Double Vision

As I lay reading a book in bed on a normal September evening in 2005 the vision in my right eye began to fade.  It was as though a dimmer switch was turning, and good vision became grey and blurry, then all grey, then black.  It happened quickly, it happened painlessly.  I was scared and confused.  I now know I had a mini-stroke, a blood clot jamming the artery that feeds that eye permanently killing the receptors in my retina.  I became blind in one eye in a matter of minutes with no hope of recovery or cure.  Life changed.  I lost depth perception and squeezing tooth paste on my tooth brush became a hit or miss activity.  I walked into walls.  Handshakes are still awkward as I see the other person’s hand floating out there but am not really sure where it is.  I have compensated.  I do not tailgate.  I extend my hand first.  I no longer play catch.  I crack jokes, “I’m keeping an eye on you,” etc.  I began this blog.  A blog focused on vision of another sort.  Though I have lost sight in an eye my vision for public schools is now more robust and intense than ever.

In our nation there are two visions for public school.  They compete and are incompatible.  We have double vision regarding schools and kids, and until our lens and focus becomes clear we will continue to stumble.  Until as a people we decide, and the decision will have to be at the polls, which vision is best for our kids, then we will remain half-blind and schizophrenic.  I personally do not suffer from double vision and never will.  What I see is clear and focused:  I see the demise of public education if we do not abandon one vision in favor of the other as we are being ripped apart attempting from statehouse to schoolhouse to fulfill both visions.  The following is my synopsis of those competing visions.

Vision 1 I shall call the historic, traditional, moral and democratic vision of public schools.  It is the vision that lured most public educators to this profession.  It includes the notion of public service, it includes the notion of doing all that we can to nurture, support and motivate children to both receive and apply an education.  This vision arises from the notion that a democracy will not long endure without an educated populace capable of problem solving, creative thinking, information retrieval and management, experience in and appreciation for the fine arts, and the ability to view issues from both sides.  Those with this vision view it as more essential to our future security than the military.  Educated people are reflective.  For them positions on issues are grounded in thought, philosophy, history and discourse, not dogma.  It is from such folks that we inherited our Declaration of Independence, and an array of inventors, artists, authors, thinkers, creators, scientists, etc.  Public education developed a learned populace, it was valued and supported, and the folks who served therein were seen as servants akin to preachers.  At its core this vision motivated educators to do all that we could to successfully teach every child regardless of demographics or zip code.  We want to make a difference, we want to help kids, the next generation and the future.  We are future oriented knowing in our hearts that the fruits of our labors are harvested years from now, not in June when the scores come in. 

We recognize education as both a science and an art, but most clearly a human endeavor.  We believe that real improvement happens inside-out, not outside in.  Circumstances are different in every community and in every classroom.  Kids are different, families are different, and educators are different.  It is a sloppy, real, goal oriented profession that requires passion and commitment as well as tolerance and collaboration.  We always understood we could do more and do it better, and at the same time understood that despite our best efforts we like the doctors in an emergency room would lose a few.  We grieved those we lost.  Our goal was to reduce the numbers we lost.  The goal is moral.  The vision is moral. 

Vision 2 I shall call the contemporary reform movement.  This vision began outside public education.  It is the vision that most Americans now seem to accept as valid and most elected officials regardless of party seem to endorse and follow.  It assumes that private sector motivations, practices and procedures will improve public education in ways the historic vision cannot.  The holders of this vision push for private sector mechanisms and models to improve schools, arguing that schools must improve and those folks are armed with an array of data indicating schools are failing.  This vision emerged from “A Nation at Risk” and was codified in “No Child Left Behind”.  The folks with this vision promote competition in schools.  They promote standardization in schools.  They promote high standards in schools for teachers and for kids, a very different notion than promoting high expectations.  They promote private sector intervention in schools in the form of charter schools and vouchers.  They promote high stakes standardized testing and the labeling of schools and punitive consequences for schools and personnel that fail to meet a universal standard.  It is a one size fits all vision where every school gets placed on a bell curve, makes a certain grade, or is eventually closed.  If schools show improvement on their measures, then the measures change to re-establish the bell curve.  It is an outside-in improvement based on data that at best is spurious and is more likely totally corrupt.  The model has added so many layers of accountability to the classroom, school house and district that no public school effort is likely to be totally successful.  Even funding becomes competitive and new experiments in private sector education are promoted to siphon funds away from public schools. 

The net effect of Vision 2 has been the total demoralization of the teacher core, a shift in the role of administrators from instructional leaders to compliance officers, and a dramatic shift in the role of communities from supporters of their local schools to quasi experts based on the much publicized data and all the required letters sent home confessing the sins of the school.  This vision is economic in nature.  It is competitive.  It has made millions of dollars for private sector folks who want to receive public dollars.  There appears to be a superficial logic driving this vision, but it is not moral.  The marketplace is not moral.  Subscribers to this vision care less for the success of any given kid and care more for the outcomes and labels assigned than any other feature of the school.  And I believe it is grounded in a deep resentment for the tax dollars spent on educating all the children of this nation.

I subscribe to Vision 1.  I have devoted my entire professional career to Vision 1.  I have worked hard with staff and communities to collaboratively achieve child success via Vision 1.  I find the data from the compliance oriented Vision 2 folks interesting but not convincing.  I will not crack whips and threaten staff should they fail to achieve certain performance levels required by the Vision 2 folks.  I deeply believe that professional educators in fact know better how to help each kid learn than private sector billionaires, lay legislators and school boards. 

It is difficult to be a Vision 1 guy, especially a superintendent, in what is now a Vision 2 world.  The Board in each community, private sector folks themselves, has a hard time understanding Vision 1 because they are in careers and jobs that function in the context of Vision 2 type accountability.  These lay folks, empowered by data, have become the new educational experts on how to improve schools, and it is very difficult for them to ignore numbers regardless of the validity of those numbers.  If the Gates, the Waltons, the Kochs and the Broads support Vision 2, and if Congress and the Legislature and the Governor support Vision 2, who are they to argue?  Schools, however, do not produce widgets. 

I have attempted to walk a very tight line in recent years, attending to the concerns of Vision 2 folks while promoting a Vision 1 learning organization.  In the end, that did not work.  Despite how the community feels about our schools and the staff feels about the support they receive for their professional practice, the Vision 2 concepts are too embedded to be ignored.  Our scores are fine, and I will not threaten or intimidate staff to improve them.  I do not believe that is how you treat professionals.  You do not ask a degreed, certified professional employee to improve scores or go, because the only way to do that is to put pressure on kids.  The classroom should not be a pressure cooker.  It should be a crock pot.  Such pressure to me is immoral.  It is self-defeating.  What one should do, if you subscribe to Vision 1, is seek to support those professionals, get their take on what we need to do, and provide the resources, support and encouragement to make it happen.  Sadly, the “make it happen” continues to be improvement in scores.

Vision 2 folks worry how the system looks compared to neighboring systems.  They want our scores to be higher.  They want all our accountability measures to be at least equal to everyone else.  It is impossible to explain that those numbers matter little; we are set up to fail so that more private sector folks get public dollars, and that Vision 2 is an economic model not a moral model.  They have accepted competition as the basis of judgment of public schools.  They do not understand that school failure in terms of these measures is in no way a failure of the staff and programs.  It is a failure of the community, and that the measures that indicate failure are contrived to do just that.  I do not oppose accountability.  I oppose this model of accountability.  I do not oppose data collection; I oppose this model of data collection.  I do not oppose the assessment of student knowledge and skills; I oppose this model of high stakes, highly secret assessment that determines the failure or success of kids, staff and schools. 

Given this double vision in public education and in Texas, the virtual universal support of Vision 2 juxtaposed with my deeply held beliefs and moral support of Vision 1, it is time for me to move on.  I am hopeful that the citizens of our state are beginning to understand what Vision 2 is doing to our schools as evidenced by a slight modification by this Legislature in the number of high stakes tests.  Reducing the number of tests is not a shift to Vision 1.  It is a political compromise to maintain the commitment to Vision 2.

Regardless of the vision that you support, understand that no system can survive if the leadership has double vision.  Edna ISD cannot pursue two visions.  If I am held accountable for the measures inherent in Vision 2 I shall always fail as they really mean little to me and I am not strongly motivated to achieve higher scores on a meaningless, non-educational test designed for the wrong reasons, by the wrong people, and funded in Texas before PreKindergarten.  That is blasphemy to me. 

I care deeply about this system and have the utmost respect and affection for our community, our board our staff, and our kids.  It is time, however, for Edna to have a single vision.  I will always be one-eyed Bob and can do nothing about that.  I will not, however, turn that blind eye to this vision conflict.  I can help EISD become a single vision district. 

Blink.  I’m gone.