I am deeply saddened by the events at the Washington Naval Yard this week. We continue to see “active shooters” killing people and it makes me sick to my stomach. My heart and prayers go out to the injured and the families of those who lost their lives.
But this event was different. This is the Naval Yard. This is a secure facility, made so by military folk and controlled gates. There are Marines there. The NCIS is there. There are a host of armed, trained, military and law enforcement type folks there. And yet, an active shooter got inside and started killing people.
I am from Texas and this may sound like blasphemy, but these events give me pause as I think about schools and safety. We went round and round here discussing arming employees, hiring officers, trying to decide if we should encourage kids to shelter or run. If the Navy Yard cannot defend itself against such an attack, who are we as public school folks to even try to prevent such an attack on a school building, especially by arming staff or having armed officers present? If many of the victims were shot running out, and such an exodus triggered even more panic, it looks like sheltering in place makes the most sense. I believe no matter what we do to protect schools from active shooters we only deter the wannabees. The serious shooters will get in and wreck havoc wherever. It is like lightning. Unpredictable, unstoppable. Not much we can do to protect all the trees in the forest.
And it continues to worry me that guns are so accessible. Apparently the shooter was delusional and rented an AR-15. A shotgun and handguns were recovered at the scene. And we respond by allowing hand guns inside schools? It is because I am from Texas that I know a handgun is not the weapon to use when confronting an AR-15 or shotgun. It does not make sense to me. Clearly it did not work at the Naval Yard this week.
Just thinking.
A former Texas public school superintendent speaks his mind and shares his vision, albeit blind in one eye.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Thursday, September 12, 2013
One-Eyed Bob is Two!
And I wonder if vision pieces should have footnotes or
eyenotes, and if notes, what key are they in? Perhaps
for me D major – too sharp. Is the piece
an eye drop? Perhaps only if the topic is
pupils and we seek to enlarge them via dilation. So sad; I bawl. One-eyed.
Launched this blog two years ago. That’s how long you have put up with this:
puns, word play, insights, rants, and hypotheses composed in fragments. (Why, if they are fragments, do we call them
fragment sentences?) I truly hope I do
not drive you as crazy as I do my grammar checker.
Happy Birthday to me. Thank you, kind and faithful readers. Thank you followers. Thank you AASA. I’m having fun having my say and playing with words. I’ll keep it up if you will! Uh, that’s not true. I am driven to share what I see whether read or not. I will remain one-eyed bob.
Thanks for looking.
9.12.13
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
False Assumptions about Public Education
I am writing what I hope becomes a published book. The book will not only look at public school superintendents and school board relationships, it will look both at the larger context of those relationships and my own very personal experience with that relationship. Just for the heck of it I share the draft of Chapter 8:
The preceding chapters have been very personal and included revelations that I find risky and painful. It is now time in the telling of my tale to be professional. The current political context of decision making from within and from without regarding public education plays a critical role in the future of public education, the relationship of all Boards and all Superintendents and all communities, and the mission of public schools.
The preceding chapters have been very personal and included revelations that I find risky and painful. It is now time in the telling of my tale to be professional. The current political context of decision making from within and from without regarding public education plays a critical role in the future of public education, the relationship of all Boards and all Superintendents and all communities, and the mission of public schools.
Widely held assumptions
about public education have changed. I
believe they have changed as part of a concerted lobbying effort promoted by
folks of wealth who would prefer not to be taxed to educate all kids. Regardless, what our nation and our
communities want from public schools, expect of public schools and how they
judge public schools has changed dramatically in the last 50 to 60 years. An entirely new set of governing assumptions
has taken root and is now so embedded in the commonly held belief system that
to challenge them appears to be blasphemy to many. Policy makers and parents of local school
children accept these assumptions as truths.
They are not. They are
prevarications. They are invented, not
proven. They are harming kids,
communities and our nation. And the
longer we hold on to these assumptions the further we will drift from the real
mission of public education.
Assumption #1 is that
public schools are or should be subject to a competitive model for the purpose
of improvement. Policies based on this
assumption are escalating. Federal
grants are now competitive. Teacher
salaries can be competitive based on student performance outcomes. Schools are judged based on competitive
outcomes. Funding for public schools in
general now competes with the funding of charter schools, and the notion of
vouchers pretty well throws down the gauntlet saying that public schools do not
win in the competition so parents should have the choice based on competitive
outcomes to send their kids to private schools with public tax dollars footing
the bill.
This assumption is
grounded in the market economy model, and is advocated by wealthy private sector
folks. They promote consumer choice as a
rationale for competition in schools.
Consumers do not have choice if kids attend schools based on an
attendance area rather than school performance; hence the support of charter
schools and vouchers and competitive funding.
Further, if competition
is the appropriate model for public schools then schools must be judged. Annual reports must be made comparing schools
and judging schools based on their product.
These reports read like a Consumer’s Report analysis of public schools: from
much better than average to much worse than average. An incredible amount of time and money are
now spent on collecting data that purports to measure how good teachers,
schools and school systems are. Those
systems judged as poor receive sanctions, some so severe that the school is
closed and the employees fired. Those
systems judged as great, exemplary, outstanding, or “A” systems receive
accolades, more flexibility with their funds, and property values therein
improve. No one wants to send their
child to an “F” school, or a worse than average school.
Imposing a competitive
model on public schools is absolutely the wrong model to use. It does not fit with the mission. It harms and hampers the ability of public
school folks to teach kids. In no other
arena of public service is a competitive model supported by the government
using tax dollars. Supporting charter
schools and vouchers would be the equivalent of government subsidies to UPS and
FedEx to compete with the US Postal service using the argument this will help
the USPS to improve, such funding taken from the USPS budget. It is the equivalent of supporting private
security firms with tax dollars taken from local police budgets if the local
police cannot produce data on crime reduction.
It is the equivalent of tax dollars supporting private sector bottled water
companies if the local water system is judged inferior. Upon just a little reflection it should be
clear that any of the above examples should not be cause to reduce funding for
the public service for private sector folks, it should be a rationale to
increase funding for the public sector.
The post office will not improve if more tax money is diverted to the
private carriers, the police will not improve if they lose funding, and the
public water supply will not improve if there is less investment in infrastructure
and health. All such attempts would be
laughed out of legislatures. Not true of
public schools. Somehow we have been
taught to believe that choice and alternatives funded by tax dollars is a
superior model to improve public schools.
This is so ludicrous it would be laughable except that so many now
believe this assumption.
Further, this assumption
is grounded in the belief that those of us in public education are here to
better ourselves financially at the expense of others. Nothing could generally be further from the
truth. Teachers do not drive to work
worried about how they are doing compared to the local charter school or even
the neighborhood school next door.
Principals are the same as are superintendents. We compete on Friday nights on the football
field, but all the meaningful improvement we accomplish in public schools
occurs through collaboration, not competition.
Rather than patenting an instructional strategy that works for kids we
are eager to share it with others.
Why? Because if we know something
that would help kids learn and do not share it we are hurting kids and that is
absolutely immoral and unethical. We are
not like pharmaceutical companies seeking to patent a new drug for our own
profit. There is no corporate espionage or
spying in public education. Our first
goal is to do no harm. Not sharing, not
collaborating harms kids and professionals and schools and communities. Competition nurtures non collaboration. Moreover, if the motivation of public
educators is to make money I argue, unless they are all nuts, that public
education is not the profession they would have chosen.
Most interesting to me is
the data regarding the so called competitive models. Few charter schools outperform public schools
when demographic characteristics of the kids are accounted for in the outcomes. We do not know how private schools perform
because they are exempt from the same measures for which public schools are
held accountable. I happen to believe
that private schools are not nearly as successful as public schools because it
is the mission of the parents of private school children for their child to be
successful and behave else wise they will be kicked out of the private
school. Private school teachers can
transmit information and kids are required to get it or leave. Better teaching occurs in public schools
every single day. Every public school
teacher I have ever fired for incompetence was hired by a private school. Place the faculty of a private school in a
public school setting and vice versa and the private school teachers will fail
and quit while the public school teacher will dramatically outperform the
private school teachers and feel like they have died and gone to heaven.
The assumption that
public schools are or should be subject to a competitive model for the purpose
of improvement is not only false, it harms kids and harms the efforts of public
school staff to teach kids.
It is very difficult to
find a member of the legislature, a school board member or a parent who has not
been convinced that this assumption is true.
The second assumption,
grounded in the first, is that standardized measures of student outcomes are
meaningful and useful for the purpose of judging schools. The assumption is another effort to apply
private sector models to public schools, and on the surface it appears to be
rational. Why don’t we simply collect an
array of data regarding dropouts, graduation rates, attendance rates,
disciplinary data, and combine it with student performance on a high stakes
standardized test to see which schools are better than others, or which
teachers are better than others. Only
with such data con we judge or compare schools.
Again, there are severe
underlying flaws in this assumption.
First, the data regarding dropouts, graduation rates, disciple, etc.,
are much more a reflection of the demographics of the students served than the
performance of the school. In wealthy
districts with efficacious parents the data on these variables is always
stellar. In districts that serve poor
kids the data is always worse. If that
is a function of the school rather than the community than a simple staff swap
would improve the performance of poor kids.
That, of course, is ludicrous, and none of the current reformers is
suggesting such. They know.
The reported outcomes of
the high stakes standardized tests are even more spurious. An entire year of learning is judged by one
test on one day administered in a high stakes secure setting to children aged
10 to 17. The outcomes of that one day
of testing are used to judge the kids, the teachers, the school and the school
system for an entire year. Failure to
perform up to established cut scores labels all the above as poor
performers. The stakes are higher for
the staff and school than they are for kids because the sanctions for staff and
schools are greater than they are for kids.
Again, brief reflection on this practice should reveal the flaw in this
logic.
There are 4 million
school children in Texas, taught by hundreds of thousands of teachers in tens
of thousands classrooms. The human
variables in such an equation are so vast as to be impossible to enumerate or
to measure. To judge kids, the teacher,
the school and system based on one day of data collection per subject each year
is the equivalent of giving a meteorologist one day of radar and satellite
imagery and ask for accurate weather predictions for the coming year. We all know that the variables surrounding
weather prediction are so vast that we forgive meteorologists for getting it
wrong, even when they are wrong most of the time. And meteorologists have continuous data
collection tools, 24-7-365. The human
variables in all the classrooms and schools in Texas are more varied than the
weather variables and the data collection only occurs on one day, once a
year. In no way should these data be
used to judge kids, teachers and schools and hang a label on them that will
last a year. It is ludicrous beyond
belief.
What is interesting is
that the data we do receive continues to confirm that wealthy kids with
efficacious parents tend to outperform poor kids. OK, we know that. Quit testing and let’s move on. Rather than preparing for a test that will
judge us for a year yet to come, let us spend those resources on seeking
strategies to help those kids who are not successful become successful.
The issue is not data
collection. The issue is what to do with
the data. If the data is collected to
inform and improve instruction then that makes sense. But, the data is so late getting back to the
schools that it is virtually impossible to modify instruction for the sake of
the kids. Make no mistake, the data is
not collected to help kids or teachers or to improve instruction. It is collected to judge kids, teachers and
schools.
No one else uses snapshot
data for long term judgment. Not meteorologists,
not medical doctors, not even engineers.
When I attempt to sell my house and discover that the survey of my
property is more than 6 months old I must get a new survey. If dirt can move in six months what might a
kid learn in six months? Further, when
my doctor takes my blood pressure he is not done for the next year. And, we do not judge the doctor for my blood
pressure. He looks at the data, makes a prescription,
checks the data soon thereafter and may alter the prescription. That is not what we do in public schools. Schools are held accountable for the blood
pressure of their students.
Add to the above the
statistical approach of norming the scores and determining quartiles of schools
and we really have a problem. If the
outcomes on a standardized test are normed, that is they are forced into a
normal or bell-shaped curve, then the likelihood of improving a school’s
position on that curve is slim. To
improve, every other school would have to do worse the next year, and no
educator wants that. Holding our own
each year is in fact a major accomplishment that should be celebrated.
Further, if all that
matters is the outcome on a standardized test then schools and teachers have
little choice but to focus on test preparation rather than real learning. The second assumption that standardized
measures could and should be used to label and judge schools is not only wrong,
it is preposterous.
However, it does serve to
bolster the arguments of those who wish schools to be judged by the competitive
model. Two false assumptions do not
yield the truth.
The third assumption is
that a legislative mandate or requirement will result in improvement. If the government requires schools to reduce
dropouts, improve standardized test scores, develop more college readiness,
improve teacher evaluations, etc., then there is a belief that those things
should happen. If the government
requires that teachers teach a standardized state defined curriculum then the
assumption is that instruction will improve.
The entire assumption is based on the belief that if I tell you to do
better you will. It is based on the
assumption that when the state or federal government sets standards that
everyone will accomplish achieving those standards.
Were that a valid
assumption I would simply send memos to teachers and principals telling them to
do better and my job would be done.
(Well, it is done anyway, but not for a lack of memos.)
The entire assumption
creates an environment of compliance.
Teachers want to keep their heads down.
Principals are reluctant to speak out.
Superintendents, who as a group are really risk adverse, lay low as
well. We begin to brag only on the areas
where we show the most success complying with all the standards and all the
mandates. So called instructional
leaders become instructional managers ensuring that we comply with everything. We have become much more concerned with doing
things right than we are with doing the right things.
Compliance reduces
leadership and individuality and creativity and collaboration, all the elements
I believe are necessary for schools to improve.
Worse, the decisions regarding where and how we should improve schools
comes from the outside-in, not inside-out.
No real improvement happens that way.
If I were mayor of my town and wanted all the homes here to be more like
some model home, I could require everyone to engage in home improvement projects
to measure up to the outside-in imposed standard. Folks might comply, but they would
complain. Real home improvement happens
when the folks in the home decide what they want and need to do to improve
their home and set about doing it. In an
inside-out improvement effort there is excitement, commitment and
celebration. In an outside-in required
improvement effort there is compliance and a loss of morale.
Further, the assumption
is based on the wrong work model. If I
am an uneducated assembly line worker then mandating improvement based on
constant monitoring as a strategy for improvement may improve my productivity. However, the “improvement” in such settings
is usually the profit margin of the corporation. The sanction is quick loss of job. The monitoring is consistent and constant,
and the variables monitored are tangible, measurable products. Schools, however, are not like that at
all. In every classroom is a degreed,
licensed, certified professional. Each
of these professionals must make decisions on a minute-by-minute basis for the
purpose of educating the large numbers of little humans that surround them. There are no widgets, no products to measure. The event horizon of success with students lies
well in the future, not in June when the scores arrive. To assume that effective management of a
professional cadre of adults should be based on effective management strategies
of the assembly line is crazy. Worse, it
is totally demeaning to the professional.
The third assumption that
legislative mandates and requirements will result in improvement in the schools
is false. Like the other two
assumptions, this assumption hurts kids, teachers and schools and does more to
inhibit real improvement than to promote such improvement.
The fourth assumption is
that anyone and everyone is qualified to set school policy, standards, and
direct school improvement.
It has been such an
interesting time to be a public educator.
I have experienced the transition from holding a position of respect in
my community to someone who simply disagrees with what we need to do to improve
schools. Today, a majority vote for a candidate
appears to be all the qualification necessary to become an expert on
schools. Or, amassing a personal fortune
empowers individuals to not only lobby for their own brand of school
improvement but to conduct experiments in public schools. As a professional educator that is extremely
frightening. I know of no other
profession where that is true. In fact,
I know of no skilled labor arena where that is true. To assume I could improve the operation of forklifts
because I received a majority vote is crazy.
Why we are not equally horrified by legislators setting school policy
and direction is beyond me.
I believe this assumption
took root because of all the standardized and competitive data collection. We have systematically convinced our
constituents and our communities that our schools are in trouble. Given that schools are run by professionals
and there is now data to indicate that they are in trouble then they, the
non-professional school community, must step in to improve schools. Sadly, the current non-professional
improvement model calls for more data collection, more competition, more
choice, more sanctions and the cycle accelerates to empower non-school folks to
do with us as they please.
I earned a bachelor’s
degree. After a successful stint in the
private sector I returned to college as a post graduate to take the necessary
courses to become a teacher. I passed a rigorous
state standardized test to become a teacher. I taught for ten years, learning
my profession and improving my practice each year. I earned a masters degree in educational
administration, attending school at night and successfully completing 45
graduate hours in public school administration complete with a constant review
of the professional literature regarding what works and does not work from
classroom to board room. I passed a rigorous
state standardized test to become an administrator. I became a campus administrator for 4 years.
I worked in a central office for 4 years.
I attended a host of professional development sessions and later
presented a host of professional development sessions at state and national conferences. I pursued a PhD. in educational
administration accumulating an additional 130 hours beyond the masters toward a
doctorate. I passed a rigorous state
standardized test to become certified as a superintendent. I have been a superintendent for 17
years. I have been totally immersed in
public schools for 40 years, the practice, the theory and the process. Evidently my background is inadequate as a
host of publicly elected folks do not take my advice and act on their own
belief systems regarding public schools, belief systems grounded in false
assumptions.
I remain amazed that a
radio talk show host was elected to the Texas Senate and has set about changing
public schools based on the above assumptions.
He has gone so far as to personally attack a set of packaged lesson
plans claiming they are un-American because they promote critical
thinking. He has successfully bullied
his political way in to censoring instructional materials.
I remain amazed that a newly
elected member of a Board, a man with no education beyond a high school
diploma, a man with no training or experience in public education other than he
attended the local high school, a man who supervisors no one at his job, a man
who works shift work on an assembly line at a local plant feels more qualified
to determine school policy and direction than I. In fact, he spends a great deal of time
telling me his philosophy of education rather than learning from me. He is wrong.
He does not know what he does not know.
He has totally subscribed to the false assumptions now driving public
education and he is not interested in hearing a thoughtful, professional rebuttal. His lack of education contributes to his lack
of critical thinking skills and promotes adherence to a belief system not
grounded in fact. He so deeply believes
in his belief system that he perceives anyone who does not subscribe to his
beliefs as immoral and un-American. He
and the talk show Senator are the new leadership of public school improvement,
not I.
The final false
assumption is that competition, standardized measures, legislative mandates and
non-expert claims of expertise are all grounded by data that indicates schools
are failing kids. They are not. Data collected and outcomes measured are much
more a reflection of the demographics of the community served than the efficacy
of the instructional staff. We assume
schools and teachers can change the ills of society and can do so in 7 hours a
day for 180 days a year. We hold
teachers and schools and school systems responsible for the demographics of
their constituents.
I know no good way to
point out the flaw in this thinking. It
is perhaps the equivalent of judging both plastic surgeons and oncologists
using the mortality rates of their patients.
Or judging ER doctors and dentists on the survival rate of their
patients. Or judging police departments
based on the number of crimes committed. Or fire departments based on the
number of fires. Or churches based on
attendance figures and the number of bars and sexually oriented businesses in
the community. None of those data
directly connect to the performance of the folks in that business. We get that.
To judge all teachers in all settings serving all kids with the same
measures and held accountable for the same outcomes is a total disconnect. Teachers and schools are not in the business
to fail kids. We are in the business to
teach kids and only fail to do so when we have exhausted every means we know
and all the resources available. The
actual learning we purport to measure is not what the teacher knows; it is what
the kid knows. Teachers cannot open
heads and pour knowledge in. Kids
themselves must learn. Kids in an
affluent context will learn. Kids in the
context of poverty will not learn as much.
Is that because such kids are stupid?
No. It is because their social
context does not value, trust or support an organized effort to learn and the
skills, support and self-discipline necessary to learn have not been taught or
valued. If we judge teachers solely on
outcomes and punish those who perform worse than others, then who will teach
the poor kids? If we do the same for
doctors, who will want to be an oncologist?
I know teachers and
schools can make a difference. I see it
every day. I believe that if each of us
in public education did not believe that we could make a difference we would
choose another profession. But there is
no formula, no magic bullet, no commercially developed program, no state mandate
or state required curriculum that can guarantee this difference. The difference emerges due to a complicated
mix of teacher attributes, abilities and motivation, student attributes, abilities
and motivation and the cultural context of each. Punishing teachers in the most challenging
arenas is absolutely the worst thing we can do to promote improvement. It is for those teachers in the most
challenging arenas that we should provide the most support, the most resources,
and the most trust.
Schools cannot cure
poverty, nor the attributes, abilities and motivation of the children of
poverty. Every educator understands that
while being judged for that. That is
morally wrong. We know the number of
kids living in the context of poverty is increasing. Sadly, even if I held the assumptions
outlined above, would it not be morally right to promote the reduction of
poverty to help improve learning outcomes?
To support policies that simultaneously increase poverty while holding
schools more accountable for outcomes most influenced by poverty is
immoral.
All five of the above
assumptions are false, yet they are the driving forces in public
education. Standing up to those forces
is risky, perhaps professionally terminal.
The likes of Bill Gates, the Broad Foundation, the Koch brothers and a
host of other billionaires are shaping school policy and pouring money into
alternative models of schooling, none of which have proved overwhelmingly
successful in any way except to divert public tax dollars from public schools
to private sector folks who are now making money, tax money. Other symptoms abound. The new Texas Commissioner of Education is a
non-educator. He is a professional
bureaucrat. He announced to the
superintendents in Texas that he did not know education, but he was a quick
study. A weekend and a six pack of beer
was all he would need to be all caught up.
School boards are hiring superintendents who are not graduates of
professional educational programs, but are graduates of private sector
preparation programs so that the new supes believe in the assumptions above as
well. The superintendent in Houston,
Dallas and now El Paso are of this ilk and are wrecking havoc on the schools
there while thrilling the local board and the private sector with their total
attention to standardized measures.
Perhaps the motives of
these folk are good hearted. I think
not, but perhaps. I sense that their
underlying motive is to reduce the tax burden necessary to support successful
public schools, promote private sector profit from public tax dollars, and
claim to care about educating all kids while they systematically deconstruct
public education, especially for poor kids.
I think they want to save their own tax money and make more money from
tax dollars. I think they resent paying
for the education of all kids. I find
that immoral.
I rail against these
assumptions and all their manifestations.
I have done so in a conservative community in Texas. I am no longer superintendent there. I have resigned. I was not run off by Congress or the Texas
Legislature or the Commissioner of Education.
I was run off by my local board.
Wonder why?
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