Football and Public Education

OK.  I am on a football kick, no pun intended.  I love watching football, though I hate the injuries.  And as I anticipate my first weekend since summer without football I grow reflective.

The game of football seems to me to be a medieval-like event based on the conquest of land and a substitute for war.  Offensive teams have several opportunities to grab yards from the defensive team.  Failing to do so requires giving the ball to the other team.  The goal of one team is to grab all the yards on the field and to get the ball over the 0 yard line of the other team.  The goal of the other team is to stop that from happening.  We defend our land, or we wage war to conquer more.  Both teams follow both strategies alternating from one to the other.  To help achieve their goals teams have only the loveliest maids in waiting, festooned in skimpy outfits cheering on the edge of battle.  We have the trumpets elevated in the keep to herald good events.  We have colorful gear to flout prior to the joust.  We have flags for each team.  The peasants sit in the stands suffering the weather (except in really wealthy kingdoms who have decided to enclose their field of battle) to cheer on the king’s knights as they joust on the field of play.  The winning knights are richly rewarded.  The peasants are taxed more to support the knights.  If the king is unhappy with his knights he may banish them from the realm.  Nothing sadder than a banished knight.  See, it’s medieval.

NFL Black Monday was December 30, 2013.  On that day five NFL head coaches were fired, banished from their kingdom if you will.  Owners simply told them they were fired and began searches for new coaches.  Were these coaches caught embezzling or doing drugs or what?  No.  The owners looked at the team data and decided to replace the coach.  Owners replace head coaches so that the team is more likely to win.  I find that very interesting.  Leads me to several questions:

Will there be more winning teams in the NFL next year than this year?  Perhaps.  Depending on the number of teams with even records there could be 11, 12, 13 or 14 winning teams.  But the variance is very small.  Will there be more NFL teams in the playoffs next year than this year?  No.  Will there be more teams in the 2015 Super Bowl next year than this year?  No.  There will just be two teams in the Super Bowl and 12 teams in the playoffs.  There are 32 professional football teams, so 6.25% make it to the Super Bowl and 37.5% make it to the playoffs.  Given those numbers, 20 head coaches (62.5%) could be at risk of termination if their team does not advance to the playoffs, or 30 head coaches (93.75%) could be at risk of termination if their team does not advance to the Super Bowl.  (Special thanks to friend Floyd Elfrink for checking and correcting my numbers!) That is a high percentage of risk.  Especially for a role that does not make a single pass, a single tackle, a single kick, or a single run the entire season.  The coach is on the sidelines.

Next year will there be fumbles, dropped passes, penalties, weather issues, dramatic punt and kickoff returns, dramatic runs to and catches in the end zone?  Yes.  Is there a way to coach that?  Yes, but the event is unpredictable.  On any given Sunday…..

Does the coach make a difference in performance outcomes?  Clearly the NFL owners think so.  There are a handful of coaches who have left a winning team, moved to another team that later became a winning a team.  So it looks like the coach makes a difference.  I happen to think that the coach is just one variable in a very complicated mix of variables that determines the win or loss of any given game, much less the entire season.  There may be stellar coaches, so far above other coaches that any team who employs them will become winners.  The Texans believe that and are looking for a Lombardi.  The best coach in the world can do little with a team of little talent.  I think vice versa is also true.

So, what does any of this have to do with public education?  Simple.  There are simpletons out there who think public schools should be run and staffed like the NFL.  Even if one makes the case that the coach makes some difference but does not determine the outcome of the game, folks still want to treat superintendents, principals and teachers the same as NFL owners treat head coaches.  If it is a poor performance year, fire ‘em.  State and federal guidelines allow for this as part of the sanctions for low performing schools.  School Boards feel like kings, empowered to banish knights if they do not like the way things are going.  (I do find it interesting that even King Arthur tolerated Lancelot.  Few Boards are so gracious.)  Such concepts are so far from reality that I am almost at a loss to know where to begin a discussion.  Almost.

Coaches are charged with preparing their individual players to play and to prepare all the players to play as a team.  They are charged with developing strategies to capture more land and they are charged with developing strategies to defend the land they have.  Once on the field and the game is under way coaches may or may not tell their players which strategy to use, they are to manage the time of play, and make decisions regarding whether to go for it or punt.  But once the game begins, the coaches are on the sidelines.  They do get an additional 15 minutes to coach mid-game, but they do not coach during the game as much as they decide what the team should be doing even though the coaches do not actually do it.  The goal of offensive team is to get the football over the 0 yard line of the other team.  The goal of the defensive team is to stop the other offensive team from achieving their goal. 

The coaches and the players focus on the football, the yard lines, the position of the other players, etc.  Once a game begins there will not be any redrawing of the yard lines.  The field of play will not get larger or smaller; it is static.  The game time remains fixed, it will not get longer or shorter.  The goal posts will not grow or shrink.  And the football will not change shape.  It will not become a beach ball, a softball, volleyball, or a hand ball.  It will remain the same shape for the duration of the game.  Further, a touchdown will be worth 6 points, a field goal 3 points, a safety 2 points and an point after touchdown 1 point.  Given all that, football is fairly simple.  You merely have the dynamics of the coaches, the players, the weather and the strategies to play with.  All other variables are fixed.  With so many fixed variables it is understandable why owners may want to fire a losing coach even if the odds of creating a winning team are not increased.

If football were like public education here is how it would be played.  The football would change shape every play just as the kids in our rooms are different every day and every year.  One day a volleyball and one day a handball.  In fact, some of the footballs would be like flubber and others like IED’s; defying description and/or actually fighting back.  The yard lines would change as the state and feds alter the ways to measure the team.  Most likely the field would get larger and it would be ever more difficult to gain a first down.  The point values of a touchdown would change based on a statistical analysis of the game in progress just as the labels for schools change based on new test scores as the tests change.  The state and the feds serve as referees, throwing flags whenever a host of teachers fail to score. 

The principal and the superintendent are the coaches on the side lines, but they do not participate in any single play.  Teachers are the players, they must know their positional responsibilities, how to play as a team, and be ever so flexible to change the strategies given the fluctuations in scoring, yard lines, penalties, their positional responsibilities and the ball.  The game would be played in silence and hidden from view in multiple venues.  Each player will have multiple footballs and will play the game alone in a venue.  No maidens cheering, no bands playing.  In fact, no coach can monitor the play of all his or her players at any single point in time.  The only time we even see all the footballs is at the intermissions during the day when we take a break for potty or lunch or to change game venues.  Public education not only has all the complicated variables of football, it has a host of additional variables that football does not.  The goals remain similar:  get the footballs over the yard line marked as success.

The board serves as owners.  They look at results and decide whether to keep the coach or dismiss him or her.  Many of these owners feel like experts in the education version of football, but they really do not have a clue regarding the complexity of the sport.  For such owners it appears to be black and white.  If you are losing, change offensive or defensive strategies and fire the coaches and players who cannot do so.  They fail to understand the ongoing variance in scoring and the shape of the footballs.

For a football coach to win clearly each position player must become an expert in his positional responsibilities and develop the physical acumen to successfully fulfill those responsibilities.  For a school to be successful, each teacher must not only know his or positional responsibilities, but they must be able to change the play at any given point based on what the footballs are doing and the changes in scoring.  Teachers must be professionals.  They must call their own game within the rubric defined by the coaches and the law.  No one can call plays for the teachers from the sidelines.  Teachers must do that.  Teachers, in fact, are all coaches.  Principals and superintendents really just coach the coaches.

And therein lies the greatest difference in football and public education.  In football the ground rules and the rules of the game remain the same.  In teaching they are constantly in flux.  Teachers must be leaders, they must be coaches.  No NFL head coach could manage a team and play a game well if each player felt like he was the coach capable of calling his own plays.  The game would be chaos.  Welcome to public education.

Using the same rules for dismissal of coaches in public education that are used in the NFL is ludicrous beyond contemplation.  The owners do not get that.  Even NFL owners do not get the relatively simple dynamics of football played with so many fixed variables.  But the challenges of the rules of learning are even more difficult.  Teachers get it.  Principals get it.  Superintendents get it.  Owners do not.

Sadly, the local owners have less understanding of education than they do of football.  And they really do not understand the dynamics of football well enough to be a professional football coach or they would be one.  Surely they should recognize they do not understand public education well enough to serve as coach or player.  They have no such recognition. 

Football appears to me to be based on medieval concepts.  Public education is based on the future.  We will never know the final score of any of our efforts with kids until years in the future.  I suggest owners learn to trust the coaches.  Teaching and learning ain’t football.