School Boards: What I Wish You Knew

I have been reading a series of responses from kids who replied when asked, “What do you wish your teacher knew about you?”  Equally powerful and interesting series in this same genre include kids’ responses to “What do you wish your Mom knew about you?” and child-free women’s responses to “What do you wish women with children knew about you?”  There are a host of insightful opportunities here for wives and husbands to answer regarding each other, employees and supervisors, police and criminals, spouse and in-laws, etc., etc.  Though I find these responses to the same prompt fascinating, I am not qualified in most cases to respond.  There are several areas where I feel more than qualified to respond, and I shall do so.

What do I wish school board members knew about superintendents and schools?  A list comes rapidly to mind:

I wish board members knew they are not qualified to run a school system.  They lack the training, education, experience and background knowledge to make a system operate successfully day after day.  I perceive that many board members do not know this, or do not believe it.  Board members who feel qualified to run a school system should apply somewhere to do so.

I wish board members knew they are not qualified to evaluate personnel.  Again, they lack the education, experience, training, and background knowledge to evaluate staff.  I perceive that many school board members do not know this, or do not believe it.  Board members feel qualified to inform superintendents which principals, coaches, teachers, etc. should be terminated while having no working knowledge of how professional evaluation should be conducted.  Patrons or parents may call board members with complaints resulting in a board member’s perception, but that approach is more like American Idol than a professional evaluation system.  Perception in such cases becomes more important in evaluation than professional observation and coaching.  Boards tend to suffer from the popularity syndrome in that a staff member who is unpopular for one reason or another may be encouraged to leave when in fact that employee is doing a great job.  Further, untrained supervisors tend to hire people who think just like they do rather than seek a variety of divergent thinkers to better strengthen the outcomes.  If a superintendent is to be held accountable for the district, he or she must pick the staff, not the board.

I wish board members knew they hold a position of public trust that has no power until they meet as a group.  I perceive that many individual board members seek power by individually interacting with patrons and friends and as a result become a board member of single issue which means more to them than the system as a whole.  The same board member may wish to direct the superintendent but has no power to do so unless it is by board action.

I wish board members knew that as public officials their job is to approve the budget, set the tax rate, approve district goals and objectives, and set board policy.  They should do so and then get out of the way.  Even Jerry Jones does not call plays.

I wish board members knew that public education is a state function, not a local function.  Local districts are given authority to act by the state, and what the state gives the state can take away.  Professionals are licensed by the state, not the local district.  Most policies and procedures and curriculum and budget and assessments are dictated by the state.  I wish they could see beyond district boundaries and local football wins and losses.  There is a very large world outside the boundaries of the school district and it improves the success of the district if the superintendent is involved in that larger world.

I wish board members knew that the superintendent and the board must operate like a team.  They must have the courage to say what is on their minds, they must have the honesty to report what they perceive and hear, and they must have the personal integrity to do so.  If a board member hears a complaint he or she is obligated by policy and integrity to share that complaint with the superintendent.  The same is true of the superintendent in his or her relationship with the board.  No member of the board should attack another member of the board or the superintendent.  Differences should be resolved by more sophisticated means.  Boards govern an educational institution and therefore have the responsibility to act in the most informed and mature manner possible.  The superintendent should work not to ever surprise the board and likewise board members should work to never surprise the superintendent.  Board members may not personally like the superintendent, or disagree with him or her on some issues, but the greater mission of teaching kids should supersede personal feelings and taste.  If a board and a superintendent can establish that kind of relationship a district is most likely to improve.  They do so by perceiving their relationship as a member of a team, not a boss and subordinate.

Because of board and superintendent relationships superintendents learn that they are professional nomads, likely to move on after the 2 to3 year average tenure of a superintendent.  Building strong ties in the community will make such a move more painful, but remains essential.  Superintendents will likely never have the background knowledge and experience board members have.  They will never understand the local culture as well as board members.  They will never have memories of growing up in the community and attending the schools they have been hired to lead.  Board members have a huge responsibility to share those insights with the superintendent, just as the superintendent has a huge responsibility to recommend and defend the best practices known to professional educators. 

I wish board members knew how vital it is to a system’s success that the superintendent and the board continue to learn from each other and have the courage to be honest with each other.  That relationship is difficult to build, and unless a board has mature, experienced members the burden of forging that team will likely fall to the superintendent.  When the relationship fails, it is likely due in some ways to behaviors on the part of the board and the superintendent, just as both parties tend to hold some responsibility for the end of any relationship.  And yet, the burden of maintaining and building the relationship between the board and the superintendent should be equally shared.  It is more likely that the superintendent who has received much education and training in leadership, team building, decision making and conflict will find him or herself in the position of teaching people who perceive that they are the boss and that they know all they need to know.

I wish board members knew it is critical that they protect, defend and support the superintendent just as it is critical for the superintendent to protect, defend and support the board.  We should brag on each other, not complain.  Worse, if a board member is complaining about the superintendent and has not told the superintendent then he or she, in my humble opinion, lacks courage and integrity.

I wish board members knew that serving on the board is an important role in the community and they should do their homework before deciding to do so.  Potential board members should attend meetings prior to running for office.  Potential board members should let their employers know they intend to run for office and seek support for the number of hours such a role will require.  Some of the weakest board members I have ever worked with walked onto the board never having attended a meeting with no background knowledge regarding the role of the board, and no advance approval from employers to serve on the board.  Such a member will begin their service with a huge deficit in knowledge and experience that will take years to overcome and cannot be overcome without the help of experienced board members.

I wish board members knew that while they directly deal with the school system for several hours once or twice a month the superintendent is totally immersed in the system every single day.  Superintendents live and breathe their school systems, constantly interact with staff, parents, patrons, kids and external organizations.  School systems are highly complex, multi-mission, human systems and cannot be directed from one perspective only.  I wish board members would listen more than they talk.

These are my “biggies” for board members.  No doubt I have now irritated multiple members of multiple boards, but from my perspective as the CEO of school systems for over 17 years, I wish board members knew the above.  The school system will work much better for all kids if board members did know.  The inherent conflict between boards and superintendents arises when superintendents know and the board believes they know when the board does not know what they do not know and it falls to the superintendent to attempt to teach a group who already knows everything. 

I have other lists of things I wish legislators knew and things I wish teachers knew and things I wish parents knew.  Ah, but those lists shall be fodder for future digestion.

Ex Machina

(Possible spoilers ahead, though I have really tried to avoid those to encourage you to see the movie!)

The phrase deus ex machina is a Latin theatrical term meaning "god from a machine" and refers to the theatrical ploy of introducing a god to resolve plot conundrums.  Knowing that, I saw Alex Garland’s (writer and director) Ex Machina yesterday afternoon and I am still processing.  Wife and I were one of two couples in the otherwise empty theater.  So strange that a film that has received virtually all positive reviews and addresses the incredibly difficult topic of humans and artificial intelligence was not well attended.  This is not your typical Star Wars or Trek action science fiction film.  This is a thinking person’s exploration of what is human and what is artificial intelligence and what is the difference?  I found it intense.   I found it profound.  I found it incredibly revealing of the essence of humanity and computers.  And I found it to trigger a deeply personal response.

Steven Hawking, imminent British physicist, recently warned that the development of truly intelligent machines would likely end human existence, or at least human hegemony on earth.  Garland walks us down the same troubling path.  In the end I was fooled by the director’s character development to the extent that I left the theater with my mind racing.  Similar shows have always intrigued me:  The Forbin Project, War Games, Matrix, Person of Interest, Terminator, etc.  This movie is profoundly different from those other plots.  Ex Machina wrestles with the same questions as arise in the other human/computer tension shows, but does so on a micro scale, intimately portraying the attributes of both.

I know that I am naive in many ways, almost Pollyanna in terms of my interpersonal relationships.  I enter into a relationship trusting the other until I learn otherwise, if ever.  And when I learn persons I have trusted did not merit such trust I am crushed, I am deeply wounded.  Ex Machina reminded me to celebrate my human mind while guarding my heart. 

Please consider seeing this movie.  It is good stuff.

Public School Reform is a Myth

Our Legislature is at it again.  They are pushing a school reform agenda that not only harms schools and harms the kids we serve, it serves no educational purpose I can detect.  I speak of vouchers, parent trigger law, charter schools, school choice, high stakes testing, teacher accountability, etc., etc.  If the Legislature jumped into any other profession with such meddlesome ideas the political ramifications would be swift and sure.  That is not true for education for some reason.  In fact, other than shifting public dollars to private sector entrepreneurs I can find no evidence of success for any of these reforms.  Why in the world would we continue such efforts when we know they do not work?  Perhaps I am dumb.  I am truly dumbfounded.

I believe that at the heart of these reforms are two false assumptions.  The first and most insidious is that public schools would perform better if they injected private sector market models in the operation of schools.  The second assumption, just as powerful but more harmful, is that the success of a school can be measured by a high-stakes, one day, super-secret, standardized test and that student performance on the test rests entirely in the hands of the educators in that building.  Both assumptions are not only false, they are so blatantly false and so ignorant of what we really know about student performance and school performance that believing in these assumptions is akin to believing the sun orbits the earth and to continue to fund a space exploration program based on that assumption.  In other words, if the supporters of school reform are correct why aren’t we seeing positive results?  They have had years to demonstrate that these models are superior to standard public education and they have consistently failed to do so.  What in the world is going on here?

Successful private sector folks must believe in their heart of hearts that the market and competition are the only models that can improve schools.  I find several things most interesting about this.  First, the private sector folks who push this model are financially very successful thanks to the private sector model.  We do not see former CEO’s of Studebaker, Eastern Airlines, Norton Motorcycles, Lionel or Pan Am backing these reforms.  Just as the market rewards winners it punishes then cannibalizes losers.  The winners always believe the market is right.  Losers not so much.  Do we really want that mentality driving our model of educating kids?  Do we really want to reward high performing schools and punish low performing schools?  Worse, do we really want to cannibalize any public school that serves children?  If you cannot imagine an organized effort to identify then punish institutions that serve children you need look no further than the current Texas (and national) school reform agenda.

The second interesting thing about the first assumption is that it is in no way related to the performance of public schools, much less public school professionals.  To support such notions is a frank admission that the person has no knowledge of what happens in a public school on a day-by-day basis.  None.  The private sector functions to identify winners and losers.  Public schools function to ensure that all kids are winners.  These are diametrically opposed missions.  Public school folks do not go to work worrying about cost overruns, deadlines or what the schools down the street or across the state are doing.  They drive to work thinking about how to structure a lesson to ensure the most learning for their covey of kids or strategies to help the kids that did not get it the first time.  (Though it may be worry about the line at the copy machine.)  The best way to accomplish the public school mission is to collaborate, get and share ideas with other professionals in other places.  No Radio Shack is not going to call Best Buy for help, but hopefully the schools where the employees’ children of those two organizations attend do that very thing.  In fact, it would be immoral for one school or one teacher to develop a strategy that really helped kids and keep it a secret for a competitive advantage.  Private sector models have no place in public schools.

The second assumption is equally absurd.  Yes, the teacher makes a difference.  One could argue that the teacher makes a huge difference in the learning of the kid.  But teachers are not the only variable that influences student performance.  In fact we know the variable of greatest impact on student success in school is the family’s income, and the family’s education level.   Kids that come to school from poor homes lead by adults with less than a college or even high school diploma simply do not do as well as rich kids from educated parents.  The fact that we collect data and then judge that performance on one day each year is absolutely bizarre and inaccurate.  On any given day kids will have good days, bad days, be hungry, be mad, had a fight with their parents, got rejected by a significant other, etc., etc.  No way can a teacher be held accountable for the #2 pencil bubbles of any given kid that day.  Legislatures, state departments of education and Pearson (the test manufacturing company) very much want to keep the content of the tests a secret.  A teacher can lose his or her job and certification if they learn what is on the test and share it.  Think about that.  How would you prepare kids to take a test when as a teacher you do not know what is on the test?  When teachers teach, and know what they teach, and know what they want kids to know, and develop their own teacher made tests to measure what kids know, the test outcomes are much more meaningful.  We do not do that anymore.  Obviously because teachers are no longer qualified to develop their own tests and someone in the private sector must make millions to do it for them. 

Teachers can and do make a huge difference.  But a teacher cannot overcome the kids’ background and home life.  Nor can he or she overcome the kid’s poverty or value structure.  Nor in the brief time teachers are with the kids can they ensure healthy eating and appropriate dental and medical care.  Teachers cannot fix those things, but kids bring all those things to the table on test day and those tests measure teacher competency.  That is absolute lunacy.

So just for the sake of argument, lets toss any and all school reform efforts that are based on judging schools by test scores and that are modeled after private sector measurements and motivations.  If we could throw those two assumptions out, what reform efforts would be left?

Not charter schools.  Charter schools do not teach kids better.  In fact they can kick kids out and force them to return to public schools.   Charter schools simply are a duplicate publicly funded K-12 education system designed to make the private sector folks who run them very rich.  We do not need competition.  We need collaboration.

Not vouchers.  Why would we allow public school money to go to wealthy parents who already have enrolled their kids in private school?  Such a strategy may increase the number of private schools eventually, but not immediately.  Is that what we want?  More private schools?  Do we believe they do better than public schools?  They do not when family income is factored out of the results.

Not high-stakes standardized tests.  Results of such tests may be interesting, but they are surely not the end all and be all of school evaluation.  If they mattered teachers and kids should get the results during a time when there was a chance of remediation.  We do not get the results that fast.  If they mattered, state departments of ed would not have to publish the degree of error in the test data while they draw a hard line at some number to determine who passed and who did not.   If they mattered, a group of teachers in that subject would design the test and teachers would know what was on the test in advance.  Schools will always have tests and other strategies to measure student knowledge and performance.  To make such a strategy be a one-size fits all, high stakes event is ludicrous.  Worse, teachers and others now spend an inordinate amount of time administering sample tests to see if the kids are “ready.”  What a waste of time.

Not teacher evaluation systems based on test scores.  That strategy clearly helps no one, not the kids, not the teachers.  Who will teach the most challenging kids if the quality of the instruction is measured by test outcomes?  If the test scores have no meaning and no value as I argue, then they surely should not be used to make professional personnel decisions.

No parent trigger law.  Such a law allows parents to look at test results and conclude they need a new direction for the campus, new staff, etc.  The flaw here is twofold.  One, the decision is based on test scores and two with a dramatic shortage of experienced, competent, qualified educators why would you want to start over?  That will make things worse.  In the entire US of A where private sector thinking has pushed parent trigger laws virtually no group of parents have ever enacted those provisions.  It is a failed reform effort on the books to further intimidate teachers.  We do not need to intimidate teachers, we need to support them.

Texas has been on the school reform mission since 1985.  Each year our state leadership laments our failing public schools.  I would argue schools will continue to fail following the above reform agenda.  Our legislature is crazy if they think we can follow the same strategies we have followed for 30 years and get different results, or somehow head down the wrong road faster and arrive at our destination.  I would argue policy wonks and legislatures who think like that should be the ones held accountable for school outcomes.  They are the ones making the rules.

I oppose the reform agenda.  I oppose anything that demeans or diminishes the teaching profession.  I oppose anything that compromises teacher salaries other than to raise them. 

I support making school a place where kids can and do learn under the influence and guidance of a teacher.  I support small class sizes so that teachers are more able to customize their instruction.  I support paying teachers a livable wage.  I support responding to them as though they were college-degreed and professionally trained and licensed.  Oh yeah, they are!

In other words, the “reform” agenda must be reformed.  It has failed.  It has made some private sector folks very rich with tax dollars collected for public schools at the expense of those serving kids in public schools.  That must stop.  I would argue that the Legislature should take the same attitudinal approach to public education they want teachers to take toward students:  focused, caring, supportive. 

And please, Texas voters, stop sending right-wing radio talk show hosts and lawyers and ranchers and oil men to Austin to make decisions about public education.  Attaining wealth does not necessarily mean one attains wisdom.  Receiving a majority of the votes does not imbue one with perfect perceptions.  It is those folks who are nailing kids by hammering on the schools.