tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55739060816732964562024-03-05T22:04:47.787-05:00Reanimating Public Education: Challenge & FuturesRon Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-36201797903363477742017-11-14T08:35:00.001-05:002017-11-18T07:24:22.868-05:00Closing the Books<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Forward<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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A seven-year run of this education blog has produced 137 posts, covering an ongoing war between America's <span class="GramE">150 year old</span> public school system, and 35 years of what has been dubbed "corporate reform." <o:p></o:p></div>
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Not automatically visible in that blogging has been the learning process needed to create those words. Even with an academic base of a quarter century of high level social research methodology, jumping into the products of the second law of thermodynamics public education reflects as a metaphor, was demanding. If that seems mysterious, I invite the reader to Google ‘the second law’ and reflect on how it may foot many of the dysfunctions now visible in America’s various education function trajectories.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Trying to explain public education – in contrast with the incredibly stupid comments of Betsy <span class="SpellE">DeVos</span>, disavowing that public education is a ‘system’ – means seeing it as a massive complex of nested systems. How one scopes that, to seek diagnosis of ills, means seeing analysis having longitudinal and latitudinal dimensions. What drives present dialogue about our schools is primarily <span class="GramE">latitudinal</span>, exploring all of the elements that comprise finally what happens in our classrooms along with their consequences. The longitudinal dimension implies how high you go in trying to visualize the system’s core infrastructure versus just working parts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But if you step back and get on top of this highly developed and <span class="GramE">ritually-driven</span> ‘big system,’ there are some points of view that explain a lot. At the top of the list are answerable questions: <o:p></o:p></div>
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What happens to any system over time when it is handed a monopoly? <o:p></o:p></div>
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What behaviors are triggered when a system is handed a public money pipeline vulnerable to being played, as well as activating the “ratchet effect” of economics, always expanding funding? <o:p></o:p></div>
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What happens to the operating entities in the system when there is no genuinely effective oversight of frequently poorly vetted school administrators, handed unchecked capacities to manipulate a child’s learning and public monies? If this question appears challenging, Google “Lord Acton’s Dictum.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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What happens to systems that have supporting constituencies inadequately educated to actually know when they are being provided subpar education or being conned? <o:p></o:p></div>
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What happens when a function as universal and secular as the core learning of a nation’s children is exploited by political power to serve ideological ends? <o:p></o:p></div>
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And what happens to that base of operating systems and its products when a false mechanism for inducing change – alleged standardized testing – is ignorantly and despotically installed overriding competent pedagogical strategies and means of assessing learning performance?<o:p></o:p></div>
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The answers aren’t per the riff of a protest song from the ‘60s’ “…<i>written in the wind</i>;<span class="GramE">” they</span> are demonstrated in the manifest <span class="SpellE">dumbing</span>-down of a nation’s children.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Origins<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Trying to understand why and how America’s public education experiment – second only to constitutional and democratic central government – has begun to critically fail is one half of the issue, that bifurcates into the above core philosophical questions, and the education ‘street’ questions of how that has evolved?<o:p></o:p></div>
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That reform call apparently went public roughly 35 years ago, it likely represented even earlier some fraction of our major corporate leaderships concluding our public schools had started to visibly fail to turn out the human resource preparation they assumed was needed to satisfy their employee and leadership needs. The call, paralleling a study called "A Nation At Risk," commissioned by then President Ronald Reagan, started a politically infused chain of events that ultimately led, in President George Bush's Administration, to the Federal mandates popularly called "No Child Left Behind."<o:p></o:p></div>
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The rest is recent history, and a massive and confused portfolio of attempts to change our public schools, to produce better learning performance. Not a credit to American ingenuity, those attempts, to use a food analogy, have become a hash of trial and error, all of it pragmatically failing to materially elevate US public school learning performances. That smorgasbord of alleged reforms has, however, driven our public system mammoth into a mess of variable compliance mixed with resistance, but sans anything that could be legitimately called reform. The premise of this concluding postscript to <a href="http://educationredux.blogspot.com/" style="color: purple;"><span class="SpellE">educationredux</span></a> is that our twisted networks of school reform have for all practical purposes left America's public schools in 2017 in a dysfunctional limbo.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Issues with the most current clarity are the very weapons that have corrupted the original reform strategies: One, continuation of proven dysfunctional excessive standardized testing that persists because of the ideologies and ignorance of state education directorates, along with testing company lobbying; and two the attempts to privatize public schools via use of charters and to a lesser extent the ideological use of vouchers to try to force religion into our schools. Neither <span class="GramE">have</span> proven productive in improving US learning, in fact, the opposite. See Daniel Koretz, <u><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Why the school ‘accountability movement’ based on standardized tests is nothing more than ‘a charade</span></u><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">.<b>’</b></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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The critical questions are, even if now increasing public resistance to both mechanisms offer some retreat and relief, how do you actually change for positive effect the infrastructure and behaviors in public education to generate true reform? The tactics of the present Administration will not last long enough to materially change a massive public system into a private one. The tens of thousands of public school administrators, many inadequately educated and wrongly conditioned by flawed collegiate schools of education can't be replaced in less than decades, and that assumes those training grounds for human resources can themselves reform their disciplines. Despite the mythology of perfection of public school teachers, that is a grand lie, because of how many were initially educationally unqualified for those positions, and our systems’ overall ignorance or dereliction in not continually updating teachers’ knowledge.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">How does a nation change this mess?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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To answer the question, one has to address the almost unthinkable challenge of causing millions of beliefs and attitudes to be modified, and millions of tactical acts both in and out of our classrooms to be modified to enhanced specifications. In perspective one can emphasize with the top corporate CEOs who ignited the reform movement just prior to issue of ANAR. They at the time logically believed that America's public schools had both become distracted with culturally defined learning needs, and had begun to become obsolete in dealing with exploding knowledge. Not a pejorative assessment but a pragmatic one. <o:p></o:p></div>
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By the decade of the '80s computer and digital technologies had already overtaken world business. The automation of manufacturing of the '70s (that failed to address how the substitution of machines for human resources would impact our nation) was already being supplanted by digital industries and robotics. What used to boggle the mind as billions of dollars <span class="GramE">has</span> become scales of trillions of dollars. America's <span class="GramE">educators,</span> run through by then arguably obsolete schools of education in terms of that knowledge, could not provide the learning being demanded by industry. The second hammer dropped.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our public schools by fundamental nature were not politically shaped organizations. However, by that time social pressures to correct major national and social inequities had mushroomed. The political mission of the liberal half of America had asserted itself, leading to putting the schools in the X-ring for the mission of correcting multiple issues of discrimination and bigotry. Simultaneously, the evolution of social psychology married to mass media expansion, made elementary and secondary education pawns of political ideology; political power via the vote increasingly hinged on attitudes, opinions and beliefs, installed either in the home or in those schools, becoming a hidden agenda of political and governmental treatment of schools. The crescendos of those beliefs among our power brokers are now crudely and malevolently on the table. Public education, to use a bonehead simple phrase, is now caught between the good guys and the bad guys. Because both sides, and the system itself defensively, have become opaque to diagnosis and treatment, they also seem to be the sources of ultimate stalemate.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">America, step out of the <span class="SpellE">Mobius</span> Loop?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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If one is both cognizant of systems theory, and rational in recognizing the complexity of what has been now assembled, then flayed out among many actors with the resources and power to nudge our education system, the answer is there are few forces that can dominate. The Constitution constrains one avenue, Federal takeover of the entire system. Divergent state constitutions, and divergent core perceptions and values about education constrain state actions. Saying out loud, "our public education system," posits a universal and monolithic organizational entity that doesn't exist. That becomes even <span class="GramE">more messy</span> by the belief embedded in our nation that education is a matter of local control. That belief, manifested in oversight of locally funded schools, lacking competent oversight and leadership from inappropriate local boards of education, is failure in motion. <span class="GramE">As the latter deficit traces directly to the failure of our states for decades to upgrade the requirement for BOE service, that doubles down on faulting our states for US learning failures.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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One might argue that the NCSL or National Conference of State Legislatures is a vehicle for reform. <span class="GramE">Or the NGA or National Governors Association a similar vehicle.</span> Both have the stigma of state divergence and competence failures. Another more plausible opportunity could be a consortium of America's top institutions of higher education? As that is precisely where our advanced knowledge gets processed before trickling down to K-12, it seems plausible. Those associations are already quietly in existence. A vignette: Two decades ago the Federal government, seeking to standardize -- for the benefit of parents and students -- the data for assessing college and university choice, could not get those institutions to agree to a common format for that critical information. Make higher education the rallying cry for reform of public schools? <o:p></o:p></div>
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What remains after all else drops out is the same concentration of wealth and power that launched our reform devastation -- our corporate behemoth. If the sundry billionaires putting billions into poorly devised schemes and personal ideologies, along with the power of our corporations constituting the Business Roundtable, operated within a unified private sector effort to sort reform strategies and tactics, it might offer a solution. This is also plausible, but faces a major constraint. The 'corporatizing' of America is underway, supportive of the concept. But that movement will also eventually run into America's resistance to any all-encompassing takeover of how the nation is ruled.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Where does the buck stop?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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It is hard to envision a pathway that doesn't require some social destruction, albeit that could be short of civil revolt or upheaval. The hard reality is that the two 800 pound gorillas in this conceptual struggle are not the ones most would articulate or ones that will yield to the relatively peaceful transitions of the last century. Public schools are an American entrenched reality; with 150 years of history they will not of their own volition give up the near nation-status they have constructed from public money, or easily yield to normative calls for becoming transparent and responsive to anything. The have become a cultural enclave that by human nature will resist being changed much less ousted. For all of the media reform blather, they are almost impervious to less than overwhelming disapproval at a scale that threatens their public funding pipeline. <o:p></o:p></div>
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On the other side of the skirmish line, corporate America has become imperious and virtually immune to public oversight, as earlier public protections are being destroyed by political ignorance and demagoguery.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Many, who feel more comfortable with physical scales of <span class="SpellE">Legos</span> to tall buildings, time’s arrow in months or years, and action units that fit the prior, will not be comfortable with the proposed analog of education change fitting the <a href="http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/insight-overview.html" style="color: purple;">Strauss-Howe</a> concept of "Turnings." That is a human trait; but it does not fit nor assist the scale of the work and accomplishment that the US must achieve with our schools to stagger successfully through even the remaining first half of this century.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span class="GramE">World renowned</span> futurist <span class="SpellE">Mishio</span> <span class="SpellE">Kaku</span>, in a recent presentation, argues that “intellectual capitalism” will overtake “product capitalism” in future. His thoughts about education in 2017:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222;">"1) In the internet and digital age, where information is at the population’s fingertips anytime, anywhere, learning based on memorization and not concepts is incredibly outdated; and 2) junior high school is the biggest enemy of science today." “Every one of us is born a scientist." “We ask questions all the time about where we come from and why we’re here. And it’s in junior high, where students are still asked to memorize the Periodic Table, that science dies in the heart.”</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">“In the future, where knowledge is everywhere and accessed instantaneously, and where robotics and AI can perform a variety of functions once held by humans, intellectual capital will be valued over commodity capital.” “In other words, the ability to reason, to think outside-the-box, and to be creative will be the skills most valued."</span></i><i><span style="background-color: white;"> <span style="color: #222222;">"So if the old methods of teaching and learning through memorization and the presentation of facts are outdated thanks to the digital age, what should teaching and learning look like today?"</span></span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Paradoxically, our brightest students of education were articulating this wisdom even before the onset of this century, but a deaf and blind, <i>qua</i> self-righteous public school establishment chose to ignore the realities, creating their own reform adversaries. A humorous sidebar but one not all will welcome, <span class="SpellE">Kaku</span> predicts one profession immune to the threat of AI replacement is, lawyers. His argument, the combination of critical thought and creativity required by its practice will resist mechanization; parenthetically F. Scott Fitzgerald's assertion about being able to entertain simultaneously two opposed views also seems apropos.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<u>The New York Times</u> <a href="https://nyti.ms/2hxrkZu" style="color: purple;">David Brooks</a>, in an insightful recent column asserts that much of what currently ails America, destroying once common values and hopes, fragmenting the nation, is a “siege mentality.” Noted by others who have sought to dissect the undiscriminating lobs of bile that litter our media his explanation is worthy: <i>"<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">The fact is, the siege mentality arises from overgeneralization: They are all out to get us. It shouldn’t be met with a counter-overgeneralization: Those people are all sick."<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Downbeat futurism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Early in this seven-year effort, there was a discouraging discovery; that a large part of our society, including many of this rural wedge of America, even its alleged educators and their BOE oversight, lacked either the will or the capacity to read for effect. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There are multiple treatises on the theme, how societies fail; only one of many examples, the work of Jared Diamond, <u>COLLAPSE: HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SUCCEED</u>, or the work of Peter <span class="SpellE">Senge</span>, et al., in <u>PRESENCE: HUMAN PURPOSE AND THE FIELD OF THE FUTURE</u>. Public education, as a major national chunk of our infrastructure, but compared to that reflecting metaphorically bricks & mortar, is vulnerable to high speed decay when its human resource derived conventions for positive improvement break down.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our staunch defenders of our public schools in this century merit applause, for bucking the multiple less commendable motivations for trying to privatize them. They do not merit approbation for the tunnel vision or blinders that refuse to log the incompetence and lack of integrity that selectively streak that virtuous view of real schools. In all explanation of phenomena, from quantum physics versus the behavior of large things, to the motivations that power individual behavior versus group and societal movements, both scales and all between require explanation if our nation’s future isn’t going to be ordained by a random generator.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I truly believe in the next decades, unless there is an epiphany in a population finally waking up, demanding better, our public education systems will continue to reflect the growth of entropy that brought us to 2017. That may realistically be public education finally sufficiently abusing its delegated grants of money and power, that salvaging public schools may compete with climate change to see which first yields to any intelligence that reflects a civilized society, if either manage the task?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ron Willett, 15 November 2017<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-17574210458178346382017-10-21T11:35:00.000-04:002017-10-24T08:08:34.038-04:00America’s Slo-Mo Public School Train Wreck: A Final Post<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Preface</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Enduring mysteries this
century: Why the American public education leviathan has acted with
such comprehensive self-righteousness, with disregard of its evolving
intellectual environment, and dismissal of challenge in the face of corporate
reform, that its status is now threatened; as the education wars heated up
primarily focused on the theme of replacing public schools with charters, why
that solution prevails versus reaching across the aisle and truly reforming
public schools; do the peddlers of “school choice” have such wholesale disdain
for the intellect of our nation’s citizens that they believe the choice lie
will fly; and how have our higher education institutions managed to rationalize
tolerating deeply flawed schools of education for now decades? What
thinking, or if not attributable to thinking at all versus ideology or deeply
embedded beliefs, foots the motivations for allowing present school dysfunction/underachievement
to add to retarding national progress?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Because this is likely the
last Edunationredux post, some liberties are being taken with its arguments;
they may seem different, but they are deliberate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The key one, both our composite public system, and its
present portfolio of reformers and reforms, have standing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are pros and cons on both sides,
the details of both frequently ignored in the strident but simplistic arguments
lobbed at our public for political points.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you navigate this post, both sides of the contest are
given points when merited, critiqued when deserved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can be seen as ambiguity, or properly perceived as a
natural effect of a national challenge that simply doesn’t have clear cut lines
of resolution.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Cut to the Chase</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A first alleged cut at reality, contradicting unthinking assertions by Mr. Trump, and delusional characterizations by Betsy DeVos, that our public schools are somehow a
homogeneous mass of incompetent educators, freedom-deprived parents, with curricula
that are irrelevant or even injurious to children’s futures, and a public
sector scam. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sotto voce</i>, you can
also hear the politically inspired muttering, that public schools are
installing insidious liberal philosophy in unprotected children, or are bent on
conditioning their very thinking to make them Democrat votes. You have to be an
oar short to really believe that version of the complex story.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The second real question is
the alleged attraction of a charter, if you dismiss the total demagoguery of
the “choice” pitch to citizens immune to its unreasonableness. What,
precisely, is that charter’s edge over most of our public schools?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One, presumably as a
private sector aligned organization, it is more businesslike? What that
actually means, I doubt DeVos knows. Although our public systems are frequently
light on competent management, it can be attributed to the organizational,
managerial and economic ignorance of our schools of education rather than our
schools in real communities, if they have any competent oversight.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Second, it is free to
innovate? The innovation hinges on high levels of subject matter
knowledge, and the high level training that embraces disciplines supporting
discovery and research skills. There are no standards for such leadership
in charters. Any phony or con artist could wind up pushing a charter, for
the overriding motivation of sucking up public tax dollars as a scam.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Third, where do its
teachers come from? What education has made them capable? The
education of teachers has been a frequent target of the reform movement, and
there’s room for critique, but the broad corruption of teacher qualities
offered by charters’ total lack of standards is far worse than the marginal
naivety installed by inbred teacher education programs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fourth, where does a
charter’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d'etre</i>, the
grist of what is to be learned, originate; it certainly doesn’t come from
knowledge pros, it doesn’t come from higher education, parts are there but it
doesn’t come from even higher order business thinking. Is it supposed to
come from the couple hundred of history's fictional 'bibles?'<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lastly, where does the
board or topside oversight come from? The learning implied by a valid
K-12 level education universe is not something to be linked only to a ‘job,’ or
be the simplistic insight that serves only short term issues, but something
that prepares all facets of a student for life in a free society. Charters
aren’t being held accountable. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is supposed
to manage that? Missed by virtually every right wing ideologue is the
reality that there is no such animal as a “free market.” Once the concept
of a market evolved from primitive trade of primitive commodities, the driving
force of a market’s players has been to work overtime to avoid competition. The
lamest student of economics of any complex society knows this; that our right
wing hasn’t grasped that basic truth should send them back to kindergarten.</span></span><br />
<b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></b>
<b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="color: black;">A Brutally Honest Footnote on Charters</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are a few charter chains that are managed by competent educators,
efficiently using the dollars scammed from public school financing.
Applause.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The larger portion of our charters represents some degree of scam, basically
economically raping the good faith school taxpayer. We’ve all experienced
scams before; what is more telling is the misrepresentation of present charters as
privatization of education. The presumption has to be that Betsy DeVos has
pulled most of her understanding of economics and business theory from a comic
book.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You can theorize how a K-12 school might be organized as a profit or
not-for-profit business organization, vending a complex service, to a segmented
marketplace. It won’t look like a charter. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And it will require some organizational invention and
creativity to ensure its product delivery and compliance with the same tests,
societal and financial and legal as any other business delivering a critical service.
Because of natural barriers to entry or replication by market, it will
still have monopolistic overtones, closer to our public utilities than
conventional markets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The bizarre perception of our conservative extremists appears to
be, that because our system’s designation invokes the term “public,” the nation
has sold out to socialism. Reality is that actually making our public schools private
sector fodder would introduce avenues for practices we already condemn in most
markets, especially financial markets. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fundamental to so structuring a school is freeing it from multiple
layers of control. That function, perceived as an asset, is supposed to be
controlled by some form of competitive marketplace, and the flex to manipulate
internal resources and even customers to achieve profit targets. Apparently
lost on those who refuse to read history, the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>effects of unrestricted capitalism required our original
anti-trust legislation, circa 1890.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sadly, the origins of those abuses have not diminished, just become more
complex and arch with America's 'vulture capitalism' degrading equitable society.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">The analysis can go on, but the take away should be that our
alleged reformers relying on privatization have not executed their homework to
make their case, and appear clueless how a simplistic rendering of a school as
a business would cripple educational process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least most of our public systems have the right
educational missions in their sights, even if the skill sets to fulfill them
can be spastic.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All said, is the core
battle between an improbable charter takeover of our massive education system,
versus initiating a wake up call for a public system with too many heads in the
sand; or is it the challenge of pointedly correcting what’s needed in our
public systems to not unravel part of a century of still commendable and orderly
learning evolution?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">The Picture is
Bigger...</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The challenge to the U.S.
public school system (and yes Betsy, it is indeed a system) dubbed “corporate
reform” has been visibly gnawing at our public schools for 34 years. It
may have festered far longer, driven by a rerouting of U.S. educational needs
by public school bureaucracies to a proliferation of liberal mantras versus
core learning needed to accommodate a knowledge explosion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But even that attribution
is a shabby explanation; where in those years the causes of American
educational angst metaphorically resemble the Lernean Hydra of Greek and Roman
mythology — possessing many heads, and for every head chopped off the Hydra
grew a couple of heads. So 34 years later, and in spite of the Bush and
Obama years of generally literate and well intentioned education mistakes, to the now total
stupidity of the Trump/DeVos debacles, our public systems are continuing to glacially
degrade. That is juxtaposed against a science-driven explosion of
knowledge along with a digitally driven capacity to log and manipulate that
knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In short, the talking heads
gush with piecemeal claims and counterclaims about why the nation’s primary and
secondary learning drags, but with little integration of explanations that
might expedite solutions and better policy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">A
Reality Check</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Consider: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Balderdash — there’s nothing wrong with
America’s public schools.’</i> Huh? So millions of observers
with better education credentials than these defenders are all wrong? The
leaderships of the largest and successful members of our commercial and
industrial universe are simply not capable of assessing the millions of human
resources they employ; their experiences of deficits of learning in those
resources are just myth, a bad night from some off-color crab cocktail? I
have some dry land in south Florida for sale.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A regular defensive theme:
Our teachers are not the problem. Oops, our teachers are ‘a’
problem, for many were created by schools of education with retro educators,
lacking insights about either the state of current knowledge, or how those
prospective teachers need to be educated and trained to serve. Simultaneously,
there are superb, educated human resources who grace our public classrooms,
some of whom have even started to grasp first vestiges of education science
finally emerging from neural science in the last decades (versus the phony and
superficial methods gambits created out of air and smoke by educators passed
off as strategists and tacticians).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next, no our schools'
‘management’ isn’t the issue. Sorry Throckmorton, it is a major problem.
The vast majority of America’s schools of education can’t spell either
management or organizational behavior much less offer enough insights to equip
an upwardly mobile education status seeker to manage a school. Combined
with self-service and pathetic vetting by BOE, some serious fraction of our
‘superintendents’ should be booted from education, or sent back to the
classroom. Simultaneously, there are ones who could qualify for CEO status in
excellent private sector firms.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If not critically any of
the above, what? BOE that are ignorant of education, ignorant of their
responsibilities as sworn board members, wrapped in ego and self-seeking?
Frequently the case, along with electoral processes that are a mockery of
democratic process. A century old system of choosing oversight of public
systems is corrupted by the low level of intellectual achievement required to
serve. Simplistic populism has been substituted for critical thinking
and rational oversight for a century, compounded by 50 states’ disparate
requirements to be on a BOE, along with refusal to change them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Things we don’t discuss:
Grade bands that go back to Andrew Carnegie, who was likely clueless what
those arbitrary categorizations of learning progress would induce in future
learning. They were motivated by another extremist ideological view, that
the human rabble (from his perspective) had to reflect some discipline to
create enough literacy to buy products made from his steel. Nobility in action?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What’s left? The U.S.
Department of Education, once before Presidents Reagan and Bush, at least a center for
research and assessment, has been gutted. Now it has become the podium
for ideologically twisted initiatives, trying to destroy the public system,
but arguably lacking rational thought why that is good for the nation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fill in the blanks. Profit-seeking
lacking either integrity or propriety in our testing companies, and textbook
firms that have been irresponsible in creating product validity and excellence?
Or politically rotten and extremist organizations like ALEC, never
subject to any public sector oversight, that are the right wing’s metaphorical
assault team. Lastly, 50 states’ education bureaucracies that reflect the
myriad ideologies among our states, and diverse intellectual and values
capabilities, given life and protection by our Founders’ misguided belief that
'education’ could be trusted to our states?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">What
is Real?</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reality is that America’s
’school system’ is far more complex than “public schools” versus "charter
schools.” It is in the mass of the numbers describing just the counts
that some understanding surfaces. But it is in the conceptual model of
interconnections of infrastructure and influences that recognition of public
schools’ change challenge comes home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You can theorize up from
the trenches, or you can view our systems top down. Both likely expedite
understanding. You have the U.S. Department of Education with a few
mandates that can be imposed because education was left in the Constitution to
our states. States ‘control’ education but only to the extent that legislatures
pass relevant statutes, including those licensing school human resources, and affect
strategy by state funding. Widely ballyhooed ‘local control’ is diffused
with state law, Federal mandates, and the vagaries of local BOE ranging from
potentially representative of a community, to incompetent, to corrupt.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Stack on top of the above,
union influences, textbook manipulation from the private sector, and the
current testing overlays; we have a multilayered and multivariate system, and
operationally all of the organizational negatives of bureaucratic thinking that
confront the teacher and school administrator that may have integrity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Consider the numbers, but
do so with caution. In spite of the massiveness and universality of
education in the U.S., its numbers are anything but comparable, one of the
overall failings of U.S. education. We know more about toilets by housing
segments in America than the stratified structure of America’s public schools,
and particularly virtually nothing about their performances by function and
over time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We spend <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> $626B on public systems.
There are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">abou</i>t 13,515
school districts. There are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">abou</i>t
98,817 ‘schools’ versus districts, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> 6,400
charters, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> 33,619 private
and 6,841 Catholic schools. Public school enrollment is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> 50,094,000, with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> 2,514,000 in charter
schools, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> 5,628,000 in
private schools, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> 2,088,000
in Catholic schools, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> 1,773,000
home schooled. There are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> 3,109,000
public school teachers, and an unknown number of superintendents because the
number is hidden (but one can assume at least one for each district). Unknown,
how many bodies are employed by charters, or their qualifications for being
there. Last numbers put our public schools’ funding sourcing at: Federal
- 12.7%; State - 43.5%; and local - 43.8%.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All of the components of
our public systems are in multiple ways hooked to each other; simultaneously
our Federal Census/Survey function has never been employed to account for our
school systems’ infrastructures, or operations, or performances. Maybe
three-quarters of a trillion dollars are sloshing around in America’s school
systems with virtually no genuine oversight of how their deployment impacts
their core mission of turning out an educated citizenry. Only one direct field
study of public school students was ever conducted, by educator extraordinaire,
Dr. John Goodlad. Few public school educators have ever heard of it much
less read the resultant book.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Change the system,
innovate, increase learning productivity, advance learning rather than sports, create
contemporary school organization, install competent school management, and
transition to a fully digitally driven system?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Pray, how do you do that
without first understanding what a century of moving target public educational
thinking, bumbled schools of education, and refusal to reform both schools’
human resource sourcing and oversight, have wrought? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The answers are not killing
the beast to get rid of the fleas and the mange; not mangling an already
complex and barely understood public system by substituting “charters” with
even less credence, with distorted values, and with little oversight; and not simply
dismissing the legitimate scholars who did foster part of a century of
normalization of public education. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The answers are not tasking
your local BOE to provide motivation and guidance and expecting results; not
petitioning your state’s education bureaucracy, with typically less knowledge
and objectivity than some BOE, to lead; not expecting a citizen generation equipped
by a sputtering education system to create better standards of performance for
their systems; not expecting not infrequently incompetent to self-serving and
integrity deficient superintendents to innovate; and not by expecting a total
public to suddenly become critical thinkers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A final bit of reality,
that circumscribes what can be changed in a public school system, and with what
speed, is the political platform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The vast majority of our states are currently Republican dominated courtesy
of gerrymandering, along with their legislatures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As any true change in how our schools can be operated hinges
on the states being in the middle of the initiatives, finding any reforms that can
reflect the views of 50 states’ education bureaucracies may be a binding
constraint?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Education’s version of
“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the medium is the message</i>?"</span></span><br />
<b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Public Education’s Black Hole</b><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Conspicuously missing from these observations is assessment of our public schools’ financial management. The reason, despite voluminous press reports of school financial mismanagement, is the scope of this element of school performance, and the serious absence of comparable data and studies of their assessments and audits. The comprehensive lack of transparency of public school financial performances is in itself a condemnation of much state oversight of its schools, and has enabled cover ups of schools' misapplication of resources, and lack of proper understanding of those assets' productivity. This topic should be a prime target of public school reform.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">One
Concept for Innovation</span></b><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The already complex
combination of K-12 school markets/environments served x varied qualities of
oversight x 50 states’ bureaucracies x n communities’ cultures, complicates the
vision of creating acceptable homogeneous reforms across multiple school
functions and goals. Even from the spare description above it seems clear
there is no single track for public education’s improvement if the notion is
timely change. It took public schools over a half century to start
failing some of their missions; changing that is formidable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Federal action can’t do the
task without Constitutional amendment. State venues short of a major
conceptual model change seem mission impossible. The large quality variances of
local systems at least impede some local but viral movement taking off.
Lastly, the myriad and layered controls on and dictates to local systems
are an impossible barrier even to an evolutionary shift in public standards of
performance for their management or academic/learning performance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Communities themselves are
also formidable barriers to productive change. In the rural site of this
blog, a long history of inbred influence, bigotry against outside views, a
basically marginally educated electorate, and an anti-democratic culture have corrupted and intellectually cheated its local system. But
as illustrated for decades, even poorly educated communities have still regularly
seen the need for the nation's “public schools” to get better even if that is
just vague and intuitive, but also inevitably think their own system is just
fine. Joining hands to defend a local school — because it’s tribal
and ours — has a damning effect on improvement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One still unimproved idea
for major public system reform cuts through some serious barriers. It is:
The national — by agreement among the states — disconnection of all
public systems from the most dysfunctional and self-serving restraints on change,
by essentially privatizing all public schools, but controlled by a
public-private model in which the states, as their systems’ owners, sign on to
a national model for learning. The 50 states keep control of education
within the Constitution, with the 50 states governing their schools operations,
but also serving as part of a consortium or governing body, becoming a unified legislative
oversight and joint research/policy function, replacing the Federal education
function. Perhaps closer to the Federal Reserve, with separate status from
detailed control by Congress or the executive function.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The conceptual argument is
that products of a century of acculturation, built by almost uncountable
agreements and accommodations among higher education, vendors, unions,
advocates, need to be eviscerated without killing the host. There must be
a second layer to this concept, built around local representation, but creating
local oversight requiring more standards than simple electoral
installation. That might be combined with local election, if the
standards for serving came closer, for example, to how local judicial
leadership is provided. In any event, that oversight by local board or
‘visitor’ participation would entail training and certification, giving local
oversight both some teeth and the knowledge to go with the power.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The concept for reform
execution could take advantage ideally of redirected funding by some of our
education billionaires, 'with conversion,' to create 50 sets (states) of
demonstration K-12 system models, seeking to create viral reform signals to a
state’s local systems. While this appears hazy, reality is that
nudging our locally entrenched schools is not going to be easy or perhaps even
feasible by grand design and definitive legislation. Seeking some
tighter alliance of local schools with more enlightened future higher education
assets, may be a better vehicle of reform than dictation or legislation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By chance today’s WP “The
Answer Sheet” featured the story of <a href="http://wapo.st/2yAs2KZ?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.597b3ecd26ac">Bill Gates’ latest attempt</a> to regroup and
take another swing at improving our public schools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two of its core ideas along with his ‘conversion,’ from
prior genuflection to bully reform to a more thoughtful model, fit some of the
above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately, it also
suggests that premature grandstanding with $1.7B, before genuine critical
thought and strategizing are in place, throws up a caution flag for sole dependence
on this latest Gates’ play?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
There clearly may be other theoretical models for reformulating the public
system, but as the arguments above imply, solutions are spare, the task the
equivalent of rebuilding a nation. The latter has happened in world
history, but the most prominent descriptor seems to be ‘very painful.'</span></span><br />
<b style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></b>
<b style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Finis</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><br />
</span></i></b><span style="color: black;">Edunationredux
is being mothballed for now, perhaps in perpetuity. All the words that
can be said have pretty much been said. Whether they have come from this
blog, from the class act <u>The Washington Post</u>'s "The Answer
Sheet" and Valerie Strauss, from legitimate education gurus like Drs. Diane
Ravitch and Marion Brady, or from dozens of other writings by competent
educational theorists, the assessments and ideas are far superior to those
emanating from our various governmental layers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
In this last act of this blog, the most insidious and negative
feature of the last seven years of posts, is that our society, and our public
education bureaucracies, and our alleged educators appear to have either forgotten, or
never truly understood -- or the most pejorative -- have rejected the need to
read for effect, to look forward instead of via the rear view mirror, and critically to entertain any views other than their own. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">W</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">orth reflection in a public education universe where, in spite of the need for this capacity to drive learning sought for America's primary and secondary students, its advocates and critics can only see the points of view from their reflection in a mirror.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br />-30-</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-9103653902395566242017-10-14T11:44:00.000-04:002017-10-15T10:47:37.620-04:00Our Public Education Debacle for Dummies<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b>Forward</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In a nation characterized by diversity and complexity, technologically gifted, it is reality that solutions to its problems tend to be seen as technological, and orderly. Choose the right algorithm, turn on the right tool, all will right itself. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Not the stuff, however, that will resolve our nation's current political quagmire. Nor its ongoing public school wars -- 150 year old, dug in system, versus the privatization driven model of "corporate reform."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Our public education dilemmas are very much the product of history, off course evolution, and foundational rather than tactical.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Read On</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Americans in this century have
become increasingly prone to go into denial about the basics that have made our
world more complex, unpredictable and contentious. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That psychologically compensatory
drive also takes the form of majority tinkering with or contesting the detail
or trivia surrounding an issue, rather than facing the hard reality at its
core.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is a large part of the
continuing battleground pitting our public school system against an odd couples
assortment of those naively advocating its privatization.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Both sides of the school
privatization debate are, using an old metaphor, on the water missing one oar.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Are public schools up to
knowledge speed and cool?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
system is simultaneously massive, but short of our military one of the most
regimented and indictrinated segments of our society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That reflects:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
previously virtually unchallenged 150 year monopoly on K-12 learning, with
known effects of monopoly; controlling unions still quietly entrenched; schools
of education monolithically isolated from knowledge’s trajectories; and an
individual school organizational model obsolete for at least seven
decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Add boards of education
that became obsolete on the same timetable, and this $500 billion system, with the
power to tax, lacking intelligent oversight and accountability, has – overall –
been ‘running on empty’ for some time.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hence, so-called “corporate
reform” finally emerges, both because of the legitimate need for a different
portfolio of learning products matching technological and cultural evolution,
and the delusions about markets and competition, accompanied by political
ideologies festering in the US since its formation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those advocating privatization apparently learned their
economics from a comic book – ‘competition’ is not the simplistic “invisible
hand” attributed to Adam Smith nor the economic mythology of Ayn Rand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">How real is DeVos’ declared priority
of making all public schools ‘businesses?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider this; if over a half century of jawboning public
education to do its own reformation, enlightenment and become contemporary, has
produced where we are, how without a Constitutional change will DeVos overcome
that massive public education inertia to go from 95+ percent of schools public,
to privatization now at less than five percent of those schools charter?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s as delusional as the majority of
our citizens who believe their public school is “just fine,” while it’s those
other public schools that need to find their bootstraps?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The rallying cry of the privateers
is a phony “choice.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>K-12 is
heavily constrained by geography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even when proximity of options occurs, it is likely today to be limited
to upper socioeconomic participation or gifted child status for multiple
reasons, defeating the pitch that charters will magically equalize learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of the parents hearing that false
call, the miracle of choice, are also rarely equipped to intellectually assess
and choose how and where their child should best be educated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lastly there is no winner, this is not
a zero-sum game. Irony, that overwhelming majority who missed some part of
critical thinking in their own development, was produced by the same schools
that are allegedly “doing just fine.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bottom line:</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Neither side to this face-off is
innocent, nor has registered close to a full awareness of what they are imposing on the
nation, in expanding time and costs to achieve required change, nor of the nation’s
opportunity costs, as our school wars drag on.</span></div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-34188609722425379762017-10-06T14:38:00.001-04:002017-10-08T07:42:12.866-04:00Psyching Out the “Knot” - Part II<div>
<div class="" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Forward</b></span></div>
<div class="" style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Counting the Ways to Fail</b></span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The stated purpose of blog two of this sequence was to explore the motivational complexes mediating the choices and behaviors of the masters of our public schools, as well as the organizations with their tentacles either in or around those systems. It was likely misstated, because the balled up composite of diverse reasons for choices reaches massively beyond the scope of this blog; but the complexity of the mission can be painted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Before launching blog two’s POV, the measure of alleged public school reform was taken in an excerpt from Dr. Diane Ravitch’s book, <u>Reign of Error</u>, <a href="http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/28/public-education-who-are-the-corporate-reformers/">linked here</a>. This excerpt should be required reading for every education civilian. Another reading of note is a speech by educator Stan Karp, “Challenging Corporate Ed Reform,” <a href="https://www.rethinkingschools.org/articles/challenging-corporate-ed-reform-and-10-hopeful-signs-of-resistance">linked here</a>. Both citations set the scene for this blog sequel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Initiating this post’s arguments, I stopped counting the players connected to any public school, either supporting or otherwise influencing how that system functions (see Note A). Critical, they may or may not be a constructive influence. Some may be resource-eaters, using school funding for interests that do not deliver the prime function, learning. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Even where the diversion of assets may be minimal, the normative mission of a school can be perverted, to feed egos or personal missions. Unfortunately, even tragically, the latter two factors are probabilistically far too common in the case of public school and system superintendents lacking integrity and or competence; the same failings are even more prevalent for obsolete BOE nominally charged with providing that leadership.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It may not be overstatement to single out 50 states’ systems of elected BOE school oversight as 'the greatest failure in American public education;' putting frequently unprepared strivers who are clueless about learning, and frequently reach those seats (immune for four years to public oversight if they’re dishonest or unprepared) by manipulated nominations and sans any legitimate testing of their capacities to serve. Right behind BOE are school administrators, chosen poorly and with the wrong criteria by those same BOE. Rapidly overtaking the priors, Betsy DeVos, who because of education ignorance, or demagoguery promoting school privatization, is trying to sell the big lie that school ‘choice’ is the equivalent of a decision about buying something in your local super, and effectively made by people who may themselves be clueless how and where their child should be educated.</span></div>
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<b class=""><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whose Reasons Matter?</span></b></div>
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<span class=""><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The stock answer is they all do. The realistic answers are two. It depends on the weight of their impact, their incidence, and when in school functions that occurs. Add if the mission is more than explanation, but prediction and calibration of inputs versus school performance, the means of acquiring that intelligence becomes a technical monster. By that criteria, we can bypass more of the list if the issue is assessing one community's system. The rest of the factors can be further segmented, but the highest priority operating variables are those directly effecting the classroom and achieved learning.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In terms of impact and persistence of effect the issues reduce to a school's interface with its state education bureaucracy and representation; with a BOE; the quality of a school's superintendent and principals; the distribution of motivations of the teaching corps; the presence and permitted clout of a local union; and a frequently anonymous cluster of parents or school advocates who become entrenched in school strategy and influence its management. The ignorance, integrity, and real motivations of its BOE's members, the same for the prior group, have a major impact, frequently suppressing change and improvement of a system or creating discriminatory choices.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The above impacts are rarely factored into the critique, writ large nationally, in assessments of where and why American K-12 public schools are lagging our expectations, allegedly the driving force behind 34 years of "reform" that has accomplished little except terrorizing a generation of our children, and confounding teachers with misapplied and frequently flawed mechanical testing and specious value-added logic. Even as finite a task as arraying Maslow’s "Hierarchy of Needs" against key players' psychological needs in serving a single system, is out of reach without primary research missing for a century.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Because we have never chosen to scientifically study and measure any of these variables for even an isolated system, or for a valid sample of our 99,000 schools, or executed a census of that universe, or even consistently supported additive qualitative research, the evidence to make good judgements is missing in action. Yet, at the lowest common denominator, understanding the functions, processes, and getting a generic model of a school is a major building block to getting smarter about what’s been created and its breakdowns. It is not too pejorative a representation, that ‘public education as an establishment,' intellectually inbred, and self-righteous, has been the principal impediment to letting some sunlight shine on failed evolution of methods and igniting genuine reform.</span><br />
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<b class=""><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hope?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the 34 years of our public schools being flogged by reform missions, undermined by failed methods, our systems can stake one paradoxical claim to fame; in the face of the weapons aimed at them, they have persevered in following the strategic game plan that emerged from public education’s inbred evolution. Public schools as a system became one of America’s most consistent version of common goals. Part of that likely is the motivation of most of its critical participants — 3.2 million teachers — believing they are creating the greater good by focusing on what has come out of their education for education, and our 50 states’ striving to carry out their learning delivery missions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Simultaneously, in those 34 years our capacities to understand neural processes — specifically learning — have expanded well beyond the school establishment’s capacity to adopt and understand it. Hence, over enough time, the limitations of the education provided has left a learning gap triggering attempted change. In parallel, the tools now available have begun to close on the questions, and now might become one type of fix for our schools.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The tools to study, predict, and assess are out there. Better human resource decisions from both psychology and organizational behavior — better information bases from statistical modeling and computer size and speed — better phenomena definitions from sensing evolution — better composite modeling of education from mathematical simulation, and emerging artificial intelligence permitted by digital methods and computer processing speeds. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If one were to lay out a research program designed to bring our public system into this century it might feature in sequence: Sampling of our schools nationally, with the goal of using current organizational modeling to understand with greater clarity school functions and behaviors; using the prior and simulation logic plus experimentation to understand how various school properties effect classroom performance — and by doing the former build an understanding how the major factors in education influence both the total costs of our systems, and their true value-added.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Part of that value-added involves better and timely understanding of the nation’s real learning needs. They have never been a fixed entity. A vital need has become retreat from the naive view that every American needs to enter kindergarten preparing for a college education. The nation’s need for skilled resources has become a silent but pervasive crisis, fed by the arrogance to assume that class equals a degree. The assets to install and maintain our infrastructure are retiring faster than they can be replaced. The conflation of physical skills and ‘class’ is undoing America. Our culture would benefit beyond words by the emergence of skilled craftsmen and technical resources who are equally our cultural and arts contributors. Eric Hoffer, philosopher longshoremen, fits the niche. A second value-added is divergent from human evolution, offsetting technology.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That step beyond has already been demonstrated by IBM in expanding the capability of its signature “Big Blue” model using AI (artificial intelligence) to address diagnostic medicine and more. The eventual extension of that approach to school decision making could enable far more effective choices among the services that both our states and the Federal government must field in future. These kinds of research have been either pooh-poohed or never understood by the education establishment, but as our present total establishment shivers and shakes around the US in 2017, that might optimistically be an opening to rewrite the game plan to evolve our schools, and in a more productive manner than running them through a privatization meat grinder. Importantly when you lift the lid, charters are proving materially a 'hollow man.'</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lack of Hope?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Counterpoint is exploding the myth of public system defenders, that “running a school in a business-like fashion" is a sell-out or contradictory to best education principles. There is a major distinction between running a K-12 school <u>as a business,</u> a categorically false goal, and administering a school system using contemporary management and communications theories. The pivot in the reasoning is recognition that a school is incontestably a complex organization, subject conceptually to all of the puts and takes of that arrangement of resources set against a backdrop of a mission, strategies, tactics, information flows, human motivation and activation, and all of the principles footing use of and accounting for resources employed and their productivity. Most school administrators, unless they have received formal education in management, et al., are clueless that those highly developed principles, along with data management and pursuit of innovation, apply to any formal school (Indiana University, finally recognizing that education deficit, has developed an MBA degree specifically for public school administrators). Both our public school education ‘establishment,' heads in the sand, and the business universe assuming education awareness not there, have been culpable in creating still another roadblock to an education truce in our time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ratings of states’ schools abound in the media, many lacking much credibility, based on averages of flawed and dissimilar test scores, or teachers’ salaries, or some other simplistic metric. The ratings may be fluff, but a major public school deficit in a paranoid and fragmenting society is the failure of our public schools to effectively communicate with their real owners. Curiously, one of the obscured measures of public education, and surrogate of quality may be the truthful, hype-free transparency of a system’s delivery of information to its community. In some of our genuinely excellent school systems, the operations of its leadership and BOE are delivered by CATS, by openness about all academic decisions, by the integrity of a rare BOE that pro-actively invites citizen exposure to a board’s deliberations versus cover-ups, and by regular presentation to the community of briefings or competent publication of a system’s operations. This mission rarely is served by the frequently amateurish and hyped <i class="">ad hoc</i> newsletters that issue, reliance on gossip, or reliance on many of the press ill-prepared to deal with education issues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There was a rather harrowing episode of the popular TV series, “Blue Bloods,” where one of the ‘family’ was in jeopardy from internal corruption. A breakthrough comes with the comment of the assistant commissioner, to an investigator, <i class="">sotto voce.</i> The series writers created a memorable albeit folksy punch line, but it fits here: <i class="">"The bluebird of happiness may be in your own backyard.”</i></span></div>
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<span class="" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A more formal statement of that concept is a major principle of contemporary organizational design: Where operations are at the boundary of an organization, keep the supporting decision making close to their execution consistent with the capacity of the human resources tasked. This aligns with a proposed reform of the early 20th century and obsolete 'production model' of our schools, to put learning initiatives in the hands of the teachers in the classroom, and school decision making close to the community rather than in state bureaucracies. Conversely, the concern with the concept of putting oversight of an increasingly technology-driven school system in hands of a traditional BOE may have far more to do with the capacity of that oversight than its basic principle.</span></span></div>
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<span class="" style="text-align: start;"><b class="" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ends and Means?</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="" style="text-align: start;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The US needs a new institution, the educational equivalent of the public accounting and auditing firm. A collaboration of our state leaderships, their universities and colleges, and appointed action groups with the authority to take apart and reassemble local systems, then become their resident oversight and advisory source of school strategic direction. Return full executive leadership of a school to a new brand of education administration, resources provided dual expertise in learning science and management, professionally recruited and vetted, subject to the prior auditing function. Trash the amateur BOE, but make ‘local control’ a meaningful narrative.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="" style="text-align: start;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The US needs a major rethinking of most of its schools of education. For a long time, the impression offered by our universities has been that they either do not value a school of education — a simmering conflict between the self-righteousness of ‘higher’ education, and the consequent resentment among primary and secondary educators for their lower status assignment. Or they lack the courage to internally reform those schools, perhaps fearful that to start the process might spread by popular demand to other disciplines overdue for modernization. Our increasingly endowment-driven, socially irresponsible, and technologically lagging B-schools are one example; the last time they were critically reviewed and amended was 1960; over a half century appears a reasonable waiting period for the responsibility to resurface?</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another basis for creeping forward with options for needed reform of our public systems — not present versions of "corporate reform” — may be addressing the decades of overlooked organizational issues, and redesign of the basic primary/secondary schools' organization. Remodeling of its formulas for self-governance and work seem way overdue, perhaps over half a century? A blog to be considered.</span></span><br />
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<span class="" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lastly, while seemingly dwarfed by organizational and human resource issues that root our systems on the dysfunctional side (while keeping the ship afloat has pretty much been the gift of over 3 million teachers who are 'taking care of business' even in the face of failed leadership), what happens to activate and feed learning must be assessed and reformed. That means aggressive critique of the decades of methods nonsense and allowing obsolete knowledge to dominate especially 9-12 classrooms. The rates of change in 'knowledge,' both embryonic and that correct the mountains of learning error being supplied by our public schools, may even increase, along with the need to adopt tools wholly missing in present education for education. Something as basic as core learning's mechanisms -- e.g., the <a href="http://www.marionbrady.com/">education developments by Dr. Marion Brady</a>, running hard against the business-as-usual splattered in our public schools, is a change need.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">A late arrival, and pretty much a stake through the heart of zombie standardized testing as a basis for alleged reform of our systems, is the just issued book by Harvard testing expert, Dr. Daniel Koretz. His book, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">discussed and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/10/05/why-the-school-accountability-movement-based-on-standardized-tests-is-nothing-more-than-a-charade/?utm_term=.4f0aefe8507f&wpisrc=nl_answer&wpmm=1">linked here</a>: Daniel Koretz, <u>The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better</u>. One has to presume, a very large batch of our public school administrators needs to open the book and read </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">something besides their own press clippings</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">for a change. </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Meanwhile, a few million public school teachers can feel a large measure of vindication.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="" style="text-align: start;">Note A: </span>The ‘players’ in public education, an abbreviated list: POTUS; US Secretary of Education; its cast of anonymous bureaucrats; Congress, House & Senate committees and the whole; the National Governors Association; its bureaucracy (which incidentally consists heavily of education novices with MBAs); American Legislative Exchange Council (a lobbying and spear point for hard right-wing efforts); the Business Roundtable, that was a force in creating our standardized testing scams and misdirection of public school reform; National Education Association; American Federation of Teachers; state superintendents; state educational bureaucrats; state boards of education (not typically packages of intellect and objectivity, and typically riddled with political objectives and control); postsecondary schools of education; their university parental leaderships; local BOE in 50 states; local school administrators; those ubiquitous but typically anonymous teachers, our only real 'worker bees;’ local school non-teaching bureaucracies creeping up on more bodies than in the classrooms, contributing far less; local civic organizations, peddlers of school mascot gear; local business on rare occasions knowledgeable about learning but primarily when it is a profit opportunity; local training consortia now trendy, and on occasion staffed with human resources with more background than some machines' operations; state textbook boards pushing ideological solutions; textbook publishers, marginally discriminating in recruiting competent textbook writers, motivated primarily by the bottom line; test publishers and test processing, with even fewer ethics and greater profit thirst than their textbook divisions; every foundation with an ideological agenda; unnumbered billionaires who dabble in education without a clue what they’ve wrought; an assorted small army of true education scholars, but lacking the organization to make a difference; startups, e.g., Teach for America, both intellectually and motivationally flawed; Bill Gates and Eli Broad, who need both an education and a new hobby; parental interest groups, typically narrow-topic driven, and frequently clueless what an education system should be; the school board associations with more interest in power than education; our courts when episodically drawn into shaping schools’ functions in interpreting our education laws and disputes; and lastly, any curious local taxpayer with the smarts to know and employ a state’s ‘open records’ laws to petition a school system for transparency.</span></div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-75055338413177196212017-09-29T15:07:00.003-04:002017-09-29T15:07:57.915-04:00Postscript to that Gordian Knot<div class="" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="">Wednesday's blog, "</span><a class="" href="http://edunationredux.blogspot.com/2017/09/americas-education-gordian-knot.html">America's Education Gordian Knot</a><span class="">" in sum had two major assertions: Short of a "black swan," our overall public school system will not change, reform or not; and the most likely yet magical reformation would have to happen with local control accompanied by 50 states agreeing to eliminate elected BOE in favor of competent oversight.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Magical" was chosen with forethought.🙂</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What do you see when you view the landscape of, for example, a public high school? If you believe you are seeing 'fact' you're wrong. What you see is product of your brain's processing of perception, and of your embedded beliefs. Two citizens, living next door to each other, can see the <i class="">gestalt</i> of a given school totally differently. At the operating level where your taxes are spent, the education insider and the taxpayer, can see that same school in vastly different ways.</span></div>
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That is one reason for the diverse, often chaotic and contradictory rhetoric that swirls around the topic dubbed "corporate reform." This effect is magnified as masses of such views are simplified by their viewers into stereotypes — generalizations that take root and are applied to all cases, becoming the means shaping how judgments happen and actions are triggered.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First, for American primary and secondary education this is further impacted by the 'players' connected to schools' real life operations. Counting for the next blog on the contradictory motivations of the entities that have their fingers in influencing our public systems, my current number of the 'categories' of players is 28 and counting. That framed the conclusion that our public school system, capital S, is not going to quickly transform itself, or be transformed for example by a Betsy DeVos.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is a second effect from stereotyping our schools. It is reflected throughout the publication, pronouncements, and social networking pumped out either critical of public schools, or equally defending them -- the use of those stereotypes to make the arguments. Our "schools are" something invariant; a "standardized test" is one species; "all superintendents are noble;" "all teachers are "Mr. Chips." The basic concept of variance in all things and phenomena is lost, and not unexpectedly the power of genuine explanation needed to assess and change anything in an orderly manner is also damaged.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Until both our systems' pluggers, and those systems' critics procure real and representative data that scopes our one hundred thousand public schools, over six thousand charters, and thousands of private schools' factual differences, all of the rhetorical <i class="">sturm und drang</i> remain unproductive endless loops.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The real condemnation of America's last century of oversight of its public education mission has been failure to do the most basic step in real science and research — defining the material constituent parts/actions of those schools, doing the science of transformation to numerically express them, and doing the precision sampling or census to truly describe what's been created. Massing spending on reform of stereotypes without any awareness of the variance around means or any other central tendency is basically intellectually addressing our whole public system as a comic book.</span></div>
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The next blog looks at how the conflicting motivations of those 28+ categories of players, on top of inadequate characterization, make our alleged reform of public education a nearly intractable mess. Likely tweaking some of this audience into a virtual hate frenzy, a fix, as Alexander's to the Gordian Knot, may metaphorically be the sword. </div>
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Our system of schools’ control forms a spectrum, from a theoretically pure “local control” (all decisions are local), to our present mixed system with parts of school guidance parceled among local, community, state, external controls (unions and other) ranging from local to national, to Federal implementation of mandates, to direct acts by Congress. Pick your point on the spectrum, and in the spirit of “single payer,” nationalize our public K-12 schools!</div>
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Perceptive conservative <a class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/opinion/abbie-hoffman-donald-trump.html?emc=eta1">columnist David Brooks</a> surveying decades of our history, noted the progression of what were American “establishments,” from the “Protestant establishment” post-WWII, to the “meritocratic establishment," to an emerging “populist establishment,” wrapped around cultural destruction and rejection of education and science, he sees healing to be the work of two decades; if our educational change to cope with present knowledge and technology trajectories isn’t in the cards, it’s going to be a long slog for our next generation.</div>
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Blog part two, a couple of weeks in the future.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class=""></span><span class=""></span><span class=""></span><span class=""></span><span class=""></span><span class=""></span><span class=""></span><span class=""></span></span>Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-33365331239026107942017-09-25T14:47:00.000-04:002017-09-25T14:49:34.106-04:00America's Education Gordian Knot<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-weight: normal;">Edunationredux Reboot</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Forward</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Welcome
to this reboot of the Edunationredux blog, on pause since the first of 2017,
for dual reasons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">First,
an impression developed as last year ended that a fragile truce had occurred,
between the diverse group of corporate or school reform groups, and our public
school systems in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many
rural systems, and systems protected from the reform culture, are still
clueless that they have been in an education war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Aggressive
standardized testing initiatives appeared to have softened, perhaps because of
parental opt-out movements across the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the opposite side of the reform skirmishes, our public
schools appear to have absorbed and more or less complied with our states’
commitments to that flawed mode of assessment – an uneasy peace, but peace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In fact,
I believe my judgment that was reality was badly flawed. The lull in fights was
less a truce than the year’s massive outpouring of campaign rhetoric, burying
the media’s interest in education, which doesn’t sell stuff as effectively as
juicier press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In
addition, our presidential campaign rarely mentioned our nation’s education
issues, not a great thing for our nation’s future knowledge health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
second reason was waiting for the Betsy DeVos’ shoe to drop, revealing the
mission our barely elected US Secretary of Education would pursue in her
tenure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That didn’t take long, and
the mission, an extreme ideological, and educationally ignorant focus seems to
be the destruction of public education, via aggressive promotion of schools’
conversion to charters, and a pre-Enlightenment retreat to religious delusion
of prior centuries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But the
DeVos vision has a few glitches.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Recently,
Lee Hamilton, former 34 year Congressman, and one of our class acts last
century as a centric legislator who worked across the aisle, authored an
editorial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its purpose, optimism
for America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its argument, that
our major institutions, with deep roots, can survive a Trump White House, white
supremacists, racism, hate venues, and international challenges, and are
resilient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A thesis
here is that America’s public school system, with origins deep
in our nation’s history, has similar properties:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Massive, systemic, embedded in our grass roots, resistant to
attack, and resilient even if sluggish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A
challenge for privatization of schools, but perversely, a challenge as well for
thinking Americans who can see beyond local tribalism, and want to see our
public school systems become current, find reinvention, find excellence, find
innovation, advance real learning, and discover service versus self-service.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In
effect, trying to destroy our public school system is just as difficult as
reforming it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today's blog explores that resistance to change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The subsequent blog will explore the diverse human beliefs and opinions
that have powered the motivations of both our public systems' die-hard
defenders, and its would-be reformers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Stepping
onto the school reform battlefield is not for the timid, nor those who cannot
tolerate ambiguity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Read on…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Sorry Betsy, It Is a System, and Mega One To Boot</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For readers not steeped in
Greek and Roman mythology, the “Gordian Knot” symbolized an intractable
problem, solved either by great creativity, or Alexander the Great’s more
aggressive sword stroke.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As implied by the Forward to today’s blog, the belief is that 34 years of attempts to reform
America’s public schools, initially dubbed “corporate reform,” have devolved
into: Political odd couples hammering public K-12; a maze of arguments;
simplistically positioning the problem as public schools versus privatized
charters; whether standardized testing has improved or impeded learning in our
K-12 venues; corporate testing profiteering and scams; and whether waving an “its
choice” banner is legitimate or the big lie?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">At the front of this 34-year
reform parade is, what launched the attack on public education; trailing and to
this day, why are public systems seemingly oblivious to the attack?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black;">Along the way what
has happened to once at least defensible and literate debate, was also public education’s
biggest mistake, reductionism. Our reform agendas perpetrated the same fault, making alleged reforms shortsighted and
prone to sub-optimization.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Contrary to the stupidity parroted by Betsy DeVos in recent
speechmaking, our education complex, of public-private-charter-Catholic-et al.,
schools, along with home schooling, along with the peripheral and support
organizations married to those systems, is a mega-system. It behaves like
a system, has the mixed constituencies of a system, has millions of
interconnected metaphorical parts and intersecting processes, and can’t be
understood much less manipulated without being addressed by systems theory.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Drilling down further, it is actually a series of nested systems,
starting at a practical level with the ’school’ (with more constituent parts of
a system) as the unit of analysis, moving to district, to state, with an
overlay of selective Federal controls that inject ideology and politics into
its standards and patterns of management, and now imposition of ‘market.’
(One could argue the first unit of analysis is the individual student, but the
powers of ten that introduces to variables blows the computer’s fuse.) And, frankly,
like our models of climate change, we aren’t currently smart enough, nor do we
have the tool-power to effectively or seamlessly build an education TOE (theory
of everything) explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Pragmatism That Smarts</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Consider the
interlaced fabric of our systems: 50 states with differing ideologies,
controlling both teacher licensing, school policy, and performance assessment,
and failing individual system/school oversight via BOE; teachers’ unions that
have seriously lagged learning’s evolution and blocked change; a U.S.
Department of Education lacking the Constitutional authority to actually
reframe K-12, but now egregiously politicized, with the selective power to
disruptively control some aspects of school policy; a population of schools of
education, that once you get past the top institutions are some of the most
intellectually obsolete stars in the postsecondary firmament; and the dug in
resistance to change in our collective public schools. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The teachers’ unions
constitute another major barrier to public system reform and creative
change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the national level
their leaderships represent at least thinking management.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the local chapter levels their
representation quickly becomes wholly self-serving and corrosive with an
anti-management bias brought to every negotiation and contract.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Do the approximate counts:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1,200 schools of education; 99,000
public schools; 14,000 districts; some unknown number of school administrators
who never grace a classroom, plus an unknown number of school bureaucrats,
ditto; 30,861 private schools; 6,800 Catholic schools; 6,400 charters; 60+/- MM
students; 2MM home schooled students; 3MM teachers; and funding from the
Federal government<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(12.7%), from
states (43.5%), and local taxes (43.8%); the NEA, AFT, and some unknown number
of local union chapters; and an alphabet soup of school vendors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">How do you even
fashion a model of school changes relevant in this complex population; the
answer may be you can’t short of nationalization of all entities providing K-12
delivery. In our present state of societal warfare and leadership angst,
that doesn’t look like a high probability option.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We need the awareness and the ‘big data’ set needed to scope and
understand the larger system, leaving a massive enigma. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even with information, how do you change
it in the large, even by fiat or metaphorically using a chainsaw without
degrading it; witness what the ignorance, ideology, and corporate
bastardization of standardized testing and how it has impeded real learning?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The logical counterpoint is, segment
the system to corral the problems, see smaller groups to address.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good science-based logic, but without
the kind of universal and comparable interstate censuses or sampling that
demands, not doable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Defeatism?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It may appear so, but in the world of research and creativity the
scene calls for genuine problem solving. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We can outline the elements and relations among the parts that
ball up to our mega-system. None are mysterious if some thinking is
applied. What gums up the works are two major roadblocks: One, our
nation, states and the Federal government, have never invested in properly doing
a census of our education systems, providing comparability of school structure
and performance information; and two, our states have never chosen to require
the right school reporting or coordinated thinking or action on school
oversight, as has occurred on other issues of state governance that have
universal venue.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">One pathetic example is the </span><span style="color: black;">‘</span><span style="color: black;">board of education.</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;"> Requirements to serve on a BOE are dictated by each state,
haven</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">t changed in half a century, and have been obsolete close to that
long. The results from incompetent and even corrupt BOE are that those
boards are unaccountable, and school leaderships basically unaccountable.
The hypocrisy is palpable: While our alleged reformers are challenging
students and teachers threatening both for </span><span style="color: black;">“</span><span style="color: black;">accountability,</span><span style="color: black;">”</span><span style="color: black;"> enforced by flawed testing, the real culprits are simply
ignored.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Let</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">s get down in the real dirt of a public
school, the site of this blog, New Bremen, OH, a physically attractive, but civically
despotic rural community. It has a </span><span style="color: black;">‘</span><span style="color: black;">pretty</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;"> school system, perpetually hyped, that may be the most mediocre
and corrupt public system in Ohio, already not graced with educational
excellence. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Three of its BOE seats are up for replacement in November with six candidates.
The history of this system (utterly opaque and resistant to voter
transparency in this century) has been manipulation of BOE elections, arguably to
suppress oversight and help advance levies, and its BOE’s poor choices of
leadership all of this century. The community equates education with
plastering its mascot “Cardinals” decal on every inanimate object and vehicle in
sight.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">For the upcoming BOE election a proposal was made, backed up with
the resources to execute it; have the six candidates do at least one debate,
or submit to competent questioning about their qualifications to serve, and of the
knowledge and beliefs they would bring to the BOE</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">s function. Either
would be recorded and offered repetitively to voters on the local CATS
channel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The response of the village’s
leadership was ‘deafening silence.’ The school system</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">s action: Allegedly feeding the six candidates four softball
and </span><span style="color: black;">platitudinous</span><span style="color: black;"> questions, publishing the oft times banal answers in its school
newsletter.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You can romanticize the nobility of our local schools, and launch
bleeding-heart scenarios about their overworked and noble teachers, and competent
superintendents. The reality is that there are superb and dedicated
teachers and excellent school organizations — we are clueless how many or what
fraction of the whole. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is
also some unknown fraction of the teachers in those classrooms not competent in
the disciplines taught because of the typical education degree. Plus some
teachers psychologically unfit to be there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More frequent than the nation deserves, are poorly vetted
superintendents chosen by incompetent BOE, lacking managerial awareness or
expertise and sometimes ethics, many self-serving versus candidates for
“servant leadership,” and some who should be removed from education.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At the other end of the academic spectrum those 1,200 schools of
education range from credible schools to last century’s education thinking
built around discredited methods and classroom tactics, versus models of
learning proven by research, and the disciplinary knowledge that originates
with our social and hard scientists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The failure of many to most of those schools to embrace other
disciplines, demand higher standards for admittance, and to ignore exploding
learning technologies, are in the opinion of some of our best education leaders
a critical cause of teaching failures, and of the present reform agendas.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">The result is, the grossed up bulk of America</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">s public education remains resistant to updating its
knowledge of learning, resistant to innovation, and clustering around
mediocrity. The key point, again, we have no mechanism at present to
accurately determine what that school system, capital S, really is? The
parallel question; how do you reform and improve something this complex that
you can</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">t even define?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><b>What are the </b></span><span style="color: black;"><b>Options?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">The already complex
combination of K-12 school markets/environments served x varied qualities of
oversight x 50 states’ bureaucracies x n communities’ cultures, complicates the
vision of creating acceptable homogeneous reforms across multiple school
functions and goals. Even from the spare description above it seems clear
there is no single track for public education’s improvement if the notion is
timely change. It took public schools over a half century to start
failing some of their missions; changing that is formidable.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Federal action can’t do the
task without Constitutional amendment. State venues short of a major
conceptual model change seem mission impossible. Large quality
variances of local systems hinder some local but viral movement taking off.
Lastly, the myriad and layered controls on and dictates to local systems
are also barriers to upgrading standards of performance for either management
function or academic/learning performance.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But one scalable option is the grass roots one; building on the
defensible concept of local control, each system steps up and reinvents itself.
Sweet -- but likely without an epiphany and major battles only if you
believe in the tooth fairy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Communities themselves are
formidable barriers to productive change. In the rural site of this blog,
a long history of inbred influence, bigotry against outside views, missing
ethical standards, and a basically marginally educated electorate have warped
support and intellectually cheated its local system of proper critique. But
also illustrated for decades, even poorly educated communities have regularly seen
the need for the nation's public schools to get better even if that is just
vague and intuitive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they also
inevitably think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i> system is just
fine. Witlessly joining hands to defend a local school that’s flawed because
it’s ours – the case for this reference site – shuts down any chance for
modernization and pursuit of improvement and excellence.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lastly, the nightmare
scenario, by some despotic maneuver the rate of conversion of public schools
into charters is dramatically increased. Seems far-fetched, and by virtue
of Murphy’s Law, it would still take decades to successfully root out and
destroy much of our dug-in public school infrastructure, likely going into
resistance mode as self-preservation further reducing public transparency.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>Conclusion</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The conceptual
argument is that to change the U.S. public system, products of over a century
of acculturation, built from almost uncountable agreements and accommodations
among government levels, higher education, vendors, unions, advocates, human
resources, and local civic entities, all would need to be transformed without
killing the host.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because that is
truly an education “Gordian Knot,” one version of an answer is, mission impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Another is that
runaway populism and activism could tip the boat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That possibility has long been considered not likely even in
America’s worst days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
instability engulfing our current political venues, clashing ideologies based
on emotion and extremism, and the nation’s increasingly inequitable
distribution of national resources and sustainable human resource employment, make
that not impossible anymore; though one prays not likely.</span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Among that set of not very tasty alternatives, the most likely to
fit both America</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">s penchant for representative democracy as
long as we can keep it, and the freedom to act even imprudently or not at all,
is a model that would use the mechanism of 'local control.' <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That would require I believe, a capacity
to rigorously vet, again, a good part of our present local schools’ human
resource bases, foment tax revolts to force school cost reductions and
productivity gains, see major citizen investment in adult self-education, and
have emerge some intellectual Pied Pipers with the capacity to start a viral
movement for reinvention of individual school systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All hard, uphill work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The pretty grim most likely case is simple, based on the physical principle
of inertia applied to large complex systems; either stasis or movement to some
alternative (hopefully improved) model of learning and alternative organization
of the functions but at a glacial pace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even this marginal hope seems distant, because of the mass of
self-interest and cultural bias the nation has allowed to be built into present
public schools.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">Missing in today’s blog, but central to understanding how America
managed to flunk education 101 for over 34 years, and perhaps much of last
century, is lifting the lid on the human factors, and ideologies, and values
that have swirled throughout the unfolding of public education for a considerable
time. Many were simply invisible to most of us, or out of political
correctness submerged as consciousness, yet have shaped and sometimes
critically damaged the nation</span><span style="color: black;">’</span><span style="color: black;">s pursuit of both equitable and world-leading
learning excellence.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The next blog will dig into that murky territory.</span></div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-3504005883000068542017-02-13T07:36:00.000-05:002017-02-13T14:57:41.468-05:00America's Public Schools: Dead Man Walking?Dr. Ron Willett<br />
13 February 2017<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b>Preface</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">America’s public schools' massive culture is complicated. Unfortunately, even in this mushrooming era of “big data” our government has never sought to gather sufficient data on public K-12 to tell its truth, or make a difference in assessing it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">At the same time, public schools have historically democratized the learning that supports a democratic and free society, but also have become by self-righteousness and being inwardly directed, a cocoon wrapped around last century’s knowledge and reams of alleged rules for educating that grew up in ignorance of how genuine learning happens. The perpetuation of this culture via increasingly obsolete teachers colleges and schools of education, and inept and politicized state education </span><i style="font-family: Georgia;">apparat,</i><span style="font-family: "georgia";"> has set up present conflict. The real world is that most of public education, even our best, in spite of 33 years of assault by "corporate reform,” is still in denial that their intransigence and intellectual failures precipitated that clumsy and punitive reform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">It is still lost on most of our public that many of them are equally responsible, by permitting the creation of ignorant, poorly prepared, ideologically driven, and even corrupt boards of education as the only real check and balance on how learning happens where there are teaching boots on the ground. Of all elected offices in the U.S., BOE stand out as the least responsibly elected, tested and accountable. Most aren’t subject to recall; many become so arrogant and able to deflect transparency that they can’t be insulted or shamed into exiting after malfeasant performances. The failure of our states to reform BOE requirements to serve may well be the proverbial key log that is finally crashing America’s grand universal education experiment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">It shouldn’t be lost on a perceptive reader that what is bringing our public model of education onto the rocks is also systemic. A century of slowly degraded public models of learning has created most of the very population that would have had to recognize the potentials for failure; those learning failures beget the failure to be able to assess environments, processes, and values, and what now laps at parental doorsteps. It has to be argued as well that the decades of "corporate reform's" thrusts circle back to our public systems’ failures to possess the intellectualism and invention to recognize that they were burying themselves in, and thereby re-broadcasting obsolete knowledge as alleged education.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Large scale systems can and do reverse and repair their rips and craters; but pivotal in that capability is whether the critical environments within which they operate, and the core explanatory models that predestine performance, stay relatively stable. Change the underlying concept of what we’re about, of why things actually work, and systems’ capacities for restoration of various equilibriums go berserk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">And that is what may well be coming down the chute, aiming point blank at America’s public K-12 systems, that have ignored too long the tsunami of core technological change brought about by over a half century of innovation curing and scaling up in labs, and entrepreneurial garages, and in the largest corporate enclaves. To the naive, this mass of strange unfamiliar products and processes built out of zeroes and ones, or particles/forces they can’t see, appears to be sci-fi or from a comic book. But as the "internet of things" demonstrates, basic knowledge and advanced technology really don't ask the permission of the average citizen if they can burst forth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Present “reform” may be the very least of U.S. public education’s problems in 2017. Today’s Edunationredux blog addresses a few of the possible implications for U.S. public education of unprecedented technology now rapidly emerging in this society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Current Point of Crisis</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">With the prospect of Spring on the horizon, a sense of renewal around the future corner, businesses, institutions, even families traditionally move their focus in February to at least near term futures. It is normally a month lacking excitement, delivering more ‘cabin fever’ than a sense of opportunity. But by virtue of the normal silence, a chance to think and plan.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Segue to 2017; a nation scrambling to find some middle ground. A White House providing the gravitas of a third-rate reality show, punctuated by commercially driven ethical lapses, ‘alternative facts,’ haphazard directives, and the nasty divisions that prevailed in November 2016 now even more virulent. Cap that off with human resources nominated to lead this nation you might not relish occupying even local government, or gracing your next dinner party. Poisoning the education component of our nation, the forced acceptance of DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education temporarily set a new low.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">DeVos is a potential threat to our 100,000 public schools, and 3.5 million public school teachers. Even more threatening, her past actions in promoting, thoughtlessly, privatization of public schools, backed by the ignorance and illogic of our POTUS, goes further than either Bush or Obama in being an existential threat to the very notion of ‘public system.’ What is not clear is how much of the now multi-pronged threat environment surrounding public education is just DeVos/Trump, versus public education’s own dysfunction, versus our private sector’s idiosyncratic abandonment of clear thinking and invocation of a false and ridiculous logic for public education reform?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">When you intensively inspect and tease apart the issues that have brought our public systems from a zenith of popularity mid-20th century, to being under attack from all sides, and now lapsing into the last couple of decades of denial, a conclusion is that they are heavily responsible for their own vulnerability. But in the vernacular of the day, ‘it’s complicated,’ and our society has itself lapsed into an unthinking mode splattered with delusions and attention spans of the immature. But there’s a branch in this road that has reached a point of evolution making all of the reform rhetoric potentially moot, and our public systems per our subject line, a potential “dead man walking.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Distraction</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Firms, institutions, congresses, parliaments, governments alike can become so internally focused or committed to some deeply invested history, that two major forces occur. Either the very environmental basis for all of that structure is just assumed to be stable or advancing discreetly and therefore projectable, or the entire notion of futures fades into the background, and what is selectively perceived as the settings for all choice is only what the actors see in front of them. Certainly there are parts of this earth where there are or have been long periods of relatively calm even glacial change. Further complicating seeing the future is what is termed "punctuated equilibrium," the major event that changes the composite landscape but that was unanticipated, and for which there was never a contingency plan. One author terms such an event a “black swan,” happens but never anticipated. Consequently the whole notion of predicting the future of a swath of human activity is frequently seen as hopeless, or naive, the stuff of sci-fi, but not the solid grist of our reality that we can see or feel, or offering a place to plant a foot.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">The U.S. has for over a half century precipitated technology revolutions, perhaps aside from once moral leadership and support of the mechanisms of individual freedom, its historical contribution to civilization as we know it. Easily forgotten when one becomes jaded witnessing the outpouring of American invention over decades, all of that innovation and technology had a birth, an adolescence, and a slog to maturity called "the experience curve.” A companion function is referred to as "scaling,” meaning the creators of this technology had to find the formula to make it work in counts of millions and up, rather than just the proof of concept in a laboratory environment. Technology that can be scaled is not a given, it must go through another development cycle. The point of this trip down technology lane is that long technology gestation periods can lull decision makers and institutions into believing their methods and tools won’t be challenged on their watch.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Coming Down the Pipeline</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">American education, especially our highly structured and inward-looking public school system, has been vulnerable for a long time to disruptive innovation. What has slowed and blocked it is the sheer mass and once credible history of public education’s long trek from occasional to mandatory schooling for the nation’s children. The second factor keeping our public model alive is the core of what education is all about; not the cute inventions of materials and gambits that inhabit today’s classrooms, but the truth of 3,000 years of how civilization fostered learning, via that almost magic interaction between the teacher or master, and the student or apprentice. A constant supportive background historically has been the steady but not explosive change in knowledge that footed early learning. With WWII that changed.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c0c08; font-family: "georgia";">All discovery since has developed as in a pressure tank simply percolating until pretty much formed it has exploded on our society. We like to think it is incremental, that what we know is sufficient to sense and grasp what’s coming along. It isn’t without embracing new models, new assessments, and retooling. In this emerging milieu U.S. public education hunkered down in the apparent belief that if they simply followed the classic education lore and guidelines all would adjust. It might have, we’ll never know. For an American business society flexing and growing in size and complexity, and in sophistication, finally discovered they were being delivered unacceptable human resource products by our public schools. Public education was still living in the 20th century, while American business was being forced to confront the opportunities for and threats to business success of the 21st century. A major theme that finally cut across every aspect of business among the top 1,000 U.S. corporations was "corporate reform.” Simultaneously there was commercial digital reinvention of just about every process and marketable output, all demanding modified human resources.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">American public education missed the basic heartbeat of the digital revolution. It misinterpreted the tsunami as the need for computers, or pads, or electronic boards, or whatever gadget was trendy, instead of a basic and profound change in how knowledge is found, expressed, processed, funded, employed, and extended. Digital logic is now not just another point of view, but the core raw material of every aspect of future knowledge. It doesn’t make any difference if the raw materials are cells, or polymers, some other arrangement of molecules, or data, if you can’t quantify it nothing happens. The stuff that unthinking educators and school boards still see as sci-fi, and a basis for rolling their eyes, is close to wiping out conventional wisdom. The terms “big data,” “machine learning,” “artificial intelligence,” “robotics,” “Big Blue,” are now realities starting to poke their muscular functions right through traditional organization of work. In the space of just a few years all of the above have started to replace not just the manufacturing jobs of the mid-70s that were decimated by automation, but are targeting the jobs once seen safe, white collar, thinking employment. In fact, some of these models are challenging human brains for supremacy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Collision in Two Parts</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Two massive movements in civilization’s track record have finally begun to collide: One, the relentless march of knowledge updating and creation that evolved simply because knowledge begets knowledge (along with techniques that support its discovery and verification); and two, discovery that zeroes and ones can be made to capture and manipulate everything that evolved in softer form as language and graphic representations of reality. Living within the beast that has been expanding exponentially is deceiving. In a way the inhabitants are insulated to an extent by the other world being sown and grown. Specialists for a time are the keepers of the digital zoo, and don’t interact fluidly with the non-digital societal clusters. But when all the threads start to converge the game changes. Sci-fi becomes science reality, and science reality gets teeth that first gnaw at how we think, then swallow it. One prominent digital age guru also in a heady fraction of our income one percent, said it: <i>“Software eats everything.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Consider just a small patch of what is now being documented for those prepared and not too fearful to look, starting with the contrast with what we presently pathetically bill as K-12 education versus the knowledge that conceptually has to be spanned and absorbed to keep the pace. For example: </span></span><span style="color: #0c0c08; font-family: "georgia";">The knowledge doubling curve. “Buckminster Fuller created the “Knowledge Doubling Curve”; he noticed that until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years. Today things are not as simple as different types of knowledge have different rates of growth. For example, nanotechnology knowledge is doubling every two years and clinical knowledge every 18 months. But on average human knowledge is doubling every 13 months. According to IBM, the build out of the 'internet of things' will lead to the doubling of knowledge every 12 hours.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">In digital terms the trajectory and present state are even more pronounced. "The BBC reports on an article in </span><u style="color: #0c0c08;">Science</u><span style="color: #0c0c08;"> about scientists who calculate that the sum of all the world’s data is 250 exabytes; that can be expressed as 10 raised to the 18th power." Put this in perspective against our universe. Multiplying the number of galaxies — which is about 2 trillion — by the 100 million stars in the galaxy suggests there could be about 10 raised to the 19th power stars in the universe. So the process marches on, but in this decade what we now call knowledge is close to exceeding the stars in our universe and may soon eclipse that. Even speculation is revealing — how many magnitudes of change have public school textbooks (controlled for decades by states’ ideologies, and a textbook mafia) experienced in even decades, versus the explosion of knowledge in the briefest current periods of history?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">Oh yeah the skeptic snaps. But those are just digits, knowledge is far richer and textured. Is it? Try playing a chess game with IBM’s Big Blue, or diagnosing the presence of cancer in a patient, using thousands of bits of real world reporting of cases and diagnoses, or in real places in 2017 seeing an entire enterprise run by robotic logic and execution.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">The other piece of a divide between assumed reality — that paper textbook or lesson plan in a 9-12 classroom — versus the swarm of data coming out of thousands of journals fed buy thousands of researchers covering virtually very facet of human knowledge, is that what used to be assumed right is now likely wrong. Call it the half-life of existing knowledge: Half of what we are teaching in public schools is probably wrong, and our educators have not been trained or recruited for the capacity to upgrade that knowledge. As the arrow of time moves on, even the half assumed right, with ever more knowledge production, is likely proven half wrong, and on. Couple this with the continuing more quiet percolation to maturity of substitutes for the traditional classroom in especially the secondary grade bands and first rounds of higher education. (MOOCs for example haven’t disappeared but like all technology are working there way up the experience curve — ditto for self-administered and extra-classroom digitally-based learning.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><span style="color: #0c0c08;">An aggressive but not unrealistic conclusion about our present public schools is, that even the very best of the genre is close to being an obsolete modality to prepare an upcoming population of workers and decision makers. Public education has no one to blame save its own internal failure to search and grow. In parallel, the obsolescence of what our systems still contend is knowledge may well mean that our entire fabric of what is learned, and how, needs to be reformulated. That, however, may still not exhaust the bad news.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b>Part Two: Non-Humans Only Being Hired</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">In the last few years two events have unfolded with many of our citizens missing the beat: One, the combination of computer/cloud capacities, the refinement of machine learning, the practical emergence of the holy grail of decision science, “artificial intelligence,” and the rapid takeover of what’s termed “big data” as a research device, have all started to bleed together to challenge large chunks of the jobs currently being done by humans. Two, the notion that it is immigrants that have ripped off most American jobs is myth, ignorance of what American technology has invested for much of a century. In reality: Our corporate business universe started the snowball in the mid-70s, with exploitation of investment tax credits, to “automate” manufacturing. And they truly did, essentially sending millions of factory jobs to oblivion (if this stretches credulity for you, tune into a contemporary Canadian TV series titled “How It’s Made;” the reality becomes transparent). To no one’s credit, research at the time revealed that, though automation dramatically increased U.S. corporate productivity and profits, our brainy executive suites gave zero thought to what those displaced workers would do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">What they did was more luck than smart government. The prosperity and middle class wealth being created at the time translated into a massive and growing service sector that in the aggregate helped absorb that manpower.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Fast forward to 2017. AI, big data, and robotics are merging to create work suites capable of replacing white collar jobs that have repetitive operations, and even creative components. They can replace humans in service assignments. They can write full news stories, compose music, and design art. Before popping a neuron, the robots referenced are not the comic book robots of fiction, but systems that contain machine learning algorithms and can duplicate human performance, sans wages, medical insurance, time off, and all other benefits. They don’t take breaks, and they don’t picket. As it turns out, thinking in an effective sense isn’t a machine barrier anymore. We are miles away from creating an artificial brain based on the actual behavior of neurons, synapses, et al., but it doesn’t matter. If the right stuff goes in, and the right stuff comes out, if productivity soars, and you don’t have to pay human wages, will the system favor flesh and blood? It hasn’t yet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The current best estimates by genuine expertise about what will happen to future jobs our schools mistakenly think they’re preparing students to get, are that by 2025 there will be 25 percent fewer human-based jobs — this includes white collar and tech — and by 2035 that loss factor may be as high as 50 percent. <b>For what mission do we then educate the next full generation of elementary/secondary students launching in 2018 or so, and hitting the job market in 2030?</b> Public education may also want to start seeking rent-paying alternatives for their present physical plants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b>Early ‘April Fool,' Right</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Human nature is to head quickly into denial of some or all of the above. Fiction. As an old classroom stomper for some quarter century, I confess these are unnerving assertions. It would be far more comfortable to believe that time’s arrow will do a reversal, and the good old days of still unfocused and benign students, not too demanding, occasionally performing and elevating your spirits, will again assert itself. Software product life cycles wouldn't be measured in hours or minutes. Not in the cards. What should be in near term mission statements of human resources still assigned great responsibility for learning, is the quest to take in the views, and data, and assessments, and reasoning, and predictions of an army of the human resources that think about these issues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">One just revealed example of the speed of technological change, a speeding up that challenges the civilian to do a reality check to make sure they haven't dropped through Alice's 'rabbit hole,' was just reported in the world journal <u>Nature</u>. It is being proposed that the holy grail of computing, "quantum computing," using thousands instead of a few "qubits," could be built right now, enabling computing power unmatched in our history. The resulting 'box' would be the rough size of a football field, but there is apparently no roadblock save funding preventing the development.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">There is surprisingly an ancient remedy for developing the backgrounds, and instincts, and tools to deal with our next decades of societal planning and prodding. It is called ‘reading.’ Many talk about it, and many don’t do it, including egregiously many especially public elementary and secondary educators. Here are a few current works that elaborate the above arguments. What is important to register is that these highly rated and coherent materials increasingly are coming from human resources who are not only intellectually competent but practicing the science for profit, and they're increasingly telling exactly the same story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b>Some Starter References</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Kevin Kelly, <u>The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future</u>, Viking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Alec Ross, <u>The Jobs of the Future</u>, Simon & Schuster.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Martin Ford, <u>Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future</u>, Basic Books. ("2015 Business Book of the Year" Award Winner)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">SCIENCE, 3 February 2017. SPECIAL ISSUE, “What can we know in advance about human activities?” PP. 469-489.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">There are many other references of merit; repeating what’s important is that there’s increasing consensus among the credible researchers and authors about the futures factors that are likely to impact our educational systems, and even their finer points.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b>Game On</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">A bit frivolous to capsulate the complex messy issue of what happens to America’s public schools of over 190 years as ‘game on,’ but in a real sense that is where history has dealt our hand. Consider that all of the many puts and takes that have pummeled our public schools for 33 years since the inception of what became “corporate reform,” are coming home to roost. Betsy DeVos, over the massive objections of the human resources who know anything about education, is now empowered to pursue whatever mission she sees. Total mystery what that is at the moment. The standardized testing grinch is momentarily stilled, but its negative effects on real learning are still deeply entrenched, and the corporations profiteering by continuing to use every ploy to keep cranking out testing won’t back off short of full bore assault by proper government; that isn’t going to come out of the present White House. Most of our public education establishment, from legitimate teachers at one pole, to too many power mongering and unethical administrators at an opposite pole, hasn't shifted enough to change anything, including reducing the denial that our systems are heavily their own worst enemy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">What is its fate: “Dead man walking” if a political maelstrom is orchestrated to attack the core idea of K-12 as a public system and good? What is scary is a fascist school model, all present schools converted into poorly overseen charters, eventually competing with each other for public tax dollars, lacking the controls on learning achievement and ethics in asset use. Almost equally scary is the less extreme option of a quarter to a third of all public schools converted to charters, also rolling religious myth back into alleged learning, but with the chaotic redeployment of tax dollars that would destabilize decades of present school resource allocation, apparently with little community recourse to appeal results that were destructive. What is clear are the hypocritical and demagogic appeals being employed to try to sell privatization by continuously mouthing, 'but it’s choice.' Reality is that present charter illogic makes such conversions a zero-sum game for ordinary Americans who will have no voice in redistribution of their taxes paid. That is not ‘choice.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">There appears no present force that can intercept the naive, simplistic view that by privatizing a K-12 education, some never explained mythological transformation via Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” will suddenly create a new era of learning. As a former business professor, student of markets, and student of American and world business for over six decades, that simply rates the assessment — stupidity. Not as questionable however, if this had been the thrust of business-driven public schools, would have been forcing into public education the knowledge collegiate education schools never self-discovered, adopted or installed, the rich theory and practice around development of organizational design and behavior, and the entire discipline that created firms capable of managerial excellence in achieving both short and long term mission objectives. Our public systems into 2017 are overall still blundering incompetents in terms of using contemporary organizational design and decision processes to plan, execute and assess within their missions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><b>Public or Private Sector</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">The astute reader will pick up on a thread woven among these paragraphs; that neither is present U.S. public school structure seen as viable in our future, nor are vouchers and simplistic charter renderings of public schools seen as a way to improve the game. What are the options?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Another day, another big data exploration, but one elephantine hypothesis is that our public schools could be successfully privatized as a universe, if there were major assumption changes. Education in the Constitution belongs to our states. Lots of ifs and buts, but if our system was seen structured as 50 public-private corporations, by state, using most of the present teaching human resources, but creating competent administrative ranks, driven by business values and principles, with a totally modern school organizational model instead of the 19th century’s, with school-by-school oversight jointly by accomplished executives paired with representatives of a state’s colleges/universities, overseen by a national congress of states’ public-private education partnerships, there might be a chance?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">Miles to go to sort out the proposal, but a scheme that might merit thought experiments and conceptual testing. Alternately, maybe former House Speaker and Buckeye, John Boehner was right, when he frequently intoned (paraphrased): ‘<b><i>If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas in edu-land</i></b>.’ Maybe Mr. Boehner was right more than any of us knew in seeing a society broken and cranky...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia";">-- Blog Transmittal -- </span></div>
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TO: Edunationredux Learning Community</div>
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DATE: 13 February 2017</div>
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SUBJ: <a class="" href="http://edunationredux.blogspot.com/2017/02/americas-public-schools-dead-man-walking_13.html"><b class=""><i class="">America’s Public Schools: Dead Man Walking?</i></b></a></div>
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Good morning.</div>
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Yes, the DeVos train wreck is coming, but it may get lost in the perfect storm.</div>
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Not news to anyone not oblivious to America’s love-hate relationship with our almost two-century old public school labyrinth — <i class="">of ever-escalating taxes, pockets of genuine learning excellence, juxtaposed against dismal low-income and discriminatory urban systems, disguised incompetence of rural schools, physical plant and sports excess precedence over learning, schools of education becoming culturally isolated islands, and the blend of near-sainthood of a large fraction of dedicated teachers versus the conflicting large fraction of pseudo-educators lacking proper training dominating school administration</i> with <i class="">self-interest and power trips </i>— public education is still under attack.</div>
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A simple pointed example of why our public systems are still drawing fire is playing out in Indiana’s current Legislature. Its school spending has exceeded inflation in five of the last six years, but simultaneously "<i class="">...more of the new money has gone to operations and overhead than to classrooms.</i>” This in spite of a major effort earlier this century to emphasize the goals of increasing that dollar fraction directly supporting the classroom, plus former Governor Mitch Daniels’ effort a decade ago to make it possible for systems to join together to cut the costs of various services. By last year the ratio of dollars going to the classroom “.<i class="">..had dropped to 57 percent</i>.” In spite of the self-evident attention of anyone who has successfully managed a corporate enterprise, Indiana local systems simply offered evidence that they were indifferent to, or unwilling to exercise the discipline to meet the need for spending reform.</div>
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It is hard to even conceptualize school leadership so naive, or so arrogant, that after decades of attempted reform, they simply offer in-your-face refusals to seek to meet stated public needs to change the game in favor putting their public dollars into instruction rather than empire building. There is major realization highlighted by this anecdote — <b class=""><i class="">American public school leadership has probably never in this century had either its educational or operating functions ‘professionally managed’ where the rubber meets the road!</i></b></div>
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<b class=""><i class=""> </i></b></div>
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The latest tactical assault is of course the appointment of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education; seemingly her qualifications for that post being her husband’s billions from plugging Amway products, and a destructive path of unaccountable charters through Michigan’s K-12 systems. But DeVos may prove to be a minor inconvenience for our public systems, compared to the strategic shifts starting to roil the need for and shape of public learning.</div>
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<b class=""><i class="">Present “reform” may be the very least of U.S. public education’s problems in 2017.</i> Today’s Edunationredux blog addresses a few of the possible implications for public education of unprecedented technology now rapidly emerging in this society, </b><a class="" href="http://edunationredux.blogspot.com/2017/02/americas-public-schools-dead-man-walking_13.html"><b class="">linked here</b></a><b class="">.</b></div>
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Enjoy.</div>
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Regards,</div>
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<span class="" style="color: #1c01fe;"><span class="" style="font-family: Handwriting - Dakota;">Ron Willett</span> </span> </div>
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Dr. Ronald Willett</div>
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New Bremen, OH</div>
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USA</div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-19804013767037999602016-08-12T11:16:00.000-04:002016-08-18T17:00:16.545-04:00Prospectus — Reframing the Debate: Our Public School Reform Fiasco<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Appended are
the bones of a thought paper underway. Its title will likely be: "Reframing
the Debate: Our Public School Reform Fiasco." The mission,
and why this preliminary display?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To the first
question, because the debates to date are becoming stylized and hardened,
reflecting the inner biases of the competitors for the high ground. In
that process far too many of the real but complex factors at play get reduced
to talking points and slogans. No effective public policy in the history
of these United States has ever been served by that simplification and its
related bigotry. The reformers aren't knuckle-dragging cretins; but
public K-12 education in turn isn't totally populated by teaching saints, many
teachers are inadequately educated to handle the knowledge cluster assigned,
and many public schools' imperfect systems for finding and ensuring competent
and honest leadership have more holes than a wheel of Swiss cheese. Our
states’ systems for creating and ensuring the professional function of local
BOE may be the most flawed function in public education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The second
question: Why this prospectus? Because the writer sees and values
others' properly considered and documented points of view, and the offering
appended below is in the hope of receiving some intelligent critique. My
defense of that assertion is in my very neural nets — I had the good fortune to
be trained at the doctoral level, plus the innate disposition from childhood
on, to be a researcher. One can't practice that professional commitment
successfully for decades without being able to dissect complexity, probe the
inner workings of a system, and consider alternative explanations for
phenomena.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Origins<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some
educators, most public system parents and taxpayers, and many members of BOE
are clueless about the history and motivations that resulted in the creation of
America’s public schools. Far from being the product, overall, of
nobility, soaring values about learning, and thirst for equality, most of the
motivation stemming from public system drivers was to create a workforce
literate enough to support last century’s growing manufacturing economy, but
not intellectual enough to question authority or become wary of the power
establishments of the era.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
probably fair to say, that as ignorant and naive as Ronald Reagan and George
Bush were about real learning, they reflected more altruistic and lofty views
of the reasons for mandatory education than most of its prior pioneers.
Simultaneously, there were education giants, with intellect, who went
with the development flow, but pioneered the ideas related to how to structure
the processes, and fashion infrastructure to make learning effective.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Systems and Public School Genesis<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Public schools
over last century quickly became the dominant source of student head counts, if
not its highest and best learning expression. The latter were, and still
are, the private schools and academies that could be afforded by our nation’s
wealthiest and elite families. Those schools — not even remotely
resembling charters — have frequently resembled small colleges, and
indeed, the pedagogy practiced more nearly mimics very high quality
postsecondary education than our public schools’ monolithic reasoning and
protocols.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The core
mechanism installing our public schools was the creation of, first, teachers
colleges across our states, then gradual creation of mainstream schools of
education in most colleges and universities. That process did two things
that became the eventual causes of the present reform fiasco: One, it
isolated many schools of education within the broader universe of higher
education knowledge creation and codification. That autonomy was likely
initially conceptualized with some legitimacy, that the teachers being created
would operate with immature human beings, children, requiring an emphasis on
methods that might be considered pedestrian when propagating or employing
knowledge among the adults and establishments in our society. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Secondly, that
created a culture in which teachers easily developed and even became dependent
on a sense of entitlement from opting for the role of teacher. That was
reinforced over decades by salaries that were constrained by the vagaries of
taxes as the source of school funding, and by an anthem as onerous as many in
today’s political arena, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them that
can’t, teach</i>.” But once installed, no matter how much respect for and
compensation of the profession improved, the composite teaching profession hung
onto that sense of entitlement. In any system where such a cultural basic
is installed, its recipients acquire a measure of self-righteousness that
erodes the willingness to look beyond their environment for clues to how well
its practices are accepted, and even more importantly, whether those practices
are fulfilling the mission the larger society ascribes to their profession.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Education Tunnel Vision<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This culture,
by itself amenable to deflecting alienation from society in general, was thrown
a curve by the failure of our educational training to recognize that management
of what became highly complex organization was neither understood by most
educating the educators, nor was it addressed by the social science those
schools understood. I have used this true story before, but it is very
pointed. At the end of last century, an education professor authored a
journal article proclaiming the “discovery” of principles of
organizational behavior and management that should guide school administration.
To anyone versed in modern understanding of organizational behavior and
management, the concepts floated as “discovered by education,” had been pioneered
at least decades before in our business schools. Additionally, every
principle “discovered” had been assigned a different name than the
universally non-education intellectual community recognized and employed.
This manifests a form of isolationism that ultimately became public
education’s trajectory to an unfortunate place — the conclusion that our
public schools were broadly failing to create contemporary understanding of
rapidly changing knowledge and skills. The systems for training, recruiting,
qualifying, vetting, and controlling our alleged school administrators may be
the most flawed, even corrupted component of contemporary public education.
Instead of leaders, the system has created unsupervised managers who can
gravitate to those positions because of desire for power and greater incomes,
not out of the highest visions of service.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A second sequela
of public school evolution has been its adoption of the view that one of its
roles as the mainstay of moving children into adulthood was to do the social
engineering to shape those values as much as install a command of sufficient
knowledge to move into a next learning world, or into earning a living.
This cultural assumption, coupled to a second factor, multiplied by
decades of relatively unchecked freedom to write its own tickets for tax-funded
infrastructure and methods of operation, plus expansion of a technology
revolution it still hasn’t in whole grasped, is what catalyzed 1983’s private
sector rebellion. The rest of the conservative ‘bit in the mouth’
initiative, to penalize public education for being unresponsive or overtly
aggressive in pushing its own values, is what’s been visible since launch of
NCLB. Add that a second failure quickly joined the first; the failure as
an institution to sense and research its own inability to meet the differential
and growing needs of minority and disadvantaged population segments for
educational change. A different audience than corporate reform, but
taking the same punitive form of the prior, it simply multiplied the damage
being inflicted on real learning. A sidebar here is as simple as trying
to find out, as a citizen paying for our public schools, or even a parent of
enrollees, precisely what a school is teaching its students. Try it some
time; ask your local superintendent to open its metaphorical curriculum books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">How Public Education Became Alienated<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Conventional
wisdom is, that though these properties taint the history of public education,
its need to practice in and secure the funding of local communities is a
countervailing force, requiring systems to respond to local oversight and
acceptance. In a perfect, and erudite citizen world, it might.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the real world of schools, citizen
deep belief in education, acceptance of its taxes, and citizen ignorance of
what a school can do, should do, and does, those are naive assumptions.
Part of the reason for that lies in the benign culture and optimistic
views of most of our society, part is the original error in strategy for
oversight of this major piece of our society, and part is that educators can be
as flawed as any other profession, possessing in the case of a school system’s
monopoly in equipping its children for life, the capacity to intimidate both
parents and a community when power is unchecked. Parents are inevitably
reluctant to challenge administrators and teachers when manipulating their
child’s assessments can be used as a weapon to suppress. Horrors, does that
actually happen? In a local system it has been observed blatantly exercised
in public meetings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One factor
above has already been noted. The image of the teaching gestalt as a
unique identity and culture creates the beliefs that our educators alone
possess the magic sauce of learning. It reinforces that sense of teacher-administrator
entitlement that promotes looking in rather than out. It creates
opportunities for dictatorial practice and malfeasance. Even the most
empathetic educator can be caught up in this ego trip. A very recent
report of research on earliest childhood learning suggests that children create
their own learning models, and can even experience less effective learning when
it is fed or orchestrated by an adult.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Spoiler alert:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schools as
we depict them are in the long swath of history a literally new invention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The second
factor is the typically American trait of assuming that we are the good guys,
that the joint presence in a community of educators and parents/taxpayers makes
them equals. In fact, most educators in our public systems see themselves
as superior intellectually, even when that assumption is quite flawed by their
comparison level with a general population versus resources who practice
intellectually at a higher level. In a nation of “all created equal” the
misinterpretation of that concept has caused more damage to civil tranquility
than many other societal discontinuities. There are systems in which some
school administrator writes the minutes of a BOE meeting before the meeting
occurs. That sounds a bit paranoid? Perhaps. All of that and
more have for over a dozen years characterized the system in the village from
which this post is originating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The third
factor is the one “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whose name one
should not say</i>,” that is, the debacle created by our utopian belief in
intellectual equality applicable to oversight of public schools — our
incredibly unprepared and frequently incompetent to demagogic boards of
education. Bypassing the extensive history of early education formation
for the sake of brevity, education became constitutionally the province of
states and local communities. In our early evolution of systems, both
parents and general citizenry, and boards popularly elected — frequently
then and to this day on the basis of general popularity and not competence to
assess and control education — could achieve reasonable oversight, because
their knowledge was on a par with that of the systems so governed. That ceased
to be true decades ago. Our states in turn failed to upgrade laws
determining the qualifications for BOE, and in parallel create regulations that
would assure elections were based on reasonable testing of candidates. At
the moment one can be on a BOE and be illiterate, have never graduated from a
high school, and experience zero testing of qualifications in the electoral process.
In fact, our systems have increasingly abused that process by setting up
candidates for a BOE, acquiring necessary signatures for them to be on the
ballot, covertly promoting their election, and the basis is virtually always
identifying candidates who cannot or will not challenge school administration
wishes, as well as look the other way for example if teacher or parental
complaints are blocked. System integrity in action?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>BOE cannot be recalled, and except for
the rare critical mass of public protest, and an occasional press that doesn’t
give them a free-get-out-of-jail-card, they receive little oversight. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Public Schools In the Real Trenches<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Two heroines
of the remonstrance against standardized testing as the right prescription for
improving public school performance have been Dr. Diane Ravitch, reflecting
both academic and public sector education excellence and power of rational
argument, and Valeri Strauss, the seemingly indefatigable editor of the <u>Washington
Post</u>’s "The Answer Sheet." It is difficult to do anything
but marvel at the latter’s reach and grasp of material by accomplished
educators who have dissected the errors in the alleged corporate reform
movement. A hero of that cause is also Dr. Marion Brady, who has authored
some of the most potent arguments for a different approach to school change,
possessing a background as rich in excellence as the two above. But for
all of the arguments mustered by Ms Strauss, she is categorically adamant about
acknowledging that not all teachers are peerless, nor that a bungled pattern of
acquiring and supervising school administrators has been the most destructive
human resource factor in blocking public education’s self reform to blunt the destructive
corporate version. The latter has been more destructive of school reform than
even the still malingering recognition that our schools of education are what’s
broken, and need radical change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let’s promptly
acknowledge, that as in all attempts to generalize about complex systems, U.S.
public education is a segmented, fragmented, stratified assembly of systems
that range from almost angelic to horrible — precisely the status of any real
world system that possesses the capacity for independence in its values,
choices, and manner of operation. Were there contemporary research and
data on what is actually happening in U.S. public schools we might be able to
comprehensively and accurately diagnose where the worst of public K-12 is occurring,
and those causal factors. Not based on research to date, totally
impressionistic, the incidence of felony indictments of public school teachers
for cause appears to parallel the comparable indictment and release for cause
of school administrators. If that is even within miles of truth, it is a
massive indictment of public school leadership — because the number of teachers
is many levels of magnitude greater than the number of administrators.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Parenthetically,
a documented event, in its history there has been only one attempt to do a
projectable empirical study of our public schools, surveying adequate numbers
of students teachers and administrators — the study directed by premier
educator/researcher Dr. John Goodlad. Paradoxically, this study was being
concluded at the same time a report was being prepared for President Reagan,
the now famous “A Nation at Risk,” that was the ignition point for the
subsequent condemnation of our public schools by the CEO of IBM emoting to the
National Governors Conference, cascading into what became finally NCLB, then
under Mr. Obama’s ideological thrust, the egregious RttT. Goodlad’s real
data on our systems were available to the group that crafted ANAR, were
requested by it, then ignored in the report. What Goodlad concluded and
recommended for improving U.S. public K-12 was virtually 180 degrees away from
the punitive current style of corporate reform.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Crisis of Knowledge<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An assumption
that appears to underlay much if not most of public education’s organizational
monolith is that whatever knowledge is perceived and being conveyed in its
classrooms is immutable. In most cases all that its teachers actually
grasp is what came out of their postsecondary training, even masters work.
So-called teacher development rarely extends beyond bureaucratic drills
to make life less taxing for school administrators; how often is core knowledge
they pass on as fact updated? In fact, all knowledge that fits into our
arbitrary K-12 Procrustean Bed is probably wrong; some material obsolete, all
we think we know scientifically, biologically, and sociologically subject to
continuing correction and updating by virtue of better research tools, better
digital capabilities, and the cumulative effects of focused study in both higher
education, national research entities, and by private sector R&D.
Most K-12 text materials are prepared by some of the most mediocre
intellects around, further twisted at state levels of textbook review by
ignorance and religious ideologies. A very small number of books
critiquing school text adoption have survived censorship, but the message they
convey is disgusting; corrupt practices at every seam, perpetrated by both
publishers concerned only with profit, and authorship manipulating systems to
maintain their authors' strangleholds on adoptions and their royalty stream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Couple the
above to both teachers and administrators, even ones with integrity, who have
been indoctrinated from training through Praxis One and Two, to mechanically
plod through classes with fixed rhetoric, and you get the nucleus of what
actually provoked corporate reform. A couple of generations of our public
systems, thanks to self-righteousness and adopted isolationism, compounded by
incompetent administration and ineffectual BOE, have in fact neutered most
creativity and genuine intellectual competence in some fraction of our overall
public systems. As counterproductive and mean-spirited as the ‘means’ of
present alleged corporate reform have been, it is very hard to actually blame
the Business Roundtable, thinking conservatives, and any entity that depends on
being able to count on critical thought coming out of public education, for
rebelling and putting into motion attempts to replace public systems with
charters if public systems refuse to reform themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The partial
counter to this is in the necessary use of “some,” “a few,” “too many,” “most,”
and on, the product of our cluelessness about what pragmatically occurs in our
massive public school universe. Repeating a previous point, except for Goodlad’s
work thirty years ago, that encompassed the experiences of 36,000 students, and
their associated teachers and administrators, we don’t know what public K-12
actually is in actionable detail. We don’t know except by chance
encounters with systems that invite scrutiny, precisely how many of our systems
are good, to mediocre, to poor, to corrupt. Alexis de Tocqueville said: “<i>America
is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will
cease to be great</i>.” There are robust arguments for the assertion that
our public school systems have evolutionarily ceased to be overall good because
of pedestrian beliefs and training, and refusal to adapt to contemporary
understanding of virtually all phenomena and even modern understanding of
organizational behavior and management. But which ones, and to each of
those characterizations, how much; then to each of those fragments, with what
causes? Lacking any of the answers to those questions, present corporate
reform does have the ambience of a knuckle-dragging gang of cretins swinging
clubs and throwing rocks to “improve” systems they can’t accurately
characterize and critique; simultaneously, commentators of the stripe that grace
the WaPo’s “The Answer Sheet,” can with sophistication, always find a haphazard
sample of excellent and highly effective systems to hold out as shining public
schools on a hill. Haphazard samples if they are misinterpreted as truth
have a nasty historical habit of undermining the universe they only
accidentally and temporally reflect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Up Close and Personal<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It would be
uplifting to segue to a narrative that now describes a pair of shining examples
of public systems in America’s heartland. Unfortunately, the opposite of that
is the curse of the site of this essay.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Two places in
America’s culturally semi-insulated heartland of west central Ohio nevertheless
make the point that we have miles to go to actually cope with over a century’s
drift of our public schools from inception, to major tax and asset users, to
virtual monopoly in critical preparation, or failure of preparation of our
youth for adulthood. As the saying goes, “<i>is not your grandfather’s or
even father’s world or America.</i>” But those places, a village, New
Bremen, OH, and technically, a small city, St, Marys, OH, missed educationally
joining this century.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Both places
could easily have visually come out of a piece of Norman Rockwell art, brimming
with wholesome and benign display of people and things. A difference, New
Bremen could be a comic book reconstruction of a far grittier history, one
notch short of being fiction. St. Marys would be that Norman Rockwell
wholesomeness aged by decades of loss of industry and a center of the modern
meaning of community. Both house the relics of a historically brief and
not terribly distinguished or prescient era of the Miami-Erie canal. New
Bremen’s as stated was reconstructed mostly as fiction; St. Marys downtown is peppered
with dry rot, its canals presently riddled with cyanobacteria, the product of a
man-made lake historically feeding the canal (now being saturated with
nutrients courtesy of surrounding farms and farmers irresponsibly leaching
animal waste into that reservoir). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Both
communities survive, New Bremen though civically insular prospering because of
the presence of a major (and controlling) manufacturing business that is
outstanding in historical business terms. St. Marys is a blue-collar
place, that one native describes as “a place where a whole bunch of us live,
but it is not a ‘community.’” Both have school systems that physically
would impress the naive observer, Norman Rockwell ambience. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lift the lids, and a closer look might
suggest that the educational highlight of the upcoming school year is the onset
of the games on its groomed football fields, and the next round of historical
liberally-rooted feel good mantras that will grace the extensive propaganda and
self-promotion from both schools. To know what either school is really
doing to their children, you would have to file in Ohio with its supreme court for
a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">writ of <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">mandamus</span></i> to force open school records.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With the
exception of a single BOE member out of the composite ten, the BOE constituency
ranges from ignorant, to bullies, to the cowardly, to the Machiavellian, to
sock puppets for special interests, to alleged human resources who pursued the
post not to work, or even to provide oversight of both the communities’ use of
tax monies or how its children were provided the assets to learn, but to
burnish personal egos. Not unexpectedly, these BOEs’ defaults in hiring
leadership reflect the above superlative traits. New Bremen’s system in this
century has had superintendents who: Trafficked in child pornography; were dishonest
in administration virtually across the board in school policy, accepting public
input, and misreporting; have been educationally retro or incompetent
accompanied by personality disorder bordering on socio-pathology; and have
demonstrated plagiarism, educational fraud, and regular lapses of ethical
management. Four-fifths of St. Marys BOE might have looked ‘good' if they
had simply emulated New Bremen, and the SMCS’ system leadership has made New
Bremen’s look almost kosher. This is the reality that is never seen by
the critic who stands on a peak and observes public education at a great
distance, visualizing only the products of this nation’s obsessive and
excessive spending on public K-12 buildings and sports infrastructure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Simultaneously,
the excesses and omissions and dysfunction of these two systems may be the
exception, or the tip of the iceberg? We simply don’t know how low an
entitled, self-righteous, and incompletely trained, but very tightly cultured
and self-identified education community can really go? Lastly, state education
departments are almost a farce; Ohio’s has now ousted more officials in that
function by implication of, or accusation of wrongdoing than most of Ohio’s
bureaucracy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Futures<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The punch line
to all of this is both optimistic and dismal. Congress in its rewrite of
the original ESEA (now ESSA) sought to hand more power to mediate public K-12
back to local communities. Mr. Obama, still guided by a deeply ingrained
desire to equilibrate childhood learning across our population segments, his
own partly flawed ideology, is still seeking to override that local control.
The point is that the opportunity has been put on the table for local
systems to reform their own venues. The dismal conclusion is
that, except for the exceptional systems Valerie Strauss digs out and
highlights, some unknown fraction of our systems has some variant of the rot or
venality described in New Bremen's and St. Marys’ systems, accompanied by the
dysfunction and cowardice of their BOE to grasp and be innovative in real
reform and upgrading quality and integrity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What happens
over the rest of this decade and the next is a major factor in where this
nation goes intellectually, civically, economically, culturally, and
environmentally as this century unfolds. Will it sink to the low depicted
by the rhetoric issuing from the “orange cowbell,” or further dissemble from
the distorted self-interest suffocating both public and private sector better
values? The stark reality is that national policy and lunges into places
not planned have increasingly been ceded to the young. The young for
better or worse will act out based on how they receive learning now and in the
near future. If their received wisdom rotates around mythology, or
inaccurate science, or distorted values, or meaningless feel-good mantras, and
lacking the capacities for critical thought and innovation without a crib sheet
or being beaten with a standardized test, envisioning our nation’s possible
futures is not a pleasant undertaking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cutting
through all of the qualified rhetoric surrounding how to rescue public
education, what would it take to roll back corporate reform, sink charters, and
stick a fork in the hybrid collection of entities collaborating by chance,
greed, and mischief to attack America’s public schools?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Real Reform <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One, it would
take a champion with the scope and authority to intercept and torpedo present
functions and their perpetrators. Ideally, if the GOP wasn’t obsessively trying
to roll the nation back to what they, experiencing delusions, believe
constituted the U.S. mid-20th century, and Mr. Obama didn’t have a neural
short-circuit in his wiring for conceiving public education, it would have been
spiritually the U.S. Department of Education. The issue here is that even through
the W. G. Bush administration, that department retained most of the brains to
accomplish the task given far more enlightened and operationally oriented
leadership. If one started today, it would take a decade to recreate that human
resource assembly and intellectual capacity trashed by Arne Duncan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Alternatively,
it could be major reform of the top 100 schools of education in the U.S. That would take starter dough of the leading U.S. universities to
challenge those schools and with real teeth demanding change.
Potentially, if that ignited and took off, some consortium of those
universities and schools could be a force and organizing concept.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Like the other
President Bush’s 1,000 points of light, a movement by some of our largest local
school systems, backed from epiphanies by some thinking governors and
legislatures, aligned with rethinking of roles by our various education
practice and school board associations, might prove a critical mass for
attracting other institutions to join the anti-testing movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It would take
Bill Gates actually engaging his neural nets, and a handful of other rich but
shallow thinkers having an epiphany, redirecting major dollars to actually
installing in our public schools the concepts already researched that could
with innovation improve real learning. In practice, those dollars applied
to re-educating America’s present teacher force with a massive program of real
teacher development, employing the most contemporary learning technologies and
virtual access to knowledge, and adjusted for every development as it occurs,
would actually be an exciting prospect and challenge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lastly, it
would take major rethinking, with new vetting of every sitting public school
superintendent, coupled with the re-education in management of those who
survive to teach them how to actually manage their systems and learning. Imagine, a small revolution in our increasingly twisted B-schools, to
redirect some of their time spent building more greed-driven finance MBAs, to
re-educate to a doctoral level the nation’s educational administrators with the
intellect to do it. Who knows, the concept of social responsibility and
ethical leadership might come back in fashion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">BOE?
Without states massively rethinking how public schools are governed and
provided oversight BOE don’t enter the picture. As inept as they are, an
argument is that actually valid and competent leadership installed in every
school could allow most BOE to simply be ignored — few would have the courage,
energy, or intellect to challenge. Yes, it’s true for many right now;
however, the issue is that too many of the latter are being mismanaged by
superintendents needing separation or indictment. The alternative
positive strategy; modification of state laws to require, one, higher levels of
education to be on a BOE, two, training and testing before one can be seated,
and three, changing present election of all BOE to a mixed system of elected
plus appointed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A parallel idea is
that every BOE has to be linked to, and is subject to ‘visitation’ by a
credible state college or university.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It might take
an effort to cross-functionally and sharply focus Federal law enforcement on
the collective abuses of our cabal of testing companies, in conspiracies to
defraud, improper buying of influence in our public sectors, bribery to acquire
public contracts, turning over every rock to expose how they have essentially
thumbed their nose at public policy since they were allowed into the education
loop by public system malfeasance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Might the RICO statute even apply?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lastly, in
precisely the opposite of the disastrous adoption of all aspects of corporate
reform, from NCLB, through RttT, to every debacle allowed by our testing
vultures, every proposed initiative could be concept-tested, via small scale
experiments, or pilot programs, to estimate issues, costs, application
protocols, project performance, and capacity for scaling – all of the correct
development action that should have preceded dumping on public education an
untested and ignorant massive system of mechanical alleged change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even our greediest firms, indifferent
to even the concept of social responsibility, use that model in development
before betting the farm on a potential opportunity for functional and/or market
failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amazing, that almost the
first words spoken in higher education work on product development are “market
testing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did our standardized
testing companies and their sundry consultants, and trailing demagogues, deposit
their brains in their left-hand desk drawers before launching our learning
Titanic?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Real Reform In Action</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After posting this draft, a report issued that embodies many of the prospective elements of real reform; in this case issuing from a consortium of our states. A</span><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px;"> major such resource is the NCSL, standing for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Not as politicized as the NGA (National Governors Association), the NCSL has frequently sponsored and reported policy research that straddles our political poles.</span><br />
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<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px;">
Such a study was featured in a regular newsletter from NCSL, just appearing in my email. That feature and lead item were so low key that it might easily be missed by those who should heed its findings and recommendations. What makes the report in question so pertinent is that Mr. Obama’s current U.S. Department of Education overreach on the rewrite of NCLB — ESSA — is skating on Constitutionally thin ice, because public education is the province of our states and local communities.</div>
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<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px;">
The NCSL report, titled “<b class="">No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State</b>,” tackles the question how a balanced, rational, multi-dimensional approach to public school reform might be structured, if our states would come to the party with their neural nets working. In a measured way it is candid, most specifically demolishing the current “silver bullet” mentality as the fix for upgrading public K-12. However, the study and report on which the recommendations are based stops short of "naming names and kicking butt." </div>
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<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px;">
<b class="">It states what should be, but, and perhaps understandably to hang on to readers, it never fingers the classes of culprits who have been responsible for where we are. For example, repeated to a fault, that we need overall far better equipped teachers, but is silent on the reality that two major factors are responsible: The wholesale failure of our collegiate schools of education to reform themselves, and move their awareness of learning out of the 20th century, and their command of knowledge into this one; and the endemic failure of both local BOE and the administrators they elect to comprehend, recruit, and support competent teachers rather than their own agendas. Of course we have good, even great teachers, a tribute to the power of empathy and values that draw one to teaching as a vocation — that is not enough. </b></div>
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<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px;">
A discriminating reader, allowing defense screens to recede sufficiently to entertain the generic prescription offered by the NCLS effort, will find there is in it a spirit and sense that foot virtually all good decision process. As with every such prescription, goal specificity, the action plan, the milestones, the contingency plans, the human and other resource assignments, and timetables to create movement are in its extensions into the specific environments. They are in this case states’ initiatives, then relay down to local systems, to make work happen.</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I can’t
suppress using the favorite quote from an executive to whom I once reported,
referencing some new and daunting performance goals for my profit center:
</span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Of course it’s hard; if it was easy I’d do it on a cocktail napkin
over a martini."</i></b></div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-55344366232349878032016-06-11T15:18:00.000-04:002016-06-13T07:27:13.512-04:00Lament for the Cessation of Reason<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Preface</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Edunationredux
has been silent for some time, witnessing the unrelenting push — even in the
face of demonstrations it has failed — to reform public education by brute
force, and punitive application of standardized testing and flawed value-added
teacher assessment. After a material hiatus it seemed timely to reflect on the shifts that have occurred in so-called corporate reform of our U.S. public schools over the last year or so. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What follows is an attempt to backfill without whitewash the current reporting with some realities that framed the onset of current testing excesses, value-added assessment of teachers, the rise and decline of the alleged common core, and the same-o, same-o by players such as Mr. Obama and his obsession with testing, Mr. Gates with his obsession with playing amateur and ignorant education advocate, with our profiteering testing companies, and lastly with our real public systems still defensively dug in or in denial they are under attack.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let’s be clear and direct on a couple of issues: No one legitimately aware of K-12 education is rejecting or has rejected the need for school testing, a common rhetorical device injected by our testing vultures — the issue has always been whether the right stuff is being tested, and who bears the design responsibility for test creation and use of insights therefrom; and few legitimate educators dispute the need for some common knowledge components to be the backbone for all learning K-12 — here the issue is whether the right human resources, for the right reasons, and with the right research backdrop created a viable knowledge and tools core. Gathering evidence suggests both issues have been fumbled in current reform, some of that fumbling incompetence, some ideology replacing critical thought, some self-righteousness, some outright corrupt action.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the 21st Century, “spare the rod and spoil the
child” once seemed too bizarre to contemplate as civilized public policy.
Companies profiting from that testing have dug in, becoming ever more
bold in simply ignoring critique, and doubling down on installing untested
products to extract public dollars. The following observations are
prompted by two core beliefs: One, that only a broader electorate can now
exert the force to mediate present trends; and two, on balance that electorate,
most parents, and even the public resources who signed on to at least nominally
serve public schools, are either confused by the reform <i>lenaean hydra</i>
poisoning public education, or blissfully unaware of what it is costing the
nation in futures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Genesis
of the Reform Movement</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">From
many sources, and over a great span of time our society has assessed how words
matter. If you research the most destructive words in our language there
is a proliferation of negative syntax. But oft quoted: "<i>The
most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this
way.’"</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I
want to contest that conclusion in a brief essay dealing with the current <i>sturm
und drang</i> surrounding America's public schools — the argument is in
essence that the most dangerous words for our society are the words that are
never spoken, the truths preferred unsaid. Public education has been a
prime inheritor of the condition. The words won't issue even from the
prolific anti-testing press advocate, <u>WaPo</u>’s "The Answer
Sheet:" <i>Public school systems in the U.S. over the
last half century have reaped, by failing in multiple ways, the punitive,
test-based, alleged "corporate reform” currently being endured.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let's
do a bit of reality testing. Did this alleged reform movement just fall
like a random shower? Was there no activating causal sequence? Did
the notion that our public schools were failing to prepare tomorrow's decision
makers just pop into some executive’s head during a Starbucks break? Were
our schools wth low variance equally equipping America's children? Was
our private sector seeing its employees (and customers) outclass the rest of
the world? Was it seeing in new hires critical thinking, creativity, and
capacities for both excellence and innovation? Were our local public
schools the recipients of the best and brightest in our society as oversight,
our famous or infamous system of boards of education accessible by popular vote
to even school dropouts? As any complex system evolves and creates deep
roots, and breeds defenders, did the public systems remain humble, rejecting
entitlement, and resisting the temptation to socially engineer the embryonic
society they obviously footed from pre-K through the end of high school?
Did the players in those schools resist the temptation to demand more of the
nation's resources because they could tax, or their personal returns were
outstripped by alternative professions? Did our public schools,
presciently recognizing advancing digital technology, become the leaders in
related education? Unless you believe in the tooth fairy, one or more of these
or ones left unsaid will resonate as 21st Century public K-12 system failure
modes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
list goes on, but quickly, for public educators long protected by society to
have absolved every source of critique would have been the persona of saints. For all of the credit public system teachers deserve for persevering
there was and still is massive resistance to change in most public schools,
resistance to upgrading obsolete texts and knowledge proffered, resistance to
and ignorance of technology rolling out in the private sector, and the latter
as will be seen a key factor in launching an attack on those systems.
Couple this with most collegiate schools of education to this day as
retro as most local systems. Local systems have regularly allowed poorly
equipped and trained school administration, compounded by incompetent BOE
oversight of that management. You have the nucleus of rebellion by the
market-based segment of society dependent on that education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there was a first shot fired.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That
event was the 1983 National Governors Association (NGA) meeting, dominated by a
speech and proposals by the CEO of IBM, Lou Gerstner. At the time still
America's preeminent technology company, the POV expressed by its
representative was the genesis of attacks on public education. That
speech was followed by comparable rhetoric about America's public system
mediocrity at The Business Roundtable, a consortium of the CEOs of America's
largest corporations. In turn the NGA's staff dealing with education, already
conservatively oriented by Republican governor dominance, became populated by
MBAs from U.S. B-schools — not educators, not even the better education gurus.
Then the perceived need for major change migrated to the Bush White House.
The anthem became, “aggressive, no excuses K-12 discipline to get tough
when the going gets tough.” The result was NCLB (No Child Left Behind) which in
fact had some rational and egalitarian roots, though short on human resources
genuinely knowledgeable about learning just beginning to be understood as
neuroscience. (Dr. Diane Ravitch, then Assistant Secretary of Education,
championed the reforms of NCLB based on testing, but subsequently witnessing
their downsides became that testing's most aggressive opponent.) Then, in
the vernacular, all hell broke loose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It
is this next phase of alleged reform evolution that was and still is not
recognized by most of our states, by virtually any local BOE, and arguably by
few public school administrators and even teachers. Once the metaphorical
public education reform toothpaste was out of the tube it not only couldn't be
returned to the source, it stuck like plaque. All of the diverse special
interest critics of public education entered the emerging battle, but lacking
any coherent composite position on what it was. (Subsequently, reform
created such disparate odd fellows as the Obama Administration at least tacitly
joining hands with the most vehement advocates of charters and public school
replacement.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At
this juncture, actually pre-NCLB, both our collegiate schools of education and
America's public systems had a chance to intercept what has since occurred —
both populations reflexively retreated into defensive positions, BOE and
schools’ leaderships in denial, teachers leaning on unions for a buffer or just
retreating to foxholes. The moment, when leadership within the education
establishment might have deflected corporate reform attack, was lost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I
would interject a brief personal experience that reinforces the above
observation. In the early 1990s, the retiring dean of my doctoral alma mater's
school of education created a program named, Center for Excellence in
Education. Its purpose to research and bring related seminars to public
school superintendents in that state. Its faculty consisted of a half
dozen of the brightest scholars I had witnessed, none the product of a
traditional school of education. They assembled cutting edge tools for
school administrators, and offered these in seminars for the small number of
public school resources who perceived the need and opportunity. Although long
off of that institution's faculty, I was serving as a consultant to the
university's vice president for research and graduate studies, and prevailed on
that resource to enroll me in the CEE summer program. A quarter century
ago, what was being taught and advocated are some of the tools just emerging in
our most contemporary (irony) public schools. The point of the story,
however, is the ultimate fate of that program — the literal day that
former dean finally left the education school the traditionally-bent
replacement started to dismantle the program. It was never
replaced. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Our
broader public education establishment has been its own worst enemy in the
reform wars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Uncontrolled
Fragmentation of School Warfare</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At
this point in history the previously referenced wave of public school criticism
experienced the arguably predictable, but never predicted sequel — that
population of critics fragmented, uncontrolled, into aggressive splinters of
public school attackers, all pretty much on their own wavelength, but all in
the common spectrum that envisioned evisceration of the universal public system
to its complete replacement. Each faction created its own weapons, and
many of the splinters quickly became candidly quite corrupt in the quests.
It became open-season on public schools. The players were diverse,
either in purpose or in methods, but the target was the same. Many of the
players, in large measure many of our unprepared or naive state departments of
education, became more pawns than activists, the political tail wagging the
education dog.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An
incomplete but telling list of the enemy: Right wing ideologues who saw
this corporate rebellion against what they saw as a retro, liberal public
education monopoly, to be a chance to dismantle at least part of it via
"charters;" migration of that political force into the Bush
Department of Education, finally resulting in ESEA (Elementary and Secondary
Education Act), popularly known as NCLB as its promotional tag; via the NGA,
creation of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council -- sounds noble, right)
a right wing organization that created legislation for conservative-dominated
state legislatures incompetent to write their own laws, pushing standardized
testing (and subsequently the alleged "common core”); the rise of the
corporate testing cabal, that saw this as a naive new market worth billions of
dollars with little need for development expenditures, and no ethical
prerogative to do needed research; the creation of a then (and still mostly)
anonymous group of primarily non-educators (instead of the professionals who
guard the quality of their area of knowledge), chaired by the CEO of a testing
company, that produced "the common core," now increasingly proving to
be a terribly <a href="http://wpo.st/r_le1"><span style="color: #386eff;">flawed effort</span></a> (being rejected by states and
schools, just branded as misguided, and torpedoed by sensible work like Marion
Brady's approaches to learning); "Teach for America" was created on
the premise that modest discipline expertise and five weeks of education
training would save the public schools, <a href="http://wpo.st/Lale1"><span style="color: #386eff;">then and now failing</span></a>; enter the misdirected dollars of a Bill Gates to push
standardized testing, with the same lame understanding of creativity and
managerial excellence installed at Microsoft; and last, but devastating, the
Obama Administration's venal endorsement and deepened installation of the
testing mentality, arguably prompted by the belief that forcing some idealistic
equilibration of education for minorities — aware it risked partially
destroying public schools — was worth that cost (this policy in the opinion of
many is as bad as the worst abuses of power and bigotry issuing from the
current Republican Congress).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
enemy within has been equally devastating: Ignorant, to fearful, to lazy,
to self-righteous, to duplicitous BOE; sports obsessions and idiocy vamping
learning priorities; school administration almost universally poorly trained to
supply managerial excellence; compounded by the failed vetting of leadership
hires that has produced school leaders ranging from simply educationally retro
or incompetent, through the fraudulent, to superintendents' out right arrogant
pursuit of power and corrupt practice; obsolete curricular thinking; naive
substitution of usually already or near obsolete technology hardware for needed
digital logic preparation; and slavish adoption of even the most obviously
retro or insane directives from state education departments (branding tweaked secondary
teachers as college professors certainly ranks high on the list of Ohio
stupidity, and based on performances since CC+’s [College Credit+] launch has
become a quality issue).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Welcome
to U.S. public education, 2016 style. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With
candor uncommon in the present venue of squeamish or gutless public school
spokespeople, it was said well in a recent <u>WaPo</u>/TAS post: <a href="http://wpo.st/kale1"><span style="color: #386eff;">“Civil rights icon James
Meredith: ‘<i>We are in a dark age of American public education</i>.’”</span></a> Perhaps
the greatest insult to the American public, and its children, has been the
refusal of any of the above list of culprits for the current education train
wreck, to either do the research or listen to legitimate research showing they
are wrong, or even acknowledging the publicly-visible failures of their various
tactics. U.S. public systems and their oversight have in turn generally
simply gone deeper into denial of a need for unforced change, and misguided by
both incredibly lame state education departments and the usual BOE
performances, have not only not created contemporary fixes, but reinvested in
those that failed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Can
Local Control Save Public Education?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
rewrite of ESEA (now ESSA, "Every Student Succeeds Act") under Lamar
Alexander was alleged to reduce the standardized testing binge, and restore
more public school local control. Actual text of the revised Act did
that; however, four major impediments stand in the way of a healthier
educational outcome. First, the Obama Administration has already abused
that spirit by its appointment of <a href="http://wpo.st/9ble1"><span style="color: #386eff;">John King as Secretary</span></a> (having failed in New York
State), and demonstrated that it has learned nothing from present reform’s
failures. Two, the moronic push powered by Bill Gates’ legacy dollars
continues, with that cabal even taking <a href="http://wpo.st/dale1"><span style="color: #386eff;">the wrong message</span></a> away from the repetitive failures
that effort has produced. Three, most school policy is still either
crafted at the state level or has to survive that gatekeeping, so to actually
assert some intelligent local control means finding paths through frequent
state education incompetence or ideology — witness the corrupt and massively
politically inspired fumbling of Ohio’s Department of Education, and of its
State Board of Education, courtesy of political cronyism by Ohio’s current
Governor. Four, lastly, local control means having BOE with the
intelligence and professionalism to not simply rubber stamp school
administrative action, but summon the courage to do independent homework and
innovate. Both capacities are notably absent in two local school systems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">James
Meredith is right, an educational "dark age" has descended on
American public education, and there appears no clear vector to a renaissance. The best chance of system change in the current chaotic political
environment is local parental and taxpayer emerging awareness that their school
system is shortchanging a community’s children. The fix is not
complicated, but historically by tradition has been very difficult:
Recognition of their children’s vulnerability to ‘good enough’
education and specious inspirational nostrums; awareness that BOE have been
products of electing resources who are an umpteenth cousin, or happen to belong
to the local Rotary, or have been manipulatively positioned by a dominant
private sector, or are cherry-picked by a school because they are considered
harmless and unlikely to challenge administration despotism; then demanding
competition and voting for professional competence on a BOE. A last
factor in Ohio; a BOE member can’t be recalled, so unless they can be removed
by the court for commission of a felony or gross violation of sworn oath,
"what you sees is what you gets.” That currently in this neck of the
woods is dysfunctional.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There
is no fully satisfactory way to exit this national crisis. Smaller
countries, with less diverse populations (e. g., Finland) have addressed the
equivalent of K-12 with greater creativity and even greater rigor than the
U.S., and have succeeded. The occasional education voice in the wilderness, e. g., an accomplished lifelong educator and guru, Dr. Marion Brady, has
offered <a href="http://www.marionbrady.com/"><span style="color: #386eff;">ways to update classroom
thinking</span></a>.
Dr. Diane Ravitch has authored best-selling books on the damage to sustainable
learning being inflicted by excessive and misdirected standardized testing. A
genuine neural science of learning is finally emerging, contradicting just
about every aspect of present reform. Parental instinctive awareness of
the cost of specious reform has produced the highest level ever in refusals to
have their children so tested. Congress remains tone deaf, as are most state
education departments and legislatures slavishly following the conservative
party line. The testing companies long ago ceased to be good corporate
citizens with awareness of public responsibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Lament</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The dispersion of power in a republic is and has been a
point of American exceptionalism. It can also when things go off the
rails be an impediment to timely repair or redirection. Lacking the
combination of social responsibility and selflessness as the governing
principles for school change moderation, by seemingly all parties, this reform <i>lenaean
hydra</i> of mythology will continue to strike and poison U.S. public school
systems. Any vector for reform of the reform appears at this point a
mirage.</span></div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-9079066945532470542015-12-03T11:12:00.000-05:002015-12-03T11:12:00.543-05:00How Public Schools Lose the Game: Stomping On Ants While Elephants Roam the HallsNovember 30, 2015<div>
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There is a paradox of major proportion in the trajectory of most of America’s public K-12 systems: The education being offered should equip our students, and by definition those doing the strategic oversight and leadership of those systems, to exemplify the spirit of 9/11’s <i class="">“Let’s roll…”</i> versus the ancient chestnut <i class="">“...we once had a problem but we solved it.” </i>Unfortunately, the strategic and even tactical performances of too many U.S. school systems, and <i class="">in extremis</i> in this neck of Ohio’s woods, are woefully replicative of the latter.</div>
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Two items caught my attention this last week; one, an op-ed by the NYT’s David Brooks, and two, an interview (audio) on innovation with two of consulting giant McKinsey’s top resources; Both are linked below:</div>
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What do these seemingly diverse and certainly conceptual references have to do with the down-in-the-dirt and practical issues that fill the hours in the oversight of our public schools, consuming its BOE and frequently superintendents? </div>
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Well, candidly, not a hell of a lot, compared with the trivia that dominate the cognitive function for most BOE. And therein resides the paradox. Most of our public system BOE reflect the POV you would get by seeing the world from the vantage point of a ground-hugger. Having managed both academic units, and private sector firms totaling nearly a couple hundred million dollars, and practicing “MBWA” (managing by walking around for the novices) as well as strategic planning, of course there are nuts and bolts choices to be made, procedures to be forged, state bureaucracy to be straddled or deflected, lesson plans to be imposed lest a standardized test score tank, budgets to be massaged, sports to be scheduled and promoted sometimes <i class="">ad absurdum</i>, and other nits to be picked. </div>
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There can be strategic choices to be made — e.g., finding school leadership, or deciding how to fund then spend double digit millions of dollars on school construction with both due process, ethics, and awareness of what product excellence entails. But rarely are the priorities for decision processes articulated with clarity in advance, or exercised with either transparency or excellence. In some cases, mirroring the worst abuses in our society, these processes are mindlessly executed or become corrupted by influence peddling.</div>
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But let’s crawl out of the prototypical bunker at least briefly. Referencing Brooks’ offering, over decades of a false sense of public school entitlement a schism developed between civic values and interests, versus the principles guiding core K-12 education efforts. Schools erected castle walls and deflected oversight, developing a rigid sense of self-righteousness. The proposition, that both broad institutional sets are actually inseparable for intelligent community, was lost; and because maintaining that duality of purpose was challenging hence pushed off, many civic enclaves and BOE/administrators not fit or up to the task. Brooks revisits prior arguments in light of the narrowly conceived and dysfunctional mechanization of our public schools via the testing/reform mafia which threaten to deepen the schism.</div>
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The McKinsey offering is sobering, because it highlights both the materiality and difficulties of organizational innovation; but without that innovation, pointedly creative means to improve learning productivity, school spending will continue to escalate while genuine learning sags, giving the reform gang even more ammunition for wiping out public schools in favor of privatization. Perhaps the McKinsey views should be augmented by another POV, namely that innovation needs to be paired with <i class="">“kaizen”</i> or continuous improvement, but not the version being ignorantly mouthed by the testing extremists.</div>
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The references bespoke two of likely only a half dozen magisterial POV that are the nuclei of strategic thinking that should guide an American public school’s organization and administration. Neither is new news, being asserted for decades by genuine students of our public systems and learning that has evolved over time and now accelerating. Half out of the bunker, also consider two realities: That public education’s failure for decades to address our systems’ strategic needs is pragmatically what launched and fed present alleged corporate reform and the drive to put public schools out of business; and that too many ill-prepared BOE and superintendents are not only in denial of being under attack, but cluelessly are aiding the alleged reformers to undercut their own public schools.</div>
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Why those topics should be front and center in BOE's and administrations' cerebral cortexes should be transparent if the pieces are read/heard. They go to the core of what educationally competent BOE and administrators should be massaging with their oversight as the strategic and overriding factors that govern systems' major choices.</div>
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December 3, 2015</div>
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<span class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman;">There were a couple of responses to Monday's post, both asking the following question: <i class="">If the two core factors listed as strategic imperatives for public schools</i> — learning and productivity innovation (that encompasses the </span><a class="" href="http://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/the-need-for-entrepreneurial-leadership-4395">need for entrepreneurship</a><span class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman;"> in our schools’ leadership), and the parallelism of school and community cultures — <i class="">are two of a half dozen</i> (perhaps plus one) <i class="">overriding areas of strategic vision, what are the other four or five?</i></span></div>
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One perspective — they are: (3) Handling of STEM in most public schools; (4) workarounds to advance genuine learning while still meeting newly revised ESEA and state mandates for standardized test performance; (5) modernizing school organization structure; (6) replacing most public schools' obsolete curricular logic and contents (see for example the continuing crusade for K-12 curricular sanity by <a class="" href="http://www.marionbrady.com/">Dr. Marion Brady</a>); and perhaps the most challenging of all for most BOE and virtually every superintendent — (7) summoning the intellect and courage, and tamping down the solipsism that blocks hearing and conversing with, perchance learning from those who are metaphorically stockholder activists in the search for better school performances (the private sector again eclipses public education, see from McKinsey, <a class="" href="http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/Corporate_Finance/What_CEOs_can_learn_from_activist_investors">Read the article</a>).</div>
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Arguably, there is an eighth heavy-duty strategic factor, but it really isn't under control of our public systems, at least directly. That is the major reform of our collegiate schools of education, to update teacher education, and to reform curricula that are a century old in concept. Even Bill Gates is getting into the act, allegedly investing $35MM to double that over the next five years to upgrade teacher training, though based on his repetitive past failures to translate hundreds of millions of dollars into positive education performance the quest’s utility may well be in doubt. </div>
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Hard to define this as a factor that favors genuine public education growth, but another billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, also just got into the act with the educational fad of the year, “personalized learning.” Like Gates’ miscues, billions of dollars may not be matched by billions of truly functioning grey cells — some commentary on Zuckerberg’s grand gesture (or grandstanding, take your pick) was just authored by a genuine giant of primary and secondary education, Dr. Howard Gardner (read it <a class="" href="http://wpo.st/Lrzt0">here</a>).</div>
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Notably, digital technology, hardware and even software don't make the list as chapter titles. They are both, however, subsets of and embedded in STEM. STEM in most of our schools, especially the S, T and E are dismal to simply riddled with misinformation, dysfunctional deconstruction of concepts, or teaching misdirection. Even present math curricula are frequently either <a class="" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/opinion/the-politics-of-math-education.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad">too low level</a> to support preparation for real STE higher education, or <a class="" href="http://wpo.st/n5-u0">misdirected</a> for students who will never become scientists or engineers.</div>
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Issues of school organization span both organization structure, organizational behavior, and the reality that many school leaderships are clueless about real management of a complex learning community. Part of that fault resides with BOE that aren't equipped to hire competent education leadership; part is that our schools of education have for decades refused to acknowledge and adopt managerial science that has been in place for decades in our schools of business and the better segments of our private sector, and applies equally to school management. Belatedly, recognition of this has spurred Indiana University’s Kelley business school to develop the "MBA for education administrators.”</div>
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Repeating a position stated in Monday's post, self-evidently our BOE and top level school leadership have to take care of tactical business — it goes with the territory in the leadership of any complex organization — but it is also achieved by a combination of leadership style, delegation, and understanding the model that defines how any organization in question achieves ongoing performance. It's simply what you reflexively do, if you are competent, on a day-to-day basis without expecting applause. </div>
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Strategic direction is another matter entirely if the organization doesn't have a short term expiration date on its charter. Like a flywheel, the organization can run for some time without inertial increments, but ultimately they are required — the basic engine — to achieve continuing performance improvement. That strategic understanding, and it's enforced critical thinking, are also the properties that equip an organization to cope with environmental trajectories in play (e.g., 'corporate reform’), and to cope with unforeseen inputs that can threaten any organizational setting.</div>
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When the nitty-gritty is allowed to dominate execution of a school's oversight, it's capacities to grow are suppressed. Local area schools currently reflect choices littered with such deficits; one glaring example is a mind-numbing plunge to spend large dollars on personal shopping lists of digital hardware for the classroom, but totally ignoring the mission, function, and fit of digital learning process as the prerequisite. Even more egregious is potentially spending millions building futures’ classrooms out of last century’s thinking.</div>
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The POV of what is truly strategically highest priority for a contemporary public school may well differ from the eight items referenced above. What does seem clear is that addressing proactively some similar roster of core issues is what will in future distinguish the public systems that develop effective true student learning and critical thought, versus those finding themselves increasingly behind national need, risking further attack of the ‘reform grinch,’ or finally being identified by a tax-stretched public as hypocritical and ineffective.</div>
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It is also the stuff of ethical commitment to serve a community’s children, rather than a small cabal of personal egos unable to distinguish between "<a class="" href="https://www.greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/">servant leadership</a>,” and being crowned, or without the humility and grit to do the self-education needed to oversee a system.</div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-57913073187537145752015-06-01T14:06:00.002-04:002015-06-04T08:56:45.588-04:00Do U.S. Colleges/Universities Need Standardized Testing?<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />This proposition is enough to cause legitimate students of higher education to pall or shudder, increase dental practices from grinding teeth, or evoke hate mail to its proponent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Promptly, that is not being advocated by this post; but what is being suggested is that one can in frustration get to that extreme position simply by trying to scope the status and futures for America’s higher education complex.</span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the last Edunationredux post the ending question was how the quality disparity among America's over five thousand post secondary institutions might impact the careers of their graduates. On reflection, that was in part the wrong question: Recognition prompted by a stirring speech; and realization that the prior point of view was likely disproportionately influenced by focusing on Ohio's extensive roster of many academically questionable satellite campuses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The speech that gave pause was V. P. Joe Biden's recent commencement address at Yale, before his son Beau died from cancer. His comment that impacted thinking was:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0c0c0c;">“My Yale Law School grad son graduated very well from Yale Law School. My other son out of loyalty to his deceased mother decided to go to Syracuse Law School from Penn. They’re a year and a day apart in their age. The one who graduated from Yale had doors open to him, the lowest salary offered back in the early ‘90s was $50,000 more than a federal judge made. My other son, it was a struggle — equally as bright, went on to be elected one of the youngest attorney generals in the history of the state of Delaware, the most popular public official in my state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0e0e0e;">Big headline after the 2012 election, “Biden Most Popular Man in Delaware — Beau</span></i><span style="color: #0e0e0e;">.</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0c0c0c;">”<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The conclusion, a large majority of our four-year institutions, and some unknown fraction of our two-year versions likely have less causal impact on their graduates’ successes than those graduates' personal aspirations, values, and determinants. And most of those institutions, by virtue of how they are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i> networked on most things academic, subject to common professional media, and employ each others' products, represent comparable intellectual values and practices. For these institutions the more relevant issue is their capacity to deliver that performance with future affordability and effectiveness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of that institutional population, assessing and remedying academic quality deficits may still be a pressing national need. That need may also be confounded with cost of delivery; the lower cost and/or greater convenience of these programs being hoisted as justification for lesser academic standards, or misconstruing training for education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is certainly complicated by the fundamental lack of comparable big data that clarify that segment's vision of their assignment, what they actually practice, and the specifics of who they employ to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pejorative, at times that appears deliberately employed to mislead or promote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today's post, going oblique from the original intent, addresses as a next issue the larger set of collegiate change needs. A subsequent post will survey the still limited collegiate attempts to increase productivity of delivery of post secondary learning, to attempts at learning and academic management innovation, and by definition to moderating its student/parental costs.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Smoke clearing, the picture isn’t pretty<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While the sound and fury has subsided a bit, over prior years’ public concerns with the inflation of collegiate tuition and related costs (ameliorated by an improved economy), the issues are not far below the surface.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">41% of students starting a four-year collegiate program still fail to graduate in six years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">60% of students entering a two-year postsecondary program still fail to finish in six years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">College student debt has now reached $1.3 trillion, on top of $150 billion in Federal aid to higher education.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even while Mr. Obama was proposing to rate colleges and universities, penalizing those dodging tuition control, many of our institutions declared tuition increases.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rating and ranking America’s colleges and universities has become a profit center for entities like <u>US News</u>, and lesser known firms that are pitching for a share of the potential college student’s search dollars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue is that there is little overlap among the various ratings, offering the college wannabe even more confusion in their search.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The level of understanding of what our colleges and universities are actually doing and achieving has been carefully managed by their administrations to in some cases actually obscure, or less pejorative, make it difficult for the public to know what its inputs, outputs, processes, and costs really are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One example, branch campuses of American colleges and universities are actually an unknown quantity, numbers ranging from roughly 500 to 650?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As most branch campuses may operate with a lower level of rigor then their base campuses, it matters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lastly, in an Ohio effort that beggars the imagination, its Department of Education proposes to turn primary and/or secondary teachers into college professors in a snake-bit program dubbed CC+, for college credit plus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the proposals for accelerating degree accomplishment is that qualified grade 9-12 students be able to secure some postsecondary credit in parallel with high school completion; that is a legitimate argument and goal, even an imperative if times to degrees are to be shortened. However, having observed first hand the pedestrian course organization and syllabi of one of Ohio’s local branch campuses, and of a local high school business course the incompetent counterfeit of a legitimate beginning university course, the potential results here are really quite scary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simultaneously, there have been real efforts to cut higher education costs, and some creative proposals for restructuring US higher education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the former category, Purdue University has just frozen its tuition for the fourth straight year under Mitch Daniels’ leadership.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indiana University’s Michael McRobbie and its Trustees have just announced that IU’s undergraduate in-state tuition will be frozen for the 2015-16 and 2016-17 academic years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There have been few replications of that wisdom across our over 3,000 four-year institutions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Building on delusions<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Understanding the difference between America’s public primary and secondary systems, versus our population of colleges and universities, is metaphorically like comparing a bicycle race to the Indy 500.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While there are standout US public school systems, the majority is still lodged in last century and dominated by educators that have not been equipped to deal with this century’s trajectories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the organizational platforms are distinct, public schools by virtue of common state oversight, similar; our colleges and universities, the public versions increasingly disconnected from their state origins, have demonstrated the capacity to declare their independence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not quite the wild west, but that independence has created a pattern of higher education corporatization in decision style and spending.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition to the above, and in contrast with the grudging fights to privatize public K-12, for-profit postsecondary work has dominated institutional growth in this century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While public postsecondary campuses have actually declined, from 1999-2000 to 2012-2013, four-year for-profit Title IV colleges have increased 259 percent; no, that’s not a typographical error.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An implication is that programs more narrowly focused on careers and even beginning job placement are superseding the traditional and defensible broader role of higher education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Three major effects of current postsecondary growth patterns connote negatives for the US:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One, pragmatically, the evolving dumbing-down of higher education by a proliferation of diluted (Ohio’s CC+) and/or commercialized programs that lack the visibility and oversight of last century; two, the substitution of adjunct/contingent faculty for prior tenure-track faculty, now accounting for over two-thirds of four-year programs, and three-quarters of faculty teaching in two-year programs; and three, the lack of comparable data for what is actually occurring in our roughly five thousand postsecondary institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arguments abound on item one; whether adjunct faculty, particularly ones with the educational background plus professional experience, may provide better classroom performance than faculty pursuing the multi-career demands in a research university?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some may.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the hard, depressing fact is we lack the basic information gathering about our postsecondary institutions that is not spun for their own strategies by the institutions, and that has been assembled with common canons for what is to be measured.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is evident even in the popular alleged college ratings (with divergent and even contradictory assessments) of our institutions being marketed for profit to prospective students. Without a reliable fact base for assessing US higher education, including core performance (completion rates that we label “dropout factories” in public K-12) and the qualities of its outputs, one gets a sense of the frustration that brought on public system “corporate reform.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />The diversity of postsecondary institutions, and the likely diversity of the processes footing what is superficially promulgated, make the data chore even more complex than describing our more homogeneous public schools, and in spite of their level of magnitude greater numbers. But the single-minded and naïve invocation of “standardized testing” to intimidate our schools is not the mechanism for changing higher education, even if it wasn’t refuted by the diversity of subject matter and pedagogy required of higher education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No first cause mysteries; many downstream<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">US postsecondary education need for assessment, and provisionally change, isn’t exactly news, kicking around the halls of academe for over a half century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the couple of decades period anchoring mid-20<sup>th</sup> century, it was about bringing knowledge and especially STEM up to date.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Toward the end of last century it became a race to build the collegiate infrastructure to accommodate soaring student enrollments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At last century’s end the most visible dysfunctions were reductions in state support of their postsecondary institutions, with the not unexpected consequence that they started to escalate tuition and related pricing for students as offset.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not as visible, our better colleges and universities gathered their wits, turned corporate, and started myriad programs to increase revenues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What that corporatization created, however, was a “business” strategy that ramped up non-teaching human resources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What it did not prompt were parallel programs to increase instructional productivity and contain costs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Much of this insight has been conveyed to our state legislatures, and testimony by two solid academics conveyed that in Ohio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One source, the perhaps longest systematic critic of what was happening to US higher education, was Richard Vedder, originally an Ohio State faculty member, now Director of the Center for College Productivity and Affordability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A second source from Ohio is Dr. John McNay, President of the Ohio Conference of the AAUP, who in March 2015 provided testimony before the Ohio Senate Finance Committee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Embracing Dr. Vedder’s critiques and more, his testimony included the following, a pretty good summary of issues:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">According to a recent <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><u>Cleveland Plain Dealer</u> </span>article, if tuition, fees, and room and board had kept pace with inflation, their cost today should be just under $9,000. Instead, the cost is just under $20,000. We agree that now is the time to take steps to reverse this unsustainable course</i>.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The numbers tell the story. Data from the Integrated Post-Secondary Data System (IPEDS) reveals that between FY 2002 and FY 2013, Ohio’s institutions spent, on average, 23.9% of their operating budgets on total instructional compensation (e.g. salaries <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">and </span>benefits). Over the 10-year period, total instructional compensation declined by 4.1%. In other words, our institutions spent less than a quarter of their budgets employing faculty, and the total amount spent employing faculty declined over that time frame</i>.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Administrative staff now outnumber full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty by a nearly two to one ratio. If you include all full-time faculty, the ratio is closer to one to one. To be clear, our institutions are employing as many administrative staffers as full-time faculty. Research has shown that the ideal faculty to administrator ratio is three to one. There is one administrator for every 14 students, representing an increase of 25% over the aforementioned 10-year period</i>.”</span></div>
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</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The issues with these characterizations are, there is a major missing factor, and one size does not fit all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Missing, the wide disparity in the level of education received from our best, versus that received from too many branch campuses and community colleges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That in turn can trace to the education and quality of faculty available to locally based institutions, and the quality of leadership/administration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even this is further complicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One, the missions of these diverse campuses are usually different, a broad core education (or deep specialization) in quality four-year programs, versus education bordering on training for locally sourced employment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter can be rigorous as well, but the missions are different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two patterns, unfortunately illustrated by examples in Ohio, local college administrators are placed in those positions primarily to fatten their resume for a main campus assignment, or to pump up retirement payments, versus appointment to pursue the best mission.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Compounding, this disparity can be beyond data reach simply because we have failed for decades to properly gather and assess the data that can position our colleges, universities, and sundry campuses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The US Department of education has failed that challenge even though it could be within its responsibilities, and most of our states lack the insights or education oversight to perform the task, or are politically motivated to duck the question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until there is a database that will permit multivariate characterization of higher education campuses and programs, and therefore a basis for assessment, the diversity is a shield for our institutions against being held accountable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lacking a sea change in how America’s colleges and universities are assessed, and some form of national consensus is formed, prediction is a no-brainer and the prospectus mixed:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The top ten percent or so of US postsecondary institutions – public as well as private – will continue to output graduates with a generally superior education, or deep expertise in discipline specialties, demanded for better jobs; the majority of public branch campuses will continue to struggle to match main campus performances, turning out either mediocre education or some mix of locally demanded training and patches of broader learning; and proliferating community colleges will continue to churn out mixed education/job-related training that may evolutionarily be replaced by emerging robotics and AI (artificial intelligence) based approaches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Emerging from retro political thinking, the myopic view that basic research should be put on the back-burner in favor of applied or job-related development (Scott Walker's folly) is potentially strategic disaster, as that miscue denies how America’s once technology leads were achieved. That cascades down to education and further debases the higher education faculty roles and tenure, influencing substitution with adjunct faculty. Political denial of Federal oversight of higher education, and variable but marginal state oversight virtually assure that “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what you sees is what you gets</i>” for a <o:p></o:p>foreseeable future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Almost makes one susceptible to the arguments put forth by two researchers (Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, <u>Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses</u>, 2010), of missing to spastic learning on our collegiate campuses, and the need for some comprehensive testing to enforce performance -- <i><b>but only for a fraction of a second, mindful of the mess that NCLB, Obama/Duncan, our testing companies, and most states, et al., have made of public K-12 standardized testing as a reform strategy!</b></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next postsecondary topic</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />In spite of the above unknowns, there have been some brave attempts to propose and execute reforms that could lower the cost of higher education, to innovate with learning processes, to deal with campus strategic and operations issues, and to reconcile the many flavors of postsecondary offerings out there. The next post will present some of these attempts to change college and university strategies and operations.</span></div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-27522475188676564852015-04-30T07:26:00.000-04:002015-04-30T12:33:56.316-04:00US Higher Education: Diverging and Descending? Round One<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Introduction</b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Recapping, this series on higher
education futures is premised on the complexity of educational institutions
that have had a couple of centuries to nationally evolve, and with world roots
that reach back almost a millennium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Accordingly, the intent is to tackle in any single post just a few of
the factors prompting current debate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Round one will seek to define parameters of US higher
education, a growth industry most of last century – albeit not without critique
witness the first presidential commission on higher education (Mr. Truman’s) –
but now undergoing challenge and potential change.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>First Principles</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Before there was a Harvard,
before the Boston Latin School, before US public schools, before Horace Mann, before
John Dewey, literally before most humans could broadly read and write, there
was a university, the University of Bologna (Italy), followed shortly afterward
by the University of Oxford (England).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Harvard was a latecomer in 1636.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The need for harboring and classifying knowledge, and for scholarship
and research mark the evolution of civilized societies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>US colleges and universities expanded
rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century powered by land grants, followed later by states’
establishment of teachers colleges to feed the need from growing public
education. Prophetically, even at birth, many postsecondary institutions projected a measure of independence from the governance that was established over public primary and secondary programs, a factor that has come home to roost in corralling escalating costs of a degree.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The GI Bill, post WWII, launched
unprecedented growth and democratization of higher education. Both Federal and
states’ funding drove expansion of both campuses and faculties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until approximately the 1950s much
curricula still mirrored the pre-war conception of a degree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But prompted by technology and research growth,
accelerated by Russia’s Sputnik, and the private sector’s demand for more
prescriptive disciplines, the decades of the 1960s and 1970s saw another
expansion of science-based disciplines and curricula, including the social
sciences and business.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
An exception to the call for
greater basic discipline development in curricula, a few positive departures still standouts, was the generic collegiate
school of education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
whatever reasons, education as a discipline walled itself off from the increasing science
content being demanded of surrounding schools and disciplines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even in this century, education dogma
has skirted much neural science, clinging to the deductive models of learning –
many plain wrong – used last century to shape classroom rubrics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part of the explanation may reside in
the questionable rigor or misdirection of its curricula, and the quality of its
recruits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time in 1959 when
this writer became a faculty member, schools of education generally were considered close to or at
the intellectual bottom of the university pecking order, vying with
health, physical education, and recreation (HPER) for that dubious honor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its students allegedly represented the
bottom one-third of the college admissions ranks, though this oft-cited
proposition lacks empirical testing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That election by collegiate education to ignore the rest of academia was directly
responsible, two decades later, for the launch of public school criticism and destructively what is now called “corporate reform” (actually inappropriately because no
contemporary business is sufficiently misguided to employ its present tactics).<br />
<br />
Related to the above, fault that must be attributed to the whole postsecondary academy, in the education and screening of those who would become public systems' peak administrators, little distinction was made between classroom preparation and fully equipping school leaders to perform with managerial competence. As much to blame for public K-12 education's malaise last century as any other factor, the failed preparation, and vetting, of public school superintendents and principals stand out. That failed comprehension of organizational behavior and proper leadership was compounded by broken oversight in the form of present BOE requirements to serve and frequent performance failures. This factor has still not been touched by alleged reform thinking.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
After calls for more science in
all areas, all was cool in academia for a time, until states, pressed by ever-growing
demands for services, started to reduce state higher education funding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America’s institutions – by definition usually managed by
smart people – responded by:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Increasing
prices, i.e., tuition, residency, and services; by seeking more research
funding; and by marketing the institutions to their successful alumni to create
endowment dollars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With that
increased self-funding came a measure of independence from state oversight,
launching the growth of higher education management that saw their institutions
as independent entities, with increased power, both from control of advanced
education, and by being the focal point of national sports obsessions.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
All aspects of higher education
expanded; more diverse offerings of education services, and the growth of
students to be served, expanded both the core human resources manning the
classrooms, but drove even higher rates of growth in non-teaching and
bureaucratic head counts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
cycle plus obsession with ever more campus construction created increased fixed costs, aggravated by “Baumol’s Disease” (failure
to increase academic factor productivity).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An explosion of digital capabilities challenging traditional
learning design, and over a trillion dollars of student debt driven by cost
escalation, ultimately created the current calls for higher education
reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly there is more to
the story, but for purposes of this exploration that is a thumbnail picture.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b>The Chess Pieces</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The major factors impacting
higher education futures span the differentiated segments of higher education
institutions, through mushrooming demand for postsecondary work, to innovations
in how that learning can be achieved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Current rhetoric feeding critique of higher education
ranges from the assertion that colleges will financially fail as costs and
tuition push degrees out of reach, to the view that innovations like MOOC will
undercut traditional institutions’ education delivery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While some for-profit institutions are
failing – the University of Phoenix losing double-digit thousands of students, and
Corinthian Colleges shutting down, current examples – for-profits generically
are struggling as the base of postsecondary institutions expands, and
governments crack down on online postsecondary fraud. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Reading higher education’s tea leaves
is not for the faint-hearted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
most influential determinants of those futures may be:<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The track of the leading 100 US
colleges/universities, that may persist simply because they are at the top of
the education food chain, where high level firms will continue to first search
for human resources, and pay premium salaries.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Limits of Federal control of
postsecondary education that is both Constitutionally and pragmatically
constrained, stuck with trying to influence those leaderships with Federal student
grants that have slowly become less significant compared to other funding.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">MOOC (Massive Online Open
Courses) blossomed as higher education’s salvation, then receded as limitations
were revealed, the most prominent being their present limits in providing regular
institutional credit hours. Like
all innovations, the skeptics pounced before all of the pieces of the game came
together. There are currently 12
or more non-profit sources of MOOC, many from our top 25-50 US institutions; and
14 or more commercial MOOC sources.
As these mature, expect their offerings to ultimately win credit toward
degrees. Perhaps of even greater
portent, the unique presentation quality of the best MOOC is being recognized
as a basis for blended learning, combining MOOC presentation that can feature
the best of any discipline with localized student classroom work and/or
constructivism. The potential is
for upgrading course quality, especially on community and satellite campuses, while cutting the cost of course delivery.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">How many US postsecondary
institutions can you name? There
are presently 5,300, a number that has been steadily growing as community
colleges and satellite campuses have multiplied. A growing issue is, there is no accepted national standard
for assessing the quality of most of these programs. Many will be fiercely defended by local populations that
view any institution of higher education, irrespective of quality, as a major
asset and source of pride. Alleged
accreditation is virtually useless as a basis for assessment of meaningfulness
of degrees issued; short of national testing of the products of degree
programs, or an unprecedented system of inspection of their faculties,
curricula, and syllabi, there appears no easy way to assign quality
metrics. The product, if the
present pattern of oversight prevails, may be an educational variant of
Gresham’s financial law (“bad money drives out good”) – “mediocre or weak
collegiate work drives out legitimate higher education?”</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Because of how our major state
universities have prevailed in the face of declining state support, developing
their own controlled sources of revenue, there is an ego factor in university
leadership. Perhaps not as extreme
as the “too big to fail” mantra of our financial institutions, before they did
fail, our majors nevertheless have simply ignored the various calls for tuition
reduction. Some institutions,
while those words were being offered in our national press and from the White
House, actually raised tuition.
Mr. Obama’s saber-rattling accompanying a threat of rating our
institutions had all the effect of a shower of that garden’s rose petals. An inside budgeting source in a major
public university has confided that planning models employed have factored
in six percent annual increases in tuition. The scary part of that university hubris should be apparent
to those in stratospheric positions – that is not sustainable. In economics the term is “bubble,” and bubbles
can burst.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Next, a devastatingly ignorant
game is being played in Ohio, threatening to accelerate a higher education
version of Gresham’s Law. That is the move (seriously lacking specification of process) to turn secondary public school teachers
into college professors, <i>sans</i> any of the real screening, preparation, and
scholarship that goes into creating the real resource. Running such course work through filters, cultures, and assets with
the norms for Ohio 9-12, and that can’t replicate the real academy is the formula for mediocrity to malfeasance. Ohio’s parents and students may possess greater intelligence than being exhibited by whatever
Ohio education brain trust hatched this tactic, and walk, no sprint the other
way. Simultaneously, some
intelligent innovations need to be sought generically -- perhaps combinations of resident work plus contemporary online work and/or a better mechanism for creating an adjunct faculty that could use the logistics of local school assets to provide credit pre-college matriculation -- to get a handle on the stretched
times being taken to achieve a degree, legitimately a material cause of the escalating
total cost of getting through college. How much alleged "collegiate" work should occur at a 9-12 level for cognitive reasons is itself an unanswered question. Ohio's underdeveloped "CC+" hatchling is not an answer, and the program dropped officiously, and <i>sans</i> intelligent pre-testing, on the state's parents suggests incompetence and/or unacceptable political sycophancy by both Ohio's state public school and higher education leaderships. Equally egregious, ignorant to indifferent local BOE are rubber-stamping the proposal without challenge.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Lastly, a quiet crisis has
been developing for years or even decades in scoping how higher education
delivery and maintenance of standards are to be enforced. Our major institutions – though not
necessarily the top schools – have methodically reduced the proportion of
courses being handled by tenure track faculty. Arguably this was a coward’s way of dealing with the tenure
issue; instead of tackling the reform of tenure that has been an elephant in
the room for a half century, our institutions simply cut faculty costs and
ducked the issue by now fielding from one-half to two-thirds of courses taught
by adjunct faculty, lacking health insurance, lacking contracts, lacking
any career path, and doing no research. To the
hard-nosed, this might appear a proper emulation of corporate values (prudent
outsourcing); to those who have spent a lifetime in education based on better
values, the question they might ask is – what does this do to teaching
motivation, and the quality levels of delivered instruction?</li>
</ul>
<div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">
<b>Questions on the Table</b></div>
<div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Self-evidently, trying to create
dialogue on these issues is not a matter of “one and done.” Hence, the decision to try to partition
the issues, and handle each material issue in a separate post.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The tasks as presently
envisioned:<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Just defining the postsecondary
universe; there are tens of attributes that might be used to classify our
institutions. Without that
specification, there is the risk of comparing, metaphorically, passion fruit and lemons. The US Department of Education’s National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has a massive postsecondary relational
database, but has executed literally no multivariate analysis that would help
to classify colleges and universities for analysis of performance. The NCES data combined with the <u>US
News</u>' ratings detail, and other private data sources, could be a platform for making sense
of sorting what is happening in 5,300 colleges and universities.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Try to project and assess the
direction of MOOC evolution, and how it could materially change the entire
postsecondary learning game, shifting emphasis from degrees to what its
students can perform with the learning acquired.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Speculate how college/university
student performance can be assessed and equilibrated across the various strata
of institutions, short of creating the same standardized testing malfeasance akin to that degrading public K-12 learning delivery. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Examine Ohio’s dubious to
shatteringly ignorant attempt to turn public school teachers – coming from the
same pool of human resources who have with only standout exceptions failed to create public 9-12 performance
that is college-ready – into pseudo-college professors. Failure can be a learning experience; simply replicating and extending the practice is one definition of insanity. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Where are our universities beyond
the top 25 or 50 heading, and what could overtake their penchant to simply
ignore the criticism being leveled and continue expansion, increasing pricing,
and executing learning business-as-usual?
Is this becoming a true bubble, and could it burst? </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">What are the pragmatic limits of
creation of so-called “community colleges” and satellite campuses – is there a
point not sustainable, where the quality of faculty available, absence of research, and the limitations of their management become so tenuous that the systems simply become a version
of high school II? Reality is that some of our best private 9-12 schools, and even premier public 9-12 programs, are
superior academically to community college and splinter satellite 2- and 4-year
postsecondary degree programs. </li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">The list may go on, but
next post will extend this series by asking perhaps the grittiest
question: </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">What happens, if the gap
in quality of learning between our top 100 institutions, versus the
next tier of postsecondary work, versus community college and satellite education levels, becomes so substantial it ruptures
the historical assumptions about what a degree means, and what it will return to
its holder in the marketplace?</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">
Hard questions, and miles to go.</span></span></div>
<br />
RPW, 4/29/2015<br />
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12pt;">
</span>Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-5355771590150022662015-04-26T09:51:00.000-04:002015-04-26T09:51:16.882-04:00Higher Education Reform in Limbo<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Preface</b></div>
<br />
This post on US higher education was written months ago, anticipating a series on possible college/university futures and possible change scenarios. It was put on hold for multiple reasons: One the discovery of much critique since 2000, not previously seen or reviewed; and two, realization of just how complex and diverse even 5,300 higher education entities can be. Compounding that awareness, seeing an exploding embryonic series of alternatives to traditional ivy-covered campus renditions of postsecondary work.<br />
<br />
The result was resolve to "eat the elephant" by slicing issues into manageable bites. The following deferred post asks more questions than offering proposed answers, which is perhaps how this series should launch.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Higher Education's Limbo</b></div>
<br />
There is angst in advocating reform of our colleges and universities while public K-12 is in throes of either intellectual devolution, or soaring to new levels of rote achievement, depending on perspective and ideology. But, one, there is an intimate connection between K-12 change and higher education’s future; and two, our post-secondary institutions are tracking vectors leading to a cliff.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>'Tis the Season</b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><br /></b></div>
</div>
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The love-hate relationship with our colleges and universities by its students, parents and critics waxes and wanes with the seasons. When graduation looms optimism and favorable attitudes blossom, buoyed by parental pride and the eloquent but generally meaningless rhetoric of ceremonial speakers; and perhaps the hope that the end of large cash outflows is imminent (discounting subsequent decades of loan repayment). Shift to the glories of autumn, where college application, matriculation and funding challenges give way to the football season. American competitiveness and escapism again elicit good feelings for our institutions, followed by March Madness. Behind that facade of twisted appreciation of the US academy, the real higher education beat goes on. Is optimism justified, or is virtually every version of cognitive distortion acting to postpone or divert the need for core change in collegiate direction?</div>
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Comparing and contrasting reform of public K-12 versus post-secondary, major differences are immediately evident. With the exception of the bursts of publications excoriating the teachers’ unions, and defending (or damning) test-based alleged reform, there is little material addressing the long standing issues with the public K-12 bureaucracy that produced the present reform movement. In contrast, there has been an outpouring of critique of our collegiate institutions, reaching as far back as the first Presidential Commission (Mr. Truman’s), and now ubiquitous in both higher education journals and seemingly endless blogs. The difference, the latter critique has deflected few of the alleged excesses overtaking US higher education.</div>
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<b>Change Needed?</b></div>
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Current critique of the academy increasingly prompts headlines such as <i>“radical reform of higher education is inevitable,”</i> or <i>“higher education is in crisis;”</i> the latter spirit reflected even in survey of higher education administrators, with high percents of agreement. Nevertheless, our collegiate presidents are going where few academic leaders have previously ventured. That is: The aggressive pursuit of not just dollars, but of major campus diversification veering away from the classroom; decision styles that conflate academic with corporate management; more bricks and mortar; higher administrator salaries; slack learning accountability; expansion of non-teaching human resources; and insensitivity to the calls for major tuition reduction, faculty productivity analyses and improvement, even deflection of the question whether four years of college are producing minimal learning as inferred from research by Arum and Roksa.</div>
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A recent ACT study demonstrated a major disconnect between K-12 educator, versus collegiate educator assessments of student readiness for college: Of K-12 resources, 89 percent asserted their students were “well prepared” or “very well prepared” for college level work; for those responding in our colleges, the number was 26 percent. One implication is that higher education has failed to perceive the K-12 linkage that impacts their own success, another that our public K-12 systems are wading in cognitive bias.</div>
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The question also bores down on not just the academic culture, but into its major disciplines. Are our collegiate schools of education responsible and accountable for the shrinkage of public K-12 learning performance that precipitated present reform? Are our B-schools responsible and accountable for the values and ethics that marinate our corporate behaviors, and for the behaviors of our financial institutions? Have the liberal arts simply dug a hole and crawled in to avoid critique and deny change? Has a more than century-old organizational model of our academic disciplines ceased to deal with advocacy and assessment of actual learning, and impeded or blocked adoption of technologies that integrated into classroom models can improve that performance?</div>
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Have collegiate classrooms become “endowed,” coupled to reduction of accountability of faculty via traditional tenure? Has the traditional depiction of collegiate learning driven by lecture and sometimes professor-student interaction become so entrenched that productivity change is frozen? An organizational issue, has a faculty as a source of veto power on administrative change simply hardened into the inevitable roadblock?</div>
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Recent developments in online learning suggest change may be forced onto the academy by learning methods bypassing traditional channels and orthodoxy – MOOC, decline in dependence of job sourcing of graduates based on traditional credentials, and continued evolution of private and community post-secondary programs. The generally conservative leaderships of our collegiate enterprises, even while adopting some of the growth strategies of the private sector, did not typically get to those positions via managerial apprenticeship and success; they frequently fail in strategic positioning and leadership.</div>
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Are any of the present trends on traditional campuses sustainable? Can a trillion dollars of collegiate student debt just be written off? Has Federal funding of higher education without controls actually precipitated the academy’s ills by enabling tuition inflation? Will token tuition decreases stop critique? Will collegiate leaderships emulate the doctrine of “too big to fail,” or perhaps, “too smart to fail,” or experience some of the other perceptual failures that lead managements to defer needed change until capacity to intercept markets is too little too late?</div>
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A trenchant, albeit futuristic scenario is depicted in EPIC 2020 from a TED presentation titled “2012 The Tipping Point.” Our colleges and universities may be impotent to intercept change that is emerging entrepreneurially from outside the academy, excepting only the handful of “A+” institutions that can likely survive any generalized post-secondary denouement. Deniers may write it off as fantasy: Reality is that Taleb’s “Black Swans” happen; US financial giants can collapse; GM did declare bankruptcy; Khan Academy endures; Coursera, Udacity, and edX have launched; and public K-12 education allegedly had such a secure monopoly that privatization couldn’t happen? There seem some pretty robust arguments that US higher education must adapt.</div>
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<b>The Shape of Reform?</b></div>
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The elements of reform are not a surprise. The National Association of Scholars in a post offering “One Hundred Great Ideas for Higher Education” conveniently addressed them. They run the gamut:</div>
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<li>Comprehensively privatize non-teaching functions.</li>
<li>Creatively invest in productivity change.</li>
<li>Scale missions back to education and essential research.</li>
<li>Change the criteria for promotion and tenure from low value research and publication to classroom performance.</li>
<li>Make faculty and classrooms accountable.</li>
<li>Reform tenure.</li>
<li>De-emphasize the most corrupted collegiate sports.</li>
<li>Focus on learning instead of buildings.</li>
<li>Recruit and hire more effective senior management.</li>
<li>Reduce or eliminate non-instructional headcounts.</li>
<li>Set higher standards for grading; reward rigor.</li>
<li>Teach graduate students teaching how to teach.</li>
<li>Teach faculty how to teach.</li>
<li>Adopt value-based budgeting, versus responsibility center management that retains the <i>status quo</i> and invites organizational gaming.</li>
<li>Move more quickly to research, qualify and implement digital technologies that can augment the classroom.</li>
<li>Update curricula where many (especially professional) schools’ concepts of relevant knowledge are still rooted in the last century.</li>
<li>A veritable explosion of tactical changes related to how teaching is planned, executed and assessed.</li>
<li>Find a model of communication, involvement and compatible values to bridge the chasm between K-12 and the pedagogy of higher education.</li>
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They also challenge accomplishment because of the reluctance of higher education leaderships to acknowledge the need for change, or failure to see change in realistic terms. An example was the assessment of a well-known educator, Chester Finn, President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Dr. Finn’s prescription: <i>“Less booze. Less sex. More Studying. Problem eased if not solved.”</i> With respect, demonstrating the distinction between normative and pragmatic solutions, the probability of that solution set getting traction is roughly equivalent to Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner exchanging valentines, embracing each other, and linking arms to anchor the politically-centric dream team.</div>
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<b>The Process of Reform</b></div>
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The reality of US higher education reform may mirror in jeopardy and sweep the Voyage of Ulysses. Higher education’s institutions, though fractionally less than five percent of public K-12’s, are a level of magnitude more diverse and complex. Those public have evolved in order to survive drastic reductions in state funding, but that autonomy begets hubris. Additionally, growth linked to external and sports funding may now seem irreversible. Accountability is even more of a challenge because oversight is frequently with politically-sourced trustees, and because their chancy tenure drives more tactical than strategic problem solving. Methods of faculty creation, career evolution and performance assessment may be too entrenched, and research and publication too linked to external organizations to be easily transformed.</div>
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There are also contradictory effects and land mines in any reform agenda. What-if, some of the same forces and motivations that have produced test-based public K-12 reform take root? For example, a frequently cited element of reform, elimination of tenure, may be counterproductive, because tenure may be the last line of defense against the imposition of test-based attempted reform of collegiate classrooms. Another, the speculation that the reform mode in public K-12, with its rote indulgence, will when it expresses in future college readiness, vastly increase the chasm between secondary education and collegiate learning values. </div>
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The above just skim the challenge of higher education change. It is a no-brainer to articulate the non-prioritized “should be” that link to and could modify higher education, but charting the critical paths that reform must take to either achieve anything, or avoid tipping a still working system into turmoil is clearly “not for dummies.” The irony of this reform venue is that it will take layers of creativity, wisdom, servant leadership and some extraordinary courage to either change the existing infrastructure, or fashion some non-destructive institutional bypass solutions for needed post-secondary change.</div>
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Lastly, all of US education is standing on pillar of questionable thinking, and false dichotomy. K-12 education and higher education are two tectonic plates, sliding past each other with neither recognizing the interdependence. Equally debilitating, even our core concepts of education look like Swiss cheese. Reflecting the item that usually heads the list of cognitive distortions, “all-or-nothing-thinking,” where is it written that one can’t be an educated welder or plumber or technician or service worker? Does the name Eric Hoffer (longshoreman/philosopher) ring a bell? American educational leadership at every level needs to rethink the assertion that the ultimate goal is (present) college for all, versus training <i>qua</i> education that supports sustainable careers and civic intelligence. On the table as well, what an “education” really means, and whether our present stratified systems need to be subjected to hard analysis, and creatively repurposed for a future all of those strata seem to have myopically ignored.</div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-56446564553240376492015-04-20T15:59:00.000-04:002015-04-23T08:37:10.161-04:00A K-12 School Reform Survival Guide<div class="" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Please consider this a school “reform" survival guide for local parents and students. Originally intended as a LTE, the word count disabled the channel. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With no avenue for mainstream circulation, these retrospective thoughts on Ohio public school fact versus fiction are being offered via some local social media. Enjoy.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Reform Debate Turns Nasty</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As so-called “corporate reform” and NCLB have proven ineffective in raising US public schools' overall performance, and encountered wide parental resistance, the rhetoric has become heated. It is not just two opposed armies, but a pastiche of different players, motivated by different ideologies or hot buttons. What is common is that misrepresentation of reality has occurred on all sides.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here are some of the issues that impact your children, and prone to questionable claims: That present standardized testing is central to securing needed learning; that our best and brightest education scholars created the tests; that the CCSSI (or misrepresented as “the” Common Core) is either a government plot to undermine our schools, or that it was also created by our best and brightest; that you will be penalized for having your children opt-out of the testing including PARCC; that anyone plugging “corporate reform” actually thought through what they imposed; that public school administration is good enough without its own reform; and that in Ohio CC+ courses taught by high school teachers will really be higher education where it is real.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Standardized Testing and CCSSI Under Fire</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our testing fiascoes are now so documented they run to books (probably the best starter resource overall is “The Answer Sheet” column of <u class="">The Washington Post</u>); that testing has become the antithesis of K-12 learning, both in substance, and in consuming time for genuine teaching and understanding. But what is not always realized is that all of the testing is coming from a handful of testing companies, reaping billions of dollars of revenue, lobbying every state legislature and arguably state department of education. Strategically, the very worst of the testing is that a small number of corporations, not educators, and anonymously, are determining what our nation calls K-12 knowledge; that defies sanity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The so-called Common Core is one anonymous group’s, of not terribly accomplished resources, perspective of what K-12 knowledge should be. It was ramrodded by David Coleman, who manages a testing company, to drive more testing. Subsequent legitimate science core material was destroyed by CCSSI after it was originally created by the AAAS and postsecondary scientists. Two views prevail here: One, the core is a liberal plot — it isn’t though Mr. Obama and Mr. Duncan endorse it to push their own agenda — and there is good argument that knowledge doesn’t change across localities, and that there should be some nationally recognized agreement on what knowledge is critical and universal (physics is still physics even in Texas); the second, undiscriminating endorsement by people who believe there should be a K-12 core and naively assume CCSSI’s offering is it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The State of New York is leading the opt-out movement at the moment (recognize that our coasts have traditionally been the initiating sources of opinion leadership in many venues), and that number will approach 200K students this testing cycle. There is no overall national count of parents opting-out of their children's testing, but it is growing in a statistical pattern associated with what is termed epidemiology. That pattern is a slow takeoff, followed by exponential growth, until it tapers and approaches some limit. Parents are being subjected in Ohio to intimidation and lies about penalties, including from demagogic or less than courageous school administration, to block or slow opt-out. Pragmatically, you have every right to opt-out, and the real world is there have been no penalties for states, nor is there even formulated policy supporting that. Because legislation frequently lags public need, it may take massive opting-out to wake up our legislators or deflect their attention from lobbyists in tow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Documented, but virtually ignored in the imposition of test-based reform, none of the postulates or models for NCLB’s application was tested or piloted before being carpet-bombed on America's public schools. The corporate testing behemoth, led by Pearson Education, simply became entrenched before a public even knew it existed. The result has been dirty tricks for a dozen years, including illegal lobbying and tests designed to produce failure, and now hints that companies are linking test questions and contents of their text sales to schools to coerce systems to buy their teaching materials. When what is being taught your children is determined by a handful of testing companies, not by those who actually represent legitimate education, the US is in trouble.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Totally ignored until very recently, that America’s collegiate schools of education became stuck in the last century, meaning that many of our 3.3+MM teachers, and several hundred thousand principals and superintendents, have not been adequately educated and trained for the learning modes needed this century. If that evokes the usual, 'but ours are just fine,' consider one major reality: “Corporate reform,” that launched in 1980, led by the CEOs of America’s 100 largest corporations, didn’t happen because someone uttered a few public school negatives — it was launched with full awareness of what was involved because American industry distrusted our entire public system of schools. Pure and simple, they were perceived as failing! Had private sector America remained in control of reform, maybe it would have turned out differently? But that start was followed by an outpouring of political ideology, the right sensing this was the moment to try to get rid of or shrink hated (assumed socialistic) public schools; hence, NCLB, charters, vouchers.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last Century School Oversight</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Full circle, no one thought to also question whether America’s BOE — unchanged for almost a century in states' requirements to serve — were being upgraded in any fashion to deal with the challenges; that means recruiting the best to serve, requiring competition where elected, requiring training before they can be seated, and demanding public transparency of BOE operations. The result, the regular ineptitude in hiring school leadership, that once hired became impossible to root out unless they committed a felony. This area, more the rule than exception, is populated with school leadership that is distorted or flawed, and failing in contemporary service. The facts are: That the current school organizational model is medieval; that virtually no superintendent is being properly trained to manage a complex organization; that once installed, where a BOE consists of the timorous or phlegmatic, there is virtually no superintendent oversight; nor in far too many cases proper educational and psychological assessment of those hired that might reveal values not supporting the real education mission, or spot those seeking power over service and integrity.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ohio's CC+ Initiative; Boon or Bust?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moving on, Ohio’s CC+, with planning gaps, and little transparency of the reasoning and motivations footing the program, may function for a time by forcing credible Ohio higher education institutions to accept potentially mediocre postsecondary work. But faculties in major colleges and universities still possess a degree of autonomy that means they need not value or make allowances for second- or third-rate postsecondary course work, resulting in a rough road for parents/students who opt to short cut better pre-higher education preparation. Based on witnessing the butchery in NBS of a course that might have been a collegiate prototype for CC+, the part of Ohio’s plan enlisting public school teachers is poorly thought out, arguably by a bureaucracy that doesn’t fully comprehend collegiate education. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is no argument that in general US higher education, especially in the largest, multi-function/market institutions, has taken on a life of its own. As our largest state institutions had their state support reduced over decades, forcing self-funding via tuition, marketing of other educational services, and aggressive (and successful) pursuit of endowment dollars, they also bought themselves a degree of independence of state oversight and control. In a sense they have become their own nation-states, capable of resisting even the current broad calls for reduction of the costs of, and speeding up a collegiate education. Largely unrecognized, because these institutions have been so successful in creating the personnel powering our private sector, and in attracting loyalty illustrated by endowments, they have put the private sector on their side blunting governmental efforts to control education costs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Concluding CC+, if institutions like WSLC and Rhodes State are managed to create high quality entry baccalaureate teaching, and enrollees are screened for readiness, that part of the plan may serve Ohio’s parents and students. An issue is that there is little evidence that the leaderships of these campuses are being installed based on that criterion for selection or management of course work. Aside from quality, the greatest risk to a high school student loading up on CC+ course work before moving on, is whether the offerings these local campuses can support will mesh with the diversity of curricula already installed in any major institution. The formula for disaster is a WSLC, seeking local approval, becoming too ambitious in building curricula and offering options that they lack the faculty to support. At the moment, there appears little recognition of the role that could be played by MOOC edX and Coursera in upgrading the quality, for example, of classroom work from a WSLC.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ohio Secondary's a Loser; Fake Higher?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps the most telling criticism of, not just Ohio’s CC+, but other similar efforts across the US, is: Why are we risking dumbing-down higher education by splinter programs on the periphery of 9-12, when we have broadly failed to upgrade basic 9-12 public school curricula and teaching capacities to support college-readiness? One gets the impression of a point of view that says; 'well, we flunked 9-12, so let’s correct that by trying to offer even higher level work employing different pedagogy, but with basically the same assets and culture?' </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In some quarters where the real world intervenes, the reaction might be, you have one oar in the water!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Where the Buck Stops</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If there is a benediction to this, it is do your own homework before buying off on any of Ohio’s current education non-thinking. As in the standardized testing and PARCC cases, CC+ is optional as well. A prudent parent would do some homework on cost-benefit before plunging into this Ohio flyer with a questionable rudder. Also reflect that the “opportunity cost” of a CC+ track for their child probably swamps the actual dollar costs, and will hang around the student's neck far longer than it takes to pay the out-of-pocket bill.</span></div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-37273157778756516202015-03-23T07:05:00.000-04:002015-03-23T07:05:17.692-04:00Proposal to St. Marys SMCSD BOE<div class="" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>MEMO</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">DATE: 11 March 2015 </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">TO: SMCSD BOE</span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">SUBJ: Proposal/Contribution</span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As a byproduct of two recent experiences and some history — working on some generic public school issues now challenging public education, and revisiting recently contemporary material on measuring a public school’s capacity for excellence — I have a request and offer. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That is, to present this memo, the appended proposal, and appended supporting material to your BOE. The full proposal is documented with the attached pdf files including one for this memo of transmission. Repetitive of that information, but for perspective, what is offered is free consulting — design, execution, analysis, and interpretation, along with personal donation of the dollar costs of any materials or royalties required to execute the proposal to assess SMCSD performance. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The offer and project are to assess a public system’s capacities for K-12 excellence, including delivery of technology to teachers and students, various teacher and administrator self-assessments, and teachers’ assessments of both the system and its administration and oversight. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The reason for offering this is timely. It is clear and documented that the standardized testing approach resulting from NCLB has both failed, and is creating exponentially growing disenchantment among both its target students and teachers, and parents. When the cracks in the bureaucratic dogmatism supporting these tactics become a chasm, political pushback may quickly diminish that testing. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The issue is, that in the absence of some new initiatives to maintain assessment of systems, there will be an unacceptable gap. What should fill that void is some variant of what I am proposing, measurement of system attributes with methods already out there, pretty much pretested, and with results from other schools that offer benchmarks.</span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I will likely also make this same offer to New Bremen’s BOE, but in spite of the greater number of college degrees represented on that board, there may be a smaller chance of recognition that a BOE serves an area’s children first, and only then some of the other motivations and agendas that can dominate a BOE. One would have to be intellectually impaired to argue that SMCSD needs no pulls on its bootstraps to crank up its excellence and standing in Ohio. But it is hardly alone, even where false quality flags have been hoisted to try to shield a system’s learning practices from inspection. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The place you start with those bootstraps, whether in a business or a school, is with a solid baseline understanding of where you are; using proper social science measurements versus hunch, opinion, squat-and-squint, or too frequently with denial or bias that represents self-serving judgment. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is another dimension to this process not expressed, that is, the self-assessment of a BOE and the efficacy of its operations. A BOE poses a problem. In professional organizational assessment I have been involved in, as both subject and direction, this appears best accomplished out of the business/institutional environment, staged to allow non-competitive and non-confrontational conversation, and takes time and confidentiality. Obviously this poses a problem for a public body, which is why it doesn’t get accomplished with the same dexterity as in business, and why the public sector can trip over their own feet. Likely the only way to do this with a BOE would be one-on-one sessions that are genuine in-depth interviews. Would take some guts on the part of a board, and some trust that what is subsequently pieced together represents a true picture. It’s also very hard work for both subject and the interviewer, and demands introspection, humility, and honesty. Not recommending this but offer the observations for reflection. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I would appreciate a timely up or down position on the present offer. If down, no fault; that puts the issue squarely on the adopted and accepted values of your BOE. I make no value appraisals of that, and the resolution is between the board member and her/his conscience and respect for the oath taken. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Lastly, another reason for this offer goes back a ways. What few people know is that 60 years ago the St. Marys’ retail market was the subject of a research effort and my masters thesis at Miami University, made financially possible because a dozen accomplished high school students from SMCS, with a school sign off, expedited with help from <u>The Evening Leader</u>’s editor, became my market research and survey crew, doing a professional job of completing several hundred personal interviews with area households. Even at the time and with the naiveté of optimism in all things, this was over the top and appreciated…(-: </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As you know, my services since being in universities for a quarter century have been in corporate places where you decide, and act, and are accountable. I know many school systems, and frequently with justification, are snarled in debate because of having diverse stakeholders. However, as this is a free offer, I count my committed time and assets as subject to hard assessment, hence an answer with minimum delay. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you need more than what is appended, obviously don’t hesitate to call. </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Best regards, </span></div>
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<span class="" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> Ron Willett</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> New Bremen</span></div>
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<b>Appendix:</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Project for Measurement of Public System Excellence</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dr. Ronald Willett, March 2015. All rights reserved. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Background </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The standardized testing of NCLB has now been shown to have been ineffective, in addition to resulting in misdirection of many classroom and student learning approaches, misuse of time, and distorted learning priorities. The opt out parental choices, and professional educator critiques of the testing are accelerating, with the likely result that there will be political pressure to reduce the testing. ESEA may even be gutted if even for the wrong reasons. An issue is, that if that action occurs, there will likely be a gap in adopting alternative assessments of public school performance. There are </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">however already out there measures of school performance/properties that can be employed to get a better reading of a system's potential for excellence than present testing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Proposal </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><u>To, applied to SMCS, and as a free consulting offer, assemble, provide, administer, and analyze some of the existing social science measurement of factors shaping a school's potential for excellence. </u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><u>The factors include: Selective present school metrics; selective student performance metrics — specifically excluding standardized test results; appraisal of both teaching and administrative human resource backgrounds and subsequent development; what is termed school climate or culture, based on survey instruments; what are termed teacher and administrator beliefs, attitudes, and practices using existing survey tools; and survey of teacher and administrative assessment of technology assets and their application, and any other preferred support assets specific to the system. </u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Timing </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Target for survey measurement is the end of the present term, but before human resources have scattered for the summer, </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">with results available tentatively, and with some lead time, to the </span>BOE<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> prior to the Fall term. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Instruments </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Most of the proposed paper and pencil survey tools are in existence, pre-tested, and many have been used enough times to extract some norms. Whether a system is compared with others is largely irrelevant because the results can be used to infer where there are weaknesses to be addressed, or where performance is par or above, or where there may be potentials for innovation in learning objectives or rubrics. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some of the instruments may require purchase or royalty payments, and for this single exercise the offer is for the consultant to personally fund those. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All refinements of, development of, or licensing of measurement instruments from this project would become the exclusive property of the consultant. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All data subsequently created, and their interpretations would become the sole property of the SMCSD BOE. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Preparation</b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Consistent with best managerial practice, the BOE would be briefed on all aspects of the assessment, provided the instruments to be employed, and the likely analyses of results to be used, all in advance of execution. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">All measurements of individual responses would need to be anonymous, used only when aggregated. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The consultant would complete a confidentiality agreement with the BOE, assuring that no results or their interpretations c</span>ould<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> be used in publication or made public without </span>BOE<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> consent. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The BOE is responsible for determining whether subsequent findings are to be shared with the system's personnel, or with the community; although, as a matter of principle, transparency is advised and favors getting the results out to the stakeholders, including the public, to produce changes in behavior. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One caveat: Any attempt by the BOE, or any system employee, to manipulate the measurements or results, or to censor data or findings, or to suppress legitimate findings, will result in the immediate cancellation of participation by consultant, and of responsibility for any ongoing work by the consultant, with consultant held harmless for any completed or remaining part of the mission. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Resource Commitment </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Open as yet; however, a rough estimate is that the total subject survey stages of the process would consume maximally a day of time and focus. Depending on the system's internal data systems, and the quality of metrics already employed to assess both students and teachers, that phase of the project might require administrative coaching and some investment in processing. TBD. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Project Extensions</b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In some full scale efforts, both students and parents have been included. This engages a different level of research, </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">including permissions, more preparation, more expenditure, and additional issues of confidentiality and feedback. </span>There is<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> no question that level of input can inform a system on strategic as well as tactical needs, but it is at much higher </span>cost for<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> both assets needed and human resource hours inputted. A suggestion is, that may be a project for another day, </span>and after<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> the above core measures can be viewed and digested. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Resources</b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">No firm number on dollars needed subject to assessing the instruments, but a rough guess is that needed tools will require up to $5K investment from the consultant. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">System compliance is required with all necessary requests for school data that is not covered by statutory administrator, </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">teacher, or student confidentiality requirements. Best efforts to employ needed system data are a condition of both </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">initiating and continuing the project. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Timetable</b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is a good deal of staff work to prepare for the window described. So prompt decision is needed on whether the project is seen with merit by this BOE. Caveats are that the final measures and instruments are likely not available for complete review without the start-up work, and that considerable effort won't be invested without BOE commitment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However, again, the process will be open and fully accessible to the BOE. Once dollar expenditures are started by the consultant the project will be considered ongoing and barring the demise of the consultant (-:) will be considered non cancellable. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Depending on the expressions of good faith from your </span>BOE<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, open whether some incurred cost </span>recovery needs<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to be built in if system-induced lack of cooperation should sidetrack the project. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Outcomes and Risk </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With the provisions for non-disclosure except with BOE concurrence, there isn't a high degree of risk in the effort. Risks </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">that are latent are: Objections from the teachers' union, that should be addressed by full and honest disclosure and </span>the request<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> for that cooperation; concerns from the teachers who see this as intrusive or a threat, managed by being up front,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">with full briefing on the goals, process, and handling of all findings including anonymity; and the technical issue of whether written permissions are necessary from survey recipients to eliminate any liability for either the BOE or the consultant. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This process goes well beyond the internal assessments used by most small systems, but it also has the potential of giving a school's oversight and administration the awareness to get it right a higher percent of the time in crafting human resource, development, and asset acquisition and deployment strategies. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One example is something that appears to some vague or theoretical, but is not. That is what are termed teacher and </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">administrative "beliefs." Normally you discover these only by accident or when organizational behavior bad stuff </span>hits the<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> fan, as the saying goes. But research has demonstrated that those beliefs are usually not obvious, are complex, </span>are difficult<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to adjust, but directly influence both behavior in the classroom as well as the management of system resources. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Clearly better understanding beliefs and attitudes about what your school and learning are all about gives you a leg up </span>in carrying<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> out your responsibilities. This is one case where a pound of good measurement is really worth a ton of <i>ex post</i> </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">remediation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Initiating </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because considerable digging and assessment are required to carry this off, the suggestion is that a decision about going ahead needs to happen by end of March. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Contingency planning: If roadblocks develop through no fault of the system, or the work needed to pull this off threatens the target window at the end of the term, a low loss alternative would be to reschedule the behavioral measurements for a period just prior to start of the Fall term. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rather than running into the legalities of some Ohio BOE meeting requirements, if approved by the BOE, the recommendation is a small working group, less than a BOE majority, be named to coordinate internal needs, be advocates and troubleshoot cooperation issues, and receive the interim briefings on progress on the project. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">RPW, 3/11/2015 </span><br />
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-77376279537728885142015-02-25T08:17:00.000-05:002015-03-04T08:57:22.713-05:00How the Testing Grinch Hijacked Learning<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<b class="">Part A</b></div>
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Every US public school student, and their parents, by now have experienced the joys of NCLB’s standardized testing. Think of it as how the testing grinch hijacked learning.</div>
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An answer is a twisted path, but the only way to enlightenment. So let’s assume you overhear the séance of a concerned parent with the departed spirits of two architects of our public schools, Horace Mann and John Dewey…</div>
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<b class="">Parent:</b> Horace and John, please, help me! Why is some massive “corporate reform” movement beating up our children and teachers in public schools you created?</div>
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<b class="">HM & JD:</b> Good morning; while we try to avoid your current society, especially your Congress, we’ll make an exception. Recognize that I, John the humanist, and fellow spirit Horace, more authoritarian, come philosophically from different places – like your present Congress – but we still communicate with harmony.</div>
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To your question, why? Four reasons: (1) Because what we call the “nanny state” now trusts neither you, nor your teachers to prepare your children for life and work; (2) because your “advanced” society apparently believes all children are manufactured products needing to hew to a common knowledge mold; (3) because some segment of your society believes learning can be expressed as a “metric” (not fully understood, though one of us invented the "Dewey Decimal System” for libraries); and (4) because something called the Business Roundtable, and a person labeled a CEO from an IBM, once decided your schools weren’t adequately preparing their future employees.</div>
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<b class="">Parent:</b> Whoa, I’m deeply offended. You are saying we are failed parents? Are you saying our public schools – that both of you helped configure – are failing? Are you saying our leaders don’t trust us?</div>
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<b class="">HM & JD:</b> Unfortunately, precisely. What was the last non-fiction book on learning you read, or last adult education class you attended? When was the last time you addressed your BOE with questions about your school’s curriculum, teacher quality or leadership; or challenged your BOE’s lack of transparency? In fact, when was the last time you demanded BOE candidates answer some real education questions before their election.</div>
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<b class="">Parent:</b> Really hurtful, but reform is working, right, based on standardized testing? Our kids will be able to cope with a different future?</div>
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<b class="">HM & JD: </b> You wish to move to the heart of that matter? Admirable. A new arrival up here, Leonard Nimoy, aka Mr. Spock, heard us and had a logical suggestion: Type into something called your browser and an Internet, the following inquiry:</div>
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<b class=""><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/01/the-important-things-standardized-tests-dont-measure/">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/01/the-important-things-standardized-tests-dont-measure/ </a></b></div>
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The reference is a brief but devastating critique of that testing by an extraordinary and experienced educator, originally from and taught in your Ohio, Florida’s Dr. Marion Brady.</div>
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The issue is that no amount of penalty ignorantly heaped upon your public schools, even by your White House and states, will constructively improve their capacity to deliver needed learning. Changing the schools we envisioned must happen from the inside out, with their most important asset — your teachers — playing a crucial role. We are baffled: Your 21st century, sophisticated concept of corporations and management seems based on understanding of organizational behavior and human interaction we never fully conceived, but your alleged reformers are acting out one hundred year-old beliefs and concepts?</div>
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<b class="">Parent:</b> Oops, help, you’re fading! Our medium is losing the contact.</div>
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<b class="">HM & JD: </b> Have no fear, good lady, well try again later; we’re not going anywhere…</div>
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<b class="">Part B</b></div>
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A dreary day in Ohio, fitting for a séance. A partially satisfied parent, still seeking answers, is back knocking on the portal to the spirits of architects of US public schools, Horace Mann and John Dewey.</div>
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<b class="">Parent: </b> Hello, please come back, President Mann and Dr. Dewey!</div>
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<b class="">HM & JD:</b> Good afternoon good lady. We do wish to continue our conversation. When we faded, we were about to probe your testing inquiry.</div>
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Testing is not just what your contemporary tongue calls “testing.” Common use has made the term generic. Your standardized testing is: One type of testing; assumes one correct answer; emphasizes memorization of alleged facts or small packets of knowledge; puts more emphasis on tricks in answering than mastery; provides little diagnostic value; based on neural research we see emerging will quickly be forgotten; won’t solve complex problems; and your society has been what you call “scammed,” with a small cabal of profiteering testing companies deciding for a nation what constitutes knowledge. To us, preposterous. There are many types of assessment, all crucial, and your knowledge is repetitively doubling; you will never succeed with simplistic learning.</div>
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Alas, the alleged reform is also failing. Indeed, your present society’s unbalanced and discriminatory social, economic and cultural properties now rival the tableaus we mercifully departed. These properties have more to do with your test results than your classrooms.</div>
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<b class="">Parent:</b> Why don’t I know all of this, and what can I do about it?</div>
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<b class="">HM & JD:</b> This is complicated. Your “reform” has been going on for 35 years. But your – our – public schools have ignored modernization responsibilities, and retreated into comfortable inbred enclaves avoiding change, complicated by failure of your schools of education to properly educate both your teachers and schoolmasters. Instead of creative public school improvement we see schools fearful of government and transparency, with underdeveloped educators, and lacking the courage to change.</div>
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What can you do? That is a tough question – you’re learning. The representation of reformers is, that without standardized testing, you wouldn’t know what your children are achieving. We contest this. Many decades ago parents knew what their children were achieving because teachers developed and gave tests, they heard recitation, they gave out report cards, and parents talked to both their children and their teachers. Right now your Congress is even conflicted on renewing what you call ESEA/NCLB, leaving in doubt whether they will double-down on, or scale back testing?</div>
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<b class="">Parent:</b> (Censored), so now what?</div>
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<b class="">HM & JD: </b> We both believe that local control of education is still the best path for learning. Looking down, we see across the nation hundreds of thousands of parents now courageously opting their children out of that testing. Testing is improving, adding more reasoning to questions; but the present format will never measure a child’s capacity for critical thought and complex problem solving, and social and civic competence, which is after all, what school and learning are supposed to be about.</div>
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<b class="">Parent:</b> But isn’t it all about just getting a job on graduating?</div>
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<b class="">HM & JD:</b> No! That is rhetoric that drifted up from a political aspirant named Scott Walker, trying to re-write the mission of a venerable institution of higher education of our vintage, but that’s another story. </div>
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Sorry, but we must go; a chorus of discordant voices from below, with incomprehensible labels, are starting to assert that perhaps the two of us don’t belong up here, versus, er, the other place…</div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-13498142665569032152015-02-08T16:10:00.000-05:002015-02-09T07:57:44.753-05:00Public PreK-12 Reform: A Baker's Dozen Inconvenient Truths<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This
is the last post on public school reform before some blog hiatus on that
topic. After nearly 100 posts on
various issues embedded in that alleged reform’s history, on standardized
testing and VAM issues, and on other challenges in and surrounding our schools
courtesy of “corporate reform” and NCLB, there seemed little to add. But the outbreak of political
correctness, and myopia permeating current rhetoric on the above called for a
reality check.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
current status of test-based reform is fluid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Senator Lamar Alexander is chairing the Senate’s education
committee, taking testimony, and apparently in line to propose changes to ESEA
(NCLB).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is unclear whether the
pendulum is coming down on the side of some sanity that would reduce
destructive testing and at minimum cause the CCSSI debacle to be reviewed?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is apparent is that defenders of
continuation of present and proposed testing are ramping up rhetoric in
response to public protests of testing, offering some marginal to idiotic
reasoning why this testing is necessary to save our discriminated or
disadvantaged children from “falling through the cracks,” whatever scientifically
that is supposed to mean.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As
egregious as the above technically disputable wisdom, the principal argument
the advocates seem to muster is that the nation’s public school students will not
be evaluated in grades three to eight, and again in high school, if present
testing is not pursued.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do over
three million teachers, the vast majority more committed to real education than
the cabal of testing companies lobbying every state legislature or the US Department of Education, simply vanish
from the classroom when the time comes to do some formative or summative
testing of their efforts?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Get
serious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Straight
talk on public education is increasingly hard to find.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some is proposed here, in the form of perceived truths however inconvenient to both reformers and anti-reformers:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Truth
#1<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Both the reformers and
the public school establishment are wrong, both culpable for the state of
American public PreK-12, and self-righteously turning out the least prepared
generation in a half century to deal with a nation’s survival problem-solving. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">How did you get
there?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Give us at least one fact
that is a legitimate assertion?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Top down:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A U.S. President
and Education Secretary who believe they have the high ground, but are
ideologically so liberally twisted or delusional that the utopian obsession with tactically elevating all discriminated or disadvantaged children's education is rationalized as a legitimate basis for destroying a century-old
public school system; the present U.S. Congress (need there be more
elaboration?); and a cabal of testing companies motivated by distorted business
theory and greed, given <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">carte blanche</i>
to define what constitutes contemporary knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bottom up: the marginal to dismal performances of some
fraction of 15,000 systems and 90,000 schools, in both international testing, allegedly per the private sector in preparation for employment, and in lack of preparation for postsecondary work based on remedial work; the fumbling of some fraction of
15,000 BOE; the ineptitude to demagoguery of some large fraction of 15,000
superintendents who should not be there; and some fraction of over three
million teachers unprepared for their job description.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span>
Not complex or detailed argument, but usually conceded to be general knowledge: That 35 years of highly involved reform challenges would not have endured if there was not some basis for deficits traceable to the public schools' performances (over and above deficits attributable to the income and cultural discrepancies among the nation's children); and on the flip side, over those same 35 years failure of testing- and VAM-based "reform" to actually produce measurable public school process and behavior changes not negative to genuine learning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #2<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">The present motif for
reform – hammering both students and teachers after the fact with simplistic
learning logic and convoluted tests – is so bizarre in the 21<sup>st</sup> century
it defies societal sanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Truth:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>America is turning
out a generation of its youth with an inventory of disaggregated facts that
will be neurally extinguished with disuse, so unbalancing legitimate critical thought
and problem solving capacities that the nation will be populated with a constituency neither capable nor creative in discriminating among increasingly complex and risky
options in every civil venue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Truly bizarre:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Calling for
every child to be “college ready” literally from kindergarten; juxtaposed
against the content of that college readiness based on standardized testing;
juxtaposed against the near irrelevance and even dysfunction of that alleged
learning to success in the college/university mission parroted?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does this actually go beyond simple
ideology or idealism to outright stupidity?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #3<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">The values for those
fractions cited in Truth #1 are?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Truth,
we know virtually nothing definitive about the full condition of America’s
public systems, because – with the exception of Dr. John Goodlad’s earlier
research spanning 22,000 public school students – our national leaderships have
not chosen to invest in that knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The quick retort from the dissenter, that is not practical for that massive
universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Response:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s needed is not necessarily
census, but a valid and reliable model for assessing those systems based on data from a projectable sample
of our schools, verified, then made available to our states and systems as a nationally
required DIY format for self-assessment and benchmarking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #4<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">America’s colleges and
universities should have been in the forefront of any public system reform,
because they have ignored primary/secondary education for a century, and
because they have the stewardship for the training of our nation’s public
school teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those schools of education have failed, for lack of intellect, and dogmatic pursuit of the wrong learning
rubrics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our colleges and
universities in turn have been too cowardly to address that higher education
failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">The least known, but
most egregious contemporary reform act, involved the creation of common K-12 STEM
standards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That chore, undertaken
by legitimate scientists in higher education in concert with the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was advanced with a proposed
process to make that knowledge accessible for critical thinking and problem
solving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Required, however, the hand-off
of that intelligence to the CCSSI crowd; the standards were promptly trashed
and subverted to become more disconnected fact chaff for support of
standardized testing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Embedded in this truth,
both higher education and our public systems could have demonstrable gains from
breaking through the wall of mutual distrust or contempt that separates
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Higher education could
materially reduce its costs of delivery if public K-12 delivered true
college-ready students (not the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ersatz</i>
version insanely advocated by Arne Duncan and the unthinking), making a four-
or even three-year degree the norm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #5<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Some fraction of America’s
BOE is a disaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Present methods
of electing those supposed to provide oversight are not uncommonly failures of
democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Frequently there is no
competition for joining a BOE, there is electoral manipulation by a system’s
administration to promote compliant BOE members, there is ineptitude in knowledge
of educational theory and practice, there is no requirement for their training on
education before being seated, and in too many cases service is sought for all
of the wrong reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Below the
radar, this may be our nation’s weakest electoral office, and until 50 states
upgrade that system for assigning local school oversight, it is a controlling roadblock to any
genuine change in our public systems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #6<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">An arguable material fraction of our public
systems’ superintendents has obsolete managerial education, is poorly selected by incompetent BOE, is poorly vetted, and should be re-educated or booted from public education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fraction increasingly earns jail
time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Perhaps west central
Ohio is an anomaly, but its schools also feature some of the most incompetent,
venal, and arrogant alleged education administrators seen in 15 years of
research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ohio has virtually no
valid system for removal of such administrators from office unless they commit
a high order felony; even theft of resources, failure to perform,
insubordination, and violation of education open records laws are challenged as
a basis for dismissal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just plain
educational ignorance, managerial ineptitude, despotism and power seeking, and
even sociopathic behavior barely tip the scale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incredibly, those illustrious attributes can result in
promotion to broader superintendent responsibility, a sick case in this
area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One egregious example of system
venality is a case where three of its BOE members cannot be conceptually viewed
as having been elected, the result of system manipulation of nominations, and
three candidates for three BOE seats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They effectively elected themselves if they voted, and voted for
themselves – school democracy in action?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">In another large public system
in a sister state, its superintendent (already on the record as educationally naive and a leadership failure) is currently seed funding an attempt to enact state law
that would restrict public system transparency and reporting. Say again? Its BOE is complicit in the quest, and the community’s taxpayers, parents, and its press appear as dumb as rocks in response to this effort. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #7<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Ultimately the truth is
that there are good US public schools, but no way currently in place of
comprehensively identifying and classifying those successes; equivalently, the difficulty
in singling out the systems that actually should be reformed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another truth is that the testing army
can succeed in beating on our public systems for the next decade, and they will
not measurably reform or genuinely improve learning in those systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because any real change in the
complexity and culture that is a public school system will have to be executed from
within the organization, and have to actively engage all of its critical human
resources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That has been borne out
by decades of sophisticated business practice, but ignorantly or deliberately
ignored by the reform horde.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #8<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Another truth:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Present school grade bands were an
invention of the early Carnegie attempts to manipulate public education;
present school organization is a century or more old; both are arguably
obsolete in our present society and world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Virtually no effort has been made by any educational authority to
innovate these infrastructures that are confining and misdirecting real
learning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #9<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">The most righteous in
our present uncharacterized mass of public schools, differentiated by 50 states
with varying levels of educational oversight credibility, are likely its
teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An accompanying reality,
that is because they are mostly in the profession by self-selection, and rooted in empathy that makes them valid in the classroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simultaneously, that focus on the children they must
support, with what is regularly now formulaic to despotic school
administration, results in their retreat to their own space, rendering them
incapable of leading any real reform charge.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Truth #10</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
Reality is that little of the substance of the genuine challenges, debates, and information that surround present school reform manages to appear in our general press, allegedly guided by journalistic integrity to see some truth. For whatever reasons, ignorance of the detailed questions, desire to report only good news, fear of offending local systems' educators or parents, or that school learning deficits are just not as newsworthy as a good killing or scandal, our press seem incapable of informing the public of what's driving testing, VAM, and other assaults on their systems. The most blatant lie regularly allowed past the "Pinocchio Test" is, that without present standardized testing, parents would have no idea whether their children are succeeding in their schools. Our schools, our teachers, do not test any aspect of the learning process they conduct? Even the most ill-informed parent couldn't swallow that. In turn, the so-called education pages of your average newspaper report primarily the feel good propaganda put out by local schools. That there is literally a war with public schools underway is lost or unwanted intelligence to most press. Some editors go so far as total denial, or censorship, to deflect that knowledge from their readers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #11<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Really inconvenient
reality:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Too many of America’s
parents and taxpayers, victims of Truth #10, are products of the same school concepts being aggressively
attacked for 35 years as inadequate, and perhaps because of that education, are
blind to or incapable of critically thinking about their local schools, or too
timorous to object to local education failures or system malfeasance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A perversion of the mantra “local control:”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the costs of local public education are
increasingly diverted by our states to local funding, that shift with electorate
disinterest or evaluative deficits in assessing local system performance, further complicates any positive change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #12<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Call this summative
assessment of the truth about America’s public system attacks:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 35 years of targeting public
education did not originate out of thin air; the performances overall of our
public systems in the last several decades of last century were the trigger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schools of education, and public
systems taking their cues from that platform, adopted a series of silly liberal
motifs, ignored innovation, and evolving from managerial weakness and lack of
proper teacher education, led to systems dropping the learning ball.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The build-up of private sector
resentment finally led to the proactive reform events that started long before
NCLB, factually in 1980 spearheaded by The Business Roundtable and the National
Governors Association (NGA).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
quietly stayed under our general population’s awareness until "A Nation at Risk" (ANAR) issued, formulated to panic the nation. That Commission perverted its findings to support NCLB
and a market give-away by the Bush Administration to our testing companies
already deeply rooted in control of school texts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Our public schools with
any intelligence responded as expected to the testing onslaught; they did
whatever it took in the short run to execute a testing work-around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First teach to the tests as
quickly as possible, then in a few quality cases also create legitimate
learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the not so quality
cases, teach to the tests, if that came up short cheat on the testing, and if
that was inadequate manipulate who was tested to control scores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this decade a runaway test load has
in many cases invalidated even better schools’ attempts to weave in real
learning because teachers are intimidated or the time simply doesn’t exist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Truth #13<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lastly, it is almost
unfathomable how an army of reformers and established educators, who must have
some intellect, have managed to ignore virtually every precept of the science
of explanation and increasingly sophisticated understanding of human behavior
and neural processes forging learning, and wagered all on fraudulent and
ignorant process for forcing change.
Is this ideology overtaking every vestige of critical thought? Is it naïve belief in single cause
systems? Are these value systems
that are truly warped to self-centric beliefs that override even common sense? Is it all of these? Perhaps at the most macro level our public education
fabric is fragmenting into factions with only myopic self-interest, or into
some subtle level of national insanity?
That is really serious inconvenient truth; because there seems no pat
prescription for disrupting the present reform trajectory generating public
system fragmentation and entropy.</span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-15199219396571916972015-01-31T15:07:00.000-05:002015-02-01T08:04:06.704-05:00US Higher Education: Quo Vadis?<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An opinion piece in Friday's <u>Dayton Daily News</u>, by
the president of Ohio's Antioch College, jump-started today's post. The
promised offering of alternative futures for America's colleges and
universities has been delayed, and a puzzle. The puzzle, however, was not for reasons one might suspect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Antioch's president addressed the core need for
higher education to achieve not just <i>pro forma</i> housecleaning, but material basic
reductions in the cost of a college education, citing the now prominently
displayed findings that over 50 percent of America's public PreK-12 students
now live in poverty. That finding doesn't magically improve when those
constituents try to educationally move into the next level of education, where
they encounter a level of magnitude greater costs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Reflecting on Antioch president Mark Roosevelt's
common sense statement of need, its contrast with a reality became writer’s
block.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That reality:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Few if any of the contemporary
depictions of why the cost of higher education is what it is capture the full scope
and depth of the issues, and there is little candor in describing prospects
that those costs can even be nudged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Prevailing Wisdom</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The most common assertion – true – is that the last
decades’ college tuition escalation reflects long term reductions in state
support of those institutions. Next in line is the plea that human
resource costs have soared, both required salaries to hold quality faculty, and
the costs of health insurance and pension reserves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kept low key in reporting, the cost of debt incurred to
support bursts of campus construction, some justified, but much designed to
dress those campuses to compete for students. Next, legitimate, some
fragment of those costs is attributable to meeting regulatory requirements. The
net costs of sports to our institutions is rarely transparent – a mixed bag, in
some cases profitable, in other cases football and basketball revenues offset
the costs of other sports. Lastly, add the soaring costs of research assigned to
our universities to support the nation's technology needs, some moved from the
private sector and imposed on our research universities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Collegiate administration, an increasingly savvy
lot in this century, squirm or bob and weave, but rarely find the industry or
courage to try to re-write their strategic game plans. The dirty little secret that
has blocked higher education reform for decades is, with rare exceptions, they
have no need to change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
virtually isolated exception in this last decade was the University of
Virginia, where an initial brouhaha slowly dissipated moving the dial back to virtually
where the revolt started.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Reality is that our traditional colleges and universities have
few natural predators as a check and balance, pragmatically receive perfunctory oversight, and increasingly corral a captive audience of sports-intoxicated supporters, and alumni who where successful and with nostalgia for their campus
salad days feed those institutions endowment dollars. That wake, funding
diverted to student recreational infrastructure, doubling of bureaucratic
resources, naive over-compensation of privileged faculty in the guise of
staying competitive, and pious refusal to entertain the use of various learning
innovations (MOOC) pleading they will reduce education quality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Riddle That Is US Higher Education</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The list goes on for any willing to dismiss the
hype, and look deeply into what the academic legions are and have been doing
for the last 25-30 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Complexity,
however, is that the academy is not an organized entity aligned with private
sector organizational design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
fragmented, with mixed levels of faculty versus administrative governance, with
operating rules and values installed over most of last century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inside the whole, every discipline can also
be an organizational subunit reflecting a different set of management and
performance criteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The presence
of faculty tenure virtually ensures that there will be little slack to remove
unproductive human resources at the academic level; lack of administrative
courage in turn virtually assures that once bureaucracy is planted it will
mightily resist uprooting, even in the face of reduced need or obsolescence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Vivid in memory of being a collegiate administrator,
was the realization after a few months in the saddle, that the faculty for whom
I was responsible did not typically see themselves as employees of the
university; rather with uncharacteristic boldness they perceived themselves as
independent contractors to the institution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tenure meant you could not terminate a poor teacher, or faculty
member who would rather wander the campus smelling the flowers than do
research, or write, or even regularly meet their classes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was great diversity of
organizational behavior depending on the colleges/schools/departments, and at some complex
level based on the nature of the disciplines represented.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because of the writer’s prior academic venue, better known cases
in point are US schools of business. Last century, circa 1960, spurred by
widespread private sector critique and scathing criticism by two major
foundations, those schools were forced to retool their curricula. What
had been a practical but simply descriptive view of American business was
prodded to find disciplinary roots for business as a legitimate social science.
In the early 1960s that widespread curricular change occurred, creating a
new B-school model, one driven by psychology, sociology, research methods,
mathematical modeling, economic theory, and computer technology and
computational business solutions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That regimen legitimized our
B-schools academically, but had an opposite effect than the private sector
anticipated. Some sound but exotic conceptual research blossomed, but the
manner in which basic disciplines were incorporated damped interest and
application of emerging social science to real, street level and especially
bottom line oriented teaching and problem solving. By the late 1970s that
approach had again disenchanted the business community, but it had created a
bipolar business education revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Business teaching incorporated
some of the science bases of explanation of market and business organization
phenomena; simultaneously B-schools’ imports of faculty from more liberally
oriented disciplines to reach the earlier reform goals had instilled in those
schools – at least for a time – the roots of societal values and ethics to
accompany harder edged business practice. That included 20<sup>th</sup> century
consumerism, and the notion that business had social responsibilities distinct
from simply unleashing market-based forces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By the late 1970s because of
corporate voices, and even in B-school internal debate, there was forced
evaluation of whether the “social science” missions of that education had
diffused and weakened the need for business teaching to be paired with usable
applications of theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this
point, reminiscent of the reform of the 1960s, a constructive result might have
been another update of curricula to marry contemporary theory and business
practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That need was lost to
emerging B-school leadership, pumped up by ramping faculty salaries, emergence
of successful prior graduates bringing in endowment dollars, and the
misconception that teaching management imbued one with the capacity to practice
the best of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That preferred
result did occur in a few specific business disciplines, notably in organizational
behavior and selected research applications, but the overall myopic result was
narrowing of focus of educational preparation for business.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the subsequent 35 years our
B-schools adapted to business’ needs by sharply refocusing learning on working to
maximize bottom lines, by aggressive development of MBA work and executive
education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prior sensitivity to
business ethics and societal responsibility gave way to current conservative
beliefs and myths about the supremacy of “the market” in resolving management decisions
– that also created the present public PreK-12 reform debacle. Bizarre to those of us who practiced through the reform
period of the early 1960s, our B-schools began to evolve similarly to our
public school system, into learning “factories” premised on standardization, highly programmed curricula, and the ritual MBA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One might argue that in the last
quarter of last century our B-schools created too many myopic marketers; in
this century, too many myopic finance graduates, many who helped bring us the
prior financial meltdown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No
mistake, tactically the MBA phenomenon brought our B-schools major success,
mega endowment dollars, and escalated faculty salaries frequently without
justification.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simultaneously, the
last 25-30 years of that academic progress has been a business research
wasteland, and has contributed virtually nothing to our advanced understanding
of business organization or market behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only the fairly recent emergence of behavioral economics has
added any intellectual accomplishment to business academia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even digital applications, once
embryonic in our B-schools, were quickly eclipsed by businesses willing to
innovate and assume risk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Paradoxically, assuming risk, and willingness to make mistakes were
never tolerated in the academic places supposed to be teaching those arts to
the private sector.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Borrowing the term, the ‘bottom
line’ is that academic business is long overdue for self-assessment and
curricular and learning methods reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With the present leadership of most of our B-schools, and without an
external <i>force majeure</i>, that is not likely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To some extent, with the possible exception of our hard and
biological sciences, similar critique can apply to most parts of the
academy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most egregious, among the
already questionable, is an obsolete conceptual model for teaching the teacher,
the worst of the collegiate breed, our schools of education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even that disgrace is not sufficient
motivation to prompt collegiate leaderships to enact reform; perhaps because of
the belief that would set in motion a view that more of higher education should
also be subject to real change?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is an all too brief survey
of why much of higher education needs reform in the worst way; also too brief in
part because paradoxically, there is precious little research on higher
education that would allow comprehensive diagnosis. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Gridlock</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This part of the argument could
form the basis for a book or two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To compress an answer into a few words, the assertion is that there is
little threat to higher education, therefore little incentive to generate major
internal debate or change, and enduring for the rest of this decade and perhaps
the next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Obama/Duncan rating scheme,
to shame(?) or with a financial wrist-slap force the institutions into strategy
change is so lame it merits no further mention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our states long ago lost
effective control of state higher education institutions when majority funding
was transferred to tuition and corporatization. An example cited in the last
post, the Indiana University system currently received only 24 percent of recent annual revenues from the state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collegiate
sports in turn have become the armored columns protecting the academic franchise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Business practice as an institution is not
a current threat, but promises to further compromise academic values by transferring
initial training for future hires back to our colleges and universities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Too many collegiate boards of
trustees or regents are either politically inspired or lack the intellect to
exercise that oversight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Peering
into the hazy future, what threats or events could force higher education leaderships
to move – to date there appear none.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>What Would It Take?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first answer to that question
is, an epiphany by an army of collegiate leaderships that is bright, keeps its
heads down, hides behind alumni-bureaucracy-sports, appeals to a swath of
America’s middle class parents, and has a formidable if undeserved reputation
for being the backbone of American future invention, industry, and
prosperity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In sum, not likely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The second answer then is almost
irrelevant, but still food for thought:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What would that change look like if one could wave a magic wand and
scare the bejeebers out of a few thousand collegiate presidents, and cause a
sudden internal assessment of their institutions’ missions and methods?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A rough try at an answer:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One, it would take the assembly
of the full financial statements of a projectable sample of our institutions to
understand the financial components that are susceptible to change, and
longitudinally, their demand and organizational elasticity.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Two, it would require rebuilding
the conceptual model of higher education into a major departure from a
millennium of history; recognizing that the very nature of knowledge and access
thereto has undergone a fundamental change, displacing the core concept of
“university,”</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Three, it would require
acceptance of the reality that our institutions are packed with tenured and
tenure track faculty who are being over compensated, are not infrequently either
subpar classroom teachers or minimally committed to the classroom, and unless
they perform a needed research function aren’t really needed to execute the
higher education learning mission.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It may even raise the question of whether it is time to scrap out the
concept of collegiate tenure.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A
majority of higher education classes – for better or worse – is now being
taught by part-time and non-tenure track faculty.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Egregiously, on many distance and community campuses,
alleged collegiate–level work is being taught by unprepared teachers who could
not pass those courses in legitimate university work.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Four, it would require coming to
grips with the reality that much of now heavily hyped higher education’s lack of on-time graduation performance is attributable to the failure of public
PreK-12, and especially its high schools to fundamentally equip their students
to operate successfully in higher education.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That should open the door to a new model of education years
9-16, breaking down the disconnect between public education and higher
education.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One form that might
take is redefinition of current grades 11 and 12, and collegiate 13 and 14,
eliminating the grade bands, regularly allowing higher education courses to be
more fluidly applied and double counted toward high school completion as well as degree
progress.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One simple (but major) factor that could reduce the recipient’s cost of higher education
without major challenge of the establishment, is to materially shorten the time
a student takes to complete a degree.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Five, arguably every collegiate academic
discipline would be tasked to assess and revise as necessary both curricula and
how that knowledge is imparted/induced, with some form of oversight of the
resultant work by a national academic board for each discipline.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Six, a major part of the cost
model for higher education is the extended residential environment.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One concept is a staged learning
procession that goes one better than tying loan repayment to subsequent
employment, but makes some combination of on-campus learning and earlier professional
employment the mainstream model.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That in turn would require new processes to allow MOOC to supplement
campus work, and/or see that knowledge sourcing tied to a new level of
inter-institutional cooperation to cross-recognize academic work.</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>What’s It All About?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even the above short list, if one
has been sensitive to the arc required to change any major institutional
system, immediately becomes discouraging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If the perpetually more optimistic would dispute that, consider the
product of present public PreK-12 alleged reform – 35 years, acts of Congress,
high double-digit billions of dollars, an army of idealistic zealots, an underclass army of professionals intimidated to
change some undesignated behavior, states slavishly applying and wallowing in test data they usually
do not understand, teachers and children degraded by the insensitive
application of ESEA without addition of common sense, a procession of Bill
Gates’ intrusions and flubs, now emerging protest movements still unable to create sane
reassessment of PreK-12 education reform tactics – and a national system barely
nudged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Is the better learning factory
the answer, or is the basic theoretical structure being forced onto our public
systems simply wrong, based on false assumptions about learning, driven by
ideology rather than the learning sought and wisdom, and now peppered with
corporate and market self-interest, and political goals that drive out positive organizational learning of a century?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For all of the above reasons,
there has to be great macro skepticism that change will occur in higher
education venues over less than decades, and without the appearance of the
metaphorical “black swan” that disrupts national beliefs and infrastructure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the trenches, America is still
graced with great and committed teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For anyone who has spent serious time in the classroom, the event that
makes it all worthwhile can be a single episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Years ago the writer, in close to
the last class taught before exchanging the classroom for corporate leadership,
was offering an advanced MBA course in marketing research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was an unusually talented, but
also pretty prideful group of about to become MBAs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The course by design employed both traditional methods
exposure and a constructivist approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The latter; three real-time marketing research issues underway at Piper
Aircraft Corporation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The class,
knowing all that an MBA could possibly want, was pretty dismissive of the
projects’ challenges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> They vocally branded the work a</span> no-brainer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Meanwhile </span>Piper granted funding
to buy just about any professional survey resources required to carry out the
projects and cover any expenses, and shared proprietary data about past,
present and prospective customers for framing the research.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Shortened story, the class had to
be dragged kicking and screaming into the awareness that they really didn’t yet
comprehend project management, or the market behaviors that had to be
assessed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prodding but permissive,
the class was allowed to seek its own timing levels, with the understanding
that performance not <i>pro forma</i> procedure was the mission and test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the class approached the end of the
term, and graduation for most, their past experiences predicted that if they
didn’t finish the work, the worst case was an “Incomplete,” in virtually every
case allowing their graduation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As “fish or cut bait” time
neared, it was made clear to the group there would be no Incompletes, rather an
F because the course grade was premised on their actual performance; an F would
have blocked graduation for all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We’ll skip the rest of that session which became a bit emotional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To give all an opportunity to succeed,
a classroom was exceptionally sequestered for 24/7 use.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Funding for renting hotel rooms and related expenses was extended for any who were losing
their resident housing. School services were arranged 24/7 as support, and the
writer was on call 24/7 for consultation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The mission:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Piper sent a cabin class twin to pick up the class, and the results of the (hopefully) completed
research for all three projects were to be presented in Lock Haven, PA to a full
complement of Piper corporate vice-presidents and department/product managers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The teams completed their reports at
roughly 3-4 AM the morning of the flight, just in time to suit up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All three teams had to practice their
presentations for the first time in flight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The performances:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bit shaky out of the hopper, but all
three teams pulled it together and did an excellent job of reporting their
findings, generating from the Piper group praise for the work, a highly
respectable congruity of the teams’ findings with Piper’s own professional research results,
and praise for the IU MBA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
flight home was smooth and initially quiet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The writer was co-pilot in the right seat, the flight compartment separated from
the rest of the cabin, but any conversation was audible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About halfway through the flight home, the
buzz started; all three teams congratulating each other, individuals doing the
same, all to a person vocalizing how they had made all three projects work, impressed
a corporate enclave, and aced their <i>de facto</i> test.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>That is why you teach</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps, as another education writer with major
K-12 credentials recently put it, that principle is where present public PreK-12 reform circuses should
have started, where any higher education reform should focus, and where
its resources and positive reinforcement should be directed -- not to
punitive factory quality control logic that was obsolete when the scourge was
launched?</span><!--EndFragment-->
</div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-42275075469482999352015-01-22T09:03:00.001-05:002015-01-22T12:40:33.477-05:00Rating US Colleges and Universities: An Inconvenient Reality<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The US Department of
Education/Duncan proposal </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(Postsecondary Institutions Rating System or PIRS) </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">to grade America's colleges and universities -- at
the moment into three still vague performance categories -- has not yet issued
in any detail. Representations have been that three factors are involved:
Affordability, access, and results. Implicit has been that the
three factors will need to be measured using data already Federally available,
byproducts of various Federal programs, including ones not directly involved in
the various Federal education "Title" authorities.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If one had just landed on earth from a distant planet, with the technological prowess that implies, the notion that over 4,000 diverse
higher education institutions could be successfully characterized and rated by
those three factors might actually seem to make sense. What could be
simpler: Do a nation’s applicable citizens have equal access to those
institutions; can they afford the price of attendance; and what has been the
value added by their participation?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a
few trips around the societal track, that visitor from another place becomes
linguistically proficient and starts to understand organizational behavior and our societal hangups, concluding
the proposed scheme for characterizing an educational institution, by analogy, has the
credibility of studying earth's life and its behavior by simply designating it bacteria,
archaea, or eukaryota.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(We as
multicellular organisms are constructed of eukaryotes, microbes, <i>et al.</i>, but
that true depiction falls a bit short of characterizing the sentient human.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In
fact, the scheme proposed by the US Department of Education is a total whack
job, calling into question Secretary Duncan’s intellectual competence,
or surfacing the question of what values and ideological excursion precipitated the
proposal?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Both
the rating scheme, and in fairness this writer’s challenge, fit
the trope <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“says easy, does
hard.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let the reader be the
judge, based on the reality of the behaviors, factors, and rating process being proposed for PIRS.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>What
are the issues?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The US Department of Education/Duncan depiction of the need for this scheme remains vague; what are the reasons the proposal has been floated now, and how do they hold up under scrutiny:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Are the
proposed ratings – even if valid and reliable – needed?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What is
the valid unit of analysis, </span><i>i.e.</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, the total institution, intra-institutional
colleges and schools (there may be great variance inside an institution.)</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On any
factor requiring differentiation to constitute a rating basis, is there greater
intra-organizational variation than variation among institutions?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Will
the ratings differentiate institutions judged deficient in providing equitable
access?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Will
the ratings differentiate institutions based on cost of delivery of a degree;
will those costs be comparable based on the quality of the degree delivered?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Subsumed
in the above, how are the times for delivery of a degree accurately determined?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How is
it determined that ratings of institutions are based on valid assessments of
comparable institutions?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How
will the punitive measure proposed change institutional behaviors?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How
does a limited number of </span><i>ad hoc</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> measures of existing variables translate into a
rational scheme to measure performance of any institution that is, </span><i>de facto</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, a
system and complex layered organization?</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Are the
variables proposed up to the task of alleged measurement: Genuine
accessibility–true net cost–education value added, and valid comparisons?</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the
wake of undercutting of genuine learning experiences by </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">dogmatic </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Federal pursuit of standardized testing as the backbone of US public
school reform, it seems fair to propose that future initiatives be judged by
one of the same standards as medical practice – first, do no harm.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Ratings
needed?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There
are currently in excess of 20 US web sites devoted to search that can mate a
collegiate prospect and a college or university, and multiple ratings already
published, e.g., <u>US News</u>, <u>Forbes</u>, Princeton, <i>et al</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Add the online sites of virtually every
credible college and university.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
categories of information may not be comparable among these sources, and they
have variable credibility; however, the proposed assignment of multi-thousand
institutions into three crudely defined hoppers, even if those assignments were
valid, appears destined to add nothing to a prospect’s effective discrimination in choosing a collegiate destination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The
unit of analysis?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A fancy
phrase for a core issue; what measure of homogeneity, or level of disaggregation
makes institutions being assessed comparable?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is
an example previously used, but it makes the point: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: .2in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>“Indiana University (IU) has two main campuses,
Bloomington and Indianapolis, different academic environments. It has six
regional campuses. The Bloomington campus has 14 separate schools plus a
College of Arts and Science. All 15 major units have multiple
departments, multiple faculties, heterogeneous curricula (and some institutions
differential tuition) — that factually determine the quality of a degree — with
180 majors, in 157 departments, representing 330 degree programs. The
other campuses have variable presence of the same venues, plus where a campus
is a joint IU-Purdue campus, there may be additional departments representing
engineering, nursing, et al.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What is
the appropriate unit for measurement:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The composite institution; each campus location; the college(s)
embedded in each campus; the various schools; even subject matter departments
that may be as large in student enrollment as some small colleges?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those differences in programs and
enrollees may produce very different results for the variables proposed as the
basis for ratings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Foreknowledge
of the universe?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Is
there any <i>a priori</i> basis for the Department/Duncan proposals based on even
sample research of how ratings factors show dispersion across institutions, or within
institutions and across the above potential units of analysis?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus far the Department has offered no
evidence of prior or ongoing research that would foot any rational proposal of
this magnitude and potential for negative effects.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
second factor impacting validity is comparability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are any two institutions of higher education comparable
given their capacity for independence of action and complexity of offerings?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What research on multidimensional
properties has been executed to provide categories of institutions that can
arguably be comparable?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
factors allegedly being rated are intrinsically linked to many of those
properties, therefore have a potential of being misinterpreted as performance gradients rather than just concomitant effects of those properties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>A
college/university is a complex organization.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the
rush to rate higher education institutions a fatal error is failure to
recognize that every college and university, even the most austere, is a level
of magnitude more complex as an organization than, for example, a public school that has narrower roots, fewer human resources, and relatively a fairly simple organizational structure; even with those similarities our public schools are not automatically comparable in assessing learning performance or
even test-based metrics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Breathtaking is the </span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">naïveté</span><!--EndFragment--> <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">to believe any organization, and ones as complex as a college or university, could be assessed for quality based on a handful of incomplete or flawed variables (if that is the true motivation, venality if it is not).</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
scope of measurement of organizational performance – especially for an
entity as layered and complex as a college or university – is impossibly beyond
the scope of this blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many
assessment models exist, and the real factors, variables, functions, actors,
and internal behaviors that foot an organization’s true performance are massive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just one example of such a guide to
determinants of performance is <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTISPMA/Resources/Training-Events-and-Materials/Quick_Assessment_Brochure_04vc.pdf">linked here</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Department/Duncan model is roughly the equivalent of trying
to build a real operating system with Legos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Assessing
student access to higher education?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As
complex as every other factor footing the proposed rating scheme,
this one is presently categorically blocked by both a lack of longitudinal
research on how admittance is sought and played out in real time, and
confidentiality law installed by Congress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To answer this question would require comprehensive access
to college applicant records leading to acceptance or rejection, not permitted
by law except at the moment available to the applicant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
latter access was just exploited by a cluster of Stanford University
undergraduates, who demanded and received their full files.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The results underscore the complexity
and nuances of the admissions process; such full disclosure would be needed to
assign faults for failures to admit, and to attribute that failure to some form of
discrimination other than student performance criteria.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Time to
acquire a diploma as a performance factor?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On its
face this factor appears one, that coupled with the cost of the educational
experience, might be defensible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 2011 a group within the US Department of Education was tasked
with assessing the factors that might be measured for rating
colleges/universities, initially targeting two-year institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the
multiple factors noted above, only one was thoroughly vetted – the time required to
acquire a degree/diploma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the
moment the only data the Department has to quantify that factor is the
measurement of the number of years taken to acquire a degree or diploma, by a
first-time, full-time degree seeking student.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> As focus shifted to four-year as well as two-year programs, i</span>t is
from that narrow data concept that the various alerts have come, stating that some
material percent of BS/BA level students fails to get a degree within the nominal four
years, and now six years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
Department’s own report, citing the errors in that measure, because it did not
track transfers and possible degree completion or subsequent degree pursuit and acquisition after the initial
drop out, has seemingly been ignored in the PIRS ratings quest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, that six-year figure for a four-year degree, popularized by our press, is likely a misrepresentation of reality with little or no research undertaken to rectify
that to pursue the ratings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still
another idea floated, use of Federal job placement data of new graduates as a
surrogate for quality of education delivered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your average eighth grader could slam that rendering of
uncritical thought; at the most basic level, starting salaries of new graduates
are tightly linked to job and professional service type, and our institutions
are diverse in occupational preparation supplied, therefore salaries are
confounded with job type.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the
occupational types number in the hundreds, type would have to be held constant
to impute a salary quality indicator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The universe of college and universities categorically can’t support the
data logically needed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Punish
to change?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First
question is, to change what; the time to degree, the net cost, the quality of
learning generated?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first item
is unresolved, the second subject to measurement of a total cost to the student
as yet undefined, and the third will allegedly not be attempted. One hammer proposed is tying availability of Pell Grants to a college's or university's rating. Other public critiques of PIRS suggest, that because of the crude reasoning and categories footing the scheme, redirecting Pell Grants may actually worsen support for collegiate candidates most needing support. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Next, will
the crude ratings being proposed by the Department/Duncan affect the behaviors and performance
of the institutions targeted?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because of the complexity of decision making in present higher education,
with the layers of stake holders, it is highly questionable even if the ratings
induce greater deliberation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using the
prior IU example for a moment, student financial aid measures roughly seven percent
of composite cash flow associated with annual operations, and that does not
include the influence of endowment funds flowing to the institution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Presently, t</span>he departure or hire of a handful of sports
coaches in some quarters might have greater impact than everything the US Department of Education
can use to put a brand on an institution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The
list goes on, to where?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pre-dating
NCLB, and blossoming in the period immediately prior to the Obama Administration’s installation, there was a small explosion of studies and
conferences addressing the core issues surrounding change in America’s colleges
and universities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of the most
comprehensive work, now simply being repeated in most discourse on higher
education change, was originated by the Association of American Colleges and
Universities, and by a small number of states, the latter focusing on measurement
of the quality of community college outputs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This work was seemingly lost in what subsequently became, it
is asserted, an unthinking and unreasonable commitment by the Department/Duncan
to ideologically driven postsecondary reform tactics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This generic
topic is only scratched by the above observations.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There is cause to argue that America’s colleges and
universities should be assessed for mission, and for operating performances
that miss or contradict the mission. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Staying
with the former academic stomping grounds for an example, and with a prior small
window into IU’s 2014 strategic planning for its Bloomington campus, the
resultant plan was narrow in perspective, institutionally self-centric, virtually
void of any recognition of the national and strategic issues that vex present
higher education.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Procedurally the
planning process was less than inclusive, literally taking properly
credentialed faculty representation out of the loop, substituting a set-piece
of submissive faculty for broader campus faculty input.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Change is arguably needed in present US higher
education organizational leadership as well as in the mechanisms of pursuit of student learning.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But overall,
the present US Department of Education/Duncan initiative is arguably the
flimsiest and most disingenuous proposal thus far for the purpose of producing
positive change in our collegiate institutions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There
is lastly also obvious room to argue that none of the narrow and simplistic
reform designs currently being floated for higher education, irrespective of
the origin, should be permitted to advance without some meaningful research
that first codifies key characteristics and performance indicators for all 4,000
plus institutions, or minimally a projectable sample of those institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sequentially, that likely is not
possible without creativity currently evading higher education, and a new level
of inter-institutional conversation and cooperation among university
leaderships, along with comparable states’ cooperation via perhaps the National
Governors Association (NGA). The assumption is that the present US Congress <o:p></o:p>is unlikely to grant such power for discovery to the present White House.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Conclusions?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Viewed
against the common sense of most of Tuesday’s SOTU address by Mr. Obama, this
proposal simply doesn’t satisfy a “sniff test.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The complexity of the mission, juxtaposed against the
ignorance and <i>ad hoc</i> tactics proposed to rate higher education, has to be viewed
as failed logic and programming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Compared to pragmatically failing testing-only based alleged reform
being impressed on public schools, this proposal is not the product of
competence that should guide national education advocacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">American
public higher education that was formerly dominated by state funding and
occasionally adequate oversight has executed a 180 over the last several
decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, using IU
again for convenience, that university system’s funding from the State of
Indiana is now less than 24 percent of total annual revenue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is an inevitable loss of
practical public control of oversight of institutions that must retool to
support themselves.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our collegiate
managements reflect intelligent and highly educated human resources, but are as
vulnerable as any private sector firm to managerial failure; perhaps to a
greater extent in many institutions where leadership has come through the
academic ranks and lacks the managerial expertise demanded in the private
sector.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That has become increasingly
evident in higher education leadership’s emulation of corporate leadership that
formerly dismissed strategic thinking. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In short, our collegiate leaderships can learn something from
our private sectors and from resources who have pioneered change in management thought; the question is whether leaderships will register that in time?</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">America’s
colleges and universities are also vulnerable to obsolescence in spite of the
intellectual capital they inventory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Change is needed, as suggested in a prior post, to:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prioritize the real missions; get on
the same page in providing information for potential students; make the process
of accepting students as transparent as possible within the context of existing
confidentiality laws; address the phenomenon of substituting part-time faculty
for tenured and tenure-track teachers, or verify that the former’s vetting
equals traditional scrutiny; combine cost effectiveness initiatives with
learning output assessment to increase productivity; get back to four years (or
two years) means “four years;” consider the possibility that “lean” techniques
applied to industry do have a role in education; and move beyond present
institutionalization of curricula to aggressive updating of knowledge being
offered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lastly,
it is impossible to avoid the reality (provocative to the guilty) that a whole
lot of America’s higher education shortfalls do not spring from higher
education, at least tactically, but because US public schools, and especially
the secondary grades are simply not performing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over a dozen years NCLB, in spite of the hype, has produced from a quarter to a
third of America’s children that have been “left behind” in spite of the hype, and will struggle to
get beyond that fate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There
is really no mystery why America is still in a form of educational crisis – you
only have to pull cognitive function out of where it has been slumbering. Look critically at too many of our local schools still dug in to last century’s
rituals and knowledge obsolescence, refusing change, exhibiting administrative venality, and BOE that are unprepared or misdirected. That is amplified by inadequate teacher training by </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">our schools of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">education, offset only by the better fraction of US teachers who have internalized stronger academic values and taken the initiative to advance their own learning and classroom skills.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps
there is discovery afoot precipitated by a shift in emphasis to higher education: That a
century, of disassociating US public </span>PreK<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">-12 systems and practices from the post-secondary education function, has to come to an end, or will at least begin to register educational and legislative awareness?</span></div>
</div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-40117760461026218552015-01-12T10:44:00.001-05:002015-01-12T20:57:19.462-05:00US Education Reform: Stumbling "Through the Looking Glass"<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass” seems an
appropriate metaphor for the distorted cognition and magical thinking
characterizing current alleged reform of US public schools, and now
prospectively its colleges and universities. The premise is,
present education reform illogic fits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Upside Down and Catawampus<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The US has now endured
over a decade of public K-12 education infighting, but on a battlefield resembling
current real ideological warfare; multiple adversaries with some trouble
defining the good guys versus the bad guys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Combatants:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our entrenched public systems; NCLB; NGA; the latter’s spawn, CCSSI; ALEC; testing companies;
state education bureaucracies and legislatures; charter entrepreneurs; anti-testing
coalitions; anti-CCSSI coalitions; sundry education opportunists; even direct
parental action to block the testing tsunami.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dispersed power blocks on all sides of the skirmishes
promise no easy or quick resolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the table but still
lacking execution, the Obama/Duncan proposal to grade US colleges and
universities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That proposal’s
dubious distinction; trying to scale performance of 4,140 higher education
institutions with a handful of available variables already possessing metrics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, the latest evolution
of NCLB, Mr. Obama’s “line in the sand” doubling down on standardized
testing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Obama’s lines in the
sand, however, have proven to be less that durable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last out of the chute, the
proposal for free tuition to two years of community college, reflecting little
transparent awareness of the implications of further loading up enrollments for
community colleges, with largely unknown intellectual provenance and capacities for
quality learning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The take from all of the
above initiatives is that there is a root agenda that has been put in place by
the Obama Administration – distinct from the origins and original highway for
corporate reform, but borrowing its standardized testing/punishment hammer –
and one of its targets encapsulating utopian educational equity is ‘some college for all.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This ideological tenet hasn’t been sufficiently challenged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Three overarching shadows
sully this grand vision:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One,
there is no present strategic support for the notion that all of America needs
or wants a collegiate diploma; two, the proposal crudely ignores the reality
that failing public K-12 has created and exascerbated the need, but piling another challenged
system on prior failure isn’t a fix; and three, the entire reform movement
totaled the reform bus before it was out of the terminal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Specifically, every reform
scheme floated has adopted some quick and dirty end game assessment to drive
change, but by ignorance or haste ignored the essential linkages between where
performance is flagged, and the underlying organization and processes that actually
cause and change that performance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Four logical conundrums
weaken the foundations of present education reform models:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deconstructed knowledge does not equal
critical thought and sustainable learning; academic organization is not a monolithic ‘it;’ the economics
of learning quality assessment and assurance are real and critical; and egregiously,
where have all the sages gone along with “the cooperative principle?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Deconstruction Naïveté<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Deconstruction, and its
Siamese twin analysis, have always been the lally columns of K-12 education.
Break any knowledge into its constituent parts, memorize them, and <i>voila</i>,
learning? Oversimplified, but the core model still dominates public
education's conceptual thought processes. The parts have been over time connected, extended to constructs/relationships formed, but still fail any test of
more advanced understanding of the science of explanation and prediction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The reasons go back over a
century, and form the roots of divergence, to the present day, between higher
education and our public schools. The early intellectualism that sculpted
public schools, whether from a learning path, or more likely the ego driving public
K-12 pioneers to want their own identity, created a system of education for
education that never aligned with the science of inquiry and explanation
driving collegiate education. The process of conveying bits of knowledge,
and especially the supporting classroom protocols, became public K-12's dominant theme.
The application of knowledge components to larger constructs and models, explaining behavior of phenomena, was either lost in teaching preparation or
was simply never understood by the public K-12 teaching factory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Offering the benefit of a
doubt, it seems incongruous that the high level leadership currently flogging
test-based school reform can be unaware of the learning dysfunction and
deficits imposed by those venues and tactics?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The obvious questions:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What leadership values are driving “corporate reform;” what ideologies
can justify the negative strategic learning effects of present reform tactics;
and is there in that thinking any calculus for the downstream effects of the
approaches?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lastly, literally screaming
at one, the hypocrisy of Obama/Duncan; specifically, employing the trope "college
readiness" from virtually PreK on, while arguably aware that collegiate
academics engage a different cognitive set and mechanisms than transient early
learning based on memorization and ritual learning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Testing Versus the Mechanisms of Performance<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In an article in the
January 10 <u>Washington Post</u>, unfolding Mr. Obama’s proposal for a free
two years of community college, the reporting also covered this
Administration’s “line-in-the-sand” commitment to standardized testing. An
admittedly overused cliché, but that reaffirmation appears the humorous
definition of insanity – "continuing to do the same thing but expecting a
different result."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The same article featured
a quote from Charles Barone, “…policy director of Democrats for Education
Reform and who helped write No Child Left Behind as a congressional aide,” and who
was quoted:</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>“</b><i style="font-weight: bold;">I don’t know how else
you gauge how students are progressing in reading and in math without some sort
of test, some kind of evaluation.</i><b>"</b><i style="font-weight: bold;"> ”If you want to see a kid’s vocabulary, how
they write, if they can perform different math functions, the only way is to
sit them down and give them a test</i><b>.”</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Intellectual and sane policy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t know what that
learning is supposed to be except as defined by magical third-party testing. We reject the view that our teachers can ensure learning and assess
classroom formative or summative performance without the 'psychometrician in a bubble.' But externally testing until hell freezes over will
surely provide that enlightenment?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Let’s try a
hypothetical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You manage a
division of a technology firm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
word comes down; the corporation needs a state-of-art xflipvoxcomp (a computing
device <i>qua</i> voice recognition <i>qua</i> AI) to fill a market segment gap in the
corporation’s consumer technology offerings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An obvious next step; you query topside, what are the
product performance and design goals, target market positioning, and
pricing-cost-incremental investment criteria for the development?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The answer comes back:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t have a clue, but we’ll be
testing your result the minute it is prototyped to see if you keep your job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> D</span>uh?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Whether prompted by
ignorance, or venality, or simply ideologically driven thinking, this second
factor rivals the first in undermining the alleged logic of present public K-12
reform, now proposed by Obama/Duncan to be extended to our 4,140 colleges and
universities by a simplistic rating scheme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No acknowledgement of the factors or processes that
ultimately determine whether a desired learning effect is achieved; no </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">acknowledgement</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> of the organizational complexity of collegiate structure; no </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">acknowledgement</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> of the delta separating teaching assets and process in collegiate
settings, versus the assets and administration in public K-12; and no acknowledgment </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">colleges and universities are systems </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">featuring even semi-autonomous layers of sub-systems</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> because of the role of faculty governance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By what logic of systems' thinking is it assumed that
beating on the aggregate of a collegiate institution with ratings will produce
positive change in learning process and performance? There is some evidence that pseudo social science, like the US News' and Forbes' collegiate rating schemes, have produced dysfunctional tweaking of academic recruiting and reporting, obscuring rather than clarifying </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">information for</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> those seeking higher education options.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Higher education’s sample look-alike
for public K-12 testing cheating isn’t a great reach; for example, a direct and
quick way to meet the time-to-diploma criterion being flagged is dysfunctional,
surreptitiously reducing the requirements for achieving the diploma. Not
exactly a useful strategic quality goal for America's higher education
trajectory?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Achieving Quality Learning<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Virtually from the first,
early 1980s rhetoric about change in public K-12 education, the arguments were
characterized by aggression and retribution for perceived wrongs. In public K-12 those offenses
seemed to revolve around the perception that our public schools had become
ideologically socialistic, more concerned with student self-esteem and vague
learning objectives than preparation for succeeding in our market-based
systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence, the earliest
reform language prominently stressed “accountability,” the presumption
apparently that there was none.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The basic premise
of both public K-12 and now prospectively higher education change, seems to be that it
must be punitive to create motivation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Is the implicit assumption for collegiate reform that the genre is elitist, and needs to be punished? </span>The corollary of that in present reform is that the good guys and the
bad guys must be sorted by the analogous process to manufacturing quality
control; inspect, measure, correct flaws, scrap out the offenders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That logic worked for early decades of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century for American industry, it should work for education?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One small glitch:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> In the private sector q</span>uality achievement of product or
service output was displaced post WWII by a cluster of routines, starting with
the work of Juran and Deming among others on statistical quality assurance
techniques, dramatically reducing the cost of achieving quality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was followed by the Japanese
revolution in TQA, or total quality assurance, that changed the auto and
subsequently most other US industries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The concepts of process control emerged to place assessment far
earlier, and continuously, in the evolution of output, even eliminating
traditional late stage inspection logic, further reducing costs and ensuring
quality. Lastly, the contemporary concept of how organizational performance is motivated and achieved is not your granddad's.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">These are not soft
arguments, but hard economic realities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By delaying quality assessment until the product pops off its assembly line,
the cost of a quality deficit soars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The earlier in the process error is detected, and the more traceable the
assignment of cause, the minimum resources are scrapped or wasted, the
lower the cost of output, and the lower the opportunity cost of the total assets deployed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Applying this to education
systems is not rocket science:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Among many genre of processes creating utility, education has the most
to lose, by its recipients, and by its agents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The costs, economic, social, and opportunity of discovering flawed
learning only after that process has reached a terminal point are major.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The effects for education recipients may not even be
recoverable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Flat out, the
present mechanism of trying to change our educational effects and productivity
by testing or grabbing metrics, after the processes for learning are already
expended, is somewhere between senseless and insanity. Present extravagant testing and
post-instruction measurement leave systems clueless about sources of need for
internal change, and defensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fix is to employ systems thinking in how student learning is
achieved, ultimately knowing how the factors of learning’s processes interactively work, focusing quality planning and assessment in the earliest
stages then extended continuously through education process.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Reformers’ reliance on a
nearly century old, and arguably obsolete conception of quality assurance is
almost inconceivable, but has been the key motif of alleged reform.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A bold-faced ‘why’ is certainly a
component of another needed test of accountability – this one for those
prosecuting present reform?</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Trashing “the Cooperative Principle”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As contradictory of
American intellectual achievement as current “corporate reform” and proposed
higher education attacks are, and as dismissive of professionalism, the fourth
issue with present education duress may be the most egregious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is driven by evolving disregard
for “the cooperative principle,” defined as “specific rules for conversations,”
or the social interactions that in civil societies become the basis for
successful negotiation and problem solving. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Overstatement?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Develop metrics
that will measure the volume of constructive, cross-aisle communication in our
2015-2016 US Congress?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The US has now experienced
the first 30 years of challenge of public education; how many more decades of
opportunity costs should this nation incur before critical thinking about
critical thinking finally emerges?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The reformers have become legions with differing interpretations of
reform, with different values and tactics, and none show the capacity to either
listen to the targeted systems, or communicate among factions in any arc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are two perspectives footing this
segment of critique:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How did
embryonic education reform become so contentious, and what is driving this
societal conflict?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first question has a
discrete answer in the case of public K-12.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It begins with former President Reagan’s refusal to name in
the 1980s the National Commission on Excellence in Education, followed by US
Secretary of Education T. H. Bell’s creating that body on his own authority and
naming its members; the Commission chair, David Pierpont Gardner, an
accomplished higher education administrator associated with the University of
California, then President of the University of Utah.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His biography is impressive but gives no hint that he was
well versed in public K-12 issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The product of that Commission was “A Nation at Risk” (ANAR), the report that politically
launched “corporate reform,” subsequently precipitating "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Simultaneously a team led
by Dr. John Goodlad, equally applauded but for public K-12 education leadership
and pursuit of change in public K-12, was completing the only large field study
of US public schools, covering 27,000 children and a carefully stratified
sample of systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As ANAR was
being drafted, the Goodlad team’s results – suggesting a vastly different and
strategic approach to changing public K-12 education – were requested and presented
to that Commission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those results,
from Dr. Goodlad’s subsequent narratives, were ignored because the Commission
wanted ANAR to issue a “<i><b>thunderclap</b></i>” that would startle and panic Americans,
justifying an aggressive public school reform agenda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is no way to
reconstruct what might have been, but the contents of John Goodlad’s work
suggest America might be an epoch ahead had myopic and politicized results and
policies not prevailed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Part two of this factor
seems to mirror our political milieu:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Extreme partisanship; unwillingness to compromise; dogmatic refusal of
transparency; unwillingness to communicate across education fiefdoms; perhaps
evolution of values and even the meaning of language that makes exchanges for
problem solution turn into warfare; and increasingly dissolution of former
virtues that made self-interest and power trips the stuff of many public school
administrators, college administrators, BOE, and higher education boards of
trustees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Particularly damaging to
American public education is that the above seem to have become endemic in our
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Call it organizational
isolationism, or circling-the wagons, but education enclaves from local schools
and especially their BOE, through college and university administration,
currently demonstrate the incapacity for cross-group communication and problem
solving.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our media have documented
that the US Department of Education and especially its current leadership, have been neither good listeners to systems' feedback, nor receptive to education expert critique of policy. Have our state education bureaucracies been any better?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The long view of public education
reform in this beginning of a new year is that none of the critical factors, effecting
either PreK-12 or higher education quality and performance, have dramatically or
even more than marginally improved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Backing Out of the Looking Glass<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The above arguments dispute
some of today’s education Pollyannaism, that sees our systems now moving to learning,
enlightenment, and goodness. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
has to ponder that Obama/Duncan and the back rooms that have powered present
accountability attempts, may have with utopian visions, but precipitating
unintended consequences, accepted and nurtured a test-based reform activation
model that is flat out dysfunctional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As long as public school success continues to be tautologically
defined by the same standardized testing – supplied by the same
developers and vendors of testing reflecting vested interest – that constitutes its
measurement, the claim is false.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is an obvious mechanism
for objectively and empirically testing present testing initiatives. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It involves creating a consortium
of America’s highest rated foundations/think tanks, with demonstrated
objectivity on the mechanisms for public K-12 assessment.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The mission would be sponsoring a
three-phase higher education-staffed research effort:</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> T</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">o first assemble more robust models of needed learning, by grade band, by knowledge types, free of
political ideology; two, do the meta research needed to create testing
representative of each of those learning models (much already exists but has been with prejudice ignored); and three, execute sample-based field assessments of the various test logics, with
the same rigor and controls already illustrated by accepted NAEP
testing. Standardized test versions are part of the assessment; the question, what parts of more </span><o:p style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">valid learning assessment can they replicate?</span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One hypothesis is that some
to much of present standardized test contents has relevance, but selectively
by grade band, by knowledge type, and by the epistemology that fits the knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A second hypothesis is
that such a research effort would surface more valid and comprehensive
understanding of what constitutes learning, and what configurations are most material
for our evolving economy and society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Almost by definition, the last couple of decades of neural research, implementation still scarce in both K-12 and even higher education pedagogy, would up the game.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The battle, between what education
should produce -- recognition, literacy, explanation, measurement, capacity for prediction, capacity for creativity, intellectual values -- and what has been
occurring in our systems and society, has been captured by analogy in many of the (economic)
assessments of Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no resisting paraphrasing one of Dr. Krugman’s trenchant <u>New York Times</u> editorial offerings, spinning it to reflect our
educational malaise. With apologies:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<i style="color: #161616;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The main point is that we’re looking
at political and educational subcultures in which ideological tenets are simply
not to be questioned, no matter what. The vendor-driven and
psychometrically defined testing is valid no matter what actually happens to the
student’s capacity to critically think and create, classroom teaching without
the ritual mechanics of school of education mantras must be a failure even if
it’s working, and anyone who points out the troubling facts is ipso facto an
enemy.</b></span></i><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Epilog</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span>
Next post will tackle the earlier higher education question: If you wanted to rigorously, and with any hope of measurement success, create a scaling model for our colleges and universities, what factors would you target, what units of analysis would you employ, what variables would you seek to make metrics, and how would you stratify/cluster institutions to allow valid comparison? How would you attempt to combine what is measurable into some composite normative model of institutional quality? How would you accommodate the internal variability in institutional quality? Lastly, how would the modeling and metrics produced be structured and communicated to our potential college matriculates to become more meaningful information for choice?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
RPW<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-41447043332823284452014-12-28T08:15:00.001-05:002014-12-28T15:30:18.051-05:00Assessing US Higher Education: Information, Intimidation, Ignorance, or Insanity?<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The last post of <a href="http://edunationredux.blogspot.com/2014/12/us-higher-education-light-versus_21.html">Edunationredux</a>
offered a partial critique of the Obama/Duncan scheme to rate America's
colleges and universities. Prior national critique reflected almost a "<i>you gotta be kidding</i>" ambience, illuminating the perceived chasm between what Arne Duncan and the US Department of Education are proposing, and anything resembling intelligent social science applied to the measurement task.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Today’s post extends the prior critique, exploring the real measurement chores needed to create valid and reliable ratings of America's colleges and universities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That chasm between the proposal and reality is so great it raises major questions; what conceptual malaise and what leadership degradation have occurred in that Department, who is steering this measurement debacle, and what resources are executing the work. Is the proposal chain-rattling just to get the attention of higher education leadership? If the intent is to actually carry through the scheme, is this another Federal agency that has now lost steerage, and mismatched the resources needed to actually conduct </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">competent education work?</span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="Body" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Post
Critique, Critique</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One tiny slip in the
pronouncement of a functionary in the Department of Education may have given
away the naïveté and slanted thinking footing the current proposal:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the factors allegedly being
considered was how to treat "improvement" as a variable, and presumably
as a simple metric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The statement
infers that the designers of this scheme may see the assessment of our colleges
and universities occupying the same conceptual space as improving test scores
in a public school system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are likely a few community college-scale institutions, close to being simply
extensions of high school level performance, where this may be applicable, but
any resources knowledgeable about the functions within a major university would
deservedly see this as bizarre.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A last retrospective issue is
further scrutiny of the misguided proposal to use beginning salaries of
graduating students as a basis for institutional assessment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This component of the proposal has some
serious logic issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aside from
the nearly impossible chore of equilibrating the professional destinations of
students across institutions to create one valid metric (or even multiple
metrics), and the cognitive error of relating quality to profession sought, a
peek at the distributions of those starting salaries poses an even more
daunting issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Starting salaries
are not distributed normally, but are skewed to the high end. The overwhelming
body of starting salaries is so constrained, the distribution leptokurtic, that
little or any discrimination among most salaries attributable to institutions
could be detected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A pretty cynical outcome of
using the proposed metric(s) for salaries, aside from all other faults, is that
success in that venue would come from maximizing an institution's output of
petroleum engineers, and wiping out the education of all PreK-12 teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the underlying intent of this scheme
is some social engineering to equalize higher education opportunity, and social
and economic states, its extreme liberal designers need to go back to the drawing
board, or better, acquire some higher education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="Body" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Fair
Challenge</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The classic, and legitimate
challenge to last post's critique of what's proposed -- that it is a loser --
is provide a more effective system for assessing our institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The remainder of this post takes a stab
at that challenge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dimensions<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The starting point in this quest
is identical to every legitimate research effort since the Enlightenment:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is the goal, what hypotheses are
to be tested, what question or questions are being posed for answers; what is
the universe from which measurements are sought; what are the variables or
factors requiring measurement, and what are their functional relationships to
the criterion question(s); what are the properties of the variables, in this
instance measurements wanted, i.e., nominal, ordinal, interval, cardinal; what
are the hypothesized or measurable distributions of measurements sought; how do
the error terms intrinsic to all variables fall out, intra-institutional
variance versus inter-institutional variance, driving the comparisons of
institutions or institutional subsets sought; what are the weights of
contributing variables in forming then informing about the differential
effectiveness or qualities of institutions being assessed; and critically, with
a finite set of candidates for positioning, how may the units in the universe
need to be stratified or clustered to minimize confounding of results
attributable to basically different higher education systems being appraised?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Given a US universe of 4,140
institutions of higher education, with internal partitioning that may multiply
the actual units of analysis by levels of magnitude, with
hypothetically complex variable sets driving the criterion effect, the project
is not the simplistic vision of the US Department of Education, revolving
around already extant data, but what is now colloquially termed "big
data:" <i>"...an all-encompassing term for any collection of data
sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process them using
traditional data processing applications. The challenges include analysis,
capture, curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and
privacy violations</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">."</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mission here, assigning performance
ratings to America's colleges and universities, is arguably the very definition
of the analysis challenge described.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Department of Education thinking
is apparently to measure some amalgam of institutional functional performance
and contribution to social goals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Both become subdivided into constituent goals that complicate what is
proposed and currently measured:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For performance, institutional graduation rates overall versus by students'
degree tracks, as well as longitudinally by how the process is finally achieved and the
time involved; the learning effectiveness of what's been acquired along the way
(made more complex when apportioned among multiple disciplines and degree
tracks); the complexity of devising true costs of education delivered, plus the
cogent issue of the productivity of all of the assets and operations incurred
to produce a graduate; and close to the most salient first use of any
assessment, whether the results actually materially impact via improvement the
choice processes of prospects seeking higher education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also ignored in the Department's
rhetoric, the longitudinal complexity of worth of prior learning at exit from
the institution, versus its worth at the various career stages the graduate
experiences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Measurement Factor Complications<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The performance of our
institutions in creating equitable student access may be slightly easier to
access in principle, but introduces major problems in execution:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A large multivariate causal set of
determinants of schools screened, preceding the issue of differential
institutional compliance with equitable admissions, is problematic; the reality
that acceptance of those who might be discriminated is also based on the
failures or successes of our public K-12 systems, long before an institution's
action effecting equity kicks in; and a major barrier to measurement at the
level of the individual student/family is driven by confidentiality
considerations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A pre-collegiate experience case
in point, familial relationship to this writer, is a collegiate freshman at a
major university, majoring in an engineering specialty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Partially because of the 9-12 work in an
effective science high school, this soon-to-be second semester freshman will be
moving into second semester sophomore level academic work with perfect
"A" grades, primed by the prior high school work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adding to the analysis challenge of
assessing institutional performance, then, are the assets/deficits that precede
and impact acceptance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
remedial work impeding, or prior learning permitting accelerated collegiate work,
becomes another complication in assessing collegiate end-game contribution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Another set of factors in
judging performance is the subjectivity of protocols of collegiate grading,
variable among institutions, among schools, among departments, and even among
individual faculty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without some
national, standardized achievement testing, by specific disciplines or academic
track of students, the comparative use of even grades and point averages as
measures of institutional performance add complexity to any rating scheme.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The <a href="http://edunationredux.blogspot.com/2014/12/us-higher-education-light-versus_21.html">prior Edunationredux blog</a>
also unfolded another major constraint, comparison of institutions based on the
proper unit of analysis as well as assuring comparability, rendering the
simplistic measurement chore inferred in the Obama/Duncan thinking the height
of amateurism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still another factor ignored in
the current conceptualization is the role played by geographic and location
factors, perhaps even highly specific location factors related to the
population and cultural composition surrounding a student's residential
assignment, influencing institutional outcomes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But there is another gut issue
that will at present -- and in the absence of never executed benchmark research
on our colleges/universities -- blind side and hamstring the proposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is the core pattern of variance of
any variable or factor used as a basis of measurement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In virtually all diversified and
complex systems (precisely what every major college/university is) there is
leveling of outputs based on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i>
competition. In common sense terms, there may be more variation of performance
within an organization, than among similar organizations, where an attempt is
made to sum or average overall experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
practical significance, with a small bit of coaching, human experts on higher
education can likely identify the better or worse extremities of “high performing” and "low performing" colleges/universities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The in-the-middle
thousands may blur because their performances tend to regress to each stratum's universe
mean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider that in the last
half century no credible college or university has been put out of business
because their outputs were wholly without merit, or their graduates could not
acquire employment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rank Versus Supply Real
Information for Choice<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The commercially hyped
collegiate rating schemes -- <u>U.S. News</u>, <u>Forbes</u>, Princeton, and et
al. -- have been widely criticized for their simplistic foundations, and the
reality that they are minimal discrimination of a complex product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they, along with such counter
productive ratings of “best party school,” are still allegedly used for input
to a critical life decision, an American tragedy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That prompts the leading question:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is the Obama/Duncan strategy embodied in the proposed
rankings one of the worst decisions of this administration, matching or
exceeding even the core ignorance of present punitive-based testing in public
K-12?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would far better choices
have been, for example, the long view with strategic research to field a legitimate
comprehensive rating scheme for our institutions’ multidimensional areas of
performance, call it the 'value-rating' model; or a non-punitive and
affirmative alternative 'value-choice' model, the mission, providing
comprehensive valid and comparable information on all public higher education
institutions, letting the user supply their own criteria for use of the
information for choice of school?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Both example approaches start
with the same research roots:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A priori</i> judgments of the factors
considered central to the quality and equity of higher education delivered,
irrespective of whether those factors are presently quantified; next the
development work is executed to convert those multidimensional factors, by
algorithm or by scaling techniques to create digital metrics for factors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point the approaches bifurcate,
value-choice becoming the issue of creating easily accessible and universal
databases, <span lang="IT">placing </span>them in
"the cloud" readily available online, searchable via criteria
pertinent to the individual collegiate wannabe, or in another possible form as
the material for use of simulation to derive optimal choices for a student.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest of our real world is inundated
with clever "apps," available for even the ubiquitous smart
phone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Publicly accessible
digitally, online, the system offers at low or no cost the structured
information to personally search possible school choices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The values or experiences available
from a candidate school remain the elections of the potential student and
parents, not predetermined by big brother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The second approach --
value-rating -- does carry out the intent of the Obama/Duncan vision, ordinal
rating of institutions, but based on the constituent properties of collegiate
value delivery noted for the first approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What changes, what additional research is needed? One model for the second approach might
be structured as follows:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
starting point is a quota sample from America's colleges/universities serving
as the development base, the sample reflecting meaningful categorizations of
our institutions; for factors presumed causal for quality and equitable
delivery by an institution, break out programs or tracks that
constitute legitimate units of analysis; use a "human expert model" of
decision making to create criterion positioning of the sample organizations,
for the unit of analysis, by the various factors; then the goodness of fit is tested between metrics
devised and expert positioning of all factors/units of analysis, mathematically determining the
salience and weighting of factors that fit expert prediction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lastly, the metrics proving predictive are tested
on a second comparable sample of our institutions for verification.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are already out there, in
the mass of college/university data banked on institutions' web sites, and made
available in detail by a plethora of both public and private sector
organizations, the raw data to start building either of the above
approaches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of our
institutions are working with their own game plans, but the composite of data
generated could be a starting point, for example, for building a universal
higher education database serving the value-choice approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A tragedy of our present society is
that a Bill Gates, instead of funding programs designed to beat on our public
schools with testing, apparently lacked the perspicacity to pursue even his own
suite of digital experiences to fund and guide the assembly of a suitable
higher education national database?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Can the value-ranking model
actually be executed?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
arguable that it already has been in part, that the logic employed by Tom
Peters and his associates in creating the corporate effort, <u><a href="http://tompeters.com/writing/books/">In Search of Excellence</a></u>, is an early precursor to that approach; it stopped short of seeking to
quantify determinants of excellence, but the core idea was successful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using the power of that same Federal
funding to our colleges/universities serves as an incentive to engage our
universities in needed research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is a far better use of the incentive than seeking to intimidate our
institutions into change by ranking linked to punitive reductions in
funding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lastly, you are
developing metrics that are defined by the real measurement challenge, and not
by what was developed for other purposes or is simply convenient.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="Body" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Conclusion</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Historically, toward the end of
last century, one of the Presidential Commissions on Higher Education offered
the White House and our higher education community very practical
recommendations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They encompassed
reducing higher education costs, reforming funding of tuition and other costs
of a degree, and cooperation among all of our post-secondary schools to adopt a
common set of parameters making available to America's families uniform ways to
assess collegiate choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both our
college/university leaderships, and our political system quickly rejected all
three sets of well-reasoned recommendations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, moving either of the above approaches, or anything
resembling them to a productive destination would require some new mindsets,
among our higher education institutions, and in Federal education leadership's
sensitivity to genuine national needs over liberal dreaming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Counterpoint is that some of our
colleges and universities, presumably “reading the room,” have already initiated
innovative changes in their collegiate instruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reported in Saturday’s <u>New York Times</u>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/business/mba-programs-start-to-follow-silicon-valley-into-the-data-age.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad">changes are occurring in B-schools’ MBA programs</a> -- to emulate the rapidity of change
and experimentation from Silicon Valley – and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/us/college-science-classes-failure-rates-soar-go-back-to-drawing-board.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad">in basic collegiate science courses</a> to move from lecture modes to high student involvement and problem
solving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Long valid patterns of
diffusion of innovation will change higher education, even as the critically
deficient Obama/Duncan rating scheme is stumbling out of the starting
gate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps merely the threat of
that Federal ‘Franken data’ has stimulated collegiate action?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Incredibly cynical albeit clever i</span>f true; but if accurate the rest of program should be
given a quick burial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>On real inspection the proposed
Department of Education rating scheme regardless of intentions simply reeks of ignorance and flawed
understanding of both complex academic organizational behavior, of advanced
learning, and of the most basic principles of inquiry and social science
explanation. Their scheme could,
analogically, be compared to trying to build a quantum computer using some AA
batteries, a photo transistor, a couple of resistors/capacitors, and some wire
scrounged from the ties used on garbage bags. The present scheme, even if Machiavellian, as well as mirroring the mental set that any solution has to
be punitive, is wholly unworthy of a Federal education function critical to our nation,
and is condemnation of the current resources managing that agency.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>Epilog</i></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The next issues of Educationredux will move into challenges and opportunities throughout US higher education that might be areas for measured change along with possible innovations. First out of the chute will be the footers for more productive higher education experiences -- bridging the chasm between our K-12, especially 9-12 school outputs, and the incoming requirements for collegiate success -- allowing passage through collegiate work with greater learning effect, in shorter periods of time, and therefore with less investment.</i></span></div>
</div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-71169568220967011272014-12-21T17:35:00.000-05:002014-12-21T20:59:12.094-05:00US Higher Education: The Light Versus Enlightenment?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Obama Administration, fronted by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, having virtually emasculated the chances for intelligent reform of US public schools by dogmatically and despotically backing test-based alleged “corporate reform” — from its inception a cultural throwback view of our schools’ issues, and dedicated to ‘test and punish’ — is now switching venues. Spoiler alert: Our system of US higher education may need to erect real battlements around their academic enclaves to fend off a horde of metric trolls.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For readers who have been preoccupied with trying to survive Black Friday and the need to gift those dear, what the US Department of Education is proposing to launch, allegedly in 2015, is a rating scheme for America’s 4,140 colleges and universities. Here are the available details about that intent:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Rating Scheme</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the table thus far from Duncan and company:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Schools would be rated as “high performers,” or “low performers,” or “in the middle.” (Note: The critique invited by the overwhelming sophistication of this scheme is an immediate temptation, but assessment will wait for the whole story.)</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The reasoning, and justification for Federal intervention, is allegedly assessment of institutions with students receiving federal student aid.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Allegedly being considered: Which metrics; how to give credit for improvement; meaning and span of “in the middle;” a single composite rating, or multiple ratings for an institution?</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Factors in the scheme: Accessibility — number of Pell Grant students, family contributions to tuition, student share whose parents did not attend college (what these have to do with educational performance seems a mystery); affordability — average net price, and ANP for families by income level; outcomes — graduation rates, transfer rates, grad school attendance, loan repayment, and “labor market success” (the latter apparently meaning graduates' beginning earnings, but a better index in today's economy might be time to acquire initial employment, or the discount in salary taken from the target profession's norm to acquire any job).</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The last item to drop, ratings will allegedly be calculated separately for institutions segmented into homogeneous clusters. An immediate observation is that even the simple factors noted — apparently there not because they are the most salient measures, but happen to be available as data — if they are probed are not at all simple. Established in prior work by our institutions themselves, what seems straightforward, e. g., even average net price for an institutions’ students varies, with real import depending on how costs are staged or offset, and services delivered.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Many of the leaders of our colleges and universities have already weighed in on the cogency of these proposals. Not unexpectedly, most of the comments, while critical of the proposed mechanisms, have been constrained or politically correct. Our colleges and universities in top tiers are virtually unanimously led by smart people; it is a reasonable proposition that were the faculty/research smarts encompassed by our best 100, or even a dozen excellent institutions, let loose on the validity and reliability of this proposal, the results might be a little fly ash remaining.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Educationredux readers will have to be content with a quick pass at the issues embedded in this scheme; Christmas would intervene were the whole enchilada attempted in one sitting. Titles for the issues perceived include: Purpose of the ratings, and the core relevance of the proposed rankings; using ‘what’s out there,’ versus researching and designing metrics that are specific and valid; and the troubled path this proposal will encounter if its creators comprehend and apply the concept of “unit of analysis” that foots all science.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Purpose</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The alleged purpose of the ratings is what; education quality, social equality, turning out the right human resources, deeply informed candidates, and all with a vague ordinal depiction of our colleges/universities? The scheme as outlined so far is a patchwork of opportunistic measures, actually a crude multi-dimensional conceptualization; but purporting to offer information suitable for real world discrimination for life-modifying choices. This scheme’s scope beggars the well developed work in marketing to develop multi-dimensional scaling of single brands. To even consider simple ordinal positioning or ranking, i.e., comparative assignment of institutions of the complexity we have, ranges from magical thinking to a fool’s errand.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Using New Graduates' Earnings</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This item gobsmacks even common sense, and raises the question of the core competence of those developing this scheme. The determinants of beginning graduate salaries are complex, are a function of the subject matter specialization marketed, and are variably impacted by transitory demand versus supply of workplace candidates. Beginning salaries are related to mid-career earnings, but not perfectly, and will this Duncanian dysfunctional rating factor wait for promulgation until the next 20 years’ experience of those graduates is logged? Lastly, but critically, those salaries may have nothing to contribute to assessing the worth of either the graduates, or their preparation for practice, to our economy or society. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How many more of the finance droids, that brought the US the financial meltdown, does our nation really need? Or how many CEOs can the system support? Versus how many more really good teachers, K-12, and post-secondary instructors, does this nation really need? The proposed ratings scheme flips the world upside down. It also says that Mr. Duncan, who has never graced a real classroom, or had an education about education, or has questionably matured beyond an extreme liberal visitor to “Alice in (education) Wonderland,” needs to find a new quixotic pursuit. Perhaps he could link arms with Bill Gates, extinguish two misdirected blow-torches destroying rational US public education.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Unit of Analysis and Those Clusters</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The readiness of this concept for prime time is already questionable simply based on the above issues. The notion of creating a compensatory fix for inequities, by assigning metrics to clusters of institutions judged to be comparable, may constitute the most unreasonable part of the scheme among a litany of the unreasonable. There are two issues: What is the proper “unit of analysis” for assembling metrics; and what happens to the set when that unit becomes a valid one?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Saying you are going to rate a higher education institution on a few metrics is roughly the equivalent of saying you are going to assign one measure of assessment to, for example, the qualities of products in an Amazon warehouse. A newly minted college graduate may walk through a common commencement exercise, but the education represented issued from some specific track within that academic labyrinth. Each track could be considered the proper unit of analysis, accumulated by a scheme and weighting that would metaphorically mirror putting a human on Mars. Even going up another level of aggregation may work for valid metrics, but the reality of that analysis challenge doesn’t assuage much. Here’s one example of the challenge you face in trying to decide how to assess one institution — it is one intimately familiar, but also representative of many in the US — Indiana University.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Indiana University (IU) has two main campuses, Bloomington and Indianapolis, different academic environments. It has six regional campuses. The Bloomington campus has 14 separate schools plus a College of Arts and Science. All 15 major units have multiple departments, multiple faculties, heterogeneous curricula (and some institutions differential tuition) — that factually determine the quality of a degree — with 180 majors, in 157 departments, representing 330 degree programs. The other campuses have variable presence of the same venues, plus where a campus is a joint IU-Purdue campus, there may be additional departments representing engineering, nursing, et al.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So the question is: What is the effective and defensible unit of analysis? If it is the substantive track the student takes, and if even our 629 public 4-year institutions have an approximation of the above internal structure, the analysis chore for that subset masses up to over 200,000 unique entities to be judged.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; text-align: start;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="text-align: start;">But perhaps the most elemental critique of this Obama/Duncan odyssey is a classic used in virtually every operations research course ever offered, what is termed “the drunkard’s search.” Referenced by philosopher Abraham Kaplan (author of a text used extensively in higher education research courses, </span><u style="text-align: start;">The Conduct of Inquiry</u><span style="text-align: start;">), it is his observation that: <i>“Much effort…in behavioral science itself, is vitiated, in my opinion, by the principle of the drunkard’s search: There is the story of a drunkard, searching under a lamp for his house key, which he dropped some distance away. Asked why he didn’t look where he dropped it, he replied ‘It’s lighter here!’”</i></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lastly, a challenge to the creators of this scheme to actually employ some of the science of measurement that has accumulated since Descartes, LaPlace, Pascal, Fermat, et al., roamed the historical halls of academe, through contemporary expertise: Will the team developing this scheme even tap the most rudimentary pretest of its metrics; putting a test run of their results up against the expert judgements of a panel of our best and brightest, to see if their metrics can replicate the arguably informed and sophisticated professional judgements of quality of a cross section of institutions? The prudent advice is, don’t try to hold your breath for the pretest.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tentative Conclusions</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">American post-secondary institutions, especially the two-year and four-year variety that lack quality accreditation, or are isolated academically from primary campuses, and that lack the internal controls on faculty quality that are embedded in mainstream institutions, are most in need of assessment for the quality of outputs. But a material fraction, of our almost 2,500 4-year public and private colleges/universities, probably internally does more work on maintaining learning quality than the US Department of Education does to police their own cognitive integrity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All of America’s colleges and universities, however, may be candidates for inspection for symptoms of “</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Baumol’s cost disease</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">,” referencing failure to aggressively seek functional productivity increases over decades. And some of the mainstream campuses we all relate to may have components that have decayed, or are still fielding bricks-and-mortar excesses. But what appears very clear is, this scheme by the Obama Administration is not a viable cure for any part of America's post-secondary education assessment needs; it comes closer to being another dose of Federal snake-oil.</span></div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-81690574095090935862014-10-26T16:15:00.000-04:002014-10-27T06:22:59.818-04:00US Post-Secondary Education: Higher or Space Cadets?<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So
begins a journey to try to understand how America’s very diverse institutions
of higher education are positioned to bridge the chasm between what issues from
US public high schools, and our nation’s demand for knowledge evolution and educational
prowess for the next decades. The
attempt is footed by a quarter century in its classrooms and councils, another dozen years hiring its products, but
still reflects the humility of always being a student of those complex learning
communities that have evolved over a millennium (the first university attributed
to the University of Bologna, 1088).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Worth
contrast in this blog’s transition from public K-12, consider that our US
public schools, even stretching their formation to seeds in the late 1800s, are
less than 120-130 years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In
a prior post, copied to some of you, educator Dr. Grant Wiggins rather
aggressively took to task our high school teachers for what he termed
“<i><a href="http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/dereliction-of-duty-by-hs-teachers/">dereliction of duty</a></i>” in preparing their students for the college academic
experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While his facts from
an ACT survey may well be broadly representative of too much of present public
9-12 curricula, and provisionally much pedagogy employed, Wiggins’ arguments
fatally ignored that there are two sides to the argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Personally experienced and noted in the
writer’s early faculty years, our colleges and universities are as fully
culpable in those periodic failures as our public high schools, perhaps more
so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It probably isn’t too strong
an assertion, that our college and university denizens are contemptuous of, or
simply ignore both public K-12 and even 9-12 processes, as well as our
prospective K-12 educators launching from frequently demeaned collegiate schools
of education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Whether
this chasm between higher education and public schools is rooted in differential history, or a
function of the knowledge and pedagogy differentials, the social gap is disconnect that has
damaged the mission of creating an educated citizenry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> There is another theory that what is taught at the 9-12 level is inherently incomplete or insufficient hence wrong as learning, because that environment and student maturation preclude necessary depth and complexity of explanation; the argument proceeds that is expected, to be modified in subsequent learning. Irrespective, t</span>his failed bridge between secondary
and post-secondary is just one of the issues to be pursued in future posts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How
to get a handle on any reasonable assessment of American colleges and
universities is, of course, a bit of a bear; a procession of <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12802">presidential commissions on higher education</a>, dating from their inauguration by former
President Harry Truman, post WWII, plus numerous other commissions and national
study groups, have tried with limited success to encompass the genre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In turn, the post WWII influx of new
numbers of college matriculants from the GI Bill changed the game, as has the evolution of
community colleges and regional campuses that frequently lack the quality
assurance processes built into traditional academic faculties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since
that same time period some major shifts in policy, and especially funding of higher education have profoundly effected all public institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More to be said on that issue, but a
broad effect over a half century has been the eroded link between funding and
oversight of those institutions:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Federal funding, especially of research has been a game changer;
declines in state funding of originally state institutions have allowed evasion
of much state governmental oversight; and increasingly both private sector
endowments, and cooperative corporate research and private sector education
programs have created a new and potent stake holder that impacts institutional
policies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All are possible future
topics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Seeking
that “handle,” one approach is to go back to basics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the most elemental level, our higher education
institutions can be viewed as a black box, receiving inputs of students,
running a gamut of processes, and hopefully ejecting a modified human resource
equipped better to perform as a productive citizen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That model is a bit primitive, a bit like building a modern
vehicle out of Legos; or for a controversial contemporary education example,
using VAM (value added measurement) of student scores on standardized tests to
assess K-12 teacher performance in creating learning experiences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
problems with the model:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
inputs are diverse, ranging from every cultural and socioeconomic variant
through the preparedness for post-secondary work; the black box is a very
complex organizational form, that doesn’t conform to any simplistic management
model, and contains sub-organizations, within sub-organizations, all varying
with disciplinary contents and mission, e.g., education versus research versus
public service; all with variance in sub-group governance and values; the
processes for creating learning are equally diverse, differing materially from
K-12 because there are few unifying controls on curricula, or preparation for
the classroom, or in management of professorial resources, or even in values
across disciplines; collegiate organization is typically by discipline, those
divisions becoming cultural islands; hence, the processes that originate in the
classroom can be as divergent as the individual faculty member.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The criteria for burping out a graduate
vary with students’ occupational or further education destinations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no common learning or graduation
test.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How
have these overall models panned out?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Criticism is obviously not hard to come by:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>UNC, recently reported, created fake courses for 18 years to
support sports teams; in a 2011 book, <u><a href="http://www.elegantbrain.com/edu4/classes/readings/depository/TNS_560/outcomes/rees_review_aru_rok.pdf">Academically Adrift</a></u>, sociologists
Arum and Roksa reported tracking over 1,600 students during college, and over
1,000 for a subsequent two years – their overall conclusion was that in four
years students’ acquired knowledge changed little.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The reader can
judge. Tuition at US four-year
institutions overall, for the last dozen years, has increased +69 percent in
current dollars compared to an overall CPI change of +27 percent in the same
period. Only 56 percent of US college/university
students currently graduate within six years. From the aforementioned 1946 Truman Presidential Commission
on Higher Education, roughly two-thirds of its recommendations have never been
adopted by our institutions in almost 70 years, fewer from subsequent
commissions. The presidential
commission of former President H. W. George Bush, produced a 1990 draft report
that was subsequently quashed, never to be seen again. Its concluding paragraph may have been
the reason; from a learned group that included multiple Nobel Laureates, that
paragraph stated, “<i>American colleges and universities are riddled with dry
rot</i>.” Add from the work by Arum
and Roksa, cited above: “<span style="color: #262626;"><i>…dismaying: Of the students who didn't go immediately into
graduate school, slightly more than a quarter earned above $40,000 a year in a
full-time job two years after graduation. Nearly three-quarters relied on their
parents for at least some financial assistance</i>.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But simultaneously
our colleges and universities have graduated millions of graduates who have
been equipped to professionally succeed, despite the exceptional glitches to be
expected among 4,140 institutions currently annually graduating 1.8MM with
four-year degrees, and another 1MM with two-year associate degrees.<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Add, American higher education institutions are
responsible for 14 percent of total US R&D expenditures, arguably
equivalent invention, and far greater levels of if not most of contemporary knowledge
development.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: #262626;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Reform
our system of higher education; a question up for grabs?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2014-15/world-ranking?gclid=CLqW6ou-ysECFQ0oaQod5nMAxg">Our top universities still score</a> eight
places in the world’s top ten list, and represent a fifth of the top 100 in the
world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The key implications then
for reform appear to focus on:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
equitable accessibility of our collegiate schools to all qualified; performance
in holding and graduating those who enter; the productivity of those
institutions’ deployment of assets; finding mechanisms to reflect the
interdependencies between higher education and institutions both feeding it and
employing its graduates; given the growth in size and complexity of our
institutions, whether traditional academic organizational structure needs
updating; whether present board/trustee oversight is now intellectually
adequate for oversight, and whether other infrastructures are needed; and the
wisdom of present academic leadership scenarios for future demands on higher
learning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One
assertion that appears defensible, reforming our colleges and universities if
necessary does not appear to be the stuff of public K-12 reform; indeed, the
prospect of the crudity of present reform tactics being employed in that venue, including the
proposed but ill-conceived Obama/Duncan ranking schemes, is venal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There
appears grist for future Edunationredux blogs, and room for debate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-65327957760185980272014-10-04T16:54:00.000-04:002014-10-06T08:07:09.862-04:00Public School Reform: Micro – Macro?<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Introduction</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The progression of large-scale
social changes as in natural systems tends to move from the relatively simple
to the complex and disorganized.
With that complexity comes a form of cultural myopia: “…<span style="color: #2a2c2f;">information
entering into the colonized mind is focused solely through a limited worldview,
and anything existing outside of that limited worldview cannot be seen with
clarity.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the
case of the 35 years of alleged “corporate reform” of America’s public K-12
schools, this has translated over time into two perceptual tendencies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One has been to accept as given and let
drift into the background the core issues that prompted what was essentially a
revolt against public education as it had evolved through the early 1980s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second developed systemically with
the increasing participation of those seeking prosecution of our schools, and
in the consequent expansion of issues that are seen as included in that quest
for reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, the
proliferation of isolated or one-note items embroiled in reform quickly drives
out or numerically submerges the core things that originally footed reform.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Today’s
post dives under that barrage of localized or parochial material that has accumulated
documenting the case for school change, as well as the now increasing evidence
of public and system member pushback.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Too much of current rhetoric, by becoming highly relevant to only
subsets of the whole school reform picture, diverts attention from those macro
issues that have driven the attacks on US public schools.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Core
Questions</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There
are five questions or footers for virtually all of current detail:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(1) Why did “corporate reform” launch,
recognizing the key early players; (2) how did the current cast of reform advocates
develop, and even polar values come to drive present tactics; (3) why
standardized testing fails as the weapon of choice to try to force school change; (4)
how have US public systems overall responded to the attack on their
performance; and (5) how did a very large US human resource sub-population of
teachers (3.1+MM) become the reform targets, versus statutorily accountable
state education departments, public school administrators (215+K), and
somewhere in excess of 80K sworn BOE members?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Why
Reform?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In
practically complete evasion of this most basic question, the apparent answer
is, because the private sector consumers of the human resources being churned
out by our public schools concluded that the public systems were failing their
educational mission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Retrospectively, there were few particulars offered by the early leaders
of a reform charge, just ramped up presentation of an ideology built around inadequate
education coupled with public systems’ alleged refusal of accountability for learning
deficits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A serious subtext, even
now spoken only in restrained tones, was an alleged belief that our overall
public systems were explicitly advocating extreme liberal values, counter to
many private sector beliefs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the
other side of the future skirmish line, our nation’s overall public education
enclaves were doing pretty much all of that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Parenthetically, the counterpoint is what is occurring
today in a Colorado BOE, where three extreme right wing board members are
dogmatically trying to install an opposite, self-gratuitous political correctness
to an AP curriculum for history; no less egregious than earlier overall public
system attempts to install certain liberal values.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That, in turn, was a legacy of schools of education that had
by that point chosen self-righteousness over the nation’s learning missions. Absorbing
and relaying to nascent teachers contemporary views of learning, and experimentally-derived models of "what works," were suppressed
or ignored; instead those programs continued to float deductive concepts and install a teacher self-image.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It surfaces the old anthem, “you gets
what you pays for.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #2a2c2f;">The initiation
acts of the reformers were detailed in an <a href="http://edunationredux.blogspot.com/2013/12/public-k-12-reform-past-in-its-future.html">earlier blog post</a>, but key players
were the Business Roundtable, and a former IBM CEO, </span>with a
selling effort that brought on board the National Governors Association (NGA),
dominated by right wing views, and ALEC, the conservative legislative lobbying
organization creating legislation for conservative state legislatures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Subsequently, the Common Core State
Standards Initiative (CCSSI) issued via the NGA, with an anonymous group of
unknown academic competence creating an alleged “Common Core.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is now known is that the group
creating those alleged standards was populated with few educators, many
political representatives, and chaired by the present CEO of a testing company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A group supposed to review the “Core”
was identified, and consisted of some of our educational representation at best
riddled with professional mediocrity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In sum, the nation’s “best and brightest” were not enlisted to either provide
or vet those standards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Following years of under the
table lobbying, and under the Reagan Administration, that reform agenda finally
issued first as a call to action, “A Nation at Risk” (ANAR); then with the Bush
Administration as the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) update of the “Elementary
and Secondary Education Act” (ESEA).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A reading of the original language of NCLB leaves little doubt that the
titling was pure hype and deceptive, and the purpose of the model was creating
failure modes for public schools that would allow conscription of their assets
for conversion into vouchers and charter schools using public tax dollars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>NCLB was a highly political act, the
first round in attempts to privatize our public systems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even by the middle of last
decade, the public was barely cognizant of what had been imposed on our nation,
and even less celebratory, many of our public schools and their administrations
were in their own parochial and self-righteous zones, totally oblivious to what
was coming at their students and teachers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Reform Adversaries?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Corporate reform” started with
the top 100 CEOs in the US, but quickly moved into a political venue, with the
Cheneys prominent in the early attacks. Then advocacy was fully linked politically,
frequently quietly at the time, by the plurality of Republican governors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One example is Ohio, where a back door
into Ohio’s Department of Education was accessible for those pioneering charter
schools, and as early as the 1990s and virtually unseen by most, that format
was being peddled to a gullible Ohio public as “community schools.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overwhelmingly, these schools were
accompanied by corrupted promotion and payments to “charter consultants.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some audaciously claimed actual
identification with the ODOE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many
of these charters are now either failed, or have seen managements prosecuted
for corrupt practices, and most constitute the bottom of the barrel of Ohio
K-12 education performance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nationally,
a platoon of opportunists joined the reform bandwagon, including Michelle Rhee,
Jeb Bush, Joel Klein, Wendy Kopp with an allegedly righteous but misdirected “Teach for
America” (TFA), and to America’s misfortune, scion of the “billionaires boys
club,” Bill Gates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is arguable
that Mr. Gates (who paradoxically never actually finished an education) has operated with the sincere belief that his intrusive intervention and use of wealth -- funding
reform initiatives, standardized testing expansion, VAM attacks on teachers,
the CCSSI “Common Core” installation among the states, and now pushy advocacy of at
best a “CliffsNotes” view of the history of the universe -- were in the nation’s
interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is also arguable that
Mr. Gates’ ignorance, arrogance, and misplaced intrusion in public education
has deepened the school-reform divide, and complicated rather than assuaged the
process for constructive US public school change.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lastly,
the dark underbelly of present reform is the phalanx of private sector textbook
and testing companies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter
have been culpable in creating the need for public school reform for at least a
half century, unchecked by any real oversight, institutional or
governmental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This set of players
must be labeled as some of the most destructive corporate entities in our
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Worse, they have become uninvited
surrogates for legitimate scholarship in defining what is being tested K-12,
and by virtue of that intrusion defining what is considered knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is outrageous for a society
honoring reason, science, and objectivity of inquiry, threatening America’s
future standing as an educated society.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
list of destructive players continues, however, and goes bipartisan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Covered in prior posts, Mr. Obama
has been blatantly hypocritical in prescriptions for reform, and has virtually
destroyed the US Department of Education with the continued appointment of Arne
Duncan as its Secretary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Parenthetically
and ironically, former President Reagan would have been proud of the
service.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It remains something of
a mystery why Obama/Duncan have continued (linking arms with the worst of the
right wing) to prosecute alleged reform, prosecution of NCLB, and a hopelessly
bureaucratic and deceptive “Race to the Top” with billion dollar bribery of our
states to continue to press standardized testing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Testing,
Testing, Testing?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There
has been so much reported on the standardized testing being employed K-12 that
it likely can’t be embellished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
of the critique demonstrating that the testing model is either ineffective in
creating higher order learning, or even destructive of it, is
unassailable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The logic for
present testing is simply wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But there are two different negatives operating at the roots of
testing-driven alleged reform.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First,
there is an elephant in the room that is being ignored in all of the minutiae –
the core logic of the entire test motif as the backbone of school
accountability and alleged search for performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why is
the entire test logic being employed, presumed the vehicle for accounting for
performance quality, using quality assessment logic that was obsolete decades
ago to achieve quality assurance, and that wouldn’t be employed by any
contemporary US private sector enterprise in this century?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The resultant
hypocrisy of every niche of reform prosecution is mind boggling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quality assurance in this century is
based on controlling the processes that create entity quality, not on
destructive or post-creation testing of a product long after it is timely or
efficient to catch failures of quality in action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bottom line, it has never been about testing per se, but
about the intelligence in how testing is employed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simply, even present formulaic testing is kosher were it
being employed at the locus of learning, designed by those responsible for that
learning, and being employed as a formative device.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ignorance of present
reform leadership is breathtaking and challenges credulity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
second testing issue simply destroys what is assumed to be the Administration’s
semi-delusional motivation for reform – trying to in any tactical time frame
erase learning deficits attributable to racial, economic, familial, and
cultural differences among the nation’s children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Multiple studies have demonstrated that especially early
grade standardized testing of children reflects more frequently their incoming and residual backgrounds defined above, versus assessing classroom effects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The result is that effective testing of
children with those differential attributes would need to follow a different
course; one size does not fit all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hence,
present undifferentiated standardized testing becomes a counter-productive, if
not destructive monolithic device in trying to boost learning among
disadvantaged students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
not a new or original concept; see the extensive work of Harvard
education professor, Howard Gardner, on multiple intelligences, earlier sidetracked
by more educational naivety, but <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/01/howard-gardner-creator-of-multiple-intelligences-theory-launches-new-project-on-good-education/">now being revisited</a> in its proper not
revisionist form.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When
what is tested with present modeling, now massively deployed, defines what is
being taught, and that in turn defines what is knowledge in America, the nation
is in far greater trouble than an unfavorable comparison with other nations in
the results of the PISA testing of students. The only good news is that objections to testing overkill are <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/06/unions-say-they-will-back-teachers-who-refuse-to-administer-mandated-standardized-tests-to-students/">gaining national traction</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Public
School Sponges</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A
factor so obvious, but seemingly oblivious to our reform remonstraters, is the
capacity our public systems have demonstrated to go from simply ignoring or
denying that “corporate reform” exists, and that they are still under attack,
to going venal by exhibiting more creativity in devising ways to cheat on that
testing than it would have taken to launch self-reform.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In
this milieu, there are a few exemplary public systems, that with courage and a
‘stick it somewhere’ attitude toward the reform vultures, that have creatively
changed their own classroom models, and advanced critical thinking and
learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The vast majority of our
public schools have simply hunkered down, some too thick or self-centric to
even acknowledge they’re under attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A strategy has been to simply game the testing to make it something
doable without triggering any self-assessment of why they are being bombed with
the testing weapon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The resultant
administrative malfeasance, not primarily our public system teachers, is the
culprit but still unrecognized, or at least only grudgingly acknowledged and
virtually untouched by alleged reform.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our
overall public K-12 systems precipitated the present reform war, and now are
extending it by reticence or dogmatism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Their failure overall to get around cultural myopia, and offset a
century of self-righteousness and perceived entitlement, is now the fuel that
is extending reform threats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
this is happening, while part of our public, increasingly our parents, even
their students, are showing more awareness of the threat to future learning, is
wholesale indictment of much present public school leadership.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Roots of School Dysfunction?</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When
you dig for answers to why America’s public schools created the environment for
“corporate reform,” then dig some more, the least referenced causal factor in
this 35 year societal debacle is likely the most important. That factor is our
obsolete and dysfunctional schools of education, not universally, but with only
few exceptions the schools with roots in the original “normal” schools of early
last century, or most states’ university-associated schools of education.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As one
critic put it, our “schools of education think they own America’s public K-12
schools.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, most of our
schools of education should be candidates for dissolution, and a new
start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have created and
fostered a faulty logic of learning for a century, have both failed to adopt the
results of accumulating neural research to amend flawed deductive methods, and
created faculties not competent to research learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It takes very little research to find that other nations' educators, for example in the key reform targets of literacy and numeracy, have
gone way beyond the US in developing the underlying theories of human perception
and cognition that foot teaching to achieve those goals.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But
the indictment gets worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Factually,
our schools of education have consistently attracted the intellectual bottom
one-third of the barrel of college students, pragmatically defining most of our
present teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without almost
immediate change in that teacher recruiting and education system, or some
drastic change in local systems’ further education of their teachers, it will also
define the next generation of US public school teachers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having
failed that basic training, along with failure to create preparation for
competent school administration with awareness of contemporary organizational
behavior, they have set up the present mess of public schools being unethically
and ineptly guided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The not
politically correct bottom line; our public schools are staffed with the
intellectually weakest outputs of our colleges. They are being managed by resources
with no better and frequently worse credentials, and who may be motivated by
factors that have nothing to do with most teachers’ still wholly sincere
reasons for choosing the profession.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
place where public school reform should have begun is with the leadership of
our public systems, the real responsible and accountable for school failure to
educate for this century and beyond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The proverb, “the fish rots from the head down,” could be applied to a
fair fraction of current public school leadership.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Digging
Very Deep</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
OECD’s PISA international testing of public school secondary students is real
enough, and likely accurately predicts that overall America’s public systems
are turning out products who are now behind some other nations in learning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was not true historically, and it
may well be that America’s perceived decline is attributable to other nations’
progress as well as need for US absolute improvement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as both economic and scientific performance world-wide
becomes more homogeneous, it still demands that US schools find paths to create
their own internal improvements in learning.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2c2f;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One
wishes that improvement in America’s capacity to compete and function with
societal excellence was the overriding thrust of present “corporate reform.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Possibly early on in the challenges to
public K-12 it may have been, with the better of our corporate community
initiating the charge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as the
movement became more politicized in the last and this decade, there is a
suspicion that motivations for reform became blurred.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is a cynical point of view, but it is also a
credible assessment: That far too much of present public school reform is
being pushed simplistically to try to reassert American exceptionalism in world
testing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the extent that is
occurring, it is ignorant selfishness. The latter because major gains are
being sought in 'our reformers’ time,' with little or no strategic
awareness of the downstream strategic costs to the nation and its children,
potentially intellectually and professionally depreciated by the present
standardized testing to achieve myopic learning gains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If there is a kernel of truth in this point of view,
there is even a stronger case to assert that any real public school reform will
need to blossom grass roots, propagated from within our local systems, or at
least be coextensive with different reform modes and from better angels in our
states, in the USDOE, and from our universities.</span></div>
Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5573906081673296456.post-26134575264544751052014-10-04T16:53:00.002-04:002014-10-06T08:02:03.404-04:00Some Old and New Public School Reform “Straight Talk” <div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Forward</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over two decades of not terribly tranquil senior management — spanning the academic version learning you don’t herd professors, through a private sector turn-around and a high tech start-up — some critical experiential learning was installed. That was, that too many managements spent too much energy and time pushing minutiae. The concept applies to present public school alleged reform; witness reform zealots as well as inept school management stomping on test and bureaucratic ants while metaphorically rogue elephants as well as some intellectually challenged jackasses roam the halls.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are a small number of genuinely critical factors in the present public school reform war; they are: A chunk of education history, that failing retrieval, is like the proverb doomed to be repeated; the critically deficient system for oversight of most US public systems; and the lessons from properly viewing any complex system, that change is neither for the timid nor those seeking instant gratification. A few more biggies are out there deferred for now, but they don’t include standardized testing, VAM inaccuracy, phony accountability, or firing teachers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Following are amended versions of two prior 2012 Edunationredux posts, plus note of the above third cited factor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Factor One: Edunationredux April 4, 2012 - Where Are We?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Not in a good place, and pushback isn't happening fast enough to potentially brake before the cliff.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Saturday's (March 31, 2012) <u>The </u></span><u style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Washington Post</u><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, "The Answer Sheet," presented contrasting tones. Stanford Professor of Education </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/education-and-the-income-gap-darling-hammond/2012/04/26/gIQAHn0LkT_blog.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Linda Darling-Hammond</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, an alleged champion of public education, and advisor to Mr. Obama before his election, mechanically repeated the platitudinous squibs well known for over a decade, that income and cultural differences among schools and students have more to do with performance than what are presently being institutionalized as reforms. Apparently, neither Mr. Obama nor his subsequent attack leader, Mr. Duncan, registered the message, then, or since.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Churned up in a related search, Indiana University's "Center for Evaluation and Education Policy" at </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">this century's turn </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">reported the results of a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the income/culture-performance question, inferring that most of the variation in public schools' performances could be statistically linked to demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural attributes of their participants. Also reported at the old stomping grounds, and also over a decade ago, a meticulous review of research on classroom teaching methods, indicating that little of the experimental results purported to be the definitive "methods" guides for public K-12 classrooms reflected fully defensible research or analytical techniques.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But NCLB, RTTT, standardized testing, and VAM have moved the goalposts and improved scoring, right? Another tidbit reported that hasn't received much attention by its state's press, dated April 2012: "...25 percent of Indiana's students passing its Core 40 testing (Indiana's graduation test) require remedial course work entering postsecondary work."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If that isn't straight enough, continue reading.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Duncan Disaster</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At the top of the present mess is an educationally delusional, politically hardened, or just hypocritical Arne Duncan, who should be removed from the U.S. Department of Education’s head shed, forthwith, and with prejudice. “The Answer Sheet” made the case for </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">impeaching his leadership</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Naïve thinking?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A property of virtually all of the critique of standardized testing being floated revolves around the value judgment that it is testing various wrong things – test validity – or that the testing is unreliable. Legitimate research of present standardized testing suggests both cases can be made, but the roots of an entire dysfunctional movement, imposed so aggressively and with so little intelligent deliberation, go much deeper than failure or perversion of the psychometrics that allegedly underpin the tests. One has to start with basic causes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first observation will certainly not be popular with many of those in public education finally awakening and registering current reality, that one intent of the testing mechanisms being hustled is to push public K-12 out of the education business. If you are one of those late bloomers, let's be clear, that is one of the goals of some fraction of the shadowy and diverse origins of present testing; the goal is privatization of K-12 in the misguided belief that “markets” will cause competition to perfect our schools. That naïve view is the alleged wisdom of neoconservatives lacking a functioning cerebral cortex, and arguably much economic education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What triggered this point of view? This will also not be appreciated: What created the present devolution of US public K-12 is the broad and historically extended failure of public education self-assessment, and it's teacher feedstock creator, our fumbling schools of education. Public K-12 has had at least a half century to start understanding learning, moderating the ignorant dependence on deduced "methods” with neural biology supplying real answers. Also contributing, liberal political correctness that infiltrated virtually every US public school last century. Remedial steps -- including reforming curricula, and adopting the organizational knowledge and managerial theories and practices that drive ethical private sector performance and creativity -- never made it across the starting line. Those failures, translating into some fraction of public education school boards, administrators, and teachers ranging from self-righteous to myopic even when ethical and educationally competent, are what initiated and have fueled the present disaster. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Somewhere in the halls of public sector leadership the belief was formed that public K-12 could or would never reform itself, and that the only Federal tool out there was the testing hammer of NCLB, perpetuating the most simplistic and punitive properties of ESEA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Beating a dead horse?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If this seems pejorative, one only has to observe in real time some of our heartland’s public systems, including where based on only test scores, excellence is trumpeted. Two local systems in this blog's backyard stand out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first has elected over two decades four superintendents not role models: The earliest was subsequently convicted of felony trafficking in child pornography; the next in line was seemingly educationally competent, but unethical and guilty of educational fraud; next an allegedly borderline sociopathic system leader seeing contemporary school management as "command and control," and allegedly maliciously and discriminatorily blocking any taxpayer who might challenge the model -- Ohio's sanction for that educational performance, appointment as a county superintendent, embedded in Ohio's most educationally corrupted infrastructure, its so-called education service centers; and the most recent leader installation, guilty of plagiarism and dishonest manipulation of school issues, and allegedly lacking educational competence. The school's curricula are still peppered with mediocrity, some contents and methods simply wrong. Its digital strategy started with fraud, and in spite of the gift of extraordinary internet bandwidth, remains a deficit for its students. Consequently, with perverse logic, it declares itself excellent. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The system's BOE, in turn, has squandered every opportunity for transparency and broad community support, losing two recent major facility levy votes (unheard of until these votes) by trying to scam the community. Ohio's open records and meetings acts have been repetitively violated. The BOE's latest act of electoral good faith, was allegedly tinkering with the last board election to deflect competition for the BOE and seat an 'inside board.' This is a system, that on the surface and in its proclamations of excellence looks good, but smells bad; a Texas idiom, "<i>all hat and no cattle</i>."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The second system may be worse, but perhaps with guilt, less glib it its propaganda. The overall system appears mediocre with occasional teacher bright spots, but unsupported; its BOE is now chaotic, the result of misguided board leadership that embodies everything that has become negative about too many US public schools: Self-righteousness and ignorance of <a href="http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2391/School-Boards.html">BOE responsibilities</a>; the belief that due and democratic process just gets in the way of control by an inside cabal; disrespect for Ohio law; literally all of the behaviors that in larger measure characterize institution performance that can become dictatorship. Also dominating are examples of arrogance and the lack of competent oversight, with administrative leadership that is equally malfeasant. All of these factors have some icing on top; a majority of its BOE members too cowardly, or ignorant, or phlegmatic to step up and execute the oversight that they swore to uphold with their oaths of elected office. A role model for the system's children? Meanwhile most of the community remains blissfully unaware of or disinterested in most of these deficits. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some of the above characters' performances, both systems, should be addressed by Ohio's Department of Education, but that politicized department as earlier noted acts with virtual total disinterest in local school performance (if it isn't embodied in standardized test scores and school grades), or local system administrative integrity, or genuine Ohio K-12 learning. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There are obviously educationally competent and civically meritorious public school systems in Ohio, but they may be developing about the same incidence as the occurrence in the US House of Representatives of members who are intelligent, politically centric, and uncorrupted. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Is this the public K-12 education it’s worth saving with double-digit billions of tax dollars, or by going to the mat with the USDOE, an Arne Duncan, or a Bill Gates, or with our politicized state education departments, or the corporate testing and charter lobbying enclaves?</b> In sophisticated language, education professor Linda Darling-Hammond suggests we simply need to play nice and bring together all of the social/institutional components effecting public K-12. The answer, or a serious academic reality deficit? The conundrum represented, draconian attack of public schools with narrow testing, local retro public K-12 and their BOE, two-faced Federal leadership, and an electorate with the capacity for strategic time scales and delayed gratification of our 21 year old cat; all challenge finding quick or one-note solutions that can actually advance public US K-12 schools and real learning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The infamous accountability challenge<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Accountability is like “ahhhh, Bach;” who can be against accountability? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But let’s put it in place where it most effects genuine learning: Congress kicking the EASA/NCLB can down the trail; moving on to Arne Duncan and an extreme liberal but now operationally nearly despotic U.S. Department of Education; a couple of generations of scattered but embedded incompetent or dogmatic public K-12 superintendents and principals; an equivalent swath of incompetent to worse local school boards; some fraction of the products of our schools of education who really are incapable of intellectualism and competent classroom teaching/coaching; let’s not forget the politicized and educationally questionable denizens of many state departments of education; the farm-team academics or anonymous text publisher back rooms typically producing most public K-12 texts, and the corporations aggressively lobbying every state to continue to peddle them; schools misunderstanding and rejecting proper technology adoption; and maybe lastly, let’s not ignore a wide swath of parents clueless or desultory about the full role they are supposed to play in seeing their children educated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Accountability? Damn straight we need it, but who’s delivering?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The testing mysteries<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moving on, the majority critique of alleged standardized testing revolves around its relevance to real learning, then the tests’ specific validity and reliability, each having multiple parts. All three points are relevant, but peek behind the wizards’ curtains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Who, specifically, is writing the tests’ questions, based on what logic, with what credentials, supervised by what expertise, with oversight by which subject matter experts, with what inputs from real classrooms, using which psychometric principles, field tested when and where before being rolled-out nationally, and subject to what mechanisms for critique and resolution of test failure or performance distortion? Who is watching the corporate creators of these multi-billion dollar businesses – the answer of course is no one supported by regulations or with the power to create confidence in what’s being delivered. Does this scenario conjure an aroma of financial meltdown<i> déjà vu</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Have you ever heard of the JCSEE? The acronym stands for the "Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation," representing the major national associations that have anything to do with K-12, spanning 18 associations from the American Association of School Administrators to the National School Boards Association. Since 1988, the JCSEE has for K-12 schools published and updated every five years: Personnel Evaluation Standards; Program Evaluation Standards; Student Evaluation Standards; and accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI, that every technical professional will recognize), making those standards “American National Standards.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Give or take a little Kentucky windage, the current standardized tests being bought with billions of tax dollars, to allegedly metrically gauge manufactured recall and goad teachers, violate virtually every caveat of these standards. To add insult to injury, the testing, to the extent it is transparent, appears to violate most of the caveats articulated for test design specified by the psychometric literature. In any discussion of that testing to date, we have yet to hear which theory of measurement, if any, has been used to create the test items: Item Response Theory, Item Characteristic Curve Theory, Latent Trait Theory, Rasch Model, 2PL Model, 3PL Model, the Birnbaum Model, or just some teaching professionalism; all of the above; none of the above? Listening...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In fact, we don’t know how these tests are being conceived, or who is by indirection calling out what has become sadly <i>de rigueur</i> by state for all subject matter to be tested, hence learned? If this is a “black box,” who is defining learning in US public K-12 schools, with what logic, with what purpose, with what demonstrated expertise, and by what authority? Is the game to support our uncontrolled text/test oligopoly of barely visible corporate profit machines, manipulating both what they with uncertified portfolio declare to be knowledge, then enforcing that omniscience by also writing its tests?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If so, fools are determining the contents of US public K-12 education.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A small part of the above puzzle was addressed in an April 27 post to <u>The Washington Post</u>’s “The Answer Sheet,” “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/pearson-attnd-how-2012-standardized-tests-were-designed/2012/04/27/gIQAjQ0MkT_blog.html">Pearson and how 2012 standardized tests were designed</a>.” It is only a partial answer, but on its face already a basis for challenging the entire standardized testing strategy underpinning alleged but seriously flawed reform.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Where the radical left joins the radical right, centrism isn't the product, and everyone loses<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next issue is the product of literally years of puzzling: Specifically, why is the Obama Administration in bed with the most zealous enemies of public education? Who are the players behind closed doors who have executed what tactics, paid what amounts, and used what intimidation or extortion to blend Obama oil and extreme right wing swamp water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If the argument is, this testing and VAM are the only tools available to Federal enforcement under the Constitution, there is at least some logic in the tactics; simultaneously, failure to recognize or callous disregard of present tactics’ unintended consequences is egregious intellectually and ethically. But the extended question is whether the actions being pushed by Mr. Obama and Mr. Duncan actually represent an extreme liberal delusion that was never subjected to proper vetting? How is what is being inflicted on U.S. public education by this Administration any less destructive than how public K-12 brought down its own house, or the educational Darwinism advocated by the worst of political and educational retrograde thinking on the right?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lastly, by failing to challenge the National Governors Association, and short-circuit CCSSI perversion of knowledge standards to ramp up ignorant state testing and curriculum requirements, the Administration has set up virtually all K-12 to be nickel-and-dimed into strategic mediocrity and reversion to a past century. The stupidity of state actions is already being unfolded, for example, launching in Indiana and Ohio with state administrative bully-driven and retrogressive testing and school grading, even while nationally protests are building to cease the testing blitz.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>A small, still material u</b><b>nintended consequence, </b><b>and a huge one</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are multiple negatives strewn across the US by the present manipulation and dissembling being called reform, most already called out by our best students of K-12 history and prospect. There is another unintended consequence: Discouraging students from challenging themselves and choosing higher level courses when they may have fewer normal grade implications, if the course test results are factored into rating their teachers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The huge one, however, that has not received attention is the consequence of the diversion of attention, intellect, and energy to firefights on testing, versus addressing an educational tsunami: Playing political or utopian games with last century’s bases for learning, while those very conceptual bases are undergoing massive transformation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Churning just beneath the surface of applicability is a mushrooming universe of technologies and expanded knowledge bought with the R&D investments of the last half-century. What the philosopher terms knowledge, and pragmatically new understanding are changing core beliefs of how everything works, universe to elementary particles through individual human and social behavior, and aggregating and doubling at a rate exceeding <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law">Moore's Law</a>. We are already at the boundary – primarily effecting secondary education, but inching toward the baccalaureate level – where what we've assumed for over a half-century can be trimmed or surveyed and introduced in 7-12 or 9-12, simply won't fit anymore. Indeed, unless there is a sea change in the re-education of public K-12 teachers, or rethinking the seat-time model, or rethinking even the entire basis of pre-postsecondary education, the whole alleged learning package becomes retro smoke and mirrors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You either craft a new theory of what public K-12 and especially 9-12 should be, or the subject matter issuing in future US classrooms and presently tested, is not just useless but destructive of this society’s economic growth and sustainability. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Footnote: In the 26 April 2012 issue of the world science journal, </span><u style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nature</u><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, neuroscience author, science journal publisher, and professor Michael Shermer, as part of a book review noted:</span><br />
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"It has been estimated that, from the beginning of civilization -- 5,000 years ago or more -- until 2003, humanity created a total five exabytes (billion gigabytes) of information. From 2003 to 2010, we created this amount every two days. By 2013 we will be doing so every ten minutes, exceeding within hours all the information contained in all books ever written." </i><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He concludes: "...the mountain of facts is now so vast that we cannot hope to learn, let alone remember them."</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thus, it just makes sense to repeat last century's production model of education; memorize facts, with disconnected fragments of knowledge, and flog with standardized tests, that engender no questions nor creativity? Add that </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/automobiles/no-time-for-car-shopping-click-print-to-make-your-own.html?" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">future manufacturing</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> may more nearly resemble 3-D printing. Then "corporate reform" is America's thrust for its future? Well, not so much.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Factor Two: Public K-12 – Is School Board Reform an Oxymoron? </b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>(Update 3/13/2012)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">There are allegedly around 14,000 of them. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Politically, like death and taxes, they will likely be with us in perpetuity in one organizational arrangement or another. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the same time, though earning widespread disrespect, they are also rarely mentioned in the ongoing assault and alleged reform of public schools. They are the frequently elected, sometimes appointed, sometimes qualified, rarely properly vetted electorally, rarely trained/prepared for their functions after installation, rarely perform transparently or are made accountable, and the alleged community representatives we love to hate -- your local school board. How does our nation strategize and implement public school change that must depend on oversight and educational </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">literacy of our BOE?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span">This topic is easily worth books; in fact, there are 37 relevant books on school board governance in the first dozen pages of Amazon listings for a search on “school board reform,” and some multiple of that in relevant journal articles, few of which if any have ever been read by school board members seen to date in this neck of the woods. Many boards do not <a href="http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2391/School-Boards.html">know their responsibilities</a> much less exercise them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">To keep this post manageable, the topics are restricted to some high- or perhaps, low-lights: Empirical knowledge about our boards; what happens to school boards; possible board reforms; boards as factors in K-12 reform.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The first item; what do we know about board performance? </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The answer, virtually nothing based on good research methodology. Compounding the issue of how to gauge board performance is the need to cover years of actions to assess the concordance of board behavior with related school performance. Further complicating assessment, the effects of a board’s function are played out in the diverse operations within a school or district and may show up as delayed effects. One obvious, politically incorrect example, is the board that insidiously puts a school’s sports’ values ahead of learning, even to the extent of choking off spending for learning infrastructure in favor of sports complexes to feed parental and community sports egos. It may take years for the cultural impact of such a value system to be seen in graduation rates, or meaningful assessment of real learning. When it occurs, the board that spawned the degradation of real education is frequently long gone, the link erased to protect the ignorant and guilty. Most schools and their boards aren’t believers in “<a href="http://infed.org/mobi/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/">double-loop learning</a>.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Board research also needs to be longitudinal, and the cost to secure sustainability of current longitudinal research is high, both in maintaining organizational relationships with systems to allow study and the lack of funding for such research, versus the episodic issues seen as central to classroom function. It takes strategic perspective, not big at any recent time in US public K-12 education.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>What is it about school boards?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Other boards work, why not school boards? This question puts you into the heart of the issue. For example, how can five or seven literate, intelligent, frequently professional human resources seen individually, turn into a board that becomes paranoid, secretive, unresponsive to those who elected them, possibly micromanagers of a system, or alternately so intimidated by a superintendent that they have little effective oversight of that system? Witness to the latter syndrome, boards where the minutes of a board meeting are prepared by a superintendent in their totality and never amended – well in advance of the meeting in question – or where responsibility for strategic issues is simply delegated to a superintendent because board members are risk averse. All it takes, referencing the earlier system example, is bad leadership and board members too timorous or lacking the integrity to honor their oaths of office.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The above immediately directs the discussion to the roles of the board, versus roles of a superintendent. Related, whether many school boards, even when they represent reasonable elected membership, are equipped without further professional counsel to hire a superintendent. One reality is that even when you have a competent board, matched with a competent superintendent, the roles to be played are not simply ones that can be easily codified, but represent a subtle dance of the two entities and sets of functions. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">One of the most frequent criticisms of boards that are populated by the generally competent is that they are still predisposed to micromanage, or focus on minutiae instead of policy and larger issues. This speaks to whether most boards, even consisting of competent members, have the organizational awareness or coaching to fashion the playbook to stay out of most school operations and within the agreed board policy and decision boundaries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The other side of this coin is whether a board is predisposed to get between school leadership and its community to protect a system from funding and other topics that take on community-wide disagreement. That is one of the roles, but one that is a hard sell when a board lacks confidence in its policy positions, or is more interested in re-election than supporting learning. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Another of those realities is that too frequently school board seats are sought for reasons other than service to K-12 education: For ego and social self-promotion; to pursue special interests, or in many cases a prior grievance with a school; as a stepping stone to other public office; and even as a way to practice nepotism or award the “good old boys’ (or girls’) network” in bringing human resources into a system. As there is little oversight of a school board once installed, unless there has been state reform to enable a malfeasant member or even board removal from office, who watches the watchers?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">At the end of the trail in trying to assess board quality, the issue comes down to a combination of how human resources are chosen for any material assignment, and whether after they are chosen, there is in place the necessary developmental work to create the expertise for the role, akin to the fashion of boards in other venues. In sum, you don’t invite the incompetent to become the basis of organizational oversight in good corporations, or in boards of professional associations, or in pubic sector organizations where legitimate oversight is sought; or the illiterate or naïve to serve as oversight of public K-12 education.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Reform possibilities?<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Is school board reform possible? A raft of optimistic educational researchers, pundits, the National School Boards Association, and related assets still believe it is. Below is an abbreviated list of proposals that have been floated for school board reform:</span></span></div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Move to appointed boards, or a mix of elected and appointed boards, where qualifications of appointed members can be required.</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Change the electoral patterns for school boards, requiring the testing and debate in the public square characterizing most elective competition. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Statutorily increase the educational requirements to run for a school board.</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Require mandatory training for elected board members; possibly even certification by testing before a board member can be seated. Add mandatory periodic developmental training for currency.</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Require a code of ethics and conflict-of-interest policy for all boards.</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Statutorily provide for removal of a board member, or an entire board for cause. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Better define the roles of a board versus a superintendent, even express these contractually. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Specifically define the duties of board members, with provision for requiring performance to maintain position. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Create a school board report card, with annual assessments; a recommendation of the NSBA. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Merge districts for board representation, to reduce the number of boards, increase the pool of competent candidates for election. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Pay board members at a sufficient level to create performance incentives and provide disincentives for malfeasance. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Organizational training in addition to educational indoctrination, to improve the actual conduct of board operations, including awareness of the needed transparency and communications relationships of a board with its constituent community. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Require qualified advisory groups from a community be used to provide professional assessments of superintendent hires, forecasting and budgeting, school design and construction, and social and behavioral issues within a system. </li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Take on the voter educational task of explaining K-12 pedagogy and reform needs to parents and the community, because a board is an intermediary between system and those funding it.</li>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Establish a solid pattern of communicating with parents and the community; one strategy that automatically improves both the contents of school board meetings, and the community’s interest and attention to education, is using the CATS provisions of local cable operation. Put your meetings online, in real time; where this is employed the whole spectrum of quality of content through quality of board deportment improves, and a community in turn learns why there are school challenges, and why their support is important.</li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Do any of these recommendations, drawn from many sources including ones representing school boards, have a chance in the present reform environment? They are all pretty rational, none really extreme judged against the contents of professional standards expected in other venues that have a lesser impact on American society. Answer:<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><i>Highly unlikely in the present US education environment.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Bitter addendum from the search</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the process of researching this post, an opinion piece by nationally known educator Larry Cuban was noted. Always informative, this one captured the writer’s attention, not by its erudition that was substantial, but by the large number and the contents of comments it had elicited from parents with children in our public schools, including many parents who were also educational professionals in some capacity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><i>The parental comments went beyond troubling, indicating broad frustration and discontent with their own public schools, even myopic teachers, but especially dogmatic, myopic and self-righteous boards, principals and superintendents, more concerned with rules, risk aversion and deflecting transparency and critique, than whether the children involved were ever being educated beyond achieving on standardized tests to keep school images, and their own reputations intact.</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><i>Astounding was the sameness of the critiques of public K-12 systems widely scattered across the US, reflecting vitriol for public education professionals who just wanted those parents to go away, let them practice what they knew, even if it was last century’s education, and expressing either disinterest in or contempt for internal creativity and change in any facet of their systems including greater teacher involvement in the core processes. If there is any question why the bizarre combination of a liberal President and a profiteering and potentially dirty segment of the corporate sector, with a few narrow or billionaire do-gooders thrown in, are the merged driving force of alleged public K-12 reform, our public education establishment doesn’t have to look beyond some its own door jambs.</i></b></span><br />
<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;"><br /></b>
<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">A postscript</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From a PhD researcher at
the Intercultural Development Research Association, a bipartisan Texas-based
organization working on quality of teaching and learning, the prescriptions for
school boards’ efforts to improve performance were logical and fit school reform needs:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>“1. Become better informed of community assets and needs, student characteristics, and implications for a quality educational program.</b> Although most states require that their school board members receive training during their tenure, the training rarely targets knowing their communities (assets, needs, student characteristics) or basic knowledge about a quality education program. How can we entrust the education of our children to persons who are responsible for school policy but who have a limited knowledge of quality education and quality teaching?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for school board members to become totally disconnected from their role and the duty that they are elected or appointed to carry out. The community that elected them should demand greater interest, action and leadership from them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>2. Engage in constant dialogue with community leaders and parents to ensure that schools work in partnership with community members and parents to enrich the quality of education to be provided.</b> Successful school boards meaningfully engage their communities in periodic forums, meetings and reflection sessions to check the pulse of schools in graduating students who are ready for college, in ensuring that schools are holding on to students, and in creating school environments that are safe and responsive to the needs of all students.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Building community consensus and support for school transformations based on research and compassion are powerful methods. It also can neutralize the effects of political rivalry and enmity that cause school board paralysis, deadlock and inappropriate action. Too often school boards engage community only during election times.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>3. Promote and facilitate partnerships with community members and parents as a powerful way of creating and sustaining educational change.</b> Recently, a leading school superintendent was lamenting the lack of knowledge and commitment of school administrators to value and partner with their communities and parents to create a learning community that works and supports a quality educational program.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Effective school boards are strong advocates of meaningful engagement. They promote and facilitate partnerships with community and parents as a powerful way of creating and sustaining change that leads to student engagement and success. School administrators must realize that total student success will not be achieved until the school partners with all sectors of the community and parents and has the full confidence of students.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>4. Become an integral part of a leadership team responsible for designing school reform efforts.</b> Many times, school boards underestimate their contributions as citizens and elected representatives of the general public in school reform efforts. They bring different, essential perspectives into the planning and design phase of school reform. They are in a position to change policies to enable schools to make the necessary changes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The total disengagement of school board members from school reform efforts can have a detrimental impact on schools’ success. By disengaging, board members abdicate the power and responsibility entrusted to them through the democratic process.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Times;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>5. Be accountable to the community for excellence and equity in the provision of services and the resultant academic accomplishments.</b> If systemic changes were well-defined, understood and supported by an informed school board, they would be less vulnerable to disruption of educational services to students created by school leadership changes like a new superintendent or new principals. Many times, leadership vacuums left by superintendents’ or administrators’ sudden departure lead to complete school disarray and dysfunction.” </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The above are immediately a source of frustration; </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">for they are what most smaller system school boards work diligently to avoid</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span></b><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Factor Three: Zap Them or Think Strategically?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lastly, coming contemporarily from an outstanding legislator and student of schools in multiple cultures, the wisdom that in any large system the rate and scope of education change within short time spans can be dysfunctional. The thoughts were </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/26/why-we-cant-reform-literacy-and-math-all-at-once/">aired recently</a> in <u>The Washington Post</u>, "The Answer Sheet."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The author is Andy Hargreaves, Brennan Chair in Education, at Boston College. He is an advisor to the premier and minister of education of Ontario, Canada; and in the last year participated with the OECD (source of the PISA international tests that are used as the rationale for much of the US public school reform agenda) in reviewing a Welsh strategy to simultaneously raise student literacy and numeracy in a brief time span.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">His and the OECD's counsel; don't. Hargreaves' assessment:</span><br />
<i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></i>
<i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Large-scale
literacy reform has been in vogue in the United States and elsewhere for two
decades now. It has been one of the driving forces of educational change across
the country and many other parts of the world. One of the places it began was in
New York District 2 in the mid 1990s. There, the Chancellor of Schools, Anthony
Alvarado, and his staff, imposed a literacy program across the whole system,
linked to measurable achievement gains, and backed up with detailed new
materials and intensive one-on-one in-classroom coaching.</span></span></i><br />
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<i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></i>
<i><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Harvard professor Richard Elmore and his school superintendent
coauthor Deanne Burney articulated and applauded the reform design and its
impact on results. Diane Ravitch later took some of the edge off the
achievement gains by arguing that some of them were a result of gentrification
of the community, not of the change strategy. But the more important point is
that when the San Diego school district became enamored of the model, and
transplanted Alvarado and many of his team members to implement it on the other
side of America in a fraction of the timescale, the results were catastrophic.
Gains were not sustainable and open warfare broke out between district factions
as teachers and principals buckled under impossible high stakes pressure for
short-term results. What was the lesson to be learned? Large-scale literacy
reform has to be grown gradually. It cannot be imposed impatiently."</span></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But that is precisely what NCLB has attempted, then doubled down by the Obama administration with RttT and throwing dollars at systems, arguably seeking a quick education win to burnish the two presidential terms. That the strategy has failed is becoming obvious, and in the manner experienced in the far wiser OECD read of those needs for change. Hargreaves sums up the experience: Problems were </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"...massive teacher burnout and professional disillusionment that led to a crisis of recruitment and retention of teachers. Simultaneous imposition of literacy and math reform requires teachers to change all their practice all at once and this is so overwhelming that it threatens the basic capacity of the profession to maintain its quality."</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Reflect those effects occur in education systems dwarfed by the US, and likely with far greater national control of the vagaries that inflict and differentiate American public schools.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is a cynical point of view, but it is also a credible assessment: That far too much of present public school reform, whether flogged by Obama and Duncan, or right-wing ideology, or some cabal of our corporate community, is being pushed simplistically to try to reassert American exceptionalism in world primary and secondary education competition, driven by nationalistic hubris, and candidly, ignorant selfishness. The latter because major gains are being sought in 'their time,' with little or no strategic awareness of the downstream strategic costs to the nation, and to the children potentially intellectually and professionally depreciated by the present standardized testing stupidity and creation of myopic short term learning </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">gains. Ego and myopia are an educationally destructive combination.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Add to the deficits, our teacher population and the foundations of an egalitarian public school philosophy become collateral damage, and that overarching mission of "corporate reform," creating a better and more creative labor force, will see virtually the opposite proceeds. The presently derided predictions of even highly knowledgeable business strategy gurus </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">may prove not fiction at all;</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> that within some of your lifetimes a combination of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) may </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">further decimate our middle majority of knowledge workers, for cause!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>The bottom line on things that are still crippling US public school strategic reform: </b></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.8em; text-align: center;"><b><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: start;">"P</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: start;">lus ça change, plus c'est la même chose</span>.<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: start;">"</span></b></i></div>
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Ron Willetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06059763400063640870noreply@blogger.com0