Shared from commons.wikimedia.org

One of the real dangers of writing a blog surfaced for me this past week. Inspired by Jan Resseger’s blog that urged readers to action in reaction to an upcoming series of mandated hearings regarding the implementation of the new federal successor (ESSA) to NCLB and Race to the Top, I added my voice in support of the value of social activism. After pressing the “publish” button, it dawned on me that I was also speaking to myself.

I decided then that there would be at least one person who would respond to my challenge – me. I realized that I needed to testify in order to do more than simply pay lip service to a deeply important issue.

So here I was challenging others (and myself) to participate in a process that I had only seen from the other side – as the organizer of such testimony sessions or as the state’s representative at them.

My experience with this process wasn’t positive. Testimonies were recorded, questions were referred to the proper program officer, answers were crafted and attached to the record. Rarely did anything change. Those who provided testimony, either in support of or in opposition to the proposals under review rarely had the opportunity to address the department’s responses. But, from the department’s perspective the process had been completed, the boxes had been checked, the requirements fulfilled and life went on.

I was reminded of this process at a dinner with a close friend and former colleague whom I had told of my testimony plans. He shared with me the testimony he had provided in 2008 about the folly of continuing to invest in the standards/assessment solution in the face of what had been accepted as disappointing student achievement. He also shared with me a letter I had written (several years after having left the DoE) in support of his position.

The impact of that effort? Here it is 2016, we have more data to support the position that the direction of the so-called reform movement has been a failure. We have witnessed a pretty sizable rebellion by parents against PARCC. We are watching the federally supported challenges to our public schools through the support of privatized charter schools and we are still discussing where the deck chairs should be placed on the Titanic.

So why bother? How can we not? Perhaps getting the data, our position, and the harm this is doing to the very kids that we want to help the most is the first step in adding professional voices to those of parents who have seen the damage firsthand. Perhaps this is time to apply the lessons learned from previous ineffectiveness of the public testimony process and to acknowledge that this is a necessary FIRST step in a more aggressive strategy. Perhaps we have seen and experienced enough. And if not us, who?

Perhaps you would like to share your own activism experiences both to encourage others and to expand our exposure to best practices.

Upcoming blog topics:

• Well, how did it go – a summary of the my experience on the other side of the podium
• Let’s stop blaming teachers – they’re only doing what they’ve been taught to do.

Shared from blog.hoosiertimes.com

Let me begin with two disclaimers.

• I am angry. I am angry that so many of the people that I have worked with and whom I have seen in my visits to schools around the country are having their work and commitment demeaned and depreciated. But I’ve learned that anger is secondary emotion and there is a root cause for that anger. For me it is frustration. I am frustrated with our nation’s continued unwillingness to devote sufficient time to the analysis of a problem, pouring incredible resources to the wrong thing and then seeking scapegoats when the solutions (to the wrong problem) are unsuccessful;

• I am not a social activist. I’m not a political organizer. My only attempts at such activity involved trying to organize the teachers at the private school where I began my teaching career. I was invited to look elsewhere for employment. I’m looking to have a better end this time around.

So this post is a follow-up to the recent” what can I do” blog. It is not a cookbook on political organizing. It’s about changing roles. It’s about changing roles because I believe that our ability and willingness to effectively organize and affect our futures are directly related to the role that we see for ourselves.

As teachers we have experienced a unique form of career exploration and training. We are most likely the only profession in which the practitioners had at least 16 years to observe the career that they eventually selected. What is remarkable about this is that, while much is written about the quality of teacher preparation programs, the impact of postgraduate studies, and the value of locally offered professional development, substantial research exists that indicates that these have not been the determining factors in how teachers teach and how they see themselves.

The most formative factor turns out to be how they were taught. That is to say that we have been trained not only in how we teach but also how to see ourselves by the experiences we have had as students in school and our observations about how teachers behaved and saw themselves.

The point here is that the vast majority of teachers have formed their notions about teaching from experiences that they had at least 10-20 years before they entered the profession.   As Kieran Egan expressed in his book, The Educated Mind – How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding, these lessons were learned during a time when one of the primary goals of the American education system was the homogenization of our society – the intentional efforts to protect and transmit the societal norms of the time.

The success of this mission was measured by behavior and the compliance with the established norms. We have both been trained in and charged with insuring compliance. It has become an accepted part of the DNA of teachers in our country.

The world has changed (you may have read something about this); however, we have maintained the roles and role expectations that were formed in another time and in a different context. That is to say, our default response when confronted with confusing and often uncomfortable data is… compliance.

Since the publication of A Nation At Risk in 1983 the citizens of our country have been fed a steady narrative of failure. During that same time we have witnessed the ideological commitment to this narrative and a series of “reforms” designed by such great educational thinkers as the National Governors” Association and funded by an increasing number of “education-minded” philanthropists.

NOTE: For an interesting and contrary analysis of the scholarship behind A Nation At Risk, you might like to read an article that appeared in EdWeek in August 2004, 20 years after the reports publication.

While in our faculty rooms and at teacher dominated social gatherings, you might hear frustration and anger at the unfairness of the current anti-school/anti-teacher narrative. As individuals, however, we have remained largely silent as the standards/assessments, test/punish direction of mandated programming continues and expands.

So?

From Facebook

I believe it is critical that we cast off the role of quiet compliance. I believe it is time for us to recover the leadership of the direction of what happens to our kids in our schools. It is no longer enough to assume that paying our association dues and nodding our heads to the lobbying efforts of our national organizations will derail (or for the optimists, redirect) the direction of the last two decades.

So What Can I Do?

We old folks can remember a film from 1967, The Graduate. The film contained a memorable moment when Dustin Hoffman received a one-word piece of advice for his career choice and future – “Plastics”. After a seemingly endless pause, the advice giver explained that there was a great future in plastics.

The 2016 version of that one-word piece of advice for us is – “alliances”.

I included above a photo from the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. I included this to remind us of the manner in which a grass roots movement exploited 21^st Century communications tools, like Twitter and Facebook, to inform, to encourage, to mobilize and, yes, to coordinate the efforts to raise awareness and force change.

One of the ironies and untapped strengths of our situation is that, while the politicians and business leaders have committed huge amounts of resources to demeaning teachers and teaching, to the narrative of schools as “failure factories”, to the “wonders” of portfolio school systems (read privatized), the majority of Americans surveyed continue to trust the teachers of their children.

We need to build alliances on this trust and help these alliances change the narrative of public education and teaching. We need to begin with the parents in our classrooms. We need to bring information to them, in easy to digest format – blogs, video clip, infographics, etc.

As I mentioned in the first post on this topic, Jan Ressger’s report  on the efforts of the folks in Vermont gives us great talking points to begin our conversation. Diane Ravitch and Sir Ken Robinson add wonderful insight and direction as well.

We need to bring this same information to local and regional PTA/PTO’s.

We need to highlight and emphasize the real consequences that our kids are experiencing in this reform age.

As threatened as we might be by the unfairness and lack of validity of test-based teacher evaluations, we need to separate that issue from the harm done to our children by the test score driven, one-dimension measurement of kid success and the accompanying loss if attention to the development of multiple talents.

We need to help interested parents prepare to talk with board members about planned or real reductions in arts programming, flack of focus on life/soft skill development, one-size fits all curricula, etc.

But most importantly we need to learn from the organizing lessons of the Egyptian Revolution, Occupy Wallstreet, and, most recently, the Opt Out movement to leverage social media potential into an intentional effort to prevent the continued chasing of the wrong thing.

We need to step away from the traditional role of teachers – a role that emphasized isolation and independence – to one that utilizes the demonstrated strength of alliances. We need to form alliances with colleagues both in our schools and via social media in other schools. We need to form alliances with parents to help them make their voices heard. We need to form alliances with members of our local boards of education and to help them form similar alliances with their counterparts in other districts.

A final disclaimer. This is not about the preservation of the status quo. This is about eliminating the distraction caused by a thoughtless and ill-considered reform agendas that focus on moving backwards into the future. This is about gaining the opportunity to re-imagine education, learning, and the place of our schools in that process.

If you would like to continue this conversation about concrete actions and alliance building opportunities, please add your voice to the comments.

A while back when I started this blog I felt there were some things to say that didn’t seem to be getting much attention. Additionally, I found that writing helped me organize and clarify some of the jumbled thoughts and feelings that I’ve been having about the direction of education, as well as the ways I had been responding to that direction. An additional benefit was that, in doing research for the pieces that I’ve published here, I’ve found a number of exceptional voices trying to shine a light on what has become an increasingly politicized, monetized, and privatized national agenda.

If you have found some resonance with the thinking I’ve shared here in this blog, I urge you to subscribe to the blogs of Jan Resseger  and Will Richardson. I continue to be inspired by the thoroughness of their work and the quality of their thinking. Today’s piece is inspired by recent posts by both of these insightful and articulate voices.

Courtesy of historyforkids.net

I’m sure that many of you recall a line from the introduction to your history textbooks and exhortations from teachers that went something like…“We study history so that we may learn from the mistakes of the past and avoid repeating them in the future”.

I hated that thought as a student and didn’t like it much more as a teacher. I reasoned that the mistakes of the past were made by men far more powerful than I and it was unlikely that I was ever going to be in a position important enough to have the chance to avoid repeating them. But life experiences have a way of intruding on our earlier explanations. While facilitating retreats for teenagers and adults. I recall hearing the saying attributed to Native Americans…”Some people are born blind and die drunk.” It was a call to develop the habit of self reflection for it was only through this introspection that we might grow in awareness and avoid a “drunken” death. Part of my own self-reflections brought me back to that history quote.

And the connection is?

For me the connection is that my assessment of my own power to learn from the mistakes of the past and to avoid them in the future was seriously flawed. It was not only the mistakes of the rich and powerful that shaped history. It was also the silence of others. The silence of others throughout history is understandable. It was/is frequently related to the busyness of survival, the energy required to do one’s job and just stay alive. Not infrequently it was/is also related to fear – fear of reprisals, fear for one’s job, fear of being different.

We are where we are today in our chosen vocation because we have been too silent. Regardless of the attempts of some “reformers” to call into question your commitment, dedication and skill, you have chosen a noble profession. You have worked diligently and tirelessly. I have seen this commitment, dedication, and skill in schools I have visited throughout the country. You have tried your best to do better the things you learned and were taught about helping young people. You have been diligent and, often, courageous. But you have left the direction of the education of our young people to others. Others who have more time, more money, and an inflexible belief system.

In one of my next posts I will write more about Will Richrdson’s recent piece  on the distinction between the words “I can’t” vs. “I won’t”. But, for now, just consider this possibility. Too frequently, we have used the words “I can’t” as a response to calls for change or even to our own inner voices calling for such change… I can’t focus on soft skills, I have to prepare my kids for PARCC. I can’t alter the curriculum, the state department has mandated what I teach. I can’t eliminate grades, the local school board, principal, superintendent won’t allow it. I can’t champion a kid’s right to get credit for things learned outside of school, etc. etc., etc.

Richardson asks us to consider the likelihood that what we are really saying in such situations is “I won’t” focus on soft skills. I won’t change the mandated curriculum. I won’t speak at the local meeting of the board of education to support less testing. I won’t help kids get credit for learning that happens outside of school, etc. I’m too comfortable, I’m too stressed. I’m too busy. I’m too fearful…

Until we change “I won’t” to “I can and I will” we, too, will prove the validity of that rationale for the learning of history in the intro of the history textbooks. We will continue to condemn ourselves to repeat what we believe to be wrong.

In her recent post, Jan Resseger provides a concrete step to help us move beyond the mistakes of the recent past. She notes that most states will now be holding hearings on the implementation of the new ESSA legislation. She challenges teachers, school leaders, and parents not to rely on their state organizations to make the case for change.

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) demands that states come up with their own accountability plans which they must submit for approval to the U.S. Department of Education. What this means is that there is a window for change, but it must bubble up spontaneously across the 50 states. If public school supporters are to achieve any kind of policy that is more supportive and less punitive, we are going to have to organize and begin working for long-term change in the culture of punitive, test-and-punish accountability that has been normalized over the past two decades.

It is time for those of us who recognize that the current reform movement is creating the wrong future for education in our country to act. We may not be as eloquent as Resseger or Richardson but this doesn’t make our voices any less important. It is precisely our voices, one by one, and joining collectively in concert,   that can stop the repetition of past mistakes and help avoid continuing them into the future.

Make your voice heard. Check your state department of education’s website for information about the dates for scheduled testimony.

The Far Side Gallery – Gary Larson

Climate Change Thinking as model for education improvement 

 NOTE: This is an updated version of a piece that appeared earlier this year in  NJ Spotlight and is inspired by a recent post by Jan Resseger that reported on a newly released book of research dealing with data and studies that reveal the failure of the last two decades of “school reform”. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed that,  during the primary season, a number of the candidates raised the issue of climate change to new heights (or depths) of absurdity.

Look at this…

In 2013 the American Association for the Advancement of Science released a report on climate change. Now keep in mind that this non-profit organization, founded in 1848, is currently the largest such organization in the world and is hardly a hotbed of liberal, progressive thinking. According to the report, only 42% of American adults understood that “most scientists think global warming is happening” and 33% said, “… there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening.” Twenty percent said they “don’t know enough to say.”

The report continues with the fact that polls continue to show that there is a belief that scientists are not in agreement about climate change and its cause. At the same, the AAAS reports that in 2014 about 97% of climate scientists conclude that humans are changing the climate.

They conclude – An increasing number of folks are telling us that we run the risk of significant irreversible damage to our planet because we would rather continue to act on our beliefs rather than confront the possibility that science has revealed that we have been in error.

So here’s the connection to education reform.   In the arena of public education, we are engaged in a battle of belief vs science. But much like the climate issue, we are seeing an increase in the number of folks who are calling attention to the nakedness of the belief system that has ruled the direction of education and schooling in our country for the past several decades.

This is being greatly aided by the work of the authors of the volume that Jan highlights in her post. As she points out in her blog “If you were to undertake a research paper on the impact of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top here collected in this new volume is much of the scholarship you need”. She continues…

This volume presents a comprehensive collection of the most rigorous research evidence about both the test-based reforms reforms and policies that have become the new normal, and the less common, most promising strategies for the future… “In its entirety the scholarship in this volume points overwhelmingly to one unambiguous conclusion – heavy-handed accountability policies do not produce the kinds of schools envisioned under the original ESDA…” (Emphasis mine… see above referenced link, pages  xix-xx)

In my original piece, I referenced the work of Russell Ackoff and an interview conducted with him before his death in 2009. Ackoff was a new name for me. A little research revealed that he had a long, varied and distinguished career, including a time from 1986 until his death as professor emeritus of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

In Ackoff’s interview he noted that, while we frequently used the terms synonymously, there was a growing recognition that there is a difference between efficiency and effectiveness and that Peter Drucker had captured this by saying that there’s a difference between ‘doing things right’ and doing ‘the right thing’.

Ackoff expands by suggesting that doing things right is about efficiency but doing the right thing is about effectiveness. He makes a strong case for the connection between wisdom and doing/identifying the right things. He notes further that when we try to do things right about the wrong thing, we actually make things worse… such attempts at improvement actually take us further from both the recognition and accomplishment of the “right thing”.

So here it is. How long can we continue to deny the obvious?

The Far Side Gallery – Gary Larson

I have spoken with hundreds of educators throughout the country who , while working hard to implement the “reforms” based on ever more rigorous standards and ever more extensive (and expensive) assessments, recognize the folly of the direction.

It is time for those of us who have read the science and have lived the misguided attempts to do the wrong thing better to speak up. Not because we are concerned about the ways in which such reforms and the attendant emphasis on accountability threaten us, but because they threaten the future of our kids, take us further away from the goal of learning, and distract us  from the exploration of new structures and experiences for kids (and adults) that demonstrate our commitment to the ideal that minds matter.

In my next blog I’ll be exploring the ways in which we, the people who have the most regular and potentially meaningful contact with students in our schools, can take action. For now though the issue seems to be, on a personal and individual basis, “Can I continue to allow the risk of irreversible damage to our children because some ideologically and politically motivated people would rather continue to act on a belief system that has been demonstrated to be both wrong and harmful?”

Please share your thoughts and reflections.

In her works on Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership, Susan Scott recounts her young daughter’s excited reaction to an “epiphany” moment by telling her mom that she just had an “apostrophe”. Here’s one of mine.

A few weeks ago I promised myself that I would spend some time thinking about and exploring some key questions concerning the status and direction of education and learning in our country. It’s not that I pretend to have a great handle on where we are as a nation; however, in my travels to schools around the country, I noted that each school is engaged in some kind of journey that involves defining where they are and how to get somewhere.

In my morning reading regime, I came across a post by Jimmy Casas, entitled, ”Wherever You’re Going, You’re Almost There”. The author was describing a conversation that he had with a new assistant principal who asked him, “When did you know that you had finally gotten there?” The author shared that he had responded, “I’m not exactly sure. I guess that would depend on where I am headed and I haven’t quite figured that out.”

He went on to make the point “…that no matter how many years we serve in the role of school leader, we will never ever ‘get there’.”

But I had stopped processing at “I haven’t quite figured that out yet?” It was my “ah ha”, my “apostrophe”… we don’t really know where “there” is. Not for lack of folks trying to tell us. Way back in 1997 Kieran Egan summarized what he saw as the three major imperatives of our education system:

Note:  This is a book length pdf file.  If inclined to check it out, the first 5-8 pages should get you the idea.  More required an adult beverage to two for me.

• We should socialize and acculturate our children – i.e., shape the young to the current norms and conventions of adult society;
• We should teach them the knowledge that will ensure that their thinking conforms to what is real and true about the world.
• We should encourage the development of each student’s individual potential.

• And most recently, the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (with some philanthropic assistance) told us we should make kids “college and career ready”.

A quick review of these various “goals” for education in America reveals (a) that there is inherent difficulty in simultaneously achieving goals which, as Egan points out, are inherently incompatible and (b) that our schools and their mission statements faithfully reflect the acceptance of these imperatives regardless of these incompatibilities.

So what does this mean? For me it means that, given the wide variety of potential “destinations” it’s hard to be wrong… or right – wherever you are going, you can be almost there. And that’s where we are – almost there or not. Almost college and career ready, or not. Almost socialized to the norms and conventions of the country, or not. Almost reaching our individual potentials, or not. Almost certain that our students knowledge of the world is real or true, or not.

I realize that what was most outstanding about the exceptional schools that I visited was that they – the students, the parents, the school/district leaders, and the teachers were all clear about where they were going. And because they knew that, they were also able to assess where they were on that journey – and look at initiatives and strategies in the context of that destination.

I recall reading an observation by Steven Covey that we have gotten much better at the management of our clocks and calendars while spending far too little time on checking our compasses. I’ve seen Covey’s observation in action. The healthiest and most highly functioning places I’ve seen pay very special attention to identifying their compass heading, to assessing their progress and making course corrections.

For reflection

• How intentional is your school, district, classroom about having a clear compass heading?
• Who set/sets the course for the school?
• How do you check to see if you’re on course?
• Have any “apostrophes” you’d like to share?

The second in a series exploring where we are, how we got there and what we can do next.

Some time ago in my work conducting site visits, needs assessments, and case studies, I

                                   Gary Larson

had the opportunity to visit an exceptionally large school district in Nevada.

What do I mean by “large”? The district (a county district) was slightly more than 17,000 square miles, making it the 4^th largest geographic district in the contiguous 48 states. I crossed a time zone to travel between schools. It was large.

In addition to the schools (22 of them) located in the county’s population centers, there were also a small number of rural or “range” schools. These were almost exclusively one-room schools serving kids in grades K-8. The smallest had a population of 3!

What did I learn there that might apply to places that, on the surface, seem nothing like Elko? I learned that their rural/range schools were not all that unique. Huh? Yup, that’s right. They were staffed by caring, hard working teachers (usually one). Teachers who looked at the kids and determined what they needed. Teachers (like the vast majority teachers I’ve met all around the country) who worked harder than heck to follow district curricula and, at the same time, give the kids what he/she determined they needed. They had minimal formal connection to the “big picture” of the district. They had minimal connection to their peers in other classrooms throughout the district.

When I visited other, more familiar schools throughout the country, I recognized that they were, too frequently, a collection of “range” classrooms. Classrooms where teachers tried to provide the best for the kids they had in their room (or class). Classrooms where teachers work incredibly hard and mostly in the same isolation that the teachers in Elko’s one room school houses did. Sure they have folks around them, but collaboration remains a rarity. As a friend once shared, our schools are most often a collection of classrooms connected by a common parking lot. People in them continue to do school much like we have been “doing school” since the early 1900’s.

So jump back now to one of our original questions… How did we get to where we are in our education system? We got to, and are continuing to get to, exactly where we are designed to get to.

Take a look at a slide shared by Will Richardson in a TED Talk he offered in Vancouver, BC.

On the left are qualities many people list when describing meaningful learning experiences. On the right is a list of things done in schools. (Will Richardson)

What is disconcerting is that at the same time we are continuing to do the things on the right of Richardson’s chart, we are seeing a startling decline in the level of student engagement in our schools. The following graph accompanied an article, published in 2013, on there Gallup site.

                 Brandon Busteed- January 2013

In his book, Why School: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere, Richardson offers the following:

“What doesn’t work any longer is our education system’s stubborn focus on delivering a curriculum that’s growing increasingly irrelevant to today’s kids, the outmoded standardized assessments we use in an attempt to measure our success, and the command-and-control thinking that is wielded over the entire process. All of that must be rethought.”

So, how did we get here?  Seems kind of clear.  While education must change, it hasn’t.  Whether in the one room range school or in the the largest of our traditional schools, whether it’s 1940 or 1990 or 1016, we continue to work in a structure that almost demands that the teachers persist in curating what it is that kids should learn, how they should learn it, and how it should be measured.

One might actually ask the “how did we get here?” question a bit differently – How can we not expect to get ‘here’ – i.e., get more of what we’ve been getting – if we continue to do more of what we’ve always done?

As always, I’d love to see your thoughts on this…

• What can we, as educators, do to reverse the slope of the Gallup findings?
• How frequently do you see the strategies listed in Richardson’s  left-hand column used in your school/classroom?
•  What can we do to move more of our kids’  learning experiences to the left column of his list?