Monthly Archives: July 2014

Denying the Crisis in Public Education a Strategic Error on the Part of Bad Ass Teachers and Their Colleagues.

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The Bad Ass Teachers Association, Diane Ravitch, and every other teacher advocacy group make a strategic error when they argue that there is no crisis in American public education and that our public schools are doing better than they have ever done.

It is a strategic error for several reasons all of which weaken the argument against the corporate reforms that are sweeping the nation. It is a strategic error because it portrays public school teachers as being in complete denial and overly defensive.

The truth is that our systems of public education are in a deep state of crisis and it is a crisis in which teachers bear only a modest share of the responsibility and are as much the victims of the crisis as are the students in their classrooms.

While it is true that our nation’s top students are learning more than at any time in the history of public education we could make an argument that even the interests of these accomplished youngsters are being compromised by the crisis in education. The sad truth is that the students at the other end of the academic success continuum may be learning less than at any time in the history of public education.

The overwhelming majority of our nation’s public school teachers are heroes of the first order as they dedicate their lives and careers to serving the interests of our nation’s children. Yes, there are bad teachers just like there are underperforming members of every other population of professional men and women. Do teachers need to do a better job of policing their own? Absolutely! Do teachers’ unions and associations need to do a better job of serving the interests of both their members and the teaching profession? Absolutely!

When examining the problems of our systems of public education, no one is guiltless, teachers included. The flip side of that statement is that when examining the problems of our systems of public education, no group of people does more for the children in America than the men and women who stand in front of our classrooms. When examined with an objective eye, in the midst of all of the forces that conspire to thwart their efforts, what public school teachers accomplish is nothing short of remarkable.

The truth is that teachers deserve all of the support we can give them and they deserve none of the mounting blame and criticism that is heaped upon their heads and shoulders, unmercifully.  It is also true that teachers need their unions and their associations. These are, after all, the only entities that support the efforts of teachers consistently. We do not plan to let the teacher organizations off the hook, however, as they are no different than any other business organization and need to relentlessly re-examine their mission, their strategic objectives, and retool themselves in an ever-changing political environment.

The one thing about which we can be sure is that very little of that which has worked in the past can be expected to work in the future.

Let us examine the evidence for the argument that our systems of public education are in a state of crisis. For the benefit or our teachers we are going to save the empirical evidence for later. The compelling truth is that teachers know in their hearts that public education is in crisis because they deal with the reality of it every single day in their classrooms.

You know it every day when the emphasis you are asked to place is more on test preparation than sustained learning. You know it every day that you must move your class on to a new lesson when you know there are students who are not yet ready; students who do not yet understand yesterday’s material and will be even less prepared to understand what is presented to them tomorrow.

You know when you deal with the disruption of students who will not behave and will not try and when their parents are convinced that you are being unfair to their child.

You know it when you deal with students who could be honor students if only they would try. You know it when parents of such students seem to have no more ability to motivate their children than you do.

You see it when you experience, first hand, the performance gap between the white and minority students in your classrooms and you know that many of the students who are failing place no value at all on education and neither do many of their parents.

You know it when, at the end of a school year you are approached by administrators asking what you can do to help a student improve his or her grade so they are able to graduate with their class; students who have done little or nothing to earn that grade for an entire semester or school year.

You know it when you look at children who are weighed down by the crushing burden of a range of disadvantages: disadvantages with which the students are as powerless to deal as are you, their teachers.

The empirical evidence for the crisis is so overwhelming is seems almost pointless to rehash the data. That teachers are unfairly blamed for the results of the standardized competency examinations administered in their respective states does not mitigate the fact that far too many children are failing.

There is the performance gap between white and black students, and between white and other minority students a gap that show no sign of narrowing and yet is rarely the topic of frank discourse.

NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) results that show that a full 60 percent of American students are below proficiency in virtually every subject of inquiry and anywhere from 85 to 90 percent of minority students are below proficiency. Contrary to the arguments of so many of the defenders of public education, the demarcation line between proficiency and below is the one that counts. NAEP defines “proficient” in several ways but the most noteworthy is the assertion that students must be able to use in real-life situations what they have learned in school. Anything less than this is simply unacceptable no matter how much we might wish, otherwise. After all, if we cannot use knowledge or skills in real life then we have not really learned.

So, the reader may ask, what are teachers to do in the face of the unreasonable scrutiny and the unfair burden of blame heaped on them by reformers and many of the families they exist to serve? It is so easy for teachers to feel overwhelmed by the forces that impede their ability to do what they know must be done.

The answers to these questions are the subject of my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America.

For the purpose of today’s subject, the answer is that teachers need to stand tall and declare, going beyond what the Bad Ass Teachers are declaring:

“Damn right the system is in crisis and we’re through taking the blame for an antiquated educational structure and process that has not been substantially altered for more than a century.”

“We are through taking the blame for what may be the lowest level of student motivation to learn on the part of students in decades.”

“We are sick and tired of being held responsible for the cavernous disparity in the levels of preparation of students when they arrive at our door for their first day of school.”

“We are fed up with being blamed for the burgeoning population of American parents who have lost hope and faith in the American Dream and no longer believe that an education provides a way out for their sons and daughters.”

And, “We categorically reject responsibility for a reality that the combined power of the influence of the peer group and social media, both of which are fueled by the power of Madison Avenue, has made it exponentially more difficult for parents to sustain their role as the biggest influence in the lives of their pre- and post-pubescent children.”

When parents have ceased being the major influencing force in the lives of their children it will be that much more difficult for teachers to preserve their own level of influence in the lives of those same children.

But complaining about these realities will only take teachers so far. The operative question is what can be done about these challenges and right now, in this point in history, the only ones coming forth with what they believe to be a solution, however ill-advised it may be, are the corporate and government reformers with their “runaway train of misguided educational reforms.”

The Bad Ass Teacher Association, by taking a stand and shouting that they “aren’t going to take it anymore,” has positioned itself to play a lead role in countering the “reformers” with real and meaningful reforms of our educational process. In my next post, I will publish and open letter to the Bad Ass Teachers of America challenging them to take the lead in changing this reality and offering a comprehensive plan of action as a place to begin.

Check out my column in this mornings Fort Wayne Journal Gazette “All pulling together, we can defeat poverty!

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Published: July 24, 2014 3:00 a.m.

All pulling together, we can defeat poverty

Hawkins

Citing a U.S. Census Bureau report, The Journal Gazette recently reported that 77 million Americans, nearly a quarter of the population, live in what have been designated as poverty areas and that this population has increased significantly over the past decade. A poverty area is a census tract in which 20 percent or more of the households have incomes below the poverty level.

The relationship between poverty and the failure of so many of our public school students is central to the debate between corporate and government reformers of public education and those who defend traditional public education in America.

Reformers are pushing for privatization of our schools; Common Core; standardized testing to hold teachers and schools accountable; and vouchers to help parents pay for their school of choice. It is ironic that the reformers are focused on enticing the most motivated families away from our “failing schools” while doing little or nothing to fix those schools or to help the families who remain in them. We have described this as the “politics of abandonment.”

The defenders of traditional public education insist that our schools are better than ever and suggest that it is unreasonable to expect more from our public schools until we do something about poverty, which they consider the biggest cause of academic failure. These well-meaning Americans, most of whom are educators, are engaged in what could be described as the “politics of intransigence.”

Neither side seems to recognize that poverty and failing schools are symptoms of the same pathology, nor do they understand how their actions contribute.

This current chapter in the history of poverty has evolved, since the end of World War II, as the population of people for whom neither the free-market economy nor the system of public education has worked has mushroomed. Over time, these Americans have become increasingly less hopeful and more powerless in the face of the challenges of life. What we have also seen is that attempts on the part of a benevolent government to soften the blow have failed to alter the reality for this population. What those efforts have created are dependencies.

We cannot continue to support those dependencies, nor can we simply abandon this population without our society reaching a tipping point after which the people who produce economic value will be unable to support those who do not. If the U.S. is to compete successfully in the dynamic world marketplace of the 21st century, we desperately need the best efforts of virtually every American man and woman.

What we must do is to attack the fabric of hopelessness and powerlessness under which so many Americans have been draped. Here is what we can do if only we work together:

We can repackage and resell the American dream to give people hope that they can, indeed, have a better future.

We can develop an educational process that will teach children that success is a process all can master. We can create this in such a way that it gives teachers the time and resources they need to teach children how to be successful.

We can teach parents how powerful parents and teachers can be, working together as partners and how, with a little help from teachers, they can literally change the world for their children.

Finally, we can create a sense of community in which we are united behind a set of shared values; a community in which we do care about one another and in which we are all willing to help.

We cannot accomplish any of these things, however, until we stop the runaway train of misguided reforms before it can damage, forever, our way of life.

 

 

 

Mel Hawkins, of Fort Wayne, is the author of “Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America.” He wrote this for The Journal Gazette.

From Terry Heick and the Bad Ass Teachers Association: “10 Things I Wish I Knew My First Year of Teaching!” also Applies to Positive Leadership!

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Terry Heick’s insightful comments entitled “10 Things I Wish I Knew My First Year of Teaching,” posted on the Facebook page of the Bad Ass Teachers’ Association, could have just as easily been written for a course in “Positive Leadership,” which, not coincidentally, could be offered to principals and other administrators.  

Prioritize—and then prioritize again. Positive Leaders relentlessly remind their people and themselves of the essential purpose of the organization and each individual’s job. It is so easy, in the heat of the challenges we face, to be diverted by secondary agenda’s and objectives.

 It’s not your classroom.   Organizations belong to the people and the customers they exist to serve and one of the biggest mistakes managers and supervisors make is to forget that their primary purpose, their over-riding priority, is to help their people and organizations succeed by doing the best job of which they are capable. Teachers and leaders need to remind themselves, often, that it is not about “me.”  

Students won’t always remember the content, but many will never forget how you made them feel. The most important component of human motivation is to make people feel important and it is amazing how forgiving employees can be when they know that the mistakes their leaders make were made within the context of helping them learn how to be successful. It is equally amazing how the level of trust that we earn is based almost totally by the way we interact with people rather than the things we say. It is also amazing how much the people of an organization are willing to give of themselves, when they know their welfare and best interests are always at the top of their leader’s list of priorities.

Get Cozy with the school custodians, secretary, librarian. One of the core principles of positive leadership is that every job well done adds value to the organization and its customers and also adds beauty to the world. Paying positive attention to people who support production and sales staff always pays dividends at crunch time when you need people to step up with their best efforts.

Longer hours isn’t sustainable. Quality always trumps quantity when it comes to how leaders and teachers allocate their time if for no other reason than it allows us to refresh ourselves and to “sharpen our saw” as Stephen Covey would say.

Student behavior is a product. In organizations as well as classrooms, how people conduct themselves, whether they have positive or negative attitudes, how much they are willing to give of themselves, and their commitment to their purpose is all a product of the kind of organization and environment the leader or teacher creates and sustains. It is also a product of how well they understand the process of success and whether they think of themselves as winners, as being a part of something special. Remember how you felt when in the classroom of one of your favorite teachers.  

Don’t get sucked in to doing too much outside of your class.  Activities that are separate and apart from our purpose can provide enrichment that refreshes and re-enthuses us or it can be an irritant that creates friction, and saps our energy. The process of getting sucked into something that is counterproductive is just one example of being distracted from one’s purpose and being drawn to secondary agendas. Pick and choose, carefully, the extra activities in which to become involved.

 Help other teachers. Everyone in an organization knows and respects the people to whom they can turn for help and support. It’s central to the adage that the more we give of ourselves the more we receive in return and this is powerful where ever people come together including classrooms and organizations.  

Reaching students emotionally matters. A lot. Ultimately our joy in life is a function of the quality of our relationship with other people. The more we understand that people are more important than things and that connecting with another person on an emotional level is the key to our sense of self and theirs, the more control each of us will have over the outcomes in our lives.

Literacy is everything for academic performance. Whether in business, in school, or in our personal lives it is our ability to read and understand and also our ability to communicate what we observe, think, and feel effectively that determine our power to create joy and meaning in our lives, and to seize the opportunities that present themselves to us.

 

The only thing I would change in this list of things we might wish we knew at the outset of any endeavor, whether as a leader, as a teacher, or as a friend is to:

“beware of the naysayers who are so immersed in bitterness and resentment that they find it necessary to drag us down to their level rather than elevate themselves up to ours”

The common theme through all of these items has to do with the quality of the relationships we are able to create and sustain. Ultimately, the value of our lives is measured against the quality of our relationships with other people.  So important is this central theme “that relationships are central to what we do” that I advocate that the entire educational process be re-structured in such a way that it supports a teacher’s ability to build and sustain close, personal relationships with their students, with the parents of their students, and with the other members of their teaching teams.

A Challenge to American Teachers: Positive Action Trumps Negative Reaction and is Desperately Needed in the Arena of Educational Reform!

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While there are few things as satisfying as a well-conceived and well-timed complaint about the injustice of this or that, there are also few things that are more unproductive. Right now, our American system of public education is at a crisis point. It is because they believe there is an absence of effective leadership in education that business and political leaders have entered the fray and are using all of their power and influence to fix what they believe to be a dysfunction educational system.

If that were not sufficiently scary, these corporate and government reformers are proposing what they believe to be sweeping educational reforms without taking the time to understand the problems of public education in America, in all of its complexity. They believe that if only we would run our schools as effectively as they run their businesses it would transform public education.

These powerful Americans are charging forward on what I like to call “the runaway train of misguided educational reforms” and the train is racing toward disaster for American public schools and for American children.

All the complaining that teachers, other professional educators and their advocates have done has had no perceptible impact on slowing, let alone stopping these misguided reforms and that reality will not change no matter how high we raise our voices.

One of the principles of positive leadership, as outlined in my book The Difference Is You: Power Through Positive Leadership is that effective people rarely complain. Instead, they propose positive solutions designed to produce better outcomes. Like the laws of physics, the powerful force of misguided educational reforms can only be countered by a positive force of equal or greater power.

I call upon educators at every level to come together in support of a blue print to reinvent education in America. It is a blue print that takes the time to understand how children learn and what teachers need in order to teach effectively. It is a proposal designed to give teachers the resources that they need to do the best job of which they are capable. It is a proposal to shift the focus away from standardized testing and away from failure to one in which children can learn how to be successful and how to master subject matter in a positive, nurturing environment. It is a plan to pull parents into the educational process as full partners with their children’s teachers because it is only through such partnerships that the motivation to learn can be inspired, nurtured, and sustained.  Finally, it is a blue print for strengthening rather than severing the critical bond between schools and the communities they exist to serve.

This blue print for transforming education in America and countering the misguided efforts of corporate and government reformers is presented in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. It is a proposal that lays out a very specific plan of action with 33 action strategies to give our nation’s children the future that they deserve and that our nation so desperately needs.

Professional educators at every level and venue are urged to take the time to review this positive proposal for action.

Vignette #4 from Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream, My worst day as a substitute teacher!

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Vignette #4 took place in a high school gym class and turned out to be the single worst day of subbing over a ten-year period.

 

In this half day assignment, the gym teacher for whom I would be subbing was still in his office when I arrived. As he explained about the one class I would be handling, he instructed me to take attendance both at the beginning and, again, at the end of the period. He said this was a very large class, approaching sixty students, and the kids would skip out early if I did not pay close attention, particularly since this was the last period of the day. He said the only ones who will receive credit will be the students who are present for both beginning and ending roll calls. The class was fairly equally divided between male and female students and was over fifty percent African-American students, which was also true of the school as a whole. The rest of the students were evenly distributed racially with equal parts white and Hispanic students and with a smattering of Asian students.

Although the students were loud and not all were willing to participate in the planned activity, there were no problems of significance during the bulk of the ninety-minute period. The students who did not wish to participate sat along the wall and talked amongst themselves. The biggest challenge, given the size of the gym and of the class, was keeping tabs on them. In addition to the doors leading out of the gym into one of the interior corridors, there was an unlocked door leading to an outdoor athletic field and a door to an internal storage room for athletic equipment; also unlocked. Anytime my attention was directed elsewhere, one or both of those doors would open.

As instructed, I took attendance at the beginning of class. As we approached the last ten minutes of the period I got the class’s attention and explained Coach _________’s instructions for the end-of-the-period attendance. Of course, the students began complaining that the Coach never took attendance at the end of the class.

I began calling names and attempted to make eye contact with each student as he or she answered. About a quarter of the way down the list, an African-American female student answered in response to the name I called. She was standing directly in front of me, less than ten feet away. A short while later, as I proceeded down the list, this same student answered a second time, when another name was called. I immediately addressed the student, telling her that, as she had responded to two different names, I needed to know who she was and, also, which of the two students whose names I had called was not present.

The student immediately and loudly insisted that she had responded only to her own name. When I repeated that I had clearly observed her responding to both names she began screaming denials at me, coming closer to me as she did so. Within seconds, two other girls, also black, came to her defense and also began yelling at me and, by that time, all three girls were within inches of my face, screaming at the top of their lungs; saliva splashing in my face as they did so. I had been standing against the wall next to the door and I was trapped against the wall.

“Coach ______ doesn’t take attendance at the end of class!” one of the girls yelled. “You’re just doing this because we’re black!” she screamed.

Another of the group screamed that “we all look alike to you white people!” and repeated her friend’s claim that I was just doing this because they were black.

By this time, my heart was racing and my ears were ringing. I could also feel my face turning red as they pressed even closer to me and as I struggled to maintain any semblance of poise. I could also see that other students were taking advantage of my predicament and leaving before the bell had rung.

Striving to keep an even voice, I asked the girls to calm down but there was no recognition that I had spoken and no lessening of their screeching. By that time, my head was pounding. As I felt a sense of panic creep into my throat, I was desperate to create some separation between the three girls and me. At this point, I reached out with both hands and gently took hold of the elbows of the girl directly in front of me to push her away.

As soon as my hands made contact with her, she reacted suddenly and violently, and screamed even louder, “Don’t touch me!” she said, “don’t you ever touch me.” She then pushed both of her hands against my chest and shoved me back against the wall. All three of the girls were now screaming so loud and my ears were ringing so badly that I could understand nothing they were saying.

I kept hoping another teacher would hear the racket and come to my assistance but no one did. Given the distance of the gym from the main hallway, it is entirely possible that no one heard the screaming although I would have thought it could have been heard at the far end of the building.

By the time the bell rang, my whole body was trembling and I was feeling a rage grow inside of me. Fortunately, within seconds after the bell had rung, the three girls were gone. All I could think about was that I didn’t even know the names of the girls who had confronted me. As the last few students streamed out of the gym, I asked if anyone could tell me the names of the three girls but the students just walked faster, avoiding my question.

Fortunately, this was the last period of the day. When the last student had departed I sat down, feeling exhausted, and tried to calm myself. Before leaving for the day, I wrote notes to the gym teacher and to Student Services, explaining what had happened, in detail.

At no time, after leaving the school that afternoon, did I hear from the gym teacher, the principal, or any of the school’s administrators.

Part 2 of the Action component of our Strategic Action Plan to Reinvent Public Education – Engaging Parents and the Community

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As we shift our focus to the community we must call on our political leaders for leadership, resell the American dream, and to educate all Americans on the paramount role of parents in improving the motivation to learn.

 

It would be so easy to stop at this point, thinking that our job is finished but, in reality, it has just begun. Education is simply a tool to help us prepare each new generation for the challenges our nation will face in an ever-more competitive world marketplace. It is a marketplace in which it will be impossible for us to compete, effectively, if we do not have the full participation of our entire citizenry. We simply must bring them on board.

 

As challenging and overwhelming as this may seem it is nothing more than an enormous marketing and advertising campaign to repackage and resell the American Dream. For all of the progress other economies have made with respect to their ability to compete with the U.S. we are still the unparalleled leader in marketing and advertising and we need to capitalize on this strength to re-engage every American to join their fellow citizens in rising to the challenges facing our nation. It is a perfect opportunity for African-Americans and other minorities to assume their rightful place as full partners in the American enterprise and in American society. We simply need to sell them on the idea that the time and the opportunities are prime.

 

The beauty of education is that nothing we do as a nation reaches into as many homes and as many families as our systems of education and it provides the perfect opportunity to not only transform public education but also to transform American society. It is an initiative in which the leaders of our school districts throughout the nation will be the point persons carrying the message of our political leadership. It is an initiative where our school superintendents and principals will be supported by leaders from government, professional athletics, entertainment, and the full spectrum of businesses. It is an initiative in which every single American man and woman will have a meaningful role to play.

 

What follows is the blueprint for action in the form of our final fourteen (14) action items.

 

 Action Item #20 – Our Presidents, present and future, must initiate and sustain a movement to re-sanctify the American dream, calling on leaders at every level of governments and business, and men and women in every community to believe in the American dream with their words and deeds and to ask American parents to accept responsibility for the education of their children. Further, that every American mother and father work hand-in-hand with their children’s teachers as full partners in the educational process. This is the categorical imperative of our time.

 

 Action Item #21 – Leaders at every level are challenged to ask parents everywhere, irrespective of race or economic circumstances: “Is your son or daughter a future President of the United States?  Is he or she a future CEO, physician, attorney, teacher, engineer, school superintendent, or other professional?” And then, those parents must be challenged to help their children achieve the best success of which they are capable.

 

  Action Item #22 – Educators accept that the over-riding objective must be to improve the motivation of students and that this requires the active partnership of the parents of those children. Toward this end, school boards need to re-establish expectations for their superintendents and principals to work toward this objective and determine how performance against those expectations will be evaluated.

 

  Action Item #23 – School Corporations must first target those segments of their community that are the lowest performing but no segment is to be overlooked.

 

  Action Item #24 – Educators must hit the streets using all available means to draw parents into their children’s schools and to engage those parents in the educational process. They must also work to enlist the assistance of community leaders toward that end and must hold themselves and their staffs accountable for the outcomes.

 

  Action Item #25 – Educational leaders must engage the creative energies of the entire community, including charitable foundations, for the purpose of developing and evaluating programs to help pull parents in as partners and to help them learn how to be effective in supporting the academic efforts of their children.

 

  In order to accomplish these objectives our school corporations must re-establish the expectations and priorities of principals and administrators.

 

 

  Action Item #26 – Superintendents must remove the administrative burdens from the shoulders of their principals, freeing them to devote their time and energy to their primary objective, even if it means employing more administrative support. Districts must create the expectations that principals and administrators spend 75 percent of their time in direct contact with parents, students, teachers, and staff.

 

  Action Item #27 – School Corporations must place a premium on positive leadership: Relying on positive leadership skills as the criteria for selection of principals and administrators and making real investments in ongoing leadership development for those principals and administrators.

 

  Finally, we must identify the communities with the greatest needs and we must use every tool and resource at our disposal to engage those communities and their leaders and to enlist their commitment to make education of our children the over-riding priority of every citizen. We must then replicate that process in each and every community in the nation.

 

 

 Action Item #28 – We need to call upon our presidents, present and future, to challenge celebrities from every venue, large and small, to make a commitment to public education by reaching out to their fan bases, asking them to accept responsibility for the education of their children. This challenge must be extended to every adult American, asking them to do whatever is within their power in order to make a difference.

 

  Action Item #29 – Initiate a cultural transformation using the African-America community as a model, on both a national and local front, in which black Americans, as a community:

  • Accept responsibility for their futures with no reliance on “The Man” to solve their problems for them;
  • Stop blaming the white people for the plight of blacks, whatever one’s opinion about the culpability of white society, simply because blaming others is a debilitating strategy;
  • Place a premium on education;
  • Raise expectations of black children in the classroom and relentlessly encourage our children to exceed those expectations;
  • Work as partners with our local school systems, both public and private, to support the teachers of our children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Action Item #30 – Local superintendents should encourage head start and other preschool programs in their school districts to redouble their efforts to pull parents into the process so that our children can continue at home the important work they do at their school.

 

 

 

 Action Item #31 – Superintendents of each district should establish a community advisory organization with representation from key members of each high school’s community: parents, churches, social and community organizations, neighborhood associations, and businesses. As noted earlier, these specific examples are specifically targeted at the African-American community because this is where the most glaring deficiencies can be found but they can easily be modified and local advisory organizations will tailor their activities to the unique requirements of their community. Examples of activities for which this organization will be responsible include:

 

 

 

  •          Reaching out to the community to solicit broad-based participation and support of the community;
  •          Asking all leaders of the African-American community to carry President Obama’s challenge into the homes of their community and to engage the community in the process of creating a new culture; one that challenges black children to assume their rightful place as players in the business and professional playing fields much as they have done in the world of professional athletics and entertainment;
  •          Brainstorming with people from across the spectrum of the community for innovative programs that will create the support systems necessary to facilitate this objective;
  •          Recruiting volunteers from among the ranks of professionals, business executives, craftsmen, tradesmen, athletes, and artists to reach out into the communities with which they have a connection and to connect with parents and students;
  •          Invite each school’s population of parents to a free lunch with their children, once per month;
  •          Using the same creative marketing techniques we use in promoting fundraising ventures, we can invite parents to workshops in the evenings or on Saturdays, to teach them how to help their children with homework;
  •          We can solicit parents to volunteer at their son or daughter’s school and, where necessary, we can enlist some of them to provide babysitting for those who have young children still at home;
  •         We can ask churches, neighborhood library branches, Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers-Big Sisters, scout troops, and many other community programs to provide organized study, reading, and writing groups and to recruit tutors from among their ranks;
  •          We can find more creative ways to develop mentoring programs to bring young people into direct contact with men and women who demonstrate each and every day of their lives that success and achievement are within our power; and,
  • ·         We can ask families and neighbors of parents with school age children to support these parents in this process in every conceivable way.

 

 

 

 Action Item #32 – Successful men and women of each community should be challenged to reach back to their communities: to support the efforts of educators to pull parents in as partners in the educational process and/or to mentor to a child in need until there are not enough children to go around.

 

 

 

 Action Item #33 – Urge all Americans to give support and encouragement to the children in their lives: grandchildren, nieces and nephews, our children’s friends, kids from our neighborhood, even our own children. Let them know how important it is that they do their best and that we are rooting for them.

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

Fixing public education must be the categorical imperative of our time and the process will require the participation of the entire community. It is essential that parents be full partners in the educational process because these are the men and women who have the best chance of bringing a child to their first day of school, motivated to learn even in the face of the obstacles with which they will surely be confronted. If the child has wandered off the path, teachers and parents working together offer the best hope that these children can be redirected.

 

Improving the motivation to learn on the part of students and increasing their level of preparedness when they arrive for their first day of school must be the ultimate objective of every single thing we do and we must evaluate the efficacy of every program and investment on the basis of how well it services this purpose. We cannot afford to waste a single moment or dollar on things that do

 

We must also step back as educators, at all levels, to view our system of public education as an integral whole. We must apply a systems-thinking approach that will allow educators and policymakers to challenge their fundamental assumptions about public education; to understand how what we do contributes to the problem; and, ultimately, to re-engineer the system to do what we need it to do to optimize the power of a child’s motivation to learn. It must be a system focused on success that will help each child progress along their unique path at the best speed of which he or she is capable.

 

The entire educational community must reach out also to the current and future Presidents of the United States, urging them to fire the starter’s gun and lay down the challenge to every mother and father to accept responsibility for the education of their children and for partnering with their teachers and principals.

 

These things must be accomplished with an unprecedented urgency because the very future of our way of life is in jeopardy. If we fail to seize up this opportunity then the outcomes we will experience in the coming years will be decidedly unpleasant and we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

Part 1 of the Action component of our Strategic Action Plan to Reinvent Public Education

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What follows are thirty-three (33) action items, all part of a comprehensive plan to transform public education in America.  These are actions that can be implemented one school district or organization at time until it is the reality in every public school district and every private, parochial, and charter school in the United States. The action items are divided into two groups.

The first group that are presented in this post are for implementation within our schools to transform the educational process. The second group, which will be presented in a subsequent post, will be focused on soliciting the support of the community at every level and venue toward the objective of pulling parents into the educational process. We want to resell the American dream and re-instill the hope and faith of millions of American parents that this newly transformed educational process will give their children a real chance for a better life.

The plan is constructed in such a way that it can evolve as our professional educators learn what works best in their particular environment. It is a plan that is designed to be a learning and adaptive process. The only aspects of the plan that are non-negotiable are our commitment to give each child an opportunity for a quality education and to preserve and protect the relationship between our schools and the communities they exist to serve.

These thirty-three (33) action items were first presented in my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. For the plan to work, each and every action item must be addressed, even if modified to fit the unique characteristics of a school or community. The deletion of any item will throw the entire plan into a state of disequilibrium and will assure its failure.

The job of professional educators is to take these action items and to add to the list of things we can do, relentlessly. When outcomes are disappointing, a solution is always there, in front of us, at the very edge of our present capability.

The reader is advised that the logical framework for these action items is discussed in detail in my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America. The book examines, from an historical perspective how education has evolved to its current state and makes a detailed argument for each and every one of the recommendations to follow. Because much has been learned since my book was written, the author has exercised the privilege of making a few small changes in the recommendations.

In our post of June 24th we outlined all of the things we want our newly designed system of education to accomplish and the reader is encouraged to quickly review those goals and objectives before proceeding with the actual action items. In essence, what we want to accomplish is to put teachers in a position to teach and children in position to learn. We want both teaching and learning to be fun. We want teaching and learning to be a life-affirming activity.

Below are the specific steps that we believe will lead us to a new reality in which all of our goals and objectives can be achieved within the context of the system as an integral whole. These are not a list of actions from which we can pick and choose.

 

Action Item #1 – Each state department of public education should establish a forum of their state’s most accomplished educators and challenge them to employ a “Systems thinking approach”[1] in order to challenge our fundamental assumptions about the system and then re-engineer the system to better meet the needs of Twenty-first century American children, their parents, and educators. We need to:

 

  1.       Assess each student’s unique starting point and tailor an academic plan to his or her unique requirements;
  2.      Change the reality in such a way that what matters is not how fast a child learns something, compared to his or her classmates, rather that they learn it;
  3.     Change the expectations for teachers in such a way that taking the time to make sure a child is ready to move on is the norm and not a risky, consequence-laden diversion;
  4.       Restructure our schools in a way that increases the probability that close, long-lasting relationships will develop between teachers and students and also the parents of those students;
  5.      Create an environment that fosters the special rapport many of us experienced with our favorite teachers;
  6.      Create reality in which no child is labeled and where every child succeeds because, in the final analysis, all success is relative;
  7.     Create a reality in which children never have to worry about being pushed into a situation in which they are unprepared and thus predetermined to fail; 
  8.      Create a reality in which the expectations of our children are incessantly on the rise;
  9.       Create a reality in which being somehow different does not diminish the esteem in which we are held and where our differences can be celebrated;
  10.    Create a reality that focuses entirely on success and in which the word failure does not exist;
  11.   Teach children that success is a process that all can master; and,
  12.   Rethink what Twenty-first Century children must learn in order to be successful in a new world where what we learn today may be obsolete before we know it.

 

It is imperative that we address the problems of trust and accountability. This will require that we engage parents in the process, that we make what happens in the classroom more transparent, and that teachers, their unions, and school administrators work together to find new methods and measures of accountability and enhance teacher training.

 

Action Item #2 – Individual teachers, members of teaching teams, and teacher unions must demand more accountability from their colleagues and must work hand in hand with administrators to develop peer review standards and practices to ensure that:

  1.        Substandard teachers are identified and remediated;
  2.        That exemplary teachers are recognized and rewarded;
  3.       That continued unacceptable performance leads to consequences that may include termination; and,
  4.      That competency exams have little if any role to play in the assessment of teacher or school performance.

 

 

 

Action Item #3 – Teachers associations must rise to the challenge of redefining their mission in meeting the challenges of Twenty-first Century public education with a focus on partnering with the administration in the development of teacher training in: working as members of teaching teams; accepting responsibility for responding proactively to substandard performance of colleague; developing positive, nurturing relationships with students; and, developing partnerships with parents. Unions will also play a key role in serving as a powerful advocate for their members in the adoption and implementation of the other action items we will be proposing below.

 

 

 

Action Item #4 – Create an expectation that parents will visit their child’s classroom a given number of times during a semester or school year and hold the parents accountable by prompting those that need it and by reporting whether or not the expectations were met on report cards.

 

 

 

Action Item #5 – Install digital video recording equipment:

 

  1.      In the classrooms of American public schools and place sole control of that equipment in the hands of the classroom teachers, and
  2.      In the corridors, common areas, and playgrounds with the control place in the hands of the principal.

 

 

Next we must demand a commitment of students to both the educational process and to reasonable codes of conduct. This must include a change in perspective in which getting a quality education is no longer an entitlement but rather and a responsibility of citizenship.

 

 

Action Item #6 – States shall be asked to pass new legislation that abolishes compulsory education beyond the age of fourteen (14).

 

 

 

Action Item #7 – Establish education as a responsibility of citizenship rather than as a right and create an entitlement-free code of conduct in which students have the right to be safe, to be treated with dignity, and to an opportunity for a quality education, and are expected to earn rights and privileges through citizenship and scholarship.

 

 

It is vital that we shift the focus of our educational process to success, subject mastery, and accomplishment and eliminate even the idea of failure.

 

 

Action Item #8 – Shift educational focus to success and away from failure, providing ever-rising expectations: there is no failure, only varying velocities of success with students always working at the edge of their capability.

 

 

Action Item #9 – Shift our focus from protecting children from humiliation to preparing students to:

 

  1.       View success as a process, not a gift or entitlement,
  2.      View disappointing outcomes and mistakes as learning opportunities, and
  3.    Understand that the learning process prepares them to overcome adversity.

 

 

 

Action Item #10 – Convert educational standards that have been established in virtually every state, to sequential gradients of mastery from a most elementary starting point to overall subject mastery. We would want to set minimum levels of mastery that even the most challenged students can achieve with ever-higher levels of mastery that will follow, effectively allowing a student to progress as far as he or she is able.

 

 

We must create a unique academic path for each and every student so that they are judged only against their own performance.

 

 

Action Item #11 – Complete a comprehensive academic assessment on each child, prior to entering their first academic year, for utilization in the development of an educational plan tailored to his or her unique requirements.

 

 

 

Action Item #12 – Require students to demonstrate subject mastery before they are permitted to move on to new material, thus building a solid foundation for future academic success by:

 

  •        Allowing students to move forward as quickly as they are able,
  •        Allowing students who are struggling to get the special attention they require, and
  •        Document their accomplishments not their failures as part of their formal academic record.

 

 

We must put teachers in a position to teach, to engage both parents and students, and insure that they have the resources they require to do their important job.

 

Action Item #13 – Replace classroom aides with certified teachers to strengthen the team teaching capability and assuring that every dollar spent on personnel in the classroom is spent on professionals who can facilitate the learning process.

 

 

 

Action Item #14 – Introduce team teaching at all levels from elementary to secondary, where groups of three or more teachers are responsible for guiding a group of students through a given number of the stages of mastery.

 

 

 

Action Item #15 – Eliminate all reference to grade levels and replace that concept with three academic stages to be referred to as Elementary (first through the fifth academic year), Middle (sixth through the eighth academic year), and Secondary (ninth through the twelfth academic years).

 

 

 

Action Item #16 – Upon entry into their first academic year, groups of roughly forty-five students will be assigned to a team of at least three teachers who will remain with this group of students through completion of the students’ fifth academic year. As children enter their sixth academic year, they will be similarly assigned to a new team of at least three teachers who will remain with their students through academic years six to eight, at which time students and their families will have to decide whether the child will continue their formal education. These elementary and middle school academic units will allow students and teachers to establish close personal relationships that will foster the child’s academic success.

When students enter the ninth academic year, which will require a formal commitment from both the student and parent(s), the schools must be able to effectively assess a student’s progress to-date in order to determine how best to support each individual in the secondary stage of their education. Not only will that decision relate to an academic track such as college prep, technical, or vocational it must also determine the levels of intimacy and personal attention necessary for the child to perform at their optimal level.

 

 

We must create new measures of accomplishment, eliminate reliance on standardized competency examinations, and integrate the accountability process into the instructional process.

 

 

Action Item #17 – Replace current competency exams, such as the ISTEP+ in Indiana, with frequent mini-exams that allow teachers to assess subject mastery frequently throughout the year and to document these accomplishments.  Also, establish the threshold for demonstrating mastery at eighty-five percent (85%).

 

 

 

Action Item #18 – Eliminate graded homework that penalizes students for the mistakes they make and focus on practice that identifies mistakes as opportunities to learn followed by penalty-free chances to try again without any sense of failure until success is achieved.

 

 

We must take advantage of state-of-the-art technology, giving our teachers the ability to manage their time and priorities, eliminating important but time-consuming activity, and all with minimal adverse impact and the same user-friendliness we have come to expect from our smart phones.

 

 

Action Item #19 – Challenge an eclectic gathering of experts to develop a system of user friendly software and technology that converts academic standards, by subject matter, to step-by-step increments that:

 

  1.        Support teachers and students in the presentation of instructional material;
  2.       Permit students to read and study independently,
  3.        Provide multiple opportunities for students to practice applying these new skills both in the classroom and at home;
  4.       Give the teachers and students meaningful feedback as to the level of the student’s comprehension;
  5.       Directs students, automatically, to additional practice and instructional resources if appropriate;
  6.        Determines when a child appears to be ready to demonstrate their mastery in a given subject and directs them to what appears to be a practice quiz with no indication that the student must pass, but which is actually a Mastery Quiz;
  7.        If the child demonstrates mastery, will guide both student and teacher to appropriate new instructional units or modules;
  8.       When the child is unable to demonstrate mastery, will, very matter-of-factly, redirect the student and teacher to additional instruction and practice opportunities with the same material; leading to additional opportunities to practice and demonstrate mastery;
  9.        Relieve teachers of the burden of grading and recording papers whether practice assignments or quizzes thus freeing them to focus on instruction, feedback, and support;
  10.    Transmits documentation of the students successful mastery of the subject matter to the student’s permanent record for both recordkeeping and verification by appropriate authorities; and,
  11.    That periodically prompts the student to a review of previous lesson modules.

[1] Senge, 1990.