An Education Equivalent of a Clinical Research Study
If we want different outcomes from education in America, we must be willing to change what we do. To start, we must answer the question “why do students struggle?” and then address their academic distress in kindergarten, first, and second grade rather than waiting until they are hopelessly behind. We must acknowledge that Black and other students of color struggle the most because the education process is poorly designed to meet the needs of children, of whatever color, who show disparate levels of academic preparedness and emotional development.
The problems in education transcend race, ethnicity, language of birth, and relative affluence. The education process is a “one size fits all” solution.
Just as children can only learn what they have an opportunity to learn, teachers can only do what the education process supports and enables them to do. The success that many students enjoy is the result of all the good things teachers do with students despite an education process that was never designed to adapt to a diverse population of children. Professional teachers are essential to a quality education.
There are leaders and advocates of public education who insist our community public schools are better than they have ever been. There is an abundance of evidence that contradicts such assertions and to ignore it serves the interests of no one. Consider that even if public education is better than it has ever been, it is not as good as we need it to be. Test results measure the efficacy of the education process and not its teachers and schools.
We should not be surprised that students unable to get an A or B on a chapter test administered immediately after a lesson are also unable to demonstrate proficiency on NAEP Assessments[1], or on standardized tests offered by state departments of education each spring. My prediction is that if we were to compare the distribution of grades in our teachers’ gradebooks throughout a school year, with the data reported in The Nation’s Report Card,[2] we would find a significant correlation.
Children have no control over the circumstances of their birth but responding to the variance of those circumstances is within the power of educators and is their responsibility. Those educators must be free, however, to use whatever levels of discretion for which their training and the wisdom of their experience have prepared them.
What we need, and what I am prepared to present to you, is an education model designed to adapt to wherever we find children on an academic preparedness and emotional development continuum when they arrive for their first day of kindergarten. It is from that starting point that individual children will begin their academic journey under the guidance of professional teachers in pursuit of whatever aspirations they will choose for themselves.
This is a massive challenge as children have endured the inefficacy of the existing education process for as long as most of us have been alive. We cannot transform education within a single school year, but we must do something to overcome the inertia that has paralyzed us. Neither do we wish to disrupt our schools and classrooms while we test a new education model. The futures of every single student are at risk.
What I propose is the education equivalent of the clinical studies utilized in medicine and other research. We will begin by finding leaders of a sampling of struggling public elementary schools who are weary of watching students and teachers languish. They will be offered an opportunity to implement my model in at least their kindergarten classroom, although the K – 2 classrooms would be my preference. We will choose to focus on public schools because they are the only schools to which all children can be assured access.
The rest of our nation’s schools can continue down their traditional pathway, while we address the performance of the schools and students in our study. I have confidence in our teachers, however, and have no doubt that, once they understand the underlying logic of my model and learn about the progress students are making, they will find opportunities to help students who can benefit from its strategy, even in their traditional classrooms.
The criteria for defining an elementary school as “struggling” will be that only ten percent or less of its third, fourth, and fifth grade students can assess as proficient or above on exams documented in The Nation’s Report Card[3] or are meeting expectations as measured by state exams. There are thousands of such schools. If this trial makes the transformative change in outcomes that I predict, it is my hope that other educators and their schools will feel compelled to replicate that success.
The operational definition of an education process, including our model, is “the way our schools and classrooms are structured, organized, tasked, staffed, resourced, and evaluated to fulfill the mission and purpose of education in America.” That purpose is to help students acquire the knowledge, skill, and healthy self-esteem they will need to have meaningful choices with which to provide for themselves and their families. We must teach kids how to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship.
Educators are not serving their purpose when we push students ahead to lessons for which they are unprepared or by measuring their performance against that of their classmates. We do not care who learns the most, the fastest. Learning is the only thing that counts and once a student learns how long it took becomes irrelevant.
When we help students acquire the prerequisite knowledge and skills success demands, they are building on success, not failure.
Which better serves the purpose of education? Keeping an entire class in perfect cadence with schedules embedded in academic standards or giving kids the time they need to learn?
The existing process treats time as a fixed resource that constrains, rather than as a variable resource available to teachers and students in whatever quantity they need to learn. A practice that accepts only the best students can do in the time allotted is the same as accepting less than their best. It is only a matter of time before their teachers’ expectations of them become our students’ expectation of themselves.
Through my twenty-five years of organizational leadership experience, I never understood why it was necessary to teach employees that less than their best was unacceptable. It was not until I served as a substitute teacher that I began to understand.
Our goal, particularly in the elementary grades, is to help children develop solid academic and emotional foundations on which they can build whatever future they will choose for themselves. When masons lay a foundation, they make sure every block meets specifications, confirming it is of sufficient strength to support whatever structure they plan to build upon it. When the education process requires that teachers push students ahead before they are ready it forces students to lay foundations of C’s, D’s, and F’s. This level of achievement will not support the futures children will need and neither is it in the best interest of our communities.
These are examples of an education process disconnected from its purpose. Teachers can only do what the education process asks them to do. Blaming teachers for unacceptable outcomes is unacceptable.
I designed The Hawkins Model© to ensure that the essential variables of academic success are not sacrificed to achieve conformance and compliance. Please accept my invitation to examine this proposed education model not in search of reasons why it might not work but rather to imagine what it would be like for teachers to teach and students to learn in such an innovative learning environment.
You are encouraged, also, to review two earlier posts on my blog, Education, Hope, and the American Dream dated November 15, 2023, and January 23, 2024. The first offers a glimpse of how my model will compare to the existing education process and the second reviews an experiment I conducted in weeklong sub assignment for a middle school math teacher. It was this experience that gave birth to the idea for the model.
Then, I am asking for your help to find a sampling of at least five struggling elementary schools to participate in this clinical study. These children need a quality education, and we need them. I believe in our kids and their teachers. They can achieve ever increasing levels of success if we have provided them with an education process/model that is designed to support the essential work the mission and purpose of education requires.
Finally, every study must detail how it will measure success in fulfilling its goals. We will gauge our students’ achievement by answering the question, can students can apply in real life what they have learned in class? And then we will document each success like merit badges. Achievements are the only things we must count.
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/assessments/