Tag Archives: American Dream

The Tragedy of the Performance Gap: Two stories, two casualties of our intransigence

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The performance gaps between white and black students in this country, and to a lesser degree between white kids and their classmates from other racial groupings are not only destroying lives, they place our entire society at risk.

The existence of this performance gap is arguably the greatest contributing factors to the reality of a two-tiered society in which the citizens residing in poor neighborhoods in communities across the face of our nation live in a world that is separate and apart from mainstream America. The segment of our society that is separate and apart includes whites as well as minorities but blacks and other people of color or more readily stereotyped. Make no mistake, it is the existence of this separation that is at the root of the tragedy of Ferguson, Missouri and similar incidents that have taken place in other communities throughout the United States for as long as most of us can remember.

It is a reality in which people reside in the same communities but do not share the same dreams and aspirations, do not trust one another, and cannot relate to the cultural differences between them. It exists when black men and women are unable to trust the agencies of government charged with public safety. It also exists when public safety officials look on certain neighborhoods and their populations with distrust; when, routinely, they look at black males in particular with implicit suspicion.

Our first example that personifies the existence of the performance gap was a young black man who was a high school graduate who was taking an admissions exam for the third time. He was a personable young man with a smile that lights up the room; when in conversation he was engaging and able to look one in the eye. On the first two attempts to pass the test the young man earned identical scores of “4” out of a possible “100.” On the third and most recent attempt, it just so happened that the young man was the last individual to finish the test. While waiting for me to pull and print his score from the system he told me that he was nervous about getting his score but added “I think I did well, this time.” In the sense that he improved his score by fifty percent, it was an improvement but the reality is that he only scored a “6” on this third attempt.

The second young man, also a black high school graduate, was taking the exam for the first time. During the registration process this kid made a good impression, looked me in the eye, and asked intelligent questions. About a third of the way through the exam the young man raised his hand. When I arrived at his station he asked a question that had such a profound impact on me that I will never forget it. He asked “How are we supposed to know this stuff?” He was in the part of the exam that was focused on math and language skills. That he asked his question with such seriousness after so recently becoming a high school graduate is staggering. He earned a score of “9.”

As these two young men walked away from me I felt great sadness as I wondered where life would take them.

To these two young men the gap between them and their dreams must have seemed unbridgeable. At this point in their lives their ability to bridge the gap and become a full partner in the American dream may still be possible but it is highly improbable.

While the data collected on the two young men offers no clue to their family’s economic circumstances, both were well-attired and well-groomed and displayed no evidence to suggest debilitating poverty.

Are these kids a victim of a racist system of education and racist teachers and principals? The legitimacy of such assertions is diminished by the knowledge that many classmates of these two young men, also black, received quality educations and went on to be successful in both college and vocational schools and will ultimately find a place in mainstream society. It will be a place where they can be productive citizens while still retaining their identity as part of their cultural heritage.

Both of these kids also attended high schools with a number of African-American teachers and administrators and one had an African-American principal. Both high schools were part of a school corporation led by an African-American superintendent.

Sadly, these two young men are not exceptions to the norm rather they are two of many young people who have been unable to take advantage of an opportunity for a quality education. Because education is the key to full participation in the American dream, these young people are effectively barred from entry.

Few things are simple in life and this is particularly true of the complex socio-political challenges of the Twenty-first Century. What we do know, with a high level of certainty, is that there is a burgeoning population of young people who place no demonstrable value on education and come from families that provide minimal if any encouragement to their children to work hard to acquire that education. What we also know, and to which the overwhelming majority of teachers will attest, is that nothing contributes to academic success as much as parents who stress the importance of it and who support their children and their children’s teachers as they pursue it.

As we have so often stated in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge of Twenty-First Century America and in many articles, in order to be supportive parents must truly believe that getting an education will enable their children to have a better life. For many of these parents, the evidence from their own experience gives them no reason to hope that their children’s experience will be any better than their own.

The missing ingredient is hope and the operative question becomes “What can we do to re-instill hope in the hearts and minds of millions of mothers and fathers who feel hopeless and powerless. Helping these American men and women regain hope and faith in the American dream for their children, if not themselves, is the key to solving the problems with public education in America and we go about our important business as if it is an unalterable given.

If we are unable to give hope and faith to these parents and guardians and to their children nothing else we do will matter and the barrier between us will become ever more intractable.

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.

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.

How Do We Stop the Runaway Train of Misguided Educational Reforms?

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The educational reform initiatives that threaten to destroy public education in America are like a runaway train and cannot be stopped by the complaints of teachers, individually or collectively. Complaints are the useless weapons of the weak and the unimaginative. What teachers must believe is that, by banding together, they have the power to alter this untenable reality in education, but only if they open their hearts and minds to a new way of thinking about the educational process in which they have been immersed for so long.

The principles of positive leadership suggest that, rather than complain, powerful leaders offer constructive alternatives. In the case of education, that alternative cannot be a return to the status quo. We must acknowledge that the one and only thing about which corporate and government reformers have been correct is that the existing educational process is not meeting the needs of Twenty-first Century American children.

These reformers are wrong about everything else. They are wrong that teachers are to blame and that if we hold them accountable on the basis of student performance on annual competency examinations it will magically alter the outcomes. Such a strategy will not produce the outcomes we seek because teachers control only a small portion of the forces that are leading so many American children down the precipitous path to failure.

The reformers are wrong to think that privatization, financial incentives, charter schools, and removing our schools from the control of the communities they exist to serve will reverse the hopelessness and the powerlessness of a growing percentage of Americans who have lost faith in the American Dream.

These reformers are wrong to think that entrepreneurial principles and state-of-the-art technology can mitigate the value of trained and committed professionals in our classrooms. These reformers are wrong because they are pushing the wrong business principles; they are wrong because they have forgotten that, no matter how sophisticated it might be, technology will never be more than a powerful tool in the hands of people who know how to effectively and productively utilize it; and, they are wrong because they are blind to the reality that American public school teachers are victims of the same educational process that victimizes their students.

What educators must recognize is that the power that drives these reformers is a function of the public’s loss of faith in professional educators, in American public schools, and in an educational process that has left millions of American men and women bitter, resentful, and disillusioned.

It is not too late for American educators to re-establish themselves as our nation’s leaders of choice as we work to reinvent the American educational process. Time has become a commodity in short supply, however. We dare not waste another day, week, or month before we recognize the challenge before us come together to face it. If we wait a year we might as well throw in the towel because our envelope of opportunity will have re-sealed itself.

In this eleventh hour we need a comprehensive blue print for reinventing the American educational process and I offer my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-first Century America (REHAD) as a starting point.

The next couple of posts will be devoted to re-presenting the action strategies offered in the book (REHAD) into a strategic action plan that requires only a definitive decision to act. That decision to act is the responsibility of the professional men and women who preside over teacher associations and unions; over associations for principals and administrators; over the boards of entities established to promote education in the U.S., and over school districts and corporations, whether public or private.

As an author, I have no illusions that my strategic action plan, as comprehensive as it may be, will be the final iteration of a new vision for education in the U.S. but it is a place to start. What must follow is an analysis on the part of a diverse population of professional educators working diligently for ways to improve and enhance this initial blueprint.

Professional educators must harbor no illusions that they can pare this vision back until it is no more than the current reality, in disguise. Any such pretense will be quickly recognized and rejected and there will be no second chances.

Excerpt #10 – Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream – Part I, The Educational Process

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The gasoline combustion engine that powers our automobiles offers a perfect analogy for education in America. On the one hand, we have an engine that was designed more than a century ago that, simply, is unable to meet the demands and specifications of the Twenty-first Century. Even in perfect condition, however, the engine’s performance is dependent on the quality of the fuel that powers it. No matter how much we might tinker with the engine, it will sputter and fail if the quality of fuel is poor. The fuel that powers education in America is the level of motivation of children to learn and the commitment of their parents to the educational process. In the current reality, as we face the unprecedented challenges of the Twenty-first Century, we are dependent on an obsolete engine powered by what may be the lowest level of motivation to learn in the history of education in America.

 

Given the challenges presented by the dynamic international marketplace of this new century, we need to elevate both the engine that represents the educational system and fuel that powers it. If we hope to seriously compete with China, India, Europe, and the other developing economies we need a ferocious commitment from parents and an equally ferocious level of motivation on the part of our children. We also need to reinvent an educational system utilizing state-of-the-art technology that can unleash the full power of that fuel, with optimal efficiency, and without the nasty by-products of failure and humiliation for our children and burn out for our teachers. The outcome we are seeking is a system in which teaching is as much fun for teachers as learning will be for our children.

 

We begin our recommendations for reinventing education, hope, and the American dream with the educational process. In Part II, we will make our argument that the greatest problems with education in the U.S. is a growing cultural disdain for education manifested by minimal motivation to learn on the part of far too many children and a corresponding lack of commitment to the importance of education on the part of the parents of those children. That being said, addressing the issue of a cultural devaluation of education is a monumental challenge that will require that we take the time to lay down a philosophical foundation for our point of view. In the interim, the educational process, itself, is fundamentally flawed and until we fix it, nothing else we say or do will be believed by those who are disenfranchised.

 

We choose to start with the educational process partly because it is the lesser of the two challenges. Fixing the educational process is a formidable challenge but, clearly, policy makers and legislators have the power to bring about any and all of the changes that we will be recommending. The things that make this particular challenge so difficult are not the issues themselves but the fact that it requires that we change the way we think about education. We must ask people to challenge their basic assumptions about the way we educate our children. The changes that need to be made are structural and systemic and they cannot be accomplished through incremental change. We will walk the reader through the logical framework behind these proposals and then will introduce the specific proposals in the form of action items that require only that policy makers and decision makers make a commitment to act.

 

 

 

Excerpt #9 from Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream – The Introduction

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The True Challenge

This author suggests that the two major problems in education are 1) the level of motivation of the students and the corresponding commitment of their parents. It takes exceptional teachers to overcome the lack of student motivation and parental commitment, and 2) an educational process that is obsolete and poorly designed to meet the needs of students and to place teachers in a position to be teach effectively.

Bringing about the necessary cultural transformation and returning education to the top of the American priority list is a formidable but not impossible challenge. Public education is the single most important issue on the American agenda and we must declare it as such. This is an issue on which our entire future depends. It is my sincere belief that if we do not turn this situation around, in fifty years, China will be coming to the United States for its supply of cheap labor.

What differentiates this book from the many others that have been written about education in the U.S. is 1) that its focus is outward on the growing cultural disdain for education; 2) that it is focused on taking action by proactively engaging parents as full partners in the educational process; and, 3) that the specific educational reforms it proposes are the result of a systems-thinking approach that challenges our conventional wisdom and traditions.

Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream has been written from the perspective of an organizational leadership consultant rather than that of a social scientist or professional educator. I am convinced that we must take a pragmatic business approach if we are to effectively address the problems plaguing public education, which, not coincidentally, are the same problems that plague our society as a whole. If we can fix education we will also, to one degree or another, be addressing poverty, hopelessness, drugs, gangs, violence, and the very roots of our socio-economic foundation.

This project was motivated not only by my experiences as a substitute teacher in a public school system but also as a result of my experiences as a manager responsible for hiring new employees for my organizations and also for training them. Also contributing was my experience as a juvenile probation officer during the first nine years of my professional career and, more recently, while administering the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) which serves, among other things, as the entrance exam for prospective enlistees in the Armed Services of the United States.

Other authors proceed with critiques of public education’s declining performance followed by prescriptions for training better teachers, reorganizing schools in creative ways, making preschool more accessible, for improving curricula, and tailoring instruction to the unique needs of children, revamping assessments, and building true accountability. All of their focus is internal as if the cultural forces that relentlessly devalue the primacy of education and the corresponding decline in the motivation of American children are unalterable givens.

These are the realities that are having a devastating impact on the quality of education and we go about our important business as if we are powerless to address them. Like so much of American society and its government, we have acquired, over the last half century, a misguided belief that we have all the answers; that we can solve everyone’s problems for them; that we bear full responsibility. Possibly, we have forgotten that ensuring that children receive a quality education is a shared responsibility. Possibly we have come to believe that it is politically incorrect to call parents out; to get in their face and demand that they accept their responsibility as partners in education. We behave as if the poor and the nonwhite are too pathetic to take responsibility for their own futures. Possibly, poor people and minorities have written us off because they feel powerless to affect the outcomes in their lives. This is a reality Americans must alter at all cost.

In Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream we will provide vignettes from my own experience as a substitute teacher in the classrooms of the middle and high schools of Fort Wayne Community Schools. The focus of each will be to provide the reader with a glimpse of what takes place in the classroom and also to illustrate the importance of parental commitment and participation. Also included will be a vignette from a first-year teacher’s experience in an inner city elementary school in Washington DC. We believe these anecdotes provide compelling evidence of the mounting disdain for education and for our assertion that parents are abdicating their responsibility as indispensable partners in the educational process.

The “action focus” of Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream will be divided into two sections. Before we can challenge the American people to begin changing the cultures and subcultures of American society we must demonstrate that “we mean business.” It is not enough to make empty promises because empty promises are all many Americans believe they have heard, each and every day of their lives. We need to speak with our actions, demonstrating that we are making real and substantive changes in the way we will teach their children. We want parents to be able to look at the changes we have made so that they can truly believe that we will be giving their children the education they will need to make the American dream a reality. We want them to believe that this new educational process will truly empower their children to take control of their young lives and to seize an array of opportunities, from a huge and diverse menu, according to their unique talents, interests, and abilities. We want parents to want the best for their children even when they have given up hope for themselves.

Only when the parents of our nation’s children can reach out and touch these things can we reasonably expect them to believe in a new reality; and, only when they believe in the reality of this new educational process can we ask them to begin, once again, to have faith in the American dream and to have real and meaningful hope in a better future. Only when we are able to give American men and women a realistic hope for a better future for their children can we begin asking them to change the way they live, think, and feel.

As we turn our focus to the process of education in America, we will begin by comparing the way children learn during their pre-school years whether at home, in daycare, pre-school or head start programs with what we offer them when they arrive for their first day at school. What the reader will see, in this simple analysis, is that our educational process seems to work at cross purposes with the way the natural learning process functions. The result is that the fun of learning is soon replaced with a stress-filled, esteem-damaging process that sets many children up for failure.

We will also examine:

• Compulsory education and the fact that unmotivated students are allowed to be a disruptive influence on students who want to learn and teachers who are striving to teach;
• Teacher accountability and the trust between teachers and parents;
• The way we structure our schools and group children in classrooms, together;
• The way we identify an educational path for our children and then direct them down that path;
• The way we utilize teachers and facilitate their ability to teach and interact with students and their parents;
• Our current educational system’s focus on failure;
• Protecting children from humiliation;
• Homework, practice, and the manner in which we deal with the mistakes our students make;
• The way we assess a student’s level of competency over the subject matter within the context of educational standards;
• The allocation of scarce resources to serve our mission to the optimal advantage; and,
• The effectiveness with which we utilize the technology of the Twenty-first Century.
•

After re-thinking our assumptions about the educational process, we will present nineteen specific action strategies that will enable us to re-invent the educational process in order to better meet the educational needs of our children and to prepare them for the unprecedented challenges of the balance of the Twenty-first Century.

Through the implementation of these nineteen action strategies, we will show how we can structure the educational process in such a way that the structure supports and facilitates our teachers and students as they go about their important work. We will show how we can create real trust between parents and the teachers of their children in order to engage them as full partners in the educational process. We will illustrate how we can shift the focus away from humiliation and failure, focusing instead on teaching children that success is a process that all can master within the context of their individual talents and abilities. We will show how, utilizing Twenty-first Century technology, we can integrate the assessment of student competency and mastery into the educational process very much like industry has integrated quality systems within the production and assembly process.

It is a national tragedy that so many students reach a point in their academic careers where they have given up on themselves. It is a national travesty that we have given up on them. It is imperative that we place teachers in an environment in which they can make a real difference in the lives of the children in their classrooms. We want our teachers to be developing rich and nurturing relationships with our children and their families; relationships that will endure and that will be remembered with the same warmth that all of us feel when we think back on our favorite teachers. We want to eliminate the meaningless activity in which so many teachers become entrapped so that their time and energy are focused not only on helping children learn how to be successful but also helping them remember how much fun learning can be. We want teachers to re-discover how much fun it is to teach.

Simply by changing our thinking we can irrevocably alter the current reality of education in America and help our children develop the knowledge and skills necessary to compete successfully in an ever more complex international arena. We believe we can show, emphatically, that all of these things are well within our power to accomplish if only we open our hearts and minds and view them without prejudice.

Few if any of these first nineteen action times will require an act of the legislature. They can almost all be implemented by individual school corporations acting within the parameters of their legislated authority.

After we have presented our blueprint for the reinvention of education in America, we will shift our focus to the formidable challenge of changing our culture to one in which every American has faith and hope in the American dream, for their children if not for themselves, and where we are each committed to a portfolio of shared values constructed on the principles of freedom and democracy in which “. . . all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. . . .”

We will begin by examining what takes place in our public schools, particularly in urban America. We will also look at the vital role education has played in the development of American society as we have evolved into the richest and most powerful nation in the world.

We will examine the results from state competency exams, using Indiana as our example. These data clearly illustrate that the performance gap between white students and blacks and other minorities is as real as it is disturbing. What we will also see is that all students in urban public schools, whites included, underperform when compared with students in private and parochial schools and in rural and suburban public schools. That we misinterpret the reasons for this underperformance places our future in jeopardy.

It is also vital that we understand how American culture has evolved to present day and we will take an in depth look at the impact this cultural evolution has had on education in America, both public and private. We will show how several cultural phenomena, beginning after the Great Depression and end of World War II, transformed our nation and society in such a way that the core values that contributed to our nation’s greatness became obscured.

We will take a particularly close look at the culture of African America because the most significant and alarming performance gap in all of education is the chasm that exists between the educational performance of white children and their black classmates. This reality demands direct, unapologetic attention. That discourse will involve a close look at the work of John McWhorter, author of Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America . Dr. McWhorter suggests to us that the problem is a culture in which it has become a symbol of “black authenticity” for African-Americans to shake their finger at “whitey” for institutional racism and degradation that no longer exist to any relevant degree, and to flip a certain other finger at education and the other responsibilities of citizenship. These responsibilities are essential to the ongoing viability of a democratic society. We hope to dispel, irrevocably, even the notion that there is an entire race of people who are predisposed to academic failure, and replace it with a challenge to African-Americans and other minorities to take their rightful place as full partners in meeting the economic, social, and political challenges facing our nation. That challenge must come with the commitment that parents can count on the partnership of their children’s educators.

We will also devote time to a discussion of “entitlement mentality.” Typically, when people feel entitled to something they do not believe they should be required to do anything to earn it. We believe this is part of the problem with public education; that we have come to view education as an entitlement for which we should not be required to be responsible. Today, our entire society spends too much time talking about rights and entitlements rather than talking about responsibility. Aided by the literal eruption of electronic communications and computer technology, the power of the peer group has become more powerful than at any time in the history of our nation and now threatens to replace the family, church, and schools as the dominant socio-cultural force.

We will suggest that changing our culture is the categorical imperative of our time. Talk is cheap, however and we will offer a strategic plan of action designed to bring about massive and comprehensive cultural change. We will suggest that, as formidable as this challenge may seem it is nothing more than a sales and marketing plan of enormous size and scope. Because sales and marketing are two of the areas in which the U.S. is unsurpassed, this challenge is within our power to overcome.

Our action strategy to alter the culture of America will commence with a clear statement of purpose followed by a focus on the utilization of the principles of positive leadership , and will be manifested in fourteen specific action items directed to the community.

We will show how educators and other community leaders can reach out into the community and pull parents in. We will show how we can parlay one of President Barack Obama’s early campaign challenges to parents to accept responsibility for their children into a nation-wide initiative to rally the American people, across all cultural boundaries, to the idea that education is the ticket to a new, Twenty-first Century version of the American dream. Somehow, we have to sell Americans on the idea that the American dream still exists. We need to re-instill hope in the hearts and minds of men and women from across the entire spectrum of the American panorama that the dream is both real and achievable. For those who are poor and disadvantaged, we need re-ignite the hope and belief that they can make it real for their children and that a quality education is a pass of admission to the dream. Education has become something that these youngsters do not value and it is imperative that we alter this reality. The reader is urged to understand that this is not something that would be nice to accomplish; it is something that must be accomplished or our children and grandchildren will find themselves in an entirely different world where being an American is not something about which one can feel proud. Neither will it be a world where our children and grandchildren can feel safe and hopeful in rearing their own children.

The reader is encouraged to believe that each of things is possible if only we will proceed with an open mind and hold on to the idea that anything man can imagine, man can do. Educators must be encouraged to believe that these things are possible if only they will challenge their biases and assumptions and, most of all, if only they will accept responsibility for finding a solution. You will hear this axiom, in one form or another, again and again as you proceed through this book, as it is central to our purpose:

Instead of blaming other people, our government, or the world for our problems, it is only when we accept responsibility for those problems that we begin to acquire the power to solve them.

The bottom line is that the problems facing American society and the problems facing our systems of education are the exact same problems and they cannot be solved by educators working unilaterally. We must involve the entire community.

Black Kids, White Kids, Asian and Hispanic Kids, All Kids Can Learn!

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Let’s clear up any confusion, misconceptions, or lingering doubts about whether or not there are certain groups of children who can or cannot learn. The fact that so very many children do not learn has nothing to do with whether or not they can. What we have seen in public schools all over the U.S., as well as in private, parochial, and charter schools, as well as in experimental schools, is that kids from every racial, ethnic and cultural heritage can learn, irrespective of their economic circumstances.

The question is, what do we as a society do to insure that all children do learn; each and every one of them to the full extent of their unique genetic capability? Notice that I did not say what “can” we do. The use of the world “can” suggests that something may or may not be possible.

We have the power, individually and collectively, to create a reality in which every child learns to the fullest extent of their capability. Given that we have such power, it is absolutely intolerable that we allow the existence of a reality in which so many children are allowed to fail.

Please ask yourself what you can do, whether you are in a position to reach out to a single child or to an entire generation. And then, make a commitment to do it.

In my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America (REHAD). I wrote:

“. . . the mathematical and scientific laws of the universe care nothing about the color of a man or a woman’s skin. The only reason children of any racial or ethnic group are not masters of the sciences and mathematics is that their fathers and mothers do not insist that they learn these things. The only reason girls and boys, whatever their lineage, do not read and write proficiently is because their mothers and fathers do not insist that they become proficient.
The only time children of any cultural heritage do not become loving partners in the process of rearing their own children and teaching them these values is when we, as parents, do not teach them by our example. The only time any child grows up with an unhealthy self-esteem is when we do not teach him or her, each and every day of their lives, how very special they are; because we do not demand that they learn responsibility and self-discipline.”

Conveying this message as part of a coordinated plan of action is, I am convinced, the most important thing any American can do for our country at this point in our history. In REHAD, I outlined a blueprint for action that involves two components.

The first component is to fix an educational process that is more than a century old and that no longer meets the needs of children of the Twenty-first Century. It was a system that sets children up for failure and humiliation and that has left full generations of American men and women not only bitter and resentful but also hopeless and powerless that they can effect the outcomes in their lives. These men and women no longer believe in the American dream and no longer teach their kids that an education is important and offers them a pathway to a better life. As a result, the children of these men and women show up for their first day of school poorly prepared and with precious little motivation to learn.

The performance gap that we refer to so often is simply an illustration of that fact. That the most disparate performance gap is between white and black students is not proof that African-American children are less able to learn rather it is proof that the culture of much of the African-American community is one in which this disdain for education is most pervasive. In fact, this disdain for education transcends culture and is growing more pervasive each and every day that we stand by and do nothing.

The real performance gap exists between children reared in an environment where belief in the American dream is real and abiding and where families are hopeful and believe they possess the power to create a better life for their children, if not for themselves; and between children raised under a shroud of hopelessness and powerlessness.

Fixing the educational process is just the first step.

The second component of my blueprint for transformation is that we must come together as one people, in all of our diversity, united by a common purpose. That purpose is to repackage and resell the American dream and then take that message to the people. It requires that we ask every American who is hopeful and powerful to reach out into every nook and cranny of our community and engage the hopeless and the powerless.

We want all of our neighbors to believe that they can create a better life for their children and that they need not do this alone. We want them to understand that their entire community, across the full cultural panorama, is available to help them.

We want them to understand that the most important thing they can do is to partner with the teachers of their sons and daughters; teachers that offer a new educational process that is focused on helping each and every one of our children learn how to be successful and acquire the knowledge and skills that will enable them to control the outcomes in their lives. Knowledge and skills that will enable them to create their own future.

This is a plea to each and every one of you who is reading these words to make a commitment to action. That action begins by sharing these ideas and your commitment with everyone in your sphere of influence.

What are you waiting for?

Blaming teachers in our schools is like blaming soldiers for the war they were ordered to fight.

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Blaming public school teachers for the problems in education is like blaming soldiers for the war they were asked to fight.

On the battlefield, soldiers have no control over the level of commitment, courage or resiliency of their opposition. They have no control over the efficacy of their command structure or quality of the strategy flowing through the chain of command. Neither do they control the timeliness and reliability of their supply lines or the relative primacy of their weaponry. While we might second guess the strategic decision making in war, we do not attempt to hold soldiers accountable for the success of their efforts, measured after-the-fact, using unproven metrics. These valiant men and women can only give the best of themselves and in this they are very much like our teachers.

How is it, then, that we can ask the teachers in our most challenging schools to overcome the lack of support of parents? How can we expect them to fight through the disruptive behavior of students with widely disparate levels of preparation and motivation and then guide them down the same path, toward the same destination, at the same pace?

We ask them to rise to these extraordinary and unreasonable expectations while we shower them with criticisms and disrespect? And, as if the job were not sufficiently challenging, we promote vouchers and charter schools that siphon off motivated families and their children from our most challenged public schools? Each child that escapes to an alternate school leaves teachers with fewer students that care and the school with less revenue with which to work.

Such a strategy might be justified if it included a plan to re-infuse the abandoned public schools with additional resources, innovative programming, extra training, and curricula tailored to the unique requirements of their students. Instead the strategy seems to be that we will turn our heads and shut our minds to the plight of such schools. “We can’t do anything about these schools until someone addresses the problem of poverty,” we tell ourselves.

The overwhelming majority of our elected officials and the powerful interest groups that lobby for what they call radical educational reforms have not taken the time to understand the realities with which these teachers, their schools, and their students must contend. They act on the basis of abstract principles that are as clichéd as our traditional American educational process; a process that has not been significantly altered for decades. It is a process that has chewed up and spit out millions of children, leaving generations of Americans bitter and resentful.

Meanwhile, our government and forces of corporate reform talk about privatization of schools and such business principles as investments, competition, and entrepreneurialism. They push for teacher accountability using annual test scores as if this is leading-edge thinking. The truth is that American industry has, long ago, replaced “end-of-the-production line quality inspections” with quality systems that are integrated within the production or assembly process.

These advocates do all of these things as if their leadership and initiative can magically solve the problems of public education; problems that they do not fully understand.

The worst objective these advocates pursue is separating schools from the communities they exist to serve. One of the primary problems in education is a pervasive sense of hopelessness and powerlessness on the part of Americans who no longer believe in the American dream nor do they see an education as a way out for their children. Separating schools from their communities and its people can only serve to reinforce that sense of powerlessness and hopelessness.

Business principles are needed if we are to reinvent public education but they are not the principles of the board room but rather the principles from operations. They are focus on purpose and customer, structuring resourcing the organization to support its objectives, problem-solving, team building, innovation, appropriate utilization of technology, and performance management.

It is imperative that we abandon our current educational process’s focus on failure. We must teach for mastery of subject matter, not test preparation, and we need to teach children how to be successful. It is only when a child has learned how to be successful that he or she can begin to see how they can control the outcomes in their lives. It is only when young men and women believe they can control the outcomes in their lives that they begin to feel hopeful for a better future and sufficiently powerful to make it happen.

What we need from corporate and government reformers is very simple. We need them to cease and desist. We need them to begin providing positive leadership in reselling the American dream to the people, in all of their diversity. We then we need them to find ways to support rather than subvert local innovation and initiative.

Excerpt # 7 from Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream, from the Introduction

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Poverty

The majority of experts suggest that poverty is the biggest problem in American public education. Notwithstanding that poverty creates tremendous disadvantages for students and that much must be done to put supports in place, there are many students from the poorest of backgrounds who excel academically and there are those who fail in spite of the relative affluence enjoyed by their families. We suggest that poverty and the problems with our systems of public education are symptoms of the same pathology. What seems to matter is a combination of two critical states of reality.

The first is how parents view the relationship between education and opportunity. For the relatively affluent families, it comes down to whether children are taught that opportunities must be earned, on the one hand, or are entitlements on the other. For the poor or for families that hover in the vicinity of the poverty level the issue is whether parents see an education as a way for their children to escape their disadvantage on the one hand or whether they have lost hope on the other.

It seems reasonable to conclude that the challenges of affluence are easier to overcome than the challenges poverty. We are concerned, however, about failing children on whatever end of the affluence continuum on which they can be found. The operative question is why we do not attack hopelessness, ferociously. Hope and expectations are inextricably connected. The consequences of an educational system that puts children in a position to fail can be devastating to the vulnerable and contributes greatly to this sense of hopelessness.

The second reality is the level of influence parents and family have over their children relative to the power and influence of the peer group. We suggest that parents who are ardent advocates for the importance of education and who teach their sons and daughters to swim in the currents of peer pressure rather than be swept away by it are most likely to have children who excel academically. As the strength of both the parent(s) advocacy regarding the importance of an education and their ability to help their children develop a healthy self-esteem begins to wane, academic performance seems to diminish. We suggest that the color of a family’s skin has precious little to do with the academic performance of their children. The role of affluence matters only to the extent that a family’s relative wealth contributes to or impedes its ability to sustain close relationships with its children.

Bad Teachers

Are there bad teachers in our public schools? Most certainly! Only a few, however, entered the teaching profession as bad teachers. They became bad over time, in many cases, after years of being subjected to a failure-laden system and precious little support from the parents of their students. If we were able to plot out the deterioration of the performance of such teachers it would be in almost perfect inverse proportion to the increase in their level of hopelessness with respect to successful outcomes. Many lose faith that what they are doing is making a difference.

What is remarkable is that there are so many public school teachers in urban communities all over the U.S. who somehow cling to their hope in the face of such distressing academic environments and teach to the best of their abilities. These men and women are the unsung heroes of public education and they deserve our respect and support, not the mounting criticism and indictments they are forced to endure.

Legislators are naive to think that they can make better schools available to the broad public simply through legislation that gives people more choices and also vouchers that help them pay for those choices. The problem, of course, is that only a small percentage of the total population is motivated to take advantage of such opportunities even when readily available to them. More choices and vouchers may provide lifelines to a few of the most motivated families but it is comparable to a sentence of death for the remainder.

The sad reality is that every time concerned parents jerk their children out of public schools in favor of alternatives such as suburban public, parochial, charter, or other “model” schools the abandoned urban public school is left with one less parent who cares. The teachers of these schools are now left with the most challenging and unmotivated students and least supportive parents, while enjoying none of the special luxuries that contribute to the success of their “model” counterparts and none of the hope. Projecting to all fifty states Indiana public schools’ loss of $37 million during the 2012-2013 academic year and we are talking about nearly $2 billion in revenue lost by schools systems that can least afford it.

What we are creating is a bifurcated system of education that separates the “haves” and the “have-nots.” The problem is not that we are creating alternatives for families that value an education rather it is that we are failing miserably in our efforts to fix the problems faced by the schools that are being abandoned.

The teaching profession certainly bears a portion of the responsibility for the problems with education in America and we must make every effort to improve the quality of teachers. We must challenge school administrations and teachers’ unions to find ways to work together toward this objective. In a later discussion, we will make recommendations for teachers and their unions on how to improve the accountability of teachers, thereby improving the quality of the aggregate faculty. Our top priorities, however, must be to attack the cultural forces that lead to parental apathy with respect to education and the resulting absence of motivation on the part of so many students on the one hand and to re-invent the educational process on the other.