Tag Archives: disadvantaged kids

The Education Process Should Support and Empower not Constrain!

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So many schools and teachers are doing wonderful things with their students and yet million of children fail, particularly disadvantaged kids. That teachers continue to work hard is a testament to their commitment and to how much they care.

Employing innovative ideas, methods, and approaches should not require extraordinary effort on the part of teachers. Why should teachers be forced to jump through hoops and overcome obstacles to give each student the unique amount of time and attention they need to learn and grow; to experience success in the classroom? No matter how hard they work, the current education process is not structured to allow teachers to meet the needs of each child and this is especially true in public school districts that serve a diverse population of children, including many disadvantaged kids.

The current education process in place in American private and public schools, has not changed materially in decades while the world in which we live has changed exponentially. An effective education process would be engineered to enable, facilitate, and empower teachers to go, virtually, to unlimited lengths on behalf of their students with full confidence that the education process would support them at every step along the way.

It helps to consider that the education process on which we rely was not created by educators striving to find a way to optimize a teacher’s ability to teach and a student’s ability to learn. The education process has evolved over a period many generations and is based more on tradition than functionality. The education process is like a software application that has been subjected to so many minor modifications and fixes that it has degraded over time and no longer performs the tasks and functions for which it was created.

The education process has grown obsolete and no amount of tinkering will make it work the way our children and their teachers need it to. Neither will incremental improvements allow the education process to meet the needs of 21st Century America. The process we have today is, in fact, a consequence innumerable incremental changes, jury-rigged fixes, and being stretched and pulled in every possible direction to accommodate new methodologies and approaches that never quite seem to fit. It is time to think about how we would construct an education process, today, if we were starting from scratch.

So many great educators tell their stories on Twitter; inspirational stories about their successes in the classroom. I love the messages about the importance of connecting with our students on a personal level, responding to their needs for supportive care, safety, and affection. So many of you talk about how important it is that our students do not give up and stop trying; that making mistakes or falling down are not failure. You talk about how important it is that children learn how to be successful and gain confidence in themselves.

The education process, however, is not structured to facilitate the efforts of teachers to make our students feel special nor does it permit teachers to give students however much time and attention they need to learn each lesson. Often, teachers must go above and beyond to achieve these things. The process is not designed to treat each child as a unique individual. Teachers might be told that this is the expectation but the expectation against which their performance is measured is something else, entirely. The “real” expectation is a function of the evolution of high-stakes testing.

States do need academic standards and they must rigorous. Where we go wrong is that the focus is on moving an entire classroom full of 20 to 35 students down a path, as a unit, in conformance to state academic standards. Teachers know there is great disparity in the level of academic preparedness of the students who arrive in their classrooms on the first day of the school year, especially in schools serving a high percentage of “disadvantaged students.” They understand that students do not start from the same place on an academic preparedness continuum nor do they learn at the same pace. We do not even expect them to arrive at the same destination.

Think about how the process deals with student performance. We give our students tests on each lesson and record both passing and failing grades in our gradebooks before moving on to a new lesson. Teachers might find time to give extra help to a small number of students who struggle but when failing students represent 25, 50, 75 percent, or more of the class there is not enough time.

If the process was structured to help each child down their unique path, our students would not be pushed on to a new lesson for which they are unprepared. Rather, the expectation would be that we let each student move on to a new lesson when they are ready and that teachers take however much time is needed to help them get ready; to help them understand. Student’s should not be expected to keep up with classmates and neither should students be asked to slow down until others catch up.

Students must be able to experience success and they must learn that they possess the ability to create their own success. They must learn that success is a process and we must help them master that process. When students give up and stop trying it is because they no longer view success as possible; as something that is within their power to achieve. Whenever we accept failure—and that is what we do when we record a failing grade—and tell students time is up and, then, push them ahead, we are depriving them of the opportunity to experience and master the process of success.

It does not matter if our leaders tell us that we are dedicated to the success of each child. As in everything else in life, what matters is not what we say, it is what we do. What matters is what happens to kids within the context of an obsolete education process. What matters is the degree to which that process constrains teachers and children and how it impedes our important work. What matters is how we keep score.

Think, also, about how well the process helps teachers form warm, nurturing relationships with each of their students. Teachers have one school year to bond with anywhere from 20 to 35 children. For some kids it happens quickly, for others it may take the entire school year, and for some it may never happen. At the end of the school year those bonds we worked so hard to form are severed as kids move on to the next grade in another classroom with another teacher and start all over. At least the kids with whom we have bonded will be able to hope that their new teacher will like them. What will be the expectations of the students with whom we were unable to bond? Some children have no idea what it would be like to have a special relationship with a teacher because it has never happened to them.

There are many kids who progress all the way through elementary school who never experience the kinds of special relationships that can change their lives and it is not for lack of effort on the part of teachers. The education process is structured in such a way that forming special relationships is a hope but not an expectation.

When our students perform poorly on state competency exams it is the teachers who receive the blame. No one even considers that it is the education process that is the problem. Because we never give such consideration, nothing is ever done to address the reality that the process has become obsolete. Most teachers have not even noticed that the process is obsolete but they do know it doesn’t help them do what needs to be done; they have a sense that things are not as they should or could be.

So many of your twitter, Facebook, and blog posts say that we need to teach the way children learn. Why don’t we start now?

Over the last ten years I have worked to develop an education model that I believe is teacher/student centered. It was developed through the application of 45 years of experience: working with kids; providing and teaching organizational leadership; reinventing production and service-delivery processes that produce unacceptable outcomes; and, walking in the shoes of public school teachers while working as a substitute teacher, part-time, over a period of ten years. The model is also as result of the application of the principles of positive leadership, organizational development, and systems thinking.

You will find the model at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/ along with an accompanying white paper.

I also encourage you to browse the 150+ articles on this blog, Education, Hope, and the American Dream.

For those teachers who work in high-performing schools and who have confidence that what you are doing works for your students, consider that what you are doing does not work in every school or for every student. Also think back on your experience and recall those occasions when you thought, “if only we could do this, or that.”

For those of you teaching in schools where many of your students struggle, consider that it doesn’t have to be this way. Think about how nice it would be if you could give your students the time, support, and attention they deserve. Think about how nice it would be if you could go home and feel good about what you have accomplished, every day. Consider that both you and your students deserve better.

Ask yourself, “if we could go back to the drawing board and create, from scratch, an education model that applied everything we have learned over the last half century or more, what would it look like?” Also, ask: “what would our nation be like if every high school graduate walked off the graduation stage with sufficient knowledge and skills to give them a whole list of choices of what to do with lives?”

Let’s not waste any more time. I know that most of the men and women reading these words are not happy with the way things are going in America.

Did you know that you are among the very few people who can actually do something about it?

Students must be able to build on success, not failure!

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It is incredibly frustrating that public school teachers and administrators have been unwilling and/or unable to take seriously the education model I have developed. It is exasperating because I know teachers want to do what is best for their students. I also know how frustrated so many public school teachers are and that the prospect of burnout is something many of these dedicated men and women fear. That teachers are blamed for the problems in public education must be especially galling.

It is even more frustrating that advocacy groups for black children and other children of color seem totally uninterested in a solution that will end the failure of millions of disadvantaged kids and shut down the schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline that is transporting these kids to a life of poverty, failure, crime, and early violent deaths.

If only all of these dedicated men and women would open their hearts and minds to the possibility of a new way to educate our nation’s most precious assets.

“This will not work in my classroom(s)!” is what public school teachers and administrators say when they first review my model. I hear it all the time.

Of course, they are correct, but this is exactly my point. In the current education process, nothing different will work because the process is flawed. To paraphrase Linda Darling Hammond, “the existing process is structured to produce the outcomes it gets and we will not get better outcomes if all we do is ask teachers to work harder.”

There are many teachers in high-performing schools who feel good about what they do but there are also many teachers in low-performing schools who are frustrated, daily, because they are unable to get through to unmotivated students.

Odd as it may seem, African-American leaders, who jump through the roof in response to symbols of oppression, do not even bother to respond to the possibility of a solution that will attack the roots of that oppression.

I ask public school educators to take a figurative step back and imagine an environment in which they are expected to give each and every student however much time they need to learn each and every lesson. Imagine an environment in which teachers are expected to develop longer term relationships with students and where the process is structured to facilitate the development of such relationships; with both students and parents.

My challenge to public school teachers and administrators is that they consider that the education process can be re-designed and re-configured to produce whatever outcomes we want.

My challenge to advocates for black children and other children of color to consider the possibility that African-American students and other disadvantaged children do not need to fail.

My education model is constructed on the premise that academic success is no different than success in any other venue. Success is a process of trial and error, of learning from one’s mistakes and applying that knowledge to produce better outcomes. Success is built upon success and the more one succeeds the more confident he or she becomes. The more confident he or she is the more successful one becomes. Success is contagious and can become a powerful source of motivation.

The key, of course, is that one cannot master the process of success until he or she begins to experience success, routinely. In school, kids learn and each lesson learned is a success. Very often, success on subsequent lessons requires that one apply what one has learned from previous lessons. When a foundation of success is laid down in school, young boys and girls approach adulthood with a wide menu of choices in terms of the kind of future that can be built on that foundation.

Imagine, however, when there is no success on which to build. When kids fail, or even learn only part of a given lesson, they are less like to learn the next lesson. A pattern also emerges in this scenario but it is a pattern of failure rather than success.

For many of these kids, failure is the only thing they know. It is only a matter of time before they give up, stop trying, and begin acting out in class. Third grade is when many states begin administering competency examinations. Right from the beginning, a significant percentage of third grade students are unable to pass both math and English language components of their state exams. Although African-American students have the lowest passage rates, the poor performance extends to a percentage of students from all demographic groups, including white students.

By the time these students reach middle school the scores are even lower. In many middle schools, as many as eighty percent of black students fail to pass both exams. Middle school teachers throughout the U.S. can attest to the incredibly low level of motivation displayed by their students. Any illusions that high schools are able to turn the performance of these students around in four years are just that, illusions; high graduation rates notwithstanding.

When they leave school, the overwhelming majority of these low-performing students return to their communities, unqualified for jobs or military service. For many, it is the final station on the schoolhouse to jailhouse line. Far too many suffer early, violent deaths. Those who live spawn a whole new generation of children who will start from behind and will never be given a realistic opportunity to catch up. They are entrapped in a maelstrom of poverty and failure.

It is an American tragedy of unprecedented breadth and scope and it is at the core of our nation’s greatest political, economic, cultural and civil rights challenges. The chasm that divides the American people is very much a function of the bitterness on the part of some citizens because of their resentment that they are asked to support our nation’s poor and infirm.

The magnitude of this reality makes public education the civil rights issue of the 21st Century. That it is a crisis that can be prevented so easily, however, is the greatest tragedy at all. The ambivalence of the people who can bring an end to this tragedy is the greatest mystery of all. Do they not care?

We can end the failure simply by making sure every child has however much time they need in order to learn. If there is a reason why we should not do this, I truly wish someone would explain it to me.

Please check out my model at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/

“Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

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These words were shouted at the great Shoeless Joe Jackson when news of the 1919 Black Sox scandal hit the press. Shoeless Joe’s fans did not want to believe that their star could have been involved in throwing the 1919 World Series between Jackson’s Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds.

As we prepare for the 2017/2018 school year it is business as usual for both private and public schools throughout the U.S. Having made no substantive changes in the education process, we can expect the same disappointing outcomes that we have seen in previous years, for as long as any of us can recall. Sure, there are many schools where kids do well and this lulls us into a false sense of security that all is well with public education. However, in schools serving large populations of disadvantaged kids, a disproportionate percentage of whom are black or other minorities, are failing in great numbers. This is an American tragedy of historic proportions and as a fan of public school teachers, I do not want to believe that they will permit this American tragedy to continue. These are children who will suffer their whole lives because we are not willing to change what we do and how we teach.

“Say it ain’t so, teachers!”

Beginning now and over the next several weeks, a whole new class of five and six year-olds will be starting Kindergarten just as others have done in the past. Wherever their public schools may be, they will be greeted by professional teachers who will give their best effort on behalf of their students—our nation’s children. The fact that there is a cavernous disparity in terms of the academic preparedness of the children who will be arriving for their first day of school will not alter the teaching plans that have been developed and approved to help prepare these boys and girls for the first grade.

People underestimate how much of an adverse impact this disparity has on the academic performance of these children. Some of the more advanced students are already reading, can count and maybe do some basic arithmetic. Students on the other end of the academic preparedness continuum may not know or be able to recognize the letters of the alphabet and may not know numbers, colors, or shapes. The challenge to get such a diverse population of students ready to move on to first grade by the end of the school year is formidable. Fortunately, in most states, teachers need not yet worry about high stakes testing, which adds greatly to the pressure to move kids quickly.

Kindergarten teachers do their best to prepare their students for first grade but giving each and every student the time and attention they need in order to learn is neither a priority nor an expectation against which teacher performance will be evaluated. In classrooms where all students are relatively well-prepared, the year will go smoothly. In classrooms where few, if any, are well-prepared things will not be so easy and teachers will struggle to give each child the attention they require. There are just too many of them. When they do move on to first grade, this latter population of students will be as ill-prepared to meet first-grade expectations as they were when they began Kindergarten.

By the third grade when high stakes testing rears its ugly head, the number of students who are struggling will have grown and the results of their first competency exams will reflect that lack of preparedness. Already, there will be many students who are beginning to give up on themselves because they are not learning to succeed, they are learning to fail.

Three years later, when these kids arrive at middle school, the majority will have already stopped trying and will have lost hope. Don’t take my word for it. Pull up the websites of any state’s department of education and you will find that in poor urban and rural school districts, roughly 75 percent of black, middle school students will have been unable to pass both math and English language arts components of that state’s competency exams. In those same schools you will often see that as many as 50 percent of white kids are unable to pass both math and English language arts components.

What you will find in these schools is a cultural disdain for education that transcends both racial and economic boundaries. By the time these kids move from middle school to high school the one lesson they have learned best is that they are unable to learn and that learning is not worth the effort. Let me rephrase that statement. This is not a lesson they have learned on their own, it is the lesson they have been taught simply because the education process has allowed them to fail. We allowed it because teachers were unable to give these kids the time and attention they require and because those same teachers were unwilling to shout out at the tops of their lungs that what they are being asked to do does not work for disadvantaged kids.

Is it any wonder that education reformers are essentially abandoning public schools in our nation’s distressed communities in favor of charter schools? It is unfortunate that reformers lack the insight to recognize that they are making the same mistakes as those made by the leaders of underperforming public schools. At present, charter schools are no more successful in meeting the needs of disadvantaged kids than any other school.

Now, ask yourself how we can go from 25 to 50 percent of middle school students unable to pass state competency exams in math and English language arts to 90+ percent graduation rates from the high schools to which these middle school students will be going. If you think we were able, somehow, to turn these students around during four years of high school, then think again. It would take an extraordinary effort on the part of teachers and students, with the full support of parents, to make up in four years what these kids were unsuccessful at learning during their first nine years of school. Most teachers would be willing to make that effort but that is not what they are being asked to do; it is not the way the education process has been designed to work.

Ninety percent of these young men and women will leave high school, after four years, with a diploma in hand but, for many, it is a meaningless piece of paper. The real world in which these young adults must now make their way is unforgiving and intolerant of shoddy effort and performance. These young people will be confronted with the stark realization that they are unqualified for all but the most menial jobs and they will find this to be true whether they seek work in civilian life, or seek to enlist in the Armed Services.

And, we wonder why education reformers have lost faith in our nation’s public schools. As long as public school superintendents, principals, teachers, and advocates are unwilling to open their eyes, hearts, and minds to the reality that is happening around them, reformers will continue to work, with great zeal, to put public schools out of business. If we allow that to happen the tragedies that the poor and minorities endure, today, will pale in comparison to the consequences of a world in which a quality education is not even available to them. Ours will have become an elitist society and there will be precious little any of us can do about.

Say it ain’t so, Joe!

Help Me Understand Why We Are Content to Let Disadvantaged Kids Fail!

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The fact that we continue to allow disadvantaged kids to fail in school is a great mystery to me and I wish someone would help me understand why.

Do we not believe the data from annual assessments?

I understand that public school teachers and administrators abhor high-stakes testing. I understand their resentment that such tests are utilized, inappropriately, to measure the performance of schools and teachers. I understand that the very existence of high-stakes testing places pressure on schools and teachers to “teach to the test” rather than teach kids to learn. I understand all of the concerns of public school educators with respect to the degree to which state competency exams disrupt the learning process.

Do these concerns invalidate the results of state competency exams, however?

The results of state competency tests show a clear and convincing pattern of failure of students in public school districts serving a diverse population of children, whether looking at race or household incomes. This is true in public school districts throughout each of the fifty states in both urban and rural communities.

African-American students have the lowest performance record on state competency tests. In our most diverse schools, by the time they get to middle school, the percentage of African-American students able to pass both math and ELA exams is as low 20 percent. I know this should be obvious but this means that roughly 80 percent of black students are failing by the time they reach middle school.

If you are a teacher from one of these schools and you are shaking your head in disagreement, open your gradebook and what do you see? You don’t have to answer this question out loud; just be honest with yourself when you look at the performance of your students, because it is not your fault. As I have said so often over the past few years, “anytime a process continues to produce unacceptable outcomes no matter how hard people work or how qualified they may be, the process is flawed and must be replaced.” This is applies to the American education process, as well as production and service delivery processes.

How can public school educators justify their assertion that public schools are better than they have ever been, given the data reported by state departments of education, everywhere?

I understand that school districts are proud to show improved graduation rates but do graduation rates trump state competency exams? Do we really believe that the middle school students who perform so poorly have turned it around by graduation?

It is my privilege to administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to young men and women interested in enlisting in the Armed Services of the United States. Every week, I see the ASVAB scores of recent high school graduates and high school seniors and I can tell you that the results do not mirror the graduation rates about which school districts boast so loudly. ASVAB results do mirror the results of state competency exams in school districts serving diverse communities, however.

Ninety percent of students in public schools serving diverse populations of children might be graduating from high school but nowhere near that many are able to qualify for enlistment. While this is especially true of black students and other minorities, many white students fall short of enlistment eligibility, as well.

Having been an executive in charge of hiring candidates for employment, I can also say that nowhere near ninety percent of the candidates whom we considered for employment were able to meet even our minimum requirements.

Don’t take my word for it. Survey employers in your community and ask them to share their experience.

It is understandable that public school educators feel the need to defend themselves from the harsh criticism of education reformers but simple assertions of success are a feeble defense, at best. All such claims do is damage the credibility of advocates for public education in the eyes of both education reformers and the general public.

I have been shouting out, for the last four years, that the poor performance of disadvantaged students in our public schools is the result of a flawed education process and not the result of incompetent teachers and bad schools. The existing education process is structured like a race to see who can learn the most, the fastest and we have learned to tolerate an unacceptable level of failure.

It need not be this way!

We can easily redesign the education process in such a way that every child learns as much as they are able, at their own best pace. The beauty of this is that success is contagious. As kids gain confidence that they can learn, their enthusiasm and pace of learning accelerates. Success is contagious even for those of us who sit on the sidelines. As parents begin to see a change in the performance and behavior of their children, it will be much easier to pull them into partnership with the teachers of their sons and daughters.

Please check out my Education Model and white paper

Every Kid Needs a Favorite Teacher, Even in the Age of Digital Learning

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Most of the people reading these words can recall a favorite teacher. If we are lucky, we may have had two, three, or more. However many, these special men and women played an important part in our development and academic success. With the spread of both digital learning and personalized learning, it is imperative that we clarify that the relationships between teachers and students, must always be at the core of academic success.

Relationships are everything in both public education and private, but it is also necessary that teachers have at their disposal and are trained to utilize, fully, the latest in instructional technology. No matter how good a farmer might be in plowing behind a team of beautiful horses or how much such a sight may stir the purist’s heart, their production will never approach that of farmers using the latest agricultural technology.

The impact made by our favorite teachers is the best way to illustrate the importance of the relationship between teachers and students and how powerful those relationships can be, even in the age of digital and personalized learning.

What did our favorite teachers do differently than the others who clutter our memory? Our favorite teachers treated us as if we were special. They liked us and they listened to us and they made us feel important. They believed in us and held out ever higher expectations, challenging us to push beyond our comfort zones, knowing they were close by to help us if we stumbled. They cheered us on and helped us celebrate each of the victories we worked so hard to achieve. They also smiled at us and it was genuine, heart-felt smile that made us glow. They treated us with respect, they trusted us; they wanted us to be the absolute best that we could be. They let us make mistakes without fear of consequences and taught us that mistakes are learning opportunities and the building blocks of knowledge and wisdom. They made learning fun and taught us that learning is a great adventure. We owe a great deal to these special men and women.

For children, relationships are everything. Relationships with their parents, siblings, extended family are vital to the healthy development of children. As their world expands to daycare, nursery schools, head start programs, or regular schools, relationships continue to be the most important ingredient in their ongoing growth and development. Whether their social skills, psychological and emotional development, or formal learning, kids need to feel safe and secure and they need to feel that the people with whom they interact care about them. Security builds confidence, and confidence builds motivation, and motivation leads to success, whatever the level to which we aspire.

The relationship between teachers and students is one of the two most important variables in the formula for academic success and this is true throughout a child’s thirteen years of school. As children get older and must learn to deal with temptations of peer pressure, solid relationships with teachers become more important, not less.

The other is vital variable is the support and commitment of parents. Parents, particularly those of disadvantaged kids, are suspicious because many of their own experiences with schools and teachers were negative. Most of them must be won over, but that won’t happen until teachers are able to demonstrate, in very real ways, that they are having a positive impact on the child.

If the reader has doubts about the importance of parental support and commitment, consider disadvantaged students who excel in spite of the incredible disadvantages they face. What is different about these success stories?

Almost always, when a disadvantaged child excels in school it is because of a parent or guardian who somehow clings to hope that an education will provide a way out for their children. These parents are ferocious in their commitment to make sure the child is motivated to learn and is working hard to learn. These mothers, fathers, grandparents or other guardians are fully prepared to seize their child’s teacher by the throat, figuratively of course, if they think their son or daughter is being treated unfairly or if the teacher is not giving their child the best effort of which they are capable. In these uncommon but almost miraculous success stories, it is the powerful parental commitment that is the difference maker. Without that parental commitment disadvantaged children fail, routinely.

It is only after their son or daughter begins to come home, every afternoon, bubbling about how much he or she loves their teacher that the parents are curious enough to want to learn what is happening. The same is true as parents begin to see their child enjoy success at school and be excited about the new things they have learned. Winning is contagious, even for those sitting on the sidelines. Teachers must be prepared to seize these opportunities to pull parents into partnership.

All educators know these things to be true, and many of you who are reading these words are nodding your head in agreement. What I want the reader to understand, however, is that the current education process is not structured to support and encourage teachers to reach out to parents. It is not an expectation held out for teachers and it is not something for which teachers are held accountable.

If these relationships are as vital as we believe them to be, then working to develop them must be at the top of every educator’s priority list. The reader is invited to read my education model and white paper to see how these expectations and the utilization of personalized learning are integral and interdependent components of a new education process.

Use Your Imagination and Experience as a Positive Force for Change Rather Than As an Obstacle!

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In almost any other venue in American society, when something is not working properly we waste little time before we fix it. We may try to fiddle with the problem for a while but if that fails to produce the outcomes we want we move quickly to revamp or replace a faulty component or process. Very few of us are willing to put up with disappointing outcomes.

This is especially true in business. Few businesses can endure dissatisfied customers as doing so is the quickest way to lose one’s business. When a pattern of disappointing outcomes is recognized, business owners feel a sense of urgency to find a solution. Only rarely will tinkering or other incremental adjustments do the trick. What is needed is a trip back to the drawing board, analyzing feedback, clarifying purpose and objectives, challenging one’s assumptions, and finding a new solution. Very often, the new solution involves a radical departure from the manner in which things were done in the past.

“But, this is the way we have always done it” is never an acceptable answer to dissatisfied customers. Learning how to be an agent for change is one of the core principles of positive leadership.

How is it that the American people can be tolerant to the point of disinterest in the fact that millions of American children are failing in public schools. Disadvantaged kids failing in a nation that boasts of American ingenuity and its commitment to human rights? It seems incongruous. Do we not care about disadvantaged kids? Do we think them incapable of learning and therefore undeserving of our time and attention?

In my last blog post, I quoted Linda Darling-Hammond from her book The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, (Teachers College Press, 2010). Dr. Darling-Hammond is President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, a Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University where she is Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. She wrote:

“A business world maxim holds that ‘every organization is perfectly structured to get the results that it gets.’ A corollary is that substantially different results require organizational redesign, not just incentives for staff to try harder with traditional constraints.”

In the midst of the failure of so many of our most precious children, how is it that public school educators do little more than ask teachers to try harder while the education reformers are on a mission to shut them down? How is it that public school educators and the advocates that support them leave some of the most fundamental assumptions in public education unchallenged? Challenging assumptions is also one of the core principles of positive leadership:

• Does it really make sense for the education process at work in our public schools to be structured as if education is a race to see who can learn the most, the fastest?

• Do we really want public education to be a competition in which some kids win and others lose?

• How can we continue to justify asking children to move from one lesson to the next, one semester after another, and from grade to grade when they are unable to apply much of what they were expected to learn.

• Do we never second guess our tradition of accepting the failure of a significant percentage of public school students as an unalterable given?

• Does it still make sense to ask all children to progress through academic standards at the same pace as other children of the same age, even though there is great disparity in their level of academic preparedness?

• Other than the fact that this is the way we have done it for over a century, does it still make sense to move students from Kindergarten through grade 12, changing teachers every year?

• Is it fair to kids who want to learn to see valuable classroom time usurped as teachers allocate increasingly larger percentages of their time to unmotivated students who act out in class and exhibit no motivation to learn?

• Do we ever consider the possibility that there might be a better way to help kids learn?

It is so easy to blame public school teachers, whom I consider to be unsung heroes, for the problems in their schools and communities but doing so is no different than blaming soldiers on the front lines of combat for the faulty strategy and tactics of their commanders.

Our public school teachers need our help not our recriminations and they need our patience as it is only natural that they be resistant to change. That being said, the best thing public school teachers can do in their own best interests and the interests of their students is speak out about the inadequacies of the education process.

The education process at work in schools all over the U.S., both public and private, does not provide our children with the best chance to learn and it does not place our teachers in a position to teach at the top of their ability. The education process and the entire system of public education is flawed. Not only is it destroying young lives it is robbing our nation and our society of its ability to provide a safe community for its citizens, to compete successfully in a dynamic world economy, and to participate meaningfully in an increasingly interdependent global society.

Public school educators are challenged to step back to a vantage point from which the educational process can be examined as an integral whole. You are invited to evaluate the education model I have developed and an accompanying white paper at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/ If you do not think my model will work, use it as a springboard to come up with something that will work. Use your experience and imagination as a positive force for change rather than be an obstacle in the way of progress.

Separate and Apart – Again and Again

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What happened in Dallas will happen again. These acts are symptomatic of the degree of separation between us. Although interactions between police and African-Americans bring the matter into the sharpest focus, these acts represent only the surface of the deep, dark place where racism resides in the collective consciousness of the American people. It is just one of the divisive issues that creates sufficient anger, resentment, and mistrust that so many Americans want more authoritarian leadership and are willing to support Donald Trump for President. It is an American tragedy.

We have also witnessed, in Dallas, an expression of grief that is shared by well-meaning Americans of every race, color and creed. We saw protesters from each side of an issue reaching out to embrace and comfort one another. This is a sign of hope. For healing to occur we, first, must grieve but we cannot legislate an end to the racism that exists in the hearts of man and neither can we wish it away. If we want a future in which all are truly equal, we must address the conditions, other than the color of our skin, that separate us as a people and that lead to police and African-American confrontations.

More often than at any time in our history, white Americans see well-educated African-Americans move into their neighborhoods and rub elbows with them on the job. Coming in contact with these black neighbors and co-workers begins to produce subtle shifts in the attitudes and perceptions of white Americans. We also see more inter-racial friendships and dating. It is hard to be prejudiced against a people who look like someone you have loved.

For many white Americans, however, their core values do not change. Instead, they carve out space in their mental view for the exceptions that these neighbors and co-workers represent. Yes, “he’s black but he’s a good worker or a good neighbor.” When these same white Americans see stories about drive-by shootings, black men arrested and sent to prison, or even when they pass judgment on the contents of a welfare mother’s grocery cart, all of their deeply-rooted stereotypes are re-confirmed.

We must challenge our fundamental assumptions about our society and about the way we educate our children. Poor people do not choose to live in economically depressed neighborhoods in America; they live there because it is the only place they can afford to live. They lack the knowledge and skills needed to qualify for good jobs and that give them choices of where and how to live. Poor Americans, whatever the color of their skin, lack such choices because the educational process at work in American public schools is neither structured, tasked, nor equipped to teach disadvantage kids.

We are not powerless to alter this reality. Solving the problems of poverty and academic failure are possible but only if we are able to imagine a different reality. They are simple human engineering problems that will yield to the fertile imagination of the human mind.

People will remain poor for as long as we continue to defend a system of public education that consistently fails the poor and the disadvantaged, with African-American children affected the most. In spite of all the talk about education reform in the U.S., we do nothing to help disadvantaged kids but try to entice families away from our most challenged public schools with charter schools and vouchers or we tinker with a flawed educational process with one meaningless, education reform after another. We fail to see that incrementalism has the same destructive power as erosion and that it is subverting the very purpose of public education.

If we cannot address the problems in our public schools, the social crises these problems create will continue to prompt people to reach out for a more authoritarian leadership and Donald Trump for President might be the least of our fears. The problems in our society are functions of the choices we make and if we want better outcomes we must be prepared to make better choices. Those choices must begin with how our public schools respond to the challenge of disadvantaged kids.

An Urgent Plea to Teachers for Social Justice

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This blog post is an urgent plea to our nation’s public school teachers and particularly to those who refer to themselves as Teachers for Social Justice. I wonder if you realize how perfectly positioned you are to do more for social justice than any other group in America.

Teachers have one of the most important jobs in America but throughout the last few decades, during which teachers have been under attack because of the problems in public education, far too much effort has been placed on defending the job teachers do. It is as if teachers feel that in order to defend their own hard work and dedication they must defend a system of public education that fails and inordinate number of our nation’s most vulnerable children. When you chose to be a teacher you did so because you wanted to teach children and because you wanted to make a difference in the lives of your students and in your communities.

Right now, at this point in the history of the United States of America, your students need you more than ever. They need you to stand up for them and proclaim that something is terribly wrong when so many children fall through the cracks no matter how hard you work and no matter how much you care. Your students desperately need you to step back and think about what you see in your classrooms on a daily basis.

As a teacher in urban or poor rural schools, you know there is something wrong with the system when kids show up in your classrooms who are so far behind that they have stopped trying. You know the system is broken when you are required to move on to a new lesson knowing that many of your students are not ready. You know things are not as they should be every time you sit down to record the failing grades of far too many children. Unless you have become totally burned out, you agonize over the fact that these kids are failing and there seems to be nothing you can do about it. Teachers know the system is flawed when, at the end of the school year, many of your students are less prepared for the next grade level than they were for the preceding level. High school teachers know the system is flawed when you are asked to find a way to help a student qualify for graduation when that student has done nothing for an entire semester.

The majority of Americans who are victims of social injustice are people who are poor and people of color. Another characteristic of these victims is that the overwhelming majority of them attended public schools. They are members of multi-generational families that have always been poor and have always failed in school. Each year these parents and guardians send their own children off to school with little reason to hope that an education will provide a way out for their sons and daughters. It did not work for them so why would they think school will work for their children.

The facts are indisputable. Year after year, in poor urban and rural school districts throughout the U.S., children are failing their classes and failing state competency exams, in huge numbers. Even in school districts that have a few high performing schools you will find elementary and middle schools in which less than fifty percent of the students are able to pass state competency exams. In many cases the percentages are as low as ten to twenty percent. The percentage of high school students who are able to pass what some states call “end of class assessments” in English, Algebra, and Biology are about the same. That graduation rates in some of these school districts are on the rise is more the result of the creative use of waivers than true academic achievement.

When they walk out on their last day of school, many of these young Americans are virtually illiterate and innumerate and they quickly become entrapped in the cycles of poverty and failure. Many, young black males in particular, become statistics in what some are calling the “schoolhouse to jailhouse track.” As teachers, don’t you agonize when you read about one of your former students who is killed in the streets or sentenced to prison after killing another of your former students?

Public education and the educational process it employs works well for many children so why does it produce such tragic outcomes for disadvantaged students? Is it because the children of color or children who are poor are incapable of learning? Is it because teachers are incompetent? I think we all reject both of those explanations, categorically.

It is my assertion that there another possibility? The reason why so many of these young people fail is because the educational process at work in public schools throughout America is neither tasked, structured, nor resourced to meet the unique needs of disadvantaged kids? These kid are behind when they arrive for their first day of school and there is never enough time to see that they catch up.

The purpose of this blog post is to challenge Teachers for Social Justice to consider a principle in operations management that suggests that if a process or operation is not producing acceptable outcomes, no matter how hard people are working, then it is the process or operation that is suspect.

Successful business leaders routinely discover that the solution is as simple as replacing or reinventing a process to produce the outcomes we want. Positive leaders in the world of business believe that people want to do good work if only someone would give them the opportunity. These leaders accept responsibility for making sure their employees have the tools and resources they need to achieve excellence and their people respond by producing quality products and services. Would not teachers respond in similar fashion if only we gave them the tools and resources they need to help their disadvantaged students?

How have things gotten so far out of hand that so many parents are unwilling to trust that teachers want what is best for their children. Parents in our nation’s poorest communities cannot look into the hearts of their children’s teachers and see their effort and dedication. These parents can only see that far too many of their children are failing just as they did. These men and women are powerless to alter the reality in which their sons and daughters must live but teachers are not powerless. All that is required is that teachers stand united behind the idea that the educational process, itself, is flawed and then set about the important task of fixing that which is broken.

If you do not stand up for your students is there anyone else who will? Is there anyone else who can?

Re-inventing the educational process to one that is tasked, structured, and resourced to meet the needs of students, wherever they fall on the academic preparedness continuum, is nothing more than a human engineering challenge that will yield to the creativity and ingenuity of the human mind.

You must understand, however, that tinkering with the existing educational process with incremental changes will be no more effective in the future than it has been over the last half century. Old traditions and patterns of behavior are too deeply ingrained in our psyches and are like a powerful gravitational force that pulls us back into our comfort zones.

We must re-define the mission of public education; we must identify clear expectations that are focused on success, not failure; we must create a structure to support teachers and students in the important work they do; and, finally, we must move heaven and earth to make sure professional educators and their students have the resources they need to enjoy success in learning as much as they can as fast as they are able.

My book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America offers a 33 specific action strategies to transform public education in America. I have also written a white paper to provide readers with a quick overview of the recommendations in the book and a model implementation plan to illustrate just how simple it would be to make these transformational changes. The white paper is entitled, Breaking Down the Cycles of Failure and Poverty: Making Public Education Work for All Students Irrespective of Relative Affluence or the Color of Their Skin. Both the white paper and implementation plan can be found in recent posts on my blog, Education, Hope, and the American Dream (October 26, 2015, and June 27, 2016, respectively).

The best thing we can do to promote social justice in America is to give poor children and children of color the kind of education that will allow them to walk out of high school at the end of their senior year with meaningful choices. Giving children the ability to control most of the outcomes in their lives is one of the foundations of a powerful self-esteem.

All of these things are well within our power to do but only if teachers are willing to be relentless advocates for transformational changes to public education in America.