The Hawkins Model: An Updated Version

THE HAWKINS MODEL

 Implementation Outline for Educational Model in Which There Is Only Success and No Failure.

By Mel Hawkins

Version dated: September, 2018

 

A Process is Just a Process

Teaching children in a classroom is a process of human design, no different than any other production, assembly, service-delivery process, or even a software program. It is a logical construct engineered to produce certain outcomes.

We are guided by the principle that when a process continues to produce unacceptable outcomes, no matter how hard people work or how qualified they are, then the process is broken and must be reinvented. The education process in our public schools must be tasked, organized, staffed, and resourced in such a way that every child leaves school with a quality education. It is such an education that gives them meaningful choices about what to do with their lives to find joy and meaning and to provide for themselves and their families. The education process must help students discover their potential and help them develop that potential and begin taking ownership of the pursuit of their dreams and ambitions.

The existing education process in use in public schools is structured like a competition in which some students win and others lose. It is a rigid process that requires teachers and schools to conform to its structure and organization. It is our belief that the structure and organization of teachers, students, and schools must be driven by the purpose for which schools and teachers exist: “To help all children learn as much as they are able at their own best speed.”

I challenge educators to examine the model you are about to read with an open mind, seeking to understand how it could work and not in search of reasons why it will not.  My hope is that this model will stimulate your imagination and open your heart and mind not only to the deficiencies of the existing education process but also to the limitless possibilities of a model created for you.

The model has been titled, the Hawkins Model, so I can retain the right of authorship. The Hawkins Model will be offered to public and parochial schools, free of charge. The only compensation I expect to receive would be royalties on the sale of my new book, that will be released, later this year, with the working title, The Hawkins Model: Public Education Reinvented, One Success at a Time!

This work will replace Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge For Twenty-First Century America, published in 2013 through Createspace. Thanks to the wonderful professional educators who support one another and share ideas through social media, I have learned a great deal in the past five years. While I believe the original book is worth a reader’s time and consideration, I have discovered many new ideas and have abandoned others.

My final advice to prospective readers is to consider that positive advocacy for a new idea or solution is a far more effective means of driving positive change than complaints and protests. The latter are like fireworks. They are exciting, stimulating, and even inspiring, but when the last echoes fade into the night sky and the smoke has dissipated, they are quickly forgotten. Only ideas and solutions, promoted through the advocacy of positive leaders working together, have an opportunity to become real and have a lasting impact on the world.

 

Discarding the Past

What public school teachers and administrators will think when they first review my model is, “this will not work in my classroom(s),” and, of course, they are correct. This is exactly my point. In the current education process, it takes an extraordinary effort on the part of teachers and principals to implement innovative ideas and solutions that will endure and not be ground to dust by the unrelenting glacial power of the existing education process. It is my assertion that no educator can be satisfied, no matter how successful their own school, until every school is focused on the success of every student.

We commence this implementation process by rejecting our current educational process in which some level of failure is tolerated. We reject failure, absolutely.

 

Two Fundamental Truths

 There are two fundamental truths that are central to our purpose and every detail of the education model you are about to read has been designed to serve those truths.

 

Relationships

The first truth is that academic success is a function of the quality of the relationships between teachers, students, and parents. Children who feel a close personal relationship with their teacher, the kind that many of us recall when we think back on our favorite teacher(s), almost always give their best effort and that proves to be true throughout one’s whole life. In fact, is there any time in our lives when close relationships with other human beings are not the most important source of our happiness and well-being?

The current education process is not structured to facilitate those relationships for more than a given school year, if it happens at all. Neither is it an expectation on which teacher performance will be evaluated. That those special relationships that do develop are severed, routinely, at the end of a school year illustrates that the most important variable in the education equation is not even a priority in the education process in schools, today.

Of great concern is the tendency of some education reformers to denigrate the importance of teachers. We reject this notion, categorically.

In the Hawkins Model, nothing is more important to the success of kids than enduring relationships with caring teachers. Add concerned parents to the equation and students will soar.

 

Learning is the only thing that counts

The second truth is that the only thing that matters is that children learn as much as they can at their own best speed. One would think this would be obvious but all students in schools, today, are not given the same opportunity to succeed. The process is structured to move children along an identical path, at the same pace. At the end of the lesson, we assign a grade to each child’s performance, record it in our grade books, and move on to a new lesson; our job on the previous lesson, completed; or so we believe. At the end of the school year, we move all but a few on to the next grade where new teachers will try to get to know them and move them and their new classmates along the next measured segment of the path delineated by state academic standards. We then, repeat this process in succeeding years as we are gradually conditioned to tolerate a certain level of failure. It is difficult not to become inured to the failure of our students.

The model you are about to examine has been engineered to insure no child is pushed on to a new lesson until they understand and can demonstrate mastery on the current lesson. If a child has not learned a given lesson the job of educators is incomplete. The expectation must be that educators keep working with the child until they can demonstrate an acceptable level of mastery; until our students have learned. Nothing else matters. We must not be satisfied, however, that a student was able to pass a test. The true measure of learning is one’s ability to apply that skill or knowledge in real life situations. Simply stated, if a child cannot use a skill or knowledge they have not learned it, and this has devastating consequences with respect to the child’s ability to become the best version of themselves.

At the same time, the last thing we want to do is put a child in a situation in which they feel pressured to perform. Learning is supposed to be fun. It is one of the great ironies of life that many children perceive learning to be fun until they start school. Learning can be fun in any environment if success in learning is both assured and celebrated. We want children to believe in their hearts that learning is a great adventure. We want it to be a great adventure for teachers, as well.

This requires that we change what we teach. We must teach more than academic subject matter and we must teach the whole child. We want to teach applied academics–how to use what they learn in the real world. We want to teach them how to think creatively; how to solve problems; how to communicate effectively using all media; and, how to work together with other people both individually and as members of a team. We want them to embrace technology and use their imaginations to take on the challenges facing both the planet Earth and human society. We also want them to learn how to be kind; how to have an open mind and be non-judgmental. We want to teach them how to participate in their own governance and to respect the rights and beliefs of individual human beings and the principles of democracy. We want them to be good citizens who accept responsibility for their actions and their communities. We want to teach the principles of positive leadership, of organizational dynamics (people working together in organizations), and systems thinking, which is the process of bringing about systemic changes. Finally, we want to teach them to value life, family, and community.

Where our students will end up in life will be determined by their individual potential, their interests, how much they learn, and how hard they are willing to work. If they leave school with few, if any, choices about what to do with their lives then not only have they failed, we have failed them.

 

The Hawkins Model

 

Step 1 – Clarifying Mission and Purpose

The purpose of an education is to prepare children to be responsible and productive citizens who have a menu of choices for what they want to do with their lives to find joy and meaning. We want them to be able to think creatively. As citizens of a democracy, we want them to participate in their own governance and be able to make informed choices with respect to significant issues of the day.

The welfare and success of all students must be a teacher’s over-riding priority and the instructional process, and the very structure of the environment, must be molded to serve that purpose with the same dedication aircraft engineers use to design the cockpit to support and enable every function a pilot will be called upon to perform.

An education must teach children more than facts and knowledge, it must teach them that success is a process. Success and winning are not accomplishments rather they are a life-long process of getting the most out of one’s life by learning from one’s experiences; both mistakes and successes.

 

Step 2 – Objectives and Expectations

Our objective as educators is to help children learn as much as they are able, as fast as they are able, beginning at that point on the learning preparedness continuum where we find them when they arrive at our door. Each school must be a “No Failure Zone!”

It is our expectation that:

  • Every child will be given whatever time and attention they need to learn every lesson;
  • They learn that mistakes are learning opportunities and that they should never give up on themselves;
  • Success will be measured against a child’s own past performance and not the performance of other children;
  • We will strive for subject mastery and that the threshold for mastery is a score of 85 percent or better on mastery assessments;
  • Students must learn well enough that they can apply what they have learned in real life situations that include subsequent lessons, state competency examinations, and life in a democratic society;
  • There are no arbitrary schedules or time limits and that all students are on their own unique schedule; and, finally,
  • Learning is an adventure of discovery.

 

Education is not a race to see who can learn the most, the fastest and there is no such thing as an acceptable level of failure. No child should be asked to keep up with their classmates and no child should be asked to wait for classmates to catch up.

 

Step 3 – What do children need to learn?

Let us summarize all the things children need if they are to learn:

  • A close personal relationship with one or more qualified teachers;
  • The involvement and support of parents/guardians in partnership with teachers;
  • To start at the exact point on the academic preparedness continuum where we find them when they arrive at our door;
  • An academic plan tailored to their unique requirements and where disadvantaged students receive accommodations appropriate to their disadvantage much as we do for special needs students;
  • Access, under guidance of their teachers, to leading edge methodologies, approaches, and technologies; from STEM to stern;
  • Our patient time and attention;
  • A stable and safe environment for the long term;
  • The freedom to explore the world and pursue their own interests as well as the curriculum developed for them;
  • To learn how to be successful and they need to know that success and winning are nothing more than a process of striving toward one’s goal and making adjustments along the way on the basis of what they learn from experience; and,
  • To experience success and winning and to celebrate every success and every win.

 

As educators, we must understand that while cutting-edge technology may seem threatening to us, it will be an integral part of the world in which our children must, someday, thrive. Educators are encouraged to think of their smart phones as an example of something that was initially intimidating but has become an integral part of our lives. Notwithstanding that everything in life has tradeoffs, think about how our smart phones have benefited us in our daily lives.

 

Step 4 – Where do we begin?

We begin by selecting the lowest performing elementary schools in any of our targeted public school districts and using them as a test case and, also, by soliciting the support of local advocacy groups that represent the people residing in a given school’s boundaries. We stress our focus on public schools because this is the only place we can attend to the needs of all our nation’s children. When something works in public education, it will find its way into private, parochial, and charter schools but the converse is not true.

People in the communities to be targeted will be skeptical. They have spent a lifetime hearing false promises and enduring their own difficulties in school. We will need the help of a community’s leaders to convince people that this is something special that will truly give their children a path out of poverty. After sharing our objectives with the community, our primary agenda is to focus on children who are starting kindergarten and what we now refer to as first through fifth grade. Our objective will be to meet each child at the unique point on an academic preparedness continuum where we find them on day one. From that unique point of departure, our objective is to help each child move forward on their unique path at their own best speed.

 

Step 5 – Organization and structure

 We will eliminate references to grades K through 12 as well as any other arbitrary schedules in the educational process and replace those grades with three phases of a child’s primary and secondary education:

  • Elementary/Primary Phase (formerly grades K through 5)
  • Middle School Phase (formerly grades 6 through 8)
  • Secondary Phase (formerly grades 9 through 12)

 

While addressing pre-school learning is not within our purview, what we will be doing will bring the importance of pre-school learning and development into sharper focus. The primary focus of public schools, however, must be on the children who stand before us.

It is understood that many school districts have divided elementary schools into smaller segments, e.g. K to 2, 3 to 5, etc. While these segments could be preserved in our proposed education model, we would ask administrators and policy makers to remember that one of our core objectives will be to sustain the relationships between children and their teachers and between students and their classmates for as long as possible.

 

Step 6 – Teaching teams

We will rely on teams of 3 teachers with a teacher to student ratio no greater than 1:15, meaning not more than 45 students assigned to a team of three teachers. To optimize our chances for success we would solicit volunteers from among the school corporation’s most capable and most innovative teachers. We want teachers who will be proud to be part of something new and excited by the opportunity. It is our belief that while modifications to existing classrooms might be nice they are not essential.

Teams have proven beneficial in business and industry for a long time and they have a clear record of productivity and excellence. Even in strong union environments in manufacturing venues, teams often prove more effective in dealing with subpar performance and commitment than management. Individuals who are marginal performers and evidence low levels of commitment may be able to hide in the crowd. Within a team setting, there is no place to hide and each person is held accountable by the team.

Teaching teams have the added advantage that if one teacher is having difficulty with a student, another member of the team can step in, thus increasing the probability that every student will find a teacher with whom they can bond. Teams will also make it easier to develop a rapport with parents as we triple the likelihood that a parent will find a teacher with whom they feel comfortable.

Finally, teams provide much more stability. If one team member is off due to illness or other reasons, the team is still able to maintain its equilibrium, even given the insertion of a substitute or replacement.

 

Step 7- Optimizing teaching staff

If a school has teacher aide slots for elementary classrooms, we recommend that the funds allocated for such positions be redirected to paying for additional teachers. Striving to optimize teacher resources is a top priority and if we are utilizing the proper tools, aides will not serve our purpose, however capable they may be. Qualified teachers are an essential variable.

Like the practice of medicine, teaching is an uncertain science. Physicians practice medicine and they are challenged to learn, relentlessly. Just like their students, practice is an integral part of a teacher’s learning process and provides one with opportunities to learn from the outcomes we produce, whether positive or negative.

 

Step 8 – Duration and stability

Students will remain together as a group and will be assigned to the same teaching team throughout their full elementary/primary academic phase. Eventually, that model will be employed as students move from the elementary/primary phase to the middle school and high school phases.

Close personal relations with teachers and their students, in a safe environment, can best be accomplished by keeping them together over a period of years. Why would we want to break up relationships between teachers and students because the calendar changes? We are guided by the adage that “the child who is hardest to love is the one who needs it the most.” Sometimes, it takes teachers most of the year to bond with some of their most challenging students only to have the relationship severed at the end of a school year, which is nothing more than a designated point on an arbitrary calendar.

These types of long-term relationships also increase the likelihood that parents can be pulled into the educational process as partners with their children’s teachers. Finally, we believe keeping students together in such an intimate environment will strengthen the bonds between classmates and have a positive impact on both the incidence of bullying and our ability to respond to such incidents.

 

Step 9 – Reaching out to Parents

Reaching out to parents must be a high priority. By partnering with their child’s teachers, the parent can play an important part in helping the child succeed.  There is a high expectation that, as students begin to experience success, their parents/guardians will begin to see a difference in their children, at home. Success is contagious, even for those of us on the sidelines. It is our hope that the desire to share in and help celebrate their son or daughter’s success will lure even the most skeptical parents into partnerships with their child’s teachers.

We also know that when we form close relationships with parents we also get to know their families. This creates a real opportunity to intervene, if there are younger children in the home, to help insure that they enjoy improved enrichment opportunities thus optimizing their academic preparedness. With each parent we pull into the process, we expand our presence in the community and raise awareness that our new education model is a special opportunity.

 

Step 10 – Assessment and tailored academic plan

Select an appropriate assessment process/tool and utilize it to determine the level of academic preparedness of each child when they arrive at our door for their first day of school. We will then utilize what we learn to create a tailored academic plan to meet each student’s unique needs.

We know that the disparity with respect to academic preparedness of students spans the full spectrum. We also know that children have different learning styles. What educators must do is to recognize that these differences exist and do their best to accommodate the unique style, potential, and interests of their students.

 

Step 11 – The learning process

Academic Standards

Academic standards have been established by most states and on a nation-wide level there is “Common Core.” These standards drive expectations of schools, teachers, and their students and they also drive the high-stakes testing that assesses performance against those standards. While assessing standards and curricula is not my area of expertise, the other area of concern is the expectation that students are all expected to be at the same place at the end of a school year. Given that students have different starting points and that they are headed for more than just one destination, such expectations set millions of kids up for failure.

As new approaches to teaching children using experiential learning methodologies gain popularity, the greater the disconnect will be between standards and what kids truly need. Education leaders and policy makers must begin to re-evaluate the efficacy of existing standards.

Most of us would agree that there are foundational academic skills upon which a diverse population of young people can build different lives. The common denominator, however, is no longer limited to being able to read and write and to have basic math and science skills, although these are essential. Our challenge is to prepare children for life, not test-taking, and this demands that we find new and better ways to help kids learn by doing. Critical skills such as creative thinking, communication, team work, problem-solving, and the ability to understand and utilize technology will be as essential to their success as reading, writing, and math skills. The compelling need to be better stewards of our environment will make science and engineering more important than ever. As citizens of the 21st Century, our students must not only be able to utilize what they learn they must be able to adapt to the accelerating speed of obsolescence.

Because of the disparity in the academic preparedness of children arriving for their first day of school, we need to help children progress along a tailored academic path from their unique starting point and we must also be helping them assume ever greater responsibility for their own growth and development. As their interests and aptitudes evolve they must begin charting their own futures, with the help of caring teachers. The process for helping kids develop mastery over an ever-widening range of subject matter must be adaptive and involve, in some form:

  1. Presentation, appropriate to the subject matter, through utilization the full spectrum of media, methodology, and technology;
  2. Practice and review, giving the student as much time as they require to learn from their mistakes;
  3. Assessment of their ability to demonstrate mastery over subject matter, which we define as the ability to utilize it in the real world. When that level of mastery is quantifiable, such as a grade on a test or other instrument of measurement, the target will be minimum of 85 percent;
  4. The expectation that no child will be pushed ahead before they are able to utilize what they have learned even if that means starting over using other means and approaches; and,
  5. A verification assessment, in each subject area, to confirm retention of subject area mastery at a point in the near future, such as 6 to 8 weeks.

 

If the student scores 85 percent or better, their success must be celebrated and, also, formally documented. Students are, then, ready to move on to the next steps on their unique academic path in a given subject area. It is envisioned that such formal documentation will, someday, replace the need for standardized competency exams given once a year.

One of our Twitter colleagues, @nkgalpal, reminded us that students can also play a vital role in helping classmates who may be struggling on a given lesson or subject area.  Educators have long recognized that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. This suggests that more advanced students benefit as much or more as the classmates they have an opportunity to help. Not only does this enhance the level and quality of learning that takes place it also strengthens the bonds between students.

We want our classrooms to function like a family or like an athletic team in which members have formed the strong bonds that result from dedication to shared purpose and objectives; sharing the demanding work required in practices; cheering for and supporting their classmates; and shared celebration of success in overcoming their academic challenges. Think about how many times you have seen starters, at the end of a basketball game, cheer excitedly for teammates who work hard in practice but rarely get an opportunity to make a basket, a steal, rebound, or an assist in an actual game. These bonds are enduring.

 

Character, Creativity, Imagination, Service, and Civic Responsibility

As we have noted, our objective as educators extends beyond subject matter mastery. Even when character, creativity, imagination, service and civic responsibility are covered in the academic standards of some jurisdictions, they are easily forgotten in challenging environments and situations, particularly in our era of high-stakes testing.

We suggest that these things are interdependent. Think of subject matter mastery as laying a foundation upon which character, genius, and individuality will be built.  An individual’s ability to explore and create is very much, if not always, a function of fundamental knowledge and skill sets.

 

Step 12 – State-of-the-Art technology and tools of success

Provide each student and teacher with appropriate technology with which to work. We must be willing and able to utilize state-of-the-art technological tools, as they evolve, to help teachers teach and kids learn. Among other things, this requires that teachers be willing to relinquish their reticence.

No matter what some education reformers might say, technology will not and cannot replace teachers. This education model is premised upon the primacy of teachers in the education equation. Technology can and will empower teachers, however. The world is becoming and will continue to become more technology-driven than it is today, and this trend will only accelerate and expand in scope.

Our children will live, work, and rear their own families in a technological world that surpasses anything most of us can imagine. Our job is to prepare students for that future, not find ways to avoid it because of our own fear and reluctance.

There are wonderful digital tools on the market but many of them are specialized to the extent that it is unlikely they will provide the full range of support teachers and students need. We are seeking something comparable to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that is real-time, cloud-based, and integrated with 360-degree feedback capability. Such technology must be relieve teachers of all classroom management responsibilities, so they can be devoted, optimally, to relationship building and teaching.

It is envisioned that, as the scope of the potential market for such a product begins to reveal itself, developers of technology solutions will be competing aggressively to capture sustainable market share. Astute providers of such solutions will work closely with their prospective customers to ensure satisfaction.

A system must help the teacher manage the process as they will have students working at multiple levels, in various subject areas, utilizing an array of resources to meet the needs of a diverse student population.  Students will be on a unique path even though many of the paths may be parallel.

Software must be able to:

  • Keep attendance records;
  • Manage various subject areas;
  • Help teachers and students through lesson presentations;
  • Generate practice assignments and grade them if they are quantitative;
  • Permit teacher to enter qualitative assessments of performance;
  • Identify areas that need review and more practice;
  • Signal readiness for Mastery Quizzes;
  • Grade and record the results of quizzes and assignments and then direct students onward to a subsequent lesson module or back for more work on current modules;
  • Celebrate success much like a video game;
  • Signal the teachers at every step of the way;
  • Recommend when it is time for a Verification Mastery Quiz;
  • Document Mastery achievements as verified by VMQ as part of the student’s permanent record; and,
  • Give students the freedom to pursue their interests, as they strive to explore the universe.

 

Our objective is to empower teachers so their time can be devoted to meaningful interaction with each and every student as they proceed along their tailored academic journey. Meaningful interaction will include teaching, coaching, mentoring, consoling, encouraging, nurturing, playing, and celebration. That interaction must also include time spent with students’ parents.

 

Step 13 – No Failure and No waiting

No student is to be pushed to the next lesson until they have mastered the current lesson as success on one lesson dramatically improves the readiness for success on subsequent lessons. Similarly, no student who has demonstrated that they are ready to move on will be asked to wait for classmates to catch up. Every student moves forward at the best speed of which they are capable. This creates opportunities for students to move ahead on their own initiative and take ownership of their own adventure of discovery even if it means teachers must scurry to keep up.

It also means that no student will experience the humiliation of failure.The ultimate mission of education is to put the fun back in learning and teaching. Success is what drives motivation, commitment, and fun. If all we ever do is lose when playing a game, it is only a matter of time until we avoid playing.

Success is a process of applying what we learn from our experiences, whether successful or unsuccessful. The more we succeed, the more confident we become and the more confident we become, the more motivated we are to learn and grow. As children gain confidence in their ability to control the outcomes in their lives, their self-esteem is strengthened and their ability to overcome obstacles, including discrimination, is enhanced.

Educators are challenged to understand that the single greatest flaw in education, both public and private, is its acceptance of failure on the part of our students. Nothing destroys motivation to learn and creates an atmosphere of hopelessness as much as repeated failure. The fact that we permit children to fail is unconscionable and inexcusable.

In our definition, “failure” and “making mistakes” are not the same thing. We all make mistakes. Mistakes become failure only when students are allowed or are required to stop trying before they come to understand. This happens every time we ask a child to move on to a new lesson before they are ready and every time teachers are asked to record an unsatisfactory grade in their books. This type of failure not only deprives children of an opportunity to experience success, it robs them of the essential knowledge and skills they will need to be successful on subsequent lessons, and to live productive and meaningful lives.

Children must be able to use what they have learned in “real-life” situations. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) defines “proficiency” as:

“having a demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter, including subject matter knowledge, application of such knowledge to real world situations, and analytical skills appropriate to subject matter.” [The emphasis is mine.]

Anything less than proficient is unacceptable and that includes “approaching proficiency.” Approaching proficiency is a good thing only if a student subsequently  becomes proficient. The work of our teachers and schools is not complete until students have actually achieve “proficiency.”

 

Step 14 – the Arts and Exercise

We also consider the arts and physical exercise to be essential components of a quality education. Student must be given the opportunity to go to art, music, and gym classes where they will:

  • Develop relationships with other teachers;
  • Exercise their young bodies;
  • Learn to appreciate and to express themselves through art; and,
  • Interact with children from other classes.

 

Step 15 – Performance Management and Metrics

Identifying how performance against objectives will be measured is a vital part of any operational plan because how we keep score determines how the game will be played. We want teachers and administrators to be rewarded for the quality of the outcomes they produce. Our objective is to measure how effectively teachers are helping kids learn and be able to apply what they have learned in real-life situations.

Students will be expected to pass not only a Mastery Quiz (MQ) with a score of 85 percent or better before moving on to subsequent lessons, but also a Verification Master Quiz (VMQ) that will be administered to students 6 to 8 weeks after passing the MQ. The purpose of the VMQ is to ensure that students have retained what the have learned and are able to utilize that knowledge and/or skills in real life situations. This can best be measured by determining the percentage of students who pass their VMQ on the first attempt. The higher the percentage of passage the better the performance of teachers.

We are not expecting perfection, however. Certainly a few students will not pass their VMQs, signaling that they were not ready. While we want to minimize such occurrences, teachers will not suffer consequences. We must ensure that “pace of learning” does not replace “understanding” as the objective of teachers or the education process. The failure of a VMQ by a student is nothing more than an opportunity for teachers to learn from their disappointing outcomes.

 

Step 16 – High Stakes Testing

The performance of teachers will not be evaluated on the results of high stakes testing. We do not want teachers to feel pressured to move students along before they are ready. Every student who passes a VMQ will be demonstrating that they were, indeed, ready.

High stakes testing using state competency exams will not disappear until they have been proven to be irrelevant and obsolete. Teachers and students should spend no time worrying about them or preparing for them. If students are truly learning, their ability to utilize what they have learned will be reflected in competency exam results. Such exams are, after all, nothing more than a real-life opportunity to apply what one has learned.

 

Step 17 – Stability and Adaptability

We will not concern ourselves with the arrival of new students or the departure of students during the process or with teachers who may need to be replaced, for whatever reason. These events will occur, and we will deal with them when necessary. These inevitable events must not be allowed to divert us from our purpose. We must keep in mind that there are no perfect systems, but the best and most successful systems are the ones that allow us to adapt to the peculiar and the unexpected.

 

Step 18 – Relentless, non-negotiable commitment

We must stress that winning organizations are driven by operating systems in which every single event or activity serves the mission. When we tinker with bits and pieces of an operation out of context with the system and its purpose, we end up with a system that looks very much like the educational process we have today. It will be a system that simply cannot deliver the outcomes that we want because there are components that work at cross purposes with the mission.

We are striving to create an environment in which the fact that some children need additional time to master the material is inconsequential in the long run and in the big picture, much like it is inconsequential if it takes a child longer to learn how to ride a bicycle than his or her playmates. Once children learn they all derive benefit from the knowledge gained.

 

Step 19 – The Power of positive leaders

As with any human endeavor, positive leadership is crucial. Administrators at every level, whether superintendents, assistant superintendents, principals, or assistant principals, must be trained to be more than administrators. They must be powerful positive leaders who understand that their success is a function of both their ability to keep their organizations focused on purpose and the quality of leadership they provide to their people. The bottom line is that the over-riding priority of positive leaders is to help their people be successful at every level of their organization and its supply chain; which includes students, parents, and the community.

Education departments in our colleges and universities must ensure that the study of leadership is a core component in the education of school administrators, at every level. We must view them as leaders, not administrators.

 

Step 20 – Special Needs

At anytime along the way, from initial assessment and beyond, if a child is determined to have special needs they will be offered additional resources, much as happens in our schools, today.

 

Summary and Conclusions

The only justification for preserving the status quo in public education would be if we truly believed the children who fail are incapable of learning. If, on the other hand, we believe all children can learn, we are compelled to act.

The fundamental premise of the Hawkins Model is that all children can learn if given the opportunity and if they feel safe and secure. The fact that we have clung for so long to an ineffectual educational process that sets kids up for failure and humiliation is unfathomable. Refusal to seize an opportunity to alter this tragic reality is inexcusable.

Once a school district becomes satisfied that this new model produces the outcomes they are seeking, the model can be implemented in every school in the district and can be modified to fit the needs of students as they move on to middle school and high school.

The success of this model will also drive the need for revolutionary change in our institutions of higher learning. Colleges, universities, community colleges, technical schools, and vocational education programs must be prepared to reinvent themselves as the needs of their students will have changed exponentially.

 

We Must Be Willing to Believe There Is a Better Way to Teach Our Children!

One of the things that distinguishes positive leaders from the rest of the crowd is their belief in the possibility of a better world. How many times, when presented with a new idea for solving a problem have you heard the response, “That’ll never work!” “You will never convince them of that.” “Management will never go for something that grand!” “You are biting off more than you can chew!” “You will never get the funding!” “What makes you think they will be willing to listen to you?” “That’s impossible!” “You are spitting in the wind!” “You’re dreaming!” We could go on and on with similar examples of the excuses people use for not taking action when getting of unacceptable outcomes.

Right now, in the USA, we are producing unacceptable outcomes that have an adverse impact on millions of young people. In our public schools, disadvantaged kids, a disproportionate number of whom are black and other minorities, are failing in great numbers. This is an untenable situation that has a negative impact on almost all aspects of American society and is placing our democracy at risk.

We have the power to alter this reality, beginning now and all it requires is for professional educator—teachers, principals, superintendents, and policy makers—to admit to themselves, if not to the world at large, that what they are doing is not meeting the needs of millions of our nation’s children. The only thing stopping us from altering this reality for all time is our unwillingness to acknowledge that their must be a better way, one that will meet the needs of every child, including disadvantaged kids.

Yes, I know many teachers in many of our nation’s best schools are happy with the job they are doing but they must not be content with the success of their own students and schools. What about the students who are struggling in other public schools in communities throughout the U.S? What about your colleagues who are giving their hearts and souls to students less fortunate than those in our nation’s best public schools?

It is time to reinvent the American education process in use in schools throughout the nation, both public and private. I have offered an idea educators can use as a starting point. I believe if you take the time to truly understand the model I have developed, you will see that, not only can it work, it would be relatively easy to implement and would require minimal action on the part of our state legislatures, if any at all.

What do you have to lose but a few hours of your time? What you may gain is something that might very well inspire you to act. At the very least, it will give you food for thought and get you thinking of other ways the failure of disadvantaged kids can be remedied.

You have the power to help create a whole new world for students, teachers and their communities. All it requires is that you convince, first, yourselves that maybe there is an idea that would work, and then, ask one or more of your closest friends and colleagues to join you in a campaign to transform public education in America.

Can you imagine how exciting it would be to participate in something that will change the world around you? Can you imagine how satisfying it would be to begin a process that will render education reformers and high-stakes testing, irrelevant.

Please examine my model at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/ and envision what it would be like to teach in such an environment. Imagine the difference it would make for your students. Envisioning better outcomes and then utilizing their imaginations to bring that vision to life is what positive leaders do whether or not they occupy formal leadership positions.

All Kids Can Learn but Many Are Sure to Fail If We Fail to Help Them

Every day that we delay addressing the problems of public education in America more kids give up on themselves because they have fallen so far behind their classmates that they have no hope that they will ever catch up.

I see these young men and women as seniors in high school or shortly after they finish high school when they show up to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). They are hoping to find a way to make a life for themselves by enlisting in the Armed Services. At the end of the test session, they walk out of the room with an envelope in their hands and their heads hanging low. In the envelope are the results of their ASVAB that show they have scored below the minimum score of 31 out of a possible 99, which is the threshold for enlistment eligibility.

So far this year, 25 percent of the candidates to whom I have administered ASVAB have scored below 31, and half of those score below 20. A score of less than 20 indicates a high probability that individuals are functionally illiterate and innumerate. Two-thirds of the young people who scored below 31 were African-American. Not only do these young American men and women not qualify for enlistment, they will also fail to qualify for all but the most menial and lowest-paying jobs in their community. In all likelihood, the young African-American men will return to their poor urban or rural communities where many will to turn to gangs, crime, and or drugs. Some will be killed during commission of a crime or as a result of black on black violence. Far too many will end up in a state penitentiary. The young woman will most likely get pregnant and begin raising their own children in the same cycle of failure and poverty in which they were reared.

All of the young men and women who scored below 31 are victims of flawed educational process in which they started out behind and found it impossible to catch up with their classmates. The sad truth is that they never had a chance and they are left with very few choices in life. There are millions of other young children in public schools all over the U.S. who are destined to the same fate.

Our systems of public education are like any other system that has lost focus on its purpose and has been allowed to deteriorate over time. Somewhere along the line, as the society-at-large became exponentially more complex, our systems of public education began to view accelerating levels of failure as normal and acceptable.

We must stop blaming poverty and recognize that poverty is a consequence of our flawed educational process not the cause of it. We must stop blaming our teachers and schools that are doing the best they can under a flawed educational process that is neither structured nor tasked to help children who show up for school with a range of “academic preparedness deficiencies.” It is a system that allows an unacceptable percentage of students to fail while contributing to the burnout of a growing population of teachers; men and women who have lost faith in the profession they chose with youthful enthusiasm and lofty purpose.

We must stop educational reformers who have no clue about the damage they do when they siphon off tax dollars of which our most challenged schools, teachers, and students are in desperate need. We must not allow them to further weaken the ties between our public schools and the communities they exist to serve, while destroying the hope of students and teachers, alike.

In their defensive postures, professional educators like to scoff at the results of the Nation’s Report Card, presented by the National Assessment of Educational Performance (NAEP), which provides documented evidence that public education in America is in a state of unacceptable crisis.

The irony is that professional educators would be well-advised to embrace the findings of the Nation’s Report Card as verifiable proof that the educational process, with which teachers are asked to do their important work, is fatally thawed.

Here is a quick summary of the NAEP’s findings for 20131, showing the percentage of American students whose performance is measured to be below or above “Proficient.” The Achievement Levels identified by the NAEP are “Basic,” “Proficient,” and “Advanced.

NAEP defines “Basic” as: “denoting partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade assessed.”

NAEP defines “Proficient” as: “representing solid academic performance for each grade assessed. Students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter, including subject-matter knowledge, application of such knowledge to real-world situations, and analytical skills appropriate to the subject matter.”

1 The italics are mine. NAEP data can be accessed at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/stateprofiles/sresult.asp?mode=full&displaycat=7&s1=18

Average Scale Scores
8th grade math: 67% Below Proficient; 33 Proficient +
8th grade reading: 71% Below Proficient; 29% Proficient +
8th grade science: 73% Below Proficient; 27% Proficient +
8th grade writing: 69% Below Proficient; 31% Proficient +

For purposes of this article, the author identifies “Proficient” as the minimum acceptable level of achievement for our students for the simple reason that if a student has achieved only partial mastery of the subject matter and is unable to apply what they have learned to real-world situations they our job is not finished.

Clearly, the goal of education must be that students be able to “demonstrate competency” over the subject matter and they must also be able to apply what they have learned in “real-world situations,” which would include subsequent lessons within a subject area.

How long do we allow roughly 70 percent of American students, a disproportionate percentage of which are black and other minorities, to be less than “proficient” before we say this in unacceptable? How long can we allow public school educators to claim that American public education is better than ever? How long can we allow the educational reform movement’s focus on privatization and standardized testing to abandon our nation’s most vulnerable students and school districts and hurt these kids, their teachers, and their communities?

It does not have to be this way! Through a straightforward application of “systems thinking” and organizational principles we can alter this reality for all time.

For an overview of my book and its recommendations, I invite the reader to check out my blog post of October 26, 2015, which is a white paper 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.”

At the end of this post, I have provided an implementation outline that will show just how simple it would be reinvent the educational process at work in American public schools. It is a model that requires no legislative action and can be implemented by local school districts, acting on their own authority.

Finally, the reader is also encouraged to check out my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America and my blog, Education, Hope, and the American Dream.

Implementation Outline for Educational Model in Which There Is Only Success and No Failure

Submitted by: Mel Hawkins, BA, MSEd, MPA

April 18, 2016

Discarding the Past

We commence this implementation process by rejecting our current educational process in which some level of failure is tolerated. We reject failure, absolutely.

It understood that most public school teachers and schools believe they work hard to make sure that every child learns and that no child gets left behind. The reality, however, is that each year children are moved from grade to grade who are behind their classmates. Each and every year thereafter they fall a little further behind until they lose all hope that they can ever catch up.

That this occurs is not the fault of teachers rather it is a flaw in a structure that does not provide each teacher with the time and resources they need to teach and does not provide each and every child with the time and support they need to learn. We cannot alter those unfortunate outcomes until we alter the internal logic of the educational process and also the structure that exists to support that process.

What we offer is a new reality that can benefit every child in America and that can transform public education.

Step 1 – Clarifying Mission and Purpose

The purpose of an education is to prepare children to be responsible and productive citizens who have a wide menu of choices for what they want to do with their lives in order to find joy and meaning. As citizens of a democracy, we want them to participate in their own governance, and be able to make informed choices with respect to the important issues of the day.

Note: An education must teach children more than facts and knowledge, it must teach them that success is a process. Success and winning are not accomplishments rather they are a life-long process of getting the most out of one’s life.

Step 2 – Objectives and Expectations

Our objective as educators is to help children learn as much as they are able, as fast as they are able, beginning at that point on the learning preparedness continuum where we find them when they arrive at our door. Our schools must be a “No Failure Zone!”

It is our expectation that:

• Every child will be given whatever time and attention they need to learn each and every lesson;

• We teach children that success is a process that must be learned and that all of our students can be successful;

• That success will be measured against a child’s own past performance and not the performance of other children;

• That we will strive for subject mastery and that the threshold for mastery is a score of 85 percent or better on mastery assessments;

• That students will learn well enough that they can apply what they have learned in real life situations

• That there are no arbitrary schedules or time limits and that all students are on their own unique schedule.

Note: Education is not a race to see who can learn the most, the fastest and there is no such thing as an acceptable level of failure. Our task is to create a model of an educational process that rejects failure and where the only thing that matters is that children learn.

Step 3 – What do children need In order to truly learn?

Children Need:

• To start at the exact point on the academic preparedness continuum where we find them when they arrive at our door;

• A close personal relationship with one or more teachers;

• Our patient time and attention;

• A stable and safe environment for the long term;

• To learn that mistakes are wonderful learning opportunities that come only when we extend ourselves beyond our zones of comfort;

• To learn how to be successful and they need to know that success and winning are nothing more than a process of striving toward one’s goal and making adjustments along the way on the basis of what they learn from their mistakes.

• To experience success and winning and to celebrate every success and every win:

• An academic plan tailored to their unique requirements.

• The involvement and support of their parents or guardians.


Step 4 – Where do we begin?

We begin by selecting the lowest performing elementary schools in any of our targeted districts and use them as a test case.

Note: Our primary agenda is to focus on children who are starting kindergarten and all of the action items are presented with that assumption. If a school district’s commitment to this model is sufficiently high, however, there is no reason why we could not, similarly, organize students in the higher elementary grades in the same manner. Doing so creates additional challenges because the farther along children have been pushed, the further behind they will be. If we commence with these older children, it still requires that we know where they are in terms of their academic development in each subject area, and then that we tailor a plan to begin the process of starting over with that unique student. Teachers will have less time to help these kids play catch up but, clearly, these students will need all the help they can get before they move on to the middle school phase.

Step 5 – Organization and structure

We will eliminate references to grades k through 12 as well as any other arbitrary schedules in the educational process and replace those grades with three phases of a child’s primary and secondary education:

• Elementary/or Primary Phase (formerly grades K through 5)

• Middle School Phase (formerly grades 6 through 8)

• Secondary Phase (formerly grades 9 through 12)

Note: We chose Kindergarten rather than first grade for our starting point because the sooner we intervene in the lives of our students, the better. Part of the problem in disadvantaged communities is that children live in an environment in which intellectual and emotional enrichment opportunities are few in number. The longer a child is left in such an environment the further behind they will be.

Step 6- Teaching teams

We will rely on teams of 3 teachers with a teacher to student ratio no greater than 1:15

Note: Teams have proven beneficial in business and industry for a long time and they have a clear record of high levels of productivity and excellence. Even in strong union environments in manufacturing venues, teams often prove more effective in dealing with subpar performance or commitment than management. In large work groups, marginal performers and those with low levels of commitment are able to hide in the crowd. Within a team setting, there is no place to hide and each person his held accountable by the team.

Teaching teams have the added advantage that if one teacher is having difficulty with any individual student, another member of the team can step in. Teams will also make it easier to develop a rapport with parents.

Teams also provide much more stability. If one team member is off due to illness or other reasons, the team is still able to maintain its equilibrium, even given the insertion of a substitute.

If a school has teacher aide slots for this age group, we will recommend that the funds allocated for such positions be redirected to paying for additional teachers. Striving to optimize teacher resources is a top priority and if we are utilizing the proper tools, aides will not serve our purpose.

Step 7 – Duration and stability

Students will remain together as a group and will be assigned to the same teaching team throughout their full elementary/primary academic phase.

Note: Close personal relations with teachers and other students, in a safe environment, can best be accomplished by keeping them together over a period of years. Why would we want to break up relationships between teachers and students because the calendar changes. Sometimes it takes teachers most of the year to bond with some of their most challenging students only to have it brought to a halt at the end of a school year.

This type of long-term relationships also enhances the likelihood that parents can be pulled into the educational process as partners with their children’s teachers.

Step 8 – Reaching out to Parents

Reaching out to parents must be a high priority.

Note: We know that students do better when they are supported by their parents and when parents and teachers are working together as a partners behind a united front. We also know that when we form close relationships with parents we also get to know their families. This creates a real opportunity to intervene if there are younger children in the home to help insure that they enjoy improved enrichment opportunities.

Step 9 – Assessment and tailored academic plan

Select an appropriate assessment tool and utilize it to determine the level of academic preparedness of each child when they arrive at our door for their first day of school. We will then utilize what we learn from that assessment to create a tailored academic plan for each and every student based on where they are and pursuant to the academic standards established in that state.

Step 10 – The learning process

From their unique starting point, we will begin moving our students along their tailored academic plan, one lesson module per subject at a time. The learning process will be:

• Lesson presentation

• Practice

• Review

• Mastery Quiz (MQ)

• Verification Master Quiz (VMQ)

Note: Teachers can spend as much time as necessary on any of the steps in the process and can even go back to re-present a lesson using other methods and resources. Each review gives teachers the opportunity to help children learn from the mistakes they made on practice assignments and on unsuccessful quizzes. When the student’s success on practice assignments suggests they are ready, they can move on to the MQ. If the student scores 85 percent or better, their success can be celebrated and they are ready to move on to the next lesson. If not, the teacher can recycle back through all or part of the learning process until the student is able to demonstrate mastery.

Step 11 – State-of-the-Art tools of success

Provide each student and teacher with a personal tablet with which to work.

Utilize technology to help teachers teach, and kids learn with the Khan Academy’s program as but one example. The tool must also help the teacher manage the process as they will have students working at multiple levels. Students are all on a unique path even though they may often be parallel paths. Software must be able to:

Keep attendance records,
Manage various subject areas,
Help teachers and students through lesson presentations,
Generate practice assignments and grade them if they are quantitative,
Permit teacher to enter qualitative results generated by them,
Identify areas that need review and more practice,
Signal readiness for MQ,
Grade and record results of quiz and direct student on to next lesson module or back for more work on current module,
Celebrate success much like a video game,
Signal the teachers at every step of the way,
Recommend when it is time for VMQ, and
Document Mastery achievements as verified by VMQ as part of the student’s permanent record.

Note: The purpose of the software is to empower teachers so their time can be devoted to meaningful interaction with each and every student as they proceed on their tailored academic journey. Meaningful interaction will include coaching, mentoring, consoling, encouraging, nurturing, playing, and celebration. That interaction may also include time spent with students’ parents.

Whenever it is deemed advantageous, we believe there is also great value in group learning sessions, projects and interaction.

Step 12 – No Failure and No waiting

No student is to be pushed to the next lesson until they have mastered the current lesson as success on one lesson dramatically improves the readiness for success on subsequent lessons. Similarly, no student who has demonstrated that they are ready to move on will be asked to wait for classmates to catch up. Every student moves forward at the best speed of which they are capable.

The beauty of this approach is that students can progress at their own speed, even if that means charging ahead with teachers rushing to keep up. It also means that no student will feel pressured to move faster than they are able nor will they experience the humiliation of failure.

Step 13 – Verify and document mastery

The Verification Master Quiz (VMQ) will occur a few lessons later as the purpose is to assure that the child has retained what they have learned and are able to utilize it on future lessons. Ultimately, if the child cannot utilize what they have learned in real-life situations they have not learned it and, therefore, our job on that lesson is not completed. Once verified, mastery is documented as part of the student’s permanent record.

Step 14 – High Stakes Testing

High stakes testing using state competency exams will not disappear until they have been proven to be obsolete. Teachers and students should spend no time worrying about them or preparing for them. If students are truly learning, their ability to utilize what they have learned will be reflected in competency exam results. Such exams are, after all, nothing more than a real-life opportunity to apply what one has learned.

Note: Ask yourself “Who would we predict to perform better on a competency exam given in the second semester of what we currently refer to as the 5th grade?

The child who has fallen further and further behind with each passing semester and simply has not learned a significant portion of the subject matter on which they will be tested?

Or,

The child who may or may not be on schedule as determined by state academic standards but has actually mastered the material they have covered and who are demonstrating an accelerating pace of learning?

I think we all know the answer.

Step 15 – the Arts and Exercise

We also consider the arts and physical exercise to be essential components of a quality education. Student must still be given the opportunities to go to art, music, and gym classes where they will:

• Develop relationships with other teachers;

• Exercise their young bodies; and,

• Learn to appreciate and to express themselves through art.

Step 16 – Stability and adaptability

We will not concern ourselves with arrival of new students or the departure of students during the process or with teachers who may need to be replaced for whatever reason. These things will happen and we will deal with them when necessary. These inevitable events must not be allowed to divert us from our purpose. We must keep in mind that there are no perfect systems but the best and most successful systems are the ones that allow us to adapt to the peculiar and the unexpected.

Step 17 – Relentless, non-negotiable commitment

Finally, we must stress that winning organizations are driven by operating systems in which every single event or activity serves the mission. When we tinker with bits and pieces of an operation out of context with the system and its purpose, we end up with a system that looks very much like the educational process we have today. It will be a system that simply cannot deliver the outcomes that we want because there are components that work at cross purposes with the mission.

Note: We are creating an environment in which the fact that some children need additional time to master the material is considered to be inconsequential in the long run and in the big picture, much like it is inconsequential if it takes a child longer to learn how to ride a bicycle than his or her playmates. Once they learn to ride they all derive equal benefit and joy from bicycling.

Step 18 – Special Needs

Anywhere along the way, from initial assessment and beyond, if a child is determined to have special needs they will be offered additional resources, much as happens in our schools, today.

Summary and Conclusions:

All children can learn if given the opportunity and if they feel safe and secure. The fact that we have clung for so long to an ineffectual educational process that sets kids up for failure and humiliation is unfathomable. If we refuse to seize an opportunity to alter this tragic reality it is inexcusable.

Once a school district becomes satisfied that this new model produces the outcomes we want, the model can be implemented in each and every school in the district.

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.

Setting the Stage

Over the last 150 years, the educational process at work in our systems of education, both public and private, has evolved slowly through a steady stream of incremental reforms. During those same 150 years, American society has changed exponentially. A combination of a growing population; increasing diversity; immigration, both legal and not; advancements in technology that would have seemed unimaginable even two decades ago; a crumbling infrastructure; a more competitive world marketplace; a fragile and demanding ecosystem; and, a far more complex political environment place great pressure on a democratic form of government.

Democracy depends upon our public schools to prepare young people for the responsibilities of citizenship and to be productive members of society but, given the dynamic world in which we live, the American educational process is ill-equipped to meet the needs of an incredibly diverse population of children. If we were creating an educational process from scratch, given what we now know, that process would look much different than it does today. It would be structured to produce the outcomes we want.

In order to alter this reality, we must start by clarifying the purpose of public education in America. As simply as we can state that purpose, it is to prepare our nation’s children for the responsibilities of citizenship and to help them develop the knowledge, skills, and tools they will need to become productive citizens. We must work to help each child maximize their talents and abilities so they will be able to enter adulthood with a menu of choices for what they want to do with their lives in order to find happiness and meaning. We also want them to be able to create value and add wealth to society. Of equal importance is that they be able to carry out their civic responsibilities as members of a participatory democracy. This requires that they have sufficient understanding of the complex issues facing our society to make thoughtful decisions.

We want their education to be well-rounded to include language arts and mathematics skills; a solid understanding of the natural world (science); a grasp of history in hopes that they can learn from our mistakes; and, finally, a full appreciation of the diverse cultures of humanity as expressed through the arts and social sciences. We need to teach them that diversity is our greatest strength as a nation.

During the balance of this Twenty-first Century, the world will continue to undergo unprecedented changes that will challenge the ability of our planet’s diverse population to live together in peace. We must address the issues of hunger, health, and economic welfare while protecting our natural habitat. We must do all of these things in the midst of the hatred some people have for others and in spite of the horrible violence people do to one another.

As a nation, we cannot be successful bickering among ourselves and neither can we meet our objectives if we must continue to support an ever-larger segment of people who live in poverty. Add caring for the steadily aging baby boomer generation and the burden will soon be overwhelming.

A significant emphasis of conservative right Americans is that it is time to cut off those who depend on government assistance. The problem, of course, is that these millions of Americans who are dependent are not going to slip away into oblivion and let the rest of the population do their own thing. We must, somehow, re-engage the poor as full and productive citizens.

We also need the millions of immigrants who have fled to the U.S., whether legally or illegally.
We must stop thinking of these people as a liability or as a danger. This population will prove to be an invaluable asset to our country and all they ask in return is the same freedom and opportunities that Americans should be able to expect.

We must also recognize that there will be a shift in political power over the balance of this century. According to the projections of the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2060, the population of non-Hispanic whites is projected to decline from 62 percent, today, to an estimated 44 percent of the total US population. Any illusions white Americans may have that they will continue to rule the roost into the latter half of this century are pure fantasy. If we are committed to the preservation of the great American democracy, we must invite the poor and the non-white to become full and equal partners. For the poor and the non-white, it is time to take charge of one’s own destiny.

What I have endeavored to do is apply a systems’ thinking approach to examine public education in America, and the educational process at work within that system, as an integral whole. Systems’ thinking, introduced by Peter Senge in his book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization (Doubleday, New York, 1990), allows one to challenge his or her fundamental assumptions and to understand how a system is structured to produce the results it gets. One also begins to see how one’s own actions, as a player within the system, contribute to its disappointing outcomes.

Through the utilization of the tools of systems thinking and application of organizational principles, we need to identify clear objectives for the creation of an educational process that will produce the results we want and for creating the structure to support those objectives.

Today, our educational process, whether employed in a public, private, or parochial setting, is not structured to see that each child learns as much as he or she can, as quickly as he or she is able. Rather, the process is structured to move children, grouped by chronological age, along a path outlined by academic standards that are established by each state. Standardized tests are utilized to assess whether children are where the academic standards say they should be at predetermined points in time.

What the current educational process does is ask teachers to guide children down that path as if it were a race and to keep score to see who learns the most, the fastest. As children fall out along the way from ages 5 or 6 to 18, we let them accumulate along that path, much in the way a 1950s assembly line would produce a scrap pile of discrepant material. Because these children have not been successful in acquiring even a basic portfolio of knowledge and skills, they congregate in the poorest neighborhoods and communities in both urban and rural America and they begin creating a whole new generation. They congregate in these poor communities because they have nowhere else to go with the possible exception of our jails and prisons.

Reformers who push for privatization of education; standardized testing as a tool to hold teachers and schools accountable and promote charter schools and vouchers are wrong in their assertions about why so many American children are failing in our schools. In their drive to apply what they refer to as “proven business practices” they are doing great harm to our most vulnerable children, their schools and communities, and also to the public school teachers on whom so much depends. These reformers proceed with such arrogance that they never consider the possibility that they might be wrong.

These reformers are correct, however, about the need to apply proven business principles but we are not talking about the principles that come from the boardrooms with their focus on financial incentives, investments, and entrepreneurialism. The business principles to which we refer are things that can be learned from an operational perspective in a business environment. These principles have to do with things like focus on one’s customer, structuring an organization to serve its purpose, problem-solving, teamwork, integrating quality assessments into the learning process, and giving the people on the production line the tools and resources they need to help them do the best job of which they are capable.

Public school teachers and other educational professionals, while unfairly blamed for the problems in our public schools, are also wrong. They are wrong to defend an educational process that fails to meet the needs of so many of our precious children. It is my assertion that the educational process, with its focus on failure, does a disservice to even the children who appear to excel academically.

Reforms of the last two decades have attacked them to such a degree that our teachers’ defensiveness is understandable but that does not make their intransigence defensible. We need fresh insight into this vital issue. It is public education on which the futures of our nation’s children depend and it is our children on whom our nation’s future depends.

If your find merit in the following pages, I ask that you read my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, (CreateSpace, 2013) and the companion blog at www.melhawkinsandassociates.com. The book is available in both Kindle and paperback format and can be ordered through Amazon.com or through my website.


Reinventing the American Educational Process and our Public Schools

For as long as anyone can remember, children at the ages of 5 or 6 have arrived for their first day of school where they, as a class, have been placed on a path from Kindergarten and first grade to twelfth grade, although not all make it to grade 12. There have always been children who fail or perform poorly in school and, over the decades, the number of failures has multiplied as one generation after another has sent its sons and daughters off to school. We now have multiple generations of families who have always failed at school and who have always been poor. With each generation, the hope in the minds of parents that an education provides a way out for their children has eroded as has their faith in the American dream.

These mothers and fathers, and sometimes grandparents and other family members, raise their children in poverty. They still send their children off to school but for many, the purpose of school has been downgraded to free daycare, five days a week, 9 months of the year. With but the fewest of exceptions, these parents and guardians no longer teach their children that an education is a ticket to the American dream, nor do they make sacrifices to help prepare their children for school or support their kids’ teachers.

These youngsters show up for their first day of school with minimal motivation to learn, little if any academic preparation, and little parental support. Often, the parents’ biggest concern is a fear that their children will be picked on by their teachers and be forced to endure other forms of discrimination, so minimal is the trust of schools on the part of many of these parents. The seemingly inevitable outcome of these realities is that each generation of the poor and the failing is even more likely to remain entrapped in the cycles of poverty and academic failure.

For decades, educators and educational policymakers have responded to this cycle of failure with a bevy of incremental reforms and initiatives and have spent billions of dollars in an attempt to fix what is wrong with public education. In their frustration with their inability to put an end to the cycle of failure, educators and policymakers alike have declared that such pervasive failure is a consequence of poverty. They suggest that we will not alter the outcomes in our schools until we do something about poverty. At no time have these educators considered that what they do contributes to the crisis or that the educational process, itself, is flawed.

The rest of us nod our heads in bewildered agreement because what else could it be? The fact that this population of the poor and the uneducated is disproportionately black or other minorities is declared to be a consequence of segregation and discrimination. Sadly, an embarrassingly large segment of mainstream America, a society still scourged by the bitterness and resentment of bigotry, believe that such outcomes are the best we can expect from children of color or for whom English is a second language. Crime and violence are viewed as inevitable outcomes. Sad commentary for a nation that boasts that it is the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world and a beacon for freedom and human dignity.

These beliefs play a significant role in the tendency of some whites and some police officers to profile blacks, young men in particular, as a threat, thereby elevating the tension in even routine interactions and confrontations. This is all part of a complicated web of interdependent forces that adversely affect American society; a society comprised of unequal components. The growing number of successful, well-educated blacks and other minorities is viewed as nothing more than an anomaly by many white Americans.

The poor and minorities are becoming angrier as they find more and more doors of opportunity closed to them. Meanwhile, mainstream Americans are angrier because they resent having to support a population of men and women whom they view as unwilling to pull their own weight. They greatly resent what they view as an entitlement mentality.

The wider the chasm between the “haves” and the “have-nots” the greater the threat to a democratic form of government that depends on the ability of reasonable men and women to work together. This ever-widening chasm contributes to a growing desire of some Americans for a more authoritarian style of leadership, a phenomenon that has been studied by such people as Marc J. Hetherington at Vanderbilt University and Jonathon Weiler at the University of North Carolina. The reader may also wish to check out an article on the subject on March 1, 2016 in Vox by Amanda Taub, and a column by Colbert I. King in the Washington Post on March 4th of this year.

It is within this context that the battle for the future of public education is being fought. On the one hand, we have business people with incredible wealth who have generously pledged huge chunks of their personal fortunes to reform education in America. These people, and those who support them in both government and in the private sector, are tired of waiting for professional educators to “clean up their act.” These education reformers are motivated by years of frustration with the difficulty in finding capable, well-educated men and women to work in their companies. They are emboldened by their absolute belief that the wealth and jobs created by their corporations are the fundamental backbone of the American economy.

These reformers have declared that if professional educators cannot fix public education “they need to get out of our way and let us run their schools like we run our businesses.” In their zeal to hold schools and teachers accountable, they have placed great emphasis on standardized competency examinations. They suggest that schools that cannot improve their performance should be taken over or closed and their teachers let go.

Their other point of emphasis is privatization through the creation of charter schools that provide alternatives so families can “choose the best available school for their children.” The words “choice” and “school choice” and derivatives have become an effective if misleading tagline for reformers and political candidates who portray themselves as “champions of public education.”
These politicians profess to be committed to the idea of “choice,” and they charge forth ignorant of both the true issues facing public education and of the harm they do. They are also proponents of voucher programs as a tool to subsidize charter and other private and parochial schools with tax dollars.

This sounds promising but it is the shallowest of promises. The problem with such strategies is not that charter schools are inherently bad rather that these reformers are abandoning our most challenged public school districts and their students and teachers. If one steps back and examines this movement systemically, there is a clear picture of intent “to help the families we can and leave the rest to fend for themselves.”

We must not allow public education to be considered “triage” where we pick and choose to whom we will guarantee opportunities.

We seem to have lost sight of the original vision with respect to charter schools which was that such schools would become laboratories for innovative techniques and approaches that, once proven, can be rolled out for the benefit of all schools. Given the fact that many charter schools seem to do little more than replicate the traditional educational process, it should come as no surprise that few charters are outperforming their public school counterparts and that some are underperforming.

Teachers unions and associations have also been targeted by reformers who believe these entities, through their advocacy on behalf of teachers, have become obstacles in the path of educational reforms. The reality is that these corporate reformers and their conservative political supporters are against unions, irrespective of venue.

All of these reform initiatives, including “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top,” evidence no real understanding of the reasons why so many American children are failing. In the interim, these education reform initiatives and their proponents are a powerful force doing horrific damage to our public schools, their students and teachers, and also to the communities public schools strive to serve.

On the other side of the battle for the future of public education, we find American teachers and other educators who proclaim that our public schools are not failing. It is disappointing that teachers, whom I consider to be unsung American heroes, are so busy defending themselves from critics that they cannot translate what they see in their own classrooms into meaningful advocacy. The things they complain about in the faculty lounge or at association and union gatherings are the exact same problems to which I refer in my book.

One can only wonder how an educational system that fails nearly a third of its students can be considered to be a success. If we examine the findings of the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) that data suggests that 60 to 70 percent of American students perform below “proficient.” NAEP defines “proficient,” among other things, as a student being able to apply what they have learned in “real-world situations.” That we can claim the system is working, when more than half of its students are unable to apply what they have learned in response to “real-world situations,” stretches credibility.

These professionals insist that poverty is the culprit and throw up their hands in figurative despair that they are powerless to overcome the impact of it. Ridding the nation of poverty, these advocates suggest, is the responsibility of our government and of society as a whole. Educators also point to the re-segregation of our poor urban and rural public schools as a causal factor. In spite of the poverty and other challenges, these educators insist that our public schools are better than they have ever been.

There have, indeed, been many advancements in education over the years but we can only judge a system or process by the outcomes it produces, no matter how hard people are working or how well-meaning they may be.

The truth about the generations of the uneducated who live in poverty is that they are victims of a century’s worth of ineffectual government policies and an obsolete educational process that works at cross purposes with the efforts of teachers and sets children up for failure. No one can dispute that poverty creates tremendous disadvantages for children but it is because of the hopelessness and powerlessness that so often accompanies poverty that parents have given up on education and have lost faith in the American dream.

Instead of blaming poverty, we need to attack hopelessness and powerlessness, relentlessly. We need to take this logic a step further and suggest that rather than poverty being the cause of the challenges in public education, poverty is, in fact, an outcome of the crisis in public education. It is a “chicken v. the egg” conundrum, to be sure.

Poverty exists because a huge population of American men and women—the overwhelming majority of whom attended public schools—lack literacy, numeracy, and the other knowledge and skills essential to full participation in the American enterprise and in our democracy. These Americans are trapped in a maelstrom of failure and poverty and are virtually powerless to alter that reality. This fact is indisputable and to disclaim any and all responsibility for such outcomes further damages the credibility of educators. We are at a critical point in our nation’s history and being in denial serves the interests of no one.

Let us be blunt. Poverty does not keep children from learning and our insistence that poverty is to blame for the problems in public education obscures the truth and bars the path to meaningful reform. Throughout our nation’s history there are countless examples of children from impoverished families who have excelled, academically, and have escaped the clutches of poverty. This is also true, today. We have known this but because we have been asking the wrong questions, the significance of these success stories eludes us. Rather than asking “why do so many children fail?” the question we should be asking is “what are the characteristics of the children who succeed in spite of the incredible disadvantages they face?”

As it turns out, the answer to the “correct question” is the key to unlocking the secrets of both the cycles of failure and of poverty. Only when we understand the real forces at work will we be able to develop a strategy to fix public education, attack poverty, and begin transforming American society.

The reason why some kids find success in a landscape of deprivation is, first, because they are supported by a parent or guardian who, in the face of incredible odds, somehow clings to hope that an education can provide a way out for their children. Many of the educated black men and women who are reading these words know that what I say is true from their own experience. These adults owe everything to a parent or guardian who refused to let them fail.

These parents and guardians are fiercely determined that their child is going to learn and they do whatever it takes to help. They make sure their child is prepared, academically; that they are motivated to learn; that they work hard; and, these caregivers accept responsibility for their child’s education through committed partnerships with their children’s teachers. Unfortunately, these parents are the exception to the rule but that does not diminish the significance of what we can learn from their success.

The lessons we can learn from these incredible caregivers must be central to every effort to reform public education. A committed parent who believes in the American dream for their children, if not for themselves, is formidable force in the life of a child. When those parents are willing partners with their children’s teachers their power and that of the teachers is magnified. Amazing success follows.

What this means for educational reform is that, somehow, we must find a way to convince parents that an education will be the difference in the lives of their children. This is no easy task when those parents have spent a lifetime on the outside looking in and have been victims of as many as 150 years of failed promises. These parents are part of multiple generations of men and women who have been chewed up and spit out by an educational process that is focused on failure. They neither believe in the importance of education nor the integrity of teachers and other educators. These Americans are drowning in a sea of anger and despair and they do not trust the hands that reach out to help them.

If we are going to convince people, we must be able to show them that we have something new and powerful to offer that will benefit their children. There is nothing in marketing as powerful as having something new and innovative to sell. Parents and guardians must be convinced that their child will not be subjected to the cycle of failure; something they know well from their own school experience.

It is imperative that we understand that this flawed educational process threatens the very principles of democracy. Unless we act quickly, with purpose and commitment, the adverse consequences for our society will be as certain as the impact of unrestrained use of fossil fuels on our planet. These generations of American were not destined to fail, rather they were permitted to fail and until we accept responsibility for that failure, the consequences will haunt the great American democracy for generations to come.

We turn, now, to the educational process at work in schools, both public and private, throughout the U.S.; first to understand and then to figure out what must be done. What is it about this process that is having such a devastating effect on so many of our nation’s most vulnerable children, thus placing our society at risk? We need to think about what happens, today in 2016, in elementary schools throughout the nation.

The disparity in academic preparation, motivation to learn, and parental support of the children who arrive at our door on their first day of school is cavernous. The disadvantage created when a child is bereft of these essential supports is every bit as great as a child with a visual, auditory or any other type of recognized disability. The impact is probably greater for the children with “academic preparedness” impairments because these other disabilities are not always accompanied by such high levels of hopelessness and powerlessness. We have known what to do for the former group of children for a long time and so we just do it.

Since the passage of the American Disabilities Act (ADA) we have made all manner of accommodations to mitigate the disadvantages of those with physical, visual, auditory, and emotional impairments and we have spent billions of dollars toward that objective, as well we should. We have done the same for children with clearly identifiable learning disabilities.

We have had no idea what to do with students with an “academic preparedness deficiency” and so we have done next to nothing other than rely on teachers to do the best they can. Very often these children come from low-income families and live in the midst of hopelessness and powerlessness. Many are children of color or those for whom English is a second language. These children deserve the same level of accommodation as other children with impairments.

Teachers, particularly in the lower grades, do the best they can for these students within the context of the current educational process and its associated expectations. Teachers recognize that many children are faltering and they reach back and help as much as time permits. What we must understand is that educational process is not structured in such a way that helping these kids is a priority or even an expectation and this is not activity against which our teachers’ performance will be measured.

The primary focus of the educational process, rather, is on preparing the whole class for the standardized competency exams that loom in the near future. It is on the aggregate performance of the class, on such exams, that the performance of both teachers and their schools will be measured and for which they will be held accountable.

It is understood that not all children will perform well on such tests and about this educators do feel remorse. It is a numbers game, however, the essence of which is that there is a certain percentage of failure that we have learned to tolerate. A school’s performance is measured against both state averages and its own past performance.

In other words, the process is designed to view a certain level of failure as acceptable. The educational process is not perfect, we tell ourselves, and it cannot be expected to solve the problems of society that contribute to the failure of so many children; most notably poverty.
If we stop and truly think about the implications of this mindset it is difficult to fathom or justify.

Why would we ever be willing to accept the failure of a child? Why would we ever judge a child’s performance against that of his or her classmates?

Although we possess the tools and expertise with which to perform a comprehensive assessment of the extent of a child’s disadvantage when they report for their first day of school, how many schools do this? Had we made the effort to do such an assessment, we possess the know-how to design a unique instructional plan to mitigate the disadvantage of every single child who arrives at our door. This is no different than making any other type of accommodation.

While we could make an extraordinary difference in the lives of children with an academic preparation deficiency by performing such assessments and creating tailored instructional plans, even this is insufficient if we do not also address the fundamental flaws in the educational process. It is a process that expects teachers to move students forward, as a class, even when some students are not ready. Every time a student is expected to move on to a new lesson before they are ready reduces the odds that the child will be successful on the next lesson. As this pattern plays out the one lesson kids are learning is that they are not able to keep up with their classmates. Sooner or later these kids will give up on themselves.

Sometime around the year 2007, I had an epiphany. I began subbing for Fort Wayne Community Schools in 2002 and for the first couple of years I was so overwhelmed by the challenges of subbing that I rarely found the time or the presence of mind to really think about what was happening around me. In this respect, I was much like the teachers for whom I was filling in. This changed when I accepted a week-long sub assignment for a middle school math teacher. I wrote about that experience and it is one of six vignettes that I included in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream (CreateSpace 2013). I have reproduced that vignette here:

Vignette #1 – Fort Wayne, IN – Middle school Math – Substitute Teacher

It is not very often that a substitute teacher actually has an opportunity to teach. One of the few occasions when I was able to teach was in a week-long assignment for a middle school math teacher. After two days of work on material having to do with prime factoring, rules of divisibility, and reducing to lowest terms, the students in three separate classes took a quiz, which the teacher had prepared in advance. It included twenty-five problems; all very similar to the problems that had been included on the several worksheets on which we had been working. This particular teacher went to great lengths to insure that his students did not cheat. The students sat at round tables, four students per table. He had acquired interlocking boards that were about twenty-four inches high for the purpose of dividing the table into four equal sections. Prior to every quiz or exam, the students would retrieve the boards from behind a cabinet and would set them up. As a result, it would be difficult if not impossible for a student to copy off of a classmate without being seen.
Given the time we had spent on the subject matter and the relatively straightforward nature of the material, I had high expectations, believing the students would do well on the quiz. To my surprise and disappointment, the results were that better than fifty percent of the 85 students scored below 60 percent and 75 percent of the students scored below 75. Only eight of the 85 students scored above 85 percent, and only two out of the 85 students scored better than 95 percent. In other words there were 43 Fs, 21 Ds, 13 Cs, 6 Bs, and 2 As.
The next day, prompted by my surprise at the results, I spent the entire period reviewing the same material. I did not return the quiz to the students, however, and chose not to review the actual questions from the prior day’s quiz. We worked problems as a class on the whiteboard and I worked one-on-one with the students who appeared to need that level of attention. Great care was taken to avoid doing the work for them.
The following day, I had all three classes retake the quiz. In advance of the retake they were told, in broad strokes, how poorly the class had done, although no one had access to their own results. They were also assured that this was a risk-free venture as I would throw out the lowest of the two test scores. The hope was that this opportunity would motivate the students to improve their scores while alleviating performance pressure.

Figure 1 – Comparing 1st and 2nd Quiz Scores

The new scores showed dramatic improvement by all but a handful of students. Better than ninety percent of students earned higher scores on the second quiz with several improving by two, three or more letter grades. A few students improved from failing grades to As and Bs. Roughly 80 percent of the students from the three classes scored 75 or better and a full third scored 85 or higher, 10 of whom scored above 95 percent (See Figure 1). Given the unlikelihood that the students remembered specific questions or problems, it seemed reasonable to conclude that their scores on the second quiz represented a substantially higher level of mastery.
While this may not have been the most scientific of studies, the level of improvement certainly was not a result of pure chance. The operative question is: Is it worth an extra two days to get such a dramatic improvement in subject-matter mastery. I’ll let the reader decide for themselves.

The epiphany occurred for me when I realized that I had witnessed something that happens to students every day, in every class, year after year. Had I not attempted to try something different, the scores from the first quiz would have been recorded in the teacher’s gradebook and I would have moved on to the next lesson and we would have repeated the same process of presentation, practice, review, quiz, and final review. For both students and teacher this process has become a ritual.

The question that kept nagging at me was, how would the 64 students who had received Ds and Fs have fared on the next lesson module, had I not taken the extra time on the lesson? For that matter, how would the 13 students have fared who had received Cs? It struck me, then, that for the students who struggled—90 percent of the students of this teacher and classroom—this was a microcosm of their academic life; probably from beginning to end. We have placed these children in an environment that we have structured as a competition in which there are both winners and losers. If that were not bad enough, we accept the failure of these students as if we are powerless to do anything about it. The logical progression of this thought process was, “how much failure can a child deal with before they become so discouraged that they stop trying?”

In the above vignette, even though there was great improvement after the second quiz, two-thirds of the students were not yet able to achieve a score of 85 percent, but many were close. It probably would not take more than one more review and the majority of the class would be ready to move on to the next lesson module. Another sad fact in this story is that the students who had achieved 85 percent or better after the first test were forced to wait for others to catch up. In the ideal scenario, these students would have been encouraged to charge ahead at their best speed.

How much failure can any of us endure before losing hope that we will ever be successful? The reader is encouraged to think back on their own experience of a time where you were struggling to keep up with your classmates; or about a task you could never quite get right; or, about a game you could never win. How did you feel? How long did it take before you began avoiding such situations?

It was at this point that I began to think about the educational process as a system. Let us summarize the existing educational process:

In spite of the great variance on the academic preparedness continuum of the children arriving for their first day of school, for generations we have asked individual teachers to do the best they can for each child. We have laid down this challenge to our teachers, however, within the context of a specific set of expectations. Those expectations are that the results of their efforts will be measured not on the basis of each student’s progress on a unique educational path but rather on the basis of how an entire population of children at the same age perform as measured against state academic standards for children of a given age.

In Indiana, for example, we do this beginning with the second semester of the third grade, and then multiple grades thereafter, until high school, using ISTEP+, Indiana’s version of a standardized competency examination. Once in high school, the purpose of the testing shifts to graduate qualification in certain subjects.

Imagine that you teach at a school where only 20 percent of the students who arrive at your door are well-prepared for academic success. On standardized competency exams, how would the performance of your students compare to the students in a school across town where 80 percent of the kids arrive well-prepared? Would you feel that you were being fairly compared? More importantly, would your students have the same chance for success?

This is the reality of the American educational process for teachers and students in schools, both public and private, in communities throughout the United States. Teachers are expected to move their entire class, in sequential order from step-to-step as established by state standards for each subject area. Teachers must do this lesson-to-lesson, chapter-to-chapter, semester-to-semester, and grade-to-grade. While teachers have some latitude to help children along, slowly, at least during Kindergarten and first and second grades, the older the students get the more pressure is felt to move everyone along at a steady and comparable pace.

That ISTEP+ or other competency exams loom in the not too distant future is a cold reality for schools and teachers. If students do not perform well on these exams both the school and its teachers face consequences. From this point onward, the pressure to keep students moving along a common path becomes nothing short of relentless.

The fact that a great variance exists with respect to academic preparedness, motivation to learn, and parental support is given virtually no consideration. Teachers must present subject matter according to the lesson plans that they have developed in conformance with state standards and that have been approved by their administration. Although they strive to give each student as much time and attention as possible, patience is a luxury not often available to teachers. The situation is complicated by the reality that anywhere from 25 to 75 percent of a teacher’s students miss most if not all of the questions or problems on practice assignments, quizzes, and tests. The time allotted for help and review is usually sufficient for students with a few mistakes but it is never enough for those who have made many.

The unvarnished truth is that the students who did poorly have been allowed to fail. The grades also become part of the student’s academic record and, not too gradually, begin to have a labeling effect. Children begin to identify with the grades they are given,

Very often, the next lesson requires that students be able to apply all or some of what they learned on previous lessons so that the student who is struggling is now at an even greater disadvantage and a greater risk of failure. Recall that according to NAEP results, 60 to 70 percent of American students “are below proficient.” They have not attained a level of mastery sufficient that they can utilize that knowledge “in real world situations,” which includes subsequent lesson modules.

Repeated failure chips away at a child’s confidence and self-esteem as these students recognize, very clearly, that they are not keeping up with classmates.

Now, think about this process within the context of teaching a child how to ride a bicycle. Some children learn quickly and are riding well before the end of the day. Other children fall down, cry and, for days, suffer skinned appendages and bruised egos. We keep encouraging them, however, because we know they can and will learn—they just need more time and our patient attention, which parents have the ability to give.

Within a few days, all are riding with comparable proficiency. Even bruised egos heal under the canopy of success and the joy of riding with one’s friends. After a couple of days, the fact that some kids took longer to learn than others becomes totally inconsequential to both the child and the community. Imagine, however, having to learn how to pop wheelies or perform other advanced riding skills before we have mastered balance, steering, and braking.

When kids fail in our schools it is not because they are incapable of learning and it is not because our teachers are incompetent. Children fail because our educational process is not structured to give each child however much time and patient attention they need. Learning quickly, or at least as quickly as one’s classmates, has become more important than whether or not a student has actually learned. This is proven, daily, throughout the nation whenever teachers must move on to new subject matter knowing full well that many of their students do not understand the previous one. Is it any wonder that kids give up on learning, stop trying, and begin acting out simply because they were permitted to fail?

This is the reality for the overwhelming majority of students who struggle and often fail, every day and in every class in virtually every school in America. Whether these struggling students represent 5 percent of their school’s population or 80 percent, the consequences are tragic for both the children, their teachers, and our nation. The fact that they do not get the time and attention they require is not because it is beyond our capability rather it is because this is not the expectation we lay out for teachers and because the educational process upon which we rely is not so structured.

Consider an alternative reality in which students are not permitted to fail; a reality in which they are always given the time and patient attention they require. When children who start from behind begin to realize that they can learn and when they have an opportunity to enjoy the success of learning, everything changes. We all want the same thing. When we sample a taste of success—of winning—we want more. The more kids learn, the more confident they become and the more confident they become the better able they are to control the outcomes in their lives. The more control young people have over outcomes, the stronger their self-esteem. Before long, the speed at which these children learn accelerates and they begin closing the gaps between themselves and the classmates with whom they have never been able to compete.

In a discussion with a teacher about this very process, he said “But they will never really catch up.” My response was a blunt “so what!” It does not matter whether they catch up with everyone else because we have no expectation that every student who completes high school will have chosen the same destination. We want them to learn as much as they are able at their own best speed. We want them to have choices based upon their own unique skills, knowledge, and interests. If a child leaves school at the age of 18 or younger and has no choices available to them because of their poor academic performance, who has failed? Is the student or is it the American educational process?

We must begin with the simple idea that every child can learn and we must commence their formal education at the specific point on the academic preparedness continuum where we find them when they arrive at our door. The fact that our community needs to begin intervening in the lives of these children earlier and more aggressively does not change the job of the school and its teachers. With one exception, we can accept responsibility only at the point at which children pass through our door.

The exception is that when we find, through our assessment, that a child has any kind of impairment the first question we need to ask is “are there other children in the home who are at risk?” If so, we need to do what we can to connect that family with whatever kind of early intervention programs might be available in our community. We must, then, turn our full attention to the child who stands before us. Each of them both needs and deserves our best and most patient effort. They must not be allowed to fail, under any circumstances, as we begin moving them at their best speed from point to point on the unique academic plan we have tailored for them.

We are not just teaching colors, letters, numbers, words or other academic skills, we are teaching them that they can be successful, that they can learn, that learning can be fun, and that success will be celebrated. As the child moves along the path, one success at a time, the speed with which they learn will gradually begin to increase. Our job is simply to help them get as far down their unique academic path as they are able during the time they are our responsibility.

There is one more job that we must do, however. We must make it an ongoing routine to communicate with the child’s parent or guardian, whether or not they initially respond to our overtures. Gradually, most parents will begin responding when they see or hear that their child is making progress; when they begin to see the evidence of that progress in the eyes, hearts, minds, and behavior of their sons and daughters. Success and winning are as contagious as any infectious disease, even for those watching from the sidelines. Every time a parent is lured by their child’s success we have gained another foothold in the community.

What is important are two fundamental benchmarks that should be applied to every child. The first benchmark should be applied at every step of the way down each individual’s unique academic path. The second benchmark should be applied at strategic points along the way and once again when they finish high school.

The first benchmark is “can the student apply what they have learned in subsequent lessons or in responding to real life challenges.” If a student is unable to utilize what they have been taught, they have not really learned. And, if they have not really learned, then our job as educators is not done with respect to that child on that lesson. Anything less than 85 percent mastery is unacceptable.

The second benchmark to be applied when kids finish high school and at other strategic points along the way is “on the basis of what they have learned, do students have meaningful choices to make.” Kids who cannot utilize what they have learned are almost always left with default decisions, which amount to no choice at all. The whole point of an education is to insure that kids have choices as adults.

We do a great disservice to a child who is pushed along to a second lesson before they have learned and mastered the first. We also do a great disservice to students who are at the top of their class when we ask them to slow down and wait for their classmates to catch up. Students should always be allowed to move forward at the best speed of which they are capable and that speed should never be influenced by the learning velocity of their classmates. To ask a student who excels, academically, to slow down will only diminish the joy of learning and add unnecessary boredom and frustration. When students are bored and frustrated they begin looking to friends, social media, and video games for their intellectual stimulation. The last thing we should ever want to do is dampen the joy of learning for any child, at any time.

In business, there is a principle that an organization is structured to produce the outcomes it gets. What outcomes do we covet? Do we want every child to learn and be able to utilize what they have learned and experience success; or, do we want a system that is satisfied to determine which kids learn the most, the fastest and in which only a few get to experience the joy of success? Do we want a process that allows children to enter adulthood without the knowledge and skills they will need in order to accept the responsibilities of citizenship?

The standard should be that every child is expected to achieve a level of mastery that is at least 85 percent on each and every lesson module and that no child should be allowed to fail. Anything less than 85 percent mastery is unacceptable. This raises questions of what is possible and practical.

Is it even possible for teachers to give kids as much time and patient attention as they need? Is it realistic to think that all kids can achieve 85 percent mastery in every subject?

The answer is “no” when we try to do it within the context of the existing educational process and the incumbent expectations on both teachers and students. When we challenge our assumptions, alter those expectations to match our newly identified objectives, and then restructure the educational process to support those expectations, however, the answer is an emphatic “yes!” It is nothing more than a human engineering problem that will yield to the application of the human imagination and relentless determination.

My book, Reinventing Education, Hope and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America offers a specific blueprint for a practical solution that achieves our objectives and more. This is not science fiction, it is real-world problem-solving that will change the reality of public education for millions of American children and, in the process, will transform American society. It will also make the American dream an achievable reality for all people.

We will discover beyond a reasonable doubt that poverty is not the cause of the academic failure rather it is the other way around. Poverty is the outcome our current educational process is structured to create because it not only permits students to fail, it sets them up for failure.

We cannot continue churning out young adults and continue to grow the population of American men and women who lack the levels of literacy, numeracy, and other academic knowledge and skills necessary to be productive players in the American enterprise. We cannot accept the outcome in which young people are unable to accept the responsibilities of citizenship in a participatory democracy that depends on its people to make informed choices. These men and women do not believe in the American dream and they do not teach their children that a quality education is a ticket to that dream. Instead they live in poverty under a canopy of hopelessness and powerlessness and they bequeath the same tainted heritage to future generations of their offspring. This is untenable and unnecessary.

Our nation’s poor urban and rural communities are now full of several generations of Americans with a common experience. Whether white, black, or minorities of other ethnic heritage matters not. The longer a culture has been forced to endure the cycles of failure and poverty, however, the more likely they are to accept their circumstances with passive resignation. It has been engrained in them so deeply that few are able to envision anything different. If we cannot envision a better life for ourselves or our children, we cannot create it.

The performance gap between white and black students is the most gaping because African-Americans have been forced to endure the equivalent of lower class citizenship for a hundred and fifty years and that does not include the centuries of slavery. In some respects, African-American culture has evolved in isolation from mainstream America and is very much separate and apart. The exceptions are those who, with the help of parents and teachers, have enjoyed academic success and have carved out a place for themselves as educated men and women in mainstream society. If they were to speak candidly, many highly educated African-American men and women who are successful professionals or who occupy high level positions would acknowledge that they often have a sense of being separate and apart from poor blacks in urban and rural America.

Poor and uneducated adult Americans have minimal trust in mainstream/white society and its promises. For them, the dream is a failed promise and it is no more real for their children. Breaking down that mistrust is incredibly challenging so it is vital that we have unveiled a new educational process and can demonstrate that it will work for their children. When the barriers have been overcome, black children are every bit as capable of high academic achievement as any other child. This is true for all children, whatever the demography.

I urge the reader to take the time necessary to read my book and blog. Public education is, after all, an issue of such importance that we can afford to leave no stone unturned in search of a solution. What a bonus it will be if, when we solve the problems of public education, we learn that we have also set in motion the systematic abolition of poverty.

I offer one last caveat. There is a tendency to back off from sweeping systemic change and to latch onto bits and pieces of a newly designed proposal or system. This never works and is no more effective than the routine incremental changes that have effected public education for a century. What we have today is a product of that way of thinking. Systems are complex human organizations and/or processes with many interdependent people, parts, and forces. For a transformational change to work as envisioned, all of the components must support the system’s mission. When we only tinker with complex systems we inevitably discover that some components work at cross purposes with the mission. This must not be permitted.

Everything starts with purpose or mission and in the case of public education the purpose is to help every child gain the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for them to have a full and productive life and to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship.

Next, we must identify the key components that create the absolute best chance that we can provide each and every child with that kind of educational experience:

1. We must perform an assessment for each child who arrives for their first day of school so that we can develop an academic path tailored to his or her unique needs;
2. We must create an environment that fosters close personal relationships between students, teachers and parents as this gives each child the absolute best opportunity to be successful. We want each child to have the same type of special relationship with their teacher that many of us remember when we think back to our favorite teacher(s) and we want the parents to be an integral part of that special relationship;
3. During Kindergarten, first, and second grades we need to increase the resources dedicated to helping these youngsters lay a solid foundation for success and learning. Some kids start from way behind and we must do everything within our power to see that they progress from their unique starting point;
4. We must give each child the time and the patient instruction they need to begin moving down the unique academic path we have created for them at the best speed of which they are capable with the expectation that the minimum subject mastery score is 85 percent;
5. We must eliminate even the possibility of failure. Learning from one’s mistakes is critical to academic success but mistakes and failure are two entirely different things. If a child cannot demonstrate mastery on a given lesson then our job is not complete;
6. We want an environment in which all children are allowed to progress at their own best speed. They must not be required to wait on those who learn more slowly and they must not be pressured to keep up with students who had a head start.
7. We also want to create an environment in which students feel safe and secure and are able to develop strong, positive relationships with their peers irrespective of the speed with which they learn;
8. We want to give each child as much stability as possible with respect to both relationships and environment, for as long as possible, and, finally;
9. We must also provide teachers with clear expectations consistent with our new mission and we must equip them with tools and technology to help them optimize their performance.

On the foundation of these core objectives we can construct a new educational process that will be structured to produce the outcomes we seek. In my book, I offer nineteen action strategies to create such an educational process. These illustrate exactly how this new educational process will be structured and how it will work. I then offer an additional 14 action items that are designed to take this message to the people and engage parents as full partners.

As an addendum to this white paper, I have attached a model implementation plan to illustrate how manageable would be its implementation.

We must then reach out to organizations that exist for the sole purpose of advocacy on behalf of the poor, of African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and other minorities and demographic groups. With the assistance of these organizations, the intent is to take a new educational model to public school corporations that are struggling in the aftermath of the national movement to “reform public education.”

These corporations will be given the opportunity to employ this new model in one or more of elementary schools in their district with the poorest records of performance. Once the performance of this model has been demonstrated and well-documented, we can begin rolling the model out in each and every public school in that school corporation and then throughout the U.S.

Only when this has been accomplished will we be prepared to meet the extraordinary and unprecedented challenges that the balance of the 21st Century will bring.

Black or White They’re Just Kids: They Need Us & We Need Them!

This is the 3rd segment of our series of articles on education, racism and the performance gap.

It is incredibly difficult for a white person to understand what it is like to be black. Sadly, most white people are perfectly content to know as little as possible about such things. For others like my white daughter and son-in-law, who are parents of a black son, it is imperative that we understand as much as we possibly can.

My wife and I have three grandchildren. The eldest is a little girl who was adopted by that same daughter and son-in-law. She is of Mexican descent with beautiful, thick black hair, brown eyes, golden brown skin, and a smile that lights up the world. The second is a little boy whose skin is a beautiful, rich brown with eyes to match, who has his sister’s smile, and who came out of his birth mother’s womb with a natural Afro. Our youngest grandchild is the biological child of my youngest daughter and her husband. She is the palest of whites, bordering on pink, and her hair is as red as her father’s beard. She is also beautiful with a smile that is second to none.

These children represent our family’s beautiful rainbow and, like all grandparents, we love them so much that it hurts.

When our daughter announced that they were adopting a black infant we knew he would face challenges but we did not yet grasp the whole of it. From the events in Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere we have become painfully aware of the dangers our sweet and beautiful little boy will face; not because of anything he has done but only because of the way the color of his skin will affect the attitudes of a huge population of Americans.

We shuddered after reading such powerful articles as “I Never Knew How White I Was Until I Had a Black Child,” which you can find on Rosebelle’s Blog; and more recently, “7 Ways Racism Affects the Lives of Black Children” by Terrell Jermaine Starr on the website Alternet.

I have spent my entire lifetime striving to understand why our world is so full of hatred over issues as insignificant as the color of one’s skin. I still struggle to understand why differences in eye or hair color are perceived as different shades of beauty while differences in skin color can produce such hatred and mistrust.

I was blessed to be born to parents who taught that we are all children of Creation and that we were blessed to live in a country in which we are all considered equal under the Constitution.

I was equally fortunate to live in a neighborhood and attend an elementary school where I learned to be friends and playmates of my black classmates before I ever learned of the existence of bigotry and racism.

When I first witnessed the hatred that my white friends had for my black friends, I was devastated. Innocence was forever lost but I never lost my perception of diversity as something to be cherished as beautiful.

Later, at the age of 20, I was privileged to spend a summer working in a churchyard in Philadelphia, providing a place for kids to gather and play, safe from the reaches of the gangs whose territories sandwiched our little oasis. All were African-American. While I was responsible for the 30 to 40 different boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 16 who chose to play in our churchyard and game room, I played with them far more than I supervised.

For the first nine years after college and the military, I worked as a juvenile probation officer where I supervised a multi-racial group of boys and girls between the ages of 9 and 17. Later, I was one of the founders of a local Boys and Girls Club where, once again, I was privileged to be around and play with a diverse group of children.

What I learned during these significant chunks of my life was that whether black, white, or shades of brown; rich or poor; male or female they are all just kids.

They all laugh when they play or act silly; cry and bleed red when they get hurt; get mad when they lose; celebrate when they win; get embarrassed when they are made fun of; yawn when they get sleepy; respond to love and affection with love and affection; and, suffer egregiously when abused by their parents or when bullied.

They all have the ability to learn; they all are curious about the world around them; and, they all get discouraged and feel humiliated when they fail. They all suffer great loss of self-esteem when they give up on themselves after repeated failure and no longer believe in their ability to compete. That we give up on them only adds to the tragedy.

They all deserve our respect not only as individual human beings but also as members of their unique cultural traditions all of which add beauty to the world. The only difference, once they arrive at school, is their level of preparation and motivation.

They all deserve the absolute best we have to offer and the very fact that so many of them fail provides irrefutable evidence that they are not getting our best and that what we are doing does not work for everyone.

Whether we are teachers, principals, policy-makers, or deans and professors of schools of education we must be willing to pull our heads from the sand and stop defending the indefensible. The fact that so many children are failing, particularly minorities and the poor, is not a predisposition of birth or a fact of nature. Such incidence of failure is nothing more than an outcome of a flawed system of human design. The performance gap between white children and their black and other minority classmates is an outcome our traditional educational process is structured to produce.

This flawed system is not the fault of teachers and other professional educators. Rather, the culpability of educators is the result of the fact that they are the people in the best position to identify and remediate this flawed educational process but they hold back as if they are afraid to act. It is critical that we understand that this lack of action is not because they are bad people or incompetent professionals rather it is because they have succumbed to the belief that they are powerless.

Teachers must be challenged to accept that powerlessness and hopelessness are functions of choice. They are equally free to choose to be both hopeful and powerful.

The over-riding truth, as we move deeper into this exponentially complex 21st Century, is that we need each and every one of these kids just as desperately as they need us.

Our ability to compete in the world marketplace will require the absolute best of every single American and if we do not pull together as one beautifully diverse nation of people—the proverbial melting pot—the results will be tragic for all of us, black, white or any of the colors of the rainbow. We will no longer live in a world where being an American is something of which we can be proud. Neither will it be a world where our children and grandchildren can feel safe and hopeful in rearing their own children.

The final segment of this series will be devoted to showing professional educators one way in which we can irrevocably alter the reality of public education in America.

They Are Destroying Public Education Just When We Need It the Most!

The events in Ferguson Missouri illustrate just how far apart we have drifted as a people. Somehow, we must find a way to repair the damage that has been done and the trust that has been lost and begin closing the gap between the white community and the communities of African-Americans and other minorities, between the rich and poor, the sick and the healthy, and the hopeful and the hopeless.

If we have learned anything from the last sixty years it is that we cannot legislate a change of heart. The only thing we can do is see that every American child; irrespective of race, religion, creed, color, sexual preference, or relative affluence has an opportunity for a quality education. It is only through education that a young man or woman can emerge from childhood with sufficient skill and knowledge to make a place for themselves in the world; to be able to choose from an array of meaningful opportunities; to be able to exert control over their own lives and destinies; and, have sufficient strength of character to persevere through life’s hardships and disappointments.

The federal government, corporate reformers, and state governments across the land are engaged in a relentless attack against public schools, community control of education, and the public school teachers. Now they are even attacking programs for our nation’s special needs children. These powerful men and women are no more qualified to fix public education in America because of their success in business than they are to perform surgery at a local hospital. As for our elected and appointed government officials, maybe they should fix our executive and legislative branches of government before they try to tackle something they know even less about.

It is, however, understandable that these reformers feel compelled to act because our professional educators have not stepped up to acknowledge the deficiencies in our educational process; deficiencies that only they are qualified to address.

The would-be reformers of public education have not taken the time to understand that the problems with education in America exist in spite of the valiant efforts of our public school teachers and not because of them. The reformers aggressively promote standardized testing, a process that distracts educators from what is important, and they drain resources from our most vulnerable community school corporations with vouchers to encourage parents to send their kids to a small number of unproven charter schools and to other parochial and private schools that cannot begin to meet the needs of every child in their communities. To offer what they believe to be a lifeline to parents who want the best for their children is a cruel strategy, indeed, if it can bear the weight of only a small percentage of the families of our communities.

These corporate reformers have not spent time in our public school classrooms so that they can witness, first hand, the deplorable lack of motivation to learn on the part of children across the spectrum of our student populations and they have not made the effort to investigate the absence of parental support in so many of our public schools.

If they did they would discover that many of the parents of our most vulnerable children are themselves victims of an outdated educational process and have no more trust in our systems of education, public or private, than they do in our systems of justice. These reformers would also discover that far too many of these men and women have lost hope and faith in the American dream.

Our systems of public school corporations and the obsolete educational process that functions within may be need a transformation but they provide the only hope to begin narrowing the breach that divides this nation and that we observed so graphically, this week, in an American community. The misguided policies of our corporate and government reformers of education can only divide us even more than we are divided today.

It is time for our professional educators who teach in or manage our public school corporations to step forth and acknowledge that our systems of public education are struggling and to accept responsibility for leading us to a new reality. A new reality in which every child is given the opportunity and the time to learn under the tutelage of qualified teachers, in an environment in which they are evaluated against their own performance rather than against the performance of their classmates.

Creating such a reality is our only hope for a future in which our aggregate dreams can be realized.

A to F Grading Makes No More Sense for Our Children than It Does for Public Schools!

When we grade schools “A to F” on the basis of standardized test scores like ISTEP+ in Indiana it is as “Absurd” at one end of the grading continuum as it is “Farcical” at the other. This is especially true when the powers that implemented the “A to F” measure envisioned that so-called “failing schools” would be gradually shut down with the kids shuttled off to charter schools from which they could expect immediate turnaround.

If that logic is not “Absurd” I do not know what is and most professional educators concur.

It was also envisioned that the failing schools could be transformed by getting rid of bad teachers and their unions, replacing them with less-educated teachers trained to embrace the use of more sophisticated technologies that would, again, transform the quality of education.

If that logic is not “Farcical” I do not know what is and most professional educators agree.

Most of those same educators would be just as critical of “A to F” grading for the students in their classrooms but the “A to F” mindset has been in place for so long that it has become engrained. It has become one of those fundamental assumptions that defy logic.

Many schools corporations have experimented with other grading methodologies, particularly at the primary level. As far back as the early 1950s, my local school district began using a “V to U” grading system which was essentially the same.

Today, the overwhelming majority of report cards that are sent home to parents throughout the U.S. utilize “A to F”. Is it our intention that we will shut down the children who are given “Fs” and are considered failing?

Of course it is not, but what we are asked to do with these kids is not much more effective. As they move from grade to grade (the word “grade” has become part of our lexicon and subtly shapes our thinking even here) we struggle to know what to do with “F” students. Holding them back is believed to have negative emotional and psychological consequences but moving them along with their classmates is just as problematic.

For generations, most of these children would become drop outs before high school graduation and enter the society as adults poorly prepared to accept the responsibilities of citizenship. In more recent times, our schools have worked hard to keep these young people in school but the ultimate outcome of being poorly prepared is still the norm for far too many of these kids.

This is the reality that the critics of public education point out, with great passion, and it is the driving motivation behind the corporate reform movement that began in the business community and has been aggressively sold to federal and state government through one of the most powerful and effective “lobbying” strategies in history.

The problem is that it is all based upon an erroneous, rarely challenged assumption about what it is that kids need, today. Whether poverty, hopelessness on the part of parents, diluted values, the unprecedented power of the 21st Century peer group, or some combination of the above what these kids need cannot be provided by privatized schools with teachers who are trained rather than educated, and using the wonders of modern technology.

Modern technology can play a powerful role in the hands of a qualified teacher if we took the time to understand what we need it to do for us. Simply distributing tablets and IPads and using digital learning tools will not magically cure what ails 21st Century education.

What kids need are more time and attention from people who care and who have the time to develop trusting and nurturing relations with them. They need us to treat them as unique individuals coming to us at a unique point on their physical, emotional, and intellectual developmental continuum. They need us to teach them how to learn, successfully, which takes longer for some than others, and they need our protection against the failure and humiliation that diminish self-esteem.

And, they need even more from us. The absolute best chance a child can have is when parents and teachers work together as partners on a child’s behalf. When parents do not embrace such relationships with their children’s teachers it is not sufficient to put our heads down and think we can do it on our own.

We must do more to close the distance between our teachers and schools and parents and their communities. We need to sell them on the idea that their child can grow up in a world where they have a menu of positive choices from which to choose that will not only provide a good life for them but will also help them fulfill their civic responsibilities.

Reaching out to the disenfranchised to pull them in is a formidable challenge, indeed, but it is nothing more than a human engineering problem that has a solution that is within our power to achieve.

In the interim, we cannot allow a single child to fail on a single lesson.

We have no expectation that every child that enters kindergarten will arrive at the same destination at the end of their thirteen years of schooling but yet public school teachers are asked to work within a structured educational process that forces them to move students down comparable paths at relative speeds. Our job must be to make certain that students learn as much as they are able within the time they are under our protective wings and that they can use what they learn effectively on the next lesson module and as they face the challenges of citizenship.

Many teachers cannot envision how this could happen within the current structure and they are correct; the structure of the educational process must be altered if we wish to alter its outcomes. Making such alterations is not all that difficult if we are willing to step back and view the process objectively. The truth is, particularly at the primary level, we could start doing things differently, almost immediately; with little or no cost.

Forget “A to F” and shift our focus to an expectation that nothing less than an A or B is acceptable (85 percent or better mastery of subject matter). Let us remember that intellectual development is only one aspect of a child’s development and it works interdependently with their emotional and physical development. Public education must not degenerate into force-feeding content into a child’s brain like they are a computer that just needs more data to process; which is pretty much where we seem to be heading.

What our children and their parents need is that special relationship that many of us had with a favorite teacher whose care and affection we could trust, absolutely.

The educational reforms that are sweeping the nation will destroy us as surely as Mother Nature will punish us if we continue to abuse our environment. Current educational reforms are like a powerful tug boat pulling a safe harbor ever farther away from a dock that has broken loose and is drifting from shore. It is a dock that is full of people who have become separate and apart from the whole and who have become hopeless and powerless. Every time we send a child out into this sea, unprepared, what is left for them but to scramble on to that already over-crowded dock?

The one thing of which we can be sure is that the farther apart we drift the more tragic will be the consequences for the future of our society.

Reject “A to F” for schools, teachers, and children and reinvent our educational process. My book. Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge For Twenty-First Century America, will show exactly how this can be accomplished.

Giving Hope to Our Public School Teachers

Last evening, when three members of the leadership team of the Bad Ass Teachers Association made a guest visit to Justin Oakley’s “Just let me Teach” on the IndianaTalks internet radio network there was discussion about getting more public school teachers to join the BATs and to stay active in their unions. It was suggested that many teachers are losing faith in their unions and are not remaining active.

No one knows better than the Bad Ass Teachers Association that American teachers are more discouraged than ever. Everywhere they turn they are under attack and it is easy to understand that they are losing hope that what they are doing for their students is making a difference and that their efforts are appreciated. That many teachers in Indiana and throughout the U.S. live in fear of losing their jobs if ISTEP+ and other standardized test results do not improve borders on criminal, particularly since most educators know that the infamous A to F grading system for Indiana’s schools really stands for “Absurd to Farcical.”

It is difficult to maintain a positive frame of mind when teachers are being blamed for problems over which have little or no control and when they are asked to work in environments in which they are as much victims of a system as their students.

What teachers need more than anything is hope that a better day is coming but to whom do they turn for hope and leadership?

They cannot look to their state and federal governments or the business community because these seemingly unassailable forces are linked together in what can only be perceived by the teaching profession as a relentless quest to destroy public education.

Many are losing hope that their unions and associations can withstand the withering assault on basic purposes that unions were created to serve.

Even the wonderful organization that we know as the Bad Ass Teachers Association and their rallying cry that “we’re not going to take it anymore,” are viewed with skepticism by some. What good does it do, some teachers ask, to stand up and shout that we’re not going to take it when, the reality is that teachers feel such a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness that anything they say can make a difference.

As appealing as the mantra of the BATs may be, I hear some teachers saying that no one wants to hear us complain, they want answers!

Teachers can rally around candidates for public office, whether local school boards, or state or federal executive or legislative offices but almost always find themselves supporting candidates who are as short on experience in public office, or in building a successful election campaign strategies as they are short on funding. And, almost always, these candidates for office find themselves running against opponents with strong support of mainstream political parties, powerful political action committees, and a movement that professes to be working to save American children from the shortcomings or our public school corporations.

We live in hope that the miracle of Glenda Ritz’s election to Indiana’s office of Superintendent of Public Instruction was a turning point but how often can we expect the stars to be so perfectly aligned as they were on that election night that we recall with such fondness? Are we to be content to celebrate candidate Zephyr Teachout’s recent primary election defeat in New York City because she won 34 percent of the vote and raised awareness?

We listen with rapt attention to the celebrated champions of public education like Diane Ravitch and Linda Darling Hammond who stand for teachers and other educators and who speak with eloquence. Sadly, these few heroic champions must somehow offset the power and momentum of the corporate reformers like Bill Gates, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama and the legions of multi-billion dollar businesses and foundations who line up in support to the demise of public education.

The problem is that the champions of the cause for public education and our public schools and their teachers offer so little upon which we can all take hope. These champions cry out that the problems of public education are nothing more than a myth and that our public schools are performing better each year, even if in small increments.

The problem is that such protestations, no matter how eloquent the appeal, ring hollow to the overwhelming number of Americans and even to an overwhelming number of the teachers on behalf of whom such advocacy is offered. It is a message that has precious little credibility.

Advocacy Groups for the support of Public Education can be found in States all over the U.S. with Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education; Indiana Coalition for Public Education just two examples here in Indiana.

Why don’t these advocates and the leadership of our various unions, associations, and other organizations working on behalf of public schools and their students and teachers shout loudly that,

Yes! Public Education in America is in crisis but it is a crisis that exists in spite of the valiant efforts of teachers not because of those efforts.

Why do they not stand and proclaim that:

Professional educators are the only ones who truly understand what needs to be done to return the status of public education to its rightful place as one of the essential components of a democratic society and a healthy economy.

Why do they not shout out that they have:

a real solution to the challenges of public education that will protect rather than damage the all-important relationships between our public schools and their communities, not to mention our students.

Why do they not:

develop an action strategy to transform the educational process and present it to the professional educators to enlist their support and commitment to a real and achievable solution?

And, most importantly, why do they not begin:

the process of selling that solution to the American people?

In recent posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and in a recent tweet on Twitter I shared a message from a poster of Michael J. Fox that read:

If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.

Our teachers know exactly what must be done to turn our schools around so they meet the needs of all American children and not just those who have an affinity for academic endeavors.

Our teachers know that the educational process is flawed when we don’t assess where a child is when they report for their first day of school and then expect them to move down the same path with a diverse classroom of other children on the same chronological schedule.

Our teachers know that the educational process is flawed when they are unable to give children enough time to learn and instead are told that their job on that lesson is done and then give the student a “C,” “D,” or “F” and ask them to move on to the next lesson; a lesson at which they are even less prepared to succeed.

Our teachers know that the solution is to give children the time they need to learn and that, in the final analysis, what matters is not how long it took a child to learn but rather than they did learn and can now apply what they learned to future subject matter and eventually to solve the everyday problems of living in a complex democratic society.

Our teachers know that standardized testing is not a measure of a child’s level of knowledge or understanding any more that it is a measure of a teacher or school’s effectiveness. A test is snapshot of a student’s grasp of given subject matter at a fixed point of time and is useful only if it determines first, whether or not a student needs more time and assistance from his or her teachers, and second; where that attention should be directed if, indeed, it is needed.

Our teachers know that the most important determinant of a child’s success in school is the level of support and participation of the child’s parents or guardians working as partners with the teacher on behalf of the student. Teachers know the system is flawed when so many young parents have no faith or trust in our schools because they are, themselves, victims of an educational process that did not give them what they so desperately needed when they were kids.

Our teachers understand that we need to reach out to these parents and pull them in as partners in the educational process, to help them learn to trust that the school and teacher are there to help them help their child prepare for the rest of their lives.

Our teachers know that each child needs to feel that they are special and have relationships with people in their lives whom they can both love and trust. Teachers understand that the child who is hardest to love and demands the most attention is the child that needs it the most. Our teachers understand that every child needs to have experienced what many of us recall when we think back to our most favorite teachers. Our teachers understand that the educational process is flawed when it is not structured to support the development of the vital relationships between our children, their parents, and teachers.

Our teachers know the educational process is flawed when children have given up on learning and are no longer willing to try; choosing to act out instead. Our teachers understand that the solution to keep children engaged in learning as a natural, fun, and exciting adventure is to teach them that they can learn. Teachers understand that kids must experience the joy of success rather than repeated failure and humiliation.

Our teachers understand that our educational process is flawed when they lack the resources to spend their time and energy where it can do the most good rather than be bogged down in meaningless record-keeping, bureaucratic demands, and political interference. Teachers know that they need technology that empowers teachers rather than limit their freedom and creativity and mitigate their value.

Our teachers know all of these things so when are we going to empower them to do that which only they can do?

If we want to give teachers hope that they can live out their careers as a professional involved in the noble and loving act of giving of themselves to their students and families we must rethink what it is that we want to accomplish in education and reinvent the educational process to support that purpose.

These are ideas around which teachers can rally. It is something that they can reach out and touch and feel and that they can sell to the parents of their students and to their communities. It is something that is real and achievable and about which they can be enthusiastic and energetic and then be re-energized and re-enthused with every celebrated accomplishment.

The sad reality is that the educational process in place throughout our system of schools, both public and private, is flawed and that everyone knows it. Every time we shout out in loud denial all we accomplish is to confirm that that the assertions and allegations that public education is failing are frightfully and inarguably true.

Employers all over the U.S. know it when they struggle to find capable employees who can not only do good work but can also accept responsibility for doing their best. They know it when they must spend millions upon millions of dollars screening applicants to find a precious few who can do the job right from the get go and must also spend millions more to re-train and re-educate those who cannot.

The corporate reformers and the government officials who pander to them and who are laboring to privatize education did not wake up one morning having experienced an epiphany that there were huge profits to be earned by taking over America’s schools. They discovered that little truth only after they were compelled by their anger and frustration to address what they considered to be the monumental failure of public education in America because no one else seemed prepared to step up and accept responsibility for taking action.

Our military services know the educational process is flawed when a full quarter of the young men and women who are candidates for enlistment into the Armed Services cannot meet the minimum qualifications for enlistment and when many more are unable to score high enough on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to qualify for the increasingly more skilled and technical jobs that need to be done at a high level of proficiency.

Our communities of the poor and minorities who live separate and apart from mainstream American society know that the performance gap that exist between their children and white, middleclass students is staggering in its breadth and scope and, most of all, in its consequences. The growing cultural disdain for the importance of education in the lives of their children is nothing more than a consequence of a prolonged case of hopelessness and powerlessness on the part of these parents that anything they do will make a difference for their children.

Most of all, as I have pointed out in my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge For Twenty-First Century America and in articles published in my blog Education, Hope and the American Dream, and elsewhere, our teachers know in their hearts and minds that the educational process is, indeed, failing in spite of their labor and sacrifices. They know that the warn-out insistence that the failure of our public schools is a myth is, itself, a myth the perpetuation of which can only have tragic consequences for our nation’s and our children’s futures.

We must open our hearts and minds to the idea that our professional educators are the only people who can solve the problems of public education. They are waiting for their leaders and advocates to stand up an offer a solution in which teachers and the American people can both believe and trust.

American teachers, the unsung heroes in the battle for the future of our way of life, are at the edge of desperation waiting for their leaders to stand up for the truth.

What are we waiting for?

Why is the educational process structured more to support earning grades and standardized test scores than it is to support learning?

In business, we know that organizations are structured to get the outcomes they produce. This is certainly true with the educational process that drives public schools all over the nation. The educational process is structured to support the objectives of earning grades and producing test scores.

In the case of grades, it is not so much a matter whether the grade is an A or an F rather that there is a grade to report. This suggests that we have completed our job for that grading period or semester and now it is time to move on. What do we know at the end of this process? We know that some students learned the material and some did not. We also know that there is a big group of students in the middle and we simply cannot be sure whether they have learned or not.

The fundamental question public school teachers and other professional educators must ask is, “are grades and test scores the outcomes we really want for our students? Most educators will respond that, “no, our true objective is to help kids learn.” The more astute educators, after taking a moment to think about what their job should be, would add that their goal is not only to help students learn but also to help them learn sufficiently well that they will be able to apply what they have learned in the face of real-life situations throughout the balance of their lives.

Those real-life situations might be applying what they have learned in past lessons or classes to subsequent lessons and classes throughout their rest of their academic careers; whether primary, secondary, vocational, or post-secondary. The real life situations might also be the application of the knowledge and skills individuals have mastered to earning a living; to fulfilling one’s civic responsibilities; to helping society find solutions to a never-ending stream of economic, ecological, political, and sociological challenges; to the mastering their unique crafts; to exploring the mysteries of science, theology, or philosophy; to finding joy through our relationships with other people; or, ultimately, to the never-ending quest for wisdom.

If educators could all agree that their purpose should be to help their students learn and master subject matter sufficiently well that they can then utilize what they have learned, the next question would be is the educational process structured in such a way that it will support us in that shared mission?

Questions we might ask would include:

Should the educational process be structured so that it starts every student off from the same point of embarkation or should we identify a unique starting point based upon the level of preparation and motivation that the child brings with them on their first day of school?

Should all students be guided to a common destination or should their destinations be determined by their unique talents and interests, along the way?

Should all students be expected to move along an academic path at the same velocity or should each be guided down the path at their own best speed so that no child is forced to move forward until they are ready and no child is asked to wait, idly, while others strive to catch up?

Should the educational process be structured in such a way that kids are evaluated against the performance of their classmates or should it be structured to support our efforts to evaluate them against their own progress?

Should the educational process be structured in such a way that some kids must, inevitably, fail or should it be structured in such a way that kids are taught that success is a process that all can learn?

Professional educators can, no doubt, add to this list so that we can determine whether or not the existing educational process is acceptable within the context of our mission, vision, and values.

If we were to determine that the current educational process is unacceptable, our attention should immediately shift to questions about how can the process be re-engineered to produce the outcomes to which we have all agreed and committed? In other words, what do we intend to do about it?”

Educators must also understand that if we default to passively accept a reality that is less than we feel we want or deserve then we are also accepting responsibility for the status quo and we need to stop complaining. Ultimately, we have the power to either accept or alter the reality in which we live. In the case of altering the educational process, no matter how daunting the challenge may seem, it is simply a matter of choice. Not someone else’s choice! Our choice!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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