Tag Archives: students

How Do We Reinvent the Education Process to Provide Every Child with the Highest Possible Quality Education?

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Educators understand that our students deserve the absolute best that their teachers have to give and also that teachers deserve the gratification that comes from our students’ success. Similarly, many of you recognize that giving kids the time and attention they deserve is often made difficult by the existing education process. You also know that in this environment, made toxic by high-stakes testing, it is hard for teachers to feel appreciated when test results are used, not as a diagnostic tool to help us do a better job, rather to justify blaming teachers and our public schools for the problems in public education

Teachers who have been around for a while know that the teaching profession has been under-appreciated for decades and they have seen many colleagues burn out and leave the profession they entered with such high hopes, expectations, and dedication.

The fact is that the world has changed exponentially over the last half century while the education process has remained relatively static. Certainly, new tools, techniques and technologies have been introduced but not all have made a teacher’s job easier. Many do not work the way they were envisioned in every teaching environment or for all students. Incremental reforms have been going on throughout the lifetimes of most of us and the best measure of their lack of success is the dread teachers feel in the anticipation of a new wave of education reforms.

I urge teachers to consider that there is an entire field of knowledge with respect to organizations and the processes utilized to serve each organization’s mission and purpose and to achieve their objectives. One of the things organizational leaders and specialists come to understand is that a process that continues to produce unacceptable outcomes, no matter how hard people work or how qualified they may be, cannot be patched, jury-rigged, or duct taped to fix that which is broken. Neither can new tools and technologies be utilized to fix an obsolete process any more than we can adapt a 747 for a trip to the moon. Elsewhere I have used the parable of new wine in old wineskins to illustrate why we haven’t been successful in fixing public education for every student through the introduction of new methodologies and technologies.

Systems are complex logical processes where the internal mechanisms that have been designed to serve the organization’s mission and purpose are integrated and interdependent. Like complex software, when we mess with the internal logic without understanding the whole, our changes will reverberate through the process creating an adverse impact on our outcomes and for our customers. Such patchwork solutions also make the work more difficult for every organization’s most valuable resource; its people. Even the best processes will degrade over time, no matter what we do.

The process utilized to reinvent an obsolete process can be replicated in almost any venue. It begins with:

• A re-clarification of an organization’s mission and purpose;

• Listening to and understanding our customer’s ever-changing requirements;

• Challenging all of our assumptions about what we do and why;

• Listening, also, to the people on whom we depend to produce our goods and services and who see flaws of the underperforming process in real time;

• Research to makes sure we are using state-of-the-art tools and technology;

• Creating a process designed to produce the outcomes we seek and that supports all of the people and resources engaged in that effort;

• A performance management system to solicit feedback and measure outcomes against expectations, not to fix blame but to help us learn from mistakes;

• To problem-solve disparate outcomes in a relentless pursuit of excellence; and, finally,

• Research and development to anticipate changes in the dynamic environment and marketplace in which we live and work.

I encourage the reader to examine the education model I have developed as each of the above components have either been completed or are in the process of completion. You can find my education model at my website at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/ along with an accompanying white paper written to introduce the education model’s logical foundation. You will also find my blog, Education, Hope, and the American Dream, with over 150 posts on the challenges facing public schools, their teachers, and students.

The education model is based upon my 40 years of organizational leadership and consulting experience; my experience working with kids, which began in 1966 and included nine years as a juvenile probation officer and supervisor, as a board member of a Montessori School, and as a co-founder of a Boys and Girls Club; two masters degrees, an MSEd in Psychology; and an MPA in public management; my own research and writing in the areas of the principles of positive leadership, organizational development, and systems thinking; and, my experience in the classroom over a ten-year period from 2002 through 2011, during which I walked in the shoes of public school teachers as a substitute in a diverse urban, public school district.

Although I have great confidence that my model will work to produce the outcomes we seek, I have and offer no illusions that it is the only possible solution. Also, I can assure the reader that it is and will always be a work in process. The reader is challenged to use my education model as a starting point to help you understand so that you can offer suggestions to improve my model or develop a better solution, if you can. You are advised, however, to relinquish any and all beliefs that the existing model can be modified, incrementally, to meet the needs of all of our nation’s children. Incremental changes to the current process is what got us where we are today and can only complicate things more than they already are.

Finally, I challenge the reader to understand that all the complaining and talk in the world will not fix the problems in public education. Neither will our complaints deter the efforts of the powerful men and women promoting what they call “Choice.” To stop them we must render them irrelevant and the only thing that works to solve such real-life challenges is applying the imagination of human beings working together for a common purpose.

Whether my model or yours, I challenge all of you to rally behind a solution as a united group of professional men and women dedicated to providing the highest possible quality of education for the children of our nation. It public education on which the futures of our nation’s children depends and it is our children on whom our nation’s future depend.

Please share this article, education model and white paper with everyone you know and ask them to join you in a crusade to transform public education in America. It may be the most important thing you will ever be asked to do for your country or for society, as a whole.

The Pathology of Secondary Agendas in Public Education!

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Over the years in teaching, like so many jobs people do, our core purpose has become obscured by secondary agendas. It might help to look at a simple example from another venue.

In a government organization for which I do some part-time testing, reduction of spending to avoid exceeding one’s budget has become a top priority. Someone in the command structure decided to eliminate overtime as this was a big contributor to over-spending. Overtime now requires prior approval by top leadership.

It was fascinating to observe how quickly the “no-overtime mandate” became more important than saving money. This problem occurs anytime multiple testing assignments are scheduled on the same day in my immediate geographical area. When this happens, my organization’s solution is to send someone from an hour or two away to handle one of those assignments; thus obviating the need to pay me 4 or 5 hours of overtime.

The practice makes sense until one compares the actual expenditures for the two test sessions. On close examination, one would find that bringing in another test administrator from an hour or two away more than doubles the cost of paying me between 4 or 5 hours of overtime. Not only must they pay the second test administrator’s testing time, they must also pay that person’s two to four hours of round trip travel time, plus $0.535 per mile in travel reimbursement.

The end result is that adherence to the overtime policy, instituted to reduce expenditures, has become more important than saving money. In just one of these examples they spend about $250 to avoid paying me an extra $100 of overtime. So much for saving tax dollars.

This is what happens, often, when our core purpose becomes obscured by secondary agendas.

In thinking about the core purpose of public education, at one time homework and classroom work in preparation for a quiz or test, were intended to be viewed as practice. Their purpose was to give teachers an opportunity to use the mistakes students make to, first, identify where their students need help and, secondly, to help those kids learn from mistakes. The same is true for mistakes on quizzes and tests. In many classrooms, the scores of practice assignments are recorded in a gradebook and are factored into computation of grades. Practice assignments, and especially quizzes and tests often signal the end of a given lesson and time to move on to a new lesson.

Compare practices and performances of a band, choir, or athletic team. Practices in preparation for a concert or game are to help improve performances in the concerts or games and are rarely graded. Even mistakes that occur during the performance are singled out so the performer or athlete can continue to work on those areas in which their performance is weak and rarely for grading purposes. While level of performance throughout a semester may influence grades, individual mistakes are rarely tallied for record-keeping purposes. Mastering the skills are the clear objective.

In the academic arena, grading and then recording scores of students’ homework, classroom work, quizzes and tests often seem to have become more important than using a student’s mistakes to help them learn and master the academic material.

Grading practice assignments, quizzes and tests that were originally intended to signal that there is more work to be done seems to have become an end, in and of themselves. It signals that work on one lesson is completed and that it is time to move on to a next lesson, grading period, semester, or school year.

In today’s education environment, schools and teachers are under tremendous pressure to keep their students and classrooms on pace, per their state’s academic standards and in preparation for statewide competency exams. The unintended consequence is that the original mission of schools and teachers, which was to help children learn, has become obscured.

There is no way to pinpoint when this change occurred and it is not the fault of any one person. It is simply one of the pressures to which any logical process can be subjected. It happens all the time in production-, assembly-, and service-delivery processes in private enterprise but the effect on product or service quality almost always results in a quick reduction in customer satisfaction. Many business failures occur because producers of goods and services do not monitor customer satisfaction closely. Successful producers are always listening to their customers and are able to take immediate corrective action.

In public education, customers such as employers and the military have been expressing dissatisfaction for decades and they are not the only ones. I have heard any number of college professors who teach freshman and sophomore classes complain about the lack of academic preparedness and self-discipline of many of their students.

Understand that this is not the fault of teachers who are doing what they are being directed to do. Making sure their schools are not diverted from their core purpose is the responsibility of leadership, however, starting with principals and ending where the buck stops in any public school corporation.

It is incredibly difficult for leaders, in any venue, to admit that what they are doing is not working and is producing unacceptable outcomes and the further removed they are from their end customers, the more difficult it is. High level administrators of public school corporations, along with their advocates, must be challenged to recognize that the education reform movement, misguided though it may be, is motivated by the same type of customer dissatisfaction as a struggling business entity. What distinguishes public education from producers of consumer goods and services is what is at stake.

In public schools, our nation’s children are suffering, especially disadvantaged students, and this is having an adverse impact on every aspect of life in American society.

Somehow the superintendents and governing bodies of local school corporations; along with teachers, both individually and collectively; must find the courage to accept responsibility for the problems in our public schools. It is not until we accept responsibility for our problems that we begin to acquire the power to solve them. And, it is not until educators accept responsibility that the failure of disadvantaged students will cease.

Please check out my Education Model and White Paper
I also want to introduce a few new blogs I have found:

https://shanephipps/wordpress.com/
http://www.justintarte.com/
www.davidgeurin.com
www.tsschmidty.blogspot.com
www.marlenagrosstaylor.com/blog
www.brentclarkson.com/blog

The Challenge to Leaders of Public Education

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In all business organizations, it is the top executives who bear responsibility for assuring that the entity is focused on its mission and that the mission, itself, properly serves the needs, interests, and expectations of customers. The process must also be structured and resourced to support the people on the line. This is the essence of organizational leadership; of positive leadership.

Positive leaders are guided by three principles or axioms of organizational development:

1) It is not until one accepts responsibility for a problem that he or she begins to acquire the power to solve it;

2) If a process continues to produce unacceptable outcomes no matter how hard people work or how qualified they are, then the process is flawed and must be replaced; and

3) The point at which a process can no longer be improved is the exact point in time that it becomes obsolete.

In public education, the top leaders are superintendents and the people on the line are principals, teachers and their students. In spite of a procession of incremental improvements over the last half century, disadvantaged students still struggle to pass state competency exams. More importantly, when these students leave school they find themselves at an even greater disadvantage in society. This reality has enormous adverse consequences for American society and is at the root of our nation’s greatest social, economic, and political challenges. The opportunity cost that these young men and women represent is incalculable.

Assertions by public school educators and their supporters that public education is better than it has ever been are difficult to comprehend, given the data. Even a cursory examination of the process shows that kids who start out at a disadvantage are not given the time and attention they need to learn. The proof of this assertion can be found in teachers’ grade books, everywhere. If a teacher records a failing grade, it means the teacher has moved his or her class on to a new lesson even though some students have not yet learned. These kids are pushed ahead with the rest of their class, ready or not, and it is only a matter of time before they give up, stop trying, and begin acting out.

The education reform movement, with its focus on high-stakes testing and privatization through the creation of charter schools and vouchers is a response from dissatisfied customers of public education. These powerful men and women leading the education reform movement are justified in their concerns but their solutions could not be more wrong. They are wrong because of their lack of understanding of how kids learn. They are doing great harm to our nation’s most vulnerable children and to their teachers, schools, and communities.

The education process at work in schools, both public and private, has become obsolete and no longer meets the needs of a diverse population of 21st Century students. Over the decades, while the process has deteriorated, public school teachers, administrators, and policy makers have learned to tolerate what they consider to be an acceptable level of failure. Public school educators blame poverty and segregation for these failures and suggest that it is up to society to address these issues.

Somehow, educators have lost sight of that fact that society has already taken action to address the issues of poverty and segregation. Society has created a system of public education; has built public schools in every community in the U.S.; has allocated trillions of taxpayer’s dollars to support this purpose; and, has hired professional educators who have been trained to teach a diverse population of 21st Century American children. At no time has society carved out exceptions with respect to which children will be taught and at no time has society said there is an acceptable level of failure.

This reality exists for no other reason than we allow it. If we want to put an end to the failure we must completely reinvent the education process. Such a reinvention is a straightforward organizational development project in which we design the education process so that teachers are expected to give every child the time, attention, and support they need to learn. All it requires is a little imagination and a willingness to acknowledge what we all know to be true. What do we know?

That the current education process is set up as a race to see who can learn the most, the fastest. Our response to students who are unable pass practice assignments, quizzes, chapter tests, and state competency exams is, first, to record their Cs, Ds, and Fs in the teachers grade book and, second, to report those grades to parents and the school corporation. Those grades then become part of a child’s permanent academic record and color both our expectations of our students and our students’ expectations of themselves.

We cannot change this reality through incremental changes or through the introduction of new and innovative programs unless they are part of an integral whole. Transformational change requires that we deal with the education process as a systemic whole and that we create a structure with the same diligence and attention to detail that is utilized in developing a software application in which every piece of code is written to serve and support the application’s purpose.

We must take action to transform public education in America before it is too late. The responsibility for this transformational change rests on the shoulders of all public school educators but superintendents—the CEOs of public education—bear the ultimate responsibility. It is time for them to step up and become the powerful, positive leaders that our society needs them to be.

I challenge The School Superintendents Association (AASA) to take the lead and guide its members through the transformation process. Our children and the American people are counting on them, as are public school teachers and administrators. This is the only way to stop the drive to privatization and high stakes testing that threatens our children, their schools and communities. If our superintendents do not accept responsibility and act, to whom can we turn?

I offer a model that I have developed and that was initially presented in my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America (Createspace, 2013). The model has, since, been refined to accommodate all that I have learned since my book was published over four years ago. The model and an accompanying white paper that lays the logical foundation for the model are available for review at my website at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/.

I challenge the AASA to assemble its most creative members and use my model as a starting point. I believe they will discover that it will work and that authorizing its implementation will be within the statutory power of local school boards. That being said, these leaders of public school corporations throughout the nation are invited to come up with a better solution, if they can. I also challenge teachers, both individually and collectively, to do whatever is in their power to influence their leaders to act.

Is this not the most important issue on the American agenda? Is it not worth our best efforts?

The reality is that if The School Superintendent’s Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Bad Ass; Teachers Association, and every other advocacy group in support of public schools, would set aside their differences and focus on their common interests, they would have more than enough power to make education work for all children, even disadvantaged students.

The coup de grace would be that the education reform movement with its focus on testing and privatization would become irrelevant.

Why-oh-Why Do We Do What We Do?

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Should the education process at work in private and public schools, be structured as if it is a race to see who learns the most, the fastest? Or, should it be a process in which we help all kids learn as much as they are able at their own best pace?

Should the education process be competition in which some students win and others lose, or should all students learn how to be successful and how to win?

Why is it that even though some students fail to master a lesson, we still move them on to the next lesson with the rest of their classmates?

When we enter a D or F in our gradebook at the end of a lesson module or chapter test, does that mean we are satisfied with that child’s performance? Does it mean that our job on that lesson with that child is completed?

Do we ever stop to consider that we are setting students up for failure on future lessons where success depends on their ability to apply what they have already learned?

If we let these children fall behind, lesson after lesson, how will they ever be able to catch up?

How important is the relationship between teachers and students in determining a student’s success? If we all believe, as I do, that that relationship between teachers and students is essential to a child’s success, why do we sever the relationships, every school year, just because the calendar turns to May and June?

We all know that some children are easier to love and befriend than others but how often do we remind ourselves that the child who is hardest to love is the one who needs it the most?

Almost all of us agree that the involvement of parents as partners in the education of their sons and daughters is important, if not critical, to the success of a student, but how many schools treat the solicitation and welcoming of parents as a high priority? How many make this an integral part of what they do?

Very often, having an adequate time is critical to the success of a student in many aspects of the education process. So, why do we not make time?

We mentioned, earlier in this post, that bonding with one’s teacher can make all the difference in the success of a child and that forming such bonds can take an entire school year for some kids. What they need is more time with the teachers with whom a student has bonded, so why do we make them start over with a new teacher in August or September; often, a teacher they may have never met?

Given that having sufficient time on lessons is critical to the child’s success, especially for children who must start from behind or who struggle, why is allowing sufficient time to learn from one’s mistakes not at the top of our priority list? Why do we not make giving students the time they need to learn an expectation of teachers, everywhere?

If most of us understand that our ability to learn from our mistakes is a critical component of the learning process, why do we not embrace mistakes as learning opportunities? Many teachers reading these words will insist that, “Oh but we do!” and they mean that, sincerely, but the evidence that they do not is compelling.

Mistakes are critical to the learning process but when we count the mistakes students make against them, what kind of message are we sending. Teachers use the number or percentage of mistakes a student makes as one of the factors that determine the grades they record in their grade books. How can students believe mistakes are nothing to be afraid of when the consequences of those mistakes are adverse? This is one of those occasions where there’s an obvious disconnect between the words policy makers and administrators say and the things they require teachers to do.

Why do we focus on failure rather than success? In everything we do, the level of enthusiasm for that activity is a function of how successful we are. The more we win, the more we want to play, and the activities at which we win most consistently are the activities we enjoy the most. Winning is a form of success, however transitory, and successful people are almost always winners.

Losing, on the other hand, is a form of failure. When we lose repeatedly—when we rarely experience success—how long before we stop believing success to be attainable? How long before we give up and become unwilling to participate? How long before we lose interest and stop trying? If all we ever do is lose (fail) how do we not think of ourselves as a loser and a failure?

Why-oh-why would we ever want to teach children to view themselves as a failure and as a loser?

There is no question that many student excel in public schools in spite of the flaws in the education process. For kids who begin with a disadvantage—who start from behind—however, there are few success stories. Most disadvantaged students leave school with very few choices about what to do with their lives in order to find happiness and meaning. Far too many end up on the schoolhouse to jailhouse express.

The question we might want to ask ourselves is, how much more would our exceptional students accomplish, academically, if they were not asked to slow down and wait for classmates; if they were free from the distractions caused by students who have given up on themselves and have stopped trying? Even our most accomplished students must endure the adverse impact of a system that is flawed in so many ways.

Why-oh-why do we do what we do? Is it because this is the best we can do? Or, is it because we do not challenge our assumptions; because we do not stop, routinely, to make sure that what we do serves our mission and purpose? Is it because this is the way we have always done it?

Whatever the reason, how can we ever justify the failure of so many our nation’s precious children? How can we atone for the opportunity cost to society of huge population of children who will never reach their potential; who will never make the contributions to society that we should have been able to expect? How do we even calculate the value lost as a result of this opportunity cost to a nation that so desperately needs the very best of every single American man, woman, and child?

Why-oh-why-oh-why?

One Child At a Time!

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Imagine that you have just started a new job with a highly reputable employer, along with 30 other new hires. Imagine having begun the month-long new employee training program and discover that all of the other trainees seem to be a step ahead of you in all of the prerequisite skill sets.

As you begin this exercise to not do so casually. Strive to show true empathy so that you actually feel what it would be like to find yourself in such a predicament when all of your peers seem to be doing well. Imagine, also, that the fact that you are struggling is readily apparent to everyone else in the program.

Next, imagine that you have finished the first phase of the program while earning the lowest score in the class. Think about how this would feel. What would be going through your mind?

Would you feel as if you were an integral part of the group or would you feel like an outsider? Dredge your past for a time when you experienced this or something similar. Compare how you felt then with what you are feeling now. Would you feel ready to move on to the next phase of the training or would you feel desperate for a little more time to study or maybe a little more time with the instructor?

Now, as you begin phase 2 of this 5-part program, imagine that any illusions you may have had about this being a fresh start are shattered by the discovery that doing well on this new subject matter requires that you be able to apply the skills, knowledge, and principles that were covered in phase 1. Strive to imagine what it would feel like to discover, as you move through the phases of training, that you are a little further behind at the end of each phase and even less prepared for what is to follow.

Would you feel comfortable in asking the instructor for a little extra time and attention? Would you be willing to share with the instructor just how far behind you are? How about your classmates? Would you feel comfortable asking one of them to help you understand?

Can you feel the sense of panic that would be almost certain to descend upon you? How would you assess your chances of successfully completing the training? After repeated failure, is there a point at which you begin to feel like quitting? Are you excited about the chance to move out onto the shop floor to begin work or is your gut knotting with dread at that prospect?

If you are a public school teacher, how many students in your classroom are living this nightmare, lesson after lesson, subject after subject, grading period after grading period? How many of the students in your school are struggling with this very phenomenon—a phenomenon I like to call the “cycle of failure?” Now, multiply that number by the number of facilities in your school district; in your state; and, finally, multiply that number by the number of stars on our flag.

If we are honest with ourselves we will acknowledge that the number of struggling students—the number of failing students—is staggering. How many kids does it take before it becomes a national tragedy? When we think about this “cycle of failure” in terms of millions of children in tens of thousands of classrooms, it seems overwhelming. Is it any wonder that public school teachers feel hopeless to do anything about it?

The sad reality of this crisis in public education is that to solve the dilemma and end the crisis, all teachers must do is slow down and give each child the time they need to understand before we ask them to move on to the next lesson. It would be simple except for the fact that slowing down is not part of the expectations placed on American public school teachers.

Our expectations in the present reality of public education is that teachers must move their entire class of students down a predetermined path so that they all arrive at the same time and with the same level of preparation for the standardized competency exams that loom in our not-to-distant future; exams by which teachers and their schools will be held accountable.

The educational process does not account for the individual students who fall off the side of the path and become hopefully lost and makes no provision for attending to their needs. Teachers care very much, however, and they do their best to give these children a little extra time and attention but the pressure to move the students along is relentless.

From a practical perspective, the solution is simple. All we need to do is alter our expectations so that each and every child is to be given however much time they need. Impossible, you say! It is not impossible. In fact, just the opposite is the case. Making such a change from a human engineering perspective is as simple it could be. Once expectations have changed, all that is required are some modifications to the classroom management process.

The problem is not the practicability of such changes but rather the political component.

Somehow we must convince policy makers that each child is a precious resource of incalculable value and that an educational process is dysfunctional if it views struggling children as collateral damage. The bottom line is that our society cannot afford to lose a single child let alone a few million children. We must make certain that every child counts and the only way we can make certain they count is to do so one child at a time.

Teachers Are the Solution and Not the Reason Why So Many Kids Fail!

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Nothing will change for the better in public education until teachers take ownership and start doing things differently!

One of the most frightening things that can happen to a business is when its customers begin to take their business elsewhere. This is a watershed event and how the business chooses to respond will determine whether or not it survives.

This event signals that customer satisfaction has eroded and has been transformed into customer dissatisfaction. It is at this point when customers begin taking their business elsewhere.

In public education the very same thing is happening. There is a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the quality of education young people are able to demonstrate when they leave school. Public school teachers and other educators may not want to acknowledge this reality but it is real and it is tangible. It is this dissatisfaction that is the driving force behind education reforms and the call for more accountability through standardized testing.

What makes this situation even more critical with respect to public education is that our federal and state governments are encouraging families to abandon their local public schools. Many states, like Indiana, are promoting the creation of charter schools for just that purpose and many are providing vouchers as incentives for families to move their children from public school to charter schools or private schools.

Teachers do not live in an ivory tower and when they ignore the truth about this fermenting dissatisfaction they do so at their own peril. Government, reformers, and the much of the public actually believe the problems in public schools are the result of bad schools and bad teachers.

The only ones who know the truth are public school teachers, public school administrators and those few groups that advocate on their behalf. This reality will not change until public school educators begin doing things radically differently.

This shift must begin with a public acknowledgement on the part of teachers that the crisis in public education is real. This is something teachers already know no matter how much they try to ignore or deny it. The next step is to present to the public the real reasons why so many children fail and they need to make this presentation boldly at every opportunity.

Every teacher knows why the system fails but they need to believe that it is okay to shout out the truth because it is not their fault. They are as much victims as are their students and their communities.

As teachers, you know the educational process if flawed:

• Every time a student shows up in your classroom who is hopelessly behind;

• Every time you must move on to the next lesson when you know that some kids are not ready;

• Every time you are asked to focus on test prep rather than subject mastery;

• Every time you see students who have given up on themselves;

• Every time you see kids who could be honor students if only they cared
and would try;

• Every time a student disrupts your class because they are hopelessly behind and have no motivation to learn;

• Every time the parents of your struggling students:
o Do not show up for BTSN or P/T conferences,
o Do not respond to your phone calls or the notes you send home, and
o Blame you for the problems their kids are having at school,

• Every time a colleague leaves teaching or, worse, gives up and goes thru the motions; and,

• Every time your state or school district asks you to implement policy changes that make no sense and make your job even more difficult than it already is.

You know each and every one of these things is real and can probably add a few more to the list. Just remember that they are not your fault and start educating the American people of the real truth about public education.

The next step is even more important! Public school educators, singly and corporately, must tell the world that they have a solution and that they are the only ones who can fix the problems that contribute to this flawed educational process! Educators must not be afraid to ask for the public’s help, however, because there are believers out there.

Teacher must act or your schools will be shut down, just like that restaurant you once patronized that is no longer there and will soon be forgotten.

Teachers must act because the consequences of not acting will be catastrophic for our way of life. The current reforms will destroy our society as surely as a cancer will destroy the cells around it and time is running out!

Challenging Assumptions in Public Education: Do Grades 1 Through 12 Really Make Sense?

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Grades 1 through 12 have been around for as long as anyone can remember. One of the first assumptions we need to challenge is whether or not this is the best way to organize teachers and students in our schools and classrooms. Does the structure support our objectives as educators? Is it consistent with our purpose?

When we ask such questions, we must always take a moment to remind ourselves of our primary purpose because the way we organize our resources must support that purpose. It is amazing how many organizations discover, after asking such questions, that one’s purpose has evolved but the organizational structure has remained static.

In primary and secondary education, whether in public schools or private, our essential purpose as educators is to help students master the academic subject matter we have selected for them to the best of their ability.

Toward this purpose, individual states have established academic standards that designate what academic subject matter is to be presented, in what sequence, and at what age. These academic standards include clearly delineated check points along the academic path so that we can verify, through annual standardized testing, that the students are progressing on schedule.

Most educators would agree that the best way to achieve that purpose or objective is to:

• Create a warm, nurturing environment in which teachers and students are able to bond;

• Maintain the lowest possible ratio of teachers and students; and,

• Pull parents in as partners, sharing the responsibility for the education of their children.

What we strive to do is help each student learn the subject matter well enough that they can demonstrate mastery. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “to master” as:

“to learn (something) completely; to get the knowledge and skill that allows you to do, use, or understand (something) very well.”

It is important that we ask ourselves whether helping students achieve subject matter mastery is what we do.

I would assert that what we do, how the process is structured and how teachers and students are organized do not support our purpose. What teachers do, today, what they are asked to do, is something entirely different. Think about the way it works:

1. Academic material is presented to students in a series of lessons or modules that are to be presented in a specific sequence and at a given time in the academic calendar;

2. Teachers do their best to help students understand;

3. We give students opportunities to practice;

4. We attempt to help them learn from the mistakes they make;

5. We test them to assess how well they learned (mastered) the subject matter of each lesson;

6. We record outcomes in the gradebook, typically on the basis of an A to F grading scale; and,

7. We move the entire class on to the next lesson.

The breakdowns typically begin to occur at step #3 of the process. As much as they might like to spend more time helping struggling students learn from the mistakes they made on both practice assignments and assessments, teachers can do so only as long as it does not slow the class down.

While there is no expectation that teachers will spend extra time with struggling students, most recognize that the need exists and do their best to make time, even if it requires that they invite the student to stop in after school.

For even the most dedicated teachers, however, there is a limit to how much time they can give to each of the students who need extra help or tutoring. The reality is that the numbers are large and most kids who need that extra attention will not ask for it nor will they sacrifice their own time to get it.

So, teachers do the only thing they can do and that they are expected to do and that is move the class on to the next lesson, whether or not all of their students are ready. For the kids who struggle, the consequence of the choices teachers must make are significant and the students find themselves predetermined to continue their struggles and, ultimately, to fail. Eventually, failure becomes the inevitable outcome and the kids who were pushed ahead before they were ready begin to lose hope.

Given the way the process is designed and the way teachers and students are organized within individual classrooms it is incredibly difficult to avoid losing students who have given up on themselves.

The current structure also has an adverse impact on the quality of the bonds teachers are able to forge with their students. Some teachers are better at this than others and some students are more difficult to engage. The reader is asked to consider the adage, which I first heard from my grandmother, that

“The child who is hardest to love is the one who needs it the most.”

At the end of the school year, kids move on to other classrooms and unfamiliar teachers while teachers prepare to greet twenty to thirty new students, the majority of whom they have never met. Then, the entire process begins anew.

For many students, the special relationship many of us recall when we think back on our favorite teachers never happens. Of equal significance is that the number of parents who have bonded with their child’s teacher by the end of a school year will be fewer, still.

The structure of the Grade 1 through 12 model has been around for so long it has become granite-like. Few educators even think about it. It has become an unalterable given in our minds.

The truth is that the Grade 1 through 12 structure is nothing more than a logical construct that was once believed to be the most efficacious way to organize teachers and students within our brick and mortar classrooms. The physical structure of individual classrooms has been questioned somewhat more than “Grade 1 through 12” but it is still the predominant reality in public schools all over the nation and also in private and parochial schools.

There have been a few initiatives to alter the structure with an “open classroom” setting as one example but few have endured. Many times, such experiments were abandoned not so much because it was a bad idea rather because there were no corresponding changes to the expectations placed on teachers working in an open-classroom setting. As a result, there were no significant changes in outcomes.

We need to remind ourselves that just because an idea does not work the first time we try it does not mean it was a bad idea.
We need to consider alterations to both the physical environment and our expectations of teachers and students.

Consider this one idea. You are also encouraged to formulate an idea of your own.

Beginning with first grade, what if:

1. We were to cut two doors between adjacent classrooms in our school and ask the two teachers to work together as a team with the same 40 to 60 students?

2. We replaced classroom aides with an additional teacher to form a team of three teachers?

3. What if we kept those same 40 to 60 students together with that same team of three teachers for a five year period and stopped referring to classrooms as first grade, etc.?

4. What if we changed our expectations so that:

a. No student is permitted to move on to new subject matter until they are able to demonstrate mastery (85
percent) over the material?

b. No student is required to wait for their classmates to catch up before moving on to their next lesson?

c. Teachers are expected to make sure that every one of their students has bonded with at least one of member of
the teaching team?

d. Teachers are also expected to engage the parents of each of their students as partners in the educational
process?

e. And, we replaced annual, standardized competency exams with small quizzes given to verify subject-matter
mastery, one lesson at a time.

What we would have, after implementing such changes, would be an environment with close personal bonds between teachers, students, and parents and in which all students succeed, albeit at their own best speed. It would be a learning environment in which there is no failure and in which all students begin to gain confidence that not only can they learn but also that learning can be fun. We would also see that the speed with which kids learn would increase, steadily.

What a different world public education would be.

Seem impossible? The truth is that making such changes is a simple, human-engineering problem that private and public school districts could begin implementing at the beginning of the coming school year. Most important of all is that the outcomes that would result would be astonishing.

What If We Were Teaching One Student at a Time?

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When we compare teaching in a classroom by a certified teacher to teaching in a more intimate environment like tutoring, things are different.

Academic tutors, often, work with one student at time and frequently with a focus on just one subject area.

Think about the tutoring process. The tutor presents the subject matter to the student; strives to explain the material in a way that the student comprehends; gives them opportunities to practice; provides feedback and clarification followed by more practice; gives them a practice test to see how they are doing; and, finally, sends them off to take a test, often in their regular classroom at school.

These are the same things all teachers do every day in public school classrooms throughout the nation. What is different? The biggest difference is what happens when kids fail.

In the classroom, the teacher’s choices are generally limited and, typically, involves recording the student’s score in a gradebook and then moving the student on to the next lesson, along with his or her classmates.

In a tutoring relationship, when a student has failed to achieve a targeted degree of mastery over the lesson material the tutor’s response is different because their defined expectations are different. Their job is not yet complete. The expectation is that the tutor will help the student achieve mastery and nothing short of that outcome is acceptable.

Subsequent to poor performance, the tutor goes back to work with the student, possibly utilizing another method of presentation with plenty of opportunities for the student to practice, get feedback, take additional practice tests, etc. until he or she is ready to move on. Always, the tutor is there to help their charge in any way they can.

Understand that the overwhelming majority of classroom teachers would love to spend more time with every student who struggles with the material and they do so, whenever circumstances permit. The problem, of course, is that circumstances rarely permit.

The classroom teacher is always a certified teacher while the tutor may or may not be. Certified teachers are every bit as capable as the tutor, often more so. The traditional educational process is simply not structured in a way that a teacher, routinely, is able or expected to slow down for just one student. Rather, teacher accountability is focused on the number of their students who are able to pass state, standardized competency exams.

Our conclusion is that the only reason classroom teachers do not devote extra time for every student who needs it is because the American educational process is not structured in a way that it would support both teacher and student in such activity, and also because it is not a core expectation of teachers. Teachers are not given sufficient flexibility. That some kids fail is nothing more than a consequence of current educational policy.

Try to imagine what a different place school would be if every student was given the time and support necessary to achieve a score of 85 percent or better in all of their classes.

Most teachers reading this post will respond that it is naïve to think that such a reality is even possible. Given current expectations and the way the educational process is structured, they are correct.

Change the rules of the game, however, and the way in which the game is scored and what seemed impossible now becomes relatively easy.

From a systems-engineering perspective, bringing about such change is relatively easy. The challenge is opening the hearts and minds of policymakers, principals, and teachers so that they begin to believe such realities are possible.

What If We Change the Way We Keep Score for Both Teachers and Students?

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In this last segment of our series of articles in examination of the performance gap we will shift our focus to taking action.

A year or so ago, actor Michael J. Fox put out a poster that challenged educators. It said:

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

We do not like to think of our classrooms as hostile environments, as envisioned by legal scholar Randall Robinson (see Part 1 of this series). Teachers work hard to make their classrooms as welcoming and interesting as possible.

The hostility Robinson describes is a function of a competitive environment in which we expect children, who arrive with any number of disadvantages, to compete on equal terms with children who have been primed for academic competition. We start all students off from the same point of departure even though the level of readiness of the students can only be described as cavernous.

That this disparity has a significant impact on the ability of some students to keep pace with others is a fact that we all know, intuitively, but are programmed to ignore.

Recall “5 Things Well-Meaning White Educators Should Consider If They Really Want to Close the Achievement Gap,” by Jamie Utt, published at his website at www.changefromwithin.org (see part 1).

The fifth thing Utt suggested that must be done, which we have modified, is:

“Envision and Create Schools Where People of Color are Centered (And Whiteness Is Not) and Where All Children Are Centered for Who They Are As Unique Individuals, Irrespective of Color, Language of Birth, Religious Tradition, Relative Affluence, or Sexual Orientation.”

This is far and away the most vital of the “5 Things” because this is one that is well within our power to control whether we are a school superintendent, school principal, or even a single teacher in a classroom.

One of the easiest ways this can be accomplished is by changing our expectations of teachers and the things for which they are held accountable. Rather than evaluate teachers on the percentage of children who achieve passing scores on annual standardized competency examinations, what if we were to evaluate them on the percentage of students who score 85 percent or better on short mastery quizzes following individual lesson plans?

The goal is that 100 percent of each teacher’s students achieve 85% or better on mastery quizzes following every individual lesson plan they are given. It does not matter whether every student earned 85% or better the first time they took a quiz or even the second or third. What matters is that they achieved mastery, that the student’s accomplishment is celebrated and rewarded, and that the teachers’ efforts are formally acknowledged.

Neither does it matter if some students, within a given grading period or semester, achieved mastery on two, five, ten or more lesson plans. What matters is that a student is not permitted to move on to a new lesson within a given area of subject matter until they have mastered the preceding lesson. Each lesson mastered is a success and each success is tallied and valued equally with every other success.

The single most powerful driver of the number of lessons a student is able to master is the level of confidence they have gained through repeated success, absent even the hint of failure.

Even within the current educational process, where we move everyone along the same path and test them on the same material each year, we have learned that by the time they finish the 12th grade they will all be at different levels of accomplishment. Some are off to college, some leave school illiterate or barely literate and are destined to a life of poverty or crime—probably both—and also a life of virtual disenfranchisement, and the rest fall somewhere in between.

Whatever their destination, what distinguishes graduates from one another is the strength of the foundation upon which their charted destinations are constructed.

What is better? Is it a student who was given 1000 lessons but failed 80 percent of them and is proficient in only 10 percent? Or, is it that they are proficient in each of the lessons they were given whether 100, 200, 500 or a thousand?

Even though we want to downplay the value of standardized testing as much as possible, NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Process) definitions bring the matter into brilliant focus. The NAEP defines “proficient level of academic performance” as:

“. . . 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 subject matter.” (The emphasis is mine.)

The crucial variable is that kids must be able to apply “such knowledge to real world situations. . . .” Ultimately their ability to utilize what they have learned is the only thing that matters. If they cannot use it effectively, they haven’t really learned it.

It is when students are unable to apply the knowledge and skills we strove to teach during 12 years of school that they are doomed to a life separate and apart from mainstream America. We like to blame poverty for this separation but poverty is the inescapable outcome that burdens adults who were unsuccessful in acquiring the skills necessary for life as a productive American citizen.

The fact that most of these kids and the adults they ultimately become are poor, black, or other minorities is not a coincidence. Neither is it a coincidence that many of these are folks for whom English is a second language or are illegal immigrants. The educational process is poorly designed to meet the needs of this fastest-growing population of American children.

The glaring and tragic truth is that these young people are set up to fail. It is bad enough that they are victims of a flawed educational process. Worse is the fact that the teachers into the hands of which these kids are entrusted are inadequately prepared, under-resourced, poorly supervised, and are held accountable for outcomes that are counter to the best interests of their students.

This is a reality that must be altered before it is too late. It is already too late for millions of Americans who were the victims of a dysfunctional system and every day we delay, more kids are lost.

All that we need to in order to change this reality for all time is to step back and evaluate the American educational process as an integral whole, re-examine our purpose and assumptions, and make a few structural changes in what we do on a daily basis the most important of which is nothing more than changing the way a game is scored.

As soon as we change the way we score success, players and coaches (teachers and principals) will begin developing strategies and structural designs to support the new objectives. There is nothing magical or mystical about this process. It is simply the way systems function within the context of organizations.

What stands in our way of bringing about such transformational change to education in America, whether public or private? Other than our intransigence, not one damn thing!

The reader is invited to read my book Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, where I offer a blueprint for bringing about the systemic changes we have discussed. The reader is also invited to check out the rest of this blog, Education, Hope, and the American Dream for a full discussion of how we can overcome the challenges of public education in America. I am not suggesting that the reader will find all of the right answers in my book and blog but they will find many of the right questions.

Both the blog and book can be found on my website at www.melhawkinsandassociates.com.

Vignette #1 – Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream

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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 constructed 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. 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.

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.