So where do we begin the process of implementing our strategic plan of action to transform public education in America?

We believe that, first and foremost, with the reminder that the time for talk and complaining has come to an end. The only thing that will stop the “runaway train of misguided reforms” is action by Americans united behind a common mission.

The key to that transformation of public education and to giving every single American child the best possible chance for a quality education is parents and teachers working as partners committed to supporting one another in every possible way. This most important of objectives cannot be accomplished with Americans working unilaterally. Such an endeavor must begin somewhere. We believe it must start with a strategic action plan, behind which people can join together in support.

We need a plan to transform public education in America. In my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, I offer such a plan: a blueprint to transform both the structure of public education and educational process that works within that structure. I am asking Americans to utilize this blueprint as a point of embarkation.

Understand that this strategic plan is not carpetbag of quick fixes and incremental changes, rather it is a comprehensive, coordinated, and interdependent plan to address public education as an integral whole.

We think it can best begin with teachers because no organized group of Americans is more intimately involved in education, no group has more firsthand knowledge and experience, and no group has more at stake than teachers. That being said, let us be as clear as possible in saying that this is an issue in which every citizen, individually or collectively, has a stake and where each has a very specific role to play.

We ask teacher associations and teachers’ unions in each of the fifty states, and also the national offices of these organizations, to adopt this strategic plan and blueprint as part of the official mission of their organization and we believe the plan to be consistent with the established missions of each of these separate entities.

Once adopted as a central core of the mission of each teacher association and teachers’ union, we ask that those organizations use the full power and influence of their organizations to make it happen.

We ask the leaderships of these entities and each of their members to begin calling upon their elected representatives at every level and branch of government to make education the number one priority on the American agenda and to ask every American parent to partner with the teachers of their sons and daughters to give them the future that not only do they deserve but upon which entire society depends.

Within each of the jurisdictions of these teacher associations and unions, we ask that the leadership of these entities begin presenting the plan to each and every public school district and soliciting their agreement to formally review the plan for implementation in each of their respective schools. We ask that these associations and unions also reach out to private and parochial schools, and charter schools as every child needs the best opportunity that we are able to give.

We ask that the plan be presented to the faculties of the education departments of every institution of higher learning within their state or jurisdiction. We also recommend that they present the plan to every chamber of commerce. In each case the objective will be to educate both the leadership and memberships of these entities and asking them to endorse the plan and establishing its support as part of their ongoing mission.

At the national level we propose that the leaderships of each of these national organizations make the a similar commitment to take the plan to every professional association with education as its central mission; to every organization and foundation with educational reform as a primary agenda item; to labor organizations in every industry in the nation; and to every organization and trade association representing every major industry. We also ask that they lobby our elected and appointed officials of our federal government using the full resources at their disposal.

As we move forward, gaining momentum and broadening the grassroots support for our strategic plan, we will ask every American citizen and each and every one of their respective organizations and alliances to clamor for our federal, state, and local governments to declare education the most important item on the American agenda and to challenge every American mother and father to accept responsibility as full partners in the education of their children.

What follows in the next post are thirty-three (33) action items to carry out the implementation of this newly established strategic plan of action, one school district or organization at time until it is the reality in every school district and every private, parochial, and charter school in the United States. The action items are divided into two groups. The first is for implementation within our schools to transform the educational process. The second group will be focused on soliciting the support of the community at every level and venue.

The plan is constructed in such a way that it can evolve as our professional educators learn what works best in their particular environment. It is a plan that is designed to be a learning and adaptive process. The only aspects of the plan that are non-negotiable are our commitment to give each child an opportunity for a quality education and to preserve and protect the relationship between our schools and the communities they exist to serve.

Finally, we challenge the reader not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of our challenge. It is nothing more than a human engineering problem. Much like the construction of a skyscraper, dam, or suspension bridge it requires only that we manage all of the components of the process, per the blueprint, one phase at a time. If we approach it thus, a successful outcome is a forgone conclusion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Column for Fort Wayne Journal Gazette on Teacher Evaluations Results in Indiana

Published: April 14, 2014 3:00 a.m.
Honing an imperfect tool
Teacher evaluations – crafted properly – have their place

Mel Hawkins

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Whatever one feels about the reliability of the data regarding school staff performance evaluations released by the State Department of Education and reported in the April 8 Journal Gazette, just having a system of evaluation in place and reporting results to the public is a positive step for our state’s educators.

Performance evaluations in any venue are an uncertain science, but the fact that they acknowledge a responsibility to be accountable to the public is the first step in the right direction. The results are far more credible than the offhand assertions of skeptics that the “results do not provide a true and accurate assessment.”

References to what would appear to be contradictory evidence provided by the performance of students’ on ISTEP+ tests are equally nonsensical.

It has become fashionable to blame teachers for the poor performance of their students, but this should be construed as evidence that critics of our systems of public education have an oversimplistic understanding of why so many American children are performing poorly in school.

Those who advocate the use of state competency test results to punish schools and teachers are simply out of touch with reality and demonstrate, with each shouted breath, that they are clueless as to the reasons for failure in our schools.

The reasons why children fail in school are many and they are complex and can be discussed in detail at another time and place; but, let there be no doubt that far too many of our children are failing and this is, without question, one of the most important issues on the American agenda.

It is because this issue is so critical to the future of our society that it demands thoughtful examination on the part of men and women who are more concerned about understanding the dynamics of the issue than they are about assigning blame or spouting meaningless platitudes.

Blaming teachers for the problems in public education in America is like blaming soldiers for the war they were asked to fight. Teachers are as much victims of an obsolete educational process as are the students that they teach.

It is bad enough that they are asked to perform miracles without the necessary structure, support and resources; can we at least spare them the ramblings of an uninformed public?

I am not suggesting that the teaching profession is without culpability, and it certainly must bear a significant share of the responsibility for changing the reality that is education in 21st-century America. Performance evaluations can play an important role in that process, and they can be a powerful tool in driving organizations toward their objectives and in holding employees at all levels of an organization to the highest possible expectations.

Unfortunately, the quality of performance evaluations is often a function of the caliber of management in the organization. If they are to work in an educational environment, principals must be thoroughly schooled in their use. Interestingly, this is an area where school corporations and teachers’ associations could work together toward a common purpose.

Performance evaluations are also another area where schools can learn from business. While the value and functionality of performance evaluations in a business environment span the continuum from pathetic to outstanding, many industries have been engaged for decades in the development of meaningful instrumentation.

The concept of integrated performance evaluations would be one innovation that would offer great promise in an educational environment. Integrated performance management systems are designed to provide ongoing, real-time interface between worker and supervisor and are focused upon helping workers, both professional and nonprofessional, maximize their ability to provide products and services of the highest caliber.

It seems to this observer that it would be in everyone’s best interests if teacher associations would take the lead in working with their school districts to mutually develop such capability. Nothing drives innovation like the compelling need to satisfy demanding and unhappy customers, and there are few people who are happy with the state of public education in America in this second decade of a new century. If ever a time would be right, this would seem to be it.