What's Become Clear

I’ve long preached that the measure we should look at when we talk about school change, is the degree to which our students are authentically engaged in the educational process. That isn’t a new thought by me, W. Edwards Deming said it something like this, every child should leave school loving to learn. If they did everything else would take care of itself. I couldn’t agree more.

The other day Dr. John Burke, my friend and superintendent at Haysville public schools, shared with me a student survey developed by the people at Gallup.The Gallup student poll. Check it out, it’s very interesting stuff. Here is the purpose and the three things the poll measures.

Purpose:

Through years of research, Gallup discovered three true indicators of student success; hope, engagement, and wellbeing. These three key factors drive students’ grades, achievement scores, retention, and future employment.

Hope: the ideas and energy we have for the future. Hope drives attendance, credits earned, and GPA of highschool students. Hope scores are more robust predictors of college success than are high school GPA, SAT, and ACT scores.

Engagement: the involvement in and enthusiasm for school. Engagement distinguishes between high-performing and low-performing schools.

Wellbeing: how we think about and experience our lives. Wellbeing tells us how our students are doing today and predicts their success in the future.

And it’s free! I don’t know if this is the best survey, but I know if Gallup created it it is completely research-based and valid and reliable.

It is my hope that in the near future when we talk about measures, and evidence, of school change and student success, that we have some measure of student engagement that has equal weight with standardized tests. – Steve Wyckoff

If we really want school change the first thing we should abandon is the concept of “college ready” for every student. I know, I’ve said it before, and I could feel you rolling your eyes through the internet. I didn’t say we should completely abandon “college ready,” but it shouldn’t be the main focus of our educational system.

So what should it be? Life ready! We should be focusing on helping every child develop a life plan. Not college plan, not a career plan, a life plan. So you want some evidence? Look at this.

And I could provide more. The myth that a college degree is a path to prosperity is just that, a myth! So when we talk about school change let’s NOT start with the premise that we need to prepare every student to attend “college”! – Steve Wyckoff

As a member of the Kansas Education Commission I remain cautiously optimistic that we may be on the verge of real school change. We’ve met once now as a total commission, and once as a subcommittee for innovation and continuous improvement.

I know, and I admit, that we will never change schools fast enough for me. For heaven sakes the conversation we are having today should’ve been had at least 10 years ago, if not 15 years ago. But better late than never.

I do have some concerns. While we have already had some great conversations it is extremely difficult to have the people within the system redesign the system.

If we had brought together buggy makers 100 years ago and tasked them with redesigning the mode of transportation, they would have designed a better buggy. I worry that that may be the path the commission follows, designing a better obsolete system.

But we have to start somewhere, and since we don’t have any natural competition to drive innovation and creativity, will have to rely on the individuals within the system for that innovation and creativity.

I hope for the sake of our children that we are able to beat the odds and actually create a system that prepares our students for their future in the 21st century. To say that we have achieved real school change would require no less. – Steve Wyckoff

I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said, “all great ideas began as blasphemy.” Well, here’s some blasphemy for you, when it comes to school change our universities are the tail wagging the dog. We spend at the least 80% of our time in K-12 education preparing kids for a four-year liberal arts degree. Well I say enough is enough!

It’s time for those of us in K-12 education to ignore the universities. Even better, tell them to stick it where the sun don’t shine! We need to focus on what’s best for our kids and, in spite of the rhetoric from politicians, going to a four-year college is not best for all kids.

Yet we continue to kowtow to universities as they tell us what we must teach, how we must teach it, and even how we must organize to teach it. Our universities are as out of date as our K-12 schools, and in many ways, the cause of our obsolescence.

Don’t get me wrong a university degree is extremely important for about 25% of our population. And most universities do a wonderful job with some of their students. But it has become nothing more than a sorting process where we prepare every student to go to colleges and then they systematically weed out all but the best performers.

That used to be an appropriate and effective because those students who are simply sloughed off of the system could still go out and find good, high-paying jobs. That’s no longer the case. Which means we can no longer allow our universities the luxury of running a process of survival of the fittest.

Real school change will focus on the needs of our students not the wishes of our universities. – Steve Wyckoff