What's Become Clear

As I talk with individuals about school change one of the issues that always arises is the sense that teachers get that they are being criticized for not being good teachers. I always try to point out when I talk about school change that teachers are doing the best job they’ve ever done, at what we’ve always done in education.

The issue is this, the needs of our kids after they graduate have changed dramatically. And therefore what we do in K-12 schools needs to change dramatically.

One of the fundamental changes that has occurred very subtly over the last several decades, is the need for our students to be able to do something with what they know, not just know something.

There are a couple of different aspects to this need. First of all, for decades and decades, it was sufficient to just know a lot of stuff. That’s what separated the educated from the uneducated. And that was okay because the uneducated could still go out, and if they were willing to show up every day and work hard, they could earn a good living.

And Americans are known for their work ethic. So that worked well.

But gradually the need to be able to do something with what you know became paramount. In 1950 65% of jobs were unskilled. They required no post secondary education. Just show up and work hard and you could be successful.

Today those numbers have changed dramatically. In fact about the same percentage, 65% of jobs, require the individual to have acquired some type of technical skills in order to successfully do their work. The real kicker is those necessary skills are always changing. So the need to not only be able to do something is important, but the ability to learn new skills and apply them is now extremely important.

Howard Gardner in his latest book, Five Minds For The Future, does an outstanding job of describing the need for our students to not simply know about a subject, but to practice the discipline of that subject. It isn’t enough to know about biology. We must allow our students to practice the discipline of a biologist. That same logic can be applied to any subject area.

Obviously, it’s impractical to have every student practice the discipline of every field. There simply isn’t enough time. So we need to be figuring out how to allow students to sample the various disciplines and then begin to choose those fields that are most personally interesting to them.

This solves another major issue that we face in schools. By my estimation less than 5% of our kids are authentically engaged in the educational process in our schools. And according to Gallup’s research, 50% of our students are either going through the motions at school, or are actively undermining the teaching learning process.

There is ample evidence to show that students who are given the choice to choose fields that are interesting to them, and are allowed to learn by actually practicing the discipline of that field, are dramatically more engaged than the students who were not.

This means that schools must begin to analyze their entire curriculum, and learning experiences, and figure out ways to move to a learning by doing model.

So I’m not criticizing teachers’ effort or results when I say they need to change. But I am criticizing leaders for not “leading” their schools to models that are more beneficial to our students. That’s what I mean when I talk about school change.–Steve Wyckoff

Not all school change is good.  For example, the Kansas Board of Regents is considering adding an additional year of math in high school for students to meet qualified admissions for the regents universities. They think that having kids sit through another year of math class is somehow going to prepare them better to be productive members of society.

It may better prepare them to sit through another math class in college but there is little evidence that another math class will benefit more than a very small number of Kansas high school students. And the reality is it will cause more students to drop out, and probably lead to more students being disengaged from the educational process.

What the Kansas Board of Regents doesn’t get is that we don’t need to have students learn “more about” any subject. What we need to have Kansas kids learn is the discipline of particular fields.

Let me explain. I was in a conversation last week with four Kansas school districts who are collaborating on creating entrepreneurship programs in their schools. They were very clear, they don’t want kids to know more about entrepreneurship, they want kids to be entrepreneurs. They want them to learn and practice the discipline of being entrepreneurs.

Our kids don’t need another math class they need to understand the discipline of what it means to be a mathematician. You don’t get that by covering more math absent the context of the real world. That’s a major issue with our entire core curriculum. We have kids learn about the social sciences, and we have them learn about the language arts, and we have them learn about communication, and we have them learn about science, and we have them learn about math.

What they don’t learn is how to practice the discipline of being a social scientist, or the discipline of being a communicator, or the discipline of being a scientist … You get the picture.

Want an example? A young lady at Erie high school, the project-based learning school that I’ve talked about many times, developed her project around cloning cattle. She found a mentor in the area who is a world renowned bovine geneticist. She actually practiced the discipline of being a scientist. Specifically a geneticist. She may not have covered all the content that other kids covered in a traditional science class. But she has a far greater understanding of science, and what it means to be a scientist, than any student who has simply sat through a science class.

If the Kansas Board of Regents really wants to improve the education of our kids, and better prepare them for post secondary education, they should start a dialogue with K-12 education to dramatically change the educational experiences our students receive in K-12 education. And also change the expectations that they have for what students will know, do, and be like when they arrive on campus.

Unfortunately, I don’t see real school change happening if KBOR is involved. If anything they are more entrenched in a decades old system, perhaps centuries old system, then K-12 education. -  Steve Wyckoff

I’ve never been short of  opinions or advice. And I’ve never been reluctant to share either one. Fortunately, I’m not all that sensitive, so I don’t get my feelings hurt when people ignore my advice and opinions. So I want to give the Commissioner of Education some advice.

The role of Commissioner, in the minds of most people, isn’t very well defined. So I think there’s an opportunity for our Education Commissioner, Dr. Diane DeBacker, to do something that has never been done before. Since nobody really knows what she’s supposed to do I’d advise her to take a page from the playbook of CEOs of large corporations. On a regular basis, they bring together the heads of all the divisions of their company for a discussion of the future.

She’s kind of the CEO of schools in Kansas. And if you follow the analogy a little further we have almost 300 “divisions” or as we call them, school districts.

I’d like to see her bring just the superintendent’s, no substitutes and no assistants, a couple of times a year, for some real heart-to-heart discussions about the issues we face, the possible solutions, and most importantly, the development of action plans to deal with the issues.

These wouldn’t be just a “state of education” speech opportunity, but rather a community of superintendents coming together to collaborate on building a better future for our kids. And not just once but on a regular basis!

Superintendents are an interesting group. For the most part they’ve figured out that the way to best survive is to keep their heads down, and not say anything. As I had one superintendent tell me, “Silence is always the easiest thing to defend.” I think you’ll agree that’s not a very good attitude to have for the leaders of our educational system, if we want to move our schools into the 21st century.

I know Diane well enough to know that she has a clear vision of where school should go, the ability to facilitate a large group to consensus, and the respect of superintendents around the state to pull it off. So for what it’s worth Diane, put on your best Lou Gerstner or Jack Welch persona and give ‘em hell! –  Steve Wyckoff

I’ve embedded an interview with the Commissioner of Education, Dr. Diane DeBacker. Deb Haneke does an outstanding job of asking really important questions of Diane. I would urge all Kansas educators, and even educators outside the state of Kansas, to listen to the entire interview. Diane touches on some very important topics.

I’m especially interested, and encouraged by the things that Diane has to say. I hope that what she believe should happen in education can be made to happen. She’s a good thinker and has a clear vision of what our schools should look like. I hope she doesn’t get buried by the bureaucracy, and the special interest groups who are only interested in protecting their own turf. With her leadership I have faith that we can experience real school change.

You can also view some very interesting interviews with state Board of Education members, And Cheryl Semmel, executive director of United School Administrators of Kansas by going to the Crisis In The Classroom website. – Steve Wyckoff

One of the points I try to make when I talk about real school change is that educators must continue to be learners, and they must be learning about life in the 21st century. In fact, when I speak to groups of educators I often tell them that if they aren’t reading at least one book a month they are committing professional malpractice.

One of my good friends,  architect Allan Milbradt, made a comment to me recently that his car was a university. I hadn’t thought of it that way before but he’s exactly right. Allan, is an avid listener to books at am I. In fact many of the books we read were recommended by the other one.

But he also pointed out that we listen to many podcasts that are very educational. For example, I listened to the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcasts from Stanford University. They are absolutely outstanding and give you a great glimpse into the future by listening to entrepreneurs and the businesses they are starting.

You can also listen to content from the top universities in America. Harvard University, among others, has made all of its content available free of charge. You can get a Harvard University education free of charge! You just can’t get  a Harvard University diploma free of charge

So as you think about improving your professional knowledge, think about the time that you spend in your car and all the ways that you might engage in self improvement. It’s sure to help you as an educator better understand the need to change schools. – Steve Wyckoff

I’ve been involved recently in several very interesting conversations that demonstrate the need for school change but also bring to light the myriad of possibilities for rural school districts to collaborate with their communities to increase the economic well-being of their communities. It can be a rather complex puzzle but let me try to put the pieces together for you.

In my many conversations with rural educators who want to improve economic conditions in their community. They typically focus on trying to entice a company to move to their town and hire lots of people, in high-paying jobs.

It isn’t going to happen!

But there are several things that schools can do to assist the community.

1. Schools can develop home construction programs. Many districts already have this program, and are using it to create nice affordable housing in their communities. Nice affordable housing is a rarity in many rural communities. One example is in Little River Kansas. They have either built or completely remodeled a home every year for the last six or seven years. There are approximately 15 students living in those houses who moved to Little River.

15 students doesn’t sound like a lot in a metropolitan area, but for a rural community like Little River that has a major impact on the community.

2. Schools can develop entrepreneurship programs. This one’s a little trickier because the natural inclination for schools would be to create an entrepreneurship class. Typically, the students would set and take notes about entrepreneurship. They can answer a lot of questions about entrepreneurship but wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to be an entrepreneur. When I say develop an entrepreneurship program, I mean that the school should actually have the students starting and running businesses.

Just such a program exists in Stafford Kansas. I’ve written about them in this space before. The stuff that the kids are doing there is phenomenal! Most of them won’t end up being entrepreneurs, but if just one student a year stays in Stafford and opens a business, in a decade it will have an amazing impact on the economics of the community.

3. Last but certainly not least, I believe that students could develop a website and using well understood search engine optimization strategies, could attract two or three families to move to their community every year. There are 3 billion people on the Internet, if a community can accurately portray itself on its website, and use search engine optimization to get it in front of the right people, there is no reason that they can’t attract two or three families a year. There are at least two or three families somewhere looking for a community to make home that looks exactly like the community the students are representing.

But most importantly I believe that each of these three ideas would begin to rapidly move us to a curriculum that informs and teaches us about learning by doing. So in essence, the strategies used to improve community economic development are a way to move our schools where we should be going anyway. Now that’s what I call real school change! – Steve Wyckoff

While I normally talk about school change, I just finished the book, The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick and it prompted several thoughts. The idea of a “helicopter mom” being one of those thoughts. “Helicopter mom” is a relatively new idea. It describes the mom that hovers over her children with much greater knowledge and participation in their kids lives than ever before.

A friend of mine who is a professor at a major university has told me several times how mothers of his students actually call him. The first time he told me I was flabbergasted! I barely told my mom where I was going to college let alone give her enough information to call a professor.

But Facebook has changed all that. In it’s inception it was strictly for college students, but as it grew Facebook began to allow anybody to join. The phenomenon of helicopter moms was born. Mothers started demanding that their kids friend them. And since the penetration of Facebook among college students was so great it instantly made mothers aware or of their child’s inner most thoughts and activities at college.

But it’s just not a phenomenon for college students. Most high school kids have a Facebook account also and many parents allow them to have a Facebook account under the condition that they friend the parents. So as with the college students, parents of high school students are learning more about their students, what they think, and what they do, then ever before.

It created an interesting and new dynamic for educators. I think the jury is still out whether or not the effects are positive or negative, but I suspect that more transparency in the long term will be a very good thing. I’m not sure yet either if it will cause real school change or simply impact the current system. – Steve Wyckoff

I speak to groups often about school change and I frequently hear the same question, “Don’t you think were doing anything right?” The answer is “yes” with a great big BUT. That “BUT” is this.

We are doing the best job in education that we have ever done, at what we’ve always done. The problem is this, what we’ve always done is not the right thing to be doing in the 21st century.

The problem is school change happens so slowly, or not at all, that over the years, and now even decades, we have fallen further and further behind. Most of you are too young to remember this chronology but in the 60s we saw major shift when we included special education students in regular education classrooms.

Between that time and 1983 we saw a very gradual gap develop between what we were doing in schools and what we needed to be doing with our students to prepare them for their future. In 1983 the report, A Nation At Risk, was the first shot across the bow of public education.

Between 1983 and the late 1980s we saw an increase in the criticism of public education that led to a highly contentious conversation about “outcome based education.” That was a really the beginning of the conversation fueled by our students’ inability to adequately perform in society.

Between the late 80s and the early 1990s we saw states all across the country mandating accreditation processes based on outcomes rather than inputs. Kansas was no different. The Outcome Accreditation Task force was charged with creating the structure for a new accreditation process that would become known as QPA, Quality Performance Accreditation. In the interest of full disclosure I was part of that task force.

Following the implementation of accreditation processes focusing on outcomes across the nation, there was a mass movement to understand and identify standards, align curriculum, and base accountability on state level standardized assessments. The crowning jewel of that movement is No Child Left Behind.

And now in Kansas we have the Kansas Education Commission trying to figure out what the next iteration of  NCLB will look like. Again, in the interest of full disclosure I am part of the Kansas Education Commission.

I can tell you what it shouldn’t look like. It shouldn’t look like schools have looked for over 100 years. The problem is this. We have spent the last 25 years seriously trying to improve public education by getting better at what we’ve always done. Somewhere along the line we should have started the conversation about what we should be doing instead of what we’ve always done.

So when somebody asks, “Are we doing anything right?” It depends on your perspective. If you’re asking, “Are we getting the things right that we’re working on?” The answer is “yes” we’re doing a tremendous job. If you’re asking, “Are all the things were working on the right things to be working on in order to prepare our kids for the 21st century?” the answer is “absolutely not.”

It’s not too late, but we need to get moving. School change doesn’t just mean that we change how we do what we’ve always done, it means to change what we’re doing.-  Steve Wyckoff

The whole world is changing, and one of the biggest changes involve social media. But for some reason social media isn’t even on the radar of school change. I am fascinated by the impact that social media has had on our lives. It’s affected how we communicate, how we stay informed, and how we stay connected.

Communicating, staying informed, and staying connected seem to me to be important attributes for schools in the 21st century. But it appears that almost all schools block students from accessing social media during the school day on school technology.

Watch this video, it’s fascinating stuff, it appears that isn’t having any impact at all on education.

If you’re an educator and that didn’t blow your mind you need to seriously think about retirement.

We make kids all across America engage in activities that will have little or no impact on their future, or their success in the 21st century. And at the same time we completely ignore some of the most important influences in their lives, now and in the future.

Wake up educators! Pretty soon it will be too late, don’t think for a minute that if you don’t engage in appropriate school change that nothing will happen to your school. It already is, you just don’t know it! – Steve Wyckoff

School change means different things to different people, but one of the things that I believe we have to change in schools, especially in rural areas, is a focus on entrepreneurship. If our rural towns are going to survive, and the kids who stay there  live a decent life, then we have to grow our own entrepreneurs, businesses simply aren’t going to move to small rural towns.

This morning I had the opportunity to visit the entrepreneurship school in Stafford Kansas. What a breath of fresh air! The kids at the Seed Academy, which stands for Stafford Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, are doing things that truly impressed me. Not only are they creative an innovative, but their work is of the highest quality.

Over 20% of all of the students at Stafford High School are involved in the Seed Academy. Most of them will never open a business, and even fewer will open a business in Stafford. But some will. And in the community like Stafford every business makes a difference. If only one student a year ends up opening a business in Stafford it will make a huge difference to the community and the economics of the area.

Even the students who never open a business are learning very important lessons for their future. And they are learning by doing, which is absolutely the way all learning should occur.

Their next step? I believe that their next step needs to be a system where students receive academic credit when they master academic skills in a real world setting. I saw numerous examples in the brief time I was there where students could demonstrate under real-world conditions the use of academic skills and knowledge. There is no reason for students to set through an English class when they are demonstrating all of the skills that they would be learning in the class. Give them English credit and let them move on!

I always enjoy visiting those rare examples where schools are truly authentically engaging students in real-world experiences. In my mind that’s what school changes all about. – Steve Wyckoff

I’ve recently been reading a lot about how traditional media are changing. I think there should be some parallels with school change.

It appears that listenership on radio is changing dramatically. First of all, satellite radio allowes individuals to listen to their favorite radio station whenever and wherever they are. Secondly, iPods allow individuals to listen to exactly the music that they enjoy most. In fact, iTunes with the use of Genius even helps you find new music aligned with your personal taste. And thirdly, some of the most popular radio is talk radio. So what does all this mean? In society today individuals want to listen to what they like, when they like it, and in many cases they want to interact, not just be passive listeners.

I think students in classrooms feel the same. It is just no longer acceptable, just because somebody is an adult, to stand in front of the room and spew information and expect the student to eagerly soak it up. Students want more say in what the content is, and more interaction.

TV today? I don’t know about you, but I think TiVo was one of the great inventions of the 20th century! It finds my favorite programs, records them for me, allow me to watch them when I want, and best of all, I don’t have to watch the commercials! And if that isn’t good enough I can go to YouTube and find darn near anything I want to watch, or even create my own, which I have done, and put it on YouTube! I can create my very own channel on YouTube.

So again, comparing it to the traditional classroom, I want the content that I want, in a format that allows me to consume it how I want, and the ability to make meaning of, and create my own, content!

Newspapers. Going out of business. Fewer and fewer people want somebody else to decide what’s important for them to read, and to dictate when they get it and in what format. Enter the news aggregators. I can set up a news aggregator, for example Google reader, and it becomes my personal assistance that 24/7 is searching for exactly the stories and news that I want to read. How does that compare to a textbook?!

And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have much time to read. So much of what I get in terms of news and information, is in the form of a podcast or an audio book. In fact, I haven’t read a book in years. But I listened to about 60 books year. I’m guessing that we still have substantial numbers of schools that don’t allow their students to consume information in audio format. In fact I can guarantee it.

So what does all this mean for school change? Probably nothing, schools seem to be impervious to societal changes and influences. –  Steve Wyckoff