What's Become Clear

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

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In preparation for a presentation on school change that I was doing recently I was going back through my material and came across the work, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading by Marty Linsky and Ron Heifetz.

Their work is really good stuff, and if you haven’t read it I would highly recommend it. Their work has always been pertinent and right on target, but I think it is especially relevant at this point in time. The most important point for me is a quote that they used about technical solutions versus adaptive challenges.

Technical solutions are the things that we  already know how to do. We apply those solutions when there is disequilibrium  (their term) in the system. For those of us in education we would call those solutions best practice. Those are the things we have been working really hard on for the last 15 years. And we’re really good at them now. In fact were probably doing the best job of what we’ve always done, that we’ve ever done.

The problem arises when doing what you’ve always done, regardless of how well you’re doing it, either isn’t good enough, or isn’t the right thing to be doing. Linsky and Heifetz call them “adaptive challenges.” Adaptive challenges require that we learn new ways, not simply get better at the old ways.

I believe that we are absolutely facing adaptive challenges. That we are going to have to change what we have kids know and do, change the educational experiences where they learn them, and change how we organize for those learning experiences.  Their quote about the mistakes leaders make applies to us today in education.

“Indeed, the single most common source of leadership failure we’ve been able to identify … is that people, especially those in positions of authority, treat adaptive challenges like technical problems.” - Heifetz and Linskey

I think that we  our treating adaptive challenges like technical problems. That is why, in spite of all of our efforts and success, society still not satisfied with the education our students are receiving. Rural school change will mean figuring out those adaptive challenges in finding new ways to meet them. – Steve Wyckoff

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When we talk about school change there is always a discussion about preparing students for college. There is no doubt that in the 21st century those people who are the most successful tend to be those with the highest level of education. But not all college degrees are highly correlated with being successful in the 21st century.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and in fact later this week I’m going to be visiting with my friend Dr. Jackie Vietti, at Butler Community College to help me make sense of the whole question of college ready. You see, I can give you a whole pile of evidence that we are doing poorly when it comes to preparing kids for college, and that even many of those who make it through college, don’t get jobs that are high paying enough to pay off their college loans. So I am suffering from cognitive dissonance on this issue.

So I’ll tell you what I think I believe up to this point. I’m looking at college degrees from two perspectives. One, is the degree in high demand in society today; and two, is it a high skill degree? I’m still compiling a list of college degrees that I believe are high demand and high skill degrees. In this category I would put engineering degrees, many health science related degrees such as nursing, and some IT degrees. But I also put many two year technical degree, and even some industry certification programs. I’m sure there are others, so if you have some examples send them to me.

So that begs the question, are there some high skill low demand degrees? I think that some degrees in the sciences may fit this category; physics, biology, and chemistry. But I’m not completely sure of this.

And as I was thinking further about these categories I started to wonder if there are high demand and low skill degrees. I think there used to be, but I don’t think there are anymore. I think that liberal arts degrees used to be high demand and low skill. I think now liberal arts degrees are low skill and low demand.

when I graduated from college almost 40 years ago a liberal arts degree, like all college degrees, was the ticket to a good job. Today, that just isn’t true. Graduates with liberal arts degrees are perfectly prepared to go on to graduate school, but the jobs available for most of these degrees are for the most part low skill and sadly, low pay.

And therein lies one of our big problems. All of our K-12 core curriculum, and all of our gen ed courses in post secondary institutions are liberal arts courses. Which means we are spending huge amounts of our time, our most precious educational resource, preparing kids in low skill low demand areas, which the students see as boring and irrelevant. Perhaps it’s time as we talk about school change to begin to deal with the sacred cow of education … the liberal arts degree. – Steve Wyckoff

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With the opening of schools I’ve had the opportunity to speak to several faculties about school change. I especially enjoy the dialogue that I get to have with the teachers even though we never have enough time to really dig in to the most important topics.

One of the questions that I ask of any audience I speak to is, “If all of our students were proficient on state standardized tests, and we had no dropouts, would society be satisfied with our graduates?” In the last week I’ve had the opportunity to ask this question of several hundred teachers. Not one, zero, nada, teacher said that society would be satisfied.

My point is this, we are working harder than we’ve ever worked in education, and getting better results than we’ve ever gotten, focusing on standardized tests, and more recently reducing the dropout rate. Yet there is a sense that even if we reach our goals, they are the wrong goals.

Nobody wants to talk about it but there’s a real sense that we are not focusing on preparing kids for their future in the 21st century, but rather the pursuit of higher test scores to please politicians and bureaucrats. I don’t think that’s the kind of school change we were looking for. – Steve Wyckoff

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Is a great deal of discussion around school change is focusing on the dropout problem. In Kansas, the governor has formed a commission to study dropouts because it has become such an economic issue. As the demand for high skill workers increases dropouts are increasingly a burden on society.

I think one of the positive things that could be addressed is the core curriculum in K-12, and the gen ed curriculum in higher ed. Both of these curricula are at least 115 years old dating back to the Committee of 10, and are primarily focused on the liberal arts.

There was a time in our history when the liberal arts meant well educated. In fact, when I graduated from college in 1972 a liberal arts degree was the ticket to a good job. That’s no longer the case. In fact if you look at two aspects of a college degree, the skill level that the degree instills in graduate, and the demand for the degree in society, the liberal arts degree today is both low skill and low demand. In days past the liberal arts degree was low skill, but very much in high demand.

The second piece of the liberal arts education has to do with our students. The vast majority of our students feel that our core curriculum in K-12, and gen ed curriculum in higher ed, are boring and irrelevant. Boring and irrelevant are not good conditions under which learning can occur.

When you couple all of these issues is obvious to me that our core curriculum and the gen ed curriculum in higher Ed serve no purpose today. They are a relic of education past. We can make major strides to increase the engagement and the relevance of our curriculum for all students by redesigning the primary focus of our system.

What might that new focus be? I’m not sure I have an opinion yet, I need to think about it more. But it may include a focus on globalization, who knows. But if we really want school change, real school change, and to reduce the number of students who leave our system uneducated, then we should take a critical look at the core curriculum in K-12, and the gen ed curriculum in higher Ed. – Steve Wyckoff

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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

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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

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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

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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

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During a conversation about school change an individual made the comment that we’d be fine if, “The kids would just bear down and be responsible like they used to be!” Interesting thought. This individual went on to say that students from foreign countries, especially emerging countries, come to America and kick our kids butts in school.

As you might guess, I have a different point of view on this. I think that if our kids got their drinking water from a hole next to their house they would be equally motivated to do what ever it takes to change their station in life. Fortunately this isn’t the case.

In an affluent society such as ours we are never going to return to the student behaviors of the past. It’s incumbent upon us as educators to create a system that meets the needs of society in such a way that it also engages our students as they’ve never been engaged before.

The other day while speaking at the University of Kansas to a group of teachers in the process of obtaining their certification to become building level administrators, I was asked if there has ever been a time in our history that our students were authentically engaged on a regular basis. The answer obviously, is no. But it didn’t matter. Our students were being prepared for a completely different society than we have today.

In fact, that’s part of our problem. We are still preparing students for a world of factories and mass production. A world where the most important skill was compliance. If you want to succeed in today’s schools, be very compliant, and act like you care. Guaranteed success.

Unfortunately, graduating from that system doesn’t guarantee success in life. In fact being compliant is the path to a job that has, low pay, high potential for being outsourced, or automated using technology.

The school change we need to make needs to be a thoughtful transformation to schools that prepare kids for their future in the 21st century. For us to attempt to make our kids adapt to our schools is utter nonsense! – Steve Wyckoff

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I just finished Richard Florida’s book Flight Of The Created Class. It’s a compelling book, along with his other book Rise Of The Creative Class, they are a must read for educators. Compelling evidence of the need for school change.

But I was disturbed …  okay I know, that’s nothing new …  that it entirely ignored the role of public education. It completely focused on the need to attract immigrants of all types, but especially immigrants in the creative class. It mentioned education in passing but it’s almost as if Dr. Florida has written off public education. In fact, rarely do I read a book today about society in the 21st century that there isn’t a discussion about overcoming the effects of education received in America.

From Dr. Florida’s viewpoint why would anyone assume that public education could produce students equipped for the creative class. Our entire focus is on raising standardized test scores, and our strategies almost completely ignore any practice that would foster and nurture creativity and innovation.

If public school educators don’t get their heads out we will become completely irrelevant in terms of preparing our students for their life in the 21st century.

And, in a state like Kansas, if we don’t figure out how to dramatically increase the percentage of our residents who are members of the creative class we, as a state, we will be relegated to second-class status. School change wouldn’t be just nice, it’s an imperative. –  Steve Wyckoff

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Perhaps it’s a change in leadership or the level of dissatisfaction with public education within the ranks or educators and policy makers may indeed be reaching the tipping point of school change. Our commissioner of education, Dr. Diane DeBacker, is either demonstrating a level of leadership not seen for over two decades, or all of the stars are beginning to line up.

I personally believe she is the right person, at the right time in history. But regardless over the last two months there have been three events that have caught my attention. The first occurred in April when the KSBE voting unanimously to not pursue the next round of Race To The Top, or as I like to call it the march to mediocrity, funds.

The second occurred at the May KSBE meeting where the state Board of Education voted unanimously to create an educational commission to:

On May 13, 2010, the Kansas State Board of Education authorized the formation of the Kansas Education Commission to examine the framework for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Reauthorization of ESEA, as outlined in the Blueprint for Reform released in March 2010, will set the direction for education in the United States for years to come. The Kansas Education Commission is the state’s strategic approach to reauthorization and educational change.

The third event occurred  in early June when the governor of Kansas signed an executive order creating a panel called The Kansas Commission On Graduation And Droppedout Prevention And Recovery. Interestingly, the governor took this action without knowledge of the Kansas State Board of Education.

So if you’re connecting the dots it appears that policymakers and political leaders may be serious about school change. In the spirit of open disclosure I have been appointed to KSBEs Education Commission. I am truly excited about the opportunity. I will be very disappointed if this is an exercise, as the politicians say, in putting lipstick on a pig. –  Steve Wyckoff

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As I think about school change I’m always searching the current literature on the 21st century for theories of how the world works. I recently read the book, The Power of Pull by John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison. Fascinating stuff. They do a great job of describing the world that is emerging and comparing it to the world we are leaving.

The world we are leaving is a push platform. According to the authors,

“’Push’ describes a method and means of organizing activities and actions. Push operates on a key assumption, that it is possible to forecast or anticipate demand. Based on this assumption which works mightily to ensure that the right people and resources are delivered to the right place at the right time to serve the anticipated demand.”

“Push approaches are typified by what we might call “programs” or “routines,” tightly scripted the specifications of activities designed to be invoked by known parties in predetermined contexts.”

If that doesn’t describe education today, I don’t know what does! Here’s more from the book…  “summarizing the philosophy of push, we might tally the following instincts, assumptions, and beliefs:”

• There’s not enough go around
• Elites do the deciding
• Organizations must be hierarchical
• People must be molded
• Bigger is better
• Demand can be forecast
• Resources can be allocated centrally
• Demand can be met

So what is pull?  “Pull is the ability to draw out people and resources needed to address opportunities and challenges. Pull gives us unprecedented access to what we need, when we need it, even if we’re not quite sure what “it” is. Pull allows us to harness and unleash the forces of attraction, influence, and serendipity.”

Pull has three levels. The first level is access, which has been growing over the last three decades. The advancements in technology have given us, all of us including students, unprecedented access. The second level of pull is attract. We now have the ability to attract people of like interests and passions. We can connect with people all over the world based on the things we are most passionate about and interested in knowing and doing. The third level of pull is achieve. We aren’t there yet but the first two waves are already sweeping over us.

I’ve written many times about the accomplishments of Erie high school. Their project-based learning is an example of a pull platform. Their students use access differently, more efficiently, and more effectively than any other school in the state. They design their own projects, and create their own knowledge.

They are beginning to attract like-minded adults to the projects that they develop. It is only a matter of time until they start attracting students from around the world to their projects based on interest and passion. They currently identify, contact, and engage their own mentors based on a common passion that they possess with their mentors.

And even early on they are starting to achieve things in their school that are unheard of in high schools. The cloning of cattle, the conversion of vehicles to run on hydrogen, the making of precision musical instruments, are only a few examples. And you can be sure in the coming years there will be many many many more examples.

I hope that Erie high school is just the beginning of the transformation of schools from push platforms to pull platforms. That will be real school change. – Steve Wyckoff

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Maybe school change can happen. In May the Kansas State Board of Education authorized the formation of the Kansas Education Commission to examine the framework for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). I have the honor, at least I think it’s an honor, of having been selected to serve on the commission.

Since my invitation I have given a lot of thought to my personal approach to the commission and I’m ready to put some of it in writing to see how it looks and sounds. I’m trying to clarify in my own mind what I think the state of Kansas should be thinking about in the redesign of schools. So here we go…

1. I believe that schools need to move from a push platform to a pull platform. If you haven’t read The Power of Pull by John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison it’s a must-read. They do a remarkable job of describing how the world is changing. How we are moving away from centrally controlled and organized systems to empowered individuals, connected to others with similar interests and desires, creating our own knowledge and achievement as we go.

2. The core curriculum, that curriculum mandated by the Kansas Board of Regents, has always been the “main dish” of education. It’s time that the core curriculum be relegated to a side dish. The main dish of the system needs to be the inspiration of every student to discover what it is that they are so passionate about that they begin the journey to becoming remarkable at it.

3. We also must recognize that our system was designed to prepare large numbers of students in basically the same way, for the same work experience in their lives. Today instead of large numbers of students being prepared for a few work experiences, we must prepare small groups of students for vast numbers of work experiences. The “mass production” of students in a “factory model” school is simply intolerable in the 21st century.

4. I believe with all my heart that if a state like Kansas creates a 21st-century school system, even begins intentionally moving towards a 21st-century school system, individuals and businesses from around the world will flock to Kansas to join the movement.

5. As a state we need to minimize as much as possible the impact of the federal government on our system. The perverse focus on standardized tests and national standards is crippling us, and our students. We need to do the minimum to comply, and hope to do as little damage to our students as possible.

So do I think the Kansas education commission will lead to real school change? I think it has a chance, but I remain skeptical. I’m not sure this situation is desperate enough… yet! I remain hopeful. – Steve Wyckoff

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