What's Become Clear

Yes I know blasphemy! But real school change would mean changing the high school curriculum. The high school curriculum has been part of what we believe schools must be for so long that we assume that it has to be that way. In fact our core curriculum has changed very little in 115 years.

In 1892 Charles Elliott, president of Harvard University, formed the Committee of 10 to define the college-bound curriculum. By 1894 the curriculum was complete and in place. In presentations I often use two slides that list the curriculum defined in 1894. I ask participants what the curriculum is? The two most common answers I get are, the regents required curriculum, or our core curriculum.

Just to give you an idea here are the courses defined in 1894:

2nd Secondary School Year

Foreign language … Latin, Greek, German,  French
English Literature
English Composition
Algebra*
Geometry
Astronomy
Botany or Zoölogy (Biology)
History

3rd Secondary School Year

Foreign language … Latin, Greek, German,  French
English Literature
English Composition
Rhetoric (Speech)
Algebra*
Geometry
Chemistry
History
* Option of book-keeping and commercial arithmetic.

4th Secondary School Year

Foreign-language … Latin, German, ranch
Greek
English Literature
English Composition
English Grammar
Trigonometry,1/2 yr.
Higher Algebra, 1/2 yr.
Physics
Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene
History
Geology or Physiography
Meteorology

As you can see over 115 years later it’s still basically our core curriculum. If indeed we want every student to become remarkable, forcing every student to take exactly the same outdated curriculum is not the way to get there.

So what should our curriculum look like? It’s not so much what it would contain as the characteristics it would have. You see, I believe every student should have a learning by doing, customized and individualized curriculum based on their needs, desires, and dreams. Can it be done? Certainly. It’s being done today at Erie high school in Erie Kansas.

Ron Edmonds said it best in the late 1960′s, “We know everything we need to know to educate every child all we lack is the will to do it.” –  Steve Wyckoff

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I’ve written many times about our obsession in K-12 schools with preparing every student to attend a four-year liberal arts college. The data are clear, we need less than 25% of all of our students to have a four year college degree. In fact only about 23% of all jobs require a four-year degree. In the workplace about 65% of all jobs require post secondary education, but not necessarily a four year degree. These high skill jobs are also high wage jobs.

One of the hidden unintended consequences of our attitude in K-12 schools is that we are preparing our very best kids to leave our communities, especially rural communities, and never returning. So in many cases our very best kids leave our communities, get a four year degree, often in the field with little or no job demand, and end up in a job that they would’ve never chosen given all the information. And these jobs are not in our rural communities where many of our kids would like to live.

So while our rural communities are engaged in a life-and-death struggle to maintain viability they are shooting themselves in the foot by having schools that aren’t focused on preparing each individual student for the future of their choice, which in many cases would be in that rural community  if the student had all the information.

It is imperative that our schools began immediately to help every individual student develop an individual plan for their future. But just having the plan isn’t enough if they’re only course choices are the traditional curriculum that only lead to one thing, leave home and go to a four-year college, and earn a degree.

With the advances in technology it is possible today to engage in many more careers than were possible in the past in rural communities. But our kids will only choose those career options if they are given the guidance necessary to develop individual future plans, and educational experience commensurate with that plan. –  Steve Wyckoff

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I have just begun to read Howard Gardner’s new book Five Minds For The Future. And to my great surprise, I’m being facetious here, in the very first chapter he talks about the inadequacies of our educational system in preparing our kids for their future.

I’m actually not here to talk about his book today, I’ll do that at a later time.  it did prompted my thoughts about kids and their careers. I read two blog posts recently on the KS careers website. One talked about women in construction careers, the other talked about jobs in video gaming. It struck me that what we have traditionally done in schools, and continue to do in schools, does very little to prepare students for these kinds of careers.

These used to be considered nontypical careers. But more and more all careers are becoming nontypical. I often talk about careers in GPS/GIS. A year ago I didn’t even know there were careers in GPS/GIS. Then I visited with my friend, the president of North Central Kansas technical College, Clark Coco. He told me about their courses that prepare students for certification in GPS/GIS, and how today everything that is put in the ground, pillar, pipe or wire, in any way is mapped using GPS/GIS. Another nontypical career.

The point is that we prepare every student, graduating hundreds of thousands every year from K-12 schools, with virtually the same preparation, as if every one of their futures is going to be exactly the same. We mass-produce graduates. But more and more we don’t need thousands and thousands of students prepared with the same knowledge and skills. What we need are some, perhaps in the hundreds, students prepared to do thousands of different jobs.

We simply have to stop mass-producing the same kind of graduates. With the advancements in technology and knowledge about learning it is unconscionable that we haven’t applied that new learning to our schools in the 21st century. Everything in our world today, touching every aspect of our lives, has been customized and individualized … except our public education experiences. Preparing every student for the same standardized tests isn’t acceptable. In fact it’s detrimental to the individual student, to our society, and to our country. – Steve Wyckoff

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Rex had a handful of students whose needs simply weren’t being met in a traditional educational setting. In fact, according to Rex, several of the young men were about to step away from becoming dropouts. But Rex, who readily admits that he was potentially one of those boys when he was in high school, knew the way to their hearts. He knew that if you want to hook a group of high school boys who are close to dropping out, and totally disengage from all school activities, the way to do it is in the car.

So Rex brought the boys together  to build a car. Not just any car, a 32 Ford roadster. Recently completed, the car was sold … for $31,000! That covered the cost of all the materials to build the car with something left over to put back into the program.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The program has doubled in size, has received many donated vehicles, and is well on its way to being a permanent fixture at Peabody-Burns high school. The students are working on their second 32 Ford, this time a touring car.

The program has all of the characteristics that make for great educational experience. The students are authentically engaged, in fact to the point that toward the end of building the first car the instructor, Matt, had to get permission to take some of the students home … at two o’clock in the morning! But it’s not just that the students are authentically engaged, in a learning-by-doing atmosphere they are applying  all of their academic learning in real situations.

I had the opportunity to visit with the instructor and the students last week.  Their stories range from hilarious to heartwarming. And all the kids have a story. But each individual will tell you what a difference the hot rod program has made in their lives. – Steve Wyckoff

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Compliance or engagement, which is most important? I am often concerned when educators talk about engagement that they are actually talking about compliance. Let me give you an example. I’ve seen several surveys that purport to measure engagement but when you look at what they measure they talk about students who get to class on time, students who turn in their homework, students who don’t miss school, and students to do their homework. To me those are all issues of compliance, students are doing what they’re told, when they are told, and how they are told.

Engagement on the other hand is much more about students that are so involved in what they’re doing that they lose track of time. So involved that they spend evenings and weekends working on schoolwork, not because they’re required to but because they want to.

But the most important issue around compliance and engagement is how well our students being prepared for their future. Students who are compliant are being perfectly prepared for algorithmic jobs. Those are the jobs that have established processes and procedures that lead to a defined correct outcome. That’s exactly what we prepare kids for in schools. Look at standardized tests, we want students to know exactly the right steps to come up with exactly the right answer. Algorithmic.

On the other hand, those jobs that don’t have established processes and procedures that don’t lead to one correct outcome make up about 70% of the new jobs being created in America. Yet in most schools little or no time  is spent with students in preparation for this heuristic types of work. Again, if you look at standardized tests they in no way reflect heuristic thinking.

So which is important compliance or engagement? Obviously the answer is engagement. Yet it’s not what we’re doing in schools. If we are going to prepare students for the 21st century  it’s important that they become self-directed, and problem solvers. And I don’t mean problems that have a well-defined process with one correct answer. For our students, having an educational system that is algorithmic by nature is boring and irrelevant. One of the keys to school change will be to quit focusing on standardized tests and instead preparing our kids for their future. That will mean making the educational experience heuristics in nature, not algorithmic. – Steve Wyckoff

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like most states around the country schools in Kansas are engaged in a conversation about making cuts, making changes, and saving money. Schools in Kansas have made substantial cuts already and the worst may be yet to come.

One of the discussions that is occurring involves the reduction or suspension of athletics and extracurricular activities. Many schools have already reduced the number of events, especially in middle school and junior high schools. Some superintendents believe that if athletic events were reduced or even eliminated that the public outcry from parents would force legislators to return schools to higher levels of funding.

While that may be true I have a different take on the potential consequences of reducing or suspending athletics and other extracurricular activities. It is my opinion that high schools are terminally obsolete in the 21st century. I further believe that athletics and other extracurricular activities are the glue that are holding high schools together. What we do in high schools systemically makes no sense. But a collection of arcane rules, many of which are built around athletic eligibility, are tolerated because students desire to participate in extracurricular activities.

If schools did suspend athletics there are ample opportunities for students to participate in those athletic events and activities outside the purview of schools.  Just look around, for the girls there is volleyball, basketball, softball and track even in most rural communities. For the boys there are leagues that exist in basketball, wrestling, baseball, and track. Not to mention swimming and tennis and a whole array of other activities. In fact in almost all communities there are programs that would meet the needs of virtually all kids, with the possible exception of high school football. And you can be assured that that need would be filled also.

So the unintended consequences. Perhaps once students experience those athletic events outside the purview of public schools they may not return to those events inside public schools. Many individuals; including parents, coaches, and participants, already complain about the antiquated rules established by the high school activities association. In addition, it is increasingly difficult for schools to find qualified teachers who are also qualified coaches. A conflict that does not exist if athletic events are not controlled by schools.

So be careful superintendents what you wish for. You may believe that the suspension of athletics might put intolerable pressure on the legislature. On the other hand, if your kids don’t have the motivational influence of athletics to keep them tolerating an obsolete educational system you may be getting bigger problems than your solving. –  Steve Wyckoff

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I had the pleasure last week of listening to Randy Rivers, superintendent at  Bluestem school district, and Jerry Cullan, currently superintendent at Medicine Lodge but formerly Superintendent at the Ashland school district. While superintendent at Ashland Jerry implemented and managed a four-day school week for six years. Randy, has led his district to the decision to implement a four-day school week beginning in the 2010-2011 school year. Randy and Jerry, facilitated by Deb Haneke, engaged in an hour-long discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of a four-day school week.

To be honest going into the discussion I believed that schools went to the four-day week for the sole purpose of saving money. I’d never considered the educational advantages that might be experienced in a four-day school week. But I have to admit that after listening to Randy and Jerry I believe  that there may be many valid educational reasons for switching to a four-day school week.

However, the barrier of tradition is an unbelievably high hill to climb. There are many high-ranking educational officials who oppose the four-day school week simply because it’s not what we’ve always done. If you are interested you can watch the entire discussion at  Crisis In The classroom. You can also watch two podcasts with Deb Haneke and Clint Corby who are discussing the same subject. Clint is the superintendent in the Haviland school district which is also on a four-day workweek. –  Steve Wyckoff

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I think kids at Erie high school have the best opportunity to receive an educational experience that prepares them for their future in the 21st century than any other total school population in the state of Kansas. I had the opportunity last week to speak with Mike Carson, Ted Hill, an architect Allan Milbradt about the transformation of very high school.

We had a wonderful discussion about the steps they took and the lessons learned. But today I wanted to share a video with you featuring Allan Milbradt discussing the project at Erie high school.

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“And yet most of the trouble businesses get into – in serving their customers and in general getting things done with dispatch – is directly attributable to the ugliness of their systems and processes. Over time, even a beautiful system tends to get elaborated and elaborated … and then more elaborated … with every change. Each one made of course, for a “good reason.” Until the whole ugly, sloppy, inefficient, demoralizing, dehumanizing, mess makes everybody unhappy. We end up “serving the system” rather than having the system serve us.” – Tom Peters

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I used to be surprised, I’m not anymore. It used to be noteworthy when I would read a book and the author would give some advice to help individuals overcome the effects of public education. Today I’m more surprised if I read a book and they don’t give advice to help individuals overcome the effects of public education.

Just recently I have read Linchpin by Seth Godin, Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port, Drive by Daniel Pink, and Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan. In each of these books there is significant advice for the reader about how they might overcome the learning that they experienced in public school. And these are just a few of the recent examples.

One of the reasons I’m sure I see this a lot is because I read so many books that deal with how to be successful in the 21st century. And our schools have nothing to do with being successful in the 21st century. Our core curriculum has nothing to do with preparing students to be successful as adults. While there is some movement in our high schools to try to do a better job it’s the side dish, not the entrée. Their focus is much more on improving standardized test scores, and preparing kids to go to college. And even in those subjects that don’t do standardized testing, raising test scores is still their excuse for not changing education.

Our two-year post secondary education institutions, community colleges and technical colleges, are doing an excellent job of preparing their students for the real world. Unfortunately we lack emphasis in K-12 schools to prepare our kids to attend those post secondary institutions that prepare students for industry-standard certifications and associate degrees, that lead to high-paying, highly satisfying careers.

I was especially struck by Dan Pink’s description in Drive of the two kinds of work that exist today, the algorithmic and heuristic. Our schools focus almost entirely on preparing students to do algorithmic work, and almost completely ignore preparation for heuristic work. This, in spite of the fact that estimated 70% of all the new jobs being created involve heuristic work. So perhaps the advice that the authors give to overcome the effects of public schools is important and valuable. – Steve Wyckoff

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For the 34th and 35th time I had the opportunity this week to speak to students in the College of Education at the University Kansas. Twice each semester for the last nine years I’ve had the opportunity to speak to students in Dr. Mike Neill’s class. These are students who hope to become teachers. Usually there are 80 to 100 students in each class. That means that over the last nine years I’ve had the pleasure to interact with between 2,800 and  3,500 students. Okay, so if you do the math it should have had the 35th and 36th time right? Well they missed one day a couple of years ago because school was dismissed because they won some basketball game. You may remember

Anyway, these are always some of my favorite days. I have the opportunity to interact with students who are pretty much fresh out of high school, but also are committed to becoming educators. In many ways it’s refreshing and uplifting. In other ways it’s depressing.

Let me explain. I always love their enthusiasm and their commitment. They possess a passion for what they think they’re going to face. They are bright, engaged, and ready to take on the world.

The depressing part, I always visit with them about authentic engagement. The flow that learners are in when they are so engaged they lose track of time. I tell them it is my opinion that the most important thing they can do is to create learning experiences that are so engaging that their students are regularly authentically engaged. But then I ask them how many of them were authentically engaged on a regular basis in high school.

Yesterday was most one of the most depressing days when I asked this question. Not one hand was raised. Think about it, these are young adults who want to spend the rest of their life in school, and yet none of them were regularly authentically engaged in high school.  Normally, there are only five or six students in the entire class who were regularly authentically engaged in high school, but still to have no students raise their hand was a little bit shocking.

Through our dialogue it was clear that they understand what being authentically engaged is. They even talked about their school experiences that were authentically engaging. They listed them, year book, drama, athletics, and other experiences that were almost all outside of the core curriculum.

When we talk about the core curriculum students in this class through the years have rarely, if ever, identified them as authentically engaging. Interestingly enough  when students did find a class in the core curriculum that was authentically engaging to them, that is typically the subject they are preparing to teach. I hope they don’t model their teaching after the teachers they had simply because it was authentically engaging to them.

The other thing that I’m always aware of when speaking to the students is how pervasive the thinking is that the way our system operates is the only possible way the system can operate. I wish that we had more time to talk about how the system could be modified in order to engage students and yet still learn the things that we want students to learn, that usual in education time limited how much we can accomplish.

Other interesting topics we cover: standardized tests, which always realize a conversation; the need for individualizing instruction; innovation; and our system is pervasively focused on preparing kids to go to four years college rather than preparing them for their life. – Steve Wyckoff

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In the innovative educator’s dilemma part 1, I talked about how your best customers can drive you out of business if you’re not careful. That your best students with the most influential parents will keep you in the old paradigm of education, traditional schooling, right up to the point that they leave for private schools, and your school isn’t meeting the needs of any of your students.

But there is a further dilemma to this story. Even the parents of students who are the least successful, and those that are far less successful, than your best students, believe that every child should be prepared to go to a four-year liberal arts college, and that schools should look much like they did when the parents were students.

This is a real problem. I talk to school leaders all the time who tell me that the fastest way for them to get in trouble is to suggest to some parents that their kids should not go to a four-year college. We’ve done a tremendous job getting parents to believe that education is the key to success. Now we’ve got to convince them that a four-year liberal arts degree is not necessarily the kind of education that is the key to success for their child. Only about 25% of jobs today require a four-year professional degree. On the other hand about 65% of jobs are what we refer to as skilled. These skilled jobs require post secondary education.  But the post secondary education may be in the form of certification programs, associate degree programs, and yes even bachelors degree programs.

Four of 10 of the most popular majors include Social Sciences (ex. History and Political Science) Psychology, Communication, and English

Popular careers of these majors include:
retail store manager
customer service representative
administrative assistant

So the dilemma for school reformers is that we must not only convince educators that they must redesign how they prepare students for their future, but we must also help parents understand that we need to change how their children are educated if they are to be successful in the 21st century. – Steve Wyckoff

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Of all the things I speak about, the slide I use that lists 10 behaviors that I identify as  “21st-century behaviors” is one of the most popular. I put this list together over the last many years from various sources. To be added to the list a behavior must be frequently mentioned in many sources. The 10 behaviors are:

1. Technological Fluency: The ability to use technology as a tool. To be completely comfortable using various forms of technology and use it with the ease that we would use paper and pencil.
2. Communication … Verbal proficiency: Of all the subjects we make students take, the one we make them take every year of their educational experience is English/Language arts. You would think with all that effort our students would be excellent communicators. Yet one of the most commonly heard concerns from the business community is the inability of our students to communicate either verbally, or in writing.
3. Collaboration … Leadership/Coordination/ Teamwork/Interpersonal Skills/Relationships/horizontal collaboration: The ability to work with others in all of its forms is critical today. Most of our kids will function in work environment that requires them to be a team player.
   
4. Solve Complex Problems: The world we live in and the problems that arise in that world are growing ever more complex. Often times requiring skills and knowledge from multiple disciplines, including use of technology. It is imperative that our graduates have the ability to work in this complex society and solve problems.
5. Gumption … Self-Direction and Reflection Skills: Gumption is not a word that we hear often but it describes clearly what employers today expect. We sometimes hear stick-to-itiveness  used as a synonym for gumption. The point is in the workplace today when confronted with difficulties individuals are expected to work through the issues, to be self-directed and to stick to a problem until it is solved.
   
6. Creativity and Innovative: Creativity is more often thought about in the extracurriculars but that’s not necessarily the kind of creativeness I’m referring to. While art and music are excellent preparation for the real world, the creativity I’m talking about is the ability to think differently than others and to come up with solutions that not only work but are innovative.
7. Analytical and  Critical Thinking Skills: Related to gumption and complex problem solving, individual today are expected to analyze the situation and think about it critically and solving problems.
8. Initiative, Work Ethic, Honesty, Integrity and Ambition: This collection of adjectives centers on the attributes that are desirable of all employees, and many times are referred to as character.
9. Adaptable … Versatilist: In a rapidly changing society it is imperative that individuals are able to adapt to change and modifications in the workplace, practices, and even knowledge. Versatilist is a term that was coined by Thomas Friedman in The World Is Flat to describe those individuals who are versatile and adaptable.
10. Inquisitiveness: Last but not least those individuals who are asking why and how, in other words always inquiring in order to improve their knowledge, or processes, or procedures.

In the lower right-hand corner of the slide that I use during presentations I place the following picture. And the question I ask is this, in the classroom pictured can these 10 critical behaviors be practiced on a regular basis? The typical answer, “no.”

For our schools to give students the opportunity to develop these behaviors it is essential that schools, especially high schools, engage in school improvement processes that involve learning by doing rather than memorization for standardized tests. Practicing these behaviors to make them habitual cannot be done sitting in a desk listening to a teacher in a traditional classroom.

Dan Pink would say that we need less algorithmic practice that we see in traditional classrooms, and more heuristic practice to prepare kids for the 21st century. Those heuristic behaviors, innovative and creative, can only be practiced in an environment that is more customized and individualized for each student. – Steve Wyckoff

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We’ve never seen the kind of financial cuts that are taking place in education today. Regardless of how you feel about school finance, and the ability of school districts to utilize their money wisely, the cuts that are being made today in the majority of school districts are painful at best. Decisions are starting to impact staffing decisions, including classroom teachers.

But every cloud has a silver lining. And often times the silver lining doesn’t show itself until much later. School districts are looking at ways to save money, cut costs, and yet at the same time improve the quality of the educational opportunities their students receive.

Down the road we’re going to look back at the decisions that are being made and many of them will have historical significance. Some because they devastated the district, and some districts will never recover from those decisions. But others will lead to creative and innovative solutions that will indeed increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the education our kids receive.

Our industry has been amazingly stagnant for the last century. We are long overdue to redesign major parts of our educational system; what we teach, how we teach it, how we organize to teach it, and how we assess what we have taught. Hopefully,  we will talk about, what the kids learned, how they learned it, where and how they were grouped to learn it, and how they demonstrated their understanding and use of what they learned.

Hopefully there will be enough examples of creative and innovative solutions that they will impact the educational system systemically. What would I like to see those systemic changes be?

I’d love to see all of our students emotionally (authentically) engaged in their learning experiences  on a regular basis. I’d love to see the content of what they are learning be the knowledge and skills that will make them more productive in their lives after school. I’d love to see them organized like we organize for work in the real world, in ways that allow them to collaborate with their peers and with experts from the fields of their choice. I’d love to see us scrap the entire standardized testing system and instead evaluate student learning based on the skills and knowledge they obtain which are aligned with their desired career  areas. I’d love to see teachers functioning as cold learners with the students, assuming a much more Socratic role. And most of all I love to see our students leave school loving to learn, and self-directed in their lives.

Is there hope? Only time will tell. Right now there is little reason for hope. Almost all of the discussions are centered on what to cut. On the other hand I was at the Topeka USD 501 Board of Education meeting last night and they are doing a great job of discussing the changes they can make to reduce expenses while at the same time focusing on improved opportunities for all of their students.

We can only hope that education and educators don’t blow it. – Steve Wyckoff

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We have an interesting situation developing across the state of Kansas that I suspect has happened, or will happen, and many other states. With the recent financial crisis we are seeing a dramatic increase in discussions about virtual courses for high school kids. To this point in time there has been very little interest among K-12 educators to use virtual courses, but as schools get more desperate to compensate for reduction in funding, school administrators are warming to the idea.

But the dilemma on the horizon is this. In traditional schools it is not uncommon, in fact it is very likely, that students will show up every day, sit passively in class, do the absolute bare minimum required, and get a passing grade. It takes very little effort on their part to do enough to make it through the system.

However, as students begin to take virtual courses they are required to engage differently and more intently in the course. The reason this occurs is that there is not an adult at the front of the room simply “dishing out” the information to them. They must actively seek the content knowledge and do with it whatever is required.

For the highly engaged, highly motivated student, this isn’t an issue. But for the student who is not highly engaged and isn’t self motivated it creates a dilemma. These students may well be sitting in a school room ostensibly taking a course in a traditional sense, but they aren’t doing any, or much, of the work.

We have seen this situation before. Their expectation is, and the expectation of their parents is, that if they were in the room and it’s a course offered by the school, then they should receive a passing grade and credit for the course. The conflict will occur when they don’t get a passing grade or are required to actually do the work before the grade is given, and it’s the end of the term.

A friend of mine who is a superintendent has already had to deal with this exact situation. Not only did the parents expect their child to receive a passing grade, they expected the grade to be an “A” or “B.” The kicker to all of this, some of the parents demanding this passing grade even though the students didn’t do the work, were teachers.

This is an indictment of the system and the pervasiveness of the thinking surrounding the expectations of schools. Even our educators believe that the student simply shows up and put in their time they’ve met minimum requirements. – Steve Wyckoff

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