What's Become Clear

I couldn’t have said it better … NO REALLY! I COULDN’T HAVE SAID IT BETTER! So I’m not going to try. Here is a post from my friend Deb Haneke’s blog. I will take credit for inspiring her to write this post because I placed the link to this video on our group page on Facebook, Rural Education and Community Development Collaboration. And credit Jerry Butler for sending me this intriguing video by Sir Ken Robinson. Sir Ken hits school change right on the nose!

Deb’s Post …

I’ve heard other presentations by Sir Ken Robinson, but this eleven minute video does a great job of really summarizing many ludicrous things about our current design in education. From the myth that a college degree will guarantee you a job, to the idea that the most important thing about kids is the date of manufacture (meaning we group them and run them through the system based on their birthdate) Sir Ken shines a flashlight on many myths and outdated practices, that are not serving kids nor the economy of this country.

In addition to the profound quote I included below, I also appreciated the research he shared about divergent thinking which he clarified is not the same thing as creativity, but rather an essential capacity for divergent thinking. This longitudinal study clearly showed all persons have the capacity for divergent thinking but it deteriorates over time. According to Sir Ken, education is likely a key factor in these results.

Sir Ken recognizes that it is not teachers who want things this way. Rather he refers to the “gene pool of education.” I hope you enjoy this insightful, and thought-provoking video as much as I did.

It started  some time  ago when I realized not every student needs algebra to be a productive member of society. I, like all educators, had drank the kool aid.I believed that every student needed algebra.

But it kept nagging at me that I couldn’t give sufficient real world examples of the use of algebra in the real world. And I visited all the time with highly successful people who told me they use little of what they learned in algebra, and NEVER in the context they learned it.

A good friend asked his father after heart surgery if he was ever worried he might die. He quipped that, “No, he knew it wasn’t his time” because his algebra teacher told him he’d need algebra someday, and he hadn’t needed it yet, and he knew his teacher wouldn’t lie to him.

All kidding aside …

I think the myth of algebra began with Larry Lezotte and Ron Edmonds. In their research they found that algebra one was the gateway to the advanced curriculum. They didn’t say that students needed to learn algebra to be productive members of society, but rather the  “system” required algebra I before you could take any of the advanced sciences.

We as educators interpreted that to mean that students needed to know algebra to be successful. I simply don’t believe that’s true. Let me be clear, I believe all of us use some algebra on a regular basis. But as far as I can tell the only profession that requires that you know all of algebra, is algebra teachers.

My second experience that leads me to question our math curriculum began as an accident. We have a shortage of engineers in my geographic area. In discussing this problem I began to hear that our students couldn’t pass the three required calculus courses to become engineers. The three required calculus courses were the “flunk out courses.”

Just by chance, an engineer offhandedly told me how hard calculus had been, and that once on the job he never used it. Since then, whenever I have an opportunity to speak to an engineer, I asked them how much they use calculus on the job. By far, the most common response is never.

Interestingly, if I asked the spouse of an engineer they often tell me that their spouse uses calculus all the time. Go figure.

Yesterday, October 13, 2010, I had another one of those experiences that caught my attention. I was in a meeting discussing project-based learning. The people who were present who are actually using project-based learning were saying that the one subject that they have not been able to figure out how to build into projects is math.

It caused me to think that we are approaching math education all wrong. I reflected on Howard Gardner’s book, Five Minds For The Future, where he talks about the need for our students to not just know about a subject, but to practice the discipline of that subject. Our students need to practice the discipline of being a social scientist, not just know a lot about the social sciences etc. etc..

When I applied that thinking the math, I asked myself the question do we really want kids to practice the discipline of mathematicians. The reality is, statistically speaking, none of our students is going to be a mathematician. But all of our students will use math in their future. We approach teaching math as if all of our students are going to be mathematicians.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It seems to me that we should completely rethink how we teach math. And perhaps the need to abandon much of what we expect students to regurgitate on math tests.

Just a blasphemous thought on school change. – Steve Wyckoff

School change at the high school level needs to begin with completely rethinking how we organize learning for students. That is, if we want kids to be able to do something with what they know, rather than simply knowing a lot of stuff for tests. That’s a big assumption. Schools presently are organized perfectly to give kids a lot of discrete information within any given academic discipline.

But I believe that in the 21st century what we really want is for students to be able to do something with the knowledge and information that they have. Being prepared for the 21st-century is more about the habits of behavior necessary in the 21st century than to simply knowing a lot of factual information for tests.

To help you understand I want to use an example that I’ve been using for many years. I always ask at the end of the example where my example is wrong. I have yet to have anybody tell me my example doesn’t hold up. So here it is.

If high schools were responsible for teaching basketball.

In high school were responsible for teaching basketball this is how we would organize the learning experience for students.The typical student schedule would look something like this.

1st Hour – Dribbling
2nd Hour – Shooting
3rd Hour – Passing
4th Hour – Rebounding
5th Hour – Offensive and Defense
6th Hour – History and Philosophy of Basketball
7th Hour – English Literature

We’d teach the students about dribbling, about shooting, about rebounding, etc. etc. instead of teaching them to dribble and teaching them to shoot, etc. etc. Even that creative teacher who would let them dribble or shoot etc. etc. would be doing it in isolation of the rest of the skills of basketball.

In addition we’d have them learn basketball by sitting and listening while the teacher explained and demonstrated in the front of the room. And we’d only allow them to play the game of basketball AFTER they graduate! And regardless of whether they were 5’6″ or 7’6″ they would get exactly the same curriculum and learn the same things.

It would be up to them to figure out what position and what knowledge and skills were appropriate for them.

By the way, we’d obviously have them learn English literature because for some reason dead white European male authors seem to be sacred regardless the educational system.

I think that you would agree that this would be a crazy way to teach basketball. It is no less a crazy way to organize our high schools if we want to prepare our kids for the 21st-century. Teaching discrete subjects in isolation may lead to short-term memorization of facts within the discipline, but it does nothing to prepare our kids for their future.

Just as in the basketball example, if we want our kids to function in the 21st century we need to give them experiences that, at the very least, simulate the world they are going to live in. Real school change in high schools should begin by dumping the Carnegie schedule .- Steve Wyckoff

Last week at the the Kansas Education Commission meeting one of the participants commented about “the classic liberal arts education” as if it were given how important, and appropriate, the classic liberal arts education is. As I’ve written before, the most difficult thing to do in school change is to decide what not to do any longer.

I think that it’s time to take a critical look at the “classic liberal arts education” and make some tough decisions about the assumptions we have made for over 100 years, and decide what parts of that education should be abandoned. I know that opinion will rankle more than a few feathers, especially among higher education people, and those who teach in the K-12 core curriculum.

But with the ever changing face of our society it’s imperative that we begin to abandon the least worthy pieces of our traditional education system. I make light of the fact that we seem to think there’s nothing more important than reading the works of dead white European male authors. While I may say it lightheartedly, I am dead serious with my question. What is so important about dead white European male authors that they must be studied by every student.

Not only do I believe that much of what we teach in the classic liberal arts education is no longer appropriate, but I believe it’s the part of our curriculum that students find most boring and irrelevant. At the very least we have to figure out how to make our core curriculum relevant and interesting to our students. In the best possible world we should figure out what to do instead of much of what we do in our core curriculum.

I know this will be hard to swallow for many educators, but at some point we have to begin to abandon something, and somebody’s sacred cow is going to get gored. When we talk about school change we mean exactly that, change! You can’t keep doing everything you’ve always done and pretend that you’re changing. – Steve Wyckoff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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