What's Become Clear

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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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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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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Real school change will only happen when the “main dish” of education is a student centered, learning by doing experience. When our 115-year-old core curriculum is relegated to a  “side dish.” There is such a school, Erie High School in Erie Kansas. At Erie high school students have the option to be in a project based curriculum. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, I believe that students at Erie high school who are in the project-based learning curriculum, are the best prepared students in the state of Kansas to face their lives in the 21st century.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting with school leaders in the Erie school district. We had a very engaging and ebergetic discussion about many aspects, and affects, of project-based learning. About their journey to create a school that strives to help every student become remarkable. And not on standardized tests.

But as good as the conversation was the highlight of my day was to tour their new school that will open in the fall of 2010. Over the last 40 years I have been in many, many new school buildings. But this one was different. Oh, there were many of the same features you would see in any school. But what you won’t see in any school is a learning space specifically designed to enable and enhance student learning in a project based environment.

From the state-of-the-art natural lighting, to the large open aesthetically pleasing spaces that will house the individual student workstations, the new facility is amazing. And it’s not just the aesthetics, architect Allan Milbradt, and Superintendent John Wyrick, took the time to show me all of this state-of-the-art green technologies that are designed to enhance learning, reduce cost, and not do damage to the environment.

I only hope that visitors to the school will pay as much attention to the way that students are learning as they do the beautiful facility. The educators in Erie are making tremendous strides towards creating a learning experience that truly prepares every student for their life in the 21st century. This is rural school change! – Steve Wyckoff

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I recently listened to a podcast from the Cato Institute on National Curriculum Education Standards. This is an extremely interesting podcast in spite of the fact that the first segment is done by a politician. Neil McCluskey, of the Cato Institute, has a very interesting take, and also interesting data.

Several points stood out to me, given my repulsion to national standards and standardized tests. The first point that Dr. McCluskey made was against the argument that a modern country should have one set of educational curriculum standards. The evidence that has always given is that India and China are gaining on us. Therefore we need national standards. But wait a minute, both India and China have realized that they need to de-centralized their educational system not centralize it more. Why then are we centralizing more?

Furthermore it is always pointed out that the countries that do better than us on standardized test all have national standards. What is never pointed out is that 33 of the 39 countries that ranked below us all have national standards. In 11 of the bottom 12 countries have national standards.

Which leads to another point that I found very interesting. There is no empirical evidence that national standards produce better results. Isn’t that interesting? In no Child left the use of research-based practices is mandated. Yet conspicuous by its absence is the research on national standards. Yet no research has been done on the use of national curriculum standards.

Call me a skeptic, but I think national standards are more about control than they are about improving educational opportunities for our children. In the 21st century it’s all about individualization and customization, national curriculum standards are just the opposite. If we want real school change we should be focusing on customizing and individualizing the educational process to meet the individual needs of every child. Otherwise we are doing a great job of further preparing kids to work in the factories that no longer exist, doing jobs that no longer exist. – Steve Wyckoff

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I just saw a tweet about the book The School Principal Visionary Leadership and Competent Management. In part of the summary there is a quote, “Today, school-level administrators are expected to be both visionary leaders and competent managers.” I haven’t read the book but my first impression was, “I don’t think so.”

This is not to denigrate in anyway the job of the principle but I simply don’t see our principles as visionary leaders. They have an extremely difficult job, that is getting more difficult all the time. And maybe it’s just a difference in the definition of leaders versus managers. When I think of leaders I see their role as deciding what to do, and the job of managers is how to do it. Leaders ask the question, “Are we doing the right things?” Managers asked the question, “Are we doing things right?”

I think all the “visioning” has been taken out of the hands of our school administrators by bureaucrats. By default our vision is for schools to look like they always have. All of the rules and regulations being forced upon us by state and federal bureaucrats are based on the assumption that schools will look exactly like they have for the last hundred years. And the measure of what we are doing has been dictated as standardized test results.

They assume that our schools will be organized by age, compartmentalized by content area, prepare kids to go to liberal arts colleges, and learn in the abstract absent a context.

It is my opinion that if our principles were “leaders” they would be looking at society and asking the question, “Is what we’re doing in our schools preparing our kids to be productive members of a 21st-century society?” Perhaps I’m in the distinct minority, but I can’t imagine anybody thinking that what we are doing in schools today is in any way visionary, and preparing our kids for the 21st century.

Again, I am in no way trying to disparage school principals, but a constant focus on raising test scores is management not leadership. – Steve Wyckoff

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It seems to me that the only acceptable measure of school change is standardized test scores. I have a real problem with that. It’s not that I devalue standardized test scores completely, I do believe that they are one small indicator of how we’re doing. But when I see the over emphasis on standardized test scores I have to shake my head.

I hear the stories from teachers and parents about the crazy things we do in order to raise test scores. I’m completely convinced that we spend more time on test taking strategies, and memorizing material for tests, then we do on real learning.

I am constantly reminding myself, and usually anyone else that will listen, about the analogy of getting your drivers license. When you got your drivers license you took two tests, a written test and a driving test. It’s obvious which one is the more meaningful. In fact in most states, perhaps all states, when you renew your driver’s license, send you the test in the mail along with the answers. That’s because the stuff that’s on the test is meaningless in the real context of driving and we don’t remember it. The truly important stuff we remember because we practice it on a daily basis, and because for the most part it is non-conscious.

It’s not that the stuff being tested isn’t true, it’s just that out of context of driving its meaningless. For example, how far before you turn are you supposed to turn on your turn indicator? When I ask this question of an audience most of them get it wrong, not because they can’t drive but because the context of driving often times dictates using your turn signal sooner than the law requires.

It’s the same on our standardized tests. The stuff we test our kids on is true and in many cases used in context would be meaningful. But taught, and tested out of context makes what the student is learning meaningless.

We should be testing the student’s ability to use the context in new and, predictable and unpredictable situations. That’s when the material is useful.

I always cringe when I hear an educators talk about “improved achievement.” Real school change would include authentic assessment of the use and application of knowledge and skills in a contextually based problem. – Steve Wyckoff

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If we really want  real school change we have to consider how students learn, not just measuring traditional student learning. Students, in fact everyone, learns by doing. Ask anyone to recall their most memorable learning experiences and they will invariably tell you about doing something. I’ve written before about the steps involved in learning so I won’t rehash all of that. Suffice it to say that if the student isn’t emotionally involved in actually doing something they won’t learn. They may remember something for a test, but they haven’t learned it.

The student must be involved in setting their learning goals and developing their plan for reaching those goals are learning to be successful. Even more importantly the student must experience failure for learning to occur. That point at which a student fails and subsequently receives an explanation is the exact moment that learning occurs.

In schools however students are penalized for failing rather than encouraged to stretch their experiences, knowing that failure will occur. The research is clear, when we tell students that if they fail they are not  ”smart” it dramatically reduces their motivation to try and learn new and challenging things.

Real school change must put student learning by doing as a primary focus. They’ll still do okay on standardized tests, and in fact will be much better prepared for life.

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Yong Zhao has written a wonderful blog post about the role of testing in China and the United States. It is a must read for educators as they ponder the direction they want to take our schools relative to standardized tests. I’ve written before about my objections of standardize tests and their impact on school change. In light of Dr. Zhos’s blog post our emphasis on standardized tests is even more disturbing.

While the Chinese are apparently gaining momentum in terms of changing their schools to prepare their kids to be more productive and more well suited to participate in 21st-century economies, we are going exactly the opposite direction in America. Their schools are trying to figure out how to make their kids more creative and innovative and at the same time we are trying to figure out how to clone test takers.

This is a disturbing trend. Americans in general, and educators more specifically, believe that we cannot possibly lose our standing as the predominant country in the world. When I hear these comments I always remind the person who makes them that 100 years ago the sun never set on the British Empire. Today the British Empire has come back to the pack and has been passed by many, many countries. It can happen to us to.

Political leaders and educational leaders alike are taking us down a path to become a second rate country. We should be striving for school change that propelles us to a leadership role among countries in the 21st century, the path we are taking now is doing just the opposite. -  Steve Wyckoff

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I was involved in the discussion the other day about school change when I was asked why I am so opposed to standardized tests. So I thought I would take a few minutes to justify my position.

It’s not that I believe standardized tests are inherently bad. They’re like many other things they are neither good nor bad inherently it’s just how you use them that turnes out to be good or bad.

Let me try to give you an analogy. My son coaches college baseball, he’s a pitching coach. He keeps an array of statistics for his pitchers, one of which is ERA. Earned run average is an important statistic for pitchers, but ultimately if they don’t win the game the ERA may make him feel better but ultimately he, and the other coaches, will lose their jobs if they don’t win enough games. Is the ERA an indicator of how well they’re doing? Yes, but it isn’t the only indicator.

In schools the only indicator that seems to matter are the scores on standardized tests. Yet increasingly our students are unprepared for the world they will live in. Standardized test, while they do give us some information, aren’t the only or the best information. In essence we are raising the “ERA” but losing the game.

In addition, the behaviors that we are instilling in our students as a result of the focus on standardized test are counterproductive to the behaviors that our students need to possess when they leave our schools. Let me explain.

Standardized test prepare every student to answer the same uninteresting questions, using the same uninteresting strategies, to come up with the same uninteresting answers, in the same amount of time. Dan Pink has described this process is algorithmic. Meaning there is a prescribed set of steps to reach a single answer. Mackenzie and Associates estimate that less than 30% of new jobs being created in America are algorithmic in nature. In fact, jobs that are algorithmic in nature are the first ones to be outsourced to other countries, or replaced by technology.

What our kids really need are heuristic behaviors. Heuristic problems have a defined path to solving problems, that lead to one correct answer. Rather there are many ways to approach these problems and there may be multiple solutions. At least 70% of all new jobs being created in America are heuristic in nature according to McKinsey and Associates.

So by focusing on standardized tests we are preparing our students to be perfectly suited for jobs that are least likely to exist, and most likely to be low paying, when they leave our schools. When we talk about school change I think we need to change the conversation from,  ”how do we change schools to get higher standardized test scores,” to “how do we change schools to better prepare our students to be productive members of society in the 21st century?” –  Steve Wyckoff

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Online learning hasn’t led the school change in K-12 schools. But it seems to have had a tremendous impact everywhere else. I really thought with the financial crisis we would see a rapid escalation of online courses for high school kids. They just haven’t happened. At least not in my state.

When I analyze how I learn today  is much different than it was in the past. When there is something I need to know in order to do something, these are the steps I follow.

1. The first thing I do is google it. I look at the results “above the fold” to see if the brief descriptions that Google returns to me cover what I am looking for. I will typically click on two or three of these descriptions and look over their websites to see if I found what I need.

2. My second step is to go to Wikipedia, especially if I am just looking for information. Actually, sometimes this is my first step simply because I know what a vast amount of information is available. Interestingly, while the accuracy of Wikipedia used to be questioned I don’t hear that much anymore. In fact, Wikipedia has turned into perhaps my most trusted resource.

3. If I really want to see how to do something, then I go to YouTube. I’m always amazed that you can find a video that demonstrates how to do some of the most obscure activities.

The reason I talk about these three steps is what we do in schools looks nothing like this. I think the main reason is that we really don’t want kids to learn how to do things, we only want them to memorize things. When teachers are simply giving kids information and the task for the student is to remember it for the test, and then forget it, there is no need for the student to practice behaviors that help them become self-directed problem solvers.

So as we look at school change educators look at online learning as just another way to deliver information and they don’t see it as any better than just standing in front of the room and telling students. What they should be doing is helping the students become self-directed and able to use the resources that are available to solve meaningful problems.

If teachers in their classroom were focused on helping students prepare for the 21st century rather than memorizing information for tests, especially standardized tests, they would see the need for students to be using online resources which in turn would increase the value of online courses. So right now online learning is the solution to a problem that doesn’t exist in the mind of our educators. –  Steve Wyckoff

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I’m always looking to capture the essence of real school change and a way to communicate the significance and importance of change. Recently I was reminded of one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin, and the word that he often uses. Remarkable. And I started thinking, what we really need to do is to help our kids discover for themselves what they have the drive to become remarkable at.

While I was pondering this question at my desk I was approached by a superintendent who stopped by to tell me a story. He recently picked up his grandson at school. Upon entering the car his grandson proudly proclaimed what his test scores were on a standardized test. He told me that his heart sunk to his stomach. Even before he could tell me that I groaned in disbelief.

Is this what our school system is becoming? Compare the two above thoughts and think of your own children or grandchildren. Which would you prefer? Would you prefer that they discover a passion and drive that sets the foundation for their life. Or, would you like to have them reach the standard of excellence on a standardized test?

No-brainer! I am disturbed and disgusted where we’re heading in public education. When we talked about school change I never dreamed that our focus would be on raising a standardized test scores rather than preparing our kids for their future in the world in which they are going to live. – Steve Wyckoff

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The whole question of leadership versus management has been on my mind for some time. Years is in fact. I’ve watched as we were told that principals and superintendents needed to be leaders not managers. And magically, even though they were doing exactly the same things on their job, they became leaders rather than managers.

Like I said, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought for a long time and I decided that we need a third category to describe the behavior of individuals in leadership positions. It occurred to me recently when I was listening to the book The Knack by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham.

In their book they talked about how valuable managers are, but only when they are monitoring the most important data to make sure that things are being done right. But they also eluded to leaders as being the people who make sure the right things are being done. So if you’re not managing well, figuring out what’s most important in collecting data and analyzing it to determine how you’re going, and are not leading, making sure you’re doing the right things, then there must be a third category.

I’ve begun calling that third category of individuals caretakers. They monitor  what’s going on in the organization but they never really analyze how to measure the most important functions of the organization. They typically make sure that what’s been done in the past keeps occurring in the future.

In education it was so pervasive that we started talking about data-driven decision-making. Principles simply had never looked at data, they simply did what was done when they were teachers or even students, and kept doing it. I still don’t think we do a good job of data-driven decision-making because in my opinion we usually look at irrelevant data, namely test scores. But that’s another rant.

Leaders on the other hand are making sure that the right things are being done within the organization, not that the things that are being done are simply being done correctly. When I think of leaders in education the individual who always comes to mind is Mike Carson. Mike retired last year as superintendent of the Erie public schools, but not before he had led the complete transformation of Erie high school to project-based learning. Now that’s leadership!

Mike looked at the organization and asked, “What is it that we should be doing to make sure that our kids are prepared to be productive members of the 21st century society?” Based on that discussion Mike “lead” his school district in making dramatic changes.

We need more Mikes in our world. –  Steve Wyckoff

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Have you ever learned something that later on down the road you realize that your life would have been easier if you hadn’t learned it? Well I have. Several years ago my good friend Tammy Worcester attended a national conference. When she returned she asked me if I’d ever heard of a man named Roger Shank. I hadn’t. Tammy went on to tell me that I needed to read his book because he been a wonderful presentation as a keynote  speaker.

So I purchased Roger’s book, Coloring Outside The Lines. I loved the book and so I decided to contact Roger. The rest, as they say, is history. Over the ensuing years I have paid close attention to the work that Roger and his many talented colleagues are doing. They have reshaped how I think about schools. Which can be a very frustrating thing because there is so little we can do to change schools.

You see, Roger has made me see how what we do in schools has little to do with learning, especially learning that will enable the student to be a more productive member of society. In Roger’s words, “How we teach is antithetical to how we learn.” Roger talks about, “natural learning” and how it is different than what we do in schools. So here’s a quick look at the difference.

Natural learning occurs when an individual wants to learn to do something:

1. The learner has a goal. The more ownership the student has in the goal the better it is, but a skilled educator can create goals that motivate the student.  All learning occurs when the student does something, the goal is to learn to do that “something.”

2. The learner must then develop their own plan for achieving the goal. This plan is the path that the student has chosen to follow in pursuit of his goal.

3. As the student begins to implement their plan they will have expectations.  In their mind they believe they know what to expect as they proceed with their plan.

4. Along this path there will always be expectation failure or surprise. It’s inevitable nothing can be learned without either failing or being surprised that their plan succeeded.

5. Following expectation failure or surprise is the explanation that leads to student learning.  This explanation can come in many forms. It can be a teacher explaining, a video, a book, a website etc. This is the moment that learning occurs.

In natural learning the cycle is constantly repeated. If you think about it, it’s how we learn everything. How you learned to walk, how you learn to talk, how you learned to crochet, how you learn to fish. It’s also how you learned to read and how you learned to calculate.

So how does this compare to what we do in schools? Let’s look at our approach in traditional classrooms.

1. Explanation

2. Explanation

3. Explanation

4. Test

This is exactly the cycle we follow in traditional classroom. Our hope is that the students will remember what we told them long enough to regurgitate it on the test. And more and more that test is becoming a high-stakes State administered standardized tests thanks to No Child Left Behind.

So Roger has led to a great deal of frustration on my part. As they say ignorance is bliss. And my life as an educator was much easier before I considered how kids actually learn. –  Steve Wyckoff

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