What's Become Clear

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last week was a hectic week but it ended on a positive note. I got to attend MACE, that stands for Mid America Computers in Education, in Manhattan Kansas. MACE is always one of my favorite conferences to attend, not so much for the presentations but for the people. You see, MACE attract some of the most innovative, and creative, nerd wannabes around the state. For the most part they’re classroom teachers who are figuring out new and unique ways to use technology in their classrooms.

Typically, the presentations aren’t always the best, but I appreciate how many of these individuals are teachers taking a risk to stand in front of their peers and present. Many for the first time. The kinds of things they are doing in their classroom won’t get the attention of Bill Gates, they are swimming upstream against the system and for that they deserve a lot of credit.

MACE is always well run and the location on the campus of Kansas State University is beautiful. But I’m still most impressed with the enthusiasm, creativity, and innovation that the educators present are demonstrating. I wish, for the sake of all these individuals, their efforts were leading to more systemic change. Unfortunately there isn’t much of that going on in education today. You see very few administrators, principals or superintendents, at MACE. That’s a shame because they could learn a lot.

The good news is you hear very little, if any, discussion about raising standardized test scores. The bad news is conferences that don’t focus on standardized test scores don’t get very much attention. Focusing on standardized test scores is politically valuable, focusing on the stuff that the educators present at MACE focus on  means better educated kids. Unfortunately, in schools today we’re more interested in raising test scores than we are in providing a better educational experience for kids. If test scores did as much to prepare kids for the 21st century as do the educators at MACE public education would be in a lot better shape. – Steve Wyckoff

Even former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch agrees! Well she didn’t exactly say it’s a curse but she did say when speaking about No Child Left Behind, “… I’ve looked at the evidence and I’ve concluded they’re wrong. They’ve put us on the wrong track. I feel passionately about the improvement of public education and I don’t think any of this is going to improve public education.”  And I couldn’t agree more!

Her primary concern is the same as mine the emphasis on standardized tests.  I believe that we have created a culture of test taking skills, she believes we have created a culture of “cheating and dishonesty.”  I think that she believes the tests are important and that the scores mean something, I don’t think they’re important and I don’t think they mean nearly as much as we like to believe.

I see all too often schools that are focused on strategies to raise test scores, that have nothing to do with students learning more, and being able to apply the knowledge under real-world conditions.The net effect of the strategies is that our students by school more boring, and more irrelevant than ever. And boring and irrelevant are not desirable conditions for learning to occur.

However, it is encouraging that some high-level people, mostly former policymakers, are seeing that the top down, centrally controlled strategies for improving education aren’t working. Hopefully, those in charge will abandon these well-meaning but misguided strategies and focus on real systemic change that leads to the kind of educational system our kids need, and deserve, in the 21st century. – Steve Wyckoff

I was recently listening to the book The Knack by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham. It’s a highly engaging and informative read that I would highly recommend. Brodsky and Burlingham, both Inc. magazine columnists, offer a host of advice to budding businesspeople.

The thing that caught my attention in the book was a comment that the authors made, that most business people don’t know what business they’re in. I’ve heard many times that the business  McDonald’s is in is real estate. This comment got me to thinking, what business are schools in?

I asked several of my colleagues what business they thought schools were in. I received several answers but I was surprised at how consistent the answers were.  Here is what I believe the business that schools are in:

• Warehousing students
• Covering the Regents required curriculum
• Raising standardized test scores
• Propagating and protecting the system

I realize that this list is offensive to many educators, but many educators in private agree completely. I regularly have the opportunity to listen in to conversations held between and among educational leaders. They use different terms but the conversations invariably focus on these four areas.  They talk about their responsibility to look after the well-being of their students, which they do. They talk about how important it is to prepare kids for college, and improve achievement. And they talk about how important it is have all the pieces of the system in place for the well-being of the children.

However, all of their mission statements, in some manner, talk about preparing kids to be productive members of society. I never hear a conversation where they talk about what it looks like to prepare a student to be a productive member of a 21st-century society. I fear that they avoid this discussion because it might actually mean changing, rather than propagating and protecting, the system.

I would point out that the younger the students are the more focused they are on teaching the students lifelong skills. I think we do the best job in education in the primary grades. But starting about third grade the system becomes increasingly more about covering a college-bound curriculum, specifically the regents required curriculum, and raising standardized test scores, than it does about preparing kids for the world they live in. – Steve Wyckoff

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

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

I read this phrase the other day and I thought it applied to education perfectly. Best in execution but worst in strategy. It is my observation that we are doing the best job in education we have ever done, doing what we’ve always done. Our execution is excellent. State assessment scores are on the rise. Dropout numbers are in decline. Each time the state or federal bureaucrats give us a new task to accomplish with our students we commit ourselves to accomplishing it, regardless of how little sense it makes.

On the other hand our students are less well prepared for the world they are going to live in than they have ever been. We have the wrong strategy. We are still preparing our kids as if a small percentage are going to go on to college and earn four-year degrees and the rest, at some point, are going to drop out of the system and go to a factory where they will do mindless work exactly as management tells them to.

Want some supporting evidence? Our core curriculum was designed over 115 years ago. It is still the core of what we teach our kids. It was designed to prepare the small percentage of high school students who were going on to college in 1892 to be successful. It was deemed to be such a good curriculum that every high school student should have it. And it was okay, because those kids who didn’t do well in the curriculum could still go into the workplace, show up every day, do what they were told, and make a good living.

More evidence: in 1950 over 60% of the jobs in America required unskilled workers. Today less than 15% of the jobs in America require unskilled workers. Only about 23% of all the jobs in America require a four-year college degree. The remaining 60% to 65% of the jobs require some type of technical skills.

But we are still preparing every student to go to college in the hopes that they will earn a four year college degree. And we are ignoring the vast numbers of students who need a different kind of preparation to be productive members of society in the 21st century.

Our strategy is all wrong …  but our execution is flawless. – Steve Wyckoff

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

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

Why can’t schools change? It’s an interesting question. If you ask many educators they would say that schools have changed dramatically. I disagree. I think what goes on inside some classrooms has changed dramatically, but not schools. We do use more technology in classrooms; projectors, computers, smart boards, etc. But what we’re doing inside those walls is basically the same thing we’ve done for over 100 years. And sadly, with pretty much the same curriculum. Oh there have been some changes, but mostly tinkering inside the old format.

Some people believe that we need to change the rules so that schools look different. But then I can show you examples of schools that look dramatically different than traditional schools and are functioning within the same rules, regulations, and policies. So the rules must not be what is impeding our ability to change.

Other people think that a tradition that is over 100 years old is keeping us from changing. That we’ve done school the same way for so long that the belief system, and the culture around schools is too entrenched to change. These people often see parents as the biggest reason we can’t change. That parents demand that schools look like they did when they were students.

Still more people believe that the arcane rules for admission into college keep us from changing. That the emphasis on preparing every student to go to college forces schools to behave exactly as they always have. They believe that the Carnegie unit, Departmentalization, focus on standardized test, etc. are the fault of universities.

A cause that is never considered among educators is that perhaps we lack the leadership to make changes. School administrators are of the opinion that they are no longer managers, but rather leaders. I’m not sure I see any difference in their behaviors from when they were managers. I don’t think that continuous improvement of traditional processes constitutes leadership when there is a need for real systemic change.

There is also a school of thought that educators are risk-averse by nature, and that has a whole, are very, very reluctant to change. But when I talk to business people they feel the same way about themselves. Being resistant to change seems to be, to a large degree, human nature, and not reserved for educators.

And last, but certainly not least, there seems to be an non-articulated argument about the purpose of schools. There seems to be a “venn diagram” of purposes for schools. Prepare kids to go to college, prepare kids for the workplace, to give them a broad liberal education, to indoctrinate them for society, etc. The conflicting camps all want schools to change in a different way, therefore causing gridlock.

I think, in my humble opinion, that each of these is a characteristic of a centrally controlled bureaucracy. And there is no bigger centrally controlled bureaucracy than public education. Bureaucracies were designed to guarantee compliance, and stability in systems and processes. There is no system with more stable systems and processes nor more compliant than public education.

So what do I think the chances of real systemic change are? Zero. Nadda. None. In fact I think the bureaucracy has moved from the state level to the federal level with a corresponding increase in stability and compliance. I chuckle at the federal government’s insistence that they are encouraging real systemic change in schools. My observation is that they are causing exactly the opposite effect. Our schools have become test preparation Academy, whose sole purpose is to prepare kids to increase their scores on standardized test.

So what’s the solution? I believe the solution is “mission impossible.” The elimination of the educational bureaucracy at a time when our country is moving in the opposite direction seems hopeless. I keep looking for that ray of hope, but every time I see one, the results never seem to pan out. I don’t think there is a rule that America has to stay the best. Time will tell.- Steve Wyckoff