Posts Tagged ‘ public education ’

Curious

I have been reading Pasi Sahlberg’s book on the lessons to be learned from Finland’s successful education program. Dominant in the PISA assessments since their inception in 2000, this Scandinavian country which set out deliberately to improve its educational system in the 1970’s is used by reformers and politicians alike as the exemplar of high academic standards. And yet, we have largely failed to learn from their experience and methodologies. Increasing the competition among schools, assigning letter grades to schools based upon high stakes testing for a handful of subjects, and denigrating the profession as a group of inadequate part-timers is neither productive nor factual.

Ifinnish lessonsf we cannot learn from Finland’s success, then we should not use the PISA scores as evidence that our educational system is in need of reform. If you decry our mediocrity in international testing, then learn from the international leaders. Emphasize the importance of all subjects, not just those that are tested. Treat our teachers as professionals and compensate them accordingly. Do not hold back those students who have mastered the content. Apply special education as a resource to all students who have difficulty and apply it immediately. Personalize the delivery of learning to each student, not simply through software, but through empathetic personal connections to caring adults.

It’s time to offer practical help and solutions, not just criticism. Take Finland as an example. Take it to heart.

2016
08/24
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Leadership
Management
Problem Solving
Leave a comment

Graduation Question

This is obviously graduation season. The latest commencement addresses are on the news. Families and happy college and high school graduates are out celebrating with their families and friends at local restaurants. Groups of young men and women with gowns and tasseled mortar boards seem to be at every arena in town.

Since I regularly work with superintendents and their staffs all over the United States, I have to ask…

Do you know how many of your former high school graduates obtained a post-secondary degree this year?

2015
05/17
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Leadership
Leave a comment

Questions, not many answers.

Here is an example in The Atlantic of how data is used for analysis that changes strategy. Sabermetrics correlates statistical data to outcomes and has been used for strategy in baseball since Billy Beane began using them in Oakland (Moneyball). It is now as unthinkable in baseball to build a strategy without using this tool as fielding a team without a pitcher. The current controversy is about who should really get credit for the win. What if the pitcher didn’t have a single strike out for the entire game? What if the catcher made every close pitch look like a strike? Does it matter? Only if you are responsible for outcomes.

How do we develop sabermetrics for education? Do we measure outcomes for teachers or students? What’s the educational equivalent of winning the World Series? What’s the equivalent of winning a division title? How about the equivalent of winning one of the 162 games in a season? How about the outcome for each inning of each of those games?

I love baseball, the great American pastime, and the correlation of data to outcomes that sabermetrics has brought to the game make all the more effective and exciting.

More importantly I also love education, the great American ask time. A time of inquiry and discovery. The current correlation of data to outcomes is that a child’s family income is a good predictor of their test scores. Is that as deep as we can go? And once we have the data, can we use the information to change outcomes?

2014
07/21
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Leadership
Problem Solving
Leave a comment

“Not My Department!”

I am a strategic planner. If you tell me what you intend to accomplish, then you need to tell me how you are measuring your progress toward that goal. If your vision and mission statements talk about a goal of student “success”, shouldn’t you measure how many of your graduates acquire post-secondary degrees? A high school degree alone, unless accompanied by skills training for a trade, is not a guarantee of a living wage – clearly a threshold measure of “success”.

In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education Beckie Supiano analyses a report from the Pew Research Center on “The Rising Cost of Not Going to College”. The economic disparity between younger workers with a college degree and those without is growing. The number of college graduates with career building jobs is also much higher than for those with a high school diploma.

I know that as a superintendent with less than five years in the job, you are measuring the success (or lack thereof) of your predecessor. Nonetheless, if your vision is the success of all of your students, one measure must surely be how many of those students graduate from college. If your graduates are not making a living wage, how can you claim they are successful?

Remember the 1965 Tom Lehrer satire?

Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?

That’s not my department, says Wernher Von Braun.

Aren’t we subject to a similar satirical criticism by claiming success is just high school graduation?

 

2014
02/13
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Leadership
Problem Solving
1 comment

It’s Only Make-Believe

Ever thought about designating a specific make-believe activity for recess at your school? Jerome and Dorothy Singer have. In this blog in Scientific American they talk about the need for pretend play to promote child development. They also mention the Root-Bernstein research indicating that Nobel prize winners and MacArthur geniuses participated more frequently in childhood games about make-believe worlds than a control group.

Perhaps the idea of a built-in ‘pretend play recess’  during the regular school day—where children can get together and explore an infinite amount of possible combinations of ideas, emotions, and perspectives—will one day be just as acceptable as traditional, but no less important, forms for recess and play.

Indeed if creativity and innovation are critical to our world, then we must create opportunities for our students to use their imaginations.

 

Thanks to Barbra Esham for making me aware of this piece in SA!

2014
02/06
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
1 comment

Ten for Ten?

Lots of talk recently in the Ed Press decrying the high turnover rates among education professionals. If you add the number of teachers who leave the classroom for administration, the numbers are horrific.

Liz Ryan in her recent post in Forbes talks about the ten ways companies drive away talent. Is your district ten for ten?

2014
02/04
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Leadership
Problem Solving
Leave a comment

Matthew May’s Three Hour Vision

Matthew May has it right. We no longer can afford to wait until the annual offsite retreat to react to the latest innovation in the education business. His three hour vision meeting is a good alternative. Perfect? No. But if you build some flexibility and interim decision points into the key projects in the last step, you will be miles ahead.

Educational institutions are notoriously risk averse. What if you get it wrong???

You have still learned much more about the problem than if you did nothing. Still worried? Don’t bet the house, use Peter Sims tactic of Little Bets.

2014
02/02
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Leadership
Problem Solving
Leave a comment

Family friendly: If not our schools, then who?

Okay, we are in the kid business. Who better to take care of our fellow educators’ young children than us? Yes, I understand that budgets are already strained and daycare is not part of public education’s charter…So let me ask you this. How do you feel about as associate whose answer to your very reasonable request is, “That’s not in my job description”? Shouldn’t we feel the same way about an organization that says, “That’s not my job”?

The latest business publications have run stories on  accommodating children at work. Here are two:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3025741/work-smart/what-if-you-combined-co-working-and-daycare?partner=newsletter

http://www.strategy-business.com/article/ac00056?gko=3e017&cid=BL20140130&utm_campaign=BL20140130

As a design professional with many years working in education I believe if we really worked at it, we could find a hundred different ways that childcare could be offered at little cost to staff in a public education setting. Who better to nurture the younger generation than education professionals?

Wouldn’t childcare differentiate your value proposition from you competitors? Wouldn’t childcare reduce teacher turnover and keep you from losing your irreplaceables?

Shouldn’t we at least be as family friendly as the for profit business down the street?

2014
01/31
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Leave a comment