Quality

In education, it is often difficult to value the contributions of individuals to the education process. Yet, people on a campus know whether or not tend to know whether a person is good at what they do. Robert Pirsig’s book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", examined quality issues as they pertained to life. Quality is something people recognize, but it has an intangible quality. People just understand quality when they see and can compare it to a less qualified standard. So it is with personnel.

I’ve written a book called "Improving the Odds: A basis for long-term change" that shows that the “system” that makes up education doesn’t do enough to improve the process of education. The current system of education often implores teachers to do more, to do it better, but doesn’t provide any real tools or guidance of how it should be done. Many teachers merely hope the administrator will not impede their teaching efforts.

There are administrators, however, that make a positive difference in the education process because they understand that what happens in a classroom matters. It is rare that people who work “downtown” in school district offices ever return to a school site. However, it wasn’t a surprise to see Cliff Weaver say good-bye to the San Jacinto district office to open a new school.

Those who had served under Mr. Weaver knew that he possessed the capacity to find and deliver quality. As an administrator in San Jacinto, Mr. Weaver had already earned the “Administrator of the Year” award for his efforts in his new setting. Yet in k-12 education, quality can only go as far as the students one serves. It wasn’t surprising to see him move back toward a place where he’d make a difference.

Those of us who have served with Mr. Weaver know what his new employees will now experience. It was nice to get up in the morning and arrive at work and feel that you are on a quest. There will be changes, and you may not know exactly where you’re going, but you’ll feel that you’re destination is certain… you’ll be moving toward quality.

On-line students outperform students in classroom...

In a recent New York Times article, students (primarily college level) who learned on-line outperformed students who were taught in a traditional classroom. Barbara Means who headed the SRI study said that:

“The study’s major significance lies in demonstrating that online learning today is not just better than nothing — it actually tends to be better than conventional instruction."

Indeed, the classroom students were considered to be the "mean" and scored at the 50th percentile while the on-line students scored at the 59th percentile. Who would believe that such results were possible? Actually, if the curriculum is specialized for an on-line class, one would think that the on-line experience can actually offer significant advantages over traditional lecture classes. The first advantage to a well-thought out on-line class is that it can be continuously improved from year-to-year and can provide immediate access to additional resources to the student. The second advantage is that notes for a class are on the computer, thus a student doesn't have to "take notes" in class and risk missing vital information from an instructor. The third advantage is that an online class can be accessed from any location with an online computer link at any time.

My book, Improving the Odds: A basis for long-term change (Rowman and Littlefield), states that to improve education, we must improve the quality of lessons delivered by the classroom teacher. Our current system of education has no means for long-term improvement of the product. Teachers do not know what techniques work best in the classroom. This is because classroom teachers do not have time to perform studies to compare what they are presenting. It is the education system's job to measure the techniques that work best and to make sure the techniques are employed in the classroom. Thus, it is not surprising that on-line students do better than those in the classroom. It is entirely consistent with the premise of my book.

As with any product, the education of a student is going to depend on the quality of the lessons received. Unfortunately, while k-12 education systems quibble over school size, tougher standards, uniforms, and gender issues, the one thing that isn't mentioned is finding the best way to deliver lessons to children. They should. Apparently, the colleges should also concern themselves with the quality of classroom instruction, or they may find themselves out of work.

As the title of my book suggests, one must "raise the class" if improvement is going to succeed. If not, the students in the class turn their attention to Twitter, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, or features of the new PS3 slim. With the advent of computer, we do not have a captive audience. We must find ways to improve the deliver of the lesson if schools are to improve...