Education Reform: Two things that matter.

When writing Improving the Odds: Raising the Class, the book looked at long-term factors that would affect public education. The two factors are: 1. better curriculum delivered to the classroom; and 2. lowering the entropy or disorder to the education process. What is clear regarding most education reform efforts is how little they address either of these key issues.

The United States does not have a coherent system of putting forth the best lessons into the classroom. This is not the fault of the teachers, unions, site administrators, but of the system itself. There simply is no real system to collect information about what lessons work best in classrooms. What teachers try to do is to present lessons the best way they can. What if medicine worked the same way?

Medicine has developed methods for analyzing and treating patient to improve their conditions. Individual doctors do not go into the office and come up with novel approaches to treating diseases. Doctors learn the best techniques that are delivered to the health system by researchers in the field. In fact the skill that doctors have is not related to making up diagnoses on the fly, the skill is related to knowing how best to apply what the system of medicine has learned.

If teachers want to be considered "professionals," then the school system must create a system to train teachers and insure that each one follows the best educational practices. The second factor that the education system must address is removing entropy or disorder from the education system, a factor that will be discussed in the next post.

Let's evaluate the politicians based on today's economy...

Governor Jim Doyle of Wisconsin wants to change the way that teachers are evaluated. He wants student test scores to be part of the teacher evaluation process. He talks about tracking the progress of students from kindergarten through graduation (for the 75% who make it). The governor told students:

"You are coming along at a time where the world is becoming increasingly competitive and the education that we provide has to be even better than it ever was in the past."

Hey Jim, what does the "the world is becoming increasingly competitive" mean? Haven't the laws of survival of the fittest been in effect for thousands of years? What hasn't happened is a standard of life in America that allows someone without a college education to maintain a good lifestyle. According to graduation statistics, our country is educating more people to a higher degree than at any time in the country's history. Obviously, teachers must be doing a terrible job. So let's get rid of teachers whose students don't do well. There is a problem with this.

What is the incentive for students who are tested to do well? This is a good question. Since there are no incentives in the testing process, students can tank on the test without any repercussions. The teacher being evaluated could do an excellent job and be chastised for the student's lack of effort. Is this fair? Let's apply the same standard to a politician.

Since the state coffers of most states are bare, let's blame all the governors. The governors will blame the economy and the state legislators who are responsible for the budget. Are governors to blame for the poor economy? Not really. Can teachers be held responsible if they teach kids that are poorer, less able, and less enthused about education? Apparently the answer is, "Yes" if governor Doyle is asked.

The problem with this approach is that education is a process. Students do not fail in a day, nor does an economy get goofed up by a single day. How does evaluating students after the fact help the students learn? It doesn't. Looking at the current economic problems will also be meaningless unless lessons are applied to processes going forward. The lesson learned must be put into the system of education. For any system to improve, it must learn from itself. Both education and economic systems require that good processes be in place. As the economic catastrophe showed us, measuring performance after the fact is usually too late.

The education system must help the teachers identify the best lessons. It is the lessons that make up the process of learning. The book "Improving the Odds: A basis for long-term change" discusses the general impotence of the top-down approach to education reform. Using the methods of Dr. Edward Deming, the book discusses a method for improving the education system by improving the process of education.

The process of education needs revision. We all agree on this point. How will a threat to base teacher evaluations on student performance change what has already occurred? Will such a threat really change the practices of mostly tenured teachers who are protected by unions? The answer is obvious. Improvements are needed in the process, not the outcome.

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...

Moonwalking and Education

In 1969, the United States celebrated when Neil Armstrong proclaimed that he reached the moon's surface and said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The thing that must keep in mind that it the race to the moon was started with an idea by President Kennedy in 1961, but was accomplished only after eight years of focused commitment toward the goal. It is focused commitment that must accompany an effort to make something happen. In 1961, Kennedy agenda was focused by fear of the Soviet Union. Today, the largest concern that most Americans face is the economy. Our ability to be competitive in the world is determined by our intellectual might, and as we embark on another round of education reform(s), we must realize that reaching a goal means working out the details of how to make it happen.

There were millions of details that had to be worked out in order to send people to the surface of the moon. The President articulated the goal, but millions of details had to be worked out to make it happen. As with most great accomplishments, the grandeaur of any large event is the culmination of many details.

Education policy makers must realize that making a speech doesn't make an event occur. Although America doesn't face threats from the Soviet Union, it does face economic threats to its current status and way of life. The nation's education system is a slower and more insidious problem to the nation's future than the Soviet Union. Public education has both implication for democracy and economic growth in the United States. It is important, and it is equally important to get it right.

As President Obama embarks on an ambitious education agenda, he must avoid rhetoric and look at the details. As the mishaps in the American space program have shown, the details are important. The tragedies of the space program left visible and dramatic outcomes when details are ignored. Small things are important. Knowing what one is doing is important. The United States' commitment to education must be focused, but it needs to work out the details.