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.

Common Assessment is the Right Thing to Do...

Many of the things that the United States Department of Education will be throwing stimulus money at education, but one thing that Education Secretary Arne Duncan proposes is right on the mark; common assessments for student. There is no reason for 50 states to have staffs that must duplicate the work to create tests for students. Not only do the tests cost money, but they also stop states from being compared to each other.

If Duncan gets his way and a common test is actually implemented, perhaps the states can address common standards for students. To create 50 bureaucracies to punch out standards is another waste of resources. There may have been a time when there were regional differences that made certain programs (agriculture in Iowa for example) more relevant, but the need and look of schools is rather uniform. Why put the extra expense and time into re-writing curriculum across the country?

Hopefully, Arne Duncan will be able to adopt a common education standard. It is one of the things called for in "Improving the Odds: A basis for long-term change" by Rodney Larson. It calls for change in the education system that is based on continuously improving education at the classroom level.

Health package doesn't taste good when crammed down throat

As President Obama made the Sunday talk show circuit last week, he spoke about health care in the United States. He said that it a huge problem and that health care costs were out of control. He said that something had to be done to change health care.

That is true. Something should be done to address the problem of health care in the United States.

Let's start with the problems. First, there is the cost issue: Rising health care costs are outpacing inflation; and second, is the issue of the uninsured. People that do not have health care coverage in the United States.

Let's start with the first issue. Why have health care costs outpaced inflation? How much of the problem is caused by legislation?

One of the things one must keep in mind is that medical coverage may be a right, but it is also a service that costs money. Whether one likes to hear it or not, the price of health care has far surpassed the benefit that is gained by the consumer. Though health care providers can provide more service than at any time, we have not seen marked increases in longevity in the American population.

The most expensive care in the world is not necessarily the best. The government has had a large role in running up health care costs. It needs to have a role in removing excessive burdens to taxpayers. However, the people have to be have proper incentives to use the health system in a responsible manner. We shouldn't all pay for other people's idiocy. There have to be incentives that reward people for taking care of themselves in terms of lower costs.

President Obama's health care plans aren't evil. The problem is that they don't really cut the fat from the system. We all know that what is being proposed will cost more. The whole point of the reform effort is to get a system that costs less.

Harry Potter should fix education...

Today the news came that Orlando will soon be the home of the Harry Potter theme park. After arriving at the airport, your first test of wizardry skill will be to see if you can avoid the toll road that is specifically design to remove cash from a tourist's wallet. It will be located at the Universal Theme park and be called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Visitors to the venue can explore Hogsmeade Station/Hogwartz Express, The Owlery, The Owl Post, and you'll be able to see magic performed as your wallet gets progressively lighter. You'll be able to head to Hogwarts Castle and Professor Snape will be there to put you in detention if you get our of line. There will be several rides planned that will allow one to get the feeling of being swept about in the warmth of the humid Florida climate. Most of you wonder if you'll get to ride on a broom? Let me tell you something: Sitting on a round stick that supports your weight is used as a torture technique in several places. Besides, think about this; even if there were flying brooms, would you want to re-use one after the last pair of sweaty cheeks in Orlando got off it?

Okay, I know after that appetizing thought, food will be out. It will be interesting to see people take to seeing Harry Potter in the flesh. Anyone who wanted to could have seen Daniel Radcliff's flesh in Equus. What a learning experience it must have been for the young who wanted to see Harry live. Speaking of learning experiences, this blog is supposed to cover education, not advertise for J.K. Rowling's expanding bankroll. Talk about magic!

The Harry Potter series has done a great deal to help get kids to read. Our current wizard is more like the man from Oz-bama than Dumbledore. The great wizard Ozbama is sitting behind the screen making proclamations about the greatness of his new health care plan. People claim that it will cost taxpayers over $800 billion over 10 years. The Ozbama can make that kind of money disappear faster than the Treasury can sell notes to China.

Meanwhile, in the back of his mind, Ozbama has ideas to promote education in the United States. Unfortunately, I believe that Harry Potter would have more success waving a wand and shouting "learnalot earnalot" than anything Ozbama has suggested thus far. Thus far, Ozbama has been more adept at saying "spendalot lendalot." We're all sort of hoping these spells do not backfire. I suppose we should all have faith.

The mighty wizard, Arne Dunbledore leads the Ozbama education campaign and we may see the whole Ozbama crew posing at the Wizarding World Theme Park in Orlando. We all know how much Ozbama likes a camera, and frankly, the camera likes him too. Hopefully Ozbama and Arne Dumbledore can make their way to Florida. Maybe they'll find some magic in the place; let's hope so because there is no magic in the Ozbama education policy.

Education Reform? Where is it?

Presidential Obama's educational reform ideas are are going to change much. They are similar to the George W. Bush reforms that forwarded ideas about giving people choice, but really didn't worry about the nuts and bolts of giving them an education. That would involve knowing what is going in education and knowing the root of problems in education.

What Obama and Bush are playing is a shell game. They shift responsibility for improving education to everything but the government (and themselves). If you open up these great new Charter schools, you've given people choice. It doesn't mean that you've offered them a better education, but choice has been put into the mix. Charter schools have not out-performed the normal public schools. Let's explain the free market system to Bush and Obama: you have to offer a better product! That's the problem.

So, read my book (Improving the Odds: A basis for long-term change) and it discusses that you actually have to improve the quality of the lesson in the classroom (the product) for schools and the education system to improve. Currently, our high-tech superpower of a nation ranks fairly low in the K-12 education world. It's hard to imagine that we can maintain our standard of living without maintaining our technical superiority. It isn't going to happen if we don't find better ways to deliver the goods.

Parents, Policymakers, and Truth

When looking at the wide divergence between parents and policymakers about school reform, the data shows that parents think the problems are social (cultural problems) and politicians tend to believe the problems are related to curriculum and standards. The teachers overwhelmingly favor the parents view and believe social habits and behavior of the current crop of kids is the largest problem.

The truth is, both sides are right. The data clearly shows that social factors such as parental income and education contribute mightily to both student and school success. Wealthier kids seem to go to better schools where achievement is measured by the number of kids who attend Ivy League schools each year. Poor kids measure success by the number of kids who don't drop out of school. In the poor school, the curriculum being taught is less rigorous than that taught in the wealthy school. The culture and societal factors affect the curriculum.

A survey then said that 69% of parents thought that their kids were "Ready for College." Surveys have also said that parents generally think that the schools that their kids attend is pretty good (74%). Policymakers think that we should ramp up the math and science skills of students, but parents think that science and math education is currently sufficient.

One would have to agree with the policymakers on this count. When one walks through the typical graduate engineering department at a University of California campus, one is often hard pressed to find a native-born American student in the program. Bill Gates has long decried the lack of qualified people to program computers. So, it would appear that we have not done an adequate job of pushing the math and science envelope.

The policymakers also tend to hear another startling statistic. When compared against other industrial nations, the United States is middle of the road academically. We are a country that is abandoning manufacturing to become a knowledge based economy. Problem is, it will be pretty tough for us to maintain a lead based on intellectual capital if our citizens are stuck in the middle of the intellectual pack.

The truth is, in our K-12 education system, we must do things better. We have to find ways to lift the American student out of the middle of the pack. Whether we like it or not, the expansion of knowledge has made education more important than ever. So, is academic rigor the problem? Is the crazy culture a problem? Yes and yes. The truth is, both problems have to be solved to get our schools to the level they need to be.

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.