Posts from — April 2005

I just read an article in BusinessWeek about Arnold Schwarzenegger (Governor of CA) attempting to push pay for performance for California’s teachers. Nothing could be further from the ‘right answer’ for education. It’s upsurd to think that paying teachers to get students to perform on tests will improve the education system. Does anyone understand systems thinking?

This argument is becoming more and more prevalent across the US. More and more communities are putting pressure on teachers to conform and as most people involved in education know, more and more emphasis is being put on standards and standardized testing to measure the ‘quality of a teacher’ and the ‘quality of a school’.

From my point of view these people are asking the wrong question. Maybe the question that needs to be asked is: who is responsible for a learners learning?

Whatever happened to the idea of creating an environment where young people are curious and want to learn? What ever happened to the learner in all of this? The focus on testing and pay for performance for teachers will only make matters worse. We’re forgetting the most important person in the equation – the learner.

Do test scores measure learning? knowledge? understanding? wisdom? Do test scores measure the performance of teachers?

Back to this ‘fundamental question’ – who is responsible for a learners learning?

Who is responsible for my learning?

I am!

Find anyone that has been successful in school or any other endeavor and ask them who is responsible for their learning? I will bet money they will tell you they are responsible for their own learning. They may have had a person or two in their lives that encouraged them to take responsibility for their learning but I can bet they didn’t like nor would they tolerate someone else imposing their agenda for learning on them. I would bet that these people have had one or more incredibly powerful and influential people in their lives that encouraged them, provoked them, challenged them and probably pissed them off at some point. But these people were critical in their development and critical in inspiring them to learn and be successful in life.

My own story is an example of this. About 33 years ago (in 11th grade) I woke up one morning and asked myself why I went to school – and more importantly – who I went to school for? As soon as I realized that I went to school for me, I also realized that I would no longer go to school for someone else (for teachers, for my parents, for society, or for anyone).

That day I went to school and informed my teachers that I would no longer come to school for them – and hence, if I showed up in their classroom I was there to learn something, and they had better have something to teach – or I wouldn’t show up any longer.

After that day I began a journey that has included many mentors and coaches. That journey included meeting and being influenced by remarkable people from all walks of life. A few of these people are the likes of Buckminster Fuller and W. Edwards Deming. These people challenged me and they also had something for me to learn (lots of somethings!). And they inspired continuous learning!

Forcing teachers to perform by getting students to do better on standardized tests will not inspire anyone to do anything other than get a score on a test (and most likely inspire them to do anything possible to get out of that system as soon as possible). Drop out rates are already 30-40% in the US high school. That’s before No Child Left Behind and all this pay for performance bunk. If this kind of movement continues it will only get worse.

Anyone participating in the process of educational change or anyone who is thinking about making changes to a school or school system is faced with making several significant choices. These choices are not typically addressed consciously and yet they impact every other choice that’s made along the way.

These ‘choices’ are actually answers to several questions. These answers begin to uncover some fundamental beliefs about the nature of human beings and how human beings learn. From my point of view, these ‘questions’ cut at the very core of any educational change process.

The first question is one that determines the systemic ‘vantage point’.

Question: Is education as we know it fundamentally flawed and hence needing redesign?

or

Is education as we know it generally working and simply needing improvement?

At first glance the significance of this question may not be apparent as I think most people who engage in thinking about education and learning have a strong desire to improve what we currently call ’school’. The significance of this question – or it’s answer – is the clarification of a systemic vantage point. This systemic view will determine ‘a path’ in which the process of change will travel. In many cases answering this question will save the change agents significant heartache (not to mention time and energy). Improvement and redesign (design) are completely different activities and require different strategies, different types of knowledge, different skills, different resources and require different kinds of effort (hence time).

Improvement

If an individual or group of people believe that education is generally working and simply needs improving then the universe of possible solutions (or improvements) will lie within a certain bandwidth of options (or ‘right answers’). If improvement is the approach taken to educational change that implies then a series of follow-on questions that need to be asked. Those questions include but are not limited to are:

What should we improve? Why?

What improvement will make the most difference (provide the most bang for the buck so to speak)? What shouldn’t be improved? Is anything sacred (beyond question)?

How will we know things have improved? How do we define improvement (what is ‘improved’)?

Redesign

If an individual or group of people believe that education as they know it is fundamentally flawed and needs redesign, then the universe of possibilities (or right answers) becomes very different from the universe of possibilities that an improvement focus provides.

Essentially this individual or group has engaged in a design process and as such has embarked on a journey that, by definition, will have a uniquely different ‘right answer’ for each group that takes this path.

A design process often begins with a relatively clean slate and has no preconceived answer built in. This is a wholly different and much more complex process then improvement and yields wildly different results (potentially).

If redesign is the approach taken to educational change then the next series of questions needing to be asked include:

What is the purpose of education?

What is learning? What is education? Who’s responsibility is it for a learner’s learning?

If we had an education system why would we want one?

A follow-on question that needs to be answered prior to beginning any educational change process determines the human vantage point.

Question: Are human beings born good and ‘learn’ to be bad?

or

Are human beings born bad and need to be made good?

Again, the significance of this question may not be apparent at first glance but the answer to this question begins to get at some very core beliefs about human beings and human nature. The beliefs we have about human beings and human nature determine our approach to learning and significantly impact our ability to ’see possibilities’ for human potential.

The ‘universe of possibilities’ available to an aspirant for change will be shaped by their beliefs about human potential. These beliefs will color one’s approach to learning. In addition, there is a lot of research on the brain and how humans learn but our beliefs will have an influence on how we view this research and how we might utilize it.

Since it was the gift of the book The Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business by Dennis Littky that inspired me to begin writing again, I would like to offer this:

To anyone that is serious about education (not schooling) or anyone that has embarked on a change process in any kind of educational institution – I would highly recommend reading this book and learning more about the Big Picture Schools and the work they are doing. His book and his web site have many things in them to be inspired about.

If you are not inspired at least these ideas will spark conversation – and possibly questions – and it’s these conversations and questions that will lead to real dialog about meaningful change that can be made in education.

In early 1999 I hosted a handful of teachers in a unique work environment I was helping to develop in Palo Alto, California. As I escorted these teachers through this environment and explained some of the things we did there the teachers asked me a lot of questions about a number of topics I thought were common knowledge – given I had been talking with colleagues about these ideas for almost 20 years (at that point).

Even though there were a couple of pieces of work by the Caine’s (Renata and Geoffrey Caine) at this time, after this group of teachers left I realized that these topics and ideas were not as commonly known as I had thought – particularly in the world of education – so I decided to write a book that would articulate these ideas. I created a working title for the book as: There is No One Right Answer – a case for reinventing public education.

After that I wrote several chapters and published them to the InnovationLabs web site. But since then, during the last 6 years I haven’t written much more – but instead have been busy working with educators all over the US.

Last week after working with a small group of educators I was handed a book entitled: The Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business. Reading through it I saw many things that moved and inspired me. That experience as lead to this – I’m beginning to write again – but this time to use this blog as a tool to instigate me to write and as a publishing medium. I don’t know if I will ever finish a book but at this point I’m committed to putting my thoughts and musings down here.

If, during reading any of this, the reader is inspired to have a more in depth conversation about any of it I welcome that – please contact me at: mkaufman@innovationlabs.com.