Posts from — April 2007

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This article in the Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul) says that schools are asking parents NOT to take their children with them to work (for “Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day”) as they may miss taking the standardized test this week – and if they don’t take the test it might hurt the school.

Talk about having our priorities all upside down and backwards.

Children who head to work instead of tests may hurt schools
Some Minnesota school districts are asking parents not to participate in national “Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day” if their students are among those taking standardized tests this week, as missing test-takers put schools at risk of failing. School officials urged parents to instead bring students to the office in the summer or on school holidays. Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul) (4/24)

In an article by former Michigan State Superintendent of Schools he says that Michigan schools are not preparing young people for the 21st Century. As a respected educator I hope he is listened to (and it’s interesting to me he is using language that sounds a lot like a consultant – which he is!)…

As Michigan attempts to catch up with the 21st Century, this state must realize that our children have to compete with the children of the world, not just those from adjacent school districts or states. It is imperative that policy makers and educators address the fact that in a hyper-competitive, entrepreneurial, information age, the old way of providing education must be altered — and sooner rather than later. Michigan’s students must be the recipients of an agile system of education and public policies that effect substantive change.

Further on he says,

In a rapidly changing world, staying even is falling behind.

These are well articulated and clear challenges for education – and also one of the clear arguments for there being NO ONE RIGHT ANSWER for public education in this country.

One of the strategies our firm advocates as a viable strategy for enterprises to use to ‘catch up’ or ‘stay even’ is to increase their own capacity to learn. The faster an organization can learn the more capable they are in dealing with/adapting in a world of rapid change.

There are several viable strategies to consider to increase the capacity of an organization to learn. One of these strategies is to have many experiments taking place simultaneously to enable the organization to learn fast. Another way of saying that is to develop a capability to do rapid prototyping. Quick cycles of testing theories (plan, do, study, act).

Another strategy organizations can use is to do things in parallel instead of doing them in a serial fashion (doing things at the same time instead of one after the other). This strategy is not an easy one for older, western educated managers to learn but it’s really important to help shrink life cycles for product development, strategy development and innovation.

Click here to read the entire article by the former Michigan State Superintendent of Schools.

A recent study followed 1000 students starting when they were three years old and finished when they were 17 years old (which is now). The study, by a University of Virginia education professor, found little evidence of education that engages students or helps them learn to think and solve problems. Here’s a quote from an article about the study:

“We don’t see much opportunity for kids to be actively engaged in projects, or teachers interacting with kids individually or in small groups, in ways that could stimulate learning,” he said. “Students learn more math and become more literate when the instruction is focused not just on whether the kids know the right or wrong answer but encouraging understanding on a deeper conceptual level.”

I am an advocate for engaged, project based, collaborative learning – focused on real-world problems. I believe this is one of the only ways to break the bonds that have isolated school and education from the rest of life. We know far too much about the brain and how people actually learn to continue to have 90% of classrooms providing passive learning (lectures).

Access the rest of the article here.

Here’s a recent article in British News that tells about a study of British School Districts that used truancy notices for parents as well as other punitive measures such as jailing and fining the parents of students who missed school. They have discovered that these measure don’t work! It says that irresponsible parents may not be the main cause of truancy! The report calls for empowering parents rather than punishing them. What a concept…

Study: Parent fines fail to curb truancy
Penalizing parents for student truancy doesn’t work, a study finds. While the report’s author noted short-term improvement in some cases, he said there were no long-term beneficial effects on attendance observed in the 150 British districts that were studied over a three-year period. BBC (4/17)

I just read a blog post by Larry Cuban, professor emeritus at Stanford University that presents an argument that schools should not be run like businesses (using a business model) as there are important differences (Why Can’t Schools Be More Like Businesses?)

Here is my reply to his blog post:

The model of education presently employed is more than 100 years old. Education has fundamentally NOT changed at all in that time. The model is based on control and compliance and is NOT designed for people to think (or to learn to think). Business, in general, is based on the same fundamental model. In either sphere the one thing required to make a transformation is changing the way people think.

Both education and business are social systems. Social systems are the hardest systems to ‘control.’ Business, as a system has been forced to change. Today there is more tolerance and understanding that thinking, creativity, and innovation are valuable assets (knowledge and skills). Education as a system has, for the most part, kept itself isolated and separate from the rest of the world.

Whether education is a business or not is irrelevant. Some people are more successful running schools like businesses. Some aren’t.

What is relevant is breaking the bonds of isolation and making learning connected to the rest of life. What is relevant is changing the way we think about what school is, what its purpose is, how people learn. One size fits all is NOT a viable strategy. Educators know that. The education system doesn’t.