People have a right to be concerned about the fate of U.S. public education, but I'd argue that much of their concern is wrongly placed. It is true that something is amiss. To me, much of what's wrong is rooted in education leaders' beliefs that the business model will save us, even though we have very little in common with that model.
Ah, but educators have never let irrelevance get in the way of our trendsetting.
Gone are the days when we sought out the input of teachers and students (although I'm not sure we've ever really sought out the input of our students--at least not enough) as we created public-school policies. These days, public-education leaders are anxiously elbowing each other in their enthusiasm to line up at the doorsteps of local businesses--these people are professionals, after all--ready to do whatever bidding these businessmen deem necessary " to save our sinking schools," which some cynics believe is really code for "to help train our new employees for us."
So enamored with the business model are these education leaders that they've even started to use new words for old things--always a warning sign to those keeping track. Gone are the principals--the go-to leaders in our schools--replaced with "administrators," whose job it seems is to do the bidding of those above them rather than to intervene for those who work below them.
I work with some terrific administrators--capable, creative, sharp folks who would readily go to bat for the rest of us. As much as they'd like to lead their flock, though, it seems that much of their time is spent delivering to us edicts that come from above. Essentially they've become middle managers, even though I'm pretty sure that they originally signed up to be leaders.
Another problem with education's fixation on the business model is that we've misinterpreted who our clients are. Why is it we continue to seek the input and direction, the approval and support of local businesses? Because we've mistaken them for our clients. Our clients are our students. It is true that many of them are poor, few of them can vote and none of them pays property taxes. But that doesn't make them something other than our clients. Why, then, do we spend so little time asking them what's working and what's not. Why don't we ask the students what they'd like us to offer?
Every business has a bottom line and that line comes down to costs and profits. I think one reason there are so many standardized tests administered in our public schools today is because we can think of no better way to report our profits to the public each year. Considering that it takes our clients at least 12 years to graduate from our programs, graduation rates don't hold the allure that standardized-test results offer to the public. The problem with this solution, though, is that we threaten our ability to create prophets--humans with a capability to lead--by focusing on these middling measures of our profits.
Not every problem in education has its roots in the business model, of course. Consider the slew of books written for educators, more and more of which teachers are being required to read. Too many of these books are written by people who spent nearly three years in the classroom, honing their expertise, until they realized they could make a heck of a lot more money telling other educators how do to their jobs than actually doing those jobs themselves. The tripe that passes for guidance in many of these books would make excellent bait for a catfish angler. Poorly written, often organized in a bulleted format (because well-formed sentences and paragraphs are so exhausting to write), few are deserving of the price tag placed upon them.
Another problem, frankly, is tenure. I know this is not a popular thing for me to say, unless you are a businessman (whose opinion, in this instance, should be sought and followed by educators) . But the truth is, if I'm no good at my job, I need someone else to train and support me so that I get better at that job. But if I continue to perform in a sub-par way, I should find a new profession. Obviously, tenure is important if it prevents someone from firing me for my beliefs or lifestyle, unless those things threaten someone's safety or interrupt the free flow of ideas and growth in our clients. But tenure as rubber stamp of approval isn't particularly helpful to a profession that has a reputation problem already.
If education can't shake its love affair with the business model, then I'd like to recommend one model in particular. Mark works as a cabinet maker at Duncan Aviation, an industry leader. There, employees work in creative collaboration with each other, encouraged by their leaders to take risks, explore new paths, learn from mistakes and build something even better and more beautiful than before. In an industry replete with uncountable hoops and regulations, Duncan is a leader because it listens to its workers, it trusts the ingenuity of the human mind, it knows the value of risking failure in order to find success.
Sounds like a perfect model for education, which is in desperate need of a new role model.
Sign me up.
No comments:
Post a Comment