Ted
Kolderie, “How to Bust Through the Inertia in the Public Schools,” Star Tribune, 30 September 2018
The public schools are stagnant.
Leaders and would-be leaders must stop resisting questions as to how a
big systems can be changed.
After decades of discouraging reports about
student learning, Minnesotans are entitled to hear serious ideas from their
elected officials and candidates about how to improve so important a system as
public education.
We are not getting that discussion: we’re not getting good thinking about why
academic performance is so flat and progress is so slow.
Democratic candidates, here as everywhere,
talk about “adequate funding” and early childhood programs. Republicans talk about choice and
vouchers. Everyone deplores the low
level of learning; everyone wants better
results. Few talk seriously about what’s
causing the prblems or what realistically to do about them.
Heavy focus on the “achievement gap” might
suggest the education problem exists only in Minneapolis and St. Paul. It’s better, actually to think about “the
gap” between what students everywhere in Minnesota are learning and what they
should--- or could--- be learning.
The effort to get at the policy problem in
K-12 should begin with a conversation about what and where the problem is.
Consultant Tom Veblen identifies
problem-definition as the most difficult challenge problem solvers face. He grew up in Hallock, Minn., worked 20 years
for Cargill, was in the first class of White House Fellows in 1965-66 and spent
the rest of his career as a consultant for organizations in the “world food
system.”
The education policy discussion is a kind
of consulting.
“Deep-seated problems,” Veblen writes, “are
multi-dimensional and excruciatingly difficult to define. This means the diagnostic phase of a
consulting engagement is indispensable.
“Most clients don’t see it that way… . Only
when the things they have tried have failed do they seek outside help. Paid to developed define and solve problems,
they are hardly disposed to question their own understanding… . They seek treatment, not diagnosis… . and the client almost always has a wrong
definition [of the problem], an almost always eloquently states wrong
definition… .”
That fits education, which has long
resisted questions about organizational design.
For years its leadership insisted the problem was that the Legislature
was not providing enough money. The “Nation at Risk Report” in 1983 declared a
need for change, but when ensuing discussions about “restructuring” led
nowhere, the notion developed that the educational system and the structure of
the school were fine. The problem was
low performance and lack of accountability.
From that came the push for standards and testing.
Today it’s clearer that the problem is one
of design. Institutions are designed for
the job they’re assigned to perform.
They need to be redesigned when the job changes. Over many years Minnesota has redesigned most
of its governmental institutions but has been slow to get to public
education. Until recently we were trying
to meet a (now) 21st century challenge with a system of schools
designed for a 19th century society and economy.
Between 1985 and 1991, however, the state
made a critical start. In opening the
system, it ended the public-utility arrangement. Interdistrict enrollment meant students no
longer had to go to school where they lived.
The postsecondary option and chartering made it possible for
organizations other that the school district to offer public education.
That dramatic change shapes today’s policy
challenge, which is for the state to give school districts the flexibility to
pick up the new approaches to learning
and the different forms of school appearing in other districts and
states, in the charter sector and, increasingly, online.
Two decades ago, three leading
superintendents saw that need: Don
Helmstetter, then president of the Minnesota Association of School
Administrators (MASA), Tom Nelson, a former commissioner of education, and Jim
Walker, a Minnesota “superintendent of the year,” asked their associations to
urge the Legislature to enlarge district’s ability to respond. MASA and the school boards association
listened. But they did nothing.
Since 1998, the need has only grown, with
still no initiative from the K-12 associations.
Clearly, action will require a political push--- which is what has moved education policy in
this state before.
With five weeks to go in the 1970
gubernatorial campaign, Wendell Anderson came out for a Citizens League
proposal to restore equalization in school finance; he won---
and saw the “Minnesota Miracle” enacted in a bipartisan way in 1971.
In 1985, Gov. Rudy Perpich endorsed a
proposal from the Minnesota Business partnership for interdistrict choice. It was in operation by 1988. State Rep. Connie Levi attached the
postsecondary option to that legislation.
In 1991, state Sen. Ember Reichgott and state Rep. Becky Kelso
championed chartering.
Interestingly, most (not all) expansion of
choice has been pushed through by DFLers.
This is not surprising: The
support for choice is largely in the party’s constituency. It is found among parents who themselves have
not finished or gone beyond high school;
among lower-income families; in
the cities; and among people of color.
State action needn’t be a mandate. To increase the capacity of school districts
to adapt, the Legislature could do now what it did years ago to enlarge the
capacity of (then) “village” governments to handle the rush of suburban
development after World War II. The
state established in law three “optional plans” designed to help municipalities
meet their challenges and a process by which one of the plans could be adopted
by local voters. (For early thinking
about possible new forms of school district organization, go to http://bit.ly/SelfImprovingSystem .)
The question will then be what a redesigned
district should do.
Getting beyond the status quo will require
a fundamentally new approach to change.
The tradition has been to make marginal improvements on the familiar way
of doing things. Boards are usually
ready with ideas of that sort, about how “we”--- from the top--- will now do better. The hard thing is to move beyond the
traditional: toward personalized
learning, letting students move at their own pace, making learning
project-based, delegating more decisions to the schools.
Not everyone is ready for the radically
different. Those wanting the different
will be the minority, opposed by the majority that emphatically does not.
Centralized as it is, districts do not do
“different” well. Boards find the
different politically uncomfortable.
Different can create controversy and animosity, can complicate an
election. It seems more practical to
keep things the same across the schools and down through time.
So, with opinion divided, proposals for
major change are likely to be rejected---
or so heavily compromised as to have little effect.
“Radical” change “at scale” is a
contradiction in terms.
Success lies in starting small, with those
who are ready for change; devolving
decisions about learning to the schools and the teachers, then letting their
innovations spread as others find they too are ready. This is the way large systems change, as
illustrated in the famous curve graph of Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of
Innovations: with new ideas flowing from
“early adopters” to the “laggards.”
The reality of gradual change will distress
those pushing to have all schools to become better now. But the Legislature cannot enact good
schools: It can only create a system
that will in time create good schools.
What’s needed is a form of district
organization where leadership fosters “a climate of encouragement for
innovation at the front-line level”---
to take historian Paul Kennedy’s description in his book “Engineers of
Victory” of the role of leadership in winning World War II.
The state needs to move districts into a
new model that is able to do both incremental and radical change, both
innovation and improvement--- and is
willing to allow teachers more involvement in professional issues, from which
they were excluded when bargaining appeared in 1960. The idea is for schools to focus on ways to
motivate teachers and students. Larger
professional responsibilities will motivate teachers. Personalizing learning will motivate
students. Motivation matters for engagement,
and engagement matters for learning.
Letting teachers lead the learning is the
approach most conspicuously not yet tried for public education. It is time for it to be tried. Teachers will change school more dramatically
than boards will.
The political leadership will find support
for that. Thoughtful superintendents and
board members understand they have to make their schools attractive--- and so they have to change. Mayors and city council members want schools
doing more vocational programs, to help their local economies. There is widespread interest in--- and support for--- enlarging teachers’ professional
roles (see www.teacherpower.org). Significant interest exists now inside the
unions.
DFLers and Republicans will argue about the
half of education policy that involves money.
Imagine if they would agree on the policy half--- agree, literally, that whichever party wins,
Minnesota will have self-improving systems of public education with innovation
developing in the charter, alternative and online sectors and diffusing
gradually through the district sector.
On such a pro-district, pro-teacher,
pro-student agenda, why wouldn’t they agree?
In private moments, former president of the
Minnesota Education Association Bob Astrup described public education as “torqued
out”--- like the stick-shift car that in
first gear will go no faster no matter how much gas you give it. It was time, he meant, to give it another
gear.
The auto industry introduced automatic
transmissions in the 1940s. It’s time to
create something like that for public education, arranging for school --- teaching and learning--- to shift smoothly into new and different
forms as needs change and opportunities arise.
No comments:
Post a Comment