In researching for my most current book, I noted some reform trends that school districts adopted to address a school-wide problem. In past books on school reform, I came across the same reform trends, but, as these books went on to explain, these reform trends were at best quick fixes, not solutions. At worse, the problem deepened. Although the themes of my books are on reform failures, I thought I would devote this blog to the top trends in school reform efforts and why they are doomed to fail.
A Program, A Guru Will Save Us
If your district is making heroic efforts to solve a school-wide problem, there is more wrong with the school’s organization than what is perceived to be the problem. A well-run organization has embedded systems that work in perfect harmony to achieve the values, goals, and practices of the organization. When heroic efforts are called for, some systems are not functioning properly or the systems in place are not aligning with the values, goals, and practices of the school or district. Bringing in a Guru or adopting a program does not go to the source of the problem. It will worsen the problem by adding additional systems to faulty systems or adding values, goals, and practices that confuse or marginalize already established goals, values, and practices.
Raise the Bar
In the last decade, the go-to governmental intervention has been a form of “raising the bar.” Although school administrators, their boards, and state regulatory agencies would nod in agreement with this mandate, behind the closed doors of school offices, raising the bar dictates is interpreted as a threat: “Raise the bar or we will hurt you.” In the words of W. Edwards Deming: “Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.” And, as Deming predicted, inducing fear in school offices, has led to dishonest data and impaired performance.
Leave No Child Behind
A spinoff of raising the bar was a Presidential commitment to leaving no child behind. While on the face of it, who could disagree with leaving any child’s behind? The implementation of this seemingly worthwhile goal, however, was merely a variant of “raise the bar or we will hurt you.” Under this law schools were mandated to meet annual yearly progress targets (AYI) or receive a continuum of negative consequences from a needs improvement label to being taken over by state authorities.
Putting aside the questionable practice of measuring a school’s performance based on standardized testing programs, blaming schools for leaving children behind ignores the village where these children reside. No one institution in this village can be blamed for decades of societal neglect and outright discrimination that have denied children in these neighborhoods access to not only well-resourced schools, but adequate health care, well-paying jobs, affordable housing, and safe streets. Sanctioning schools for poor academic performance is just an exercise in blaming the victim.
Standardize Performance
Next to raising the bar, the other popular governmental intervention is standardizing performance and all the instructional tools associated with instructional performance. Although aspects of this reform movement have fallen out of favor, all fifty states now have adopted curriculum standards. Forty-one states have adopted the Common Core state standards initiative. Along with standardizing the content of the curriculum, many states have adopted some form of standards for teaching. The deep-seated problem with the standards movement is the act of teaching, in the real world of classrooms, is a highly idiosyncratic art that defies efforts to standardize or improve. The same could be about standardizing curriculum which is in direct opposition to school mission statements that proclaim their instructional programs develop the diverse talents, interests, and abilities of their student bodies.
Privatization
The newest trend on the school reform agenda is all forms of privatization, from charter schools to voucher systems. The thinking behind this movement is a combination of private sector managerial techniques, along with providing parents a seat at a zero-sum game where winners attend the best schools, and the losers are “left behind” in poorly performing schools. Putting aside the morality of setting up a system where the roll of the lottery dice determines the quality of schooling a child will receive, the privatization movement ignores two blunt realities: First, over the last decade at least, the performance of the private sector in this nation has been far from stellar. Second, the underlying assumption in this movement is that privatized schools have adopted innovative approaches to teaching and learning. They have not adopted innovative approaches to teaching. What their performance has benefitted from is a sorting system that picks and chooses what children will be left behind and what children will comply with a pedagogical regime that would fall far short of what contemporary research on effective teaching methodologies prescribes.
The Knight Riding in on a White Horse
When all of the above reform trends fail, school districts look for a Knight on a White Horse to rescue their instructional programs. The Knight is a Superintendent or Principal who has built a reputation for turning districts or schools around. The Knight on the White Horse solution has been popularized in several movies—Lean on Me, Stand and Deliver, The Pirates of Silicon Valley, The Social Network—where charismatic school leaders or private sector CEOs, literally raise test scores, restore school discipline, and make billions on innovative ideas and organizational structures.
Although the Knight on a White Horse is a popular narrative in entertainment venues, it suffers from the three blunt realities of institutional schooling: First, by their very nature, they are a rare breed, even rarer in the public sector whose compensation packages fall far below what Knights are paid in the private sector. Secondly, the incentive and organization tools Knights employ in the private sector are either unavailable in the public sector—incentive pay structures—or are in opposition to teacher mindsets valuing affiliation with colleagues and students over the competitive mindsets of their private sector counterparts. Lastly, the disruptive skills of the Knight on a White Horse travel poorly in institutional environments that value certainty over novelty. To put it another way, the disruption of institutions and the effective operations of institutional systems involve two entirely different leadership skill sets. I will not go into the particulars of each leadership skill set, but, suffice it to say, that after Knight rides out on his White Horse it takes a great deal of patience, attention to detail, and coaching skills to put the stable back in order.
Alan C. Jones 