Building Human & Social Capital for Improving Education

Nearly everyone involved in the work of improving or reforming education acknowledges the importance of the people working in our schools as perhaps the most critically important lever to improve learning. Even with technological advances, education remains primarily an endeavor driven by teachers, administrators and those in supporting roles in schools. As an extension, the success, mediocrity, or failure of our schools also rides on the qualities, capacities and talents of the people working with our students.

Hard-charging education reformers put a tremendous amount of faith in the ability of “human capital” systems to deliver educators with the abilities we need to dramatically improve our schools. Using strategies related to human resource processes like recruitment, selectivity, performance management (including evaluation), compensation, and dismissal – this “human capital” frame holds that if schools would use theses human resource processes more effectively the result would be a more capable educator workforce. This viewpoint primarily puts the individual educator as the central point where we should focus our attention and work for improvement.

Juxtaposed against the human capital frame is another viewpoint that great educators emerge from collaborative and collegial environments where educators are given the opportunity to learn from each other, plan together, build relationships among staff and students, be involved in key decisions, and work in an environment where they have the tools and resources to succeed. This “social capital” frame holds that it’s not the people that are the problem, it’s the system (or lack thereof) in which educators are working that is the problem.

It’s difficult (at least for me) to take a hard line against either of these views. It is disingenuous to argue that talent and ability doesn’t matter. Further, it is also disingenuous to say our human capital systems in education are anywhere near as effective as they could or should be. Differences do exist in educator quality that can be attributed to the capabilities and talents of individual educators. Failure to acknowledge or address human capital concerns (or the more common tactic of trying to advance some excuse or “red herring” to distract the argument) does little to advance us toward the common goal of a better education for all of our students.

It is equally insincere to argue that the systems and supports in which people work don’t matter. Anyone who has had the experience of working as part of a high quality, high functioning team or organization knows that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts and that collective capacity trumps individual heroism when it comes to delivering quality on a consistent basis. On the flip side, anyone who has had to work in a dysfunctional environment or under a tyrannical boss knows that bad culture kills productivity and creativity.

Somehow, the debate on improving education in this country has got to reconcile these two ideas of human and social capital. Too often we place them in contrast to one another when we should be considering how they can (and should) be used to compliment each other.

We aren’t going to achieve greatness through a pure reliance on draconian, Kafkaesque systems of individual accountability. We also can’t achieve greatness through the liberal use of some professional Kumbayah circle.

Talent, intelligence, and ability matter. So do connections, belonging, and love.

For the sake of the American education system (and more importantly our children), we’d better figure it out sooner than later.

Finding the Meaning of Leadership

Photo courtesy of "Dyanna" via Flickr

The always engaging and dynamic Dr. Troyce Fisher with the School Administrators of Iowa asked me to be a provocateur for a state group working on leadership in education. Troyce specifically asked “What do Iowa education leaders need to do to restore Iowa’s schools to best in the nation?” With hopes of raising the discussion on the meaning of leadership across our state, I am presenting my words here. The listing below contains what I consider the essential qualities real education leaders must have.

1. Get the goals right.

The question posed of “what must Iowa leaders to to restore the state’s education system to best in the nation” isn’t the right goal.

It’s not St. Paul; it’s Shanghai. It’s not South Dakota; its South Korea. Our expectations have to be higher. Best in the world – that is the only goal. We can accept no substitutes.

The October blueprint we released contained a huge number of strategies and ideas. Some of them made sense for the state, some didn’t. Some made it to the Governor’s plan, some didn’t. While we continue to argue about those strategies today, they weren’t what was most important. The first page of the document, which contained the title and the vision, was the most important.

We called the blueprint “World Class Schools for Iowa – One Unshakable Vision.” People had a lot of fun with that. It was a good punchline for those who wanted to disparage the effort of dramatically improving our schools in Iowa. Despite the detractors, we set the vision and the tone. It is about getting our schools to be among the best in the world. There can be no other goal.

If Iowa loses this focus, this “unshakable vision,” then we are finished before we even really begin.

2. Be adaptive.

The pace of change is just going to keep accelerating. Get used to it.

The world is faster now. It demands that we change, and then change again, and then change again. And this world is relentless and merciless when it comes to whether or not we adapt and improve.

Workers in other nations are now entering the global economy with the same, or superior skills, to Americans. In this era of intellectual commerce and instantaneous data transactions – location and natural resource advantages mean less and less.

We should ask ourselves: “Why will employers continue to pay American workers higher pay for the same quality they could get in other places at less cost?” We already know the answer … they won’t, and they increasingly aren’t. We have to adapt as leaders and push our education system to adapt to the furious pace this global economy demands.

3. Reject “change without change.”

We must never accept the appearance of improvement while actually perpetuating the status quo as any substitute for meaningful change.

Iowa is very guilty of this. While incremental change is laudable, it is also expected. We shouldn’t congratulate ourselves for a “job well done” because we made incremental improvements. If you aren’t getting better, you are getting worse. So, incremental change only allows you to keep the pace. Don’t confuse incremental change (which only allows you to survive) with real improvement.

It’s not enough to inch things along, call it a victory and pat ourselves on the back. For Iowa to build a world class school system, we’ve got to reject “change without change” as a viable long term strategy.

4. Find the courage to risk.

It’s always easier to say “no.” It takes guts, leadership, and determination to find our way to “yes.”

We shroud ourselves in “no” because it creates the illusion of safety and security. We might console ourselves by saying at least we know what to expect, or things will at least be predictable and this somehow justifies a position of blocking or saying no.

But that ignores the slower and more insidious danger of failing to risk. Failing to risk makes us, and our schools, more outdated and ineffective by the moment.

Again, it’s easy to say “no.” It takes guts, leadership, and determination to find our way to “yes.”

5. Fail - but (and more importantly) get up and go at it again.

Everyone gets tired of sports analogies, so I apologize in advance.

Arguably and perhaps the greatest and most successful athlete of our time is Michael Jordan.

Jordan said “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

We can’t be afraid of failure. Meaningful change involves things going wrong. Let me emphasize again … if you are enacting a meaningful change SOMETHING is GOING to go wrong.

Our future leaders will need to fail, learn, and go back at it again, and again – as many times as it takes.

6. Go big.

What we don’t need – more pilots, programs & small scale projects. We need ideas that take people’s breath away. We are already behind and we need rapid advancement in dramatic ways. Arguments for tinkering when major change is needed are just cowardice in disguise.

We need changes, improvements, and investments on the scale of the problems we face and this lesson goes beyond just education.

7. Take the heat.

You are the leader – it’s your job to take the shots, handle the pressure, be abused, be unpopular … and still keep pressing for improvement.

If you aren’t making people uncomfortable, you aren’t doing your job. Let me clarify, if you aren’t making “the right” people uncomfortable, you aren’t doing your job.

If you aren’t confronting the meaningful problems – you aren’t doing your job. We have lots of in-name-only “leaders” confronting problems that don’t really matter.

If you aren’t causing a commotion, causing a debate, causing a stir … you aren’t doing your job.

We need leaders who are willing and able to (gracefully, intentionally, respectfully) apply the pressure … and take the heat.

Acknowledgement to Phil Wise for some wisdom related to this post.

On Evaluations…

Photo courtesy of Chris Palmer via Flickr

The Widget Effect called us out. Education does a pitifully poor job of acknowledging, recognizing, and acting on differences in educator quality.

Perhaps some of this stems from the fact our field is much more about “support and celebrate” than “punish and shame.” But we aren’t even doing the “support and celebrate” part very well when it comes to recognizing great teaching. Even holding the “fire bad teachers” debate at bay for the moment, are we identifying the most effective and talented teachers we have, celebrating them, and then finding ways to use them in supportive roles to spread their effectiveness and expertise? I’d argue that, for the most part, the answer is no.

Several issues relating to educator evaluation have emerged recently, calling for us to redesign and improve our evaluation systems. First, waivers for increased accountability flexibility from No Child Left Behind require that states improve their evaluation systems to provide regular and more meaningful feedback to educators. Second, the InTASC Standards present a national framework for what good teaching is and how it could be measured from preservice through inservice. Finally, within a few weeks of each other, two studies have recently emerged concerning measures of educator effectiveness and its impact on students’ lives. The Gates’ Foundation work around Measures of Effective Teaching released its Gathering Feedback for Teaching report which positively and significantly correlates a number of teacher evaluation systems with student results and Harvard economists demonstrate that “teachers’ impacts on students are substantial” in terms of increased lifetime earnings for student who have more effective teachers.

So let’s sum up what we know:

1. There is variation in educator effectiveness (teachers aren’t all the same).
2. The components of effective teaching are known.
3. Effective teaching can be validly and reliably measured.
4. Effective teaching has an impact on students’ lives.
5. We, for the most part, ignore all of the above.

Most evaluation systems are “drive-by” and once-every-three-years measures that fail to accurately measure anything and provide little meaningful information. We go through the motions where the forms come out, an observation happens, everyone signs the papers, and then into the file drawer it goes. If this is all we are going to do, it would be a more productive use of everyone’s time to just drop the evaluation process altogether.

Improving evaluation systems means creating measures that both discern effective teaching and provide meaningful, individualized and “at the shoulder” supports for how to improve. So let’s not push against efforts to define, measure, and spread effective teaching. Given the evidence at hand, this is exactly the work we need to be engaged in.

Keynote Remarks for the IASB Annual Conference

Acknowledgement to Battelle for Kids Executive Director Jim Mahoney for the inspiration and structure of this speech.

Good afternoon and thank you so much for the honor of being here to close down what has been a very successful conference. I’d like to express my appreciation to all the education leaders here, especially school board members. Your love, dedication, and service to your communities inspires us all. Thank you for everything you do to help move Iowa’s schools from good to great to world-class.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a book a couple of years ago titled “Eat, Pray, Love” that chronicled her personal journey from a tough period in her life to a better place. My wife has both read the book and seen the movie. I’ve been resistant to both, for obvious reasons! I believe Brad Pitt is a lead character in the movie, who incidentally bears a striking resemblance to Governor Branstad. Words of wisdom – take every available opportunity to butter up the boss!

In her personal journey, Gilbert related her story to “Eat,” meaning have fun and enjoy life’s blessings, “Pray” in attending to the importance of her spiritual journey, and “Love” in her work to build meaningful relationships with people in her life.

I’d like to share with you my three concepts relating to the work all of us have to do as education leaders. I think these three concepts are important to any leader doing the important work of improving schools, but I hope you will consider and ask what your three concepts might be as well.

First, Courage – Let’s start with an assumption about better schools. “All the easy stuff has already been done. The low hanging fruits have already been picked. The slow, fat rabbits have already been cooked.”

Because of this, leading meaningful change for everyone in this room means confronting difficult issues, entrenched positions, and wicked/complex/vexing problems.

Confronting the important issues comes with conflict, contention, and pressures that will have an effect on even the strongest among us. There is an undeniable cost associated with leadership … this is a sacrifice that everyone in this room has signed up for out of love for your kids and your communities.

Leadership involves having the courage to take on the meaningful issues irrespective of that cost. It takes courage to pressure your organizations into a place of disequilibrium, uncomfortableness, and uncertainty and also be willing to serve as beacons of strength, persistence, and commitment in the uneven and imperfect process of change.

It takes courage to press for meaningful change. For the sake of our children – we must have that courage.

Next, Curiosity – futurist and author Seth Godin wrote that we are all born with innate curiosity and incredible imagination. At age 2 we are all musicians, experimenting with sounds on pots and pans and our own voices. At age 4 we are all artists, experimenting with shape, color, line – engaged in the work of creation. At around age 7 some amazing teacher has taught us to read and we are all poets, combining words and sounds in unusual, fun ways. Perhaps at age 10 we all become scientists, collecting and experimenting with the world around us – raising all sorts of interesting questions and looking for evidence of truth.

A sad fact for all of us is that as we become adults, many of us lose this natural curiosity.

And in many cases we lose curiosity out of the very adult need to be “right.”

Sometimes we become too preoccupied with winning the moment or the debate – we lose track of the fact that our lives are a process of learning and learning requires curiosity. If you aren’t learning and growing, you aren’t living and so long as we retain that capacity to learn and grow – we thrive. It’s not about always being “right,” it should be about always learning.

The more we make our lives about winning the arguments instead of learning the lessons – the more we lose one of the great joys of our human existence.

Everyone in this room is an education leader. If you haven’t already felt it, enormous pressure will be put on all of us to have all the answers, to come up with the easy solutions, and to make mistake free decisions and live mistake free lives – as if that were even possible.

While we must do our best to make good decisions that are often technical in nature, we must also work to protect our fundamental curiosity – that spark of question and imagination that makes learning possible and keeps all of us growing.

Protecting our curiosity keeps us all learners.

Finally, Commitment – everyone in this room shares a deep commitment born out of love for our children, our schools, our neighbors, and our communities.

We all want a better education system, but the process of getting them involves a meaningful, personal, and even spiritual commitment to the moral importance and purpose of this work.

All of us have to make this commitment to better schools a driving part of all our lives.

Real improvement is difficult, challenging, messy, iterative work – but our schools so desperately need a genuine – an honest – a meaningful commitment from every education leader that we will put ourselves on the line, as many times as that takes, to bring about the meaningful changes and improvements our schools require.

I believe these three concepts of “Courage, Curiosity, and Commitment” are valuable and important to any leader. I hope my thinking has been in some way of service to you in your work toward better schools for your community. I am honored to be with you today and please know you have my best wishes in the days to come.

Fundamental Attribution Error & Improving Education

One of the more common and vexing problems of human behavior is that we tend to point the finger of blame toward an individual person or group when something goes wrong, an outcome isn’t achieved, or behavior isn’t exactly what we’d like it to be.

It’s their “fault,” or “someone didn’t do their job,” or “someone has to be held accountable.” More often than not, the issue isn’t with an individual person or group of people. More frequently, the real issue is with the systems or conditions in which people are working or living.

Social psychologists call this effect “fundamental attribution error,” or more simply the tendency we have to blame people for systems issues.

Teachers get this all the time, and both the “blame teachers” movement and the counter-reaction against it are real life examples of fundamental attribution error gone off the deep end. Sure, there are ineffective educators – everyone knows this and probably has even had a few. But more often than not, it’s not the teacher that is failing, it’s the system the teacher is in.

We do the same thing with administrators. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard “if principals would just do their jobs.” This comes up a lot in matters related to evaluation. The logic is that if principals would just do their jobs related to evaluation, we wouldn’t have an ineffective educator problem and would be able to remove those that aren’t effective.

But the principals, more often than not, don’t do their jobs when it comes to evaluation. Frequently when they do, it’s a drive-by assessment with little meaningful feedback or improvement. But is it really the principal, or is it the system we’ve put this person in?

And we do have ineffective educators – many of whom have the potential to get better and maybe even become great teachers. But they work in substandard conditions and have no real support systems about what “better” even looks like or how they might get there.

Our answer lies less in individual accountability, though that is important, and more in better systems.

The next time you hear someone make the fundamental attribution error, call it out. Our thinking has to change.

Jason Glass
Des Moines, IA

Superman

I caught some of the Discovery Channel’s excellent documentary Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero this past week. I would highly recommend watching some or all of it if you have the chance. The program certainly stirs up lots of emotions and memories of that terrible day, now nearly 10 years ago. It gracefully touches on the sorrow and loss our country experienced in those awful hours, but also appeals to our “better angels” and asks us to raise our eyes and look ahead.

About a month after the tragedy, several musicians performed at Madison Square Garden for an event called “The Concert for New York.” One performance that still sticks with me was Five for Fighting’s “Superman”, which had an exceptionally poignant message about heroes and our definition of them. The term “hero” certainly took on a different definition for me at the thought of the firefighters and police officers who charged up those stairs with the singular and noble purpose of helping others, with little regard for themselves or their own safety.

That day changed my view of heroism. Now, I know that real heroes are people who put others ahead of themselves and are willing to sacrifice for the betterment of others. As an educator, I get to work with these kinds of people every day. What an incredible blessing…

If we stopped to notice, real “supermen” (and women) are everywhere. Unsung, infrequently noticed, taken for granted … but still there. That’s unfortunate but of no real import as true heroes aren’t concerned with the recognition or the acclaim anyway. What matters to them is the often quiet and patient work of helping others. Saving lives (more often than not) happens with persistence, genuine love for others, and just being there – not in “leaps and bounds.”

I think the challenge for all of us isn’t to try and recognize and thank more heroes, although that’s important. The real challenge is to try and live our lives with a spirit of service that puts the needs of others ahead of our own.

We all have the choice…

What Motivates Teachers?

I know some things about teachers. You see, the people I love most in this world are teachers. My parents were both teachers and inspired me to enter this profession. My wife is a teacher. Some years ago, in the small Appalachian town of Hazard, Kentucky even I was a teacher. So when we talk about the teaching profession, keep in mind … this is personal to me.

In what’s unfortunately turning into a bona-fide “blog feud” between Jennifer Hemmingsen and I on educator compensation, Hemmingsen asks the important question of “what motivates teachers” and openly asks me for a response.

First, I have to say how disappointed I was in Hemmingsen for citing parts of an unpublished draft of my dissertation. I provided a draft version to the media with the caveat that it was still in the final proofing phase before being sent for binding and inclusion with the Seton Hall library. It is disappointing that Hemmingsen violated the trust I had when making the document available for media review. Sadly, I guess I’ve learned a lesson.

Even more disappointing is the fact that Hemmingsen cherry picks some of my findings to bolster her own predisposition while leaving the other half of my conclusions out of her discussion. However, in keeping with the “card game” metaphor we seem to be developing in our back and forth, it’s clear to me that academic scholarship trumps ‘gotcha’ editorials. You see, I have a responsibility in academic writing to provide a balanced and honest point of view and to critique the weaknesses of my own arguments. It would appear some editorial writers do not operate under the same ethos.

But let’s get past the personal level of this discussion and get to the policy question, which is ultimately the more important component.

The question of “what motivates teachers” was the subject of my dissertation. In a nutshell, I asked the question of whether teachers were motivated for money and economics or motivated to help kids and to be part of something greater than themselves. The answer … “yes.”

In studying the Eagle County School district (which arguably has one of the longest running and most interesting stories on performance based compensation) I found, overwhelmingly and not surprisingly, that teachers were primarily motivated to help kids. Teachers were also heavily motivated by the concept of being part of something greater than themselves, a concept noted in the literature as “public service motivation theory.”

However, I also found that although the altruistic motivators were clearly strongest, teachers also paid more attention to those things compensation was attached to (evaluation and assessment results in Eagle County’s case).

So, it’s not one or the other, but both. Teachers are motivated to help kids. Teachers are also rational people who pay attention to economic incentives.

I’ve used my findings as a possible explanation for why simple “cash for test scores” or “merit pay” schemes fail to raise student achievement. These approaches, by themselves, they don’t pull at the major levers in what motivates teachers and they usually don’t come with any real supports to help teachers improve their craft and learn from each other.

My conclusions were that we should avoid simplistic approaches advanced by many on the “performance pay” side of the argument, but we should also avoid a defense of the status quo “step and lane” system.

Deci and Ryan’s work was made popular by writer Daniel Pink, who said that compensation systems must be “adequate and fair.” I would argue the industrial “step and lane” pay system is neither and we have a great deal of evidence that educators are responding to its incentives in ways that lead us to perverse outcomes. For example, nearly 50% of educators nationally obtain advanced degrees that have an incredibly poor research track record of success in improving teaching. Compare this with the estimated 10% of Americans who have advanced degrees overall.

Think that has something to do with the ongoing compensation incentives provided with a “lane” change? I certainly do.

Frederick Herzberg also wrote about this nearly 40 years ago and told us that while compensation wasn’t necessarily a “motivator” for improvement, it did have the capacity to “demotivate” if it weren’t well attended to. I’d hold up the evidence around attrition for teachers early in their careers and labor market shortages for special education teachers as examples that we don’t have this “right” yet. Certainly working conditions and supports are part of this conversation, but so is compensation.

So, Hemmingsen is improving in her sophistication in being able to engage in this discussion – but she still doesn’t get it as she continues to try and paint me as some kind of merit-pay hawk.

To again clarify, I’m not talking about using compensation as a motivator for teachers, I’m talking about changing compensation structures to align with things that would actually be good for schools, educators, and kids. Things like creating and paying for teacher leader roles, creating time for teachers to work together collaboratively, incenting the pursuit advanced degrees or other PD options that are aligned with what their kids need, paying more to get and keep our best teachers in front of our neediest kids, front loading pay structures to get better candidates into teaching and keep them, extending the school day/year for kids that need it, and addressing teacher labor market shortage areas. And yes, performance based elements – so long as they are coupled with support systems to help teachers improve.

The possibilities are fascinating to consider – but part of the change is that we have to stop using the cash we have in such non-strategic ways and start using it smarter.

Hemmingsen also selectively takes her shots at the school organization I was proud to be part of in Eagle County, noting the high attrition rates at the inception of human capital system change in 2001 and the leadership turnover in 2007. But again, she only tells you part of the story. When I left Eagle County, the teacher attrition rate (for those not being non-renewed for performance related reasons) was in the single digits, we had solid leadership which remains in place today, and we had the highest paying salary system in the state. Further, the district has been closing the achievement gap at an amazing pace, has been recognized by the state legislature for its innovation, has had 4 Colorado Principals of the Year in as many years, and has value added results that are just startlingly good. This in a district with a 51% Hispanic student population, along with the language learner and poverty issues that accompany that demographic statistic.

The improvements with Eagle County’s results did not occur just because of a change in compensation system. Rather, leaving the step and lane system allowed the district to better move finite resources to solve problems and achieve strategic outcomes. I don’t think anyone there would say the pay was the driver. The change primarily happened because all the pieces in the organization were pulling in the same direction and toward the same goals and the district had the flexibility in its resources to address student needs.

So, what motivates teachers? Helping kids and being part of changing the world motivates teachers. But teachers are also rational people who respond to financial incentives. Our work shouldn’t be to blindly protect a near 100 year old industrial era compensation structure, but instead to think about how we build a compensation structure that takes into account teachers’ altruistic motivations and that incents them toward things that help kids and communities. Then, we would be moving toward a system that emphasizes the real underlying motivations for educators, and that uses money strategically.

Reflections on Harvard’s “Learning from the International Experience”

This past week I had the chance to visit Harvard and be part of the “Learning from the International Experience” conference. First, what an incredible honor for me to get to meet some real giants in the education policy realm, notably Harvard’s Paul Peterson and Stanford’s Eric Hanushek. The event centered on the release of a new report called “Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete” followed by two days of discussion on the condition of education in the United States and, more importantly, what we might learn from high performing countries to improve.

I’d first say that the results of the study aren’t fresh news by any stretch. The argument that the U.S. education system is floundering and puts the country’s economic health at risk goes back to the industrial revolution. The same argument was used again in the Sputnik era, in the 1980′s with the release of “A Nation at Risk”, and even more recently through the “achievement gap” lens of No Child Left Behind in a McKinsey report. One of the authors of the Harvard paper, education scholar Eric Hanushek, has been hammering at this issue for some time.

The U.S. continues to come up mediocre in these rankings but there are certainly some limitations to their utility, as these pure aggregate average score approaches aren’t taking into account poverty, equity, or social considerations. Also, this data is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the U.S. remains the most vibrant and adaptive economy in the world, most of the top universities in the world are in the U.S., it takes the rest of the world combined to equal the number of patents issued in the U.S. in a single year, and there are (by far) more Nobel Prize winners from the U.S. than any other (acknowledgement to Seton Hall’s Chris Tienken for this list of reminders).

These points should be used to counterbalance the discussion, but we would be foolish to ignore the message of the economists and political scientists that given the global nature of this economy compared to any time in our past we absolutely should be investigating the approaches used by the highest performing systems and pulling them into the playbook for American education.

I must admit I was disappointed by the conclusions of some of the economists at the conference that our reaction to this most recent illustration of U.S. educational mediocrity should be centered around “charter schools,” and “performance pay.” Keep in mind, I am an advocate for increased school choice and compensation reform, but I also realize they only take us so far.

While we should broaden these terms and discussions to consider the possibility of how “school choice” and “strategic compensation” could improve the American system, these do not (at least in my review) seem to be the major drivers in building great schools in looking at the highest performing systems. If the aim of this conference was really “Learning from the International Experience” then we would see lessons around clarity on student outcomes and a subsequent alignment of instruction and measurement. We would also see a hyperfocus on improving the quality of the educator workforce through a variety of approaches. Finally, we see systems that try things and make mistakes, but most importantly keep up the work and learning about getting better.

My takeaway was that we need to keep our eyes on the ball here. Improving schools is about teaching and learning coupled with a process of continuous improvement and innovation. To the degree that school choice and compensation figure into a framework on better teaching, learning, and innovation then they absolutely should be part of the discussion.

Any ideas we glean from other countries has to be considered against the culture of the American education system. In the U.S., our system has a heavy flavor of accountability in the form of standardized measures and (increasingly) individual measures of effectiveness. Our focus on accountability is creating what I’d consider an “over-reaction” from some in the education community who fantasize about an end to accountability and measures. I’d venture that this is pure fantasy and this over-reaction discounts that we do have much better performance data about our schools than we have had at any point in the past and this data, though admittedly imperfect, is also useful.

To take the lessons from the international experience and graft it into the American system, our question going forward should be “how do we get the right yin/yang mix of teaching-learning-innovation with accountability?”

Intelligent Accountability

The landmark federal education law “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) required states to create (or build up) accountability systems based primarily on student achievement measures. Success or failure on these measures is based on how well schools and districts are moving every subgroup of students toward a state-defined level of “proficiency.” Persistently being labelled a “failure” on this system comes with increasing consequences for schools.

Two distinct camps emerge on accountability. One side presses for ever greater accountability, with some members of this group even hoping that more and more schools “fail” so they can justify any number of policy directives. The play is simple. Perseverate and point to the number of schools failing, then insert whatever policy you want as the panacea because clearly whatever schools are doing isn’t working.

The other camp pushes back against accountability, holding that schools (and those working in them) are performing heroic acts in the face of insurmountable circumstances. This camp even presses a goal of eliminating the use of standardized student achievement measures, or making them so subjective and qualitative as to be of no use for accountability purposes.

Rather than get in the cliche’ and worn-out business of criticizing NCLB, or of buying into another false dichotomy narrative, what if we instead considered what an accountability might look like … or even better, what it should look like.

Consider an accountability system that…
• Used a sophisticated suite of student achievement measures, beyond one test.
• Considered student growth, or improvement, as an equal (or perhaps higher) goal with proficiency.
• Provided actionable and timely student results available to guide instruction.
• Considered several measures of organizational health along with student results, such as fiscal responsibility.
• Considered the concepts of student hope, engagement, and well-being.
• Considered parent satisfaction and partnership.
• Considered staff working conditions.
• Discovered the “bright spots” in those schools that are beating the odds … and shared them as models.
• Provided targeted resources and proven expertise to those schools needing improvement.
• Allowed for “earned autonomy,” where successful schools have little oversight but failing schools are prescribed and directed.
• Required collective accountability and a “transparency of practice” where teaching and leading schools are open to peer critique.
• Empowered and required local professionals to hold each other deeply accountable through a democratic process.

This sort of system I describe would not only better identify the real continuum of performance in schools (as opposed to fail/not fail), but would actually provide information and supports on how all schools might get better. Instead of a system of “blame and shame,” we might instead have a system of “intelligent accountability.”

Caffeinated Conspiracy Theories

Shane Vander Hart recently wrote a piece for his very entertaining and thought provoking blog, Caffeinated Thoughts responding to my remarks at the 2011 SAI Annual Conference.

After gently letting left-leaning Jennifer Hemmingsen have it over her coverage of education policy in Iowa, I would stand to lose my “I don’t give a damn about politics, let’s improve schools” credentials if I didn’t give right-leaning Shane Vander Hart the same treatment.

Let’s first set the record straight about the Iowa Core and the Common Core. I don’t expect Shane and I to ever see eye to eye on this and that’s ok – in this country we are free to disagree and are better from an open exchange of ideas. As I understand it, Shane’s position is that the Iowa Core/Common Core is some sort of Obama-driven-federal-takeover-plot aimed at indoctrinating your children to love Chairman Mao and slowly transform this country into North Korea. OK, I may have embellished that last statement … slightly (apologies Shane – just having some fun at your expense!).

Where does this conspiracy theory drivel come from? The fact is that the National Common Core was and remains a STATE led (not a federal government) initiative. The Common Core represents student expectations in reading and math that are on par with the highest performing systems in the world and also represent the kinds of skills our students are going to need to be competitive in a global context. The fact is that a common thread among the highest performing school systems in the world is the adoption of clear and rigorous standards for all students (see example after example in Michael Fullan’s latest work and in Marc Tucker’s analysis of high performing school systems).

Shane goes on to (falsely) state the the Iowa Department of Education and the State Board had no authority from the legislature to establish the Iowa Core or merge it with the Common Core. This is just silliness about the authority to enact the Iowa Core (which contains the Common Core as its Math and English/Language Arts elements). The fact is that the Iowa legislature gave the Iowa Department of Education and the Iowa State Board the directive to establish the Core. To the point that this wan’t an open process, all of the State Board’s steps to include the Common Core in the Iowa Core were public proceedings, as is every action taken by the Board. Sorry Shane, this is within the lines.

Shane goes on to make the dreadfully predictable case that I am pushing for some sort of hyper-centralized school system. Actually, as I’ve stated many times before and stated in my remarks to the SAI Administrators, I’m calling for a reasonable balance of all the players in the education system. Each part has an important role to play, and Iowa’s schools will be best served if all the parts are working together and in symphony.

Governor Branstad was clear to me about my role in Iowa: Make these schools among the best in the world. That happens by building capacity at ALL levels and focusing the whole system on carefully selected strategies tailored to this context. It will not happen by closing your eyes and hoping all 350 districts in the state of Iowa spontaneously pull off becoming a world-class system on their own through some miraculous convergence.

Improvement to put Iowa on par with the highest performing systems in the world takes an intentional and focused effort. Raising useless and worn out rhetoric about government takeovers, “indoctrination,” and “educrats” just regurgitates political soundbites and does little to move Iowa forward to being a great school system.

We do need to build up and support local capacity – but we also need to focus our efforts in a way that makes this fractured patchwork of schools start to move as a system.

Jason Glass
Des Moines, IA