Get Going – Get Better – Get Known; Why Reform Movements Fail And Why We Are Going To Make George Scott Reports Succeed

Developments in Katy I.S.D. over the past four years in particular have confirmed just how rocky the path of achieving an effective public education reform movement in any school district is.

This difficulty is especially true in school districts such as Katy where many, if not most, citizens have a patriotic fervor about the school system that rivals an old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration for intensity.

That rocky path towards reform is also made more mountainous because the business and corporate community institutions, such as chambers of commerce and economic development councils, simply have no interest in playing any role whatsoever other than cheerleader.

The old days of business groups actually caring about concepts such as efficiency, accountability and government spending have long since given way to the pursuit of government dole.

If business groups are hotly pursuing tax abatements, tax increment financing districts, and infrastructure targeted to benefit its membership, the likelihood of its going to battle with governments over arcane principles such as the gross misrepresentation of academic accountability standards are nil.

Today’s business community, including the leading organizations in Katy, cares more about bricks, mortar, projects, and vested-interest tax breaks than the tragic disintegration of the quality of public education.

The political leadership of a typical community, state and nation have abandoned parents, students, teachers and taxpayers.  Most politicians are just too intellectually lazy to study the issues.  They want to be spoon-fed the issues in small bites.  This is not a singular attack on Republicans, Democrats, conservatives or liberals.  It is the truth about them all.  Each has earned a well-deserved pox on all their collective acquiescence that has done such grave damage to society.

Citizens’ groups are too often just ill equipped to confront the power of the educational bureaucracy.  They not only must deal with the patriotic fervor of most citizens and the stunning abandonment by business organizations previously defined, but also most groups eventually come to grips with their own organizational failures.

The Katy Watchdogs are a perfect example.  It is my opinion that the group found its genesis where most similar groups find theirs – anger.  That group enjoyed an early success in getting a member elected to the school board.  Anger will not sustain a movement.  It never has and it never will. The Watchdogs’ board member has been an utter failure at leading a reform movement because he, like his peers on the board, wouldn’t recognize genuine academic and management accountability issues if they jumped up and bit him in the tail.

Board members don’t study the issues independently.  They are given, in effect, Cliff Notes by their administrators.  Tragically, they come to believe they have read the novel.

Most Board members get elected to the Board thinking they will make a difference.  Soon, they discover that they are simply not prepared to even ask questions of a school administration that has mastered the art of rhetoric and power point presentations.  Their lack of intellectual discipline overwhelms their distant memories of the intentions they may once have had.

The training process imposed upon them by the State intimidates board members.  They too often develop a very narrow view of their authority, acting as if they have allowed administrators the opportunity to ‘mind-meld’ in the fashion of Spock in the old Star Trek series.  They too often become one with their administration, while losing even a semblance of independent analysis.

Most are never able to clear the intellectual hurdle that distinguishes how a Board member can use policy and contracts to hold administrators accountable for specific administrative actions and results without the State dropping the ‘meddling’ bomb on the District’s Boardroom.

With rare exceptions, many board members undergo a radical transformation between the moment of decision to seek the office and one year or even less of actual service.  They go from envisioning themselves as advocates for students, teachers and taxpayers to becoming a defender of administrative policies - no matter how destructive and irrational the policies might be.

That’s why one of the articles I previously posted on George Scott Reports is so fundamentally important.

Your Katy I.S.D. School Board has never asked for a wide range of accountability reports it should have sought.

Your Board can’t tell you one important thing about grade inflation in math and science classes because it has never demanded its administration produce a reliable one.

Your Board can’t tell you one important thing about the disparity of academic skills of students in secondary education nor the impact this has on improving student academic performance.  That’s because it has never demanded the administration give it one.

Your Board can’t tell you one important thing about the effectiveness of the Professional Learning Community initiative in this District.  Millions of dollars of cash and District resources have been allocated to this curriculum management program.  Yet, the Board has never directed the administration to produce a reliable report evaluating its actual effectiveness.

Your Board can’t tell you one important thing about college readiness of the broad range of the Katy I.S.D. secondary student body; it can’t tell you one important thing about college performance of District graduates; it can’t tell you one important thing about the strength of honors math and science classes at each of the high schools or between the high schools; and it can’t tell you one important action that it has taken to hold itself or its administration accountable for such a colossal failure of management.

On these issues and more, George Scott Reports received the tragic answer of “doesn’t exist” to formal public information requests.

Your School Board has taken no public action to indicate that this gross failure of management is even important to it.

It is within this context that I decided to use my 30 years of experience in public research to launch George Scott Reports.  The most recent 15 of those years have found me immersed in public education accountability research.

I am looking at this as a one-year test project to see if I can create an academic reform movement in Katy that can spread to other communities that may become interested because of what I do here.

I have known there are three stages to this effort: get going, get better and get known.  Of the three, publicity has been the last of my initial three objectives.  That will come soon.

The first was to simply ‘get going.’  We did that some six weeks ago.  The initial effort was to post content that sent a clear message that this site would be different.  We’ve sent the message.  There will be no sacred cows.

The second objective is to get better.  Our goal is to spend the months of November and December doing just that. 

We are going to expand our methods of presentation.  Condensed power point presentations will supplement continuing in-depth commentary and reports on exhaustive data.  We’ll also add periodic podcasts.  New videos will highlight the more complex issues we address.

Permanence.  It’s the one word that has been missing from prior efforts to achieve reform in public education.

Over the course of the next year, I hope to build a coalition of educational reformers in Katy and beyond.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to join that effort.

After all, George Scott Reports is now entering phase two – getting better.  I could use your help in so many ways.  My goal has been to reach January 1, 2009 with a fully-engaged, well-developed website that makes use of several methods of communication.

At that point, the foundation of reform should be poured.  Katy I.S.D. and other school districts will hopefully discover that their olds ways of communicating to the public will no longer be acceptable.