The 5 Elements of Education Reform - Series Compiled And Republished From 2009

The 5 Essential Elements Of Reform - 1

There are five elements, which I will spell out in detail, that would create a perfect storm of educational reform in a community if they could be mustered in unison.  However, empirical history and harsh reality dictate that two of the five are either systemically unattainable or consistently unachievable.  These two - local news media and business community leadership - are generally lost causes unless ways can be calculated to ‘bully’ them into action.

The remaining three must function together if meaningful reform is to be forced upon a system that is dedicated to its own eventual implosion.  While the likelihood of successful reform has grown dim, it is theoretically possible to achieve.

These five elements take for granted that the Texas Legislature is fundamentally incapable of taking the lead in genuine reform–the kind that restores the academic integrity of academic classrooms.

The politics of public education in Texas is among the primary reasons that the academic integrity of education has been corrupted.

What the Legislature has allowed in its name has enabled academic corruption, dishonesty, and public misrepresentation of academic reality. The Legislature will never lead actual reform; it is destined only to follow community-based reform because its collective membership is politically and philosophically incapable of pursuing academic reform - preferring the appearance of reform as more achievable.

The system of public education that has evolved over the past three decades is pervasively powerful.  It distributes billions of dollars cumulatively in spending that fuels the political, statutory, and legal processes that preserve, protect, and reward those who distribute the dollars in the first place.

It is a circle of influence that is protected viciously.  National governments have militaries.  The public education bureaucracy, armed with abundant finances and enduring power, retain mega-law firms such as Bracewell and Giuliani.  In conjunction with powerful associations such as the Texas Association of School Boards and the Texas Association of School administrators, and others, the bureaucracy has placed a high priority upon protecting itself from penetration.

These institutions play a pivotal role in intimidating and bullying school board members into surrendering the “independent” part of a district.  Vendors who slop in the public trough of public dollars and  no-bid professional services are always there to grease the skids of an administration’s need during bond issues, or at conventions and other communal gatherings of educators.

Think of these forces protecting the educational bureucracy as you would the U.S. Army Rangers or the U.S. Navy Seals.

When reformers leave their communities and head to Austin in pursuit of reform, they are taking a garden hose to fight a forest fire.  At that level, there are simply no chinks in the armor of the system.  The political system is too corrupt, too entrenched and too vested to contemplate actual reform that will be meaningful in what happens in your children’s classrooms.  One can add to this the fact that powerful corporate interests that are enriched by public dollars also protect the ’system.’

As you consider the veracity of that brutal conclusion, consider the predestined-to-fail efforts of the conservative Dr. Jim Leininger, who has poured literally millions of dollars down a political rat hole believing that fundamentally ignorant legislators knew enough about the substance of public education to ‘deliver’ him vouchers.

Setting aside his ill-conceived notion that vouchers automatically translates to better public education, he should realize by now that Austin is an impenetrable political fortress, protected by conservative, liberal, Republican and Democratic politicians who all share the shame of the past 20 years of fraudulent academic accountability.

The five elements of reform also acknowledge that the local school board’s role as a viable independent entity (in holding a superintendent’s administration accountable) has given way to the intellectual equivalent of a holy matrimony where the two have become one.

Individually and collectively, school board members and boards as a whole do not think in terms of holding a superintendent (and thus the leader’s entire administration) accountable.  Board members have been inculcated to believe that they and their administrators must ride a unicycle - with the superintendent in charge of the guiding handles while the board members sit in a subservient position.

The likelihood of electing a school board armed with the knowledge and self-motivation to change this relationships is a years-long process.  There are few if any school boards ready now to lead a reform effort, and, like the Legislature, boards will only follow community-based demands.

As protective as most school boards are with their administrations, organized community efforts must target the school board with a sustained effort to ‘break the model’  of acquiescent ‘accountability’ typical boards have created.

So what are the five essential elements of reform that will be covered in more detail over the next several columns?  Reform groups must develop a working strategy that accomplishes the following:

Taking a slightly closer look at the last two elements - the news media and business organizations.

An effective strategy will have to find ways to make it “journalistically impossible” for the news media to avoid covering a group’s major issues.  There are some practical ways to do this.  As far as the business community is concerned, a group will need to bypass the leadership and go directly to the rank and file members.

An group that is successful in developing strategies to achieve the first three elements of reform will almost certainly improve their chances of improved performance regarding the last two elements.

This series on the five essential elements of reform will now discuss each of the five in much more detail.

The 5 Essential Elements Of Reform - 2

One common denominator of why public education watchdog groups rise and fade so quickly is the low-hanging fruit of the system’s abuse they target almost exclusively.  To be certain, supporting business efficiency and opposing financial abuse of taxpayers should always be a part of an agenda.  However, it will never be enough to change the powerful developments that are destroying the academic integrity of your children’s core subject classrooms.

• Forcing school districts to post check registers and financial audits online
• Exposing administrative abuse of district-issued credit cards, excessive travel, or claimed perks of the job
• Creating public outcries that block a particularly stupid decision
• Rallying public ire at any given issue of the moment
• Producing the momentum for across-the-board budget cuts to save a penny or two on the tax rate

A 100% success rate on any of these kinds of issues and dozens more that could be cited will do absolutely nothing to improve the quality of education that the district organizes and delivers to your children’s classrooms.

Groups often focus their anger upon these issues because they are absolutely the easiest ones to confront.  In the scheme of things rated on a scale of 1-10 for impact on actual education, these issues rate towards the bottom.  In truth, they barely rate at all on this standard.

Let’s be more blunt.  A group that forces a district to post its checks online or to back away from spending $5 million on artificial turf for fields at individual high schools, for instance, will do absolutely nothing to resolve the helter-skelter, hodge-podge organization of core subject classrooms that puts children of vastly different academic skills into the same classroom at the same time.

Therefore, the most important ingredient in an education reform movement should be the actual reform of education.  The more the focus is upon the assistant or deputy superintendents of instruction is the more a group is likely to have positive impact on the children’s education.

There should be no misconception about this. This is a dramatic challenge, and very difficult to accomplish.  The curriculum and accountability management side of public education works under the radar of most community groups except in superficial ways.

The superintendent of schools becomes a major roadblock between a school board and accountability for such administrators.

If you go back into the archives of George Scott Reports, you will find specific columns actually proving this in Katy.  We asked for specific reports that had been prepared by the district to document the empirical effectiveness of administrative-directed and board-approved curriculum initiatives.

We forced the district to acknowledge time and time again on one curriculum strategy after another that such documentation of program effectiveness “did not exist.”

There was a major math and science task force report presented to the Katy school board in 2007.  Proof of its effectiveness did not exist.  The district is huge into the Professional Learning Community.  Give us some proof of performance, the public information request said.  Responded the district, it “doesn’t exist.”

Show us some empirical evidence that your strategy of team teaching or collaboration through vertical teams were improving student academic performance.  Such proof doesn’t exist said the district.

These kinds of issues and strategies are at the very heart, soul, and bone-marrow of the quality of education your children are receiving.  Yet, most watchdog groups are too intimidated by their initial lack of knowledge on these subjects to learn more.

Certainly, school board members quickly become ‘children of the corn’ types of automatons by allowing themselves to be browbeaten by their superintendents into believing they are not capable of independent thought upon these subjects.  Moreover, school board members are ‘trained’ to believe that it is not within their job description to challenge the details of curriculum initiatives because it would involve them in administration rather than policy.

That’s why this system of public education has deteriorated so dramatically.  It is why your children’s academic futures are genuinely at risk.

Here is a fact.  The academic integrity of significant and increasing numbers of core subject classrooms have been fatally compromised if the standard is creating organizational units in which classroom teachers can deliver genuine grade-level instruction.  This language means that in districts such as Katy, there are still students who are receiving a world-class education in extremely effective classroom units.  However, even in districts such as Katy, these numbers are dropping.

Classroom teachers are the first to know it.  The fact of the matter is that mid-level administrative curriculum specialists, most of whom are extremely dedicated professionals, know it as well.

These folks are forced to work in an environment that is imposed from above, and most are doing the best they can to make it all work as best it can.  From the federal government to the Texas Legislature to the Texas Education Agency to your local school board to your superintendent to your high level curriculum administrators, they are all key players in a sick system that is destroying public education.

The truth of the matter is that these developments have gone on for so long, and they have become so inculcated into the ways things are done that genuine reform of public education has grown less likely to even be achievable.

Having written that, there are specific things that can be done to help your children while re-establishing some management accountability over curriculum and accountability measures in your district.

Despite what members of your board may have been told they are allowed to believe, the school board does have some independent authority to take actions that would help.  Right now, school board members don’t generally think they have such power; they would not really know what to do if they concluded they did have power; and they have no organization of parents or citizens demanding that they exercise such power.

A community has limited choices here. It can choose among:

1. Adopting a posture that there is really no problem while concluding that people like me are crying wolf
2. Staying on the sidelines far removed from engagement on these issues
3. Taking the battle directly to your school board over an extended period of time on issues of educational substance (Don’t worry about school board elections as much as you focus upon school board performance.)

From a practical standpoint, the third option above will never materialize in a community without an effective watchdog organization.  Movements are always about initial leadership.  Sustaining movements is always about issues, revitalized leadership, and consistent agendas.

Here’s a one-question litmus test about evaluating a watchdog organization: which action would be most important to your children?

1. Blocking $5 million of spending on artificial turf
2. Forcing your school board to demand that its administration produce an empirical based report demonstrating the effectiveness of vertical team conferences in improving math performance at the district’s junior and senior high schools. A part of this demand would include an opportunity for private citizens organized by the watchdog group to directly engage the administrators who produced the report with questions in front of the school board.

If your answer is the first, your group will never be successful.  It will never produce serious educational reform in your school district.

The second answer is the only correct answer.  It is the hardest answer. The truth of the matter is that the likelihood of a community group dedicating itself to such an aggressive, important role is not great.

Moreover, the second answer is just one tiny step of changing a community’s attitude about what is and is not really important. It is a daunting challenge.

The entire educational bureaucracy has successfully engineered a scam it has foisted on school boards and many rank and file citizens including far too many parents.  The scam basically reads as follows:

“We are the experts.  We have the doctorates.  We know what is best for your children.”  Don’t question us is the borderline-explicit message.

So, if a watchdog organization is to be effective, it must prepare itself to become informed on issues that for the most part have always been left to the “experts.”  The group’s leadership must, at a minimum, do the following:

1. Determine and identify individuals it can trust to ‘crack the code’ of curriculum administrative arrogance
2. Determine an effective initial agenda that includes a specific curriculum-accountability project
3. Develop a specific public information request that focuses like a laser beam to get information that really advances your first project
4. Implement an effective communication strategy to the general public

George Scott Reports is prepared to help any community organization in the state develop such a strategy.

However, let me suggest now that the first step any organization must take is to find a way to engage classroom teachers in private discussions about the reality of their classrooms. The fact of the matter is that there will be no reform in your school district unless and until your group finds a way to understand what classroom teachers know and take for granted.

Expanding a group’s agenda beyond the low hanging fruit of business abuse into the bone marrow of what is really wrong with what has become of a deteriorating public education system is the most important step in achieving reform.  Without this commitment, no other steps really matter, and no watchdog organization will have any real ‘bite.’

The 5 Essential Elements Of Reform - 3

Perhaps this will be the most controversial theme of the series “The Five Essential Elements of Reform,” because it is going to take everyone to task for what’s happening to classroom teachers - including classroom teachers.

Here is a fact of life in Katy I.S.D. in particular and public education almost everywhere.  One of the single most hostile work environments that exist in any American workplace is the public education classroom.  Classroom teachers are among the most ‘bullied’, white-collar professionals in the United States.

They are the victims of arbitrary and capricious top-down management from their real bosses at central administration (much like principals and assistant principals can be).  To many irrational, mantra-drive conservatives, classroom teachers are often the focal point of all that is wrong in public education.  I simply don’t accept that.  Moreover, that’s not a defense of every bad teacher of which there are many.

Teachers’  bosses give them classrooms filled with students having a range of academic skills from ‘Jethro Bodine’ of the old Beverly Hillbillies to students who are actually at grade-level and ready to learn more.  That’s just the start of it.

Their ‘good public policy’ idiot bosses above tell them:

• Differentiate your instruction!
• Make vertical teams!
• Make horizontal teams!
• Collaborate!
• Use strategies such as:
  • Think, Pair, Share!
  • Jigsaw!
• Operate as a Professional Learning Community: traditional schools emphasize teaching but PLC emphasizes learning!

And, by the way, when Jethro does not turn in his homework - or finish his classwork - do not give him an ‘F!’ Give him another day.  And, when Jethro doesn’t turn in the work for a second day, call his parents.  If he doesn’t turn it in for the third day, give up your duty-free  lunch hour, and make him do it in front of you.  Never mind that forcing teachers to give up their lunch hour is against the law; our kids don’t get zeros and our kids don’t flunk without an act of Congress.

And, by the way, when teachers are planning on using their conference period to grade papers, plan lessons, contact parents, or any of the hundreds of other things teachers need to do to prepare themselves every single day, they get an order from an administrator telling them they have to attend a departmental meeting to “collaborate” all on orders from public policy idiots at central command!

Never mind that this action butt-kicks state law.  Never mind that the public policy idiot school board members in Katy endorsed a legislative proposal to try to change that law in the current session of the Legislature while permitting the law to continue to be broken in Katy I.S.D.   When central command snaps their fingers, teachers must respond even if what they are required to do subtracts from time they have to give to most of their students.

When too many kids in a class are not succeeding academically because they act up in class, don’t turn in their homework, and don’t work to succeed, teachers are expected to find a way to pass the vast majority of these relatively few but highly disruptive students anyway.

And, if they don’t pass the particular kids, they often get summoned to the office to explain why.  Summon a teacher once, they get the message.  No future summons are needed!

Parents should not think that these abusive personnel policies directed towards the rank and file classroom teacher help the majority of children who are there to work hard, to learn and to have some fun in their school years.

Professional abuse.  Intimidation.  Corrupt academic standards imposed too often.  So, to whom does the teacher turn for support?  Their gutless, wimpy teacher groups?  Nonsense.

Of them all, the ATPE is the most gutless and worthless to their members.  The ATPE, the largest group in Katy I.S.D., ought to be leading the way helping teachers file literally thousands of grievances against the administrators of this district.  Oh, that’s right - the ATPE has administrators as well as teachers in the group.  The ATPE could stop the majority of this nonsense in one semester, but its institutional gutlessness rivals the school board’s.

If there were ever a need for Gayle Fallon’s group to become active in a suburban Texas school district, Katy I.S.D. would be exhibit A.

So, what does this have to do with reform?

The thesis of George Scott Reports is that the classroom is the single most important organizational unit in public education.  Everything else is distant by comparison.  The integrity of too many of those classroom units has broken down - academically, organizationally and managerially.

Watchdog groups that want to reform public education have a gigantic pathway to success.  It begins with establishing diplomatic relations with classroom teachers.

As evidenced by even the current school board race, incumbent and challengers seeking election to the school board have gone through this entire election cycle without saying, writing or perhaps even thinking one substantive thought that would change the condition of reality in the classroom.    They spout intellectual drivel such as “better communications” or “experience” as if it means something.  One candidate in particular is about to set a Guinness Book world record by running three consecutive campaigns of the most inconsequential, vacuous nature.

The fact of the matter is that classroom teachers possess chapter and verse of what’s happening in their workplace, why it is happening, and the impact it is having.

Reform groups that want to succeed must find a way to open communications with classroom teachers to begin developing the knowledge base they will need to confront administrative reform.

Reform will not and cannot and shall not happen without engagement of classroom teachers.

On the other hand, classroom teachers should recognize that this problem has grown because they have allowed themselves to become intimidated by a process over which they have more control than perhaps they believe.

Nobody or no group can help you if you are not willing to help yourself.

You have about a month left in school.  Here are three things you should do to be better prepared to deal with these issues next year:

1. DEMAND: A specific plan of action should be developed now and over the course of the summer to be implemented at the start of next school by your professional organization.  The plan should deal with explicit strategies including providing legal support for teachers who file legitimate grievances that are within the parameters of the plan and/or state law.  As necessary, the plan should include a commitment by the statewide organization to assist implementation.
2. CHANGE LEADERS or CHANGE GROUPS: If your current group will not make the commitment to do this, change leaders or change groups.  Your current group is not the only place to get professional insurance.
3. SEND LINKS TO GEORGE SCOTT REPORTS: As strange and ironic as it may seem, a political conservative who believes that public education’s best days may be behind it is probably your single best friend in this community.  Your school board is not.  Your administration is not.  The last watchdog group in Katy was run by political idealogues who preferred the pursuit of  philosophical mantras to intellectual substance.  Although I am a vicious critic of what public education is becoming in many ways, I remain strongly committed to its reform or restructuring.  What you and I know is that reform cannot be achieved without restoring your standing and wresting control away from the high level administrators who abuse you professionally every day you come to work.  So, please use your private emails to send links of this column and my website to your colleagues.  You have to trust someone.  You can trust me to protect your confidence.