CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
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President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
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CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
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CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
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95%
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January 12, 2010 09:11 PM UTC
47 Comments
We still have 30% of our children at below proficient in our public schools. That’s abject failure. What systemic change will they propose to fix this?
More Money…
Denver Broncos… Still Suck!
The top per-pupil funding is in school districts like Chicago and Washington, DC. And they are some of the worst anywhere. The answer most definitely is not mo’ money.
I agree that more money might not be the best answer to failing schools, but to say that more money makes it worse (a causal claim) is wrong-headed. Post hoc ergo propter hoc at its worst.
Intractable problems in urban schools has little to do with extra money being spent and everything with the web of social problems schools are asked to take on. ESL, absent parents, low value placed on ed by families, poor nutrition, inadequate transportation–public schools have to deal with every inequity and social pathology in our society with little help from the rest of government.
You want to get real results–make the world around the school better.
nutrition, transportation, ESL, etc. will require additional money, which is why I believe it is faulty to say that we shouldn’t spend more on education. Increasing education funding does not just mean increasing teacher salary and buying new textbooks (although I’m not convinced that that would be a foolish way to spend tax dollars either!)
But I would like to hear state reps and senators address where additional education spending should go and why.
Is that every time I have seen money thrown at a problem in the companies I have worked at – it has made the problem worse. Additional money tends to make people try to use the money to paper over the problems rather than fix them.
I think we should look for systemic improvement first, and then provide more money once they show that they have brought about substantial change and can clearly show how additional funds can then improve things more.
The options are blindly throw money at the problem or withhold money until the system is fixed. One or the other.
For specific uses, as improvement is shown.
Why are so many here so opposed to holding schools accountable and requiring results before throwing more money at the problem? It strikes me as irliberal to not strongly focus on quality education for all children.
the state “throw more money at the problem.”
when school budgets are cratering, demanding enough money to keep districts from having to make draconian cuts is not the same as asking for blindly thrown money.
Up here they had raises (small ones) and no cutbacks in staffing levels.
what would “systemic improvement” look like? (i.e. what would be the changes that would be “systemic”)
If they were more like software companies.
…best comment on this thread.
All the other comments here still assume the Taylorite model of lining ’em up, and dumping in what society needs them to know. If they won’t do it voluntarily, just add incentives like higher wages or disincentives like punishing the parents.
The failure of this 20th century model has nothing to do with the teachers, the students, or the schools, but the fact that society has changed around the model, and the model has not. That’s the “reconceptualization” part.
Software companies don’t meet needs that exist in society (who really ever thought we needed a blog?). They generate aps that create needs, and markets, for new products, thus creating jobs and capital. RSB is exactly right: schools need to be like software companies because to succeed, our kids need to learn to use education to create value, not just to value education for its own sake.
To create that kind of community, we have to stop thinking of schools as a place where we hold kids until they’re ready for the real world, and start thinking of them as the place where the whole community works, together, on imagining the real world of tomorrow. A school that does that, successfully, and I know some around the country, pulls parents and local businesses in as partners, raises real estate values in the local neighborhoods (talk about incentives!), and attracts teachers who are “jazzed” by the environment they work in, not some idealistic internal motivation that fades all too quickly.
So, what does it take to do this? Some money, yes, but money spent to train and recruit the educational leaders who can turn around a school–and our schools of education — with this kind of reconceptualization. What’s the biggest obstacle to this? Old-fashioned notions of “accountability” that are rooted in, and therefore reinforce, the old models. Until we stop McNamarizing our education policy with after the fact body counts (i.e., CSAPs), we’ll get no where.
but don’t see how it contradicts the model I presented. It seems to me to be the same general idea, with less specificity.
Not all uses of reductionism are “Taylorite.” Complex dynamical systems analysis, for instance, which is very “holistic,” depends, like all mathematical and analytical thought, on some form of reductionism. Understanding how a dynamical system functions in terms of how the parts interact is not the opposite of, or antagonistic to, pursuing the goals you outline. It is requisite to it.
and not sure I intended to contradict.
That said, application in the education field is usually linear rather than “chaotic,” even when more formal systems analysis techniques are applied to performance and assessment data. We may change the flow of the assembly line, but we still educate largely the same was as we make beer and sausages: receive, sort, pack and ship.
I see this practical problem primarily as a lack of vision on the part of those charged with implementing reform. The focus is on the wrong unit of analysis: students, rather than the learning communities they inhabit. Before anyone panics, I’m not suggesting students are irrelevant, but that they are data points in a system, not isolated data islands unto themselves. Failure to realize this is (largely) the fault of the programs that train educational leaders, AND (partly) the fault of funding streams that reward this mentality. Harvard, Columbia, and DU right here in Denver, among others, are radically rethinking educational leadership. Perhaps that will make a difference, but only if the funding streams are adjusted as well.
In the meantime, most educational institutions (primary, secondary, and even some higher) are still more engaged in the sorting and tagging process, rather than in the process of actual education.
I agree completely that we have an outdated assembly line approach to education. I was just saying that not all ideas for reform that consider how in-puts affect out-puts are necessarily guilty of the same defect, since any policy idea should be considering how in-puts affect out-puts (for instance, how taking actions which create more community involvement could improve the educational development of children, whether narrowly or broadly conceived).
Innovative too.
If they have 5% more students getting proficient on the CSAP and 5% more students going from High School to College, and 5% more students graduating from college within 6 years.
what systemic improvements would have “5% more students getting proficient on the CSAP, etc., etc.”?
That the education system we pour so much money into could figure that out. If they can’t I’d say step one is replace the top administration with people who can figure it out.
with your own empty platitudes?
I don’t mean to be unduly degrading, but seriously to say “we need major change that isn’t doing X, but I have no reasons or a clue as to what Y would be” makes you sound pretty ridiculous at best.
response to David’s solutions for education, and offering of a more comprehensive alternative analysis.
No offense Steve, but I don’t see how that is any more concrete than what David said.
Point by point:
a) “Reconceptualizing schools”: What does this mean? How? Mindsets are notoriously difficult to fiat.
b) “Creating opportunities and incentives for parents”: What would these incentives be? How are you going to enforce this? How do you mandate better parenting (which is essentially what you’re asking)? But overall, how would these incentives (once you’ve clarified the first question) solve the problem or be effective?
c) “Encouraging educational conducive behavior”: Uhhh, what does this even mean in a practical sense? I’m confused when you say “programs, such as positive behavioral support” since positive behavioral support seems to be a parenting/teaching/encouragement technique rather than a general program. If it is a program, what is that? I’ll grant maybe I’m just not familiar with it, but, help please? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Then once I know what these positive behavioral support programs are, how would they translate into increased educational performance? Not just why (although that would be important), but how. I mean, I believe that I have received positive behavioral support in the past (as in, parents and teachers rewarding good behavior rather than dissuading bad behavior) but I don’t see how that has made me, or would make anyone else want to engage in education. Again, maybe this one is just that I don’t know what you mean by “programs such as positive behavioral support”, but still, without that filler information this means nothing to me.
d) “Lowering teacher attrition”: How would you depoliticize the curriculum? If you did, (and thus somehow granting more teacher flexibility) how would you make sure students in all schools are at the same level in all areas? How would you make sure that a high school diploma means the same thing regardless of which school or set of teachers you have had? If you “depoliticize” the curriculum (again, what does this mean?) how does this lower teacher attrition? Do you have data on teachers leaving their profession because they can’t be innovative in their curriculum vs. the number that leaves because the pay blows?
I don’t want to be a nanny nay-sayer and just be shouting down ideas, but your ideas need to be flushed out a lot more with additional specifics in order to be any kind of systemic or comprehensive fix.
This whole things kind of reminds me a clip from what is possibly the most hilarious movie review ever. This guy is reviewing Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, and in total it’s a 7 part, 70 minute bit (hilarious) but check out the clip from 1:25 to 2:25 from part 6 here and see if you agree:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
a) reconceptualizing by boards of education and other educational policy makers, thus directing their attention to how educational policies need far more assertively to take into account what happens outside of the school and outside of school hours. The current assumption that educational policies should be limited to what happens in school during school hours virtually guarantees a continuation and deepening of our most profound obstacles to improving educational services and outcomes.
b) incentives, when discussing policies, usually involve some form of taxes and subsidies. Parents can be incentived by being relieved of certain fee obligations, or given certain tax breaks, in conjunction with certain decisions (such as to participate in a program designed to provide educational services to the parents). There are some tricky design problems involved, such as how to create the net of incentives such that it does not burden those who are doing a good job, but guides those who aren’t toward getting the assistance they (and their children) need. But knowing the challenge is the first step toward addressing it.
c)i) “positive behavioral support” is an established program, with a body of literature and research generated by it. I haven’t worked with it myself, so am only familiar with it in general terms. It is pretty much what it sounds like: a fully fleshed out system for providing positive behavioral supports in the school setting to promote behaviors that are conducive to learning. My reference to it was a passing one, meant only to indicate that there are researched techniques already available for accomplishing some of the goals I have identified.
ii) as every classroom teacher knows, classroom management is the most vital requisite to effective education. Positive behavioral support, as a program, helps to ensure that kids are focused on learning, and that classroom distractions are kept to a minimum.
d) i) depoliticizing the curriculum is impossible in an absolute sense, and one of the most difficult challenges facing public education in any sense. But the amount of organized effort to impose anti-intellectual constraints on school curricula (e.g., making the teaching of the theory of evolution a mine field) is definitely destructive of the educational mission.
ii) it reduces teacher attrition by attracting and maintaining teachers who are jazzed about guiding their students on an exploration of some facet of reality, about infecting their students with their own passionate sense of wonder about the world. The ways in which that passion is shackled and punished due to various forms of the politicization of school curriculae is a force that runs counter to the mission of delivering the highest quality education possible to our children.
Yes, you’re right that these ideas need to be more fully fleshed out. But just laying out the bare bones without putting the meat on them required a very long post, something for which I receive abundant criticism. Imagine how much longer it would need to be to fully explain each reference! That requires volumes, which not even I would attempt here.
And no offense taken.
and these do seem like good potential policies if they could be flushed out in a practical way. If you had an idea for tax or subsidy incentives that would create results you’re talking about (encouraging teacher innovation, increasing parental involvement, increasing student focus and passion for education) I would be way way on board.
My problem is that I would not want to stall on specific policies that we could do now (even if they require more money in a broken system) in favor of vague “comprehensive or systemic” reform. For instance, we could pay more to have high quality lunches and food available to all kids, regardless of income. There have been some great studies showing the relationship between eating a better diet and improved schoolwork. Or we could expand police budgets and put more cops on the streets, maybe not the best way, but a proven way of reducing crime. Again, there is a clear link between reduced crime and increased test scores. We could expand ESL programs and internet access (particularly for low-income and rural students). All specific and easily attainable policies/goals. I would rather hear my elected officials speak about these types of policies (concrete and immediate), as opposed to more vague ideas on comprehensive reform.
Some things are simple: nutrition, and its relationship to education. Another one, less well-identified, is mental health services. We tend to think of the need for mental health care as being the exceptional case, and not a critical component of eduction. But there is increasing evidence (intuitively obvious to anyone who has ever had or been a kid), that adolescents, especially, are generally in need of services to help them cope with the emotional and cognitive tumult they are experiencing. And many are in need of specific, clinical assistance, which would improve their educational performance while improving their ability to cope in general. (I worked on a project at a small policy LLC addressing this challenge last summer).
But these simple and necessary fixes will only get us so far, and not nearly far enough. We do need some profound reforms, and there’s no time like the present to try to get them into the public consciousness.
But a couple of ideas are critical.
We can not treat school as an island. Kids come from communities and communities influence schools as well as vice versa.
We must incentivize parents and or students: pay them to show up. It sucks that some people don’t see that education is its own reward, but it costs society more than some nominal payment.
Finally we must train people, students and parents, to value education and how to maximize their access to it.
I was born poor, single parent, welfare, food stamps and home made clothes, but education was valued in my family. It was the great transformational device in my life and I wish that every kid had the gift of a parent who rammed home “school will set you free.”
It’s hard to teach the kids when the parents either don’t see the value of education or are thwarted by their unfamiliarity with the system.
to tell me which things you completely disagree with, either here or over a beer some time. I have great respect for your opinion, and can’t recall ever having thought that anything you posted was not well thought out and based on very sound reasoning. If there’s something in my proposals that you think is poorly reasoned, I would benefit from, and appreciate, that feedback.
and have them pass that onto their children is where it gets tricky. This is where I mentioned in some other comment on how it’s impossible to fiat mindsets, and while it is possible to have attitudes change over time that doesn’t mean you can create that mindset shift through policies.
So when you say “we must train people, students and parents, to value education” I don’t know what you mean by that or how it would be or could be made manifest in our country.
Finally, I think it is wrong to believe that by paying people to show up (students, teachers, or parents) that this would have the desired effect. Dan Ariely in his book “Predictably Irrational” demonstrates how such an act would transform education from the realm of social norms to that of market norms, and how when that happens we lose a lot of the benefits acquired from an act that was previously a social good but is now a market good. This illustrates that conundrum of trying to effect mindset and values through policy, since the primary tool of policy is the government’s ability to manipulate the market, but using that erases or fundamentally changes the good that the policy is trying to encourage.
that you’ve identified a complexity in incentives: providing extrinsic incentives for something we hope to be intrinsically rewarding and desired creates, through cognitive dissonance, a diminished appreciation of the intrinsic value of the thing.
But I think it’s a mistake to reduce this to absolutes. It merely is one of numerous factors to bear in mind. Extrinsic incentives still have a vital place (indeed, every aspect of our social institutional framework other than internalized values depends on them, and even internalized values are socialized into us through them).
When I hire a VP of Marketing I don’t hire someone who knows less than me, I hire someone who knows more than me. Then I measure their impact by the number of quality of leads they bring in for money spent.
If I know more than the person hired or have to tell them how to do their job – then I’ve hired the wrong person.
but, if I’m reading your analogy here correctly, you are saying that we should hire educational officials that have good ideas about how to implement systemic reform, but if you don’t know what systemic changes need to be made, how would you know if the person you hired has the correct ideas for reform?
I have the exact same issue with marketing – no one knows what works in today’s world for our market. So you look at how successful they are. One of the best things a district can do is accurately measure how well students are progressing. From that they can identify what is working well and then replicate it.
anyone else, so long as they promise to not follow or implement any policies that are currently in place? Then see what happens and if schools improve, keep those people and if they don’t they draw another set of people at random?
There are actually cases where randomly picking people does better than selecting them based on the criteria normally used.
I think however we should take a more measured approach. Track which schools work best taking Socio-Economic Status into account. The ones that do best, put some more money in.
The ones that do worst – have them emulate the best ones. If they still can’t pull it off, then bring in new people for that school.
those inner-city kids never really needed school anyways, right?
They’ll be better off without any funding or education. Then they can really pull themselves up by their bootstraps!
Sorry to answer what has been a civilized debate with snark, but seriously, I find it difficult to believe that someone who seems to be as intelligent as you seem to be can actually believe in the “let’s starve those who suck” approach.
We have schools that are failing today – that’s a fact. My point is replace the leadership & crappy teachers in the bad schools with better ones. How on earth is that a bad idea?
to judge what a “better” teacher/administrator would be!
I think we should measure results which is the best measurement of all. As to who we bring in, there I think we should look for people who have a track record of success.
but, if I’m reading your analogy here correctly, you are saying that we should hire educational officials that have good ideas about how to implement systemic reform, but if you don’t know what systemic changes need to be made, how would you know if the person you hired has the correct ideas for reform?
The current plan of cutting can’t possibly be all they have planned for the long term. Is there anything on their agenda that would help middle class families continue to put their kids through school? Because starting in the fall, that may no longer be feasible.