Learning to Be Free

Recently I observed a ninth grade “Pre-Algebra” class of 18 students in a small high school in Oakland in the one of the lowest income, most crime-ridden parts of town. Three young people were actively engaged in a teacher-led review of a quiz, four more were receiving tutoring in the back of the room from an aide, the other eleven slept, daydreamed, drew in their notebooks, or just sat staring. About two-thirds of the students were young men. Only once did the first-year teacher challenge one of the non-participants to answer a direct question.

“Huh?” the student said, looking up startled.

“(5-3) – 2 = 5-(3-2). True or false?” asked the teacher.

“I don’t know. Um, true? False? One of those.”

“Yes, but which one, Andre [not his real name]?” persisted the teacher.

“It’s false,” said a young woman, the only active participant in the exercise.

“False,” repeated Andre.

“It is? Explain why you think that?” probed the teacher.

“Because she said so,” Andre mumbled, nodding his head towards the young woman.

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I have observed countless exchanges such as this one in more than 25 years as an educator, including in my own classroom when I started teaching public school in 1986 at De Anza High School, part of the Richmond Unified School District (now West Contra Costa School District). My first assignment included two ninth grade basic math classes (I am credentialed in English). I have been that first-year teacher. (How many of the many critics of public education have ever stood in this young man’s shoes?)

Exchanges like these did not start and won’t end with NCLB, but I believe they have increased as part of the unintended consequences of NCLB. More importantly, they illustrate the complex social, political and economic factors that influence what and how many young people actually learn something meaningful in school. NCLB is simply not the system change that will bring us to the Promised Land (and if you want to know what I think might takes us there, download and listen to our podcasts).

NCLB impact on students…

The net effect for most students, ironically in name of rigor, is more time spent on basic academic skills than higher level competencies, the elimination of more interesting electives and activities, and a dramatic increase in the number of high stakes tests they must take — all of which make school a less enjoyable and challenging place to be. It is now wonder that schools are losing the battle for kids attention and interest to cell phones, internet games, social networking cites, malls, movies, music videos MySpace and YouTube (just to name a few competitors).

Schooling is largely a process of assimilation for most students — it requires them to decide whether to engage, comply, tolerate or resist an educational process that mostly defers relevant learning until a young person’s early twenties. For students and families who cannot afford to move or pay private school tuition (and subject to compulsory education laws) few choices and virtually no pathway to educate themselves as empowered learners.

Many polls and surveys over the last decade have documented high school students’ increasing opinion that their schools don’t expect much of them. For example, a 2007 national survey conducted by the National Governors Association concluded, “A large majority of high school students say their class work is not very difficult, and almost two-thirds say they would work harder if courses were more demanding or interesting.”

And on the teachers who teach them

In California, as with many states, teachers and principals believe, based on years of experience, that much of what NCLB legislated in the name of more rigor for children actually is further “dumbing down” the curriculum. They cite as examples the frequent testing of discreet and unrelated (in the children’s minds) factoids and skills over higher order competencies and habits of mind. Students and teachers alike bemoan the loss of art, music and electives or the continuous fundraising required to keep them in the curriculum. NCLB’s has forced many teachers away from the kinds of teaching strategies that nurture curiosity, engage students deeply, and develop habits of mind and self-directed learning.

In the cold light of its unintended consequences, NCLB’s near religious exhortations about “scientifically-based research” appear cynical at best given the blunt instruments most states use to measure what they think matters. The devil is in how one defines success, especially in an enterprise that is ultimately about who and what a person becomes as a human being and the various learning pathways to get there.

In short, what gets measured gets done —and that’s the problem. What matters to the state has become very narrowly defined as “academic standards” (mastering “basic” skills and declarative knowledge). In the meantime, what matters increasingly to families — especially those with limited access to human and fiscal resources for a robust, personalized education — is becoming more expansive and urgent. Is my child happy in school? Who is my child becoming? Will they be able to lead a productive and healthy life? Will they be able to go to college and get a job?  Will they be good people, neighbors and world citizens?

What happened to equity of outcomes?

A 2005 study of NCLB’s effectiveness by the Northwest Evaluation Association using “scientifically-based research” methodology, NEA concluded (among other things), “Students of other ethnic groups that have shown achievement gaps in the past grow less under NCLB, and may grow less than comparable Anglo students.”

A year later the Harvard Civil Rights Project evaluated NCLB’s impact and concluded that it would fall far short of its stated goals for literacy and Math with serious damage done to the system along the way in part because of unfunded mandates at federal and state levels and test-driven accountability. It added, “These projections become much gloomier when it comes to closing the achievement gaps for disadvantaged minority students who are even more left behind in reading and math proficiency.”

So what do families really want for their children?
Families want vastly different things, according to several studies I reviewed. In short, our cities, our country and our world are becoming more diverse, while the pace of changes in the environment, the economy and society moves exponentially faster. These changes are driving greater demand for personalized education services in the private sector outside of the public school monopoly, while inside government-sponsored education the structure remains inflexible and slow to respond to this demand.

Here is an example of the differences in what families want in their child’s teachers. A recent Hoover Institution study of one district’s choice system concluded:

In particular, in low-income schools where academic resources are scarce, motivated parents are more likely to choose teachers based on their perceived ability to improve academic achievement. On the other hand, in higher-income schools these parents seem to respond to the relative abundance of academic resources by seeking out teachers who also increase student satisfaction. This may reflect a parental preference for their children to enjoy school, or it might reflect parental preferences for teachers who emphasize academic facets that increase student satisfaction but are not captured by standardized test scores, such as critical thinking or curiosity.

This difference in expectations plays out dramatically when one compares the programs offered in highly resourced communities to those offered lower income communities beset by crime, lack of development and neglect. In high-end communities academic skills are base level expectations, but few families think that alone makes for a good education. Under NCLB we are evolving to a two-tier system, one for the privileged and another for everybody else — not at all what was intended.

And about measuring what matters…

I agree with critics who say that K-12 education has become rigidly immune to rigorous scrutiny based on important outcome measures related to its assumptions and practices. Schools of education churn out volumes of education research that K-12 educators find mostly irrelevant and, therefore, ignore. During the nearly 30 years that I have been an educator I have often lamented our persistent focus on activities rather than outcomes — especially when it comes to questions of equity, fairness and justice as evidenced by its results. Having said this, I believe NCLB’s emphasis on “scientifically-based” research is a smoke screen, and, in practice, an effective strategy for privileging the interests of powerful businesses, associations and bureaucratic institutions over the hopes and dreams of ordinary individuals.

The consequence of measuring the wrong things is that it most often leads to doing the wrong things. And, of course, we mostly do measure the wrong things, or, at least, less important things — that’s what families and young people are saying with increasing frequency and vehemence. Many young people and families feel trapped in schools they need for childcare reasons, but in which they have little faith that the institution of schooling really can help them change their own lives for the better.

I believe that the interests of the state and the institutions that populate the education industry and the more than half trillion dollar marketplace it creates — the testing industry, higher education, curriculum and teacher training firms, unions, districts and nonprofit reform organizations of all kinds — have diverged from the interests of individuals seeking economic opportunity, self determination and better lives.

Money, markets, and measurement have their place. They are important tools indeed. We should honor and use them. But they are far short of the deification their apostles’ demand of us, and before which we too readily sink to our knees. Only fools worship their tools. — Dee Hock, Birth of the Chaordic Age

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The things our education system does wrong are mostly done with the best of intentions, I hope. But the truth is, “Education 1.0” grew out of an industrial era worldview and it is a miracle it has done as well as it has — it was not designed with equitable outcomes in mind. I was open minded about NCLB at first because it was the first policy initiative that held schools and districts accountable for closing the achievement gap. It hasn’t and it won’t in its current form. As recent studies have consistently shown, the number of students not finishing high school furnishes strong evidence of massive system inadequacy.

The net effect is that more and more young people—whether they are dropouts or not—increasingly see high school as a waste of their time. At least, that is what high school students are saying. The things they care about, educators don’t really measure: interest, curiosity, motivation and self-determination.

In all fairness, it’s not that we educators don’t want to measure the right thing (at least, most of us do); we just don’t know how to do it efficiently or effectively. Most teachers I know are distressed about the current deficit orientation of teaching and learning under NCLB, and many are considering new careers because they believe that NCLB is forcing them to do all the wrong things even if it is for the right reasons. Very few young teachers view K-12 teaching as a long-term profession today. Between the teacher and student dropouts, the coming budget crisis, the looming teacher shortage, and the growing “hope deficit,” NCLB could the “Silent Spring” of this generation.

A final thought…

I think our language confuses us. We say “we educate children,” but we really don’t. As we assert in our podcasts, “You can teach them but you cannot educate them – the learner must educate herself.” Despite dozens, perhaps hundreds, of studies on the learner motivation, it turns out that it’s the one thing the Education 1.0 does worst, and it’s the thing we must do best. That is why it is at the core of our vision of Education 2.0.

Consider the societal effect of “de-motivating” students. For one thing, it’s expensive:

Each year, about 120,000 students fail to get a diploma by age 20, according to the California Dropout Research Project, which on Wednesday released detailed recommendations for state lawmakers and educators. Each annual wave of dropouts costs the state $46.4 billion over their lifetimes because people without a high school diploma are the most likely to be unemployed, turn to crime, need state-funded medical care, get welfare and pay no taxes.

For another thing, acting as if motivation doesn’t matter is dehumanizing. As popular author Tom Rath writes in his book Strengths:

“Over the past decade, Gallup has surveyed more than 10 million people worldwide on the topic of employee engagement (or how positive and productive people are at work), and only one-third ‘strongly agree’ with the statement: At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.” He argues that workplaces and schools need to focus on discovering building upon people’s strengths rather than their deficits, saying, “You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are.”

Education is ultimately about who and what we become — as individuals, families, communities and global citizens. I wonder if we have the will to seize the moment that our concern over education offers us?

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

I look forward to your responses.