Three Sigma Systems

Obama wants to rework G. W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”, which was itself a monument to stupidity. According to the NYT, Obama says that he will,

“…replace the law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure individual students’ academic growth and judge schools based not on test scores alone but also on indicators like pupil attendance, graduation rates and learning climate.”

Because, said Education Secretary Arne Duncan,

“We’ve got to get accountability right this time,. For the mass of schools, we want to get rid of prescriptive interventions. We’ll leave it up to them to figure out how to make progress.”

So Obama’s “new plan” is no plan at all. It is just another way to measure outcomes being produced by unknown processes run by an anarchic cadre of do-it-yourselfers. With stupidity incarnate, the best idea Obama can up with is to try and change educational outcomes, not by working on the system and processes that produce those outcomes, but by hitting students and teachers with bigger hammers.

As a lifelong educator who spent more than a few years running a small public high school in the basement of a church and buying teaching materials using a portion of my meager salary, it seems to me that even a simpleton should be able to understand that, rather than hammering students, teachers and yes, even administrators, to produce more desirable educational outcomes by doing whatever it takes, we must work on the system and processes that produce those outcomes!

For starters, here’s what Obama’s new standards should look like.

Educational Facilities

Set minimum standards for educational facilities and augment funding as needed to assure that all facilities meet those standards. Standards should include safety, comfort, and designs that reflect a theory of education. For example, every school, primary,middle, and high, should have classrooms laid out around a central quad, to promote the collaboration of students and teachers. The quad must be employed by teachers and administrators as the village center — the hub of the learning community.

Educational Leadership

Rewrite the  job description for school and district administrators so that educational leadership tops the list. To this end, leaders must be required to work with their teachers to create, maintain and constantly improve a working explanation of the theory of learning and a methodology of teaching that they use in educating students. In other words, say what you do and why you believe it will work and then do what you say. It is not important that administators and teachers get the “perfect” theory but it is very important that they share a theory. Since very few school and district administrators have any idea why this is so, outside help will be needed.

More specifically, although leaders should listen to local community wishes regarding WHAT is to be taught, they must turn to their teachers and students to build a consensus regarding HOW to educate. This must begin with a theory of learning and end in the application of a methodology of teaching that is consistent with that theory. Only by doing this can theory and methodology be systematically improved.

Teachers

Require that properly prepared teachers be paid at parity with other workers who have made a similar investment and commitment to their professions. If necessary, subsidize districts that cannot meet this requirement. In addition, teachers must be given a chance to succeed by setting standards for teacher-student ratios and overall class size. For any given educational objective, there is an optimum ratio, above or below which the system fails.

The Teaching Community

Leaders and teachers must be required to come together on a regular basis (daily) to study the efficacy of their teaching efforts. Leadership must promote a continual exchange of ideas and methods for doing better. The school must be viewed as a whole community that takes responsibility as a whole, for outcomes. Every individual has strengths and weaknesses. Only when the varying individual characteristics of teachers and leaders are optimized in terms of the whole, can the educational enterprise succeed.

Measurement

Require the proper use of measurement. Proper measurement will make it possible to hear “the voice of the process”. Statistical methods for determining what is common cause and what is special cause must top the list of measures. The first job of the educator is not to evaluate individual students or teachers — to pit student against student and teacher against teacher. The first job is to continually evaluate the system and processes being used to educate. Only by studying the system and its processes can educators master the science and art of educating and improve continuously, so that everyone wins.

These simple standards will provide a good start at focusing on the processes that produce educational outcomes rather than the rearview mirror of outcomes.

“We must be guided by theory.”

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.”

W. E. Deming