The curious paradox of “Won’t Back Down”

Won’t Back Down, the new Hollywood film about two mothers determined to take over their children’s failing inner city school, represents everything that’s wrong with the present way we talk about school reform – and everything we need to talk about more in the future.

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The Science of Learning (and of School Reform)

Here’s a strange but illustrative little animated short based off a short clip of a David Brooks speech, in which he lays bare one of the false assumptions about the brain that has led us down the wrong path for generations.

As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve had my issues with David Brooks in the past — mostly because he’s so RIGHT half the time, yet he can’t seem to connect all the dots of his own emerging understanding of the extent to which we are, truly, social animals, and the extent to which that understanding should completely change how we think about schooling, and school reform.

If you’re interested in going a little deeper than 36 seconds into the science of the brain, and of school reform itself, I’d recommend reading this and this. In my mind, the implications of all this research are clear: We need to stop obsessing over what kids know, and start obsessing over who they are. We need to strike the right balance between the art and the science of teaching and learning. And we need to define the ultimate endgoal of public education as an essential set of lifeskills – and the content we teach as the means towards acquiring those skills – not vice versa.

This is what Special Education (in America) Looks Like

Imagine if the goal in America was to make every teacher a “special ed” teacher – and to give every student specialized attention? I bet we’d see less stigma, more individual and collective capacity to diagnose and meet the needs of each child, and a deeper investment in our nation’s teachers.

If that sounds like a pipe dream, bear one thing in mind — that’s how Finland already does it. Why not us?

Special Education 101 Infographic

USC Rossier Online

 

In Chicago, Imagining a Different Ending

Now that the teacher strike in Chicago has ended – and the city’s schoolchildren have returned to school – one thing seems unavoidably clear: despite the agreement, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his city’s public school teachers will remain deeply divided, deeply mistrustful of one another, and deeply entrenched for the foreseeable future.

The good news is that the rest of us can learn something from the mistakes both sides in this particular melodrama have made. In fact, there are cities that have actually transformed their school systems for the better, and done so in a way that left everyone feeling good about (and committed to) the changes. To bring about such a shift, however, the central figures of reform – elected officials and teacher unions – must start thinking very differently about how transformational change occurs, and what it requires.

One place Chicago’s leaders might want to visit is the Canadian province of Ontario, which realized a few years ago that its school system needed some massive remodeling. Unlike Chicago, however, the key figures in Ontario understood that in order to improve their schools they needed to build collective capacity – which meant generating both the emotional commitment and the technical expertise that no amount of individual capacity working alone could ever match.

Educational change expert Michael Fullan was a part of the successful reforms in Ontario. In his book All Systems Go, Fullan explains why it worked: “The gist of the strategy is to mobilize and engage large numbers of people who are individually and collectively committed and effective at getting results relative to core outcomes that society values. It works because it is focused, relentless (i.e., stays the course), operates as a partnership between and across layers, and above all uses the collective energy of the whole group. There is no way of achieving whole-system reform if the vast majority of the people are not working on it together.”

If the morality play in the Windy City had played out differently, each side would have heeded a different part of Fullan’s advice. Mayor Emanuel would have recognized the importance of fostering a deeper emotional commitment from the folks most responsible for seeing the reforms through – his city’s teachers. He would have realized the futility of pointing out that Chicago had one of the shortest school days in the country while also denigrating his city’s educators and putting them on the defensive from the moment he took office. And he would have genuinely welcomed educators into the process of reimagining what Chicago’s schools should look like. In short, he would have done what our civic leaders are supposed to do: foster eclectic coalitions that bring people together in a spirit of partnership to work towards a common goal.

By the same token, in a parallel world Chicago‘s teachers would have realized that a deeper level of technical expertise is required in modern American classrooms. They would have been the first to call for a longer school day – and they would have made sure the extra time was used wisely. They would have been the first to demand a better system of evaluation – and they would have made sure it actually helped teachers improve the quality of their professional practice. And they would have been the first to acknowledge the value of empowering each school principal to build his or her own teaching staff. In short, they would have done what our educators are supposed to do: help the rest of us understand what great teaching and learning actually looks like – and requires.

Instead, what we see in Chicago is a mayor primarily focused on the technical aspects of school reform, and a teaching force primarily driven by emotion. Ontario instructs us that it doesn’t need to be this way. But it will, in Chicago and elsewhere, until we heed some simple advice: How we speak, not just what we say, matters greatly. And until the tenor of our national conversation reflects a deep awareness of, and commitment to, working together to achieve results, our efforts at developing collective capacity will remain, in Chicago and elsewhere, agonizingly out of reach.

(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)

The World is Watching Chicago, Once Again

In 1968, student protesters stationed outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago broke into a spontaneous chant that quickly crystallized the tenor of the times: “The whole world is watching!”

It’s ironic, then, that one day after this year’s Democratic National Convention, rumors of a city-wide teacher strike in Chicago are reaching a similarly feverous pitch.

As they do, I want to borrow that famous line from 1968 and re-purpose it for 2012. The whole world should be watching, once again, because the issues at stake in Chicago are the same issues at stake in our ongoing efforts to improve American public education. In short, what’s happening in Chicago is extremely important, extremely rare, and not entirely discouraging.

It’s extremely important because you have a Democratic mayor pushing reforms that his city’s teachers — the majority of who are also Democrats — are pushing back against. The mayor wants merit pay and a longer school day. The teachers want a more balanced set of courses, including the arts, music and foreign languages. The mayor wants 50% of a teacher’s formal evaluation to be based on student reading and math scores. The teachers counter that if you enact a policy like that, the only thing your extended day will get you is more test prep and more concerted efforts to game the system. In that sense, the fight in Chicago isn’t purely about teacher contracts — it’s also about conflicting visions of how you create the optimal conditions for teaching and learning.

It’s extremely rare because it hasn’t happened in a quarter-century — and yet 90% of Chicago’s teachers, and 98% of the teachers that voted, indicated their support for a strike. That tells you just how strongly Windy City teachers feel. And regardless of what one thinks about teacher unions, surely we can all agree that having teachers more directly engaged in core questions about education reform is a good idea.

And finally, it’s not entirely discouraging. The most recent reports I’ve read suggest that a deal is close to being reached. If that’s true, I’d characterize the Chicago showdown of 2012 as our latest reminder of what democracy actually looks like when it works — messy, frustratingly slow, and contentious. And yet, at the same time, when we honor individual and collective processes for making our opinions felt and known, it’s also the best chance we’ve got to ensure that when decisions are made, they are done so with the fullest possible knowledge of what “we the people” wish to see.

Tune in if you can.

(This article also appeared on CNN’s education blog, Schools of Thought.)

Who We Are, And Who We Aspire to Be

It has been four years — when the promise of an Obama presidency was still just a promise — since I have felt as inspired as I felt tonight, watching Michelle Obama, as First Lady, remind us of who we are on our best days.

Back then I produced a short video that tried to capture the spirit of that moment, and to apply it to the particular challenges we face when it comes to improving American public education.

To be sure, the prose of governing will always pale in comparison to the poetry of campaigning. And yet, thank you, Michelle, for reminding me it’s still possible to feel inspired by a larger story, and a broader set of shared values, that can guide our way.