To Transform A Local School System By Exercising “Local Control” — What Options May A Local Board Consider?

This past week I made contact with a senior member of “The Department of Strategic Reform and Initiatives” of the Ohio Department of Education (ODE).  I’m looking forward to a good conversation with this person. To make our time most useful, I prepared this e-mail with questions and background:

In 2009, when I campaigned to be elected to the Kettering School Board, the League of Women Voters’ asked:  “What is the biggest challenge facing Kettering Schools?” I answered:

“Public education needs transformation. To achieve 21st century quality, we must stop simply replicating the present system. … The biggest challenge for the Kettering School Board is to inspire and empower teachers and citizens to work together to define system excellence and to create a plan for long-term transformation …”

In my view, even in top rated districts, like Kettering, our system of public education is failing to produce citizens prepared to maintain or advance the American experiment. The degree of this failure is hidden by an evaluation system that uses a trivial and inadequate definition of “excellence” — one that does not attempt to measure or evaluate what is most important.

Our 19th century system of education must be changed into a 21st century system by consciously transforming:

• The aim / purpose of the system.
• The structure / design of the system.

This is a huge goal. I know, from those basically satisfied with the current system, the question arises, “Why fix something that isn’t broken”? Of those most resistant to changing the current system are those who are winners in the system, those who are pleased, overall, with how things are.  It is interesting that the theme played out on the big stages of history is the theme even at the local level — a church, a club, a community — that, somehow, a fairly small clique gets in control and fiercely resists change.

Citizens must reclaim education for the common good — away from the dominance of the politicians, lobbyists and the educational establishment.Thanks to the yeoman work of our ancestors, in order to effect transformation in our society we simply need an engaged citizenry. It is our opportunity to bring about societal change by somehow awakening our democracy.

Democracy is all about community — people coming together, not as partisans, but as members of an extended group — people held together with a common interest in promoting the general good. I’m considering organizing a four or five week seminar, open to the public, to help get the ball rolling. The general topic of the seminar, I’m thinking, will be: “Public Education in Kettering, Ohio — In The Year 2030.” I think it is a useful and uniting activity to attempt to thoughtfully consider the future and I hope the idea will appeal to others as well. We are on the cusp of an explosion of technology that will make simulated Artificial Intelligence a real force in education. We are on the verge of insights into the functions of our brains that will have huge implications for our understanding of human development and learning.

Since 1982’s “A Nation At Risk,” there has been political discussion about how to make pubic education more successful. The conclusions have been political — not scientific — the system needs more rewards, punishments, technology, rigorous curriculum. Lately, the theme has been that that the teacher is the most important element in public education and everything would be swell, if only every student had great teachers.

I hold with the view advanced by the late W. Edwards Deming, the “quality guru,” that the biggest determiner of the quality of the output of a system is the overall design and organizational structure of the system. Deming made the bold claim that 85% of the factors deciding quality are found in system design. The quality of personnel, and every other component of the system, according to Deming, has only a small impact, comparatively.

Deming’s insight means that to accomplish the big improvements needed in public education, the overall system structure must be transformed — beginning with clarifying the aim / purpose of the system. There is no other way. Such effort at transformation, of course, can be expected to be fiercely resisted by those embedded in the current system. The best way to proceed, I’m suggesting, is to co-opt resistance by making transformation a long term process — one that allows sufficient time for the old guard in the system to fade away with dignity, giving the benefit of their experience to the transformation effort.

Over the last four years, or so, I have posted over fifty web logs dealing with education. See here: The Best Hope For Public Education Is That Communities Vitalize Democracy And Exercise Local Control. In the article, excerpted below, I give a good summary of the thinking that pushed me to run for the Kettering board and that pushes me, even now — The Kettering School Board’s Biggest Challenge Is To Gain Public Support For Transformation:

Voters want more from their schools than high test scores and, schools invariably promise much more. For example, Kettering High School says its mission is for students to “develop individual talents, to graduate with skills to attain a career goal, and to become contributing citizens.” This sounds good, but school mission statements are largely empty words. The relentlessness of testing and grading trumps everything; the importance of test results is hammered again and again by the media and by schools themselves. The broader mission of schools is given only lip service. …

It is aim / purpose that should drive the system, and, according to Dr. Deming, without an aim, there can be no system. Isolated departments doing their own thing, individual profit centers seeking their own ends together do not make a system. Right now, the unifying aim / purpose public education has embraced is the production of test scores, and making test scores is what drives the system.

Kettering is like a gifted adolescent with great potential. As Lucy once told Linus, “There is no heavier burden than a great potential.” The League of Woman Voter’s question to Kettering Board candidates is: “What is the biggest challenge facing the Kettering School system?” It seems to me that the biggest challenge for Kettering is for Kettering simply to live up to its potential. It could have a truly great system of public education. These are not just rah rah words. It’s a reasonable evaluation based on facts — Kettering is a prosperous community, it has great infrastructure, great traditions, it has with many civic minded and highly educated citizens. Kettering has advantages many other communities lack, but, the question is: How can these advantages be made to work together to make something exemplary?

Kettering should seek to live up to its name. It should develop a new system of public education that redefines the standards of “excellence” for public education.

Brainstorming questions:

1. What school districts in Ohio, if any, have exemplary systems of self-evaluation, pegged to locally defined “mission statements”?
2. Prior to implementing ODE’s current district “report card” grading system, what other systems of evaluation were considered by ODE, but rejected?
3. To encourage “strategic reform,” in keeping with Deming’s insight, has the ODE studied or recommended alternative system designs a local district might consider?
4. Does ODE offer any incentives for a local district who chooses to embark on a serious effort at system transformation?
5. What schools or districts in Ohio have implemented a policy of personalizing education for every student?
6. Has the ODE prepared an impact study concerning the expected explosion in education applications that will be soon available via our ongoing exponential explosion of technology?
7. Has the ODE prepared an impact study concerning the advances in the understanding of brain function and how teaching methods can apply these understanding to stimulate learning / motivation?
8. What school district in Ohio is using technology in the most forward looking way to accomplish educational goals?
9. Kettering spends about $12,000 per student per year. How much freedom does a local board have in spending this money?  What is a strategy a local board could pursue in order to gain the maximum control over the spending of this money?
10. Can a local board directly allocate funds to parents and students for the pursuit of self study or independent projects? Can a local board place students or parents on the payroll?
11. Suppose a community, as represented by its local board, believes in the principal that quality best emerges in a system based on entrepreneurial opportunity, choice and competition. What strategies, consistent with Ohio law, could a local board pursue to advance this principal?
12. What Ohio laws — or ODE or federal regulations — limit the prerogative of local boards to implement an organizational structure built on the principal of entrepreneurship?
13. What new laws should the Ohio Assembly consider enacting to give local boards more opportunity to meaningfully restructure their local systems of public education?
14. At one time, individuals whom an Ohio school board deemed qualified, could be permitted to teach up to 15 hours each week in Ohio high schools, regardless that these individuals had zero teaching credentials. Is this rule still in effect?  According to Ohio law, what are the rules that govern how individuals — qualified but without teaching credentials –may teach in Ohio schools?
15. A K-12 education has an accumulated cost exceeding $150,000.  A system built on free market principals would seek to maximize personal freedom and opportunity. What are strategies by which at least some of this $150,000 may be directly accessed by parents and students?

Previous Posts:

• Great Teachers — Through Their Behaviors And Attitudes — Serve As Good Role Models
• What Is The Public Education That Will Sustain An Ever More Successful America
• If The Aim Of Public Education Is To Provide Opportunity — How Should $150,000 Per Student Be Spent?
• How A Lazy Disinterested Prince Came To Relish Learning, Treasure Understanding, Delight in Insight
• What Quality Guru W. Edward Deming Had To Say About Reforming and Improving Public Education