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What Is The Aim Of Our System Of Public Education — That Justifies Coercive Taxation?

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Mike Bock

An “Excellent” school in Ohio is defined as a school where a strong showing of its students demonstrate that they have sufficiently mastered core curricular content, and a school where attendance and graduation rates are high.

If Ohio is to meet its potential, Ohio needs to be guided by a much more profound definition and vision of “excellence” than the one now is place. If every school in Ohio would meet this standard of “Excellence,” Ohio’s system of public education would still be far from what it could and should be.

I like the conclusion reached by a Hewett Foundation study that students need “deeper learning,” that schools must prepare students to:

Master core academic content
Think critically and solve complex problems
Work collaboratively
Communicate effectively
Learn how to learn (e.g., self-directed learning)

The foundation says: “After months of research and analysis, including more than 100 interviews with top thinkers in the fields of education, business, and public policy. Over the course of our exploration, we found widespread agreement that America’s schools must shift focus dramatically in order to prepare all of our children to succeed.”

To shift focus means to shift how one defines “excellence.”

Education is still under local control and that is why we regularly have school board elections, including this year, 2011. In a vitalized democracy, these elections would serve an important function in the community’s ongoing discussion about its system of public education, as, every two years, candidates and community members would dialogue about how their local schools are doing and about how public education in their community could be improved.

I like the insight of David Matthews of the Kettering Foundation that we need a vitalized democracy — in order for our system of public education to reach its potential.

Any board candidate worthy his or her salt should have an answer to: What Is The Aim Of Public Education That Justifies Coercive Taxation?

Certainly, the public cannot think the aim is so shallow as Ohio’s Report Card system indicates, and if our democracy had any force, the public, via their local board elections would have a lot of opportunity to reexamine this basic question of system aim.

We pay tax to support a common good and, as I say here, the reason a society seeks to educate its young is based on the reality: it is in youth that the future of our society rests. Our motivation for preparing the young is, in part, self serving. Taxes for education should be an investment used to advance America toward “liberty and justice for all.”

Suppose the aim public education is to produce a citizenry with the strength of character, intellect, training and background needed to sustain our national ideals. Certainly this would involve “deep learning,” and much more. Suppose you had $10,000 per year per student and great facilities to use, the question is: What is the design of the system that could best accomplish such an aim?

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South of Dayton Democratic Club To Meet Tomorrow — To Make Plans For This Year

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Mike Bock

This is the e-mail note I wrote to the South of Dayton Democratic Club members, concerning our meeting tomorrow where we are to discuss our plans for this year. John Murphy is president of the club.

Thank you for reelecting me to the office of Vice-President of the South of Dayton Democratic Club.

President Murphy and I have been challenging each other to think through a vision of this club that will inspire us all to work together so that our club might grow into an ever more successful organization. Our meeting this Wednesday will be at 6:00 PM at the Wright Library in Oakwood.

I’m wondering if we could think this big: Can we imagine how the South of Dayton Democratic Club could gain 500 new members this year and pull in $6000 in membership fees?

My thought is that we should agree on a project and tell all new members that this year $10 of their $12 dues would go toward funding an exciting and / or worthwhile project of obvious need. And then,

Initiate a campaign to bring new members into the club by telephoning registered Democrats, explaining this project and giving a personal invitation to join the club.
Create a club web-site to refer potential new members. This web-site would contain information about the club, and would have the means for potential members to join and pay dues via Paypal, etc. The web-site also would give detailed information concerning the project.

An obvious need is the need for meaningful civic discussion concerning important topics of the day. My thought is that every year, starting this year, our club could choose one or more topics to research, and raise money specifically to fund the needed research. The idea would be to create free seminars, open to the public, using paid presenters, possibly chosen through an RFP process. These seminars would also be put on You-tube and posted on DaytonOS and other sites. The idea is that these seminars would serve as the context for growing community.

My first choices for possible topic this year:

Ohio’s new budget
The future of public education

Sincerely, Mike Bock

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Ohio’s SB5 Provides The Greenspace Required For System Transformation — Needed: Profound Knowledge

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Mike Bock

Ohio’s SB5 requires that teachers be paid according to a merit system. This requirement should inspire some thoughtful discussions.

SB5 gives local districts a choice of how they will define teacher merit.

The basis for judging merit is a clear understanding of how success is defined.

We have a good definition of what success in basketball means, and so, we have a fair basis upon which to judge the merit of a basketball player. An evaluation of a basketball player revolves around the question: To what degree does this player contribute to the success of the team? There is not a chance that someone who is an awful player could be mistaken for someone who is an excellent player. The definition of what success in basketball means ultimately is the basis for a merit system that determines the pay of professional basketball players.

The system of merit pay used to compensate professional basketball players could serve as a model for a system of merit used to compensate teachers if we could ever figure out what success in teaching should mean. As it is now, success in teaching is defined solely in terms of individual success within a system of schooling. The problem is, the system is wrong, seeking wrong aims, so the definition of success in the system is wrong as well. The merit of a teacher can be judged in a manner similar to how the merit of a professional basketball player is judged, only in the sense that the game of basketball parallels the game of schooling.

Basketball, like all games, occurs in a small universe, controlled by a finite amount of specific regulations. The “object of the game” is narrowly defined.
Schooling also occurs in a small universe, also controlled by a finite amount of specific regulation and again, the “object of the game” is narrowly defined.

The problem is, substituting schooling for education is a bad idea and schooling, as presently defined, is miserably failing to produce the effective and thoughtful citizens our nation needs.

SB5 shows a fork in the path, two roads diverging. We are on the wide and easy path of schooling and we deceive ourselves into thinking we have “excellent” schools because, according to a bureaucratic process, we are winners in the game of schooling. But SB5 opens the opportunity for local control to redefine the game. Here are our choices:

We stay on the path we are now: Public education accelerates its alignment with corporate interests and becomes ever more effective in serving its corporate overlords.
We take the road less traveled: Public education creates a transformed system, one whose purpose is defined as effective, self-actualized citizens, prepared and happy to advance the common good of our society.

Last summer, the Kettering school leadership studied an interesting new book, Frederick Hess’s, “Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling.” On the cover of the book is a picture of an open green field. Hess’s theme is that we must transform the system of education and that the first step is to clear out the bramble and debris and create green space for new development. I read the book and made this response: “To Bring Excellence To Public Education We Must First Engineer A Better System.”

SB5 clears out the bramble. The question is, what do we do with the “greenfield” it created. It seems to me, Hess’s wants to open public education to corporate America to use as a big profit opportunity.

My thought is that green space should be an opportunity for an engaged democracy to exert local control. In the book I am researching, “Public Education In Kettering Ohio In 2030,” I imagine that a prosperous community determines to take path #2, and successfully creates a system design that empowers their success.

I keep remembering W. Edwards Deming’s words, “Profound knowledge is required.”

The challenge for Peggy Lehner, my local state senator, recently designated chair of the Senate Education Committee, is to show leadership in bringing profound knowledge into this discussion about school reform. SB5 should energize discussions about the purpose of public education and about how the system of public education should best be designed to best accomplish that purpose. Questions Senator Lehner’s committee should investigate:

What is the aim of Ohio’s system of public education?
What are the possible system designs that a local district might implement that could accomplish this aim?
How should teacher professionalism be defined?
What is the system that would empower and reward ever more professional teachers?
What is a merit system that would work to make Ohio’s system of public education most effective