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

Interesting debate today in the Ohio House concerning HB No. 1, was shown live on the Ohio Channel. This controversial “Jobs Bill” is Republican Governor John Kasich’s landmark legislation that, if approved, will authorize him, through a board he will appoint, to spend $1 billion to incentivize job creation in Ohio.

It is heartening to see a representative assembly where everyone is given a chance to speak in depth. I was glad to see that, although, according to Roberts’ Rules, the Republicans have the votes to stop debate whenever they choose, the Democratic minority was given complete freedom in this HB1 debate to speak and to offer amendments.

I was impressed that our representatives, Democrats and Republicans, made thoughtful speeches, many delivered from a carefully prepared statement, in a polite and respectful setting. I hope a transcript is available. It delineates two very different points of view that deserve careful inspection and analysis.

Democrats attempted to make amendment after amendment to the bill — variously seeking to make the spending of this $1 billion more transparent and the governor and his business council more accountable to the citizens of Ohio.  Each of these amendments were defeated, again and again, by 38 Yes to 58 No.

One Democrat chided his Republican colleagues that in supporting HB 1, they were throwing their principles overboard — just as years ago tea was thrown overboard — by pushing a bill that, amazingly, pushes “taxation without representation.” He said Kasich obviously doesn’t want to be a governor in a democracy, because democracy requires transparency and accountability.  He said, Kasich apparently wants to be a king, empowered to work in secrecy and to spend the public’s money with no accountability.

A Republican’s response was to read the definition of the word, “hyperbole” — an obvious exaggeration.

Other Democrats complained that this legislation is missing many good government features, and fails to protect “the public interest.” One Democrat said that the secrecy and lack of accountability that HB 1 codifies into law will make Ohio “rife for another scandal that will make ‘Coingate’ look like chumpchange.”

Part of the Republican spiel is that “Government should move at the speed of business.” Democrats said they feared that Ohio would be inflicted with the speed of Enron, the rapid destruction of AIG,  and the quick descent of Ernie Madoff.

I cannot seem to find much interest concerning HB 1.  Plunderbund says, “The sheer concentration of power for the Governor at the expense of the legislature is breathtaking.  Public record laws dictated by private contracts signed between the Governor’s political appointees subject (pending a floor amendment) to only Controlling Board review.  The Senate will have no right to exercise any advise and consent confirmation powers to the appointments the Governor will make the Board. … JobsOhio will costs more than the 3C (Railroad).  It contains thornier and more broader policy issues than a simple train.  It also has less planning than the 3C.  So why is it getting less scrutiny?”

And a libertarian writer at Yarblog, responds:  “I thought Ohio gave the G.O.P. power because government was too big and not transparent?  What about Obama buying an equity stake in GM and Chrysler?  At least these were specific investments we could debate.  JobsOhio is more like SlushOhio — a slush fund to be doled out in secret meetings by people specifically exempted from laws governing public employees. I can’t believe I’m applauding a Democrat on a fiscal/jobs issue.  Hester (at Plunderbund) is exactly correct. Democrats offered amendments that would limit campaign contributions and incentives that are obviously a conflict of interest.  These are reasonable checks on power and they were denied.”

In the face of 9 percent unemployment, a diminishing middle class and more Americans than ever below the poverty line, it was surprising that the President Obama in his State of the Union Speech spoke of the American Dream and said, “We believe that this is a place (America) where you can make it if you try.”

More and more Americans are in poverty (see list below) and Obama’s implication — If you are not making it financially, you must not be trying — no doubt, tickled Republican ears. But it is a line of thinking that in a SOTU speech makes no sense for a Democratic president.

It’s a comforting idea to those who are financially successful that it’s all because of personal effort and merit that they’ve achieved the American Dream of financial security. In his speech, Obama said, “We are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea — the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That’s why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here.”

But, the biggest reason individuals cannot reach the American Dream of personal prosperity is not because of personal failure or personal shortcomings. The problem is system failure, caused by faults and shortcomings in the system. The reason so many poor Americans have done such a poor job of “shaping their own destiny,” is not because of laziness or lack of effort, but because the system is designed to have a few winners and a lot of losers.

It is interesting that people who have money think it has to do with their personal merit, but, in fact, as I say in “Why Are We Rich,” few of us are rich, even minimally, simply by our own efforts or own merit. We have money because of our connection to power within the system.

The “elephant in the room” that everyone seems to want to ignore, is that ours is a very unfair system. It is fascinating how such an unfair structure can be perpetuated and sustained in a system that is supposedly “democratic.”

There are millions of people in poverty (see below) who will never climb out, regardless of how hard they might try. Robert Reich responded to Obama SOTU speech by saying Obama ignored “the central structural flaw in the U.S. economy.” Reich says, “Although the economy is more than twice as large as it was thirty years ago, the median wage has barely budged. Most of the gains from growth have gone to the richest Americans, whose portion of total income soared from around 9 percent in the late 1970s to 23.5 percent in 2007.”

Our economic system has been subverted over the years — via our corrupt political system — to funnel money to the few at the expense of the many.

Obama would have us believe that the problem in our economy is global competition, and that our solution is to mount a national effort to “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build” the rest of the world. But, even if the nation could rise to the challenge, if our present system of wealth distribution stays the same, how is the average American helped? If the wealth produced by the system continues to be gobbled up by the very few, how can the American Dream be realized by the average American?

In the last couple of decades, there have been enormous gains in productivity resulting in a huge amounts of new wealth. In his speech Obama noted, “In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business. Steel mills that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100.” But the huge wealth generated via increased productivity has not been fairly distributed.

When he was campaigning for the presidency, Obama said, “While some have prospered beyond imagination in this global economy, middle-class Americans — as well as those working hard to become middle class — are seeing the American dream slip further and further away. I believe that Americans want to come together again behind a common purpose. Americans want to reclaim our American dream.”

But here in 2011, Obama’s answer — “make America the best place on Earth to do business” — is inadequate. The big issue is not how to produce more wealth, but how to create a more fair economic system that will allow more Americans to reclaim the American dream.  Our current “trickle down” system is not a system worthy of a democratic society.

I agree with what Obama said as a candidate, “Americans want to reclaim our American dream.” The dream of “liberty and justice for all” seems just that, a dream, for many Americans.   The only way to reclaim the American dream is via a vitalized American democracy, via vitalized American communities. In his speech, Obama failed to acknowledge that the central crisis of our time is the fact that ours is a weak democracy that the weakness of our democracy is fundamentally the biggest reason so many Americans have little or no chance of financial security.

It’s a goofy notion that it is more technology, more science education by which our nation can “win the future” — “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build” — and maintain world dominance. North Korea and every other totalitarian state would embrace such a strategy, but such an attitude is not worthy of our American democracy.  We win the future by finding the most vibrant, forward looking leadership possible.  We win the future by vitalizing our democracy so that it is effective and so that it ever advances the “common good.”

President Obama in his SOTU Speech Got It Wrong.  At the top of list of tasks this country must accomplish in order to secure a good future, you will not find “Out compete the world in technology.”  You won’t find “Out educate every other nation.”  If the goal is to create an America where Americans universally enjoy the American Dream, then the theory that must guide our thinking is that the best route to a good future is via democracy.  Of most importance, and what should be at the top of our list is that we “Vitalize American Democracy.”

Vitalizing our democracy so that we have a government “for the people” is the answer to bringing the American Dream to more and more Americans.

Here are 27 Signs That America’s Poverty Class Is Becoming Larger than America’s Middle Class

1. Only 47 percent of working-age Americans have a full-time job at this point.
2. One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
3. In America today, 8.9 million people are working part-time jobs for “economic reasons”.
4. During the last school year, almost half of all school children in the state of Illinois came from families that were considered to be “low-income”.
5. In 2010, more Americans than ever before were living below the official federal poverty line.
6. The number of net jobs gained by the U.S. economy during this past decade was smaller than during any other decade since World War 2.
7. The Bureau of Labor Statistics originally predicted that the U.S. economy would create approximately 22 million jobs during the decade of the 2000s, but it turns out that the U.S. economy only produced about 7 million jobs during that time period.
8. 108.6 million Americans are either unemployed, underemployed or considered to be “not in the labor force”.
9. The United States now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.
10. The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
11. Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
12. According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, visits to soup kitchens are up 24 percent over the past year.
13. Approximately 5 million U.S. homeowners are now at least two months behind on their mortgage payments.
14. The number of Americans filing for bankruptcy rose another 9 percent in 2010.
15. In 2009, total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined in the United States.
16. According to a survey released very close to the end of 2010, 55 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.
17. Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
18. The number of Americans on food stamps set a new all-time record every single month during 2010, and now well over 43 million Americans are enrolled in the program.
19. Even in our nation’s capital stunningly large numbers of Americans are suffering in desperate poverty. Today, 21.5 percent of the population of Washington D.C. is on food stamps.
20. It now takes the average unemployed American over 33 weeks to find a job.
21. The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
22. The number of American families that were booted out of their homes and into the streets set a new all-time record in 2010.
23. Some formerly great industrial cities are rapidly turning into ghost towns. For example, in Dayton, Ohio today 18.9 percent of all houses are now standing empty.
24. Ten years ago, the “employment rate” in the United States was about 64%. Since then it has been constantly declining and now the “employment rate” in the United States is only about 58%. So where did all of those jobs go?
25. A recent study by a law professor from the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States. Back in 2001, they only accounted for 12 percent of all bankruptcies. It is getting really, really hard to live on a fixed income in the United States.
26. In the United States today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.
27. One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.