8/9/2019 When Will They Ever Learn?

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When Will They Ever Learn? Lets Close the Achievement Gap

NOW!!!

The Holy Grail in education today seems to be the quest to close the achievement gap

between demographic subgroups of students. Sadly, this has been an ongoing, wheel-spinning exercise where much time, money and talk have been expended, but where nosignificant improvements have occurred. According to the COLORADO CLOSING THE

ACHIEVEMENT GAP COMMISSION FINAL REPORT, C.R.S. 22-7-612(4)(b),NOVEMBER 16, 2005 the effort to close the gap had already consumed 6 years at thetime of the 2005 report. Subsequent years of CSAP test results show that noimprovement of size has been made at all in four more years of CSAP results. Even theapologists and insular, defensive education fiefdom members must admit by now thatthe current approach is not working. Outsiders who are concerned for the benefit of thekids, all of them, suspect that is exactly the plan. Do a lot of talking to distract the publicbut have no intention of really changing how things are done. We suspect this because

we know that improving the situation will require real change and increasedexpectations of educator performance, something that is anathema within the educationfiefdom.

If you look at the executive summary from the commission report you will see that itregurgitates the time honored chant of educators, PROCESS, PROCESS, PROCESS.Processes have their place, but the hubris involved in thinking that all problems can besolved by pseudo-experts specifying a command and control process approach whichwill solve all the problems is as ridiculous as are the results being turned in by oureducation system. For context, we can think of the current situation as a pre-PearlHarbor approach. That is, tell the people in the system what to do and how to do it.Dont think about what might happen, just do as you are told. What we need is a post-Pearl Harbor approach. That was characterized by a must do ethic with realleadership that brooks no delays or road blocks from the bureaucrats. The emphasis asin any emergency must be on action. If it turns out wrong, fix it quickly and move on.Dont shoot the messengers, learn from your mistakes, be rigorously intellectuallyhonest. Of course, in a political correctness, insular, Group Think infected fiefdom, itwill take a change of mindset, and most of all leadership passion and openness toachieve what needs to be done.

It is time to face reality. If you look at the results that some charter schools with highpercents of free and reduced are turning in on the gap, versus those of the mainlineschools and districts you see a big difference. It is instructive to examine why. Is itbecause the charters follow the six point plan outlined in the executive summary of thecommission report? HARDLY! It is because of two things; charter school staffmembers really believe that those kids can learn and expect them to do so.Second, charters have much more freedom to do what works, without beingburdened with all of the bureaucratic requirements and union interference thatthe normal schools have. I have heard it said that the leaders and staff at chartersare much better people than those in the normal schools. While there may be some

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truth to that, I believe that the freedom from the Gordian Knot (insane?) bureaucraticPROCESS is the biggest impact. Now if you look at positive charter results and youreally believe that closing the gap is important, then wouldnt you learn from that? Itseems that the mainstream educators are far more concerned with being shown upby charter competition than in serving the needs of their students. In other words the

approach in mainstream circles is to only think of doing things which are palatableinstead of considering all the options objectively that could favorably impactperformance for the benefit of our kids.

What should be done in my opinion? We need to stop specifying process to ninedecimal places and specify desired RESULTS. Also, we need to specify short timeframes for improvement like a year at a time with penalties for not getting resultsshowing adequate progress. Penalties that would get peoples attention would have tobe used. We can no longer afford the milling around at the starting line approachthat has been in place for the last decade. Thus, you could have a ten percentreduction in a districts administration funding for salaries for the subsequent

year if the district didnt close the gap by at least 25% in the first year, 10 percentmore in the second year, etc. This is eminently reasonable when you realize that if thedistricts used a short cycle, data driven, continuous improvement process it would bevery doable. This approach gives an exponential improvement in results so that the firstyear gains should be the greatest, i.e. significantly greater than a 25% reduction in thegap. This is NOT a Baldridge, over-bureaucratized, going through the motionsapproach as has been tried and failed in some large districts. It is the real deal as hasbeen done with great positive impact in industry for decades.

If the kids arent worth it, then what is?

Paul Richardson

2010