best of myshortpencil

David A DeSchryver / The
Doyle Report
Issue 5.46 – Nov. 18, 2005 / Originally published in Issue 5.23 – 6/8/2005

If the world is
“flat” should we expect schools and districts to outsource instruction?
How you react to this questions [sic] likely parallels your current state of
cynicism, but it’s one that will demand some serious thought in the coming
years. . . .

The question causes audible dismay from most educators. Education is not flat
because schools do not operate as corporations that produce and repair
“widgets” (as in the generic economic term and not related to Apple
“Tiger” OS X). An educator’s work is unique. For example, a teacher cannot
be outsourced, and certainly not off-shored, because it’s a trade based on
personal charisma and individual contact. Successful teachers connect with their
students and vice-versa.

It
is precisely because an educator’s work should be unique that computer-delivered
and/or outsourced instruction is imperative. Why should every child in the
classroom be getting the same instruction at the same pace with the same
homework from a teacher who may not have the information, skills or interest in
what matters most to each student?

And in today’s classrooms, how much individual contact contact is there, really?
Moreover, it may be a means to learning but it is far from the only means or
even the most effective means. Celebrating "personal charisma and
individual contact" is like glorifying stagecoaches as standard of
transportational excellence. Well, the stagecoach is no reason to reject
automobiles, trains and airplanes and "personal charisma and individual
contact" are no reasons for rejecting the use of technology and
outsourcing.

How they connect also inhibits the flattening of instruction. Early grade
students cannot be managed through a technology medium.

Somebody
better let Sesame
Street and Blue’s
Clues in on the news.

Late grade students cannot be controlled through a monitor no matter how clear
and attractive the connection.

You
can’t pry students from their monitors and gadgets. Where has this guy been?

The art of personal connection extends to the parents as well. Who in their
right mind would send their child to an institution that outsources its
instruction?

Oh,
I don’t know, maybe someone who wants their child to have access to talents and
skills not possessed by the local teachers?

Only the child of efficiency driven economists, is my best guess, because the
act appears to prioritize budgetary efficiency over safety and an embracing
learning environment.

Absolute
nonsense. Greater efficiency means more programs and services for a given cost.
That’s bad for students, right? Safety? Have you been reading about the
epidemics of bullying,
brawling,
threatening
and assaulting, fornicating
and teacher-student
copulating, let alone the average, everyday disruptions going on in public
schools? Not only is this far from safe, it’s also far from a sound learning
environment.

As it is a poor selling point for parents it is bad protection of the public
good. Schools are government actors and have a duty to provide public education
in a responsible fashion that, at least, assures the safety and welfare of their
children. The outsourcing of instruction would impose large oversight and
management costs on the school. These costs obstruct their ability to check
certification, qualification, and personal backgrounds of those providing the
instruction. The costs and risk of error, then, seem to outweigh the more
familiar and safer hiring and monitoring practices.

The
high costs are in managing and training local staff. Let’s say elementary math
is outsourced to a software program that produces better results on average than
produced in classrooms. How much oversight and management costs are needed for
that?

Finally, teacher unions would never allow it.

And
that’s what this story is really about–crafting a justification for the bigotry
of teacher unions. They may delay advancements for decades in improving academic
outcomes and in delivering education services, but they can’t stop the
advancements from coming.

The above reasons just begin to cover the reasons why outsourcing instruction is
a bad idea – but times and practices change. There are good reasons to believe
that the “flat” world (one of growing economies with millions of qualified,
readily accessible and eager potential employees) will enter the K-12 classroom.

First, the quantity and quality of teachers in the US is not good.

What
good is personal charisma and individual contact if the quantity and quality of
teachers isn’t "good"?

According to the National Education Association the nation is in a “teacher
recruitment crisis.”

The
nation is in a lesson quality crisis that can never be cured through teacher
recruitment.

While student enrollments are rising rapidly, more than a million veteran
teachers are nearing retirement. “Experts predict that overall we will need
more than 2 million new teachers in the next decade.” [1]

Like
"experts" predicted the need for thousands of horses to pull all those
stagecoaches.

Making it worse, the quality of the diminishing pool is troubling. Education
Week put it this way:

Despite universal agreement that teachers should have basic literacy skills
and know the subjects they teach, Quality Counts found states playing an
elaborate shell game. While they set standards for who can enter the
profession on the front end, most keep the door cracked open on the back
end.[2]

In
other words, there’s no effective means for assuring continued competency once a
teacher earns tenure. I personally know teachers who did lots of enriching
activities prior to earning tenure and then promptly terminated them when
granted tenure. Of course, some teachers put everything into their work every
day, but many don’t and there’s no way to prevent teachers from reclining on the
job if they want to. When other professionals slack they get canned. But not for
the workers doing the most important work in the world!

(Do you think the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay plays shell games
with its graduates?)

Second, outsourcing is not a zero-sum matter (the camel-nose-in-the-tent analogy
is more appropriate). No one really thinks that it would replace teachers
outright (yet), but it may make sense to use a proven/reputable program for
tutoring, grading of classroom material, inputting student data into databases
and as a video-conference based virtual-classroom-teacher-assistant. In fact,
there are current examples of success such as the University of Phoenix and
Growing Stars (www.growingstars.com).
[3]

Finally, the technology is available and getting better. In 1995 the Internet
was a peripheral tool. In 2005 it’s central to social and professional lives.
In 2020 it will be beyond our imagination. Interactive,
real-time virtual face to face conversation and interaction is only a few years
away. . . .

Combine the above considerations and it is reasonable to conclude that a future
principle may find the increased teacher-student ratio of a virtual assistant
teacher cost-effective and even attractive to parents who want the best
education the world can offer.

So back to our question: If the world is “flat” should we expect schools and
districts to outsource instruction? Despite the present barriers listed above
– plan for it.

There
were no barriers listed above. They were all lame fabrications.

Thousands if not millions abroad are probably doing so right now.

Endnotes:

[1] National Education Association, “Attracting and Keeping Quality
Teachers,’ http://www.nea.org/teachershortage/index.html,
visited June 3, 2005.

[2] Quality Counts 2000: Who Should Teach? (Education Week: 2000), http://counts.edweek.org/sreports/qc00/,
visited June 8, 2005.

[3] Anupreeta Das and Amanda Paulson, “Need a Tutor? Call India,” Christian
Science Monitor, May 23, 2005, http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0523/p01s01-legn.html,
visited June 8, 2005.

Neal
Peirce / Syndicated columnist
Originally posted March
30, 2004

"Child-centric" is the name that developer William Gietema applies to
the new elementary school being built in Hometown, a New Urbanist community
northeast of Fort Worth.

The energy-conserving building will have many windows and be flooded with
natural light, which research shows stimulates melatonin and in turn endorphins
that make children happy — and thus ready to learn more rapidly. Air exchange
will also be boosted to cycle carbon monoxide out and more oxygen in — another
favor to the children.

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Set in a compact new town with 6-foot-wide sidewalks, trees along the streets
and traffic-calming features, this school will be just across the road from the
city recreation center, next to a performing-arts center and new city library.

And 8 acres of the 10-acre site, notes Gietema, will go for child use —
classrooms, playground and a forested environmental-learning area, with just 2
acres given over to parking and bus areas — uses which normally gobble up half
of most new school sites.

"Instead of a school designed around the drive-through," notes Gietema,
"we designed the school first, then came up with a method to allow parents
to deliver and pick up their children without damaging the school’s
design."

The green light for Hometown’s innovative school design came from Stephen
Waddell, superintendent of the Birdville School District. "We intend this
school to be flexible for people working there today as well as 30 years from
now," Waddell explains. "The design incorporates flexibility, allows
different teaming opportunities for kids and teachers."

Plus, Waddell boasts, "this school is being built so that the community can
use it after hours." Community and library rooms upfront, for example, are
open to learning opportunities for adults after hours, even while other parts of
the building are secured.

Futurist thinker-consultant Ian Jukes, director of the InfoSavvy
Group, stoked the intellectual fires of the school officials, planners and
architects (HKS of Dallas) when designing the Hometown school. Jukes argues
the old formula of "Stand and Deliver" — a teacher before a class
giving kids facts they’ll be required to regurgitate — is hopelessly outdated.
Teachers are no longer "masters," he suggests, when kids, from their
desktops, have instant access to every library or museum on the planet.

Yet most schools, Jukes notes, look like they did in the 1860s, before
telephones, telecommunications or the gas-powered motor. He dismisses the rigid
standards approach of No Child Left Behind as "a rearview mirror of what
education has to be all about." Instead, he’d aim to develop skills of
independent, highly resourceful thinking to prepare children for lives in which
they may experience a dozen or more careers "in jobs not yet invented,
technologies not invented, problems not thought of yet."

This
is what it means to educate The
21st Century Student.

So many new schools look alike, asserts Prakash Nair, international
school-building consultant and architect, because we continue to
"warehouse" children with too little thought to how the design will
impact student learning. Every business/professional group, from construction to
maintenance, transportation to curriculum to security, lays out requirements.
But who’s responsible for learning?

Nair suggests how smaller, learning-centered schools might be configured. For
example: multipurpose "learning studios," where children can be
engaged in flexible learning zones that replace traditional classrooms; atriums
and other open areas, encouraging student interaction, in place of traditional
corridors; wireless laptops and other Internet-connected digital communications
devices available to students where and when they need them.

A big point of the reformers is that students, especially older ones, can
gain immensely by spending big chunks of time learning outside the school, in
libraries, parks, museums, community service and school-to-work programs.

Elliott Washor of the Big
Picture Company, co-inventor of the precedent-shattering Met
School in Providence, R.I., describes the ideal new school as "a
welcoming space," accommodating multiple types of learning.

Most of the same old architects grinding out the same old, banal school
structures are oblivious to these new cutting-edge ideas. Cleveland is using its
$1.5-billion fund for new schools so unimaginatively that it’s "on the
verge of a major public architectural catastrophe," a member of the
Cleveland Landmarks Commission (Theodore Sande) told Cleveland Plain Dealer
architectural critic Steven Litt.

Litt asks: Couldn’t the school district collaborate with Cleveland State
University and Kent State to organize a national symposium on state-of-the-art
architecture and community-related planning?

To me, that’s a crackerjack idea. The school-design issues need to be hauled out
of bureaucrats’ offices, into the sunlight of spirited communitywide
discussions. America’s universities could serve their communities well by
igniting the debate.

By Patti Ghezzi / Get
Schooled Blog of the Atlanta Journal Constitution
October 25, 2005

Want
to know why public schools don’t change? People just keep rehashing old problems
and applying old solutions. The conventional wisdom is no longer wise.

I was going to post about Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox, who introduced
herself yesterday to schoolchildren as “the queen of testing.” But that can
wait…

“Teacher Too” has some far more interesting thoughts:

“With all the news regarding test scores and the college boards, I felt it was
necessary to talk about school climate. I teach middle school, and I don’t,
and haven’t, seen an academic atmosphere. Students come to school with a
social attitude rather than an attitude focused on learning.

Assume
that’s true. Can the problem be corrected? If so, why isn’t it happening?

While the problem can be mitigated, it cannot be eradicated. What has to happen
is for the education system to take advantage of the attitudes students have.
But it can’t be done because the current system requires students to be
something they are not. It tries to fit the round pegs of students into the
square holes of classroom instruction. Since educators have more power than
students, it’s the students who are constantly required to change rather than
the system. It would be far easier for educators–who control the system–to
change the system, but they don’t perceive it to be in their self-interests to
do so. Moreover, few have any idea about how things could be done differently–Jerry
Mangus excepted. But they can be, in schools for The
21st Century Student.

A couple of weeks ago, Good Morning America did a comparison of two high school
students, one in the North and one in China. The differences in attitude were
alarming. The telling statements occurred at the end of the segment, when the
American student said she was going to college to play a sport, and the Chinese
student said she was going to college to study engineering.

It’s
true that in other countries the attitudes and backgrounds of students are
better aligned with a system of classroom instruction. Consequently, students in
these countries produce better results than American students in a similar
education system. But that doesn’t mean American students can’t outperform
students from other countries. It means they can’t outperform them in the same
kind of system.

Until our teachers, parents, administrators, and our society in general, begin
to value education- across ALL economic fronts, nothing is going to change.

What
do you think? True or False?

The truth is that it must be possible to improve learning without
changing attitudes. And it is possible, not insignificantly because it’s not
education that isn’t valued, it’s the education system that fails to
entice and captivate students and the public from more alluring alternatives. To
insist that people enthusiastically embrace the current education system amounts
to a dilatory refusal by educators to compete with the activities people would
rather be doing. Nothing is innately more exciting or more consistent with human
nature than pursuing knowledge. The problem in education isn’t the mission, the
content or attitudes. It’s packaging and delivery.

Students do not study at home, homework is not valued, and if anything is too
challenging, parents create a fuss.

Homework
is an old-fashioned concept based on the division between home and school and
the idea that instruction occurs in a particular place. All work is schoolwork.
When students have access to instruction and learning reinforcement at all times
and in all locations, then the construct of homework will vanish. And as the
system provides greater rewards for greater effort and productivity by
students–rather than rewarding
mediocrity–then the incentives for treating "homework"
differently from at-school learning will likewise vanish.

One reason we have an extremely watered-down curriculum is because students are
too busy after school to actually study. Until everyone accepts that a
challenging curriculum cannot be taught in 50 minute classes, and that if test
scores are indeed going to rise, then students must study at home, complete
meaningful assignments–in school and at home–, and come to school focused on
learning.

Until
educators accept that the system is incapable of motivating students to
apply themselves and that the system actually encourages them not
to achieve to the best of their abilities, then neither students nor the public
is likely to support more than 50-minute instructional periods. For many
students, 50 minutes is way too long. For others, it’s way too short. The
solution is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the time each and
every student spends in pursuit of knowledge. And this requires individualized
learning tracks which are economically feasible with computer-delivered
instruction, monitoring, feedback and testing.

Students have more learning tools than ever before, yet they seem to be learning
less. What a shameful indictment on our state of education.

Just a few observations. If I sound bitter, I guess I am. People talk and talk
about reform. But for true change to occur, we must make sweeping changes-
starting with the question of what is education supposed to do?

Everything!
But it can’t be done with a one-size-fits-all curricula delivered in
one-size-fits-all classrooms.

And, where does a “free and public education” begin and end?

The
content of education is all knowledge and skills. It has no beginning or
end. The only reason why it must be as extremely limited as it is is because of
classroom-based instruction. When students are given parent-guided,
teacher-recommended learning choices, the scope of learning will broaden
dramatically at the macro-level, even if the quantity of each student’s learning
remains constant–which it won’t. It will increase because learning will be more
enticing relative to alternative pursuits.

And finally, should education become a privilege that can be taken away under
specific circumstances?

When
education becomes enticing and captivating, the need to ask this question will
disappear.

Should we continue to try to educate those students who are severely disruptive,
who time and again, are suspended? who interfere with the learning processes of
other students who continually fail, year after year?

It’s
a question that makes the false assumption that the primary means of learning
must continue to be classroom based. When instruction is provided to individuals
rather than classrooms, the incentive to disrupt ones own learning decreases
dramatically.

And, why do we only seem to value those students who may be college-bound? Why
not have more focused technical programs for students who aren’t going to
college?”

To
balance the emphasis among competing educational goals requires system reform
and greater student choice.

And now, here’s a few of the 69 commentaries to date made by readers:

“Teacher Too” is absolutely correct about the importance of the correct
attitudes in education.

"Teacher
Too" is absolutely wrong. The article has been written from the perspective
of what it takes for a teacher to do the best job possible given the current
system. What needs to be asked is, "What is the best way to educate
students given who they are and in the context of their environment," not
"How must students change to make the system of classroom instruction work
better?"

Whether the student succeeds or fails is directly influenced by their home
environment.

True,
to some extent. But that doesn’t mean students can’t succeed to far greater
extents given existing home environments.

If parents do not view education as important, then neither will their children.

All
parents view education as important. The problem is not an issue of the value of
education. The problem is about how education services are provided.

We absolutely must work together to get our kids to realize how demanding and
important education is.

* * *

Working together, with the right attitude, is what it is all about.

Parents
must work individually to get the best education possible for each of their
children. The approach of the collective is precisely the approach which is most
responsible for the state of learning, today.

There are attitude problems all the way around. The teacher’s attitude
towards students, towards parents, towards their administration and education.
The Admin’s attitude towards teachers, student, education and parents. The
parent’s attitudes towards teachers, admin, their own child and education. The
child’s attitude towards their teacher, their school work, the admin, their
parents, their peers.

It’s all related and it all needs to improve.

This
is essentially correct. All these attitudes are interrelated and caused to a
great extent by the context of the education system. You want different
attitudes? You’ve got to change the system. There is no alternative. The system
produces precisely the results (and attitudes) it’s designed to produce.

Oh, right. All teachers are perfect in every way and it’s everyone else,
admin, parents and students who need the attitude adjustment.

You’re kidding, right?

Not
kidding, just narrowly focused, unimaginative and biased.

The sad truth is: we don’t value education in America as we should.

The
truth is we highly value education. But the system reduces parent
commitment and student learning by focusing on classrooms rather than individual
families and students. It creates the appearance of a lack of commitment to
education, but education is not the problem. The system is.

Children always do better when they “think” they are smarter.

Children
always do better when they know the truth. If that’s not true, it’s still more
important for them to know the truth.

The wheel doesn’t need to be re-invented — it already exists.

Should
we farm with horses, fertilize with manure and ride buggies to town?

We have discarded the educational principles that gave us the greatest nation on
earth in favor of politically correct mantras of diversity and multi-culturalism.
We are teaching subjects like science in a box. We think of school as
punishment. We have made school boring and unispiring.

I had a H.S. student tell me yesterday how WONDERFUL her English lit teacher was
-She taught “The Grapes of Wrath”, but didn’t make them read the whole
book! Nope – they got summaries of the chapters that the teacher found
unnecessary. Steinbeck must be rolling over in his grave!

The
wheel doesn’t need to be re-invented — it already exists? Please.

Not to argue, but why do you folks think school is the way it is? We’re trying
to please you and answer to your (society’s) demands. Society asks for more
rigor, more fun, more challenge, more variety, more options, more basics,longer
school years, shorter school days, more rest time, more individial instruction,
more career training, less homework, more reading, more math, more,more, more!!
We’ll never make everyone happy, but god help us we’re trying to the point
of physical and mental exhaustion. We care, believe me as a teacher, we’re
doing the best we can.

The
system causes physical and mental exhaustion. It’s not that the demands can’t be
met. It’s that they can’t be met within a system that tries to be all things to
all people simultaneously and in one classroom. For everyone to get their
way–within reason–more education services must be provided individually. That
requires shifting more instruction–not all instruction–to computers.

My own experience in “good” public schools was mediocre at best.

Even
the best classroom-based public schools are mediocre compared to what they could
be if the system were redesigned.

When my grandparents went to high school there were only 11 grades. Why did we
add 12th? Is it really necessary? Why can’t all school sports be privatized?
Why is it we have to lure kids to school with extracurriculars? What happened to
vocational education? What will happen to our society if everyone goes to
college? Do we just turn over all other jobs to the illegals who will be happy
to do them? Can we create voucher vocational schools for 16-19 year olds so
there’s a publicly funded non-college option for kids?

There’s just so much to think about. The status quo isn’t cutting it.

When
educators adopt policies and practices that benefit one group, it’s always to
the detriment of another group. There’s no exception when services are provided
to classrooms. That not only reduces overall improvement and the potential for
improvement, it also reduces public support for the education system, which
makes it appear as though people don’t value education. The system
causes this.

I’ll grant you it isn’t perfect and there are some bad teachers out there.

A
bad teacher can set a child back from 1 to several years, with some never
catching up. But, what’s bad for one student may be just what another student
needs. The only way to ensure no student ever has a bad teacher is to
provide as much instruction as possible through high-quality, research-tested,
practice-verified, computer-delivered lessons accessible from any place, around
the clock, all year long.

For some time I have wondered what the difference would be if we as an American
society would accept the notion that education is not a right but a national
responsibility…a responsibility that must be assumed by every citizen.

Personally,
I side with the responsibility viewpoint, but even this issue vanishes when
education services are provided with the quality and excitement that overwhelm
competing interests. Indeed, as hard as it might be to believe, it’s possible
that education could be so well done that people would seek too much of it. Just
imagine the masses ignoring theatre, concerts, football, racing, movies,
newspapers, magazines, church, visits to grandma–all so they could learn
something new from a public school website! As long as most educators keep
thinking like they’re thinking now, we aren’t going to have to worry about that!