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Book: FIX THE WHOLE ENCHILADA: A ROADMAP TO THE COMMON
GOOD Recap So what would public schools look like in a future that's not broken? Five large themes help in shaping an answer. Purpose. In an earlier era, Americans were satisfied with public schools that served all children even though many didn't graduate. Now the purpose has been ratcheted up. Public schools are being given the mission of Serving All, Eeducating All, Graduating All. Even that isn't ambitious enough. Our schools need to do more for the world than simply crank out graduates who know algebra and perform well on tests. Our schools need to be incubators of civic wisdom; it's important for every generation of elders to awaken young people to the excitement and complexity of the civic challenges that face our society, to prepare them well for the decades ahead. Engagement. There's a curious fact of life about the roles this nation expects of its Superintendents and their Boards of Education. A Superintendent is at one and the same time a Producer-Seller and a Buyer-Customer. With role confusion so embedded, public confusion is a natural consequence, but wise leadership can overcome much of the difficulty. If everyone involved signs up for a commitment to excellence, the tension of conflict and frustration can give way to the fun of cooperation and achievement. Diagnosis. Five decades ago, the typical public school had a pretty simple organizational structure. A principal, a cafeteria staff, a custodian, a roster of classroom teachers, and maybe a band director and a physical education coach. Public schools today are much more complex, with numerous specialized professionals in addition to classroom teachers. Real dollar costs per student are double or triple the norms of fifty years earlier, yet even with all that money, maneuvering room somehow seems diminished. In a system as over-defined as the modern public school, educators see change almost solely in terms of incremental adjustments to existing habits. While school systems for upper middle class suburban children seem to work well within this framework, school systems that apply Standard Model Incrementalism to the task of educating at risk children invariably perform more poorly than they should. Tipping Point Models. Schools that succeed in educating children of poverty embody organizing principles that are very nearly the polar opposite of incrementalism. The leaders who design and organize successful schools do so by combining every success ingredient they can think of. All at the same time. If one imagines every child needing to reach an internal tipping point in order to become a motivated learner, it's not difficult to see how the tipping points for at risk children are so much higher than for middle class children. It takes a much more intensive effort to coax such kids past their built-in tipping points and turn them into serious students. Standard Model Incrementalism fails because kids don't reach their tipping points. Tipping Point schools succeed because their designs are tailored to the realities of the children they're teaching. Taking Success to Scale.
One sure way to interest a school system in doing something new is to
offer it a major sum of money. If a national competition were held to
award grants to the six school districts with the best chance of achieving
district-wide success as tipping point pioneers, there's be enthusiastic
takers. And, in time, at least one or two of these districts would create
exciting success stories from which the rest of the nation could learn.
In the meantime, there's much that all districts can do to improve, beginning
with cultivating an an all-hands commitment to excellence. The next step, the higher step, is curriculum enrichment. It's important to educate students in the basics of literature, history, math, science, and the arts. It's even more important to educate students for civic wisdom. Educating for civic wisdom is a high calling. And, in a complex world, an essential part of steering toward a future that's not broken. June 2006 |