Schlechty Center

Posted by George Thompson

In an article published in Educational Leadership, “The Threat of Accountabalism,” Phillip Schlechty offers that public education in the United States is slowly being overwhelmed by what David Weinberger, a highly regarded author in the field of business, calls accountabalism.

According to Weinberger, “accountabalism is the practice of eating sacrificial victims in an attempt to ward of evil.” He goes on to write, “because accountability suggests that there is a right and a wrong answer to every question, it flourishes where we can measure results exactly. It spread to our schools where it is eating our young - as a result of our recent irrational exuberance about testing, which forces education to become something that can be measured precisely.”

Daniel Pink, in Drive, cautions, “what science is revealing is that carrots and sticks can promote bad behavior, create addiction, and encourage short-term thinking at the expense of the long view.” At the Schlechy Center we have heard many stories from educators who are caught in a world of contradictions and dilemmas where accountability, while well intended, has become destructive, or just plain silly. We invite educators, parents and/or students to share examples of accountabalism, where short-term thinking and actions have trumped doing what is in the best interest of students over the long term.

Article: Whose Standards Are They?

Posted by George Thompson

We suspect that you and your staff have been dedicating time and energy to unravel and try to make sense of either the new Common Core Standards or newly revised state standards. At the Schlechty Center we have also been educating ourselves about the most recent standards, thinking hard about your challenges, and anticipating some of your current needs and interests. This article discusses the current issue of standards-both Common Core Standards and revised state standards-from the perspective of the Schlechty Center’s major concepts and frameworks. We know that you have state officials and others telling you what you need to know and how you need to proceed. You’ll find we take a different approach. We recommend questions for probing district discussion that might help strengthen your district’s direction while you and your staff think deeply about important content. 

We are also offering a session (also entitled “Whose Standards Are They?”) at the 2011-2012 Working on the Work Conference in order to provide you and your districts additional support in this area. 

We would love to have feedback on the article and this issue in general. Let us know what’s happening in your district with standards and how you imagine using this article.                                   

Sincerely,

George Thompson

President, Schlechty Center

 I first heard about the idea of charter schools from Albert Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers. As he explained the notion, it sounded pretty good. Based on the idea of charters as developed by European monarchs during the “age of exploration,” a local school board might identify some problem, or set of problems, requiring a level of innovation beyond the school district’s present capacity to respond. Teachers and other educators-perhaps in partnership with parents, local businesses, and civic groups-would be invited to join together to develop an innovative solution to the problem or problems. Those who accepted the challenge would be provided a special charter much like Queen Elizabeth granted to Sir Walter Raleigh and James I granted to Henry Hudson.  This charter would give the group a special license to explore innovative approaches to the problems identified and to act on their discoveries. 

                As a part of the charter, the chartered school group would be freed from most if not all of the policy restrictions, rules, and directives under which other schools in the district would be operating. In some cases, the group might also be provided some venture capital to support their efforts. In exchange, the chartered group would agree to document their efforts, make their work transparent to others, and, if the innovations proved to be successful, provide technical assistance and support to others who might want to use the innovation as a prototype for their own efforts to solve the same problem. 

                Shanker found the idea appealing, not only because it had the potential to release the creative capacities of teachers, but also because it had the potential to empower teachers to pursue ideas they believed worthy of pursing. It was not long, however, before the idea of the charter school was co-opted by those bent on introducing more choice and more competition into the American system of education-and, ironically, also as a tool to bring teacher unions “under control.” (Of course, those who use charter schools to promote choice and competition argue that these schools can also serve as models for public schools, but it is clear that choice and competition rather than systematic exploration of innovative solutions to persistent problems is the superordinate goal of the charter school movement. Indeed, some of the more popular charter school models operate more as franchises for an established innovation than as tools for exploring alternative models.)

                 As instruments to promote choice and competition, charter schools have become places that promise to do better (which is not to say, do differently) what traditional schools are intended to do. Indeed, some charter schools proudly proclaim that they are traditional schools. Rather than inventing the future, the goal of many charter schools seems to be to affirm the past.

                If one assumes that schools as they have been designed to operate can meet the needs of the twenty-first century and that all that is needed is relief from onerous bureaucratic regulations, then the ideas underlying most present versions of charter schools will provide some relief to a few students in a few schools. The obvious question, of course, is, “If it is the regulations that are impeding performance, why not change policies and program restrictions for all schools and for all students, not just the lucky few who enroll in this or that charter school? Why insist that the formula of strong states and weak school districts is the preferred formula, when state intervention almost invariably leads to more regulation and more bureaucratic controls than would otherwise be found in any but the most highly bureaucratized big city school system?”

                 If one assumes, as I do, that what is needed are schools that encourage continuous innovation and the disciplined exploration of alternative solutions to persistent problems, charter schools such as those now being developed will do little to help us meet the challenges we must meet to ensure that every child will be provided a high-quality education. The charter schools Al Shanker described to me could, however,  be valuable tools in our effort to transform our schools from government-based bureaucracies into the community-based learning organizations they must become if they are to serve twenty-first-century democracy and twenty-first-century economies well. (See my book Leading for Learning for a more extended discussion of this point.)    

                To properly use charter schools as such a tool, policymakers would have to renounce the idea that these schools are primarily a means of providing parents and students choice. More than that, they would need to be prepared to recognize that school improvement is not a stand-alone activity.  In the long run schools only improve on a continuous basis when there is strong sense of community surrounding the school and a sense of ownership and pride attached to the school.

                In the multicultural, multiethnic world in which we now live, democracy’s survival depends upon the building of a sense of community among the diverse populations from which children come. In addition to needing strong communities as a condition of their own improvement,  public schools may be the only organizations positioned to systematically address the need to build community, just as the schools may be the only organizations that might help parents better fulfill their educational functions. The challenge confronting many schools, therefore, is to build a sense of community among diversity rather than to simply design schools that assume a unity of purpose that does not exist.

                The fact is that many of the problems we locate in schools have their origins in the family and community. Rather than lamenting this fact and complaining about the lack of family support and community support, maybe schools should be encouraged to explore innovative solutions to these and other problems. Rather than seeking ways to help schools develop the capacity to do those things families and communities no longer can or will do, it might  be worthwhile to charter a faculty to explore new ways for schools to build community in places where a clear sense of community does not exist and to help parents to better carry out their functions as educators?

                 Maybe a school that operated under a specific charter to build community rather than trying to serve a community that is fractured could also serve as a catalyst to solve many additional problems that are affecting community life in America-for example, the lack of honest communication across racial and ethnic boundaries. Maybe schools could once again serve as vital centers of community life and become the cultural institutions they must be if they are to serve our democracy well. Maybe schools could become places where the young and the old, the rich and the poor join together to ensure the continuation of our democratic way of life as well as to provide each child with a quality educational experience. Failing this I fear schools will continue to devolve into the government-dominated agencies present reform efforts are threatening to cause them to become.

                If the initial concept of charter schools were adhered to and charter schools were seen as tools to explore ideas like transforming schools into community-building agencies, well-conceived charter school initiatives might address issues that have plagued our education system for many years. As things now stand, however, the charter school is as likely to further aggravate the problems that exist in some communities as it is to address those problems. The problem for educators committed to democracy is to create ways to educate children from diverse backgrounds and to do this in a way that embraces diversity rather than accepting Balkanization as a solution. Too many charter schools treat race as a variable to be controlled rather than a resource to be used. Indeed, as a group, charter schools are even more segregated than are public schools.

                What we need are schools that build communities and reinforce a sense of unity among us rather than schools that are designed to support the divisions that exist between and among us. We need schools that are based on the understanding that a strong common bond that fosters pluralism and tolerance and that honors cultural diversity and democratic discourse is the only means we have to ensure that democracy will prevail and the further disintegration of community life will be avoided. Charter schools such as those once described to me by one of the nation’s foremost union leaders could well lead the way to the communities we need to support the schools all of our children deserve. However, charter schools such as those now being encouraged will, I fear, not only fail to solve the problems we have but might well exacerbate them.

            Some years back I was invited to give a speech to a large group of superintendents. As I am prone to do, I laced my speech with many stories and anecdotes to illustrate the ideas I was presenting. For whatever reason, there seemed to be a special chemistry between the audience and me, and at the end of the speech I received a standing ovation that lasted an embarrassingly long time. Needless to say, I was honored, pleased, and gratified.

            Later on I went to a cocktail party with a group of superintendents who had attended the conference and heard my speech. Many made very flattering remarks and recalled points they found especially telling. I noticed, however, one young man whose body language suggested to me that he was not in tune with his colleagues. (Given some of his comments and the fact that he had placed a large “Dr.” in front of his name on his nametag, I suspected that he was a freshly minted PhD—and wanted to display to others that he deserved the title.) In any case, either because he had had all of me he could stand or because he simply needed to be center stage, he finally blurted out, “Hell, if you cut out all the stories, you could say in five minutes everything you said in an hour, and most of what you said anyone with common sense would know anyway. Where is the research? Anecdotes are fine, but I want facts, not stories.”

            Well, I couldn’t resist. I turned to him and said (as coldly as I knew how), “Young man, you are probably right. I would only add a little bit to what you said. I’ll bet you whatever you care to wager that most of my audience will remember much that I said for a considerable length of time, but they will not remember for five minutes what you say if you have no stories to tell.” I am still not sure I should have said what I said to this young man, but I am sure that what I said about the power of stories is so.

            Stories provide sails in which the energy of ideas can be captured. Stories also provide rudders to maintain direction. Without stories, ideas do not produce action. Without stories, ideas are like so many leaves blowing in the wind—they go no place in particular, and they need a lot of wind to keep them in the air.

            Metaphors, too, are powerful ways of communicating vaguely understood notions. I recall that many years ago when I was first starting what is now called “the Schlechty Center,” I was trying to find some way to convey to the staff I was recruiting the nature of the culture I wanted to build. More than anything I wanted our organization to be classy and businesslike, but at the same time I wanted it to be a warm and supportive place to work. We prepared a document entitled “The Schlechty Center Way” which provides a list of organizational expectations such as the following: A promise made by one of us is binding on all of us; Our clients are our friends; Promise only half of what you think you can deliver. This document, while useful, still did not catch the tone I hoped to convey. 

Then it happened. At a company Christmas party, each staff member (and others as well) were invited to express their view of the Center and speak about what working for the Center meant for them. One person in the group offered the following metaphor: “The way I see the Center is that it is a mixture between IBM and the Brady bunch. On the one hand you try to run a world-class business operation and provide nothing but quality service; on the other hand you often behave like a family that is a bit out of control and who love and enjoy each other very much.” Sounded like a good story to me and we tell it often around our place. Every place needs to have a story about what it is.

            Why is this so? I think the Heath brothers—the authors of the book Made to Stick, which I referred to in my last several blogs—have it about right. They contend that memory operates more like Velcro than like a filing cabinet. Once a person has learned something new, the question of whether or not it will be remembered depends on how many hooks have been attached to the idea. Remembering occurs when these hooks become attached to and enmeshed in the existing “loops” that have been created by past experience and past associations. The more hooks there are, the greater the memory will be and the longer the memory will last. 

            When a member of an audience asks for an example, he or she is simply seeking a story or a metaphor that has some hooks on it. Moreover, what the audience member wants are hooks that will respond to the loops he or she already has woven into his or her mental fabric. The key to making ideas concrete, therefore, is knowing the audience and what the audience is prepared to see and hear. By knowing the audience, the speaker, the teacher, or the leader begins to get a feel for the “loops” audience members have in their memory banks to which the hooks on the other side of the Velcro fastener can be attached. 

            Abstractions have few hooks. Indeed, most of the hooks have been stripped away from abstractions so that the idea can be expressed in the most uncluttered way. Stories, metaphors, and analogies, on the other hand, have many hooks. Unlike the abstraction, the concreteness of the story makes generalization more difficult. At the same time, the story can give heft and texture to a proposition so that will have meaning in the concrete world in which most of us live most of the time.

Learning to tell stories is essential to being a leader. Equally important, however, is to ensure that the stories told really convey something important about the idea you want to convey.  Too often, writers and speakers tell stories that are not relevant to anything other than the titillation and entertainment of their audience and the gratification of the ego of the storyteller. We all like to get positive feedback from our audiences, and laughter and standing ovations can be seductive. However, stories should inform rather than simply entertain. And remember there are those who just want the facts and are prone to see storytellers as nothing more or less than shallow entertainers. 

            This is the third post I have written that was inspired by the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. According to the Heaths, one element that makes an idea “sticky” is the element of the unexpected. Ideas that are conveyed through the introduction of an unexpected event are more apt to stick and be remembered than is the case when the story line leads to an expected and predictable result. Great stand-up comedians are aware of this fact, and many of the jokes they tell that are later repeated at cocktail parties and in bars stick because the punch line is unexpected. Indeed, when the punch line is too predictable, one begins to hear faint “boos” from the audience. 

            I came of age as a student of education in an academic atmosphere where it was assumed that the primary task of the teacher was to bring students to profound academic understanding by challenging their present beliefs and present understandings. Many of my professors at Ohio State were Dewey disciples, and it was their understanding of Dewey that led them to the notion that an idea is more likely to stick if it is created or appropriated by students in response to some puzzle or problem for which the students’ present knowledge does not suffice. This being the case, one of the primary tools in the arsenal of great teachers is the art of asking confounding questions-questions that reveal disjunctions in the present knowledge and beliefs students have regarding the nature of things and the way things work. Sometimes these disjunctions are revealed in logical contradictions and sometimes they are revealed in competing facts. It is such disjunctions that constitute what the authors of Made to Stick refer to as “the knowledge gap.”

            Here is an example: Sometime back my youngest daughter took her son to the Patton Museum where he (then about 5 years old) saw many military tanks. A year later he and his mother decided it was time for an aquarium, so his Mother took him to the store to buy what his grandfather referred to as a fish tank. Eventually he put these pieces together in a way that led, for him, to a “knowledge gap.” How could those big things at the Patton Museum be tanks and that glass thing Mom bought be a tank as well, he queried. This led to a somewhat systematic inquiry, resulting in my grandson’s learning a great deal about tanks-including the fact that in Texas, farm ponds are called tanks as well-and in the process he learned something of the wonders of a Google search.

            In my work as a speaker and consultant, I use this story to illustrate how important it is to transform schools from push environments to pull environments. One of the ways this can be done is by transforming schools into platforms where students are provided experiences that confront them with disjunctions and with questions that challenge their present views of the world in which they live. Once the challenge is given and accepted it is, of course, necessary to provide students with the learning tools they need to satisfy their curiosity. Unfortunately, as schools are now organized, teachers are more likely to push knowledge down to students rather than encourage students to explore knowledge and make it their own.

By Phil Schlechty

In my last blog post I talked about the fact that to make complex ideas “stick” (a term I have borrowed from Chip and Dan Heath), it is essential to distill the ideas down to their core elements. My goal here is to illustrate what I mean by this assertion by discussing a problem I have confronted for a long time.

            Three sets of ideas have driven me since my earliest days as a teacher. First, as a student at The Ohio State University, I came into contact with many professors in the School of Education who helped me to understand that learning is an active process and that students learn best when they are confronted with compelling problems and issues that call upon them to reflect and create solutions. I never got over these ideas, and I am still struggling to understand all that I think I know about them.

            Second, as a result of experience and study, I have come to the conclusion that the bureaucratization of schools, the removal of schools from the control of communities, and the embedding of control of schools in governmental agencies is a major impediment to quality education—especially if creativity, problem solving, inquiry, and knowledge work, as well as mastery of traditional subjects, is included in the definition of quality. 

            Finally, I have concluded that the primary job of the teacher is to create conditions in which students became emotionally and intellectually engaged in the pursuit of solutions to problems and in the exploration of possibilities, and that these conditions should be orchestrated in a way that encourages students to learn what they need to learn to participate fully and meaningfully in the society and culture where they will live out their lives. 

            Now, that is a lot to unbundle, and in spite of over 40 years of disciplined work and having written nine books, I still feel that I am on the “cutting edge of ignorance” with regard to these issues. In the past couple of years, however, I have come up with some simplifying statements that seem to me to come to the core of what I think I have learned.

            First, while I say that I am concerned with transforming schools from bureaucracies to learning organizations (and I am), stripped to its essential core, what I am really up to is transforming schools from teaching platforms to learning platforms.

The terms teaching platform and learning platform seem to be ideas that stick. They invite further discussion and exploration, whereas the terms bureaucracy and learning organization are not especially inviting terms and sometimes shut discussion down. Indeed, unless one has a relatively sophisticated understanding of the literature on complex social organizations, the words bureaucracy and learning organization are apt to be viewed as nothing more or less than buzzwords and jargon. I have found, however, that when I say that what we must be about is transforming schools from teaching platforms to learning platforms, the ideas seem to resonate more and stick longer.  

This is a beginning. But if the conversation stops there, all we have is a slogan. If, however, we use the idea of platform as a beachhead from which to launch a larger assault on conventional ways of framing the problems of schooling, we may be on our way to thinking about schools in more productive ways. 

            Second, in recent months I have taken to suggesting that a part of this transformation is moving schools from being a push environment to being a pull environment. Sometimes I use a picture of a person with a megaphone to illustrate what I mean by a push environment and an image of student doing a computer search to illustrate what I mean by a pull environment. Sometimes I illustrate these points by showing pictures of bored students listening to what must be a poorly constructed lecture and then contrasting the photos with a video of students actively engaged in querying an expert about a subject of interest to them.

            I have found the ideas of push and pull to be “sticky ideas” that lead to discussions about notions such as “learning is an active process” and why working on the work, rather than working on the students, is a preferred strategy for improving the performance of students and of schools. The push/pull idea also opens up discussions of why discovery, inquiry, and problem solving are so important and invites teachers and school leaders to consider the ways bureaucracy serves as a barrier to pulling information from the environment and how bureaucracy works best to support pushing information down from the top. 

The following are some additional sticky notions I have found especially useful in unbundling my thoughts:

Transformation requires more than change—it requires metamorphosis. Imagine something like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly or a tadpole becoming a frog. Transformation goes across forms; reform stays within the limits of the existing system. 

One goal is a goal, two goals is half a goal, and three goals is no goal at all. I often use this sticky phrase to invite people to consider the importance of having a clear conception of the core business of their organization and the superordinate goal toward which this business is oriented.  I also use it to invite people to consider the possibility of exploring the linkages among goals and selecting for action that goal which if pursued will lead to progress toward other goals as well. 

The cutting edge of ignorance is a phrase I use to suggest that transformation requires one to go beyond the research and the safety of the known and be prepared to explore unknown territory and travel more by assistance from a compass (which keeps direction clear) rather than a road map—which can specify destinations (goals).

Work on the work rather than on the students. This is a dangerous sticky idea and too often becomes a slogan. What I mean to convey is that teachers can either design schoolwork in a way that encourages students to perform or they can induce students (through rewards and punishments) to do whatever work they design for them to do. Many teachers, however, hold on to the view that it is their performance rather than the performance of students that determines what students learn; these teachers are therefore not in a position to hear what is being said about the motive power of the work students are assigned or encouraged to undertake.                    

Teachers are leaders and those they most often lead are students. This is an old idea and one that has appeal to teachers once they accept the fact that it is the performance of their putative followers that is of most importance in school. The performance of leaders can make a difference in the performance of followers, but it is the performance of followers that determines the effectiveness of the performance of leaders. Teachers are more dependent on students than students are dependent on teachers. Teachers cannot teach without students being present, but students can learn without teachers and increasingly they can learn anytime and in any place. Schools are no longer as essential as they once were and they will be increasingly less essential if they are not transformed into learning platforms. Teaching is increasingly available to those who are motivated to learn, and schools are not the only places where teaching and teachers exist.

Later in the year I will return to these ideas and share some of the stories I tell to help further clarify what I mean by these phrases that I hope will stick with my audience.

By Phil Schlechty

Some time back I read a book by Chip and Dan Heath entitled Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Clearly this book stuck with me, since I am still pondering some of the ideas the authors present. From time to time I will use this blog to present the results of these “ponderings.” Here we go!

The Curse of Knowledge

            One of the ideas the authors present is something they call “the curse of knowledge.” In my early days I spent a great deal of time reading sociological theory, especially theory intended to explain life in complex social organizations, and I clearly became cursed by the knowledge I acquired. In 1976 I produced a book entitled Teaching and Social Behavior: Toward an Organizational Theory of Instruction. The title alone should have warned the reader that I had been “cursed by knowledge.” I had learned a lot about organizational theory and I cared a lot about schools. My goal was to take what I had learned and apply it to something I cared about.

            What I failed to appreciate is that to understand and embrace what I was trying to say about schools one needed to know at least as much as I had recently learned about organizational theory. Unfortunately, most who knew what I knew about organizational theory didn’t really care much about schools-they were more interested in studying life in corporations, hospitals, and the military. Even more unfortunate was the fact that most of those who cared about schools really didn’t know much about organizational theory. (I even wrote a chapter about what I called the “psychological bias of American educators” in which I lamented the fact that too few educators seemed interested in the study of schools as social organizations.) The result was that the book was a flop. A few university professors liked it, some graduate students read it, and my mother was very proud. The fact is, however, that what I wrote had little impact on the direction of schools and school reform.

            I sincerely believe that if I had known how to present my ideas in a “sticky” way I might have made a much greater contribution than I did to the school reform agenda that was beginning to emerge in the late 1970s. For example, in Teaching and Social Behavior I describe 36 different types of schools and try to show that the way schools are organized affects the performance of both teachers and students in schools and in classrooms. Among other things, I show how and why demographic shifts in student populations so often lead to increased reliance on bureaucratic structures and coercive means of student control. This does not happen by intent and it does not happen rapidly-rather it is a form of social drift that operates more like the classic frog in the pot of water being brought to a boil. Leaders can stop this in its early stages, but often they fail to act until it is too late and crises arise. If what I wrote in 1976 had been understood as I intended it to be understood, policymakers might have been discouraged from some of the ill-informed actions some of them have taken in the name of school improvement. Unfortunately, I failed to present my ideas in a sticky way. I hope I have learned something about this business since 1976.

            Here is a story that might make what I am trying to communicate more “sticky.” (Stories are a powerful way to make ideas stick.)

One of the wisest men I have ever known is Jay Robinson. Jay, who passed away several years ago, was, when I first met him, superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina. (He later became vice president of the University of North Carolina.) I met him about the time the book mentioned above was published. Jay read it and here is what I recall him saying to me: “Phil, you are going to have to make up your mind whether you want to write books for people like me (by which he meant practicing school administrators and teachers) or for professors and graduate students. I read this book because I like you, but believe me I wouldn’t have gone beyond the preface if I had not known you. There is good stuff in that book, but I had to work too hard to find it.” (By the way, Jay is the person who introduced me to the work of Peter Drucker.)

            I started working with Jay in 1977 and I worked hard to meet his standards. I knew I was getting someplace when, in the early 1980s, I was invited to testify before the education committee of the Tennessee legislature. After I testified, one of the committee members gave me a ride back to the airport. On the way back I recall him saying, “Son, you sure can get the hay down to the ponies.” Obviously, he was pretty good at getting the hay down to the ponies himself. In one brief and pithy statement he both summarized the problem presented by the curse of knowledge I referred to earlier and suggested a solution as well. Those who have knowledge must seek the core of what they know and what they want to communicate and they must state what they know in terms that are familiar to their audience. (By the time we took our ride, the legislator was aware that I was born and raised in the country and knew something about horses, ponies, and haylofts.) 

            Stating a complex notion in simple ways is, according to the Heaths, one of the first steps in making ideas stick. To do this, one must get to the core of the idea and strip away everything but that core. In doing this, however, one must be careful not to strip so much away that the essence of the idea is lost. Moreover, the core idea should be stated in a way that invites others to later explore the subtleties, nuances, and additional insights that have been stripped away to make the idea more sticky.

            Here I am reminded of the maxim that anyone who wants to present a complex notion to an audience that is not already familiar with the contours of the notion should have a 30-second message that states in clear and simple terms the core of the message he or she is trying to convey,  a 3-minute statement for those who find, as a result of the 30-second message, that they want to know more, and a 30-minute statement that expands and develops the core idea to a more sophisticated level-thus the simple idea of the 30-3-30 rule for conveying new ideas.

By Phillip Schlechty

I recently received a copy of a report written by Paul E. Barton entitled “National Education Standards: Getting Beneath the Surface” from ETS (Educational Testing Service).  (Copies can be downloaded here.) The report is worth reading; in fact, I read it twice.

I came away feeling sorry that many of those who are pushing for national standards either do not understand the complexity with which they are dealing or do not believe it is really that complex—or they are somehow so blinded by their own agendas that they do not see what they need to see in order to do what they want to do.

Among other things, Barton reminds us that there are many kinds of standards: for example, opportunity standards, standards for what should be taught, and standards for what should be learned. Sadly, the standards of greatest concern to those who argue for national standards are usually limited to those having to do with standards related to scores on standardized tests.

Clearly, if we are to truly have national standards we need to think much more deeply about what we mean by the word standards. For example, what are the differences between and among the meanings of the words standard, goal, benchmark, and indicator? How does evaluation differ from assessment, and what is the difference between an assessment and a test? When the word test is used within the context of the standards movement, is the meaning limited to paper- and-pencil tests? When I ask my grandson to read to me so that I may figure out if he can read, am I testing him or is something else going on?

There are, of course, no nice, neat, and simple answers to such questions. Standards are not goals, but it can be a goal to meet a standard. Benchmarks are not standards, but they can be used to mark progress toward meeting a goal. Can benchmarks also be used to track progress toward meeting a standard? That, I suspect, depends on how we define the word standard. Indicators are, I think, things—conditions and attributes we are willing to take as evidence that some more abstract condition is also present or being met. Does this mean that indicators are more concrete than the condition being indicated? That too depends. Sometimes indicators morph into standards.  (That is what has happened with tests—or so I would argue.)

Tests are commonly referred to as assessments, but it is just as common to use tests to assess.  (In this latter case, tests are tools in an assessment process. What then are the other tools?) Is evaluation simply another name for assessment, or is evaluation something we do in the process of assessing? If so, what else do we do in addition to testing and evaluating? (Thinking and analyzing might be useful places to begin—and to end—an assessment process.)

Barton ends his very useful monograph with a quote from Albert Einstein which goes as follows:  “You should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Those who would use scores on paper-and-pencil tests as a substitute for standards make things simpler than they are. More than that, they threaten to render trivial and meaningless the idea that common standards are essential to quality education. 

The thing that makes standards common is that they are embraced (not simply complied with) by those to whom they apply, as well as by those who must see to their application. That is why I argued in my earlier blog that standards may well be national standards but their assessment and enforcement should be local matters.

The Devil Is in the Details

By Phil Schlechty

America’s experience with alcohol use and cigarette smoking should be instructive to those who are trying to develop and impose national education standards. What we might learn if we studied these matters is that standards that have any real substance cannot be enforced unless they are enforced locally. The Prohibition Amendment set a national standard of total abstinence from the use of alcohol. Many local communities only enforced the standard in a ritual way and closed their eyes to many illegal activities. As the life of Junior Johnson (the famous racecar driver) illustrates, high-stakes penalties such as going to jail for running booze were not a disgrace in some communities. Hell, Junior became a hero and a cultural icon and it was partly because he did not uphold the standard. I remember a case as late as the 1950s and 60s that involved an older female high school English teacher who hired high school students to run a still in her barn. She operated in this way for years and had many alumni. The federal officials never got to her but eventually local sentiment discouraged her.

Smoking cessation, on the other hand, is proceeding on a different course. Many more Americans do not smoke today (that is, they uphold the non-smoking standard) than was the case fifty years ago. The strategy used to produce this result is, however, based more on education than on coercion. Non-smoking in restaurants did not happen until there was enough local sentiment behind the standard to make the standard enforceable. (Most casinos still permit smoking for the simple reason that gamblers seem less likely to uphold the non-smoking standard.) The result is that so many Americans are now so committed to the non-smoking standard that they make smokers quite uncomfortable when smokers fire up a cigarette around them. (There was a time when commitment to the non-smoking standard was so weak that even asthmatic non-smokers were reluctant to challenge impolite smokers. No more!)

As Dornbusch and Scott observe in their book Evaluation and the Exercise of Authority, evaluations that count must be done by people who count. Applying formal sanctions and denying access to dollars will produce ritual compliance with minimum standards. These measures will not, however, inspire excellence. If the standards are high and if they require a commitment to excellence, then evaluations done by state and federal officials from far away count for far less than the evaluations done by local folks.

Equity and excellence go hand in hand, but they do not go hand in hand when we define equity as guaranteeing only mediocrity and more bureaucracy. What we need is an elite public education for nearly every child. What we are headed for is a situation in which local “elites” abandon the public schools, and the schools are transformed from community schools to government schools serving only the children of the poor, the ill-informed, and the uniformed.    

By Phil Schlechty

Governors and chief state school officers from 46 states and other members of the policy elite are threatening or promising to embrace common national standards. If they really mean common standards, this might not be a bad idea. Unfortunately, what will follow the development of national standards will be a drive for a common national test—a standardized test—to assess performance against the standard. The result will be that the test will become the standard and the standards themselves will recede into the background.

I don’t know whether the proposed national standards will be rich and powerful, but I do know that rich and powerful standards cannot be assessed from afar or with too much reliance on standardized tests. How do I know this is so? Two decades of state experience proves it to be so. The morphing of powerful standards into trivializing tests is the history of the standards movement in the United States. What we need are standards for assessing performance against national standards and a means of holding local communities accountable for ensuring that whatever standards they claim to uphold serve as the basis for local assessments.

Political leaders are wont to quote favorably the statement by Tip O’Neil, the longtime Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, that “all politics is local.” It is time they embraced the equally compelling notion that all assessments, if they are truly to affect performance, must be local as well. Test scores are not standards, even though state officials and bureaucrats tend to treat them as though they were. Test scores as they are currently used are either auditing tools or instruments to bludgeon teachers and local communities into compliance with standards they often do not understand and do not embrace as their own.

The strength of bureaucracy is found it its ability to standardize. It is not the characteristic of bureaucracies to inspire excellence. Thus, the standards that can be enforced by bureaucracies and by bureaucrats are designed to produce standardized education. The pursuit of excellence depends on the commitment of local communities to standards and the willingness of local publics to enforce the standards to which they become committed.

Standards may be a national concern, but the assessment and enforcement of standards is a local responsibility. What is needed are ways to ensure that local communities accept this responsibility. Rather than strategies for taking the responsibility for enforcing standards away from local communities and lodging it in government offices far removed from the schools and classrooms to which they apply, state and federal governments should be concerned with helping local communities and local publics develop the capacity to embrace and enforce the standards of excellence to which every child is entitled.