Dangerously Irrelevant

Mike Parent has done a fantastic job this week of guest blogging. If you like what you’ve read from Mike, check out his blog, The Schoolhouse Dissident.

Jason Dyer will be my next guest
blogger in 2008. I asked Jason for a short blurb about himself. Here’s what
he sent me:

Jason Dyer started out with a degree in Fine Arts Studies, intertwining
music, media arts, and computer science. After the dot-com crash of 2000, he
picked up a mathematics degree and now teaches high school in Arizona. He still
has a soft spot for his multimedia roots and has movie posters hanging on his
classroom wall. The school mascot is the Warriors and his normal blog of
residence is The Number
Warrior.

Jason has an ambitious series of posts for us next week and I’m looking
forward to reading his thoughts on math, education, and leadership. If you’re
interested in being a
guest blogger, let me know!

Many folks are concerned that schools today are mostly about churning
out worker bees for uncaring corporations who are more than happy to chew up
employees and spit them out in favor of others, perhaps overseas, who are
cheaper. Like Mike
Parent, my guest blogger this week, they are
worried about mission statements like that of the The New Jersey High School
Redesign Steering Committee, which states that it is ‘working to build
public awareness and support for a more rigorous high school experience, one
that allows students to succeed in the workforce or in pursuing higher
education.’

I’m not one of those people. Although I, too, want my children to be happy,
creative, caring, self-directed, intellectually curious, and environmentally
aware, I also want them to be contributing members to society. And, if they
decide to challenge certain statuses quo, I want them to have the tools
to be able to do that successfully. I think that means preparing them to be
powerfully productive in the technology-suffused, globally-interconnected future
in which they’re going to live. If they can’t play, work, thrive, and influence others in that
world, they’re going to be marginalized, impotent outsiders.

So, with all due respect to Clay
Burell, I see Did You
Know? 2.0 as a conversation starter for how the world is changing
around us but, like Karl Fisch,
I don’t see it as an overt call for preparing students solely for economic
competitiveness. Nor do I think it is fair to label William
Farren’s excellent Did You Ever Wonder? video as a ‘vital
counterpoint’ to the issues in the Did You Know? video. I see no reason
why equipping students with 21st century skills is in opposition to preparing
them to be ecologically-responsible citizens. In fact, a strong argument could
be made that it is only by equipping our students with 21st century
skills that they will be in a position to solve the massive problems that we are
bestowing upon them.

Collins
and Porras note that we should be embracing the ‘genius of the and’
rather than the ‘tyranny of the or.’ I agree. I will be preparing my
children to be productive 21st century citizens and employees. I will
be preparing my children to be environmentally-aware and
economically-productive. I am hoping – and, indeed, counting on – many others
doing the same.

One year ago: Online
multimedia textbooks: A strategic investment and Online
multimedia textbooks: Follow-up

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the submissions for my
recent contest. As you may recall, I asked readers, “What would be a good
six-word motto for your nation’s schools?”

Here are my favorites. All of these were picked solely by me and all had to
do with the USA. Your list might be different!

6. This one gets at the lack of leadership during an era of turbulence. Of
course that’s one of the main themes of my work and this blog.

USA: Rudderless in the sea of change (Dave)

5. Although it’s a phrase that’s been used by others, I thought this was a
nice choice for this contest. It captures much of the essential tension between
the current system and the constructivist leanings of many edubloggers.

USA: Dewey … or don’t we?
(Scott,
I know you’re jonesing for a CASTLE mug. Maybe next time!)

4. This one just made me laugh (‘cause, given its essential truth, otherwise
I’d have to cry)! All three of this contributor’s entries were pretty
clever…

USA: Standardization + medication = American education (Ahniwa)

3. David Warlick and others
have aptly noted that personal computers are the pencil and paper of our
time. That’s why this one strikes home so deftly.

USA: Number two pencil is main tool (Michelle)

2. The ‘faddism’ that occurs in American education is legendary. Veteran
teachers roll their eyes at the latest thing that comes along, saying “This too
shall pass.”

USA: Another solution to a previous solution (drollord)

1. With advance apologies to Larry
and Alice,
who rightfully noted a concern that most of the entries were negative, my
favorite was this one. Our schools have, indeed, been extremely positive
contributors to American society and I am a big proponent of schools and
educators. That said, like others, I still think that there is a LOT of wasted
potential and that often students succeed despite, not because of, their K-12
educational experiences. See, for example, the classroom observation studies
profiled in John Goodlad’s A
Place Called School (whole book), Mike Schmoker’s Results
Now (p. 18), or in the March 30, 2007 article
by Robert Pianta in Science.
So with due respect to all of the educators who are working extremely hard, my
personal selection for best 6–word motto is…

USA: Underwhelming kids on a daily basis (Diana)
(note:
this could apply to American public policy too, not just
schools)

Diana, I don’t know who you are, but if you contact me, I’ll mail you a CASTLE mug. Paul,
please contact me also. I’m
going to award you a bonus mug because I like how
you involved your middle schoolers. Thanks, everyone, for
participating!

So I’m digging into this week’s Carnival of Education and first I read this (I love the quote by Sinclair!):

Pop over to your neighborhood school and visit some classrooms. Is what’s happening cognitively nutritive? That is, does it satisfy present needs and provide nourishment for the future health and development of children’s thinking?

Or is it punitive, with little concern for present nourishment and future health and development?

The Genevan psychologist and researcher Hermina Sinclair said,

All of us concerned with education should view children as wearing signboards saying ‘Under Construction’. No, wait a moment. I didn’t say that strongly enough. All of us should look at people as wearing signboards saying, ‘Under Construction—Self Employed’. (See Reference 1.)

We are in the fifth year of research, work which sheds light on Sinclair’s claim, shows that present educational goals for children are often trivial, and which suggests that current methods of causing learning to take place should be re-thought.

The work shows that children at grades 1-5 are capable of stunningly complex thinking and that this goal can be achieved with no direct teaching, but rather by posing problems for the children to solve.

Then, in an abrupt about-face, I read this:

Elementary and middle school should be about memorization. Many of my 8th graders aren’t really capable of abstract thought at this point.

As an example, I teach my 7th graders about the reconquista and about the exploration of the Americas. Yet despite repeated prompts, none of my students in 7 years have been able to connect the two things, despite my prompts about both occuring in 1492.

Let high school and college develop meaning and interconnection.

The second excerpt is from a teacher. I feel really, really sorry for his students…

Thus far, I have posted about educational conspiracy, challenging the competitive nature of schools, and assessing assessments.  What follows is a topic near and dear to everyone's career and workplace.  This is a post I have been looking forward to sharing with all of you.  It's a bit lighthearted, but a serious topic for school leadership.

Let me begin with a disclaimer.  A tantalizing and possibly offensive word will be used throughout this post.  The word is not common to the professional language of Dr. McLeod or his readers.  However, since I will be using the word in the context of a theory, it should be understood that I am not trying to be edgy or shocking.  I am merely using the word for purpose of clarity.

The day before Christmas break I am browsing through a book store looking for a good gift for my principal.  In the management section I spot a small book with an intriguing title – The No Asshole Rule.  I first think this must be some kind of gag gift.  But a ten-minute perusing of the book tells me something else.  The author, Robert Sutton, is a well known and respected writer.  He's not joking here.  He is only using the lay terminology for "difficult people", "hardened hearts", or "combative individuals".  I bought The No Asshole Rule (TNAR) for my principal, and a copy for myself.  Now we're both equipped to handle this obnoxious faculty member.

TNAR is a much needed common language leadership book.  I know many of as are fans of many different education leadership authors (Fullan, Heifetz, Wheatley, and Gardner) .  These books are chock full of ideas, principles, and theories that are sound, sensible, and applicable.  But Sutton is onto something different here.  His deliberate use of the word "asshole" to describe those – well, assholes – that we work with, sit through meetings with, receive directives from, and must collaborate with every day, is refreshing.

Though TNAR is written mainly for those employed in the private sector (where hiring and firing is fast and furious – unlike public education), it does have some practical applications for schools.

For instance, how many administrators, teachers, or staff members have you worked with or encountered that have indulged in Dr. Sutton's "Dirty Dozen" list of actions that assholes use?

1. Personal insults
2. Invading one's personal territory
3. Uninvited personal contact
4. Threats and intimidation, both verbal and non-verbal
5. Sarcastic jokes and teasing used as insult-delivery systems
6. Withering e-mail flames
7. Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
8. Public shaming or status-degradation rituals
9. Rude interruptions
10. Two-faced attacks
11. Dirty looks
12. Treating people as if they are invisible.

Check out Dr. Sutton for yourself.

A few things anyone can take from this book are Sutton's suggestions on dealing with assholes you can't get rid of:

1. Deal with their asshole behavior immediately and make it known that you did.  Don't let asshole behavior go on.  Even if it hurts to confront an asshole, do it for the greater good of the organization.  People are watching to see how you react to the known asshole.
2. Marginalize them.  Make them irrelevant and their influence minimal.
3. Don't be confrontational with assholes, but don't be a doormat either. 

His final word of advice is one that we should all take to heart.  Don't hire assholes.  Those of us in positions of authority to hire faculty, administrators, and staff must seriously consider candidate's personality as much as we consider their knowledge and ability.  I'll remember that as we begin our annual hiring carnival this Spring and Summer.

Lastly, Sutton's book will give you some great tips on how to deal with those pesky, pernicious, parents whom we lovingly call (in the copy room) "assholes".

PS- Just for fun: take the asshole quiz.

Mike Parent – guest blogger

I was notified today of an interesting film competition for college and high
school students: Film Your
Issue (FYI). Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Winners are selected by an illustrious VIP Jury, by the public online, and by
participating cause organizations. Prizes to eleven winning films include
internships at USA TODAY, The United Nations, P.O.V. and The Humane Society and
a $5000 college scholarship from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and
Strong American Schools, and a filmmaker VIP Pass and presentation at
SILVERDOCS:  AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival.  Winning films or
excerpts will also be broadcast on Starz, and a selection presented at the
annual NAACP Conference. The MTV audience favorite will be featured on Think,
MTV’s multi-media community focused on youth activism, and the winning filmmaker
profiled on MTV News.  In addition, FYI presents two additional annual awards: 
The Walter Cronkite Civic Engagement Leadership Award to an academic
institution, and The Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award, to an
individual.

FYI 2008’s VIP Jury is headed by legendary news anchors and
authors Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw, and includes MySpace Founder Tom
Anderson, MTV President Christina Norman, CNN Anchor Wolf Blitzer, NBC Anchor
Brian Williams, United Nations DPI Under-Secretary-General Kiyotaka Akasaka,
Best Buy Vice-Chairman Brad Anderson, HBO Host Bill Maher, USA TODAY Publisher
Craig Moon, USA TODAY Founder Al Neuharth, Weinstein Company Co-founder Harvey
Weinstein and others. 

Sounds like an interesting showcase for students to use multimedia to express
themselves on important topics. I like the two-minute constraint too. It forces
students to pare down to their essential message…

Here are some of the past honorees:

• One
  word
• How
  a prostitute is born
• Looks
  can be deceiving
• The
  terrorist
• 2006 winners

This is not an advertisement for The Education Trust, nor is it an endorsement of all that The Education Trust stands for.  This post is merely my commentary on one aspect of The Education Trust’s practices – assessing standards in practice.

In 2003, I was working at a semi-urban high school near Paterson, NJ.  Our school was seeing a major transition in demographics; more ELL students, Hispanic students, and first generation Muslim-Americans were enrolling.  It was a regional high school, so we did not have a handle on the K-8 curriculum.  Basically, what we were sent, we had to deal with.  Literacy rates were suffering and our students were in need of more basic reading and math skills.  In short, we were aware of the achievement gap that was present in our building; the honors courses and AP courses were completely Caucasian and the general level classes were nearly all minority.  We weren’t ready for this.  We had no plan other than to offer the mundane BSI courses.  But a crafty Assistant Principal, Jim Jencarelli (who is now the Superintendent of a NJ high school) had the novel idea of bringing in The Education Trust to help us with our achievement gap problem, curriculum redesign, and shifting of paradigms.

One of the first things The Ed Trust does when they come in to your school/district is to meet with the teachers and administration to discuss their Standards In Practice protocol.  I can remember the meeting very vividly – teachers were appalled at the presenters statement that one reason an achievement gap exists is due to the pity parties that teachers have for minority students and students who have less than stable home lives.  In essence, teachers and schools do no students favors when they lower the expectations based on the perceived inabilities or emotional concerns that teachers and schools have for struggling students.  What the Ed Trust ultimately condones is the practice of teaching every child as if they were college preparatory material. 

Standards In Practice consists of the following (you can view Ed Trust’s presentation below):

1. Creating teams of teachers to review, analyze, and critique assignments
2. Having these teams honestly look at the standards (usually state standards) and see if their assignments reach the expectation, or fall short.  (NOTE: you would be surprised how many tests and quizzes are comprised of recall and rote questions.)
3. A rubric is followed whereby the assessment is measured.  If need be, the assessment must be redesigned to meet the standards.
4. The teams meet regularly and each team member is on the "hot seat" – no one is immune from the clinical exercise.

| View | Upload your own

What I found most intriguing about Standards In Practice was not the protocol.  Of course I learned a lot from the exercise (I disappointingly found that my assessments were far too "dumbed down") and gained insight into how to construct rigorous assessments, which, in turn, forced me to redesign my approach to students, lessons, and teaching.  No, what intrigued me most was the philosophy of the Education Trust.

Ed Trust is committed to narrowing the great divide between minority students and others.  I can’t tell you angry I get when I see school leadership revel in the glory of "beating" other schools at high stakes testing.  I take no pride in the following facts:

• 32% of White adults (ages 16-65) read at the Basic or Below Basic proficiency in Prose literacy. (2003)
• 67% of Black adults (ages 16-65) read at the basic or Below Basic proficiency in Prose literacy. (2003)
• 53% of Hispanic adults (ages 16-65) read at the basic or Below Basic proficiency in Prose literacy. (2003)

Notes: Prose literacy refers to the knowledge and skills needed to search, comprehend, and use information from continuous texts. Source: NCES Table 379.

What I have come to understand is that while we scurry to find new ways to meet AYP, get our students over the hump, and keep our schools out of the editorial pages, there is a quiet epidemic of illiteracy spreading in our urban schools.  The Education Trust (while not completely perfect) is trying to address the issue through their programs and protocols.  They seek to shift the paradigm of teachers and schools, not throw money at the urban schools and hope that a miracle happens. 

For my part, I can say that The Education Trust shifted my paradigm.  I now see the problem and a potential means of addressing the problem.

Whatever happened to that high school I worked at in 2003 where we brought in the Education Trust?  The Principal and Superintendent though it was too expensive and unnecessary.  Jim and I left for brighter futures and more open minds.  Yet, we are both committed to bridging the achievement gap… however, I now know that the achievement gap is a symptom of nothing more than institutional racism.  When any school thinks that a curriculum must be watered down in order to help the minority student, simply because that student comes from a family or neighborhood that is less desirable, then that school is acting in a nearly criminal manner.

Please examine your state’s literacy rates.  Is there a widening literacy deficit?  Are you in a school or district that seems to have more than a fair share of minority students either classified as LD or stuck in Basic Skills?  Once you have that answer, ask yourself if your school or district assesses students to the standard set forth by your state or county?  How much rote and recall do you see in your classrooms?

Mike Parent – guest blogger

What follows is an actual conversation between me and a dear friend who is also an administrative colleague. His name has not been changed, since he is guilty and cannot be protected like the innocent.

Setting: About four o’clock on a wintry afternoon in Vice-Principal Jim’s office in NJ.  The office’s aged, mint green walls are adorned with motivational quotes from great NFL, NBA, and MLB coaches.

ME: "So Jim, what do you think the Superintendent is going to say about the proposed change to the school’s grade scale?"

JIM: "You know what, whatever gets the kids working harder.  I just think the weighting of AP and Honors courses is going to throw off the ranking system."

ME: "Good.  The ranking thing should go.  We’re not about competition – we’re about learning.  If it were up to me, I’d do away with grades, scales, ranking… all that."

JIM: "You’re nuts!  We have to keep ranks and grades.  How else do we know who is doing better or well in a subject?  And we rank to see who is the best in the class.  Besides, competition is good for kids.  They have to compete to get into college."

ME: "So you’re saying that it’s okay to have a number one student?  That means, Jim, that to have a number one, there must be a number two, then a three, and so on.  You’re saying it’s okay to have kids at number 100?  We shouldn’t have them compete, we should have them collaborate and learn.  The weak helped by the strong.  Competition is for the field, not the classroom."

JIM: "That’s why I’ll never work for you at a school you run."

I love Jim.  He’s an honest man, a good father, a great mentor for lost adolescents.  But he’s dead wrong about competition in the schoolhouse.   To make him upset and aggravated,  I sometimes use facts and ideas from Alfie Kohn to combat his arguments.  Jim listens, but thinks I am  too rebellious for my own good.

One article from Mr. Kohn that I use frequently to argue my point about the need to eliminate competition from the schoolhouse is entitled "Against “Competitiveness”: Why Good Teachers Aren’t Thinking About the Global
  Economy".  It appeared in the September 19, 2007 edition of Education Week.

Janet Swenson at Michigan State University points out that
  “we’ll all benefit from the best education we can provide to every child on
  the face of this planet.  Do you care if it’s a child in Africa who finds a
  cure for cancer rather than a child in your country?” she asks.

Bravo Ms. Swenson.  When NCLB was proudly announced as the law of the land, schoolhouses became battlegrounds; each school district against another, each factor grouping against another, each state against another – which really only translates into each child against the other.  NCLB may have "raised the bar" (whatever that means), but it also made schools places of gaming, not learning. 

And now for my close-to-home moment.  Try not to gag or vomit on your keyboard when you read the comments of one Dr. Larrie Reynolds, Superintendent of NJ’s Pequannock Schools.  Dr. Reynolds is a newly hired Superintendent from the great state of Texas (known for its educational leadership, of course).  Mr. Reynolds was featured in the February 18 Bergen Record.  The title of the story: "Pequannock Goes For Gold".  Here are some excerpts.

The Gold Academy will be the most rigorous and selective program the
high school has to offer. It’s more selective than honors classes,
which require only a teacher’s recommendation.

It was designed to address concerns that some of the best students leave the district after middle school for private schools.

"That is why our high school scores are not very good, or not as good as they should be,” Reynolds said.

Wait, there’s more…

He heard that 22 eighth-graders were considering leaving the
district in the next school year. In the last four years, 64 students,
10 percent of the high school enrollment, left for private schools.

"If those 64 students were still in our high school, how would our high school have been different?” Reynolds said.

"I
suspect we would have had better achievement results, higher SAT
scores, we’d have better results in the classrooms,” he said. "We
would have had a better school.”

He ends his unbelievable comments with this:

"If we can celebrate and recognize and honor talent on the athletic
field, then public schools had better be willing to do the same thing
on the academic field,” Reynolds said. "In many ways, it’s more
important.”

Rumor has it that if you call Pequannock Schools, you will be greeted by the salutation "Pequannock Schools, striving to be number one…".  Apparently, this is what anyone who answers a phone in Pequannock is ordered, by Dr. Reynolds, to say. 

So what do we do about ranking and competition in classrooms, in schools, in districts, in states, in our country?  Do we just ignore it and accept it?  Apparently so.  Not many states have given back the ransom cash Washington D.C. ponied up to get us to buy into NCLB.  Not many schools have stopped the practice of ranking students.  Monthly and weekly publications still sell out copies of the issues that rank colleges, universities, and high schools (NJ is famous for its yearly ranking magazine articles).  I think we like it.  We are Americans; we are supposed to thrive on competition.  The problem is, I don’t see where the competition is taking us. Or maybe I do – and that’s what I can’t tolerate.

As you embark on your journey to school today, I ask you one question.  Did you eat your Wheaties?

~ Mike Parent – guest blogger

I was recently a
guest blogger for eduwonkette. She’s pushing up against my guideline of
having a Technorati authority of less than 100, so I figure now is as good a
time as any to name her as the next recipient of the crimson
megaphone. For those of you who are unfamiliar with her, eduwonkette is the
pseudonym of an anonymous professor somewhere. I don’t know much about her other
than that she’s super fun to read because of her willingness to inject levity
and attitude into her blogging. This, of course, makes her blog one that
deserves a bigger audience (DABA). You’ll also see
that she often sparks fascinating discussions in her comment areas. If you’re
looking for a lighthearted, and yet somehow still serious, look at major policy
issues in education, eduwonkette’s a great bet.

Here are a few posts to get you started (see also her posts before she moved to
Education Week):

• It’s
  a Small World After All
• Social
  Studies, Science, and NCLB
• My
  Value-Added Bucket List
• Americans’
  Attitudes on Inequality: A Teacher’s Dilemma
• Professors
  Strike Back?
• The
  NYC Teacher Experiment Revisited
• Do
  Schools Matter?

Happy reading!

• See
  list of DABA blogs
• Read
  DABA posts on a web page
• Subscribe to DABA posts via
  RSS
• Subscribe
  to DABA posts via e-mail
• DABA
  clip code
• DABA
  blogroll code
• The
  Crimson Megaphone

One could hardly call me a conspiracy theorist;  I don’t put much stock in Area 51 theories, alternate possibilities of the JFK assassination, or any such popular underground thoughts.  But I do believe that American Public Education has been usurped.

John Taylor Gatto‘s "Some Lessons From The Underground History of American Education" appeared in the 2002 edition of Everything You Know Is Wrong (EYNIW).  The EYNIW synopsis outlines the original intent of education and the historical (widely secret) events that have shaped what we now consider education’s purpose to be.  Educational institutions began as places where intellectual curiosity, worldliness, and spirituality were explored, fed, and cultivated.  Yes, they were bastions for the elite and public schools originally were established to counter the elitists.  But something went very wrong in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Gatto writes that public education had become the vehicle for social management and the premiere institution for societal construction where the commoner was to be kept common.  Since Reconstruction, public education has become merely an extension of both private industry and government.  Gatto utilizes the words of famed educators like Ellwood P. Cubberely, Edward Thorndike, and Benjamin Bloom and others to make his case.  To maximize his point that public education was forged into a social engineering tool for the commoners, Gatto provides some startling quotes:

"Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata,careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow, the prescribed custom.  This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual." ~ William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education 1889-1906

"…We shall not try to make these people [the lower and middle classes] or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science.  We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets, or men of letters.  We shall not search for the embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply.  The task we set before ourselves is very simple… we will organize children… and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way." Rockefeller’s General Education Board, Occasional Letter Number One, 1906.

These men, their publications, and the reform movements birthed from their ideas has essentially taken education to a place that centers on creating good common citizens, productive workers, and contributors to the status quo.  If you think otherwise, just read your district’s – or any public school district’s – mission statement.  Is the phrase "productive citizen" or the word "citizen" present? These are the remnants of said philosophies.

Gatto’s work (available online) resonates with me and many others who have a deep sense that something is fundamentally wrong with the aim of our public education system.  Those of us who reject the idea that schools are to first and foremost produce good citizens and skilled workers are increasingly being marginalized by the "great machine" -  a term I use for the seemingly unstoppable train of political movements, think tanks, boards of education, and state organizations who seek to hold schools accountable (particularly high schools) as training grounds and indoctrination camps.  A close-to-home case in point:

The New Jersey High School Redesign Steering Committee is "…composed of the
leadership of New Jersey’s major education organizations, is working to
build public awareness and support for a more rigorous high school
experience, one that allows students to succeed in the workforce or in
pursuing higher education... The Steering Committee grew out of the New Jersey Education Summit on
High Schools convened in 2005 and supports the work begun at the
National Education Summit on High Schools held in Washington, DC in
February of that year. The Steering Committee
is co-chaired by New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine, Prudential
Financial Chairman and CEO Arthur F. Ryan, and Montclair State
University President Susan A. Cole and is composed of the leadership of
New Jersey’s major education organizations."

The Committee was formed a few years ago to address the perceived inadequacies of NJ high schools as preparatory institutions for the workplace.  The Committee claims that though NJ high schools may be graduating over 90% of their students, have  "good" SAT scores, and have a high number of students going on to  post-secondary education, we are not producing good workers.    They tell the public (at their numerous public meetings) that NJ businesses are facing certain outsourcing of jobs – not because of the economic realities of the "flat world" – but because our students are not skilled enough.  The Committee’s aim is to hold high schools to a higher industrial standard; produce better workers, produce a better middle class, produce better earners.  The Committee has a plan – to institute Regents-style exit exams in math, science, and language arts and to have students partake in workplace readiness activities in high school. 

As a high school administrator in NJ, this is my new professional reality.  This is what my government says my new mission as an educator is to be.  I should not think of creativity, of cultivating a love of learning and life for my students, of offering my students opportunities for personal and spiritual growth.  I am to make good workers of them.  I am to foster a stronger middle class.  I am to produce producers – not inspire or lead students to self actualization… not unless the leading leads to a good job.

Public education has been hijacked.  Not in this generation, but many moons ago when compulsory education was legislated.  The public scorn for mandatory education was so strong, Bruce Curtis, in his book Building The Education State 1836-1871, notes that:

"Many
schools were burned to the ground and teachers run out of town by angry
mobs. When students were kept after school,  parents often broke into
school to free them. At Saltfleet Township in 1859 a teacher was locked
in the schoolhouse by students who "threw mud and mire into his face
and over his clothes,"  according to the school records—while parents
egged them on."

As a result of generations of social engineering, it is no wonder the homeschooling movement has become so popular.  Many parents have rejected the government’s means to and end and the end to those means.  Private schooling, too, is an alternative for the disenchanted – though, admittedly, many private schools are also guilty of the same sins of public education.

As and education leader, I face a dilemma.  How do I swim in the current of the public school agenda while holding true to my deepest convictions about children, learning, and the point of learning?  How do you?

– Mike Parent, guest blogger