Rethinking the Education Mess: A Systems Approach to Education Reform

A Systems Approach to Education Reform

I. Mitroff, L. Hill, C. Alpaslan

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781137384829
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137386045
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Using a form of systems thinking, this book analyzes K-12 education as a complex, "messy" system that must be tackled as a whole and provides a series of heuristics to help those involved in the education mess to improve the system as a whole.

1

Introduction—TEM, The Education Mess

Abstract: This chapter argues that education is a mess. A mess is a system of problems that are so highly interconnected such that no problem exists or can be studied independently of all the other problems that constitute the mess and the entire mess itself. The chapter also lays out the debate with regard to what to do about TEM, The Education Mess. On the one side are those who favor charter schools. They believe that the public schools have failed and therefore need to be radically redesigned, if not jettisoned altogether. On the other side are those who support public schools and seek to improve them, not abandon them. The chapter argues that both sides need one another more than they realize. Both are needed if we are to have any hope of coping with TEM.

Mitroff, Ian I., Hill, Lindan B., and Alpaslan, Can M. Rethinking the Education Mess: A Systems Approach to Education Reform. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137386045.

“‘... People need to think a little more about the problems kids in this school [Manual High School in Indianapolis, Indiana] have and the issues they have to deal with day in and day out [alcoholism, bureaucratic and uncaring administrators and teachers, chronic poverty, constant threat of crime and violence, drugs, divorce, guns, homelessness, low parental and teacher expectations, school and parental apathy, parental abandonment, teenage pregnancy, etc.]. There are a lot of social issues and a lot of home drama. There are a lot of things, a lot of factors that go into a school being unsuccessful. People want to say it’s the kids. Or the parents. Or the teachers. Or the system. [sic] It’s not that easy. There’s no one factor that can turn everything around. Americans want quick fixes and easy solutions. Sorry, there isn’t one when it comes to education. All you can do ... is put every ounce of energy you have into helping every student you can.’”¹

Rich Haton [Teacher in Manual High School]

Introduction

A central theme of this book is that education is a mess. While many, if not virtually all, who study education agree in some form or another with the broad proposition that education is a mess, having said this, agreement quickly vanishes. The extreme divergence and abject bitterness between different philosophical positions, values, and worldviews about what to do to “‘solve’ TEM” quickly take over and dominate the debate. Indeed, different parties don’t see the “same mess” to begin with, let alone whether it’s “solvable or not.”

The conflict is so bitter, deep, and intense that it virtually prevents—paralyzes—everyone from seeing that the solution does not lie in any of the one-sided perspectives and extreme worldviews. Rather, if there is a “solution,” it consists in forming new perspectives and worldviews that integrate and go far beyond the old ones. More than they realize, all positions are highly dependent upon one another.

In fact, we show that none of the previously stated positions can even define the problem adequately, let alone solve it, acting solely by themselves. They need to incorporate seriously the very things to which they are so strongly opposed in order to form richer definitions of “the problem.” In short, they sorely need richer definitions before they can ever hope to find “solutions.”

In brief, the extreme divergence between positions and worldviews is itself one of the biggest, untreated contributors to TEM. While discussion of this particular aspect of TEM has of course not been absent altogether, it has not been given center stage and thus the full treatment it demands. For all practical and theoretical purposes, the proponents of different positions live in parallel universes. They are not merely “ships passing in the night,” but are more like “far flung galaxies billions of light-years apart.”

Although this book is not solely about charter schools, the charter school movement is one of the best issues to illustrate the extreme divergence between views regarding the state of K-12 education in America and how to improve it. And, although The Charter School Mess (TCSM) is not completely equivalent to TEM, they are close enough for our purposes such that treating TCSM allows us to treat TEM. In fact, TCSM is so deeply intertwined with TEM that they cannot be treated separately.

Charter schools

Briefly, a charter school is a publicly funded school that is normally governed by a group or organization under a legislative contract with a particular state. The charter exempts the school from certain local and/or state rules and regulations. In return for their independence, a charter school must meet strict accountability standards that are laid down in its initial contract. Normally, a school’s charter is reviewed every three to five years to see whether it is following specified guidelines on curriculum and management, and whether certain standards such as the marked improvement in student scores on standardized tests, typically reading and math, are being achieved. If it is not, then there are strong grounds for a charter’s closure.

At the present time, there are approximately 55,000,000 students in public schools. In comparison, it is estimated that there are only 1,500,000 students in charter schools, or roughly 2.7% of the public school population. While small in numbers, the charter school movement is nonetheless huge in its implications.

To say that the proponents and the critics of charter schools are divided, if not as a general rule extremely hostile to one another, is putting it mildly. More often than not, it seems as if they truly despise one another.

The reformers: pro-charters

On the one side of the debate about charters are The Reformers. For them, the current public school system is irredeemably broken. It cannot be fixed, period! The only hope lies in rebuilding the system around entirely new kinds of schools, that is, charter schools and the like.²

To support their argument, the Reformers repeatedly trot out the fact that the current system of public schools has failed miserably to make a dent in the persistent achievement gap in math and reading scores between (1) poor, urban, mostly Black and Hispanic children, and (2), mostly white, middle and upper middle-class children. (Upper middle-class and upper class children already opt out of public schools to a large and growing extent by going to costly private schools.) Freeing charter schools from the bloated bureaucracies, archaic teacher unions, and underlying attitudes of the current system (“poor kids don’t have what it takes to succeed”) that do more to protect adults than they do to help children, and exposing them to dedicated, outstanding teachers is the only thing that can save all children.

Charter schools can do this because unlike traditional public schools, they are free to attract and hire the best teachers, and fire them if they don’t perform. They are not burdened with the constraints of the current public school system that forces them to accept whatever teachers a district imposes on them. They are also not bound by the seniority rules of public schools that insist that preferences in hiring be given to older teachers even if younger, and other older, teachers are better, more qualified, etc.

Charters are also generally in favor of testing children and basing teacher evaluations, promotion, and retention on student performance. In short, teachers are judged primarily on how well they do in getting children to pass standardized tests. They are also judged on a host of other factors such as encouraging creativity and in motivating children to want to succeed.

Charter schoolteachers strive to instill the belief in parents and children that all students can succeed because they believe that every child can. They are not willing to accept any of the conventional excuses why children cannot learn, that is, the general problems of society, poverty, poor health and living conditions, etc.

Public School Advocates: anti charters

Public School Advocates are on the other side of the debate.³ They are often mistakenly characterized as anti-reformers, which they are not. Public School Advocates believe in public schools because they believe that it is one of the basic duties of a democratic society to educate all of its children in a shared public setting where they get to know, and hopefully respect, one another through prolonged and intensive interaction. Only in this way can they become citizens who can empathize with and relate strongly to people that are different from them.

We hope that it will become clear that although we are very strongly in favor of a highly select, special set of charters, we agree with the view that children need to be exposed to and interact with others that are different from them. We are also very strongly in favor of not abandoning public schools altogether. But make no mistake about it. We believe that it is not business as usual. Public schools have to change, and not in minor, but in major ways. But this is equivalent to saying that the general public also has to change in major ways in its understanding and support of public schools, if not all schools. In this sense, we do not regard charters as the “solution” or “final model.” Rather, we regard charters as an “educational innovation lab for the schools of the future.”

Public schools are under a tremendous burden and disadvantage because unlike charter schools, they cannot “cherry pick” motivated parents and students who are willing to do the extra, hard work that it takes to learn, and thereby to close the achievement gap. Public schools have to accept everyone in their surrounding district, rich and poor, advantaged and disadvantaged, abled and disabled, etc.

This particular criticism of charters is less true today than it was. It is certainly not true of Indianapolis, the city we know best, where the population of students in charters is very mixed and heterogeneous that it essentially matches the population of the surrounding public schools.

Public School Advocates are generally opposed to testing because teaching to tests quickly becomes the norm and thus gets in the way of education. In their view, standardized tests are more often than not unreliable and invalid. They do not give a true assessment and picture of what education is about, that is, critical thinking, being a good citizen, life-long learning, etc. Tests promote cheating and gaming. Linking teacher performance solely or mainly to tests is a grievous distortion of what good and great teachers strive to accomplish. Further, linking merit pay to how well students do on tests not only promotes divisiveness between colleagues, and hence destroys collegiality, but it is also intrinsically fallacious because who is a “good” or “great” teacher varies from class to class and year to year.

Public School Advocates also believe that what happens away from school is as important, if not even more so, than what happens at school. External or Outside factors such as crime, hunger, low-wage jobs of parents, poor health, poverty, poor living conditions, etc. are as important, and even more important, than Internal or Inside factors at school, that is, class size, school conditions, leadership, quality of teachers, etc. Thus, the way to improve education is to improve the general conditions of society, strengthen school curricula, raise the prestige of teachers, etc.

Public School Advocates also argue that as successful as some charters may be, there is no practical way to scale up the results to make them applicable to all schools. In short, charters operate under a very special set of non-replicating situations. What happens in the small cannot always work in the large.

The debate charges on

The proponents of charters and special schools argue that they are not willing to wait for society to solve all its ills and problems before the achievement gap is lowered. They’ve proved that it can be done.

In turn, Public School Advocates respond with their own counter argument: if you look at the hard data that Reformers advocate so strongly as the final arbiter or measure of progress, then there is little overall difference between the general performance of charters and public schools in average math and reading test scores of students.⁴ There is of course more than a modicum of irony in Public School Advocates using test data to judge charters since Public School Advocates don’t generally believe in the use of standardized tests—or at least not solely—to evaluate something so complex as teaching and learning. But then, in their view, charters have so-to-speak laid down the “initial data challenge,” not Public School Advocates.

Both sides are profoundly right and wrong. Special charters such as The Harlem Children’s Zone have shown that with a very distinct and highly integrated set of surrounding support services and systems (health, housing, jobs, paren...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: TEM, The Education Mess
• 2  What Is a System and What Is a Mess?
• 3  The Psychology and Philosophy of Inquiry, Philosophical Psychology, and Psychological Philosophy
• 4  The Charter School Mess, A Messy Systems View
• 5  The Charter Schools of the Future Possible Designs
• 6  Hiding in Plain Sight: Education Reform in Indiana
• 7  General Heuristics for Coping with The Education Mess
• 8  Waiting for WilberforceMaking Sense of and Coping with the Tragic and Senseless
• 9  Crisis ManagementAn Imperative For Schools
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index