
{"id":7288,"date":"2009-10-02T10:34:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T18:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=7288"},"modified":"2009-10-02T10:43:50","modified_gmt":"2009-10-02T18:43:50","slug":"ed-matters-when-the-good-is-the-enemy-of-the-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2009\/10\/02\/ed-matters-when-the-good-is-the-enemy-of-the-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Matters: When the good is the enemy of the better"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Steve Peha, Columnist<\/p>\n<p>If you follow education \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and you follow it on TV, the radio, the Internet or just about anywhere else \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you probably think our schools are goin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to hell in a handbasket. Truth is, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to tell, given the monkey business states have engaged in with their test scores.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>One thing we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re sure about is that there are a whole bunch of bad schools out there. Apparently, we have 2,000 so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dropout factories\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in our country, high schools that account for more than 50 percent of all the kids who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t finish 12th grade. Then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the 5,000 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153worst schools in America\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has identified for immediate turnarounds.<\/p>\n<p>What you probably don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear much about are good schools. And for the purposes of our argument, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s say that a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153good\u00e2\u20ac\u009d school is any one where more than 90 percent of students pass all their tests. How many good schools are there? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure. Out of 100,000 schools in America, maybe 1 percent or 2 percent.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve worked in a few of these schools. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re usually in wealthy suburbs like Grosse Point, Mich. or Mercer Island, Wash. At least that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve found them. In general, their kids are predominately white and exceedingly well prepared to enter kindergarten. Most of these kids could probably pass their tests without much schooling at all, such is the richness of their lives and the value their families\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 place on academic achievement.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with many of these good schools is that they never get much better. And why should they, with test scores near the theoretical maximum?<br \/>\nI can think of at least two reasons: (1) State tests are notoriously easy to pass, and many states have intentionally been making them easier with each passing year. So if your scores stay the same, chances are your learning may be going down. (2) Any organization that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t focused on getting better eventually begins to get worse. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s simply no way to take something as complicated as a school or school district and put it in some kind of magical state where nothing ever changes. Absent serious efforts to improve, decline is probable. Absent any effort at all, entropy is all but guaranteed.<\/p>\n<p>The toughest part of making good schools better is that most of the people who work in them think they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re already good enough. Change is hard, and who wants to do hard things when you know your district, state or the federal government will never call you on the carpet for your results?<\/p>\n<p>In general, schools of all types \u00e2\u20ac\u201c good, bad and in-between \u00e2\u20ac\u201c only make changes when forced to do so by an outside agent. In high-performing suburban school districts, there are only three possibilities for this agency: the community, the parents and the school board.<\/p>\n<p>While the community pays the bills, few community members have the energy and experience to move a school or district one way or another. Most people who live around good schools are just happy to have high property values. As for those powerful parents, most are busy advocating for their own children. <\/p>\n<p>That leaves the school board. We elect board members as the community\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal accountability system. This small group of people is given oversight of a district and the job of advocating for everyone.<\/p>\n<p>In most districts, especially high-performing districts, school board members typically act as a rubber stamp for the superintendent. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not usually any more interested in changing things than anyone else is. But I think they have a vital role to play, if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll accept it, in banishing complacency about fixing problems most people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like to talk about, and in helping things that are good get even better.<\/p>\n<p>A board member\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most direct responsibility concerns the superintendent: If a new superintendent is to be hired, the board does the hiring. If a change needs to be made, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the board that carries out this unenviable task as well.<\/p>\n<p>All change requires leadership, and nothing is more effective than leadership at the top. Where board members do the most good is in spurring on reluctant district leaders to take strong, clear public positions on new initiatives and find succinct solutions to longstanding challenges.<\/p>\n<p>Serving on a school board is time consuming, emotionally exhausting and it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pay. But board members have a perfect opportunity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and a unique responsibility \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to make sure their districts are moving in the best possible direction for all students. In some cases, they may be the only agents of change in the community. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot to ask of unpaid volunteers. But if board members don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get out in front of important issues, often no one else will.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Peha is founder and president of Carrboro-based Teaching That Makes Sense Inc.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Steve Peha, Columnist If you follow education \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and you follow it on TV, the radio, the Internet or just about anywhere else \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you probably think our schools are goin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to hell in a handbasket. Truth is, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to tell, given the monkey business states have engaged in with their test scores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[87,27],"class_list":["post-7288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-education","tag-education-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7293,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7288\/revisions\/7293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}