That is, until I read a simple blog from some K-12 teachers which was griping about the state of education today.  I actually almost missed it - a nugget of information that I felt rather silly for being unfamiliar with.  In my own defense, I was skimming a blog that I don’t really like to read.  You know, the one with little to no hope and plenty of blame for problems and issues – the kind with all quesitons and no answers.  Do you know those blogs?  Me too.

But tucked neatly inside the blog was an allusion to a person and an entire body of work that I had never heard of.  There was a simple link to an essay by John Taylor Gatto – a man I have never heard of despite talking to educators 40-70 hours a week for the past 2 decades.  This may seem odd to you.  Why would I assume John Taylor Gatto should have gained my attention somewhere along the way?  He’s just one guy, right?  Well, actually he seems to be “bigger” than just one guy.  He was Teacher of the Year in New York three times.  In fact, it was the 3rd year he had been given this honor when he decided to quit.  His letter of resignation was posted in the Wall Street Journal – an article titled, “I Quit, I Think.”  After 30 years of teaching and with literally no plan and no inkling of how he would pay for a single bill, he quit.  Before I go on, I’ll let you read what I read, so that we’re on the same page:

Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents. The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from the theological idea that human value is a scarce thing, represented symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid.

That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It found its “scientific” presentation in the bell curve, along which talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of Biology. It’s a religious notion, School is its church. I offer rituals to keep heresy at bay. I provide documentation to justify the heavenly pyramid.

Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession, something like this would happen. Professional interest is served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating the laity to the priesthood. School is too vital a jobs-project, contract giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be “re-formed.” It has political allies to guard its marches, that’s why reforms come and go without changing much. Even reformers can’t imagine school much different.

David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can’t tell which one learned first—the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I label Rachel “learning disabled” and slow David down a bit, too. For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, “special education” fodder. She’ll be locked in her place forever.

In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a learning disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.

That’s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation. There isn’t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen—that probably guarantees it won’t.

How much more evidence is necessary? Good schools don’t need more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn or deliberate indifference to it. I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. Come fall I’ll be looking for work.

Do you know this piece?  I certainly did not.  But it lead me to check out more by Mr. Gatto.  And it turns out he has quite a body of work.  In fact, in another essay he explains that after this piece ran in the WSJ, he has never had to look for work as it has continually found him.  He wrote this piece in 1991 and has turned a second career out of doing everything in his power to destroy his first one.  For over 20 years this single criticism has lead to keynotes, workshops, and consultations about all that is wrong with the institution of school.  In fact, one TED talk refers to Mr. Gatto as a “De-schooler” akin to Ivan Illich in the 1970′s.

But as I read through several of Mr. Gatto’s pieces, I noticed some strong and powerful voices rattling around in my head.  There were words and sentences bouncing around in my head that have guided my own philosophy of education for a while now.  Essentially I heard 3 people:

Keena – a fantastic 1st grade teacher, a woman with a Master’s in Education, an intelligent person with a wonderful sense of pathos and logos, and who also happens to be my wife, kept saying: “So what?  We’re not going to stop the institution of school.  Society needs to be educated and it’s our job to figure out how to do that in a meaningful way.”  Ahh, ever the pragmatist…even in my head!

Jack Welch – the CEO of GE who turned the company around and is considered by many to be one of the greatest leaders of our time had this to contribute to my brain-talk: “Something I hate more than failure is people who say, “I knew it!” after the fact.  If you see a problem then either fix it, make enough to get it fixed, or shut up.  I told you so does nobody any good at any point.  It’s not the sign of a leader.”

Paul Borden – the best speaker I have ever had the pleasure of hearing and a true consultant’s consultant.  While he is a minister and happens to be my father, he is also extremely well respected on matters of organization and change.  My inner monologue from him likened back to my teenage years when he had moved from being the Dean of a school to a part time minister, part time educator, but after he found two men who would mentor him for a while: “For years I preached the gloom and doom.  I used guilt and fear as a motivator.  And what I found was that it motivates nobody for more than a little while.  Nobody wants to feel bad.  Nobody likes to hear that they can’t win.  That’s why I now work where I work.  I am working for two people who believe we not only can win, but that we are winning.  No fear, no guilt, and no tricks.  While they will tell you quickly what is wrong, they will also tell you how to fix it and in the end you’ll feel like you can accomplish it.  That is what motivates people to change over the long haul.”

I just heard those voices slipping in and out of my consciousness over and over again as I read through piece after piece of disgust, contempt, frustration, and anger.  Mr. Gatto never held back his distain for educators and anyone even remotely linked to an academic institution.  Here is one more example from an essay of his:

For instance, for those of you who believe in testing, school superintendents as a class are virtually the stupidest people to pass through a graduate college program, ranking fifty-one points below the elementary school teachers they normally “supervice,” (on the Graduate Record Examination), abd about eighty points below secondary-school teachers, while teachers themselves as an aggregate finish seventeenth of twenty occupational groups surveyed. The reader is of course at liberty to believe this happened accidentally, or that the moon is composed of blue, not green, cheese as is popularly believed. It’s also possible to take this anomaly as conclusive evidence of the irrelevance of standardized testing. Your choice. (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm)

Now, in fairness, I only read through four and a half pieces before I had to stop.  So I certainly am not an expert on the philosophy of John Taylor Gatto.  But it did cement my own philosophy significantly.  What is that philosophy?  It’s simple.

In 2011, as I delivered 16 Keynote addresses and over 40 workshops or seminars, I also explained that education was in trouble.  When I delivered professional development seminars I offered evidence that our kids and “the system” are broken.  But I also offered something else.  Something I never read in any of those pieces – I offered hope and I offered solutions.  (And no, I don’t consider disbanding schools a solution…any more than disbanding the government would solve our political gridlock.  All that would do is allow any number of other nations to come in and take over…)

Do I agree with Mr. Gatto that schools need reform?  Absolutely.  Do I agree with him that standardized testing needs to be seriously re-examined?  Completely.  Do I agree with him that creativity and critical thinking are often destroyed within the very walls that promote their appreciation for them?  Definitely.

But I also believe that there are realistic, scalable, sustainable, and meaningful solutions to each problem we have.  That is actually why I work for both a University AND a commercial company.  While I can do good for my 60 students per term, I can help transform the world at Pearson.  No, I’m not naive enough to believe that every answer to every question will ever be posited to create the perfect system.  “Systems” that involve humanity have always been and will always be flawed.  But we can certainly fix piece after piece after piece.  And some of those pieces can make a meaningful impact.  I know that’s all quite ambiguous and I’m happy to talk specifics with anyone willing to listen to me.  And so, there you have it.  I guess that’s the difference at the end of the day.

I know there are plenty of people who will line up to hear that the sky is falling.  I just don’t know many who will line up over and over again.  But, when I deliver a message of problems AND solutions…I seem to get plenty of repeat business.  Because I think we all want to feel like we actually can make a difference.  We don’t want to feel like everything we do is for nothing or worse, actually damaging others.

Imagine you are the principal of an urban Title I funded K-6 Elementary School that has seen its student count increase from 390 to 620 students in just  4 years. Imagine, too, that your student population has an annual 50% mobility rate (that is, 50% of your students are new every year as the result of the influx of a highly transient, low-income, immigrant-heavy population). Add to this context that for over 60% of your kids English is a new language.

If you feel a bit daunted by the prospect of leading a small team of teachers in the daily work of getting each and every one of these wildly diverse students college and career ready, now consider that this is the reality for Dr. Jane Ennis, the Principal at Adelphi Elementary School in Adelphi, Maryland.

Adelphi is one of the shining examples of things going well in Prince George’s County Public Schools, just across the border from Washington, D.C. A few days ago, I visited the school with Charles Goldsmith, a Pearson colleague from London who’d heard of Jane’s success and asked me to introduce him to her,  her staff, and the students while he was in Washington D.C. (more on this from Charles in an article he’ll publish soon). Charles wanted to know what many national and international educators have also wanted know from Jane and her team, recently:  how did you do it, and how do you keep doing it?

Dr. Jane Ennis - Adelphi Elementary School - Adelphi, MD

In the last 4 years, Jane has not only turned her school around by fixing the basics – cleaning up dirty and messy hallways and classrooms, empowering students and parents to be responsible for their education, using data to understand why grades were sinking while standards rose, and bringing together teachers who were once divided into groups and seldom collaborated or communicated – but, she’s also helped both teachers and students imagine and create an amazing teaching and learning complex and culture that consistently produces children who meet and exceed some of the toughest State tests in the country – the Maryland State Assessments (MSA).

But if you ask Jane or any of the 18 model teachers in her K-2 and 3-6 grade teacher leadership teams how Adelphi children continue to meet and beat the MSA, you’ll find there’s no teaching to tests and that teachers don’t come to work each day worrying that their kids might not pass the high-stakes exams at year-end.

Instead, Jane and her teacher leaders told us that learning to be ‘facilitators of student-led classrooms,’ where lessons are structured in ways that ensures curriculum, instruction and assessments are aligned with college and career ready standards, is so ingrained in their daily practices at this point that they take it for granted. And, that as part of this built-in mindset, they believe as long as they facilitate learning according to their new processes of ‘supporting and guiding’ versus simply ‘lecturing,’ their students will continue to succeed not just on tests, but as lifelong learners, leaders, and thinkers.

In fact, they’re always shocked when they visit other schools and don’t find the same level of student empowerment and collegiality between teachers supporting teachers in an effort to continually improve student lives and outcomes.

Recently, Jane and her teachers have – only half-jokingly – begun to worry that the strong student-led learning environments they are creating at Adelphi are working so well that they, the teachers and administrators, may soon no longer be necessary in the education equation for their students.

What I noticed, though, was that the structures and support systems they’ve built in four years of focused hard work are really allowing these educators much more freedom to observe, guide, mentor, and create the lasting genuine relationships and time required to consider just how special and different each student is at Adelphi.

I suppose one might say that Jane is leading a team of imagineers in a way similar to that breakthrough work led by Walt Disney over 70 years ago. The processes and practices Jane and her team have learned, improved, and abide by seem to be translating into freeing them up for more time to imagine what helping ALL kids at Adelphi succeed actually looks like. In fact, Jane tells us that the kids, teachers, and departmental staff now actually dance and sing Rock n’ Roll songs in the hallways each month to celebrate their successful completion of the Principal’s Book of Month.

Bottom line:  I think their jobs are quite safe.

If you are a Principal or teacher in a struggling school, or just with some struggling students, how are you building in time for imagining what learning should look like for the children in your care?

Related articles

• Helping to Turn the Flywheel of Change (fwd.pearson.com)
• Common Core Brings K-12, Higher Ed. Together (edweek.org)
• On a Mission to Help (fwd.pearson.com)

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• A Glimpse of Technology-Enhanced Tests (blogs.edweek.org)

First and foremost, I’m a mom.

I have two sons aged 6 and 9 whom I love more than anything in the world.  As a mom, I pay close attention to standardized testing. Why?

Like all parents, I know the world is changing.  I know that our children will have a more difficult time getting and keeping jobs in today’s global economy.  So, I also know that we need to ramp up the rigor in our classrooms to make sure my sons are prepared for college, careers, and life. The best way to make that all happen is to change the way we’re teaching and assessing our children. Yet, change is inherently uncomfortable.

As nearly every state moves to the Common Core State Standards, we know the new kinds of assessments being developed are asking our students to think differently.  But, shouldn’t they be?  Shouldn’t we be pushing our kids to think critically, problem solve, and apply their mathematics in real-world ways  – even if that means it’s more challenging?

And, as we challenge our kids to learn differently, I often times find myself telling other parents and neighbors that the test is ONE piece of confirming information.  The assessment results help a busy parent understand what’s happening in the classroom because we can’t be there every day.  More importantly, they round out the wider scope of information gathered at the local school level to help us understand how our children are progressing.  All of this together will ensure my boys will have the future they deserve.

For the record, I’m not only a mom but a former teacher and — here’s the kicker — I help inform the development of educational assessments as a career.  It turns out that all three of these things can, and do, co-mingle happily.  In fact, I think they make me better at my job.  I never forget that my two boys are in their classrooms being asked to take these assessments.  I have a vested interest, as do my colleagues, in ensuring the test development process is fair, accurate and reliable.

To learn more about how new rigorous standards are impacting measurement in the classroom, view this video on next-generation assessments.

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Today several Pearson team members got a chance to walk the halls, speak to kids, teachers and administrators, and see firsthand what all the excitement is about. We listened, observed and learned from the MGSD team, and then had a chance to share our strategy and begin to explore ways of helping MGSD take it to the next step.

The partnership between Pearson and MGSD has quickly blossomed into something strategic and special. MGSD has strongly influenced the Pearson 1:1 Learning Framework and been a strong supporter of our model and advocate as we’ve brought the Framework to the national forefront.