Tinker vs. Des Moines was a landmark legal case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court that established the rights of students.  In essence, the case established the fact that students do not “abandon their rights at the school-house door”.    The fact of the matter is that students don’t abandon a lot of things at the school-house door.  They don’t abandon addiction and abuse.   They don’t abandon cognitive delays and language barriers.  They don’t abandon homelessness and hunger.

During the Senate Education Committee on HB0091 and HB0072, Sen. Chris Rothfuss proposed an amendment that would establish a pilot project for one district to use a 360 degree evaluation as a part of the accountability process.  Taking a nod from the business world, 360 degree feedback systems have become popular in education and are a good way of using multi-source feedback to improve performance.  We require all of our administrators to conduct a 360 degree assessment and are considering one for use by our board of trustees.  I commend Sen. Rothfuss for his thinking.  From my perspective, it could be another “club in our bag”, in terms of improvement.

But as a member of the Senate Education Committee, I would also challenge Sen. Rothfuss and all Wyoming legislators to extend their thinking beyond just monitoring student performance when it comes to using a 360 degree approach.  A well established body of research shows that outside of school factors must be addressed if policy makers wish to truly improve educational performance.   The importance of these outside-school factors should also caution against policies that simplistically attribute student test scores to teachers.

The landmark study that started the “school effects” debate was the Coleman Study.  With over 650,000 students in the sample and resulting in over 700 pages, it was one of the largest studies ever conducted at that time.   Entitled “Equality of Educational Opportunity”, it evaluated how a student’s background and socioeconomic factors affect their performance.  It’s a debate that continues to this day, but it doesn’t seem to be a part of the debate in Wyoming (or anywhere else for that matter outside of research papers).

If 360 degree evaluations are good for businesses and schools, why wouldn’t they be good for educational accountability as a whole?    Why wouldn’t our legislators want to track the “outside-of-school” factors that research has shown to affect student performance as much or more than things like teacher quality;  factors like poverty, access to health care, malnutrition, truancy rates, and high-speed internet access?  Factors our legislators could influence with policy, just as they are doing with education.  

Make no mistake, I’m not trying to divert the accountability discussion, just broaden it.  School districts in Wyoming need to name our challenges and own them.  We need to take responsibility for every student that walks through our doors.   State-wide, there’s an army of people working on that issue.  But the reality is that we don’t own some of the biggest challenges we face.  To ignore this fact, fails to incorporate the basic tenets of multi-source feedback for performance improvement.

Our district uses a balanced scorecard to monitor quality indicators for our district.  These quality indicators are aligned to our strategic plan.  It’s a common practice as a part of good strategic planning.  These quality indicators include more than just student performance measures, as we know that there’s more to a providing a quality education than high stakes test results.  We measure a broad range of factors that include everything from the percentage of network uptime to a self-evaluation process for our board of trustees.  I don’t see any reason our legislators can’t begin to monitor the full spectrum of factors that affect student performance, including the out-of-school factors, and take policy steps to positively affect these factors too.

I often hear our legislators say that they just want to improve the quality of education in Wyoming.  If that’s true, the research is clear.  We have to do more than just focus on the in-school factors.  Sen. Rothfuss is right.  It’s time we begin to consider evaluating performance from a 360 degree perspective.  But, we need to put the child in the center of that data collection circle, rather than just the teacher.

So after listening to the discussions regarding the future of Wyoming accountability system at the Senate Education hearings this morning, I find myself sitting here in front of my computer doing the same thing I have for the last three years, mind unchanged.   Years of work and millions of dollars are going to be invested in a comprehensive accountability system for Wyoming schools that will still be asking the wrong questions, will still be implementing school reform principles that don’t work , and will still lack the capacity building structures that have made educational systems like Finland’s successful.

While that may sound hypercritical of many who are working hard to make education in Wyoming better, please don’t take it as such.   The legislators and consultants working to improve the educational outcomes in the United States and Wyoming are good, caring people.  And they know that the United States just isn’t stacking up when it comes to our performance on international comparative benchmarks like the PISA.  The problem however , is that we are using data from international benchmarking and state-level assessment data to support our existing beliefs about good accountability systems rather than using this data as a springboard to true reform.  Andreas Schleicher, Head of Indicators an Analysis at the OECD, likens this to a drunken driver who looks for his lost keys under a street light rather than where he lost them because it was the only place he could see.

It’s time that we start looking for our keys where we left them.  That will require addressing more than just a system that monitors performance.  Currently we care more about keeping score than coaching the players.  Changing our performance will require addressing factors like teacher and principal preparation programs, the nature of teacher tenure, and developing state departments of education that focus on capacity building supports more than they focus compliance.  It will require making a transition to an inquiry based system of instruction rooted in 21st century skills.  Yes, we will have to focus our energy on broad reaching, complex problems and create solutions for these problems rather just watching the scoreboard.

And more than anything else, it will require time, patience, and political support. And let’s be honest, when I say political support, I really mean support from organizations like the Wyoming Business Alliance and other similar organizations nation-wide.  These types of organizations have been adamant that the quality of education improve, and rightly so.  The members of these organizations are the kinds of opinion leaders (and campaign contributors) that can get broad policy changes to the forefront of the political conversation.

But, if you are a member of one of those organizations and you happen to be reading this, I’ve got some bad news for you.  The policy found in HB0091 and HB0072 might look like a great remedy for what ails you, but in the long run, you’re merely treating symptoms, not finding a cure.  I certainly can’t blame you for supporting this legislation, as I’m sure it looks like the only treatment option available.  But I’m here to tell you, while it might very well raise our state-level test scores, IT WON’T RESULT IN A STUDENT BETTER PREPARED FOR COLLEGE OR THE WORKPLACE.

Unless we change the instructional focus of our teachers by changing the types of tests we’re giving, focus on proven school reform research, and build capacity supports for all schools, the accountability systems that you are counting on to improve our educational systems aren’t going to produce the kinds of workers that we want (and the kind of students that WOULD perform well on a test like the PISA).  You can make the accountability systems as elegant and complex as you want.  And you can collect terabytes of data on student performance, and fire as many administrators and teachers as you want.  But in the end, you’ll be just as crazy as me.

I truly believe it’s the financial and political clout of our businesses that can make reform possible.  While our legislators are involved in this process, our businesses have a pig level commitment just like we do.  Why?  It’s your livelihood, just like it’s mine.  And it’s the future of our local and national economies that’s at stake.  So, while there’s still enough time to get a second opinion from…I don’t know, one of the world’s leading researchers on the subject, I guess I’m asking you to do just that.   This is major surgery we’re talking about.  Let’s don’t look back on this process in ten years and say the surgery was a success, but the patient died.

Dr. Steve Miller was the chair of calendar committee.  At the December board meeting, he presented the calendar committee recommendations to our board of trustees.  Many of the committee’s recommendations reinforced components of the calendar that have been in place for many years, including the start and end dates, and the timing of our Christmas and spring breaks.

A couple of the recommendations however, would bring change to our calendar.  One of the recommendations was to stagger the dates of our parent-teacher conferences on different nights for each of our schools.  This would allow parents with students in multiple schools greater flexibility in meeting with teachers.  I think our parents will see the immediate value in this.

The recommendation that will have the greatest impact on parents, addresses the need for our district to deal with student and teacher absentee rates related to activities, and the need for collaborative work time for our teachers.  As many of our 6-12 parents know, activity travel in Wyoming is a unique animal.  It’s not uncommon for our students to miss significant amounts of instructional time as a result of long bus rides to contests.  In an effort to address this issue, the calendar committee recommended that we identify high-absence Fridays (based on activities at the high school) and other logical dates (end of quarter) to schedule half-days for students, while teachers work a full day.

While I support this action to reduce absenteeism and increase instructional time, I prefer a more consistent format that includes an early release every Friday during the school year.  The proposed release time would be 1:30 PM for the high school and middle school and 1:55 PM for the elementary school.  It is important to note that this change would reduce our total instructional time, however we increased the length of our school day this year, and as a result we would still have more total instructional time than we have had in the past.  This calendar would also provide our teachers with much needed collaborative work time and allow our parents to plan for this time on a regular basis.   It’s a calendar variation that’s being regularly used throughout Wyoming by other districts with success.

It’s certainly an added responsibility for our parents in terms of child care; an area of concern that was discussed by our Board of Trustees.  However our teachers are facing an unprecedented work load beyond their regular teaching duties.  The State of Wyoming has adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and a new accountability system is poised to tie teacher evaluation to student achievement.  While we don’t yet know what the state assessment system will look like, we do know that the new assessments will be testing students on the CCSS.  And as a result, every district in Wyoming is working furiously to implement the new standards so that our teachers and students can be well prepared to take the new accountability assessments.

On the surface, it doesn’t sound that difficult to adopt new standards.  In reality it’s a herculean task given our current timelines.   Add to that the work the district is doing on instructional strategies, 21st century skills, and implementing technology, and it’s not hard to understand why our teachers need  some dedicated time for curriculum work, collaboration, and professional development.

Until now, we’ve schedule work time for these types of activities on a few half days throughout the year.  The fact is that we just can’t accomplish all of the work our teachers and administrators need to do outside the classroom during a few half days throughout the year.  Much like fitness, the most effective means for improvement is a dedicated approach, and we will need to work out every week in order to get things in shape for the new accountability system.  Add to this the benefits of reduced teacher and student absenteeism from activity travel, and we think the proposed calendar will help us continue to improve the quality of the education our students receive at SCSD 1.

Two days ago, another horrific school shooting took place in Connecticut.  I won’t give the perpetrator the attention he must have wanted by expanding on specific details, but at this point, we all know the vast majority of the victims were elementary school children.  And while some of the intent of this post is to inform our parents of the safety and security measures that are in place at SCSD #1, I wouldn’t be much of a father or an educator if I didn’t ask each and every one of you to pray that the healing spirit of God rest and abide with each one of those grieving families and bring them comfort.

In the near future, and as a result of this incident, there will be another renewed discussion of school safety.  I say renewed because the difficult truth is that our collective memory can be rather short when it comes to these types of things.  Less than a year ago, I wrote a post for this blog addressing the concerns of some folks in our community about new door hardware at the auditorium entrance that required visitors to be buzzed in.

The truth however, is that nothing needs to be renewed about our commitment to student safety and security at SCSD #1, and I want our parents to know that.  As I outlined in a press release from the district, over the past two years we have added additional external safety measures and surveillance equipment.  We have opened our facilities and buses to the Sheriff’s office for training.  We have added a school resource officer and completely revised our crisis management plan and our emergency response manuals to match the incident command system used by first responders.  And most importantly, we continue to schedule and conduct training drills with the Sheriff’s office to address the threat of an active shooter.

There is another truth, sadly, that we must also acknowledge.  Schools by their very nature are designed to be open, inviting places.   As much as we work to ensure the safety of our students, the primary function of a school building isn’t security.  I don’t know where the appropriate balance lies between security measures and the educational environment, but it’s a discussion that we as a nation and a local community will continue.

At the end of the day however, it is our commitment to people who will have the greatest impact on preventing and mitigating violence of this nature.  Bars on windows and locked doors are merely deterrents and mitigation factors.  Valuable certainly, and potentially life saving, but I don’t think that’s where our primary focus should be.  The perpetrator in Connecticut shot through glass windows to open locked doors.   The lives that were saved at Sandy Hook Elementary School were saved by the actions of people, not by static security measures.

Whether anyone wants to really talk about it or not, the basis for our security standards is contained in the Latin phrase, in loco parentis.  It means “in place of the parent”.   It’s a legal term that gives schools the power to act in the best interest of the student.   This is most often used in an educational sense.  But as the heroic teachers and administrators at Sandy Hook Elementary School demonstrated, it’s come to mean so much more.  It means treating your students the way we would our own children, even if that requires making the ultimate sacrificing to protect them.

I can tell you from experience there isn’t lot of discussion about this aspect of being a teacher in the teacher preparation courses in college.  And we don’t have a standard interview question that asks, “Would you take a bullet for your students?”  But as we have recently learned, even the youngest and perhaps meekest of our profession, have done so without hesitation.  If you haven’t recently said thank you to a teacher or principal for what they do, or what we all know they would be willing to do, I encourage to you do so.

But even beyond the commitment that teachers and administrators make to in loco parentis, I think it’s even more important that we ALL make this same commitment to one another.   Experts will tell you that those who carry out events like school shootings plan the event for months, and somewhere the clock is ticking on the next event.  For just a moment, let’s collectively take the time to think like a parent for everyone we know.   Who could use a kind word, an email, or a phone call?  Who do we know that’s lonely or isolated?  Let’s take a minute in Pinedale, to check in with our neighbors and the person you see every day, but never seem to find the time to stop and talk with.  Let’s care enough about people we’ve never met, in an effort to truly care for our children.  And let’s do our part locally to ensure that absolutely no one feels like their options in life have been reduced to the point of shooting innocent children and caring educators.

Jim started as a board member in 1991.  And for the past twenty-one years, he’s been an integral part of the fabric that is SCSD #1.  In addition to serving as the chairman of the SCSD #1 board for 11 years, Jim has been a WSBA Area Director, a member of the WHSAA Board of Directors, and a member of the All-Wyoming School Board.  In any given year, including special meetings, we have upwards of 30 or more meetings, and that doesn’t include the PAC and BOCES boards on which Jim served.  When you include all of those meetings, the WHSAA meetings, the WSBA leadership meetings, and professional development opportunities, the number of meetings Jim has attended in his official capacity as a board member easily exceeds one thousand.  That’s a lot of fabric.

It also turns out to be a lot of professional development.  Each year, at the Wyoming School Board Association (WSBA) annual conference, board members around the state are recognized for meeting professional development milestones.  The WSBA has a point system whereby board members receive points for professional development and service on state and national committees.  To become a certified board member, you must earn 50 points.   To qualify for the School Board Leadership “Hall of Fame”, you must earn 400 points.   Jim is exiting our board with 1275 points, the only school board member in Wyoming with over 1000 points.  He is easily the most dedicated board member with whom I have ever worked in terms of his commitment to continuing his professional development.

Being a board member isn’t easy.  In my opinion it’s one of the most challenging community service opportunities a person can undertake.  And, over the past twenty-one years, there’s certainly been no shortage of challenges.  The student population at SCSD #1 has grown by 50% and the demographics of our district have changed dramatically.   The district has dealt with significant changes to the school funding model,  ever-increasing accountability measures, and an erosion of local control.  All things considered, it’s easy to understand why the average tenure for school board members is less than five years.   But if you take the time to get to know Jim, it’s just as easy to understand why he has been a dedicated board member for over two decades.

For the past two and a half years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of other board members and administrators from around the state.  Almost all of them know Jim, and with few exceptions, they all said the same thing somewhere during our conversation.  ”I always know where I stand with Jim.”  So as we transition to a newly configured board and Jim transitions to a new chapter in his life, I want Jim to know where I stand; thankful for his many years of service to the children of Sublette County School District #1, and proud to have worked with him.  Godspeed Jim.

Effectively adapting to change has become a hallmark of successful educational organizations.  As Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”   And while we do spend a lot of time trying to meet the challenges that result from legislative mandates, we would be short-sighted to let our vision of the future be defined by those mandates.   Most of those mandates are currently focused on accountability.  I’m focused on students.  And in my professional opinion, those are two different things right now.

In today’s world, being adaptive requires an understanding of the trends that will affect  our students.   If you haven’t noticed, their future is changing rapidly.   Jobs in cloud computing, user experience,  search engine optimization, and social media didn’t exist ten years ago.   And that’s just the tech field.  New jobs in elder care, sustainability, and patient advocacy weren’t on our radar either.  Estimates indicate that 60% of the jobs that will be available to our students ten years from now don’t currently exist.  And up to 80% of our students will make significant career changes throughout their lifetime that will require continuing education.  Since the birth of the students in our 12th grade class, entire industries have disappeared, heavy manufacturing has gone overseas, and technology has created and changed the workplace.  The key point is that change is inevitable, but progress is optional.  So we need to change the way we think about preparing our students for students for college and careers.

In his book  Sixteen Trends:  Their Profound Impact on Our Future, author Gary Marx emphasizes the need to focus students on Career Adaptability rather than Career Preparation.  Researcher Mark L. Savickas has identified four key components of Career Adaptability:

1. Concern:  Students need to develop a future orientation, a sense that it’s important to prepare for tomorrow, the ability to think about their work-life over time.  
2. Control:  Students need to develop a belief that they are responsible for the creation and construction of their career and a belief in personal responsibility that promotes good decisive decision making.
3. Curiosity:  The reality of future occupations is one of constant training and retraining.  Developing a personal standard for continuous improvement and life-long learning will be key.
4. Confidence:  This isn’t about stage presence.  This is about the ability to solve complex problems and the skills necessary to do this in new and unfamiliar ways.

Odd that he didn’t mention standardized test scores.  So what does this mean for SCSD #1?  It means that not everything that counts can be counted.   It means we need to focus on the kind of instruction that teaches our students creativity and innovation,  critical thinking, and information fluency of all types.  It means developing a comfort level with a wide range of technologies.  It means that in the not too distant future, with the exception of reading at a high level, imparting content knowledge will mean less than the development of student metacognition and individual learning strategies.  It means providing less teacher directed instruction and more teacher as activator and facilitator.  It also means that we’re going to have to make a conscious choice as a district.  The current direction of the Wyoming accountability system isn’t going to drive this kind of instruction and focus.  We’re going to have to drive it ourselves.

The reality is that what’s good for kids isn’t always what’s good for accountability.  I have two kids in this school district and speak from personal experience when I say that I’m more concerned as an educator and a parent with their ability to develop academic stamina and solve critical problems than I am about their PAWS score.  And I’m more concerned about them developing academic curiosity and a growth mindset than a 4.0 GPA.  And trust me when I say that neither the PAWS nor the ACT can truly assess those abilities.

Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.   Four years ago a nation watched as an entire generation of autoworkers with 25 years of experience and a great career plan got punched in the mouth.   It’s incumbent upon us as educators to learn from that lesson and prepare our students for a career environment that has never been more unpredictable.   Doing so means focusing more on our human capital than the state capital.  Even in we get punched in the mouth.

And as I thought about how easy it can become to let our busy lives block out the natural wonders that surrounds Pinedale, I realized that it’s just as easy to become dulled to the people in our lives, both personal and professional, who are a part of the multitude of blessings I experience each day.    So as we approach Thanksgiving, I think it’s time to practice some thanksgiving, and recognize the people who make a difference in my life and many others every day:

• To my family:  Thank you for your never-ending love and support.
• To my church:  Thank you for providing me with a place to renew my spirit.
• To our veterans and armed forces:  Thank you for your service and sacrifice to protect our freedom and keep our nation safe.
• To the SCSD #1 Faculty and Staff:  Thank you for the work you do on behalf of our students.  You are the most dedicated and hard-working group of education professionals with whom I’ve had the privilege to work.
• To the SCSD #1 Board of Trustees:  Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve SCSD #1.
• To Jim Malkowski and Mike McFarland:  Thank you for your service on our Board of Trustees.
• To the PAC, its staff, and SCSD #1:  Thank you for providing me with a place to renew my body.  Where else can you find a facility of this magnitude in a community our size.
• To the Sublette BOCES, its staff, and SCSD #1:  Thank you everything you do.  I continue to be amazed at the enrichment opportunities you provide for our community and our students.  They are second to none.
• To the State of Wyoming:  Thank you for your commitment to funding education.  You are a national leader in this respect.
• To our first responders:  Thank you to our law enforcement, fire fighters, EMS, search and rescue teams, and emergency management teams for putting your life on the line every day for our safety and well-being.
• To Sublette County and the Town of Pinedale:  Thank you for the services and recreation opportunities you provide.  Your efforts make this a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family.
• To everyone I’ve missed:   I know there are a lot more people who deserve recognition than those I’ve listed here.  There are just too many to list.  Thank you.

I truly appreciate the work of local photographers Dave Bell , Fred Pflughoft and others.  They have a unique ability find and capture the spectacular events occurring in Sublette County that I seem to overlook and under-appreciate all too often.  Their pictures often remind me to I need to be mindful of, and thankful for, what I have right here in Pinedale.   I haven’t always had these things.  And I may not always have them.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Actually it can.  From my perspective, the relevance of these authors and others are more timely than ever.   Pick up a newspaper.  Read the news online.  Watch the news on TV.  Just take a moment and look around.   A fantastic learning opportunity is staring you right in the face.  Anywhere and everywhere you look, you can find public discourse.  Debate.  Dialogue.  Nationally, there’s no shortage of topics as our presidential and local elections enters their final phase.  Locally, we have dealt with the issues such as the number of county commissioners that represent us and what school district trustee boundaries should look like.   All of these issues will affect you as an adult.  And when you’re older, you’ll want to voice your opinion on topics that are important to you.

Schools used to have debate teams to teach students these types of skills, but they have gone by the wayside long ago in most places; mostly due to a lack of students interest.  My high school didn’t have one and that was nearly (cough) 30 years ago.  That’s too bad.   Students who were on the debate team were prepared to contribute to the public discourse in a positive way.   If you watch the news and the newspaper, you can see that what happens when you let a skill like that wither on the vine.  So what’s a bright young mind to do without a living, breathing debate coach?   Read of course.  And the classics are a great place to start.

First, don’t shout or get personal.  Michel de Montaigne,  a renowned writer during the French Renaissance said,  ”He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.”  You don’t need to shout over one another.  Besides, there’s plenty of research to show that people listen a whole lot less when you’re rude or shout.  Just for the record, I’m not sure my high school basketball coach was privy to that ground breaking research.

Greek philosopher Cicero said, “When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.”  Kids, that’s 2100 year-old Greek sarcasm.  It’s also standard practice for many attorneys and talk show hosts.  Don’t be that guy.  Learn how to practice the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable.   Don’t resort to half-truths and misleading statements.  Focus on the facts, not the person with the opposite opinion.

Secondly, have an open mind.  F. Scott Fitzgerald, said that, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”   Take the time to understand the other guys position.  Nobody says you have to agree with him or her, but a little empathy goes a long way.  So far, in fact, that the most innovative and the fastest-growing global enterprises count empathy as one of the top six skills they look for in new hires.

Also, take turns and be polite.  You learned this in kindergarten.  Don’t forget it, even when you strongly disagree.  Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her biography of Voltaire summarized his views by stating, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”   No greater civility was ever embodied in a statement of disagreement.  And much more than simple disagreement, Hall expresses disapproval.  I more than disagree with you; I don’t like what you’re saying and don’t want you to say it, yet I would die before I would deprive of the opportunity to do so.

And lastly, be self-reflective.  Most of the adults reading this will assume I’m talking about “the other guy”.   Before you enter any sort of public debate, consider your motives.  Baltasar Gracián, a 17th century Jesuit priest and writer, said “Don’t take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.”  Whether it’s an election or a fight with your buddy, make sure you are arguing for the right reasons.  And when it’s all said and done, if you happen to come out on the losing end, do so with dignity.  And here’s a hint, if you’ve followed the wise words of  Montaigne, Cicero, Hall, Voltaire, Fitzgerald, and Gracián, you’re already there.   And here you thought there wasn’t anything worth reading in those dusty old books.

• I understand that the Tough Mudder is not a race but a challenge.
• I put teamwork and camaraderie before my course time.
• I do not whine…kids whine.
• I help my fellow Mudders complete the course.
• I overcome all fears.

And it supports the Wounded Warrior Project.  The course is twelve miles long with 24 wet and muddy, military style obstacles designed by British Special Forces along the way that includes 10,000 volts of electricity coursing through your body at some point.  Challenging in any environment, but our day turned out to be cold and windy.  The first 10 miles were a lot of fun, but this thing got kind of mean in the end and I wound up asking myself, “Why am I doing this?”

The answer of course, is that it puts life into context.  Without some real challenges in life, both physical and mental, you have no point of reference for knowing what you’re truly capable of.  Take  my fellow Tough Mudder in this picture.  In the span of a few short moments, I went from being really proud of myself to being truly humbled when we crossed paths at the finish line.   Talk about gaining some perspective.

I learned a few things about myself over the weekend (and maybe a little something about hypothermia).  Things I hope to carry forward at work.  There’s no shortage of challenges that we face as educators today.  And while they may seem insurmountable, I don’t think they are.  A new accountability system is being developed that sure makes our work feel like a race.  Even the federal grants for schools are called “A Race to the Top”.

But it’s not a race.  It’s a challenge.  A really big one.  If we are going to provide the kind of education that our students deserve, we need…I need, to start putting teamwork ahead of our “course time”.   We need to quit whining (I’ve done my fair share).  And we need to help our students and fellow educators complete the course, no matter how tough or how many obstacles we face.  There’s a lot of uncertainty, and no shortage of fears out there, regarding the future of education, especially for educators.  But what we can do together,  far exceeds what I can do alone.   I guess I’ve always known that.  Sometimes it just takes a Tough Mudder to remind you.

As we all know, the NASA engineers did find a way to put a square peg in a round hole.  It’s become an iconic standard for American ingenuity.  Every time I see that scene, I ask myself the same question.  Are we developing the kind of students that can find a way to put a square peg in a round hole?  The truth is…we aren’t.  And here’s why.

Accountability systems drive instructional practices.  As much as we’d all like to believe that we aren’t teaching to the test, we are.  When teacher and principal evaluation is tied to student performance on a specific test, and teachers and principals can lose their jobs because students fail to perform well on that test, you can bet instruction will be customized to improve performance on the test.   In theory, that’s a great concept.  But when your accountability measures (high-stakes tests), only require the most basic of cognitive skills, instruction will become tailored to those skills.  And that’s the kind of student you will produce.  Students with basic cognitive skills.  Let me give you a concrete example.

Below is a sample question from the ACT.  The ACT is designed to assesses students’ academic readiness for college.  11th grade students across the country take this test each year (remember that I said 11th grade students).  Wyoming is in the process of adopting it as their measure of student performance for high schools.  It’s widely respected and scores from this test are used by a large percentage of colleges in the U.S. as an entrance standard.  Questions on this test are also typical of the types of questions you will find on accountability measures being used around the U.S. to demonstrate student knowledge and skill.

For i = , if 3i (2 + 5i) = x + 6i, then x = ? A.  –15 B.  5 C.  5i D.  15i E.  27i

To answer the question above correctly, a student must know the relevant mathematics concept, apply it, and then correctly choose from the supplied answers.  On Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive skills, this problem requires students to Remember, Understand, and Apply.  The three lowest levels of thinking skills.  Now let’s take a look at a sample question from the PISA.

A result of global warming is that the ice of some glaciers is melting. Twelve years  after the ice disappears, tiny plants, called lichen, start to grow on the rocks. Each lichen grows approximately in the shape of a circle. The relationship between the diameter of this circle and the age of the lichen can be approximated with the formula:

 
where d represents the diameter of the lichen in millimetres, and t represents the number of years after the ice has disappeared.  Using the formula, calculate the diameter of the lichen, 16 years after the ice disappeared. Show your calculation.

Notice anything different?  This is the kind of questions that other countries give to 15-YEAR OLDS!   It’s also one of the tests given to U.S. students for achievement comparisons with other countries.  Questions like the one above go well beyond Remembering, Understanding, and Applying and require students to use the math in a  real-life situation.  In addition to Remembering, Understanding, and Applying, it engages students in the higher order thinking skills of Analyzing and Evaluating.  Is it any wonder our test results don’t stack up?  It’s the difference between asking a student to tell you what time it is and asking him how to build a watch.

Without intentionally doing so, our accountability tests have reverse-engineered for exactly the kind of results our business and legislative leaders don’t want.  These systems have set the  bar at basic understanding and our teachers are hitting it.  The problem is that basic skills don’t translate well when compared to what’s needed in the real world, and what other countries like Finland are doing in their education systems.  In order to be effective, our accountability measures need to ask the right kinds of questions.  When they do that, teachers will change their instruction to meet that goal and we’ll produce the kind of student that can compete globally and invent ways to put square pegs in round holes.  And until that happens, one thing’s for certain.  We’ll continue to sit squarely on the launch pad while the rest of the world reaches for the stars.  Houston, we have a problem.