No thanks, Bill Gates!

Bill Gates was on MSNBC's “Morning Joe,” and in his efforts to promote the “Common Core,” he proved that corporate billionaires are as qualified to run our nation's public schools as donkeys are qualified to design his Microsoft software.

Gates insisted that until US schools embrace “Common Core” we will always lag behind twenty or more countries in our scores on a test that is wrongly used to generate education policy in the United States.  The test is “Trends in International Mathematics and Science.”

Then, Mr. Gates proceeded to contradict himself by insisting that American education needed to copy the Korean, Singapore and Peoples Republic of China school designs – because he does NOT believe America has the right teaching strategies for academic success.

How did Bill Gates contradict himself?

Gates spent hundreds of millions of dollars to campaign  vigorously to impose “Common Core”  teaching methods on US teachers.   Bill Gates wants to walk into any classroom in the United States and see it filled with sharply focused eager children who work independently, inventing new math ideas without any direct instruction from teachers.

As if every child were a Baby Bill Gates, or a Baby Beethoven, or a Baby Einstein,  Common Core proponents believe our children will “invent” new mathematics with no time spent learning math facts. Or, they will write symphonies without learning to read music.  Or, they will become astronauts with endless hands-on lab experiences, and very little time spent acquiring foundational knowledge.

There's no doubt in my mind that every teacher in Louisiana WOULD embrace the “Common Core” discovery teaching methods if our schools were wealthy like the private schools where Bill Gates sends his children.  If American schools were run like Finland's public schools where every student is given exactly the same amount of classroom materials, computers and teachers, we could probably replace Finland as the top scoring nation.

When MSNBC interviewers asked Bill Gates if he wanted the US to follow the Finnish model of public education to improve our science and math scores, he flatly said “No!”  

Bill Gates wants American public schools to become more like Singapore, South Korea and People's Republic of China public schools.

His incredulous host asked why, and Bill Gates gave these answers:  1) they have better school demographics, 2) their schools are cheaper to run because they pack 40 to 50 students in a classroom.  

Singapore, South Korea and China do not embrace the Common Core in any way.  In fact, these countries use very rigid rote memorization models.  If you've ever been to South Korea or the People's Republic of China to observe their schools, you would know firsthand that the mass majority of students engage in memorization, vocabulary building, mastery of the written English language, and strict adherence to traditional mathematics methods.   There is no diversity in their schools.  Students with disabilities are put in orphanages.

Children in these countries DO NOT spend hours a day in the gym or on the football fields after school.  They DO NOT spend weeks preparing for homecoming, proms, all night basketball tournaments, school day golf matches, etc.  Instead, students with college potential have NO free time.  NO social time.  Early in the morning, they walk to private academic tutors.  After school, until six or seven p.m. students walk to private academic tutors to ensure they mastered materials required for university entrance exams.

The South Korean birth rate is the lowest in the world.  Policy analysts attribute this fact to the agony families go through once their children enter the public school grind of tutoring, testing, memorizing, testing some more.  The South Korean government is discouraging college education, because the country already has too many college graduates who cannot find jobs.

Obsessive focus on teaching math, English and science will not guarantee academic success in our children, nor will it improve the American economy.

Why would Gates preach “Common Core,” and then, contradict himself by rejecting Finland's success model and instead, pushing for standardized tests, large class sizes, and Korean-style drill-and-kill instruction?   Well, Finland does not believe in high stakes tests.  There's no market in Finland for Bill Gates to “monetize” education for his own personal gain.

But, Americans have to decide for themselves.  Do we want our children to be educated the Chinese way?  The Korean way?  The Finnish way? Or, the American way?  If we believe in the American public education model with its traditional wealth of art, music, dance, sports, vocation and industrial arts classes, we must fight to save it.

The Four B's of School Leadership: My Sunday Eunice News Column for September 7, 2014

Most school improvement programs today require school principals to become “instructional leaders.” This is quite a shift from traditional expectations for rural superintendents and building principals.

Before the No Child Left Behind Act was passed and signed into law by President George Bush, K-12 school leaders across the nation spent most of their time satisfying parents' concerns about school logistics and school discipline.

Over the years, I've seen principals and small town superintendents work ungodly hours just dealing with beans, balls, buses and behavior issues.

These leaders were successful most of the time because they treated their teachers as professionals, and they saw themselves as agents who gathered resources and ran school logistics in such a manner that teachers could easily and independently plan and deliver instruction consistent with state academic standards.

When NCLB became law, there was a lot of resistance to the idea that school administrators had to become instructional leaders. I've heard many a superintendent and principal insist that they had no time to be Chief Educator. To keep their jobs, they had to spend most of their time satisfying parental concerns about beans, balls, buses, and behavior. Their tenure depended on the satisfaction of parents and school board members, based on their overall management of cafeteria, sports, transportation, and school discipline issues.

But, the paradigm shift is not at all a bad idea. It's just badly implemented most of the time, because public schools rarely have the financial resources to expand their administrations to invest in instructional leadership at the building or school district level.

The State of Louisiana Board of Education, for example, implemented rigid policies about how teachers should teach, with the expectation that classroom instruction would flow the same way in every classroom regardless of subject, student ability, or access to textbooks and computers. Every classroom, every student should look, act, and perform the same way, as if teachers were packaging McDonald's Hamburgers rather than developing the minds and hearts of children.

And, now, using the “Compass” evaluation system, Louisiana has completely undermined the value of instructional leadership, as it was intended to push our schools to higher levels of achievement.

Under “Compass,” principals are supposed to walk around with their clipboards, and downgrade teacher effectiveness if they notice any deviation from the teaching formula that our State Superintendent of Education now requires of all teachers – whether or not the deviation produced better learning in the classroom.

The Compass system encourages principals to downgrade teachers if they engage in direct instruction – even when research shows that at-risk students make greater achievement gains when teachers use direct instruction methods.

Under “Compass,” principals are supposed to walk around with their clipboards, and downgrade teacher effectiveness if they notice that a teacher is not using technology – whether or not the school provides the teacher with technology.

Even when teachers produce high levels of achievement in their students, our state education superintendent has instructed principals to still downgrade teacher evaluations, on the bizarre theory that teachers will work harder if you devalue their accomplishments.

Sadly, there are a few school administrators in Louisiana who have embraced this negative instruction leader model, because their own evaluations now depend on compliance with the Compass System. Is it any wonder that school teachers are leaving the profession they love in droves?

At the outset of NCLB, there was much discussion about whether or not schools needed to have larger administrative staffs in order to accomplish this major shift of responsibilities for top administrators.  Other industries have much smaller supervisor to staff ratios, the reasoning went. So, if we really wanted to improve classroom instruction, we needed to reduce the number of teachers each principal supervises, to make it possible for principals to more closely monitor their teachers.

My own dissertation results showed an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent on administration – the more more money spent on administration, the lower the math and reading scores. Conversely, the more money that was spent inside the classroom, the higher the achievement.

Of course, money spent in the classroom needs to be spent wisely on instruction materials, smaller class sizes, highly-trained, certified teachers and student support systems.

Since the Compass evaluation system was implemented under Superintendent John White, Louisiana's teaching profession is being reduced to a cookie cutter recipe of behaviors that are not based in research, history, psychology, or best practices. Rather than providing instructional leadership, White expects principals to monitor superficial behaviors of teachers and students, with the expectation that both will move and act with robotic precision.

Our children and our schools performed much better when our teachers were permitted to act as professionals. Until Louisiana's administrators are allowed to be positive instructional leaders to their team of professional, certified teachers, it may be best for administrators to focus on what they do best: keep everybody happy with a steady flow of beans, balls,buses, and behavioral interventions.

Education Should Do No Harm - My Sunday Eunice News Commentary published July 27, 2014

Should Louisiana taxpayers “keep it simple,” and allow high-priced Common Core education contracts to be funded in violation of our state contracting laws?

That was the suggestion of Stephen Waguespack, LABI President, when he argued last Sunday that it was too late to remedy the badly designed Common Core Program by canceling the sole-source contracts the way our governor, Bobby Jindal, chose to do. 

Mr. Waguespack does not seem to be aware of the public testimony of teachers, parents, and administrators who are clearly making the case that Louisiana's Common Core Program was disastrously adopted, recklessly imposed, without adequate design input from teachers, subject-matter experts, or education testing experts. 

There have been dozens of hearings, media interviews, and expert testimonies in which education leaders argued that the Common Core Program is hurting our state public education system.

The legislature tried to halt the program, but, so many state legislators are financially beholding to education industry lobbyists, they dared not cross their patrons by voting down the Common Core, as their constituents asked them to.

Governor Bobby Jindal chose to halt the Common Core with a legal strategy.  He vowed to restore some modicum of democratic process to the next phase of planning for Louisiana's public schools.

But, now, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is trying to force the Common Core through – no matter what the people and the experts say.

Enter Mr. Waguespack, spokesperson for the Louisiana Business Institute: Go through with the Common Core, because we've already invested four years in it.  “It's just that simple.”

Mr. Waguespack did not address any of the critical concerns presented by dozens of nationally recognized educators.  He ignored concerns expressed by thousands of teachers and parents who are worried that the Common Core is not age appropriate for younger school children, but at the same time, not rigorous enough for high school age children.

He minimized our concerns using the label “doubts,” then proceeded to argue we should do the easy thing: spend hundreds of millions of dollars MORE on tests that were never subject to scrutiny by experts in the field of education.

I can think of several disasters that resulted from this kind of thinking, this kind of inattention to fundamental design flaws.

Do you remember the Challenger Shuttle that was torn apart minutes after takeoff, killing six astronauts and the first teacher to travel in space?  Days before takeoff, NASA engineers were still debating design flaws.  NASA management chose to go through with the launch, because it was just that simple:  they were fearful of the embarrassment guaranteed if there was another delayed take-off due to an inexpensive design flaw.

Do you remember our shock and awe as a nation, when the City of New Orleans was submerged under water – because design flaws in the New Orleans Levees resulted in devastating floods after Hurricane Katrina?  Three months BEFORE Katrina, scientists were testifying that MRGO, a dirt moving project that was supposed to make it easier for ships to navigate to the port were rarely used, and they actually created a funnel for storm waters to surge through – guaranteeing major flooding.  MRGO was nicknamed “Trojan Horse.”  Warnings to correct the design flaw were not heeded.  We know the rest of the story.

So many complex engineering plans have design flaws, but, we ignore them because “It's just that simple:”  Disasters rarely happen.

Do you remember our disbelief as a nation when the Deepwater Horizon wells ruptured?  This engineering project was rushed.  Warnings of impending danger by trained staff were ignored. In the interest of getting oil to market quicker, managers took the simple solution.  They rushed a job and ignored reports of design flaws.   Eleven workers were killed. 

The Deepwater Horizon Disaster caused one of the worst environmental crises in American History. 

There's no reason to rush the Common Core Program through, now that design flaws and contracting flaws have been made obvious to our legislators, our Governor, and our parents and community leaders.

Sometimes, it's smart to pull the plug on badly engineered structures.  It's just as smart to pull the plug on badly designed education programs.

In the short run, superintendents and directors and public leaders may be red-cheeked with embarrassment at the sudden change of course.  After all, they've been forced to publicly endorse a very badly designed program that is already doing a lot of harm to our children.

But, in the long run, we can produce lasting positive changes in our schools by adopting research-based curriculum and testing strategies that meet the real needs of our diverse students and our 21st century workforce  --- without doing harm in the process.

Public Education should do no harm.  It's just that simple.

Copyright July 22, 2014