Deadly Assumptions About School "Reform" Hampers Iowa's Educational Future

I had the good fortune of spending some time yesterday interacting with Governor Branstad and Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds during a meeting at SourceMedia Group in Cedar Rapids. The Governor and Lt. Governor are sincere and earnest in their desire and interest in dealing with Iowa's Educational system. Like almost everyone concerned with Iowa's future, Branstad and Reynolds want to return Iowa to the first-in-the-nation status we held during the days when factory-age schooling fit our cultural, social, and economic needs. This shared goal and desire holds great promise for our future educational trajectory.

As a person supremely interested in and passionate about creating transformational 21st century learning systems for Iowa's children, I am convinced that the only way to create these learning systems lies in our desire and courage to expose, confront, and dialogue around the implicit assumptions that many collectively hold related to the means of achieving these goals. Yesterday's dialogue made it clear that the Governor and Lt. Governor and those helping them shape the educational agenda continue to hold deadly assumptions that will prevent us from reaching the very future we desire for our children and our learning systems.

I am proud to be a part of a growing group of what I call a "coalition of transformational, action-oriented educators" who have taken the time to expose, uncover, challenge, and determine the continued validity of assumptions about learning and education in order to forge not only a strong vision for the future we want but the actions and means that hold the most promise of getting us there. Until the majority of our citizens, teachers, parents, administrators, business, and political leaders confront and dialogue about these assumptions, we will continue to propose and legislate feckless non-solutions. To illustrate, I will take on just a few based upon yesterday's conversation.

First, the growing coalition of transformational, cutting-edge educators desire and are pursuing a vision for education significantly more bold and forward-thinking than our government. Quite naturally, our state government has a strong and relentless focus on economic viability, of which education is a critical, foundational component. It doesn't go far enough. Our interests - I would argue our moral imperative - is to do more and go farther which, in the end, would dramatically strengthen our economic capability and performance. Put simply, it is the vision to "unfold the potential of every child." Within this vision is the utilization of the vehicle called "school" to make them "world-class."

The current dialogue coming from our Governor when confronted with challenges and questions to his recommended set of actions is to imply that detractors are seemingly against:

• high expectations
• high standards
• accountability
• making sure all children are proficient in reading

As transformationally-minded educators, my colleagues and I hold the same desires and values. We want to elevate the teaching profession, increase the expectations and standards, develop meaningful accountability systems, and ensure students are prepared for the future they face. The problem we see, because we take the time to carefully examine the assumptions driving our educational system and the solutions proposed, is that some of the proposed actions are actually counterproductive to our vision and goals.

When asked about the Governor's desire to rid Iowa of its factory-based model, stated in his proposal as:  "This time-based system is the root of the outdated “industrial” or “factory” model of education," and the seemingly incongruent actions around 3.0 GPA for teacher preparation admission and 3rd grade retention, the assumptions of his administration became crystal clear.

The proposal and its defenders seem not yet to truly understand the implications and elements of the factory-model of education. As Jamie Vollmer so clearly and compelling argues, "as long as we choose to hold time constant for teaching, learning, and testing, we are sorting children not on the basis of their intelligence, but on the basis of (the speed with which they progress.) As long as we hold time constant, the selecting system will produce this distribution of student achievement." Schools Cannot Do It Alone pg. 57. Continuing to staunchly hold onto the notions of grades, courses, and the age at which someone is supposed to learn something creates an on-going plethora of non-solutions to the new problems we face.

3rd grade retention is a classic example of a non-solution steeped in the idea of the assembly-line, time-constant model. The Governor said yesterday, and I paraphrase, "We must do things differently if we are to change our education system." I couldn't agree more. The problem - doing more of the same isn't doing something differently. 

Let me be clear on this point, I am just as opposed to social promotion as I am to retention. Why? Both are products of the assumption that time is constant and that the best way to organize and educate is by batching same-age children together, taking them through a series of disconnected and prescribed content-based coursework, evaluating them via grades and age/time based tests and then either sending them back for re-work or moving them down the assembly line incomplete because it is "time" for them to move to the next set of curriculum. Social promotion of children who have not mastered the competencies necessary for success at the next level because the assembly line demands it is horribly damaging to a young person. So to, is sending them back for re-work when they reach the end of the assembly line because the message is: you are a defective product. When will we have the courage to recognize that the system we place these children in artificially creates these failures?

If we truly understood and accepted a new assumption about learning - that learning is a highly personal and variable attribute - we would aggressively make strides to create a system based upon competency and the interventions and actions required to continue to help children demonstrate a basic set of skills and abilities as they progressed through the system. We would also recognize that student passion and interest is the prime learning motivation and not old and tired "carrot-and-stick" approaches. Brain research (and quite frankly, a good dose of common sense) tells us that people learn at different rates. Pat Wolfe, a noted brain researcher, indicates that "learning to read" occurs across a distribution from age 6 to 10. Artificially deciding that if a child isn't reading to learn by age 8 and assuming that this destines them for a poor academic career says more about the system we use to teach and move students than it does about the child. We assume that all students are and should be motivated to learn what we have to teach them, when we want them to learn it.

What if we had a system whereby an 8 year old who read like a 6 year old but had a passion and talent for science discovery could continue to pursue those skills while teachers helped him connect his passion areas to reading - to help him see for himself how improving his reading could open up a greater world of science? Perhaps his motivation to read would kick in and the system would allow him to progress naturally through his reading progression. By age 9, he might likely be "reading to learn" and still be engaged in and excited by his learning. A much different vision than making him repeat an artificial construct like "3rd grade" because he didn't read as well as other 8 year olds. Einstein didn't learn how to read until age 9 but it would be tough to argue for his retention. So here's a novel idea: lets quit making reading by age 8 a manufactured problem because we believe we have ready-made solutions for that problem. No doubt our system should be getting a majority of kids "over the bar" by age 8, but labeling a child a "failure" does us or that child little good, nor does social promotion that assumes they "should have gotten that skill last year."

Our problem is one of the system of education, not in the correct application of factory-age solutions. So let's look at our proposed solutions, expose the assumptions we hold, determine if they remain valid, and then take action that moves us towards "unfolding the potential of every child" instead of trying to fit our solutions into a factory-age conception of education.