I realize that education and business, while similar in some respects, are not the same. But I am amazed at how administrations and other seemingly interested parties jump into something without a true notion of the cost and what the real change will be. I think there are a lot of teachers resistant to change because they’ve already seen change and it’s been a failure. Why make more work that’s just going to fail? It’s bad for teachers and it’s bad for students to keep failing at each next great thing. It’s hard to study changes in education because there are so many variables.

I like change. I usually embrace change. But I don’t like it for its own sake and I want to know that the change is worth my time. I’m even willing to be a pilot subject and I want to see the results when it’s over. Do not tell me that it’s in the interest of the children unless you can either prove it to me or convince me that we need to try it to see if it will work and I’m the first study subject. I’m ok with that as long as I know where I stand.

Let’s face it: bad teachers will always be able to mess up your system. Good teachers find a way to make it work no matter what, even if that means subverting the system so kids can learn.

When an alcoholic has lost every job that s/he has held over the most recent five years, is alienated from friends and family and faces bankruptcy, it is not uncommon for everyone BUT the alcoholic to be clear that 1) there is a problem and 2) the problem stems from drinking. This is appropriately called denial. Sometimes friends and family get taken along for the ride, blaming the employers, the creditors, the other parts of the family/friend circle who have left. They all regard themselves as the expert on what is REALLY going on (he wouldn’t have started drinking if his wife wasn’t such a witch; the problem isn’t the alcohol–its that she lost her job; if they could just get rid of the creditors then they could get things back on track again)–and resent any clueless do-gooders on the outside who are clamoring for change in the fundamental problem–which is drinking.

Teachers seem to have a difficult time confronting some basic realities about the mal-distribution of education and knowledge in our current system of public schooling. Some will freely tell you that they are GOOD teachers, but they cannot make kids learn. They know that they are good teachers because they are doing what they have been doing for the past 20 years–and some kids seem to follow along just fine and end up learning. But–too many (how many? 30%, 50%, 70%?) just aren’t interested, lack the basic smarts, don’t have enough family support, are too hungry or too sick or too criminally oriented. Why put any effort into change when what you are doing works just fine for the kids that you believe are “ready to learn?” (Senge refers to this as changing the goal to accommodate the existing system, rather than making improvements).

I have worked with groups of children and youth in decision-making situations. A basic parameter was always that the “group” had to arrive at a decision (consistent with the overall philosophy of the agency where I was working) that everyone could live with. Diane Ravitch deals with this approach harshly in Left Behind. But the antithesis is something like anarchy (or top down edicts, if they can be enforced). Clayton Christensen describe a situation in organizations in which neither goals nor methodologies are agreed upon. There are three other possibilities to work from (agreement on both, on one or the other), each calling for different leadership qualities. But the lack of agreement on anything is at once the most difficult to confront, and the most damaging. Nothing can ever improve (because there is no agreement on where the organization is to go, or how to get there), and morale suffers tremendously.

I personally tend to still attempt some definition of agreement–even if it is only to try something and then evaluate. Christensen (and others) really look to more drastic action–cleaning house, sanctions–the kinds of confrontations that will force enough change to get far enough away from the anarchy to allow for some agreement and movement (I think it is Good to Great that uses a bus analogy–ensuring that the right people are on the bus–all headed in the same direction).

What I absolutely cannot buy into is a defense of the status quo as being good enough. Accepting the need for improvement implies an acceptance of the need for change. At that point there is room for discussion about whose way is the right way. Are Diana’s teaching methods exemplary and something to be emulated in other classrooms (and how do we know, and exactly what are the things that should be carried over)? Do we see evidence that some identifiable group of kids or segment of curriculum is repeatedly being left out?

These are big picture questions and require a big picture point of view–something hard (but not impossible) to maintain from a classroom–but also frequently rejected out of hand by classroom teachers. Administrators, after all, are nothing more than failed teachers. Their point of view is useless–”reformers” who want change for the sake of change.

As a parent–and therefore an outsider–and one who may be cast (without shame) as a “reformy-type” I will honestly say that I want change. I don’t want another mother’s kid to be treated the way that one of mine has been by the school system. I want a school system that sees the overwhelming low achievement of some groups to be a problem begging for solution. I don’t want to hear again (and again and again) that despite all evidence to the contrary–what has happened in my kid’s classroom is the best that can be expected–and that the problem is that I expect too much.

I am not committed to change just to make teacher’s lives unbearable, or because I think that teachers are all stupid. I want improvement because I see every day on my block and in my neighborhood and in my house the evidence that too many kids are overlooked by teachers who firmly believe that what they are already doing is the best of all possible options.