Re: Can quality work for public ed?

[Myron Tribus <mtribus@home.com>]

Recent posts on the above topic have been answered by actual 
experience in schools and school districts.

I have spent quite a few years visiting the Leander Independent 
School District in Leander, Texas (just outside of Austin) where the 
results of applying quality principles in education are impressive. 
I have visited school systems in many parts of the world and wherever 
quality principles have been put to work, the results have been 
pleasing.

One of the biggest difficulties faced in education is the lack of an 
agreed aim for the system.  The measurement methods used nowadays, 
emphasizing standardized tests,and little else, are driving the 
educational system into chaos.

Studies of the requirements for success in industry, at all levels, 
indicate that people need to be able to work in groups, to learn on 
their own, to speak, to listen, to manage their own time and other 
resources, to make measurements and to improve systems.  None of 
these are on the standardized tests.

Here in Florida, where I have been visiting for the last week, 
Governor Bush has indicated his intention to take money away from the 
schools who are performing poorly on these tests and give it to those 
who are performing well. He intends also to give vouchers to the 
parents of children who attend the schools ranked poorly.

I constructed a scatter plot showing the ranking of the schools on 
the Y axis and the "Poverty Index" on the X axis. (The poverty index 
is the fraction of the students on free or reduced cost meals)  For 
each ranking I computed the average poverty index (there is wide 
variation).  A straight line fitted these averages with great 
precision.  The schools with the fewest children on reduced cost or 
free lunches had the highest scores.

If you go into these schools in poorer neighborhoods, you will see, 
as I have seen, that children from impoverished families are much 
harder to teach than the children of the affluent.  They do not have 
the cognitive structures in their brains required for success.

Meanwhile the teachers have been told they will have their salaries 
cut or increased according to the scores of their schools.  so,of 
course, they frantically teach for the test and ignore the real 
requirements of education.l

In the face of irrational policies like those of Florida, it is idle 
to discuss the applicability or inapplicability of quality methods in 
education.

I just spent a week helping the teachers in the schools most a risk. 
What saves the system is the devotion of these teachers, who continue 
to work under conditions I find intolerable.

As our DEN moderator has said, I have posted several articles on the 
DEN web page that give data as well as analysis of how quality works 
in education.

Myron Tribus,  350 Britto Terrace,  Fremont, CA 94539
Ph:510 651 3641  Fax: 510 656 9875   e-mail: mtribus@home.com
There is no such thing as an immaculate perception.  What you see 
depends upon what you thought before you looked.
=================================================================