Quality in Education

[Myron Tribus <mtribus@home.com>]

I extracted the following material from an e-mail from my friend, 
Ivan Web of Launceston and thought it would interest DENizens.

>Did you know the US will need to recruit 2 million new teachers in
>the next decade; that California is 40 000 short now where some
>schools are placing 'teachers' after 3 months training?  And the UK
>many schools are moving to 4 day weeks because they can't get enough
>teachers for five days.
>
>And you are certainly right - teaching for tests hardly qualifies as
>education. In Tasmania we have mandatory time allocations for
>literacy & numeracy.  At RPS we ignored this requirement (we didn't
>need the distraction, were already greatly exceeding the requirement
>in the course of educating the children) and at the latest state
>testing 88% of our students met or exceeded the Grade 5 benchmarks
>for numeracy when the state average was ~65%. And we have not given
>much specific attention to numeracy in recent years.
>
>If I could presume to share a few insights that have helped me in
>dealing with those who don't understand how to improve the school,
>or school system, as a whole system. People tend to think the system
>is the collection of people, facilities, curriculum. They don't
>notice the processes and this is where the opportunities are. In
>Tasmania, a few years back, we had a head of the Education
>Department who said: " We tried the process approach and it didn't
>work so now we are going to focus on outcomes" but he never
>explained what outcomes came out of.
>
>Some of the following notions are simple but profound and contrary
>to the 'dominant logic' and so they not necessarily easy to
>communicate - but when one gets through ... the results can be
>spectacular, especially in the area of well-being.
>
>1. Make it easier for people to do well. People want to, it is cost
>effective, it releases resources for use elsewhere... At RPS, a
>school of 670 children with the highest pupil: teacher ratio in the
>state, we could still deploy 97% of all teacher hours to working
>directly with children. As Principal I taught 0.4 = 2 days per week.
>
>Making it easier to do well is a powerful message that it is
>important to do well !!!  Start by getting people to think about
>    - how they could make it easier for the next person, whoever they are
>    - how they could work with others to make it easier for themselves
>and then let them do it !!!
>
>2  Get managers to work on the system with the help of the people in
>the system (at the process level to make it easier for everyone to
>do well): allow, support and encourage
>    - teachers work on their classes with the help of the students to
>make it easier for all to do well;
>    - principals to work on their schools with the help of the staff,
>students and communities to make it easier for everyone to do
>well.....
>
>The fundamental principle is to work WITH people, not ON people!
>cf. Testing is an attempt to work on the teachers not the system. If
>your standardised testing is like ours it usually labels the
>teachers and schools and fails to give them anything of value,
>certainly not anything that they could use
>
>3. Change as little as possible and improve as much as possible.
>This is the most difficult notion to communicate. The world thinks
>you can't have improvement without change - they are wrong! Reducing
>variation (Deming) includes reducing change (not more) and results
>in better outcomes and less cost which releases valuable resources
>which can then be used ...
>
>Note: people often object that the system isn't working and then
>demand changes. Imagine the same approach with someone who was
>having difficulty walking - the legs aren't working well so we'll
>cut them off and provide different legs.
>
>   It can be useful to step back and ask the question: "If it was
>working properly, would it be OK?"  then "In what way isn't it
>working well?"
>
>People usually assume that the system, as it is, is about as good as
>can be expected - everyone is working really hard...  To help people
>get insights into what might be possible it can be useful to ask
>another question: "Does everything get done on time, around here?"
>and  " Would it make much difference if things happened on time? "
>This is an excellent starting point for improvement without change.
>It easy, understandable, only requires cooperation (team work) so is
>fun (except for the most discouraged people) and results in a lot of
>quick wins and everyone can contribute.
>
>4. Mine the counter measures for learning and resources. The plea is
>always for more resources: to improve we need more resources. My
>response is that this claim would only be true if everything was
>working perfectly.
>
>Counter measures are rework (which means resources were wasted at
>some point)  disguised as good things to do. Schools are full of
>rework.
>
>We might need to contain a problem temporarily - that's urgent. But
>it is important to learn from the problems we encounter and work to
>eliminate them (or at least reduce their incidence) by preventing
>their occurrence - need for counter measures. As one of the teachers
>at RPS said to me (somewhat mystified) a couple of years after we
>got into quality "We don't seem to have many of the problems we used
>to have."
>
>Ps. I used to be proud of my capacity to implement counter measures
>(solve problems) before I understood about rework - that insight was
>embarrassing even though I was highly regarded for my 'fire fighting
>capacity'.
>
>I don't mean to preach to the converted - I just hope the words
>might be useful to you somewhere sometime - an attempt to 'repay'
>you for your interest and encouragement.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Ivan Webb   <Ivan.Webb@Bigpond.com>

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Myron Tribus    <mtribus@home.com>
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Ph: (510) 651 3641  FX: (510) 656 9875
Experience is a great teacher, but it has few serious students
The official website for Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment is at 
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