If the teacher is the quarterback, Government is the offensive line.

Here is a brilliant excerpt from a speech given by Texas Superintendent John Kuhn:

If the teacher is the quarterback, Congress is the offensive line. Their performance impacts our performance, but they keep letting us get sacked by poverty, broken homes, student mobility, hunger, health care. And they just say “Oops” as that linebacker blows by them and buries his facemask in our chest. Then we get back to the huddle and they say, “You gotta complete your passes.” We’re aware of that. Make your blocks, legislators. Give us time to stand in the pocket and throw good passes. Do your job. It doesn’t take a great quarterback rating to win games; it takes a team effort.

Steve Denning on reforming K-12

Here is an interview with management expert Steve Denning by Anthony Cody. It is a fantastic read. Here are some of the smoking hot highlights:

• The biggest problem that the education system faces today is a preoccupation with, and the application of, the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of "the system", to which the students, the teachers, the parents and the administrators have to adjust. "The system" grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and parents alike.

• The factory model of management doesn't work in the factory world so why would we be surprised that it doesn't work in the education world.

• When the problems have been caused in the first place by introducing the practices of "management", then a more rigorous pursuit of this type of "management" only makes things worse.

• Today, apart from a few core skills like reading, writing, math, thinking, imagining and creating, we cannot know what knowledge or skills will be needed when Freddie or Janet grows up.

• The goal of education needs to shift from one of making a system that teaches children a curriculum more efficiently to one of making the system more effective by inspiring lifelong learning in students, so they are able to have full and productive lives in a rapidly shifting economy.

• In other words, we need to move from "You study what we tell you to study, when we tell you, and how we tell you, and at a pace that we determine" to a focus on the ultimate goal learning: "Our goal is to inspire our students to become life-long learners with a love of education, so that they will be able to learn whatever they have to."

• Role of teachers and parents must move from imparting a static package of knowledge to a dynamic goal of enabling students to create knowledge and deploy skills to new situations.

• Unless teachers are themselves inspired, they are unlikely to inspire their students.

• The role of the administrator has to shift from being a controller to an enabler, so as to liberate the energies and talents of the teachers and remove impediments that are getting in the way of their work.

• Education must abandon accountability through the use of detailed plans, rules, processes and reports, which specify both the goal and the means of achieving that goal.

• At its heart, it's a shift from a focus on things to a focus on people, and the true goal of education.

• We need children to be as good at deciding what are the right questions as they are at finding the right answers.

• Bureaucratic management doesn't work in knowledge work.

• an education system that focuses on learning, and encourages students to learn by exploring issues that are of interest to them, has a greater chance of overcoming some of the constraints of poverty than a top-down system that proceeds from a prescriptive approach such as "You study what we tell you to study, when we tell you, and how we tell you, and at a pace that we determine".

• We need to stop asking "How do we improve education and start asking?" what does the world know about running knowledge organizations?"

You can find part II of Denning's ideas on reforming K-12 here.

The Sainthood of Teaching

By Anonymous

I asked for this to be published anonymously because I am afraid of retaliation.  I asked to be left unnamed, not because I do not stand behind what I write, but because in this society, I cannot say my opinion without being blacklisted.


I became a teacher because it was my calling.  I knew that meant long days, limited pay, and never, ever being able to leave work behind.  I thought I signed up to work in a profession where I at the very least would be respected.  Not so anymore.


When we sign up to be teachers, we make a sacrifice, however, no one ever explained to me just how great this sacrifice would be.  You are expected to want to be a teacher whether it is paid or not, I call this the sainthood of teaching.  As imposed saints we carry burdens within us that no one else can fathom; we hold the fate of our nation’s children in our hands every day; yet how dare we ask for decent pay or rights?  As a teacher you are not allowed to voice dissatisfaction over your pay or anything else you face, because that means you are in it for the wrong reason.  After all, if you truly are in it for the love of teaching, making a difference, then that should be payment enough.  You are not allowed to make a disparaging comment about your profession or the work environment you function in, because you should be thankful.  I am thankful, however, dedication and thankfulness does not feed my family.


In Wisconsin, we watched teachers protest for their basic rights and parents told them they were ungrateful.  Ungrateful over the job so graciously given to them, ungrateful over being in the best profession imaginable.  Protesting teachers were told that they obviously were only in this job for the 3 months off, the short days, the amazing salary and benefits that anyone would be envious of.  And no one spoke up because they were too afraid of looking like a selfish teacher, who just happened to also rely on this job not for mere life satisfaction, but also for the paycheck.  We sign up to perpetuate this myth of sainthood when we remain silent.


A colleague of mine quietly said to me during the protests, as we spoke of how scared we were for the future, “I may be a teacher, but I am a person first.” How powerful a statement, something that we cannot say in public.  The perversion of teaching as a noble profession has gotten so far that now when you get your teaching degree, you give up your person-hood.  You give up basic rights to speak up for yourself, to share your personal statements; indeed you live an edited life.  And you are supposed to just accept it, to feed into it, because otherwise you are obviously not a true teacher, but instead a selfish person who should not be allowed around children.


So with contracts being gutted, unions being quashed, and teachers becoming the enemy, our silence is deafening.  Sure you will hear the conversations in hushed tones in the hallway or over the phone but you will not find teachers sharing it aloud.  And there is much to be shared; how districts are manipulating the financial situation to present “take it or leave it” contracts that strip all rights, how principals determine pay or placement, how teacher’s voices are being destroyed in fear of retaliation or losing their job.  Teachers have successfully become the enemy, the people who brought on the financial recession, the haves, so how dare they complain?  I ask for teachers to be reconsidered in their positions.  For them to be recognized indeed as people first, teachers second.  That does not mean that we do not put our students above everything else, it just means that we ask to be given terms that means we can feed our families, live our lives, and indeed even continue to be teachers.  I do not think this is a big thing to ask for, don’t let the silence speak for us all.

When I become a teacher...

On face value, these statements sound ridiculous, and yet how often do we allow these things to come true? While some teachers simply don't care, I believe that most teachers are good intentioned people. They care about kids and wish to do well by them.

So how do we end up lecturing more than we should? How do we become agents of the state that prevent change? How do we maintain the bell shaped curve?

How does all this happen if teachers are good intentioned?

I believe part of the answer can be found in our systems accountability madness. Every time someone outside of the classroom dictates to those who are in the classroom how learning should look like, we compromise ourselves and our students.

Until teachers begin to refuse their cooperation with those who wish to externally impose cancerous accountability policies, we will continue to have good intentions with utterly pathetic implementation.

Faulty Reform

I often think about how education 'reformers' continue to push their tougher standards, raise achievement mantra. Of course, when they say tougher standards, they mean standards that not all children can achieve, and when they say raise achievement they mean higher test scores.

I'm disheartened daily by these 'reformers' obsessive need to reduce something as messy and beautiful as learning to a standard and a test. Does anyone in their right mind actually believe that if all teachers simply taught common standards and achieved high scores on a standardized tests that the challenges our schools face everyday would simply evaporate?

What's more, 'reformers' tend to scoff at anything that can't be 'properly' reduced to a number.

When I show people some of the projects my students do through out the year or even as a substitute for a multiple choice final exam, I often get suspicious looks. Responses sound something like this: that's all well and good that the kids are doing this, but how do you grade it?

This response frustrates me because it fully acknowledges the real learning that occurs during such projects but a knee-jerk obsession with measurement seems to entirely trump this acknowledgment. 

I find this excerpt from Alfie Kohn's Schools Our Children Deserve aptly explains why real learning is so often trumped by numbers:

Anyone trying to account for the popularity of standardized tests may also want to consider our cultural penchant for attaching numbers to things. One write has called it a "prosaic mentality": a preoccupation with that which can be seen and measured. Any aspect of learning (or life) that resists being reduced to numbers is regarded as vaguely suspicious. By contrast, anything that appears in numerical form seems reassuringly scientific; if the numbers are getting larger over time, we must be making progress. Concepts like intrinsic motivation and intellectual exploration are hard for the prosaic mind to grasp, whereas test scores, like sales figures or votes, can be calculated and charted, and used to define success and failure. The more tests we make kids take, the more precise our knowledge about who has learned well, who has taught well, which districts are in trouble, and even which schools (in this brave new world of for-profit education) will survive another day.

Until we demand policy makers be actual educators - professionals who actually work in the field they are suppose to be running - education reform will be plagued by outsiders who at best can make uneducated guesses at applying solutions from the business world for classroom problems.

What the hell happened?

While Obama was running for the presidency, he was quoted:

"Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of the year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test."




What the hell happened?

Knowing what I know today about Arne Duncan's No Child Left Behind 2.0 which actually dictates even more testing than George Bush's No Child Left Behind, watching that clip of Obama makes me sick to my stomach.

Here are two articles that might provide some insight into how and why education reform has been bastardized by market-based reforms that are being carried out and dictated by non-educators:

A New Vision of School Reform

The Hatchet Job on Linda Darling-Hammond

Learning to Change; Changing to Learn

I think it's safe to say that school has to change. The factory model's shelf-life has come and gone. This 5 minute video provides us with the promise of progressive education.

Right answer, vending machine standardized testing simply has no role in real learning.

Are we seeing the death of education and the dawn of learning?

civil rights movement for our time

Politics tends to polarize issues. There is no shortage of topics that the left and the right are all to willing to engage in political duals.

But have you noticed that whether you are speaking with a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican, or reading the Washington Post or Globe and Mail, almost everyone who may be progressive in other areas are indistinguishable from Fox News?

Have you noticed that Obama's education policy's simply took Bush's No Child Left Behind and added...

...more testing.

But this time the tests carry with them even more bribes and threats (read as Race to the Top and mass firings like Central Falls and Rhode Island). It all brings new meaning to Maslow's Maxim:

He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail.

When Tony Blair said the three most important fields for government to concern themselves with should be education, education and education, he was profoundly correct; however, when it comes to education, far too many people are simply ignorant towards what it means to provide excellent, progressive education for all.

The gaping void that exists between policy makers like Arne Duncan and real educators like Linda Darling-Hammond are inescapably gargantuan.

And the gap isn't getting any smaller.

Hence why many people are calling the issues around education reform the civil rights movement for our times.

The Daily Riff

The Daily Riff is an excellent blog for anyone interested in understanding progressive education. Here are two articles that I loved:

Why Testing Fails Us


"Hacking" School Ratings and Student Assessments

The Secret Powers of Time: Phillip Zimbardo

I was thoroughly impressed by this 10 minute video. I think it speaks to our different perspective of time in a profoundly thought provoking way.

If you didn't think the factory model of schooling was in need of change, this video might be enough to seriously question the status quo of traditional education - it also equally challenges the idea that education reform simply needs to return to the basics.

Alfie Kohn Interview

Here is an interview featuring Alfie Kohn on Education Reform. His comments start at the 14 minute mark.

Here are a couple of Kohn's articles that he refers to during the interview:

The Folly of Merit Pay

Progressive Education

Beware of School "Reformers"

Punished by Rewards

Trivial educational reform

In his book The Element, Sir Ken Robinson urges us to rethink school:

This is especially true in high schools, where school systems base education on the principles of the assembly line and the efficient division of labour. Schools divide the curriculum into specialist segments:"some teachers install math in the students; and others install history. They arrange the day into standard units of time, marked out by the ringing of bells, much like a factory announcing the beginning of the workday and the end of breaks. Students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture. They are given standardized tests at set points and are compared with each other before being sent out onto the market.

Too often the changes made over the years to education have been simply trivial. In his book The Red Pencil, Ted Sizer writes:

Most of it is not only recognizable; it is still fully accepted and honored today as a representation of what we call secondary school: a class of twenty or so adolescents gathered by age into grades to learn together a subject both for its content and for the skills embodied in that content taught by a single teacher who is responsible for delivering that material, assigning homework, and assessing each student's performance in a uniform manner, all this proceeding in sequential blocks of time of forty to sixy minutes each in a specialized school building primarily made up of a succession of identical rooms taht are used for six hours for fewer than half the days in a year... This is what school is.

What makes the persistence of this routine even more interesting is that its effectiveness has long been known to be weak, "effectiveness" defined as the students' ultimate resourceful use of the content and skills being studied. Nonetheless, the form of such a "good" school is widely accepted, and today's students assembled in classes... surely have palms as sweaty as mine were. The red pencil has, perhaps, been replaced by the machine-graded standardized test, a trivial difference. Tradition in the framework of schooling has remarkable momentum.

School simply has not changed very much since the turn of the century - and I'm not referring to 1999 to 2000. I would wager Sir Ken Robinson's description of school would ring just as true for my grandfather who was born in 1916 and my father who was born in 1953, as I who was born in 1978.

My greatest fear is that my daughter, who was born in 2008, will understand all too well the system that Sir Ken Robinson describes.

If she responds to the above descriptions of schooling with anything less than shock and awe, we will know we have failed her.

Stay silent and the saurians will get you!

Here's how Harry Harrison begins his novel Winter in Eden:

The great reptiles were the most successful life forms ever to populate this world. For 140 million years they ruled  the Earth, filled the sky, swarmed in the seas. At this time the mammals, the ancestors of mankind, were only tiny, shrew-like animals that were preyed upon by the larger, faster, more intelligent saurians.

Then, 65 million years ago, this all changed. A meteor six miles in diameter struck the earth and caused disastrous atmospheric upheavals Within a brief span of time over seventy-five percent of all the spicies then existent were wiped out. The age of the dinosaurs was over, the evolution of the mammals that they had suppressed for 100 million years began.

If all this can happen, suddenly I see education reform as something very achievable. We simply need good people to cease being scared silent.

Alberta's Inspring Education

On June 2, Alberta Education released their Inspiring Education Steering Committee Report. This has been a long awaited document, as many teachers have waited in the balance to hear where the government plans to direct education.

Of course, the entire report was directed by Albertans, as they were asked to contribute their thoughts and feelings on the future of Alberta education. The democratic nature of Inspiring Education can be found in its subtitle - A dialogue with Albertans.

Through the Inspiring Education dialogue, Albertans articulated a vision for a 21st Century education:

• Engaged Thinker
• Ethical Citizen
• Entrepreneurial Spirit

To achieve these three essential outcomes for an educated Albertan of the 21st Century, transformational change with a bias for action and a tolerance for risk will be demanded from all stake-holders.

To achieve this, we need a shift in policy:

For this shift in policy, we need the following shift in governance policy:

So what does this all mean? Well, you need to read the report below, but here are a few points the minister made during the June 2 press conference:

• School Act will be written to be adaptable, less prescriptive and more of a framework
• learner-oriented as opposed to system-oriented
• Classrooms will focus less on content and more on competencies (less curriculum outcomes to distract students and teacher from real learning that is relevant to the learner)
• Assessment will shift from standardization of assessment to a focus on standards of assessment.

Mistrust drives manipulation

Superiors are there to support you not dictate you.

Seth Godin writes about turning the traditional top-down power structure up-side down:

I always took the position that my boss (when I had a job) worked for me. My job was to do the thing I was hired to do, and my boss had assets that could help me do the job better. His job, then, was to figure out how best give me access to the people, systems and resources that would allow me to do my job the best possible way.


Of course, that also means that the people I hire are in charge as well. My job isn't to tell them what to do, my job is for them to tell me what to do to allow them to keep their promise of delivering great work.

If you go into work on Monday with a list of things for your boss to do for you (she works for you, remember?) what would it say? What happens if you say to the people you hired, "I work for you, what's next on my agenda to support you and help make your [learning] go up?"

Today's test and punish brand of accountability have left teachers deprofessionalized in a pool of distrust. I've come to know far too many teachers who are numb to top-down, teacher-proofing reform. For them, education reform has become a shopping list of dictates and demands, and so many teachers have come to see their principal or their superintendent as their superior who tells them what to do.

When I hear of school districts that mandate teacher's professional development, I am not surprised to also see their teachers disengaged from their own learning. Undert this climate, everyone comes to see professional development as this thing to just get through.

When interactions between teachers and administrators become more about power, things go awry. Harriet Rubin, a legendary innovator in the world of business-book publishing, sums this up when she said: "Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash."


When you don't trust someone, you resort to controlling and manipulating them.

Mistrust drives manipulation.

In his Harvard Business Review blog, Bill Taylor writes:

So much of how we think about strategy, competition, and management remains centered on the zero-sum logic of amassing power: For me to win, you must lose. But almost anything that's hopeful and positive about business today is premised on spreading freedom — inviting all sorts of people, inside and outside your organization, to contribute ideas, improve your products and services, and otherwise have a voice and a seat at the table that they never used to have. For leaders, the most important question today is not How many people or departments or business units do you control? It is How much energy and participation have you unleashed?

Education reform should be less about compliance and more about ingenuity. If the teachers in the field aren't affored the opportunity to influence administration without appearing to be troublemakers, reform is destined to fail a thousand deaths.
Education reform must be less about control and more about collaboration. We would be wise to listen to Dan Pink when he speaks of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

We would also be wise to ponder Thomas Gordon's message:

The more you use power to try to control people, the less real influence you'll have on their lives.

For teachers, Gordon's words act as a kind of double-edged sword. Just as teachers have a need for collaboration with their administrators, so must teachers collaborate with their students.

This isn't a teacher thing - it's a human being thing.

Using Technology to Support Real Learning in Alberta

Here is a new research publication from the Alberta Teachers' Association. It questions how pedagogical practices and the curriculum may need to change in order to prepare students to participate meaningfully in the knowledge-based and globally interconnected world of the 21st century. This monograph serves to stimulate a debate on the true nature of learning in the 21st century and on the role that technology can play in transforming the teaching and learning process so that it optimizes student learning.

This is not only progressive, but it is potentially game changing!

Here are some important points:

• Technology typically has been implimented to merely suppliment traditional teaching and learning rather than to transform the pedagogical process. To truly transform schools we need to focus less on teaching and more on learning. Rather than using technology to reinforce and amplify traditional instructional methodologies we need to focus on redesigning our fragmented curricula so that they emphasize problem-based learning.
• Too often technology has been less about creating more meaningful assessments and more about online report cards that has simply led to more data - therefore amplifying the already less-than-optimal assessment practices
• Examples of transformative strategies include teaching less and encouraging students to learn by undertaking projects, doing away with textbooks, and replacing the entire curriculum (math, science, social studies and language arts) for a particular grade wtih a set of technology-based activities designed to ensure the same learning outcomes.
• Too many Alberta jurisdictions rely on externally imposed mandates for "data-informed improvements" rather than on exploring ways of transforming the teaching-learning process. When schools follow policy mandates and pursue the relentless quest for short-term gains, they evolve into addictive organizations
• Many schools in Alberta exhibit a culture of compliance that inhibits innovation
• Knowledge is a process, not a product and it is not produced in the minds of individuals but in the interactions between people
• A paradigm shift in educational thinking is needed. We need less emphasis on content and assessment and more on real learning and the creation of genuinely new knowledge
• Secondary education, in particular, needs to move away from the industrial age, one-size-fits all, production-line model of education to an approach that takes into account the leanring needs of individuals
• Take a project-based approach to curriculum delivery - restructure the school day by moving from several short periods to one to three long periods. Currently, the school day divides the curriculum up into different fragmented domains that all too often appear disconnected from one another
• At the top of the list for Systemic Barriers to Transformative Change is the persistence of bureaucratic accountability regimes
• Educational jurisdictions that emphasize accountability and employ a state-imposed curriculum tend to diminish the professional role that teachers play in the delivery of education.
• Large-scale testing programs and other command-and-control mechanisms tend to narrow curriculum and reduce teaching to little more than an effort to boost test scores. Teachers, in such regimes, are not encouraged to develop innovative instructional practices.
• With changes to school act, does Alberta see technology as a way of transforming the culture of schools from one of compliance (accountability and adherence to a prescribed curriculum) to one of innovation? Second, does Alberta Education regard technology as a way of engaging students by making learning less artificial and fragmented and more authentic and integrated?

I can't tell you how proud I am to see this kind of progressive educational research coming from my teachers' association!

Alberta Education: more scuttlebutt

Minsiter of Education Dave Hancock is listening to the people and following models such as Singapore and Finland while re-calibrating education in Alberta. (It's important to note that Alberta is not following the United States version of test and punish accountability)

Recent scuttlebutt tells us that there may be a move for more professional development days to be installed in the school year. This could mean 10 days in the school calendar that has teachers at school, with no students, working collaboratively with each other, advancing their professional development.

There are some obvious growing pains to come of this progressive change. Firstly, parents may not be too keen on having to provide care for their children for these days, and secondly, teachers may not appreciate having even less time to accomplish what seems like an infinite list of curriculum outcomes. To be fair, these teachers have a very legitimate gripe.

This brings us to the 500 pound pink elephant that is sitting on the education reform table that no one really wants to talk about - Curriculum.

So what's the problem with curriculum?

There's too much.

There's a reason why Robert Marzano, American education guru, says that in order for students to learn all the curriculum outcomes in school, we would have to rename school from K-12 to K-22.

The good news is that Alberta Education's key project working group titled Curriculum Process and Standards Redesign has been hard at work for the last year to address this over-wieght, pink elephant. The word on the street is that they have been given the task of slimming and trimming the program of studies. This

To understand what this committee is doing, let's use a popular analogy. If you have jar and you need to put a bag of sand and a couple big rocks in the jar, you have to place the rocks in first, then the sand will fit as needed. But if you place the sand in first, you'll never get the big rocks to fit.

So, if the curiculum is a jar full of sand and rocks, the idea is to focus less on prescribing the millions of sand particles and focus more on the big rocks.

So what might this look like?

If you are an experienced teacher who's been doing this gig for some time, you might remember a time when teachers had more time in their year for teacher or student electives. Again, the word on the street is this could equal 10% to 30% of the curriculum being left for the teacher and students to decide what it is they need or want to learn.

This all brings us back to why professional development is so important: How do we get those big rocks to fit in the jar? What are the big rocks? Are they more about process or content, or both? Will the sand take care of itself?

Ofcourse, I am being metaphorical.

Teachers need far more time to work together to develop their teaching practices. Finland provides a powerful model in this area; they understand that there is a lot of truth in the idea that if you teach less, you can learn more. Quality of instruction can not be driven by sheer quantity. Sometimes teachers are so busy teaching, they don't have time to stop to make sure the students are learning.

With the prospect of less curriculum on our plates, teachers will be better able to see these professional development days as supportive rather than an albatross.

It takes great courage to look at the United States' test and punish education reform and say "No Thanks", and it takes even more testicular fortitude to look at the seemingly counter-intuitve paradoxes of the Finnish model of education to shape our own progressive education reform.

Our most difficult challenges most likely still await us, but it would appear that Alberta is going in the right direction.

Distracted Intentions

Ask parents what they want for their children and you'll get a chorus of answers that sound eerily similar - happy, confident, productive, respectful, helpful, empathetic, just, accountable, kind... this list is hardly controversial.

The What is easy.

It's How we are going to achieve these lofty goals that causes controversy and divisiveness.

Teachers and parents are good people. Sure there is a handful of baddies, but they are certainly in the minority. For the most part, adults are good souls with the best of intentions.

Despite these good intentions, we are sometimes woefully misinformed and susceptible to distractions.

Peter Bergman warns us to not get distracted by our plans:

Every once in a while there happens to be a trail that travels in the same direction we're traveling so we follow it. It makes for easy walking.


But a dangerous thing happens when we follow a trail: we stop paying attention to the environment. Since the trail is so easy to follow, we allow our minds to wander and neglect to observe where we are.


Then we forge ahead, moving with speed and purpose, right to the point where we look up and realize, like I did that day, that the environment around us is no longer recognizable. Our focus blinded us.


This is not just a hiking thing.

When schools cut recess for academics - our focus blurs.

When teachers give up on the weakest students to help the bubble kids - our focus dissipates.

When parents bribe students to learn - our focus crumbles.

When whole teaching staffs are fired - our focus rots.

There's a lot wrong with education deform - no wonder people like Sir Ken Robinson talk less about the need for evolution and more about revolution.

Sir Ken Robinson - Learning Revolution

Reform is no longer enough. Renovating a broken and bankrupt factory model will not take us, or our children, where we want to go. Renovation is not innnovation.

If you shrug or roll your eyes to the concepts that are being delivered by Alfie Kohn, Linda Darling Hammond, Deborah Meier, Ted Sizer, Sir Ken Robinson, Monty Neil which I try to share so often on this blog, then you are not listening. (If you don't know who these people are - you're really not listening!)

There may not be time for an evolution - what we need is a revolution. Like it or not, there is some urgency here.

We need to think anew and act anew.

If you are still teaching the way you always have - you're not listening.

If you still use those laminated lesson plans - you're not listening.

If you still place importance in standardized testing - you're not listening.

If you place great emphasis in grading - you're not listening.

If you want to make a difference and be a part of this education revolution, you need to disenthral the tyranny of common sense that has developed around linear standardization and commonality.

You have to stop standing at the front of the classroom and spamming all-calls.

You need to concern yourself less with standardization and more with personalization. Think of learning less as a linear exercise and more like an asymptote.

The culture of public education has been poisoned. The expiration date for our industrial model of education has come and gone. It is time to switch metaphors - it's time for a more organic model.

Personally, I have chosen to make a difference by abolishing grading, and it has made an immeasurable difference. At the risk of sounding dramatic, it has liberated my teaching and their learning. It really has.

Now, what are you doing? Please share.

Renovation is not the same as innovation

Youngme Moon writes about the limits of data in her book Different:

We allow this kind of formal market research to seduce us nevertheless. Consequently, we are more committed than ever to gathering it, using surveys or focus groups or customer interviews. We are more committed than ever to aggregating it, in the form of PowerPoint presentations and executive summaries. We are more commited than ever to drawing conclusions from it, conclusions that typically lead to some kind of renovation of our existing value proposition. And yet, as I noted in early chapter, renovation is not the same things as innovation, and there are times when I wonder whether we wouldn't be better off putting our market machinery aside for a few minutes, just to see what we're capable of coming up with without it.

I know that I am not the first to point this out, but here is the problem with formal market research. Consumers will always be able to tell us how much better they'd like our products to be. But we cannot expect them to be able to tell us how different thsoe products could be. And more important, we cannot expect them to be able to tell us how it might be possible for us to surprise them.

What this means is that if we want to move beyond the incremental kinds of augmentations that dominte our product marketing activity, we need to look beyond the granular pieces of data that our market research infrastructure is likely to generate. Those peices may be rigorously objective, but they are guaranteed to be woefully incomplete. They will only give us half the story. To get the other half, we need to take responsibility fo the hard work fo imagination ourselves.

I am alway hesitant to make education metaphorical of business, but Youngme Moon's vision of business meshes well with my vision of education.

Data has come to be God in education. In business, data is driven by market research. In education, data is driven by test scores. And those test scores then drive our decisions.

Data is very limiting mostly because it tends to conceal more than it reveals.

Test score data tends to squander innovation and places a kind of blinder on educators - employing a kind of test score tunnel vision. Your goal, if you chose to accept it (as if we had a choice), is to raise the scores!

It's time we put our test score, data-driven machinery aside for a moment and let's see what we are capable of coming up with without it. It's time we strike a balance between our analytical and intuitive thinking.

Our over-dependence on data is sabotaging reform in an educationally neutering kind of way.