Servant Leadership instead of Leading the Servile

I am, how shall I say, fairly close to this situation.  It seems we read about this kind of thing a lot.  At least a couple of districts nearby are having issues of similar sorts in which people are unhappy with the administration.  I believe this stems from a failure of leadership, which derives from the fact that leaders too often think they're drivers, instead of servants.

What we need is more servant leadership.  In education we are always talking about stakeholders--the individuals who have roles, responsibilities and needs, to be met or undertaken in and through the organization.  In the case of schools, the first stakeholders are the students (and, by proxy, their parents).  Everything we do is supposed to be in service to the goals and needs of those families.  

Now, of course, teachers and administrators have a certain set of 'needs,' too, but the only one that really seems relevant is the need to have reasonable working conditions and expectations.  

But all too often, especially with new administrations, it seems like folks think they have something more at stake.  As if they have a bigger stake than they do.  A new superintendent, say, comes in with a lot of big ideas about the best way to do things, and wants to make things work well on his/her watch, to either validate the wisdom of his/her leadership, or show worthiness for even greater leadership responsibility, or both.

The needs of the primary stakeholders may or may not be well-served by this reordering of an administration's priorities, and you might end up with an inversion of the right orientation to the organization's work.

Think of the very opposite of a new administration 'brining in all its own new people,' as so many seem to do.  Why couldn't an administration say to parents, "You chair the committee, along with teachers (the next up the line from students and parents), to pick the new principal.  It's my job as administrator to serve that new principal (by providing guidance, help, support, resources, etc.) succeed in service to you.  Since I am to be his/her servant-leader, I can work with whomever you pick."

I am not saying you'll get a better principal, necessarily, but I do wonder why we assume such a route is to be rejected out of hand, and instead continue to accept that trusting oneself is somehow superior to and more reliable than working with others in a trustworthy way.

Test Results...what to do with them.

Our standardized testing is over.  With not much to do for a couple hours for several days, I got to thinking.

What have our results been like lately, and how would we evaluate the teachers' performance based on these scores?

So, the last two years' scores. 


Level 3 and 4 constitute 'passing.'  Level 1 and 2 are 'not meeting standard.'

The Overall at Standard percentage, then, is the sum total of Levels 3 and 4.

Move to the right for the performance of the 2010 8^th graders when they were in 7^th and 6^th grade.

In other words, each table consists of the results for the same group of students, across the years.

PMS is my school, which consists of two language arts teachers in both 7th and 8th grades, 4 (they do LA-SocStud combinations) in 6th grade.

PMS %  (State %)

2010 8th grade testers	8th grade results	7th grade reading results	7th grade writing results	6th grade results
Overall at Standard	82.8  (69.4)	74.2  (59.3)	82.5  (69.8)	84.9  (68.9)
Level 4	51.2  (43.1)	38.1  (27.2)	37.1  (25.1)	40.2  (25.6)
Level 3	31.5  (25.6)	36.1  (31.2)	45.4  (43.8)	44.7  (42.1)
Level 2	17.2  (18.8)	23.2  (29.1)	17.5  (18.0)	14.0  (23.1)
Level 1	13.3  (10.7)	2.6    (10.2)	5.2    (10.1)	1.1    (7.2)

PMS %  (State %)

2009 8th grade testers	8th grade results	7th grade reading results	7th grade writing results	6th grade results
Overall at Standard	79.6  (67.5)	73.2  (63.1)	77.8  (70.0)	74.2  (68.0)
Level 4	48.4  (34.3)	40.4  (34.3)	22.2  (24.3)	26.3  (25.9)
Level 3	31.1  (32.5)	32.8  (27.9)	55.6  (44.8)	47.9  (41.0)
Level 2	14.2  (21.1)	20.2  (26.5)	18.2  (19.2)	20.5  (24.0)
Level 1	5.3  (9.8)	5.1    (9.4)	3.0    (9.3)	5.3    (6.9)

I still don't know what to read in these figures.  It's great that we're above our state average.  I don't know how much that has to do with me, or any other teacher, though.
(Note that most of the time we're also lowering than the state average on the 'not passing' scores.)

I was also pleased to see higher numbers passing at Level 4.  Then again, I don't know if anybody has talked of making that a measure of teacher performance.  What about 2010 in 8th grade?  High Level 4 pass rate, but also higher than the state on Level 1 scores.  Is that good, bad, or what?

What do we do with 7th grade, which tests on two language arts related subjects?  Do we evaluate their test outcomes differently?

I hope this becomes clearer, and more open, than the test development process.

Not so Standardized Test

For the 3rd year in a row our standardized state test has varied in some significant way (or two).

3 tests ago, we had a 6-day (2 for math, 2 for science, 2 for reading) paper/pencil test. Last time, under a new state superintendent, the test switched names and design. Not sure how, of course, since I can't look at the tests and their creation and content are closely guarded secrets. We also did the reading online. This year, we're down to a 3-day test (1 for each), back to paper and pencil for all tests.

So, we're taking the 'still standardizing' tests, or the 'in transition to new formats, but not changing the standardization of content--as far as you know' tests.

I don't hear a lot about the maintenance of test validity in this aspect. I guess we're just supposed to assume it's all right.

The Civics Test may not capture what we're hoping for

Well, more data...this time that our students are pathetic in civics, too.

I wondered, so I wandered through the "report card" web site.

I came across this sample question.

The following question refers to the statement below.

The Second World War marked the most substantial change ever in the context in which United States foreign policy is made. The world that emerged after the war had fundamentally changed in economic, political, and military ways. These changes made the world a more dangerous place, and altered the demands placed on foreign policy.

The statement calls the world after the Second World War "a more dangerous place." What specific change could one cite to support this claim?

1. The rise of the European Union (EU)
2. The signing of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT)
3. The decline of German military power
4. The development and spread of nuclear weapons

The real difficulty here is that depending on your conceptual and philosophical views you might argue any of these. This is why my graduate political science advisor joked that the social sciences are the really hard sciences.

1. One could argue, for instance, that the EU only exists because of the American security umbrella over it, and the EU's rapid rise reorganized Western Europe into a potent power faster than it would otherwise have done, thereby threatening the Soviet Union, and making the world a less safe place.

2. Some might also argue that the increase in free trade (GATT) actually makes collaboration among the big and dominant economies easier, thereby making the world less safe for those smaller, developing countries. Indeed, dozens of millions of Third Worlders were killed in the years after WWII, so their world was less safe.

3. In slightly different contexts, some have indeed argued that a country of Germany's stature needs to have the military capacity commensurate with its size and importance. To withhold that from them risks their anger, not unlike the 1920s.

I'm not persuaded by the first and the third. The second is true.

4. But so is the fourth (in this case) anti-argument. Many analysts argue that the presence of nuclear weapons actually made the world more stable--the dominant powers were much more cautious with each other because of their ability to mutually destroy each other, though they were perfectly willing to undertake violence in the developing world.

So, what's the 'right' answer? I know they're looking for #4, but I'm looking for a student who can sophisticatedly render and evaluate the competing claims, not just one who reasons the same way as the test authors.

By the way, I saw plenty of questions that generated the same concern, to my mind.

Test Exhaustion...and we haven't even started yet

My mother would never believe it, but I feel like I have nothing more to say. I read education articles or blogs here, there and everywhere, and I get more convinced that these 'issues' will be with us...until they're not. Why they'll go away will have little to do with wiser or cooler heads prevailing...it'll likely just shift almost imperceptibly, until we realize a big change has overtaken us.

Okay...I just thought of something. We start our standardized testing tomorrow, so, like most other teachers, I've been practicing with a few 'released items'--sample test passages and questions that were rejected for final inclusion on the real test.

The other day, we did this one about a blind artist. (If you really want to look at it, you have to go pretty deep into the booklet...it's after all the instructions and several other passages.)

One of the short answer questions is this:

Explain how Michael became an award winning artist. Include two details from the selection in your answer.

The teacher booklet goes on to explain what respondents might put in their answers:

Text-based details may include, but are not limited to:

A. His mother was a potter / he helped her fix her clay

B. Playing with clay as a child

C. “I knew that what I wanted to do was be an artist someday.”

D. Making small animals in hospital after blindness/Vietnam, continued to

sculpt

E. Sculptures were photographed by newspapers

F. I get a picture in my mind / make his memories come to life

G. Inspires / leads sculpture workshops

H. Sculptures can be seen in museums/public buildings/Vatican /White House

I. People collect his work

Now, it doesn't matter which two items a test-taker lists in his/her answer. All items are equal, even those--like H, I, and maybe E and G--which don't really 'explain how he became an award-winning artist.'

H and I seem more the consequence of his becoming an award-winning artist, not an explanation of how he became one. I guess 'how he became' does not mean causality. I would have thought it did. But, by their answers, I gather they really mean something more like the event sequence of his rising to 'award-winning artist status.'

I hope this passage and questions got rejected for this flaccidity. I hope it wasn't something else, and that we really are (mis)testing comprehension with items like this.

Character

My daughter was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society this week. Part of the ceremony was the reading of the 5 pillars of the society--Character, Scholarship, Leadership, Service and Citizenship. In the discussion of Character, there was this line. (I won't use quote marks, as I'm sure I'm not getting it precisely the way they read it, but it's like this:)

The issue of character is about self-control.

I found that fascinating. We talk too little about self-control in school. We talk about expressing yourself, maximizing your potential, empowering yourself. But we don't talk much of self-control, self-discipline, or, heaven forbid, self-denial.

When a student is bothering--bullying, intimidating or harassing--another student, we talk of how the bullied student feels, or the consequences of getting caught as a bully. We appeal to self-interest, in other words. Imagine yourself the victim--YOU wouldn't like that, so don't do it to somebody else. Or, if YOU get caught, it'll be bad for you.

We don't appeal to character--self-control. We don't say, you need to have the discipline to be thoughtfully concerned about the people around you.

Both kinds of appeal are going to be difficult. But the former, essentially appealing to the self-interest of the bully, seems to me a dead end. We all abuse other people--in varying degrees and quantities, and we do it primarily to advance or protect our own egos. Sure adults do it in calmer, more sophisticated ways. We tend to do it bureaucratically, if we can. (I'll have to explain that some other time, I think.) But we all incline that way. Lowering someone else elevates me in comparison.

The appeals to self-interest have a difficult time working, for they simply reveal the internal logic that actually stimulates bullying. How would the other person feel? Lousy...that's the point. And I'm getting a payoff! So I'll take the risk of getting caught, because I probably won't, and when I get away with it the benefits are pretty good.

I think maybe this is why my school always see a spike in bullying right after the anti-bullying training. (This plus the "reporting effect"--higher incidence of reports because of 'encouragement' to recognize bullying more.)

Next step? (...as we say in education) That's the hard one. Character education that focuses on self-control. But we have to do this in a comprehensively consistent fashion. Problem is that all our social norms and expectations push us away from self-control.

There's too little of the kind of awareness and acknowledgment that G.K. Chesterston, the fascinatingly wide-ranging thinker, exhibited in response to a newspaper invitation to explain 'what is wrong with the world.' He wrote simply:

‘Dear Sirs:

I am.

Sincerely Yours,

G. K. Chesterton.’

Normal Accident Theory of Education, continued

Earlier, I started my Normal Accident Theory of Education. Here are a few key ideas necessary to advance the idea that education is rife with normal accidents or normal failures.

A brief but good overview of some of the definitions of key terms that make up Perrow's theory about Normal Accidents, by Professor Piccard of Ohio University.

High-Risk Systems

This term encompasses risks "for the operators, passengers, innocent bystanders, and for future generations." He applies it to "enterprises [that] have catastrophic potential, the ability to take the lives of hundreds of people in one blow, or to shorten or cripple the lives of thousands or millions more." This means that although he does include chemical plant and refinery accidents, he is explicitly excluding from his focus the primary harmful impacts of fossil-fuel burning (greenhouse gases and toxic combustion products released into the atmosphere), since those effects are diffuse and happen by design, not as an accident. Education and schools are a bit different. Their accidents are not deadly, but they do have lasting impact. Today especially, we look upon school processes and their outcomes as high-stakes. The consequences of failure, then, are serious, though not deadly.

Normal Accidents

Perrow uses this term in part as a synonym for "inevitable accidents." This categorization is based on a combination of features of such systems: interactive complexity and tight coupling. Normal accidents in a particular system may be common or rare, but the system's characteristics make it inherently vulnerable to such accidents, hence their description as "normal."

Education accidents (or failures) are common, though lower intensity than the fatalities that would be associated with a nuclear meltdown or a plane crash.

Discrete Failures

A single, specific, isolated failure is referred to as a "discrete" failure.

A student's failure of one course, or one standardized test, would be a discrete failure. So, where a nuclear plant might have a discrete failure occasionally, the education system produces its smaller discrete failures routinely.

Redundant Sub-systems

Redundant sub-systems provide a backup, an alternate way to control a process or accomplish a task, that will work in the event that the primary method fails. This avoids the "single-point" failure modes.

Interactive Complexity

A system in which two or more discrete failures can interact in unexpected ways is described as "interactively complex." In many cases, these unexpected interactions can affect supposedly redundant sub-systems. A sufficiently complex system can be expected to have many such unanticipated failure mode interactions, making it vulnerable to normal accidents. A student's failure to 'get an education' would be an interactively complex failure. A student must systematically fail courses, annual tests, etc., though these discrete failures may not necessarily amount to not getting an education. It is difficult to determine 'getting an education,' and we have increasingly defined that as passing all the classes and annual tests (or at least the last of these tests, 10th grade in WA state).

Tight Coupling

The sub-components of a tightly coupled system have prompt and major impacts on each other. If what happens in one part has little impact on another part, or if everything happens slowly (in particular, slowly on the scale of human thinking times), the system is not described as "tightly coupled." Tight coupling also raises the odds that operator intervention will make things worse, since the true nature of the problem may well not be understood correctly. The education system is loosely coupled, which means discrete failures here and there can be overcome. Persistence of discrete failure, however, which is, definitionally, evidence of interactive failure, can occur...with everyone's knowledge (so these failures are not incomprehensible--see below). One point of concern here. Perrow argues for decentralization of loosely coupled systems in order to allow flexible decision-making in the performance of the system. School reform portends increased centralization, though. This will increase the likelihood of normal accidents.

Incomprehensibility

A normal accident typically involves interactions that are "not only unexpected, but are incomprehensible for some critical period of time." The people involved just don't figure out quickly enough what is really going wrong. A normal accident occurs in a complex system, one that has so many parts that it is likely that something is wrong with more than one of them at any given time. A well-designed complex system will include redundancy, so that each fault by itself does not prevent proper operation. However, unexpected interactions, especially with tight coupling, may lead to system failure. System operators must make decisions, even with ambiguous information. The process of making a tentative choice also creates a mental model of the situation. When following through on the initial choice, the visible results are compared to those expected on the basis of that initial mental model. Provided that the first few steps' results are consistent, the fact that the mental model was tentative is likely to be forgotten, even if later results contradict it. They become "mysterious" or "incomprehensible" rather than functioning as clues to the falsity of the earlier tentative choice. This is simply the way the human mind works, and systems designed with contrary expectations of their operators are especially vulnerable to system accidents.

Operator Error

It is indeed the case that people sometimes do really stupid things, but when most of the accidents in a particular type of system (airplane, chemical plant, etc.) are blamed on the operator, that is a symptom that the operators may be confronted with an impossible task, that there is a system design problem. In a typical normal accident, the operator's actions may contribute to the problem, or even initiate the sequence of events, but the characteristics of tight coupling and interactive complexity also make their contributions. This brings us to the question--what is 'the education system' and who are the operators? If the system is the parents, home, community and school, then the operator is the individual student. If the system is just the schools, then the operators are the teachers and other school personnel. If we call the schools the system, we in effect leave 'incomprehensible' the functioning of the other parts of the student's educational life, and leave the student as something of a cipher. an entity being acted upon rather than an principal-operator of an educational system created--by his/her parents AND the schools--to make an education available to him/her.

For want of a nail ...

The old parable about the kingdom lost because of a thrown horseshoe has its parallel in many normal accidents: the initiating event is often, taken by itself, seemingly quite trivial. Because of the system's complexity and tight coupling, however, events cascade out of control to create a catastrophic outcome. So, a cascade can come from a string of bad or inattentive teachers. Or, a cascade can come from a school and teachers monitoring and intervening, but other parts of the whole system (parents, student, etc.) not responding. I'm sure the former happens. I see several cases of the latter every year. Most common form--we identify a student who needs an intervention in math or reading, and suggest a one-quarter class for this, and the parent opts to keep their student in band or art. Parents' choice; school will be held responsible.

Organizations

Organizational issues routinely confront the analyst of normal accidents. Because the interactions among subsystems are not predictable, the operators must be able to take prompt and independent action. Because of the tight coupling, in which operators of one part of the system influence the tasks confronting operators of other parts of the system, centralized control is required. These two conflicting requirements cannot be readily resolved, and the organizational attributes that work well for one side are likely to be dysfunctional for the other.

Schools and school personnel are increasingly bound, not independent, in their actions. There are school districts that tell teachers exactly what they'll be teaching on a given day. And, of course, as soon as the stakes are raised on the standardized tests, we incentivize teachers to focus more on the test, and, for some, to even cheat.

Okay, more later.