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A LYS Superintendent shares the
following:
SC,
A teacher
(with a known agenda) sent a mass email to a bunch of superintendents. As you know,
I love reasoned and spirited discussions so I responded. And in return, I received
a second round of “questions.” See below for the new questions and more of my
responses.
Thinly
Veiled Questions Mass Emailed to Texas Superintendents:
Questions again...
Do schools fear excellence as well as failure?
If all of your
students could be achieving at or above levels similar to those of the students
of Jaime Escalante in the movie, Stand and Deliver, would you implement a
program that would achieve those levels... above the norm?
If you knew of a
program that produced elevated success and mastery at an exceptional level for
any interested student, would you want it (as an administrator) knowing that it
would upset the structure of the system?
Exceptionalism
requires flexibility and that would upset the design of “the apple cart.” Mastering
material at exceptional levels wouldn't appear to work with CSCOPE because, as
you said, the scope and sequence is important and vital to CSCOPE. “Accelerated
mastery” would allow the option to break out of that timeline. Is it
possible to have two programs running side by side?
This Superintendent’s
Response:
I don't know if schools fear excellence, but it is certainly true that
excellence comes at a price, and it is also true that most schools are not
willing to pay that price. As Jim Collins writes, “Great is the enemy of
good.”
As soon as you start pushing, people start screaming for balance.
The problem is the physics of balance. To get a balance you have to take
away from one side to add to another. In the terms of education, to get a
"balance," you have to take away from children. In essence we
are saying, we could do a better job for kids, but that would require that
adults give up something else (and this is not pointed at educators:
Politicians – All revenue increases aren’t bad; Voters – Infrastructure has to
be built, maintained and paid for). So as long as it is someone else’s child, the adults in our state overwhelmingly choose mediocrity instead of sacrifice.
As to programs, I have NEVER seen a school “program” itself to success.
The path to success is perfecting tradecraft, in our case, instruction.
The never-ending hunt for excellence in instruction has to be pursued
with vigor should we want to become truly excellent for our children.
Escalante was a legend. He was also rare. I would guess there is
not 1 teacher in a 1,000 like him. This is neither a critique nor an indictment. Consider this, there are a lot of good NBA basketball players. But a Dr. J, Magic, Jordan and LeBron show up once a generation.
Exceptionalism requires flexibility. That may be true. And
it may not. For example, the
greatest athletes on the planet have very inflexible training programs.
Certainly I think you can be exceptional AND flexible, but I think it
also very possible to be excellent OR flexible, which in a logic statement
would also be excellent AND inflexible. It is also possible, and perhaps
most likely, to be neither excellent NOR flexible.
Certainly CSCOPE is not perfect, but you are targeting the result and
not the cause. CSCOPE is a school response to the state's push for
rapidly and constantly changing accountability, as I have discussed before.
As long as high stakes testing and accountability exist in their current
forms, there is no choice but to have something like CSCOPE. So the
driving force that destroys creativity, flexibility, and exceptionalism is
accountability and high stakes testing. CSCOPE is merely a tool.
Is it possible to have two programs running side by side? Certainly.
But most schools can't even get the basics down, much less run two
systems. It would be nice if schools could walk and chew bubble gum, but most
can't. The sad reality is accountability does indeed destroy some
excellence; no doubt about it. BUT, it is easy to get into a circular
argument on the issue. You see, if the Escalante's of the World were 900
out of a 1,000 instead of 1 in a 1,000, there would have never been an outcry
for accountability and high stakes testing. It is enticing and satisfying
to believe that the vast majority are chasing down excellence for all of their
students, but the reality and the data don't support that argument.
Indeed adults seek a "balance," and in most cases the adult balance
that is found is an unfavorable imbalance for children. There are many people
who have the strong belief that if you take care of teachers they will take
care of kids. I wish that was a 100% truism, because it would make my job much,
much easier.
Think. Work. Achieve.
Your turn...
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