Below you will find an interview with my friend Bentley Richert. Bentley now teaches at Inman elementary school that was a coworker for many years. Over those years we spent many hours discussing school change. Bentley decided to go back to the classroom and see if all those ideas really make sense.

I think you’ll enjoy our conversation that ranges from authentic engagement to standardized tests. Bentley expreses his ideas about individualization and customization, learning by doing, and the use of technology in the 21st century.

Bentley teaches at Inman Elementary School and has a background as an educational specialist at ESSDACK, teacher at a charter school and as a classroom teacher in the Haven school district.

What’s Become Clear w/ Bentley Richert from Steve Wyckoff on Vimeo.

What’s Become Clear w/ Bentley Richert from Steve Wyckoff on Vimeo.

This is a repost from Because Our Future Depends On It, Deb Haneke’s blog. I think she’s right on!

Will another great crisis go unexploited?

January 11, 2011

For some reason it seems to me that educators lack the where-with-all to seize the moment and make use a good crisis to redefine how we do business. Despite finding ourselves in the spotlight on many occasions, where demands for educational reform were prolific, we responded with ‘more of the same.’

From the launching of Sputnik by the Russians in the late 50s, to the release of the report “A Nation at Risk” in the early 80′s, to the implementation of “No Child Left Behind” under President Bush, our response has been to do MORE of the same when educational reform is being demanded. Add more time, more standards, more required classes for college admissions, more high-stakes one-shot tests, more graduation requirements…. You get the picture.

So here we are today in 2011 with an economic crisis like none we’ve seen in America since perhaps the 1920′s. Revenues from taxes continue to fall far short of meeting the demands of a system that has grown ‘fat,’ at all levels of government–local, state, and federal. Public education in Kansas and many other states has not been spared the discomfort of deep cuts and more are likely on the horizon.

Yet, through all this, the primary response from education has been to try to protect current funding. Very few educators or leaders outside of education have asked if we were to take advantage of this financial crisis and make REAL changes in the educational system, what might be possible with less money. I have long contended that many ‘educational’ decisions are made based on the need for custodial daycare.

Maybe it is time to recognize the core business of education and make decisions that support the mission with which we are charged. In our current system, time is fixed and learning is variable. What would an educational system look like if learning were the constant and time as well as delivery systems became the variables?

Thanks Deb! – Steve Wyckoff

The C3. That’s what they’re calling them in McPherson USD 418. So what are the three C’s, how did they get there, and are they really leading to school change?

They got there through a multiple year process of asking their staff, parents, and community what they collectively want for each student. The C3 are the result of those conversations.

Citizenship Ready, College Ready, and Career Readiness. I have to be honest with you, I was skeptical about how much school change was actually occurring when I heard the stories about what McPherson was doing. Don’t get me wrong, my skepticism wasn’t about McPherson, it was about education in general.

As the saying goes, “When all is said and done, there is more said than done.” I once heard a superintendent say, only half jokingly, “They had a program that was so bad, they had to change the name.”School don’t change easily, in fact they rarely change.

But when I had the opportunity to hear McPherson superintendent Dr. Randy Watson talk about this C3, and provide evidence as to the results, I must admit I was impressed.

If you want to read the whole story you can go to a page on McPherson’s website that describes in detail C3.

McPherson has asked the federal government for a waiver from the state’s standardized test. In fact the date when they would be notified about their request has come and gone several times. But even if the feds don’t allow the waiver I suspect that McPherson will figure out a way to minimize the damage of the state’s standardized tests.

I believe that what makes this C3 so powerful is the focus on each individual student in preparation for their future. I was worried when I heard the stories that this would just be another program disguised to make sure that every student had the same identical curriculum focus completely on preparation for a four-year liberal arts degree. What I heard instead was a focus on each individual students post secondary needs based on their career aspirations.

McPherson still has literally hundreds, if not thousands, of issues large and small that will need to be solved as they move forward. But kudos to them for making a real effort at school change, to educate each student in preparation for their future. – Steve Wyckoff

I decided to write this post to honor those educators that I believe are actually doing something to change the educational experiences for significant numbers of kids. So my criteria was, did they actually do something that changed the educational experience for their students for the better? These leaders are actually engaged in school change.

Dr. Randy Watson: Randy is the superintendent of schools in McPherson USB 418. Over the last several years Randy has facilitated a discussion with the Macpherson community to define what they collectively wanted for their students. They’ve decided that the three most important things for their graduates are citizenship ready, college ready, and career ready.

Dr. Mary Jo Taylor: Mary Jo is the superintendent of schools in Stafford Kansas. Stafford high school has a student population of about 70 kids. In spite of that small number. Mary Jo and her staff have implemented three innovative programs that benefit her kids, and their local community. They have a health sciences program with almost 20 students that leads to the students being certified as CNA’s, CMA’s, or EMT’s. Next year they will add certified pharmacy technician as an option. Each of the students is also receiving college credit along with their certification. In addition they have an entrepreneurship center where students are running their own businesses, and a construction program where the students last year built the first new stick home in Stafford and almost 25 years.

Dr. John Morton and Mrs. Natise Vogt John is the superintendent of schools in Newton Kansas and Natise is the principal of Walton Elementary School which has been transformed into a rural life charter schoolOver the last several years. The school epitomizes what a learning by doing experience can look like for elementary school children.

Dr. Diane DeBacker: Diane is the Commissioner of Education in Kansas and after initially being named interim Commissioner of Education, the interim was officially dropped. Diane formed the Kansas Education Commission made up of 50 individuals from across the state to thoroughly examine the key priorities found in the Blueprint for Reform. Diane gets it, the only question is is any individual powerful enough to change the direction of public education. Only time will tell.

Mr. Mike Carson: okay Mike retired two years ago so this is kind of an honorable mention. Mike was the superintendent of Erie public schools. Mike lead the transition to a project based curriculum. This may be the best job of leading I have personally observed in public education. Mike truly lead systemic change. Again, time will tell if the change sticks.

I truly wish this list was a lot longer. There are several people worthy of mention for implementing programs that made a difference for some kids but lacked the systemic impact of these four individuals. Perhaps next year and looking at school change for 2011 this list will grow significantly. – Steve Wyckoff

The federal government, through No Child Left Behind, has set the direction for school change in America. The NCLB act appears to be focused on two issues; develop a set of national standards that are adhered to by all schools, and raise standardized test scores. There is a fair amount of rhetoric around innovation and creativity but very little action.

Recently however, I listened to a very interesting podcast by Neil McCluskey of the Cato Institute. The first thing that I found interesting was that Dr. McCluskey pointed out that since data has been kept in the 1950s, the United States has never led the world in standardized test scores.

Where we have always led the world is in creativity and innovation. And yet, creativity and innovation are exactly the areas we are reducing in order to increase standardization of processes and content. Other countries, such as China, are making a conscious effort to make their students more innovative and creative. No such movement exists in America, in spite of the urging by many researchers and experts. Politicians are hell-bent on raising test scores. At any cost.

The second push by the federal government is to move us to national standards. It’s always pointed out to us that the top 10 or 12 countries on standardized tests (again, who cares) all have national standards. What Dr. McCluskey points out is that the bottom 12 countries all have national standards. There is simply no evidence that national standards lead to higher test scores, even assuming you want higher test scores.

In a time were school change should be all about customization and individualization for every child, our federal government is forcing us in exactly the opposite direction. I hope, but seriously doubt, that there are enough rebels out there telling the federal government to stick it, and doing what’s best for our kids in spite of the consequences, to overcome this disastrous direction. – Steve Wyckoff

Several things have become clear to me when thinking about school change in rural America. I’ve been listening to conversations about declining enrollment for over 20 years. During that time I’ve facilitated goal setting for many boards of education in rural communities. Most of them have a discussion during that goal setting about stealing students from their neighbors. Few, if any, succeed consistently at this goal.

I’ve been thinking about this issue differently over the last year. What we really need to do is to attract new residents to our rural communities. Not an easy task, but it can be done. We do have new families move into our rural communities, just not often enough.

So recently I began to think about this issue from the perspective of a family considering a move to rural America. I think, generally speaking, a family would consider two things in deciding where to relocate.

First, they would want to know about the schools. If it were me, I would want to know what the school could do to help my child become remarkable. No, most parents wouldn’t use the word remarkable, but I think that’s what all of us want for our kids. Unfortunately, we usually settle for our kids surviving the system.

Secondly, they would want to know what the community had to offer. Would my family fit in? Would we be welcomed? Are there things to do, that we enjoy doing? Are the amenities present that we need to live the lifestyle that we desire? Will our finances go further than they did in the city?

A couple of thoughts about answering these questions. First of all our rural communities need to be thinking from this perspective, and as a community take action to develop our community. The same things that would attract a new family will be attractive to the current residents.

This is also a great opportunity to engage our students in real-world experiences that are meaningful and engaging, and at the same time prepare them for the real world. There is no reason that our students couldn’t be involved in all aspects of community development. Their activities would not only be of benefit to the community, but would also facilitate the learning and application of academic skills in a real-world setting.

The new key component  that I’ve learned over the last year is how people find what they want in the 21st century. The first thing we do today when we want to find something is Google it. So we need to teach our rural communities and our schools how to present themselves so that they’re found on Google.

The second part of that key component is social networking. Over 200 million Americans are on Facebook. Our schools and communities need to have a presence on Facebook and work diligently to spread the word about our schools and communities through Facebook and other social media.

As we consider school change it is imperative that we also consider community development, and how to market our schools and communities in the 21st century. Kansas, and almost all of the other 49 states, have substantial rural populations and there is no reason that we can’t educate our kids better and at the same time develop and market our rural communities. Now that would be real school change. – Steve Wyckoff

John Wyrick, superintendent at USD 101 in collaboration with the Erie community are making a bold move into the digital age. They are embarking on a marketing strategy for their school and community utilizing social media and search engine optimization of the community website to attract new visitors and residents

Their first goal is to have 1000 “likes” on their Facebook page. Help them out by clicking the link and liking them!

Erie is part of a larger group engaged in rural education and community development collaboration. There the first district to make a tactical move, But they certainly won’t be the last.

I hope you can see it to help these  rural districts and communities help themselves! PLEASE SPRESD THE WORD FOR THEM!

In my previous post, School change:  so does Oklahoma get it, and Kansas doesn’t?, I was responding to an e-mail sent to me after my post, School change: Oklahoma gets it, Kansas doesn’t. Part of that e-mail asked the question:

Other comments have to do with what the direction of education should be. We keep hearing that we need to change and there is never an answer about what needs to change. I know the long range vision would be to do something different with our educational system but my question is what?

So I’d like to take a shot at answering that question. Again, this is my opinion, and I would love to hear your opinion on this topic. Bear in mind that I’m trying to describe in a few paragraphs what would require months if not years of discussion and transition for full implementation. And my focus is on high schools.

There are three main areas that we need to address; what we want kids to know, do, and be like; what their educational experiences would look like; and how we would organize our schools to facilitate learning.

The first thing that needs to be addressed is what the educational experience would look like for our students. We should begin the transition to learning by doing, rather than learning by sitting and listening. I think that Erie in high school has demonstrated how you can begin to successfully transition to a learning by doing environment.

They have chosen project-based learning, which I would include, but you could also have students solving real-world problems, engaging in real world career experiences, and entrepreneurship opportunities. Stafford high school is a leader in this area. They have students engaged in construction that last year built the first new home in Stafford in almost 25 years. They have students engaged in health sciences who will be certified in areas such as CMA, EMT, and phlebotomists. In addition they will have college credits in all these areas. They also have students in their entrepreneurship center, the SEED Center, that are rationally running their own businesses.

In Oxford students are running the local restaurant, and in Pretty Prairie they are working to have their students run the local grocery store. I believe that all of these, and others based on the needs of the students and the community, should be options as well.

The “what we teach” should be changed to what we want students to know, be able to do, and be like when they graduate. All of our current standards should be reframed in the context of their real-world application. We can actually start this process today by working with teachers to understand how they can validate standards mastered in real-world experiences.

The key to the success of learning by doing experiences is the ability to give core subject academic credit for standards that are mastered and demonstrated in a real-world context. The pieces are in place to do this today.

The last area is how we organize the school day. I’ve written about this before in a blog post titled; School change: how we organize schools makes no sense. The Carnegie schedule is a relic of the past and needs to be abandoned.

Obviously, this is an oversimplification, and addresses only the changes necessary at the high school level. In my opinion the high school level is the most critical piece of the puzzle. If we change high schools, middle level and elementary level educational experiences will naturally align accordingly.

But even with that caveat  there is a great deal of work that would need to be done. But as I identified above there are schools already doing these things. There is nothing magical here. As Ron Edmonds and Larry Lizotte said, “all we lack is the will to do it.” If we want to change schools for the better, and make every student educational experience more relevant and useful we can. –  Steve Wyckoff

I received an email from a superintendent/friend regarding my blog post Oklahoma Gets It, Kansas Doesn’t, and I’d like to respond here so that others with the same questions/thoughts might see my response also.

Your recent article “Oklahoma gets it, Kansas doesn’t” has raised some conversation within our district. One of the comments was “That’s interesting because I was at one of the Kansas conferences he was at last week, and we didn’t have any sessions that covered raising test scores.

I’m assuming you could pick presentations to attend that would avoid the topic of assessments. And while I didn’t hear the keynotes, typically KSDE has brought in speakers who present the bigger picture of the world. So I’m not doubting the validity of the above statement. But, the conference title used to be, “The Fall Assessment Conference.” It has been combined with the annual conference but with a major emphasis still on NCLB, AYP, and standardized tests.

I did a little further digging in the breakout session descriptions and the  topic of assessment, and the variations on the word assessment, was mentioned 71 times; tests was mentioned 58 times. Inspire, and its variations, were mentioned 2 times; and innovation, and its variations, were mentioned 4 times. Creativity, passion, and remarkable  weren’t mentioned in any of the descriptions.

So again I don’t doubt the validity of the statement, but there is no doubt that the focus of this conference was on standardized tests and not on our kids and their futures.

The next comment in the e-mail was;

In fact, we had some speakers from Kansas talking about some of the things these national/international speakers were talking about…”

Again, I don’t doubt the validity of this statement. In fact I had many conversations with individuals about the things that we should be doing in education. And I’m sure that these ideas were talked about in breakout sessions. It is my experience in talking one-on-one with educators that there are some broad areas that we have a high agreement on. Unfortunately policymakers and higher-level administrators aren’t moving the system in that direction. And the reality is, like it or not, our standardized test scores in reading and math are what we are measured by. And a preponderance of the breakout sessions were focused on standardized test scores.

I think the focus at the national level, regardless of the rhetoric, is solely focused on standardized test scores. And regardless of what our policy makers and state-level administrators wish we were doing, they are being forced to comply with the feds desires.

Other comments have to do with what the direction of education should be. We keep hearing that we need to change and there is never an answer about what needs to change. I know the long range vision would be to do something different with our educational system but my question is what?

This discussion is worth an entire blog post, so click this link to read what I believe are the most important changes that need to be made.

I think we do some things very well and there are some areas that frankly we have not been able to change for whatever reason. We as a nation have been accused of not preparing our students for the future and to some extent I would agree with that.

I agree completely. In fact I repeatedly say, and it almost never gets heard, we are doing the best job that we have ever done at what we’ve always done. There’s no doubt that we have optimized the current system. The problem is policymakers and state and federal administrators keep forcing us down the old path.

When policymakers and state and federal administrators told us we needed to raise test scores, we raised test scores. And that’s just the latest mandate that we’ve endured. Unfortunately, higher test scores are not an indicator of a student’s readiness for their future.

I know we have not kept up with the test comparisons around the world but I also know that we include a totally different group of students in the results than most nations.

In my mind comparisons of test scores with other countries are useless. So is the conversation about national standards. The United States has never led the world in standardized test scores since the comparisons began in the 1950s. What we have led the world at is innovation and creativity, both of which are being sacrificed today to achieve higher test scores.

And the advocates for national standards all point to the fact that all of the countries who score better than us on standardized test scores all have national standards. What they fail to mention is the bottom 12 countries and those comparisons also have national standards.

I would caution you to get on the bandwagon of anything that standardizes. We are in an era of customization and individualization. In the education our children receive should be as customizable as any good or service today.

I hope that I have addressed the concerns completely and adequately. I truly appreciate any opportunity to have dialogue on the topic of school change. So please, if you have a comment let me know and let’s talk about it. – Steve Wyckoff

I was asked a really good question recently following a presentation on school change. I was asked to explain the paradox between two schools of thought regarding college educations. On one hand we read all the time the data that indicates how much more money you will earn in your lifetime as a college graduate, and on the other hand how overrated a college education can be.

I should’ve thought about this long before now but it appears to me that the answer is all about averages. When you consider the  high potential lifetime earning power of some college degrees and the very low potential of others, on average college graduates do very well.

But when you consider that  according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants, you can see that these college degrees bring that average way down.

All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.

Looking a little deeper, 4 of 10 of the most popular majors include, Social Sciences (ex. History and Political Science) Psychology, Communication, and English. The most popular careers of these majors include retail store managers, customer service representatives, and administrative assistants, none of which are high salary careers.

I don’t have any problem with an individual earning a college degree and choosing any career they choose. What I do object to is telling high school students and their parents that they absolutely must have a college degree in order to be successful in life, but failing to tell them that not all college degrees will earn them enough money to even pay off their college loans.

It is unconscionable to imply that every college degree has the same earning power. Students should be given all of the information before they choose from among their post secondary options. Yes, with the right college degree your chances of making a much better living are greatly enhanced. But if you choose the wrong college degree, and exacerbate the problem with excessive college loans, you will never approach the earning power you desire.

What’s even more frustrating is the erroneous message we give high school kids that our core curriculum is essential for them to obtain that college degree that leads to high salaries. Our core curriculum is much more closely associated with those college degrees that lead to low salaries.

I suspect that if students and parents had all the facts they would be much more inclined to support school change that changed our core curriculum to a more appropriate offering. – Steve Wyckoff