As a country, do we want our schools to be excellent? Very good? Good? Just good enough? Just getting by?
What level of performance is acceptable?
Thus far society has not demanded anything better than what we are getting.
And, lest you think this is critical of educators, let me say that not only has society not demanded better, but they also haven't shown a widespread willingness to support what it takes to be better.
Because what it might take would be something akin to an overhauling of American education.
And many just won't stomach that.
One of the big changes would require a completely new mindset on how schools ensure that every student is successful.
Dr. Robert Marzano and Dr. Timothy Waters wrote about how schools could assume a much more serious approach by operating like High Reliability Organizations (HROs).
They explained about HROs in their book "District Leadership that Works" (mentioned in this space last week).
In short, examples of HROs include those that run an electric power grid, a nuclear power plant, or an air traffic control system.
In all of those examples, the organization must function with an extremely high level of seriousness with very little room for error. If anything does go wrong, an HRO must have a system or a plan in place to immediately address it.
The vital importance of the task of such HROs demands that everything be done with extreme care, with the utmost scrutiny, and with the realization that too much is at stake to take a haphazard approach.
But what about schools?
Marzano and Waters contended that schools should strive to operate with the same serious approach as HROs, because a case could be made that their task is just as crucial.
Their assertion is a hard one with which to argue. For the sake of young lives and for the sake of America's future, education has to be done right.
Marzano and Waters wrote that if student achievement and effective teaching are crucial for schools then definite achievement goals must be established and continually monitored.
At this time, many schools do this, but it's only on paper and not really in everyday practice.
The authors explained that if a school truly operated like an HRO it would be more likely to make immediate adjustments when students aren't successful. In their words: "Any perturbations in student achievement should signal a need to shore up instruction in classrooms."
American schools, however, are a long way from taking their mission as seriously as HROs. They simply do not have the same urgency about the task before them.
But to be fair, we could say that schools do not conduct business as an HRO because Americans in general do not see the need for it.
In the 2001 best-selling book called "Good to Great" by Jim Collins, the theme is that good is the enemy of great.
Many schools in this country do a good job. Some do a very good job. But just as Collins explained, good is not great.
And in the case of our schools, settling for good means we will never get to great.
Again, to be fair, our communities seem to be satisfied with good (or even mediocre) when it comes to schools.
In some schools the prevailing attitude is not even a sense of satisfaction with being good. A lot of what is done in schools is not looked upon as good but as good enough, which carries with it the connotation that it's okay to do the least one can get by with. In other words, sometimes educators--without deliberately intending to do so--collectively find the lowest level of performance that is acceptable and go with that.
Again, this is not said to be critical of educators but merely points out that educators have a job that can and should be approached with such an overwhelming sense of conviction about its importance that it changes everything about how business is done each day.
In short, schools could be much more like HROs.
And all of society should support educators in their work by accepting nothing less.
DAVID WILSON, EdD, OF SPRINGDALE, IS A WRITER, CONSULTANT AND PRESENTER, WHO GREW UP IN ARKANSAS BUT WORKED 27 YEARS IN EDUCATION IN MISSOURI. YOU MAY E-MAIL HIM AT [email protected]. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.
Editorial on 05/10/2017