Subject: My letter to the editor

Posted by Philip Abode on 12/7/2004
In Reply To:My letter to the editor Posted by Richard Turnock on 12/6/2004

Message:

Upon reading Richard's letter, the thought floating into my mind is that education, like other social institutions, appears more like the proverbial elephant being comprehended by men suffering from varying handicaps or biases. Richard's perspective is quite common in that it is buried in the educational trenches where supposedly teaching-learning exchanges take place. Yet, this perspective commonly ignores the larger picture and the organizational knowledge built up over the last half century. Only through this narrow view does the assertion that "NCLB creates a crisis in public education by measuring improvement using traditional methods, standardized tests and teacher expertise." Richard went further to suggest that NCLB encourages schools to focus on "factoids and trivia."

May I humbly suggest that while NCLB may have redeemable flaws in that it did not anticipate the alternative ploys and loopholes that educational practitioners will employ in responding to NCLB's accountability demands, it could not be blamed for the least-impact strategies being employed by schools and districts. I am not sure what Richard meant by "factoids and trivia," but what is going on is more than trivia when you consider the fact that in schools across the United States, especially central city schools, academically marginal students are being kicked out of public schools into the emerging charter school market so that school could be NCLB good-looking.

I am of the opinion that system dynamics can help right from the superintendent's executive suite down into the classroom, and I believe it is in the educational executive suites that the application needs to being, not with teachers in the classroom. It should be clear that schools and classroom do not appreciate the economic implications of their actions which tend to raise the per pupil cost of education not for real performance improvement but to create the appearance of the same. The most effective way for an organization to respond to stakeholder demand for accountability in the face of real systemic (not local) performance problem is to rethink its strategy. My limited understanding of system dynamics and systems thinking suggests that these tools could help school administrators appreciate the consequences of alternative contemplated accountability decisions over time with the power of influencing the making of optimal choices.
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Philip Abode, Doctoral Student
Joint Doctoral Program
Educational Leadership
UC/CSU Fresno

Follow Ups:

Educational Leadership - Richard Turnock 12/8/2004 
Educational Leadership - Bill Ellis 12/8/2004
Educational Leadership - Bill Ellis 12/8/2004
Educational Leadership - Malczynski, Leonard A 12/8/2004