Author: Sam

I write books and talk about stuff.

Why Is School So Important?

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It’s a great question — and at a whole-school assembly at my son’s school this morning, I heard some of the older children offer their answers in a short video they produced with their teacher.

Now is the point in the story where you’re supposed to hear touching observations that make you feel good about school, and learning, and the innocent beauty of kids. Instead, what I heard over and over from the kids were the three answers that they’d clearly picked up, like osmosis, from the adults:

FOR THE FUTURE!

TO GET JOBS!

TO GET INTO A GOOD COLLEGE!

I felt so depressed as I left. Is this really the best we can do? Is this really the extent to which we understand the purpose of school? Are we even thinking about these things? Is anyone asking why/for what purpose/to what end?

The good news is, we can do a lot better. When people ask us the right questions, we do understand the purpose of school. There is a deeper knowing just waiting to be tapped, and I take hope from thinking of what we can unleash when we do so on a larger scale. In the meantime, however, seeing eight-year-olds describe the purpose of school in purely external terms and accomplishments is enough to make me realize, on a Friday morning, just how much work remains to be done.

Best Questions

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Just because.

Ask them, answer them, share them. If you have a favorite, tweet it along with the hashtag #bestquestions. If you have one that isn’t here, add it. And if you want to see what happened when a whole community asked these questions of themselves and each other — and then co-created a public portrait series, check out Who Am I in This Picture?

What does the term “learning” mean to you? How has your life journey helped you to determine what learning means?

Who/what has been your most influential teacher?

There are many different ways by which people acquire knowledge. Under what conditions do you feel you learn best?

Is it possible to learn everything about yourself?

How has learning helped you to have better personal relationships in your family, school and community?

When does your community feel loneliest to you? When is it a good place to be alone?

Where, when, and with whom do you feel invisible in your community? When do you feel that other people feel invisible?

Which is the better course, the one that challenges you to learn new things or the one that challenges you to reexamine what you have already learned?

Does being educated make you happier?

How should a teacher define success? What do you see as the primary role of the teacher, and whose responsibility is it if students are not learning the material that is being taught?

How does the lack of education of others affect us? What stakes do we have in the empowerment of others?

What is our responsibility to each other, and where and how do we draw the line between our personal, professional, and school lives?

How Empathy Will Change the World

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Skip to the 3:20:00 part of this video — a recent panel discussion at the University of North Carolina — for a further examination of this idea of an “empathy formula”, or a way of thinking more intentionally about how we help educate the heart and mind.

Gaming the System

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. . . is not the goal, as Seth Godin illustrates well in a recent blog post (and if you like it you can also check out his TEDx talk, which took place moments before mine). As Seth wrote:

Sometimes, we can’t measure what we need, so we invent a proxy, something that’s much easier to measure and stands in as an approximation.

TV advertisers, for example, could never tell which viewers would be impacted by an ad, so instead, they measured how many people saw it. Or a model might not be able to measure beauty, but a bathroom scale was a handy stand in.

A business person might choose cash in the bank as a measure of his success at his craft, and a book publisher, unable to easily figure out if the right people are engaging with a book, might rely instead on a rank on a single bestseller list. One last example: the non-profit that uses money raised as a proxy for difference made.

You’ve already guessed the problem. Once you find the simple proxy and decide to make it go up, there are lots of available tactics that have nothing at all to do with improving the very thing you set out to achieve in the first place. When we fall in love with a proxy, we spend our time improving the proxy instead of focusing on our original (more important) goal instead.

Gaming the system is never the goal. The goal is the goal.

How Do We Fix DCPS?

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. . . is the question @amyjwatkins asked me on Twitter this morning, in response to the news that DCPS plans to close 20 neighborhood schools in an effort to concentrate its student populations and provide them with fuller services.

Great question, Amy. To answer it, imagine if DCPS adopted the following as its theory of change (TOC)?

IF we have cultures of transformational learning where we

THEN all students will flourish and achieve to high levels.

Think that TOC (which is the brainchild of the remarkable QED Foundation), would give the district the focus it needs to reimagine urban public education in ways that are both specific and visionary? I do. And the good news is that DCPS has already broached the idea of moving to a competency-based system.

In sum, it’s possible — and essential — to fix DCPS. And it will require a comprehensive theory of change that recognizes the limitations of the current test-obsessed climate, and reimagines the structure and purpose of school.

What do you think?

Sunday Morning Quarterback

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Earlier this week the DC Public Charter School Board released its latest rankings of every charter school operating in the nation’s capital. Some schools earned higher or lower scores than last year — each school is rated either Tier 1, 2 or 3 — but the majority did not change. No surprise there: these things take time, not to mention the fact that our system for evaluating whether a school is high- or low-performing remains imperfect at best.

Still, the report worried me, mostly because of the language charter leaders used to frame their reactions to the rankings. “If your results aren’t good after a fair period of time, you need to lose your right to operate,” said Robert Cane, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, or FOCUS. And Naomi DeVeaux, deputy director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said this: “You can’t tread water and stay a Tier 2 school. Each school has to continue to become better.”

On one level, my response is, “Well, of course.” No school should be allowed to continually provide a subpar learning environment, and every school should be proactively seeking ways to improve. Yet what I hear in the undercurrents of these comments is an expectation that schools achieve quick results, sustain a linear march to excellence, and operate under a no-excuses culture of expectations. And maybe it’s just coincidence because we’re in DC, but when I hear that kind of language from the top, I think of the Washington Redskins. And when I consider all we need to do to improve the city’s schools, I can’t think of a worse organizational model for systemic change and sustained success.

For those that don’t follow it closely, the Redskins are a storied NFL franchise with a long history of success — just not recently. In fact, since current owner Dan Snyder bought the team in 1999, the Redskins have become a perennial cellar dweller and experienced nearly constant change at the top — seven different head coaches over the past thirteen seasons, to be precise.

This is not exactly a recipe for success. Yet Snyder has spent goo gobs of money over that time, and he clearly, desperately, wants to win. So do the players. So why aren’t the Skins winning? And what does any of this have to do with the DC charter school community?

Simply put, what has plagued the Skins is the impatience of Dan Snyder, and the jittery culture he has established. He overpaid for free agents instead of building through the draft. He failed to consider the ways different pieces come together to form a team — that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. And by hiring and firing coaches whenever things didn’t turn around quickly enough, he ensured that his team would never have time to establish a sustainable, long-term road map for success.

By contrast, consider the approach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the NFL’s oldest and most successful franchises. In my 42 years on earth, the Steelers have won six Super Bowls, and played in eight. Along the way, they’ve also had nine losing seasons.  And yet over that entire period, the Pittsburgh Steelers have maintained a consistent organizational identity. They’ve always built through the draft. And in 42 years, while the rest of the sports world lives and dies on each game, they’ve had just three head coaches: Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin.

Which takes us back to the comments of Robert Cane and Naomi DeVaux, and some lessons from the gridiron we would be wise to apply to the classroom as well: Sometimes, successful organizations do tread water. And always, the mark of a great culture is the extent to which it is aligned around core values and principles, and the extent to which its leaders create a culture of security, not anxiety, by their words and actions.

What are the core values and principles that define the shared vision of the DC Public Charter School community? And when it comes to constructing a path for sustained excellence, how can charter leaders be more like the Steelers — and less like the Redskins? There’s no single answer to those questions, but this much seems clear: when it comes to making hiring or firing decisions based solely on a school’s rating (or a team’s record), I can guarantee what legendary Steelers owner Art Rooney would say: that dog just won’t hunt.

(This article also appeared in the Washington Post.)

What’s the Big Idea?

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It’s a good question. And Montgomery County Public Schools superintendent Josh Starr is asking it as part of his new podcast series, which honored me as its first guest.

You can hear the conversation here, but one thing I want to point out: the show is co-hosted by a major urban superintendent and the head of his local teacher union, Chris Lloyd. Their partnership is a model of what’s possible. And their willingness to ask big questions is a reminder that big change is possible even in big districts.

Let me know what you think.

OK, Obama Won. Now What?

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It’s official. Barack Hussein Obama has been re-elected.

Now what?

When it comes to public education, let’s start by recognizing that Race to the Top was well-intentioned — and ultimately out of step with a truly transformational vision of where American schooling needs to go. Yes, we need better ways to improve teacher quality and capacity; no, we can’t do it by doubling down on what we currently measure. Yes, we need to find a way to ensure equity across all schools; no, we can’t do it by ignoring the ways in which schools are inequitably funded and resourced. And yes, we need to ensure that every young person is prepared to be successful in life by the time they graduate; and no, we can’t do it by continuing to assume that the endgoal of schooling is a discrete set of content knowledge at the same time the new Industrial Revolution is removing all the barriers from knowledge acquisition — and accelerating the need for an essential set of lifeskills and habits.

The definition of leadership I offered in American Schools is the ability to balance a distant vision (“One day . . .”) and an up-close focus (“Every day . . .”). Great organizations, whether they’re schools or Fortune 100 companies, see, nurture, and respond to both mission and vision in everything they do. That’s the tension. That’s the art. And that’s the way to ensure that we’re not just solving the practical problems on our plate; we’re also working towards the aspirational goals that animate our efforts.

In Obama’s first term, we received a series of education policies that addressed the problems on our plate; and we were driven by a mission to perfect our ability to succeed in an Industrial-era system that no longer serves our interests.

What would a healthy tension between vision and mission look like in an ideal second term when it comes to public education? I’d suggest three things:

1. Vision (“One day, every teacher in America will be a special education teacher.”); Mission (“Every day, every school and teacher preparation program will work to deepen its capacity to prepare teachers for the 21st century classroom and its emphasis on greater personalization and customization.”)

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: every child has special needs, and every child deserves an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Here’s something else that’s equally obvious: we are responsible for creating the “short-bus” stigma around special education, and we can change it.

Finland is instructive here. By investing deeply in the capacity of its teachers to diagnose and address the individual needs of children, Finland helped ensure that, in effect, every kid ended up in Special Ed. This removed the stigma, so much so that by the time they reach 16, almost every child in Finland will have received some sort of additional learning support. We could do the same. President Obama can’t require traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs from overhauling what they do, but he can certainly put public pressure on them to do so. And individual schools and districts can certainly shape their own professional development calendars with an eye toward that long-term vision, and a step toward the short-term goal of equipping teachers to become more fluent in the full range of student needs.

2. Vision (“One day, every child will be equipped to use his or her mind well and in the service of a more just and harmonious society.”); Mission (“Every day, every school and classroom will identify, and assess, the skills and habits it believes its graduates will need in order to use their minds well and in the service of a more just and harmonious society.”)

As I’ve said before, it’s time for teachers to stop defining themselves as passive victims of the policies of No Child Left Behind. It’s been a decade, and no one has stopped us from identifying — and then piloting — a better, more balanced way to assess student learning and growth.

Actually, that’s not true. The New York Performance Standards Consortium has been doing this for awhile now, and with great results. Individual schools like The Blue School in New York City or Mission Hill School in Boston have been doing it. And forward-thinking districts like Montgomery County in Maryland are exploring ways to do it more.

What are the rest of us waiting for?

The future of learning is one in which content knowledge stops being seen as the end, and starts being understood as the means by which we develop and master essential skills and habits — the real endgoal — that will help us navigate the challenges and opportunities of work, life and global citizenship. This future will require us to do more than merely give lip service to the skills we value; it will demand that we find ways to concretely track and support each child’s path to mastery, while maintaining our awareness and appreciation for the nonlinearity of learning and of human development. And the good news is the art and science of teaching and learning are not mutually exclusive. We can do this. In fact, many of us have already begun.

3. Vision (“One day, it will be universally agreed-upon that education in America is a public good, not a private commodity.”); Mission (“Every day, every policymaker and decision-maker will repeat this vow: whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children.”)

In America, we hold two definitions of freedom in creative tension: the first is the capitalistic definition, in which freedom means choice and consumption; the second is the democratic definition, in which freedom means conscience and compassion.

This will never change; our challenge will always be to manage the tension between the two in ways that serve both. But it’s foolish to unleash choice and consumption in American public education and expect that it will deepen our capacity to exercise conscience and compassion. We can either see education as a private commodity or as a public good. And we must choose.

That doesn’t mean we need to get rid of charter schools or choice; in fact, I’d say it’s undeniable that almost every great school I’ve visited has become great in part because it had greater freedom to chart its own path. But it does mean any investments in school choice need to be proactively made in light of the original vision of charter schools, and that we stop pretending that schools with smaller class sizes, better-trained teachers, and richer learning options are only appealing or viable for the families of the wealthy or the well-located. Simply put, a great learning environmentis challenging, relevant, engaging, supportive, and experiential — no matter who the kids are, and no matter where the community is located.

If I were in charge, those would be my marching orders.

What do you think?

(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)

The Empathy Formula

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For over a year now, I’ve been working with a remarkable group of people at Ashoka who believe empathy is the foundational skill we need in order to become effective changemakers in modern society — and who are bold/quixotic enough to envision a world in which one day, every child learns to master it as readily as s/he masters the ability to read and write.

The challenges associated with an idea this big are myriad. Public education in America is organized around content knowledge, not skills. It defines success via the prism of intellectual, not emotional, growth. It survives via compulsion, not commitment. Any effort to elevate a “soft skill” like empathy must unfold within a larger culture that aspires, tragicomically, to be Bruce-Willis hard. And any adult who already sees the value of nurturing empathetic children needs useful guidance in how to actually do it.

It’s a tall order. And in a recent conversation with some of my Ashoka colleagues, I heard something that might diffuse all those challenges in a single stroke.

As it turns out, there’s a formula we can use to explain how people master empathy, even if no one’s ever described it that way before. And best of all, it’s got a familiar ring to it:

E = EC².

This “Empathy Formula” first emerged out of a conversation several years ago between Emotional Intelligence author Dan Goleman and behavioral scientist Paul Ekman. As Goleman describes it, the two men were discussing FEMA’s feckless response to Hurricane Katrina, and trying to clarify what went wrong, and how the full range of human capacity could be activated in solving our most intractable problems in the future.

What Goleman and Ekman mapped out — in a little-read blog post from 2007 – was three different ways a person can convey empathy. The first is “cognitive empathy,” or the act of knowing how another person feels. This is the first stage of becoming empathetic, and while it may be helpful in motivating people or running for elective office, it also has a dark side if it exists in isolation: narcissism and sociopathic behavior, to name a few.

The second is “emotional empathy,” or the capacity to physically feel the emotions of another. Until recently, we were at a loss to explain how, or even why, we do this. But now scientists have located the process in a set of special cells in the brain called mirror neurons. These cells are what help us recognize and understand the deepest motives and needs of our fellow human beings. As with cognitive empathy, however, emotional empathy can have troublesome consequences if applied in isolation. As Goleman writes, “One downside of emotional empathy occurs when people lack the ability to manage their own distressing emotions can be seen in the psychological exhaustion that leads to burnout. The purposeful detachment cultivated by those in medicine offers one way to inoculate against burnout. But the danger arises when detachment leads to indifference, rather than to well-calibrated caring.”

That leads to the third and final part of the formula — “compassionate empathy”, which is what occurs when we combine the previous two in the name of acting upon what we think and feel. This was the missing ingredient in FEMA’s response to Katrina. Is it possible that it’s also the key to helping us unpack not just how to walk in another’s shoes, but also how to act compassionately on their, and our, behalf?

What would happen if schools were more mindful of this Empathy Formula? Instead of offering disconnected but well-intentioned efforts to help children think, feel or act, would adults start to help children think, feel and act? Would communities be increasingly populated with people who were neither narcissistic nor emotionally empty? And would the most pressing problems of our day — from energy to education to enlivening our civic life — be analyzed, internalized, and diffused by a new generation of changemakers?

Ashoka certainly thinks so. What do you think?

(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)