Here is a blog that says that a school with low test scores is like a failed restaurant.
We know what happens when a restaurant fails.
It closes. It goes bankrupt. The hungry customers go somewhere else.
He is an entrepreneur who is now in the business of reforming schools.
Here is his analysis:
Struggling schools are like failed restaurants. The kitchen staff are the educators. Maybe the chef is the chapter union leader. The restaurant owner/manger is the school administration. Customers are the kids. And Eli Broad or one of the education agencies he funds is Gordon Ramsey. He comes in with honest, straightforward observations, and tells you what’s going wrong. Sometimes it’s the chef that’s the problem and the management is too disengaged to fix it. Sometimes it’s the management, inhibiting the talent of a bunch of great cooks. In most cases, the restaurant is neglected – dirty and infested. Disgusting actually, especially if you look in the secret places, behind and underneath things, as LA Unified knows all too well.
Well, gosh, wouldn’t you be thrilled to have Eli Broad come to your school and tell you how to fix your problems? Wouldn’t you want to have a guy who made billions in the home-building and insurance industry tell you what’s wrong and what to do?
Or are you just a lousy chef working in a rat-infested building without the sense to do anything about it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hm. Myself, I think Wendy Kopp should be named to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, because she’s not a CPA, or to the State Board of Law Examiners, because she’s not a lawyer. I’m not sure about naming her to the Physicians Certification Board, though. Let’s ask Doug Lynch at Penn. Oh, wait. Maybe ask Zeke Emmanuel over at Wharton? Teachers are just short order cooks, ya know?
i totally agree that a struggling school is like a failing restaurant, and that Eli Broad would be like the educational reform version of Gordon Ramsay. hmmmm. . .i wonder how that would work out?
in the first two seasons of Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares,” the show where Ramsay swoops in for 2 days to “fix” every problem in a troubled school, only 5 of the 21 restaurants he visited are still open; in the second season alone, only 1 out of 10 is still in business. the big difference is that Ramsay is actually involved in the restaurant industry, and has some level of content knowledge; Broad is not a teacher, has no education degree, and has never taught anyone anything.
Ramsay’s approach to “restaurant reform” appears to be very similar to Romney’s approach to business, called “creative destruction.” it makes sense that Broad would follow the same script. the bloggers clumsy analogy was more accurate than he probably intended.
That’s a remarkable fact. I have to admit I was taken in by Ramsay. The story narrative is that he usually returns in a few months and the miracle is bearing fruit. Instead it turns out his “no excuses” pedagogy is giant failure.
Now I understand how journalists can tour one charter school and assume that what they witnessed that day (or what they were allowed to witness) is what happens every day in every charter school in perpetuity.
People like to trust other people–it makes us feel that we are in a safe world. It also makes us vulnerable to people who exploit that trust to create an illusion of success.
Appears to be another edudeformer who never taught in a public school telling the professionals who have taught many years what and how we should teach. He especially bristles at being called a “colonizer”. Hum, I wonder why, could it be his christian background (studied at Regent College “An international graduate school of Christian Studies to educate, nurture, and equip men and women from around the world to live and work as servant leaders.”) Sounds like a “colonizer” to me.
i’m no fan of Mr. Broad’s approach to reform, but he didn’t study at Regent University. he graduated with a BS from Michigan State University.
I think Duane is referring to the blogger Diane linked above.
Yes, I am referring to the blogger. On his site it states that he studied at Regents.
Once again children are likened to a “thing. Using a restaurant as an analogy is ridiculous. It just makes little sense to me. Unless you consider that each restaurant, except for fast food ones, has strengths and weaknesses just like children do and the goal is to play to the strengths and improve on the weaknesses. Isn’t that what the restaurant critics do when write a review?
Nice thoughts but I have to disagree in a certain sense. You stated: “Using a restaurant as an analogy is ridiculous and generally I concur, but. . .
I’ve been stating for years, “If you want a gourmet meal do you go to McDonalds to get it. Standardization vs Gourmet. We would like to see gourmet results when we only provide for standardized meals, i.e., McDonalds. One doesn’t get a gourmet meal for McDonald’s prices.
Mitchell beat me to it, but Gordon Ramsey is someone who has actually cooked in a restaurant before and worked his way up to the top of his field. He is highly required by cooks/chefs all over the world, and many people would jump at the opportunity to work with and be mentored by him. Though it looks like many of the struggling restaurants he has helped have failed anyway according to the other response, those restaurants sought his help. The state restaurant inspectors office didn’t send him in to intervene.
However, all of these non-teachers telling teachers how to do their jobs is just insulting. Personally, I would love to have the kind of access to a master teacher as I had when I was a student teacher for a period of time to tighten things up.
Let’s say I grant the writer his comparison that schools are like restaurants. Let’s continue it use Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay too. We’ll also ignore the awful rate at which Ramsay succeeds at saving these restaurants and that they are more interested in making a television program than a restaurant. Here is where the author has it all wrong.
If the kitchen staff are the educators, there is no way the chef is the union. The union works for and on behalf of the teachers whereas the kitchen staff works for the chef. It is the chef that creates the dishes and tells the kitchen staff how to prepare them. This would make the chef the policy makers, the people who dictate to the educators what and how to teach (common core possibly?). No matter the technical skills of the kitchen staff, if the chef has terrible recepies the food will still be terrible.
Maybe he’s correct that the problem is the chef and management (local school boards) is too disengaged to fix it. Maybe they are intimidated by corporate managers (state boards) who rarely have any experience in restaurants other than dining there who claim to know it all and control the capital. Maybe corporate management bullies store management ignoring the advise and experience of those in the restaurant. Maybe its the shareholders, the ones who provide the money (national boards, Mr. Duncan) make these ridiculous demands, never dining in these restaurants, preferring the private country club and treating the restraint as only a data point. Maybe it’s any or all of those factors which undermine the success of the restaurant? If the restaurant is dirty and neglected, it’s neglected by the owners. Who owns schools, we do! The public. The communities where these schools live. (yes, that last sentence reads correct, schools live, and in neighborhoods!) Get dirty, clean it up, but don’t just sit and point the finger of blame. You’ll be stuck pointing at you! Children are not customers. They are part owner! Families and communities don’t consume school, they own it.
Lets peek at Gordon Ramsay, the reformer. It may be a telivision program first and foremost, but let’s look at the way they attempt to rescue these restaurants. First, Gordon Ramsay is a world renown chef and restraunteur not some insurance salesman. He’s not some hack that’s never “been there, done that.” Ramsay goes into the restaurant and tastes the food personally. He watches and solicits feedback from the customers. (If we step back and use the kids as school customers, when is the last time anyone asked them about their schools?) He interviews the service and kitchen staff and LISTENS to their concerns and suggestions. He will dig deep into the personal lives of the owners/management to find the true source of the problem as it is rarely what it may seem on the surface (marital problems, depression, family crisis, etc.) Who are the owners of the schools? Right, the communities! And what are their “issues?” It will be really difficult to truly fix the school without fixing the community. Back to the restaurant, It is very rare that he fires someone and when he does recommend it, the offending party is often a malcontent. Ive never seen him fore the entire restaurant staff. NEVER! Ramsay takes the time to retrain chefs, support the waitstaff, etc. he finds the restaurant’s true leaders and stands back, letting them work. Sure he’s close by incase they need a helping hand or a bit of advise, but he is not the micro-manager. Yes, when needed, he overhauls the menu, but he carefully shows the staff how to execute it. Sure, he’s redecorated the dining hall, it’s amazing what fresh paint does to morale. So lets have true professional development for the school staff, let’s clean and polish the buildings, let’s work on fixing the communities (they’re the owners remember). It’s a long, long, terribly difficult process (did I mention that it may take a while) to transform a failing restaurant into a success. You see, that’s why so many of Ramsay’s reformed restaurants fail. He swoops in to be the savior, rarely sticking around for more that a few days or weeks even, then goes back to his posh life. Soon after his return to Mt. Olympus the owners are left to their own devices and return to their old selves thus causing the restaurant to fail. Isn’t that what these education “reformers” do? I’m all for reform, but let’s start with the owners (who are they again?) and let’s stick around until the job is done.
Sorry for the long response. Please excuse any typos. That’s was a lot to Type from an iPhone. I couldn’t let this one slide by. I had to respond now.
Man, way too logical of an analysis. Are you a certified Mr. Teachbad “difficult teacher”????
As a 30-year veteran on the, umm, “kitchen staff,” I can nitpick this analogy to pieces–beginning with the absence of servers (who are the interface between customers and the reason they came into the restaurant) and ending with the union leader as chef–does this mean that when a restaurant / school, is high-volume, serving delicious food and entertaining a long waiting list for reservations that it’s the union leader’s creative policies that got it there?
Right. I rest my case. Here’s my question, however: why are education “reformers” moving to analogies to make their case? (see Michelle Rhee’s analogy of clumsy, overweight, embarrassment-to-the-nation schools here: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/michelle-rhee-launches-web-ad-campaign)
Is this because the facts just aren’t running their way, so they need entertainment which allows viewers to draw their own unsubstantiated conclusions?
Damn, you must be another certified Mr. Teachbad “difficult teacher”.
Good on ya!
The clumsiness of the restaurant analogy simply indicates a blithe lack of understanding what education is on the part of the corporate reformers. Comparing a school to a business doesn’t work any better than trying to operate a school like one.
Any analogy about schools that describes kids as customers is flawed. In fact, in any school the students are workers and they are required by law to be there. Unlike customers who have the option of being somewhere else, students work at producing and acquiring knowledge and skills. While there may be many valid comparisons when applying market models to schools, in any endeavor someone must build, create or manufacture a product or service if the endeavor will be a going concern, then there must be workers. Students are workers, and they produce and sustain knowledge, skill, and inquiry that are used by themselves and others over a lifetime. Students are not customers.
Overall your analysis is fine but to state “Students are workers” belies what you have written.
Thanks Dr. Ravitch for sharing the troubling post and inviting these helpful deconstructions of the analogy. I tried in my original comments on the ‘Kitchen Nightmare’ post as respectfully as possible to address my reaction:
I find the analogy of Gordon Ramsey making over a kitchen, to entrepreneurs making over a school, to be offensive at a number of levels. This doesn’t ‘deconstruct’ the “imperialist motif,” which you allege, but reinscribes it far more farcically still by oversimplifying the fundamental priorities of learning and teaching (“the end goal isn’t complicated”), reasserting the responsibility of educators to understand and accept the corporate reformers’ reputed beneficence, implying the equal or perhaps greater authority of the outside and uniformed voice to design and to promote meaningful transformation, and obviating reference to the framing macroeconomic and sociological conflicts that govern certain crises in the public education system. I salute, at some level, your bravery in offering up this perspective as a counterpoint to certain threads of current discourse–and I agree, in the most general sense, that the ongoing conversations must become more constructive–but that work must and shall be performed, in my opinion, most effectively by those professionally trained, experienced, and familiar with the cultures and the systems they wish to improve. That work is happening in a startling range of schools and districts; community and educator organizations; and student, parent, and educator voice forums across the country–and it will be from the ‘intrapreneurs,’ and not the ‘extrapreneurs’ that meaningful change will come.
As to the author’s bristling at the use of of the language of colonialism and/or imperialism to characterize reformers’ efforts, I ventured this:
Also, I don’t think that those who use the ‘imperial’ or ‘colonial’ tropes to address or to repudiate corporate reform intend them (1) literally or (2) to imagine themselves in the roles of the colonially or imperially oppressed per se. I think the usefulness of the figure in the discourse on education is to understand the arrogance, presumption, and privilege that is brought to bear by the would-be ‘colonizer’ on the ‘indigenous population.’ To that extent it seems a useful metaphor to understand and to respect the experience of many, many educators throughout the country.
As for an exchange of comments on a blog, it didn’t go well.
if Kitchen Nightmares really followed the lead of school reform, then Ramsay would turn every restaurant into a chain fast-food joint (charter schools), with the same menu (canned curriculum and “scripted” courses), staffed by a team of poorly-trained, lowly paid, constantly turned-over cooks and waiters (TFA interns and uncertified teachers), led by people who had never worked in a restaurant before (business and military leaders drafted as school principals, Rhee, Duncan et al) and run by a huge conglomerate more concerned with the bottom line than with preparing and serving delicious food (K12, National Heritage Academies, Gates Foundation).
analogies are tricky tools.
Thank you! Very well stated!!