One of the favorite tactics of corporate reformers is to set lofty goals.
We have learned over the past twenty years that you can’t have reform without goals.
I remember back when No Child Left Behind was passed, and it included the goal (mandate, actually) that all students in grades 3-8 would be proficient by the year 2014. (By the way, if anyone wonders, I was not an architect of NCLB. I wasn’t involved at any point in writing it. That distinction goes to Sandy Kress, Margaret Spellings, Education Trust, and maybe even Rod Paige, who was Secretary of Education.)
I remember the six national goals set in 1990 by the nation’s governors and the George W. Bush administration. Goal one was, “By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn.” There was also, “By the year 2000, United States students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement.” The Clinton administration added two more national goals I don’t think any of the national goals were met, but there were no punishments attached to them so they quietly disappeared.
With NCLB, everything changed. Suddenly, there were real consequences attached to not meeting a goal (100% proficiency) that no nation in the world had ever reached.
Schools that persistently failed to make “adequate yearly progress” would eventually be closed or turned over to a private management company or turned into a charter (same difference) or taken over by the state or staff would be fired. At the time, none of these sanctions had any evidence behind them. They still don’t. No state had ever taken over a school and made it a better school. Charters had almost no record at all. And private management companies had failed to demonstrate that they knew how to “fix” schools with low scores.
So now we have moved on to higher levels of goal-setting, since that is what business strategists like to do. Reformers must have goals! And goals must have accountability!
When I was in Detroit, the local business-civic groups that wanted to take over the schools said that if they were given a free hand, the graduation rate would rise to 90% in ten years. Well, why not 100%, as long as they were making promises? Why only 90%?
In Indianapolis, a local group of corporate reformers has proposed the usual remedy of privatization and promised remarkable achievements, come the by-and-by.
In Philadelphia, the former gas company executive who is currently in charge promised that if the plan he purchased from the Boston Consulting Group were adopted…well, you know, a dramatic increase in test scores, graduation rates, etc.
As I wrote just yesterday, Mike Miles—the Broad-trained military man who holds his troops in low regard—pledged grand goals for 2020.
But my current favorite goal is the one pledged by John White, the Broad-trained Commissioner of Education in Louisiana. White has promised that by 2014, all students in Louisiana would be proficient. (http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2012_05_06_archive.html). Now, the reason I especially like this goal is that the timeline is so short. That means that we can hold Commissioner White accountable for results in only two years! If 100% of Louisiana’s students are not proficient in 2014, he has failed.
Now there is a man willing to stake his career and reputation on his goals. That’s impressive.
I wouldn’t exactly take that pledge to the bank, but I think we should treat his promise seriously and hold him to it in 2014.
Diane
If Louisiana’s students don’t accomplish this goal, whose fault will it be? Will he take the blame, or point it elsewhere?
Only public schools and their teachers can fail; corporate figureheads like John White simply move on to the next investment opportunity, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
I certainly relate to the frustration with government officials setting goals that seem more political than realistic. (I’m not suggesting that John White is doing that in this case.) Three thoughts though:
1. You link to a post by a blogger that claims John White set this goal. It would be better to see the link to a known news source and/or a post that includes a quote from John White. I’m not at all suggesting that such a post doesn’t exist or that John White hasn’t set that goal, but I thought the source you used was a questionable one.
2. In many contexts, setting a goal that will be difficult or impossible to reach could be useful in guiding or encouraging progress. I don’t think that I like the idea of government officials doing this, but I certainly am OK with organizational leaders doing this if they think it will lead to the best organizational result.
3. If Louisiana gets close to 100%, or even greatly improves on proficiency, I hope you will give him partial credit! I’m guessing that most others will.
KHirsh,
You ask a good question regarding the source of John White’s goal of 100% proficiency by 2014. The source of the statement is Louisiana’s official application for a waiver from the mandates of NCLB, on p. 60: http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/uploads/19324.pdf
Diane
Thanks! Lots of interesting things on that page:
1. The title of the section is “Retaining Louisiana’s Long-term Aspirational Goal of 100% Proficiency in 2014”. It seems that the word “retaining” and “aspirational” are both important in this phrase.
2. The first paragraph begins “Louisiana’s dedication to excellence and equity are central to its accountability system. For this reason, Louisiana remains committed to the [goals] established several years ago, which set …. targets aimed towards 100 percent… by 2014.”
In other words, they are sticking to the original goals. I can’t tell when they were set, but the table on that page suggests it might have been in 2002-2003.
3. The next paragraph begins “A goal of 100 percent proficiency ensures that there is no variation across the end-points for districts, schools, and subgroups”.
Overall, it seems like the context of this goal — an aspirational goal that was set several years ago that they are sticking to because they think it will lead to the best results — adds useful color to your comments.
That is a restatement of NCLB’s aspirational goal of 100% proficiency by 2014. No nation in the world has achieved 100% proficiency. No state in this nation will reach it by 2014, including Louisiana. Setting unreachable goals does not raise morale, it lowers it. It guarantees failure. NCLB has failed because (among other reasons) it mandated a goal that was never within reach. What you cited supports what I wrote: John White has set a lofty goal. This is his goal. Will he reach it? Diane
That’s helpful. So the goal you are referring to is just the NCLB aspirational goal. I see your point, but I’m guessing that morale will be excellent if they dramatically improve proficiency. Hopefully we’ll find out.
I agree strongly, though, that the original NCLB goal of 100% proficiency was an inappropriate measure for a government. In the very least, it’s likely to be used as a weapon to attack people for failing to meet the aspirational goal. Moreover, it tends to dumb down the policy conversation.
I agree completely. After 10 years of NCLB, we now know that more than half the public schools in the nation have been labeled as “failing.” In Massachusetts, our highest performing state, it is 80%. Setting an unattainable goal does not encourage people to try harder. It discourages them and makes them feel futile. When aspirational goals are connected to draconian consequences (people get fired, schools get closed), then there is something mean about them. Diane
John White wrote the waiver in such a way that he hoped the document would get the o.k. from the USDOE. One needs to realize, too, that the submitted waiver, I understand, was never brought before the the state board of education (BESE) for approval. It is also a reflection of the former Supt. Paul Pastorek, who by the way recommended John White to be appointed by BESE. An attempt to do a national search was defeated by a vote of BESE.
Diane writes: “Setting unreachable goals does not raise morale, it lowers it. ” – I agree. It may be an aspiration to be perfect, but goals should be SMART goals: “Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Realistic – Timely”. Teachers are required to write smart goals. Reformers should practice what they preach, so to speak.
“lofty goals” is a symptom to the process of handing education from the hands of real people – us, to the hands of fictitious people – greedy for profit corporations. The business world uses lofty goals on a daily basis and the transformation of this language to education tells us where it is heading. The business world uses lofty goals to mask lies. They commit fraud on enormous scale, hide it behind vague, lofty, optimistic lies and profit from the next bubble until it bursts. The fraud we have been seeing in the business world moved to education, with the assistant of fraudulent managers like Bloomberg, Duncan, Obama, Klein, Rhee and even that man Coleman. All are ignorant regarding education but have excellent talent in business or rather in fraud.
We have seen in the past years few of those lies based bubbles burst over and over again yet those managers never took responsibility nor were discredited for their “reform”. Another corporate trait adopted by the destroyers of education is the shift of responsibility of any failure to teachers while decorating themselves with any achievement – most of which are fraudulent.
We can skim through few of the greatest bubbles in education caused by the culture of lies and cover ups, correlated with the ones designed in Wall Street and brought the great depression and the smaller depression – 2008.
First it’s Texas “dramatic results” that were achieved by vast data manipulation by the business oriented Bush #2:
http://www.factcheck.org/bush_education_ad_going_positive_selectively.html
it seems that:” school officials were shown to be fudging the numbers to disguise high drop-out rates” Sounds like Goldman Sachs but it’s Texas government.
Another bubble based fraud came from Atlanta:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/05/atlanta-public-schools-cheating_n_890526.html
it was found that:”widespread cheating inflated Atlanta Public Schools’ 2009 state standardized tests scores.” thanks to threats sets of intensives and unrealistic demands from Bush/Obama administrations that in order to be achieved required people of all ranks to commit fraud.
One of the most outstanding example is from the the genius of business himself Mayor Bloomberg, one who made fortune in the world of fraud, as a matter of fact he has been paid billions to lie around the clock via Bloomberg network. The emperor who was voted on a promise to fix education was exposed without his clothes. The huge gain in state’s test were mainly fraudulent:
But the facts don’t matter to the purgers in charge. Their aim is not to make education better, but to dismantle a system that promotes equality, democracy, civility, gave rise to unions. They dislike a system that benefits more then few hedge fund managers and parasitical profiteers like Rhee and Pearson.
” However, the blind adoption of arbitrary, albeit just sounding, quantitative targets is foolish at best, and tremendously harmful at worst.” — teacher, and MBA, Dave Reid. See InterACT for more: http://accomplishedcaliforniateachers.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/edreform-goals-reid/