Ed Johnson is a relentless watchdog over public education in Atlanta. He happens to be a devotee of the thought of W. Edwards Deming, and he opposes the current corporate reform philosophy of disruption, top-down orders, ranking, rating, punishment, and rewards. Johnson understands that accountability begins at the top, and that the role of leadership is to support those who work in the organization, not to micro-manage or give orders. He recently sent this mini-essay to members of the Atlanta Board of Education:
Atlanta Superintendent: “Changes are never easy”
Why yet another trifling and regressive catchphrase of the same variety as “change is hard” and “people are afraid of change?” Augh!
All too often the reason the autocratic, self-absorbed leader summarily talks about change being hard or never easy amounts to the leader implicitly self-promoting the leader’s standing and implicitly denigrating the standing of others. It is an ingrained, intentional, and perverted psychopathy of blaming meant to intimidate and silence dissension from the get go. It provides for immediately reframing and thereby dismissing dissenters as “being afraid of change.” It is a slick, accusatory way of saying: “Others have to change, I don’t.”
Heaven forbid such a leader should be asked: “Well, why are changes never easy? What are you doing to make it otherwise?”
change (v.) make or become different
Meanwhile, in reality, in general, change is indeed easy simply because change is a ubiquitous fact of life. No change, no life. In fact, ones very being is change. We all do and experience change, every day, every hour, every second, every whatever time unit. We are so embedded in and involved with change that we rarely notice change. We tend to notice change only when change is imposed, and then when change seems pointless, untenable, threatening, unjust, amoral, unethical, evil, etc.; in short, change for change sake.
Then what, in reality, is not a ubiquitous fact of life? Improvement.
improve (v.) make or become better
Unlike change, improvement stems from getting new knowledge; no new knowledge, no improvement. However, the autocratic, self-absorbed leader already knows all there is to know, so is generally fearful hence wickedly controlling of others learning and getting new knowledge and improving because, for the leader, the collective role of others simply is to perform well to benefit mostly the leader’s standing and aspirations.
Sadly, nowadays, with competitive market-based school reform and school choice and such, “others” includes children controlled and manipulated to perform to “high expectations” and “high standards” of college and career readiness and such, with authentic learning and getting new knowledge and improving made secondary.
Then for whom is change truly hard and not easy?
Consider change is truly hard and not easy, if not impossible, for the autocratic, self-absorbed leader who chooses the easier task of imposing change upon others rather than choosing the harder challenge of leading improvement.
Why bother making Atlanta Public Schools better when making it different, at a cost now approaching one billion dollars, is so much easier, quicker, and efficient to do. Plus, top leadership need not change their ways.
Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA
(404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com
“Change is never easy”
Change is never easy
Dollars even harder
Shown to us by Deasy
Lauded as a martyr
Funding Loss
Death be not proud,
A thousand cuts make one queasy;
Bleeding be not loud,
But change is never easy.
Excellent posting.
😎
Off topic but, speaking of Atlanta, a Georgia attorney partnered in a prominent law firm who “defended EMPLOYERS in more than 200 union organizing campaigns” …was “indicted by a grand jury for malice murder, felony murder and five other counts.” The victim was his wife. He shot her in their car. Jonathan Turley’s blog reported on the story and the lawyer’s defense. “He pulled out the gun when he thought they had inadvertently driven into a Black Lives Matter protest.”
There’s so much one could say about justice and Georgia.
For a laugh- a commenter to the Turley post wrote, “Spouse murders always spike during BLM protests-they’re worse than the Super Bowl. Anyway it’s not very unusual for guys nicknamed “Tex” to kill their wives.”
Diane, I get you blogs daily and find them very informative and helpful. Our two sons are both products of public schools and excellent universities, Both have master degrees,etc and have taught15-20 years. Chris is here in the Dallas area with the CFB district(Ranchview H.S.) Alex is in Washinton D.C.(the Paul H.S.public charter) They both teach American History and they want to stay in the classroom not administration. . Alex was teaching in Chapel-Hill N.C. until things got so bad that his mentors said get out while you can. There were two articles in the Dallas Morning News this morning(1) two bills coming up in the Texas House after passing the Senate concerning virtual charters(Pearson is behind this) Also DISD is looking at a tax swap. I appreciate our leadership,but this just doesn’t feel right. Would you please let me know either in you blog ,ect what your thoughts are. I read this as just another hedge fund getting my tax dollars that should be going to our children and grandchildren public schools. I have reached out to our Rep.Linda Koop who sits in the House Education Committee. Thanks Will Wilkins
Will,
Thanks for writing. I can tell you that online charter schools–whether owned by Pearson, K12 Inc., or someone else–are a waste of students’ time and taxpayers’ dollars. They have been evaluated repeatedly, and they have always been found to be deficient.
I don’t know what the “tax swap” is, so I urge you to learn more and tell us.
In the meanwhile, help Lori Fitzpatrick, who is in a run-off for a crucial school board seat against one of Dallas’ “good old boys.”
This is the definition of a billionaire, corporate-driven K-12 public education reform movement:
“the autocratic, self-absorbed leader who chooses the easier task of imposing change upon others rather than choosing the harder challenge of leading improvement.”
I’ve seen that attitude from almost all of the adminimals I have met. It’s not just billionaires.
For to “lead” improvement one has to get out of the way and let the line workers, i.e., the teachers be the ones if improvement is even needed. Which I see as another fault of the adminimals following along with other adminimals who say change is needed without seriously examining the school or district in which they are supposed to lead.
Anyone who has helped make changes/improvements in a business or school should know, starting out, that the first roughly 50% of the desired change is usually rather easy. The next 25% is incrementally harder, the next 12% geometrically harder and the next 6% exponentially harder-good luck on the last 6% as usually by then the whole process needs to be started over. That is the nature of “improvement” in a system. And most don’t even know how to get that first 50% done because they focus on the wrong things and/or demand that the lowest level workers do all the sacrifice.
Sacrifice should start at the top. I think the 1st sacrifice to the gods should be agent orange followed by most of his cabinet, one at a time, a blood sacrifice like in the old testament.
The first principal I worked with back in the late 1970s believed in bottom-up; not top down. His name was Ralph Pagan and he spoiled me and probably the rest of his staff. I thought his management style to organize his staff into teams to manage the school with him in a supporting role was the way things were done. Then Ralph had a stroke and almost died. He retired early and never returned.
That’s when the staff of that middle school discovered that the district had a top-down, autocratic, incompetent, know-little-to-nothing, micromanaging mentality and Ralph had been running interference to keep them away from his school. The pressure on Ralph was intense and we didn’t know it.
Once Ralph was gone, we ended up being pulled in to the top down, fascist regime of that school district. Nothing was ever the same again.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Money buys power and that leads to corruption and evil.
“. . .a blood sacrifice like in the old testament. ”
I’d probably prefer something more on the order of Aztec blood sacrificing. Huitzilopochtli is not happy. Time to make him happy.
I recall that Aztec blood sacrifice is where they cut out the victim’s heart and start eating it before the sacrificed dies.
The practice of human sacrifice has a long history in MesoAmerica and even Andean pre-Columbian cultures. The Aztecs really were “johnny come latelys” to that horrible human practice. What was done to the heart and other victim parts depended upon to which god the victim was sacrified. For some it was considered a great honor to be sacrificed which shows, to me, the great lengths to which humans go to satisfy and appease their gods (and Christians and their god were not exempt from horrific deadly practices.)
And President Agent Orange thinks he is a god who should have humans sacrificed to him.
How incredibly patronizing, not that we all haven’t heard some version of this assertion. I could almost feel the pat on my head. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” echoed in my thoughts.
But they know best, just as they seem to think they do at CPE I. So they persist and persist.
Sent from my iPhone
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Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ἡράκλειτος, Herakleitos; c. 535 BC – 475 BC) , postulated that “We live in a world, in which the only constant is change”
see
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heraclitus
Anyone else feel when they fight this, “current corporate reform philosophy of disruption, top-down orders, ranking, rating, punishment, and rewards.” they are made to feel like they are insane?
Or maybe you have been told by your BOE members that “there is no conspiracy to ruin public education and turn it over to charters and privateers”. Who said anything about a conspiracy – I’m just pointing out facts.
Or we “reviewed the research” before we brought in Teach to One Math. You mean the reasearch they paid for to make them look good so you would buy their products?
But imbedded in the last paragraph in their “research” is:
“It is important to stress again that these findings cannot be attributed to TTO without the use of experimental or quasi-experimental designs. In other words, we cannot state definitively that TTO caused the above-average achievement gains noted above. ”
But alas, I’m insane.