In this podcast, Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider interview business journalist Andrea Gabor about the lessons of her new book, “After the Culture Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.”
“Gabor argues that business DOES offer lessons for schools – but that the education reform industry has learned all of the wrong ones.”
This is the book to read this summer.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fear based“Reform” doesn’t work.Fixed the redundancy.
And I would argue that Gabor has it exactly backwards.
Good schools offer lessons of cooperation and grassroots based improvement to businesses, rather than the other way around.
Why does a “business journalist” think she is an expert on education, anyway?
It’s bizarre.
Yes, there seems to be a ubiquitous presumption that education must be fixed, not merely modernized or updated. It’s fair to say education should keep up with job skills to some degree, be aware of what’s becoming more or less relevant. But if there are lessons to be learned, I think corporate culture and function has dibs on them. It’s almost like considering modeling your own social behavior based on political turmoil or analytics. Education is not a product or simple service, and cognitive development is not a sales enhancement or customer satisfaction rating.
Education cannot fire its way to “success” because the same students will remain whether teachers are fired or not. Teachers have no control over the socio-economic level of their students which largely determines the scores of students. They can bring in a new batch of teachers that won’t be able to control these variables either. “Reform” rife with false assumptions.
She is borowing from Deming’s theories here, which seem to have been her special interest for a long time in both biz & ed. Deming would have found all of today’s ed-deform policies counter-productive, & was promoting ways to implement exactly what you recommend, “cooperation and grass-roots improvement.”
I will soon post a review of Andrea Gabor’s important new book, which incorporates Deming theory of collaboration as a lens through which to understand school reform
Yes, yes and yes.
We have a fear-based POTUS, and look how that’s going for us.
He’s a mental midget and thus all the hate.
I lived through a district turnaround long before “reform” entered the picture in ’80s and ’90s. Teachers, parents and administrators worked collaboratively. Teachers served on every district committee. We did a self-study that improved instruction and services for students. There was a high level of trust among the staff, and the “fear factor” was low. After NCLB and a change of some central administrators, top down decisions became more common, most notable in my building where the same principal that fostered collaboration in the ’90s shifted to the “do what I say” model of management. The stress and unrealistic goals of NCLB turned some administrators into authoritarian types as more and more regulations trickled down from the state and federal governments.
NCLB, RTT, Success for All, high stakes testing, the Common Gore are all there in place to make $$$$$ for the few and to ensure the entitled stay in power (unchallenged) and continue accumulating even more $$$$$.
So agree…you really cannot be an administrator at this time unless you follow the reform narrative…which by the way has had the opposite effect on improvement in education.
“. . . the same principal that fostered collaboration in the ’90s shifted to the “do what I say” model of management.”
At the same time in the mid to late 90s the administrator literature all were spouting the need for a “strong líder*” based on the model of the strongman CEO of business. So as all good adminimals do, as referenced in your statement, they followed the crowd and political mandates and tried to become and recruit those future líderes of public education. Gotta have accountability for the bottom so that the accountability doesn’t reach the top dog líderes.
*líder = strong arming authoritarian on the model of a banana republic oligarchical boss/commander.
A strong correlation: keep the accountability heavy and endless at the bottom so that it cannot reach the top
The linked amazon summary mentioned Leander, TX schools as one of Gabor’s case studies. Googling, I learned this district has long been working on adopting Deming’s
collaborative, bottom-up theories as its M.O. One of their first moves — basic to eliminating ‘fear-based reform’– was to obtain a waiver of most of the state-mandated evaln process. I found links to one of Leander SD’s primary resources for these efforts, langfordlearning.com. Interesting site.
At least in the podcast, I did not hear Gabor speak about the role of corporate influence on federal and state legislation and the difficulty public schools have in by-passing those rules almost all them tied to funding for schools.
The Leander District’s success in getting a state waiver for teacher evaluation based on test scores helped to create a school culture with some reduction in fear. I think that the waiver from federal regulations in the CORE districts of California did not have the same result. It introduced more standardization and data-based threats, aided and abetted by private foundations and research programs enlisted to rationalize standardized policies and practices. Absent from the podcast (perhaps not from the book) is the multifaceted campaign to substitute computer delivered instruction anytime, anywhere for brick and mortar schools
“Graffiti Grows in Hartford”
(Diane Ravitch versified)
Graffiti high up on the wall
Says “Schools are not a business”
“But public good for one and all”
Though some have clearly missed this
Framing the issue as “schools should learn from businesses” is simply wrong headed, regardless of the businesses one chooses to emulate.
But that is precisely how Gabor frames the issue. By saying in that book that “what has led the mainstream education establishment astray is that it has adopted the wrong lessons from American business”, Gabor implies that “if only they had adopted the right lessons from American business, everything would have been great.”
It’s not clear why schools need to adopt lessons from business at all.
They have fundamentally different purposes — which would seem to be important.
The purpose of every business is to make money, for management, employees and/or shareholders.
Some businesses may be more democratic than others and some might even share profits among employees, which is all well and good, but their basic purpose is still making money.
But of course, that is NOT the purpose of schools.
That some ideas (eg, of Deming) might work well in both business and schools is not particularly surprising given that human beings are involved in both endeavors. But that does not mean that businesses are good models for schools.
Regardless of how many things Gabor gets right, her basic thesis is flawed and, unfortunately, the flawed framing of the issue inflicts damage on schools because it perpetuates the idea that if only schools could be run as businesses (“good” businesses, of course) all would be well.
I agree, but I also liked the analogy Gabor made to Toyota letting its assembly line workers make decisions instead of force feeding decisions from up high. I don’t need to learn lessons from businesses, but I need my bosses to learn better lessons from somewhere – anywhere!
“It’s not clear why schools need to adopt lessons from business at all.”
Public schools shouldn’t have that need at all. If anything it should be the other way around. But as you state the purpose of business is to make oodles of money, everything else is secondary, and if something/someone gets in the way of that purpose, well, time to say adios to it/him/her.
Public schools have a completely different fundamental purpose as laid out by this summary of various states’ constitutional wording:
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
Were businesses to have as a fundamental purpose of “promoting the welfare of the individual” this country might have a lot more humane economic system. But that isn’t the case so why do many insist that schools follow what businesses do?
Gabor makes a lot of good points that Diane and others here have made (eg, about Deming) time and again, which makes me think Gabor has gotten her ideas from this blog.
That’s a good thing, as long as she credits the people who have given her the ideas.
It’s just unfortunate that she perpetuates the “schools should take lessons from businesses” idea because a lot of (most?) people who hear that understand it to mean that “schools should be run like businesses” which is essentially what the deformers have been saying for two decades now.
That is without a doubt the worst idea that the deformers have propagated because it has led to all manner of destructive policies (disruption, value added modeling, accountability and all the rest).
Thoughtful, insightful, true.
True dat. Yet certain types of business and education are not so far apart, & idea-borrowing/ sharing not so outlandish. At one point I spent a decade working in an engrg co (my husband still works in that biz so I keep current). It is similar to teaching in that the primary asset of the enterprise is its people – the professionals who are delivering the service (an attitude school admins do not always emulate) .
I find the engrg co’s (w/the exception of those that become too big) have far better “people-policies”. There, it is a given that experience is what makes a good engineer; it is prized and remunerated. A mix of experience levels is hired to continue feeding the mentoring/ apprenticeship process, & you don’t easily let people go w/o having given them a number of opportunities to succeed in different situations. Developing subordinates is a key measure of a good team leader/ supervisor. Ability to collaborate/ work in teams is a typical measure of excellence (not some bean-counter version of individual productivity).
Law firms have some lessons to share. They are similar to schools in that the bulk of personnel are professionals on more or less equal footing who work individually with clients. If the firm is big enough to have sr. partners heading up specialty areas [parallel to dept heads], you may see much more shepherding/ training/ mentoring going on than at a school. Developing subordinates again, in small groups. Schools seem too often to leave individual teachers to their own resources. PD is not mentoring
Borrowing ideas is great, but framing the issue as “schools should adopt the lessons of business” is not.
It makes all the difference.
“Reform” was not wrong headed because it adopted the wrong lessons from business, it was wrong headed because it used business as a model.
And notwithstanding what Gabor says about “good” businesses, the businesses she mentions (Gore, Patagonia and a few others) are not at all the norm. And Mozilla in it’s original form was not really even a business.
I worked as a software engineer in an R&D group for a high tech company for many years and it was probably what Gabor would consider a “good” business because the employees were treated very well and their ideas respect.
But…and it is a big but…it was a business, which meant that the bottom line (money) dictated things in the end. The primary reason I left (despite what was a great , collaborative, creative, work atmosphere) was that the sales department was pushing products (safety critical instrumentation) out the door before they were ready. That’s the rule in business rather than the exception.
That’s a very poor model for schools.
Quite frankly, I don’t believe Gabor really understands what goes on in most business. Theory is not the same as practice.
Andrea Gabor wrote a book about Deming years before I started blogging. Read her great book “The Man Who Invented Quality.” About Deming. I learned from her about the negative consequences of merit pay and ranking employees.
I’d bet good money that the things she notes about “reform” and “reformers” were taken from what you and others have written on this blog. They are pretty much word for word what you and others have been saying for years on this blog.
If that’s a coincidence, it is a good independent verification of what you and others have written here, but I don’t believe it is coincidence.
“. . . which is essentially what the deformers have been saying for two decades now.”
Actually, the “run schools like business” has been being pushed since the last decade of the 1800s. See Callahan’s excellent book “Education and the Cult of Efficiency”.
That’s interesting because, Gabor’s references to companies like Gore and Patagonia notwithstanding, the prevalent business model also seems to be that of the late 1800’s, with all the real work being done in what are effectively corporate colonies in China, India, Mexico and other places with lots of cheap labor.
My father-in-law recounts how bad top down management wasted money at the company where he spent more than forty years. I met a guy who,worked for Sears during its hay day who blamed the same process for the decline of Sears. I recently visited a factory where one of the fathers in my extended school family works. Workers there are required to suggest ways to improve production as a part of their job. I was impressed by the way people treated each other there.
Perhaps we can learn something from business. Top down reform has failed in school for a lot of the same reasons it failed in business. Of course there will be remarkable differences for the reasons many of you have enumerated above, but knowing what worked in business will not hurt us. The harm comes when people from business trying to come into education with the idea that they know what is going on. The same harm accompanies anyone who believes that you get a better view from the outside looking in.
Agree. & I suspect most of the warmed-over potboiler biz ideas imposed on education come not from actual business leaders, but from mgt or econ “experts” who never worked their way up thro an industry. They are like the guy selling you med products “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.”
Unfortunately, framing the issue as “schools should adopt lessons from business” is an invitation to all manner of crackpot “business” ideas.
And many of these ideas came from actual businessmen and women. Bill Gates is the prime example. One can say “he should have known better” but that does not change the fact that he IS a businessman and represents the way many (if not most) big corporations are managed.
It’s not really a profound observation that collaboration and grassroots input is good in most human endeavors whether it be science, education or business.
Teachers knew this long ago, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons why they have reacted so negatively to all the competition based nonsense that the deformers have imposed from the top down.
According to Rick Hess, fear-based reform DOES work.
Hess wrote this nonsense about school vouchers and competition:
“The absence of competition means that public schools, like other government agencies, typically are not subjected to this kind of discipline. No matter how inefficient, employees have little to fear. Subjecting school systems to real competition would indeed produce more effective schools –and other benefits as well. It would provide quality control beyond that afforded by standardized testing, empower entrepreneurial educators to offer alternatives to reigning orthodoxies, and permit good schools to multiply without waiting for permission from resistant district leaders.”
In other words, fear in the workplace is a “good” thing. It leads to “effectiveness.” It causes “quality control.” It fosters the proliferation of “good schools.”
Barfola.
And Hess has it completely wrong as only one who prostitutes their writing for the powers that be can. I’d bet he has very limited actual business work experience. Yep, just looked up his bio. Nothing! K-12 teaching experience? None!
And we’re to listen to this inexperienced talking head on what to do with public education???
No thanks!
It’s a very big mistake to give any of these people the time of day because the way they have framed the issue of eductation is very destructive.
I’m assuming that’s an old Hess quote. That ideological speculation can be tested against results today. Where are all the public schools who have upped their game to compete with their magic-sauce rivals? Struggling on budgets depleted by charter/ voucher enrollment stretched to cover more-exensive-to-educate kids rejected by charters/ vouchers. Or closed.
Oh yeah, the game was rigged, & was never about “competition to improve quality,” a business concept that is incompatible with a public good available to all by pooling public money.
You could learn something from business if each one of a small handful (8) of adult managers and supervisors were in charge of large groups children for just 40 minutes per day. A work environment where each supervisor spends the equivalent of 2.5 weeks of full time work per 10 months of time and is expected to generate positive outcomes from all. A work environment in which the adolescent workers were routinely absent, often late, socially distracted, immature, unmotivated, and bored. An environment in which child workers were promoted regardless of effort or performance. Why adult reformers fail has more to do with their inability to understand the challenges of managing and teaching 50 million children who, by and large, prefer fun over work. And to do it day after day after day. An almost hard to fathom 72,000,000,000 individual class periods per year.
Scare tactics may work (temporarily) if adults can be held directly responsible for an expected result – and when there are serious follow-up consequences. Neither of these pre-conditions exist in schools. However, the cornerstones of a viable and productive public school system cannot be threats, coercion, fear, and tension.
“A work environment where each supervisor spends the equivalent of 2.5 weeks of full time work per 10 months of time and is expected to generate positive outcomes from all.”
Do you mean 2.5 weeks of full time work per week?
It’s bad enough that many think that teachers work only 9 months a year and have all that time off when they “work”.
Clarification please.
Secondary teachers get about 110 hours of instructional time per class, per school year which is equal to less than three 40 hour work weeks.
Thanks! Now I see what you are getting at. It appears that what you are saying is that teachers can’t perform miracles, eh!
Precisely.
Most people don.t realize just how little time we have to work our magic. Factor in normal adolescent social distraction, chronic absenteeism, and the constant interruptions within those 110 hours and, well, you get the point.
There may be a few companies who have taken the lessons of Deming to heart, but I’d have to say that overall, things are moving in the opposite direction.
Take Amazon, which has patented bracelets to monitor workers’ hand movements to essentially make them into robots. Or take Apple, which has used what is effectively Chinese slave labor (including children) to produce it’s products.
“The Master business plan”
Initial step‘s to break their will
The second step’s to tame
The final step’s to work the mill
With robots, all the same
I think we REALLY need to get away from this comparison of schools to businesses in all it’s forms, no matter how benign the comparison may seem.
“Tools or Jewels?”
Public schools are public jewels
A common public good
They aren’t simply business tools
But for the neighborhood
While Apple might be a great place to work in the US, it is effectively a “Deming Faker” because it has farmed out it’s production to companies with some of the worst business practices, which harken back to the mills of the late 1800s.
Many other companies in the US have done the same thing.
Companies manufacturing Apple products base their entire business model on fear and intimidation.
Steve Jobs did the same.
From
“What everyone is too polite to say about Steve Jobs”
http://gawker.com/5847344/what-everyone-is-too-polite-to-say-about-steve-jobs
“There were things Jobs did while at Apple that were deeply disturbing. Rude, dismissive, hostile, spiteful: Apple employees—the ones not bound by confidentiality agreements—have had a different story to tell over the years about Jobs and the bullying, manipulation and fear that followed him around Apple. Jobs contributed to global problems, too. Apple’s success has been built literally on the backs of Chinese workers, many of them children and all of them enduring long shifts and the specter of brutal penalties for mistakes. And, for all his talk of enabling individual expression, Jobs imposed paranoid rules that centralized control of who could say what on his devices and in his company.
Jobs was worse than Gates by orders of magnitude in many regards. At least Gates never used slave and child labor to make his billions.
And Gates never set up a wage-fixing cartel to keep workers from switching companies — and thereby keep wages down — as Jobs did.
People envision Jobs as some LSD taking, mind expanding eastern Guru who listened to the ideas of his workers when the reality is that he was a control freak who, for years, would not even acknowledge his own daughter.
The fellow was a real piece of “work” and it is long past time that people acknowledged that.
Would not acknowledge the very existence of his own daughter, even after a DNA test had essentially proved it.
How smart is that?
American companies have circumvented Deming by moving their “production” and in many cases engineering to places like China and India.
That allows them to appear to be following Deming while actually violating every one of his precepts.
Isn’t it great that Apple engineers here in the US use collaboration?
I have to agree, SDP, that this is the false note in Gabor’s framing her thesis as what ed can learn from biz — & then talking about Deming’s theories for factory mfg, which were barely given 1/2 a try here, then abandoned in the shuffle to offshore mfg. What has resurfaced here, as discussed in a recent thread, are century-old ‘efficiency’ [time & motion] practices. Deming’s theories are in the main applicable to education (& as you said above, are based on principles appropriate to any human endeavor), but let’s not pretend that’s how big biz is generally run in the US.