Ed Johnson is an adherent of the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming, who wrote and spoke about the superiority of Improvement over disruptive change. Ed lives in Atlanta, where the school board and its superintendent believe that they must shock the system, privatize, impose constant disruption. As he shows in the chart below, their approach (the so-called “portfolio model”) has made matters worse. He announces here that he is running for a seat on the board. Wouldn’t that be wonderful to have a critic of disruption on a board now dominated by Ex-TFA know-it-all’s?

19 July 2019

“Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

I am not a proponent of letter grades for schools.  However, Georgia Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) is, to wit:
“This website provides school reports for all public elementary, middle, and high schools in Georgia. These reports include A-F letter grades based on school performance and other useful information about the school, such as performance on statewide assessments, the make-up of the school’s student body, the graduation rate, and additional academic information.”
So, for those who like to have letter grades for schools, I say: Okay, let’s have them.  Ditto for “heat maps.”
My short presentation, here in PDF and here in PowerPoint Show format (download only), carries the title, Atlanta Board of Education District Schools Cumulative Growth by Quantified GOSA Letter Grades since “School Turnaround.”
The presentation aims to be fairly self-explanatory.  Still, essential points about it are:
  • Baseline year 2014 marks the first year of execution of the Atlanta school board and superintendent’s School Turnaround Strategy.
  • For each year from Baseline year 2014 through year 2018, each schools’ GOSA letter grade A, B, C, D, or F is translated to the numeral 2, 1, 0, -1, or -3, respectively.  A is translated to 2, B to 1, C to 0, D to -1, and F to -3.  This then quantifies the letter grades and, yes, the translation procedure is arbitrary—or might one say, “innovative?”  Alternatively, a compounding procedure might be used instead of this purely additive one.
  • Each school’s quantified letter grades are added such that the running sum is recorded over time, creating a time series.  The first addend, at 2014, is noted and added to the second addend, at 2015, and the sum there noted.  Then the sum at 2015 is added to the third addend, at 2016, and the sum there noted.  Then the sum at 2016 is added to the fourth addend, at 2017, and the sum there noted.  And, finally, the sum at 2017 is added to the fifth addend, at 2018, and the sum there noted.  This then establishes a running record as a time series of the school’s Quantified Letter Grade Cumulative Growth.
The presentation offers plots of Quantified Letter Grade Cumulative Growth, over time.  There is a plot for all schools in the Atlanta Public Schools system as well as a plot of schools for each of the six Atlanta school board districts, with school names listed in a side box.  School names are as known by GOSA, except in one case.

For example, the following plot of Atlanta school board District 1 schools shows, at year 2018, the full range of the schools’ quantified letter grade cumulative growth.  Mary Lin Elementary School marks the positive extreme of the range, at 10 (2, 4, 6, 8 10), while Price Middle School and Thomasville Heights Elementary School both mark the negative extreme of the range, at -15 (-3, -6, -9, -12, -15).  All other school board District 1 schools fall in between these extremes, at year 2018.

Note that the Atlanta school board and superintendent outsourced Thomasville Heights Elementary School to a private operator at the beginning stage of executing their School Turnaround Strategy.  They did so as one of their earliest bold actions aiming to fix the supposedly horribly broken school and keeping the state from taking it over, they claimed.

Interestingly, any one of the plots in the presentation looked at holistically, rather than analytically, offers a basis for predicting the future, if only short term.  An obvious prediction to make is that schools in the mostly northern area of Atlanta serving mostly children labeled “white” will generally continue to stay better or get better, while schools in the mostly southern area of Atlanta serving mostly children labeled “black” will generally continue to stay worse or get worse.  The zero-line in the above plot effectively demarcates north Atlanta-area schools, above the line, and south Atlanta-area schools, below the line.

Why is this bifurcation of public education in Atlanta so persistent?   Why does it keep happening?

Well, consider the Atlanta school board and superintendent’s School Turnaround Strategy is today’s version of the root cause of the matter, as it entails essentially the latest in a long string of school reform quick fixes, change initiatives, bold actions, and solutions meant to instantly fix the broken Atlanta Public Schools system and close so-called achievement gaps, opportunity gaps, access gaps, equity gaps, 30 million words gaps, and all manner of gap.  Such has been the root cause for nearly three decades, starting with the school boards of the permanent superintendents Benjamin Canada, then Beverly Hall, and now Meria Carstarphen.

However, the basic, immutable facts have been, and always will be, change does not mean improvement, bold actions do not substitute for quality leadership, there are no solutions, APS cannot break, and so APS cannot be fixed.

One has only to consider what “solution” means and the kinds of systems to which solutions apply—namely, mechanical systems and mathematical systems, for example, but not, dynamic, idiosyncratic social systems such as public school systems and, yes, children.  Public school systems and children are not the kind of systems where solutions can fix them.  Trying to fix APS is much the same as trying to fix a child, which can only be a most egregious, inhumane, and even evil endeavor.

Atlanta Public Schools can only be improved, continually, never ending.

If one won’t believe me and my having been out in the wilderness for the longest of time yammering and crying about these basic, immutable facts, then perhaps one will believe the billionaire Bill Gates and The 74, which he funds.

According to this recent article by The 74, Mr. Gates seems to have recently cottoned to what some might consider W. Edwards Deming’s “continuous improvement” philosophy.  But, of course, putting $93 million towards his new interest entitles Mr. Gates to claim and declare it as his own Continuous Improvement Model.

However, if one were to examine—better yet, read and study–Dr. Deming’s last seminal works, The New Economics for Business, Government, Education(1993, The MIT Press) and Out of the Crisis (1982, The MIT Press), one will not find the term “continuous improvement.”  One will only find the term “continual improvement.”  The point being, it seems Mr. Gates is dragging public education into yet another experiment without having essential knowledge of what is required.

I am aware some of Mr. Gates’ foundation employees attended a Deming conference a few years ago and so I have always wondered what would come of it.  Maybe we are about to find out.  Hopefully, prayerfully, Mr. Gates will not end up having tarnished or compromised Dr. Deming’s legacy:  “Well, we tried the Continuous Improvement Model but it, too, turned out to be one of our experiments that didn’t work out.  So we will move on to look for the next promising elixir to magically fix all the nation’s failing public schools in poor and minority communities.”

I any case, I hope we can understand Dr. Deming’s continual improvement philosophy posits a way of learning, a way of getting knowledge and wisdom, hence a way of life.  The philosophy does not posit a model that, if scripted and the script implemented and “scaled up,” that then will solve and fix all broken public school systems, or turn them around.

In this sense, the plot above, as in the presentation, shows a failing Atlanta school board and superintendent School Turnaround Strategy poised to keep on failing (prediction, knowledge).

Thus, for me, the time has come to “Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

Accordingly, I decided at the last minute to seek the now open Atlanta Board of Education District 2 Seat in a Special Election to be held 17 September 2019.

I simply could not walk away—meaning, I had already taken the first step to leave Atlanta behind by first greatly downsizing to a small fixer-upper bungalow and working on it a while before moving back to my hometown, having already jettisoned years of accumulated stuff.  When nearly three years ago I made this initial downsizing move, I purchased the bungalow within the same ZIP code, as intended.  However, I discovered soon afterwards that I had also purchased just a few hundred yards inside Atlanta school board District 2.  What can I say?

If any of my yammering and crying in the wilderness over the years about Atlanta Public Schools needing improvement, not change, have ever resonated, then I humbly ask for your non-funds support, endorsement, and vote according to your civil privileges.

You have all the civil privileges of supporting, endorsing, and voting for me if you reside principally in Atlanta Board of Education District 2.  If you reside principally outside of District 2, you still have the civil privileges of supporting and endorsing me to those important to you but you cannot vote for me.

Because mainly, though not exclusively, at least one candidate funded by The City Fund’s local executive director is in the race for the District 2 Seat, and because big money is just itching for a fund-raising fight, I have committed to forgo soliciting and accepting campaign contributions.  The fund raising fight The City Fund and other big money are itching for won‘t be mine to give.

Really, just think what a blow it will be to big money when someone (me!) gets elected with no strings attached to big money’s purse strings or school privatization agenda!  Someone who has never been bought and sold, and won’t be, to put it bluntly!

Let’s do this!  Let’s “Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com