Annette Weeks commented on Tom’s blog post “Bail This Out” that teachers should work together to find out what works best for students in their schools. She responded to Tom’s discussion about what he sees as difficulties in adapting business procedures to schooling.
Annette agreed with Tom’s sentiment, and reported that her high school principle told faculty to raise GPSs this year to rival those of other high schools in the district. The principle’s instructions seem reasonable to me, too.
Here are a couple of tips from business that would likely raise GPAs this academic year. Many of us have used these ideas in business and in school classes.
1. Business owners know what products they manufacture and sell. Teachers should clearly define each class’s product, likely against state minimum academic performance standards. Simply stated, all school lessons consist of vocabulary and logic. So, directly instruct the lesson’s relevant vocabulary for the first seven minutes of each class session. Directly instruct ways to use these words during the next 20+ minutes, then use the rest of the period for “discovery,” etc.
2. When under pressure, business owners reduce the range of product options. For teachers, that means to give priority to the easiest immediate measurable outcomes. I’d tell the students the answers to whatever test I plan for them at the end of each class or week. When students pass those measurements successfully, add procedures each teacher prefers to use with each class. (This teacher approach uses backward learning curve strategies.)
3. Business owners support products that move the quickest with the most profit. Assume the goal of teachers is to raise the mean GPA score. So, teachers should give priority to raising scores of students most receptive to increased learning. Likely, these students will appreciate teachers raising the bar and helping them to exceed it. As these scores rise, add attention to those students less receptive to learning more, and then to those least receptive. These follow-up procedures will reduce the number of grades below “C”. (Following this logic, I wonder if teachers should identify the number of “F” grades assigned last year, and redistribution them this year across classes in order to assure a lower number.)
I wonder how many teachers use these ideas when instructing in public schools?
Yikes…education is not a business and cannot follow a business model. There are common analogies made between the two. However, those analogies should only be used for pondering. If a business were in the business of people, especially young people, then the analogies would have more worth. As it is, businesses are usually (and please do not get hung up on the exceptions) involved with a product or end service that the person receiving the service has requested.This is not the way education works. Bob, I value your ideas and I like your angle on many of the topics in education so I feel that there must be more to what you say and think. However, I cannot get past the superficial ideas that “if you do this” ….. “this will happen” because a teacher does not have a consistent product or material base and so therefor cannot make education a business. Education is more like counseling with learning. Each student is an individual.Take for instance a company that makes skateboards. If this company received different sized boards; wheels not only of different hardnesses, but inconsistent so that not even the differences could be grouped into patterns; and the materials used in the making of the trucks, bearings, and bolts was nonstandard and come from upwards of 60 different countries; and if this company were to be able to exist and turn a profit for centuries, then an analogy could exist between education and business.Again, Bob, I like your thinking so tell me more on how the models you propose take into account the differences in children.Respectfully,
Yikes! Fair enough. I like your style. I think this addresses the core of your comment: Business people, as do teachers, must understand people in order to survive the intense competition for attention, etc. A business person has to get a contract and money from another person. So do teachers have to get a learner to pay (with time, energy, etc.), althrough teachers use softer and less precise descriptors of our behavior. I think students can gain by teachrs adopting more business rhetoric and other practices. I’ve lived, instructed, and advocated the ideas you describe so clearly. Gestalt, Jung, Bruner, Dewey, et al. ideology still hold a sentimental place, as does Summerhill. These serve a useful, but insufficient foundation about increase learning on teacher demands (with softer terms), but not a sufficient one to increase them. I agree, direct instruction strategies also have tactical formats in order to work consistently across demographic cohorts of learners. Anyone can make them fail. I give priority to learning. That’s measurable. If it exists, it’s measurable. That’s a principle of applied behavior analysis, including of learning. Education, like communication, have references too imprecise for measurement. I also adopted to learning the principle from fighter pilots (I’ve know some survivors): Failure is not an option. That’s as difficult for some teachers to honor in schools as for pilots in combat. Yet, it seems necessary for teachers to consider it in order to assure that all students learn to their optimum. As to steps to take in classrooms, some business practices work there too, whether some teachers believe in them or not. Yes, I’ve seen teachers fail with them. I think, because they believe it’s too simple to be relevant to learning. Another lesson from business: people attend to what you inspect before what you expect. I resented that sentence for more than a decade after first hearing it. “How dare anyone challenge my choices about the way I handle my classes!” Then, I started examining its sources and testing its validity through my own work. Now, I hold it as a useful reminder when I plan my work. I agree with your comment about education as a continuing enterprise. As a sociologist, I distinguish between education as a social institution for transmitting what people know across generations and schooling as organizations to implement part of that transmission. Does any of this address your questions about my reasons for my comments? What do you think?
“I also adopted to learning the principle from fighter pilots (I’ve know some survivors): Failure is not an option. That’s as difficult for some teachers to honor in schools as for pilots in combat. Yet, it seems necessary for teachers to consider it in order to assure that all students learn to their optimum.”I would like to honor the failure is not an option mentality in schools as well. I strive for them, work every possible angle. However, in the end the comparison between a fighter pilot and a student is only good for a discussion, but not for comparison. Here is my thinking…a fighter pilot has a personal stake in the result of his learning, his life. A student has a marginal stake in her learning, not getting in trouble with mom and dad. The thought of not getting a job in 6 years based on a lack of knowledge now, just is not enough for for most students. The idea of who is dating whom takes priority. Now if students had that internal motivation to be the best, do the best, get the best, you could move students forward as fast as you wanted because they would all be “with you”. Additionally, the military is magical with what it can do with large groups of people in terms of achieving success. Let’s apply some of those strategies to education: dress code, shaved heads, making everyone look the same, yelling, physical punishment, one person in total control, little input from outside people such as parents, unbending rules that have consequences. Yeah, we could do that.
“Does any of this address your questions about my reasons for my comments?”It does, and what I continue to see is that we share an agreement on education and you have a solid thought process behind your thinking. However, we just get to the end result in, perhaps, two different ways. Tell me more about the Inspect before you Expect. It seems like what teachers I know do. However, in its phrase it is a bit vague without the larger background of meaning. It seems like something with which I would agree and if it is, it is a connection between business and education that I could swallow.As an aside, I use business analogies when talking with parents and students, but only for the product, the finished result, or acquired skill. I find that the PRODUCT of education works will with business models, but the PROCESS of education is more like art.Another aside, Bob, what is your education/teaching background? I am intrigued now. I have, in our conversations, gotten the vibe of a long education career with multiple angles, but I do not know what it is. Thanks. Keep posting your posts. Love them.
Thanks, Travis, for your comments. You make sense. Kudos for including the business ideas you use in your classes. I’d like to learn more about them. As personal backround, I’m a learner willing to share what I know with anyone interested, and sometimes with others also. 🙂 I have decades in schooling and learning dominated organizations, sometimes together, sometimes separately, ranging from local to international schooling, research, and business efforts. The consistent theme has been to find ways to advance student personal benefits for their efforts. In short, I see little difference between schooling and business beyond rhetoric and belief systems. Few school people where I’ve worked at any level have business experience where they stand the risk of eating or not by the results of their efforts. With the fighter pilot quote, I intended to indicate this as a motto for teachers, not students. Too many teachers implicitly reject this theme. I haven’t thought about the student part as fully as you indicate. I’ll do so, and post thoughts about it later. I’m a lifelong pacifist, but know many fine military people, some of whom you’ve likely seen movies about them. I respect the preparation they overcame to do what they did. I do not see a one-to-one transfer of military methods into all schools, as you tongue in check inferred. I do think, at their core, military training, including that which direct instruction includes, permits development of split second decision making necessary for intellectual survival in business, athletics, and other competition. I learned the phrase “People respond to what you inspect before what you expect” from a former Air Force fighter wing officer. He used as a control mechanism of those mavericks. I call it “The Big Blue Arrow System” and used it mostly as an education and training administrator of a state operation. Here’s how it goes. I urge people not to dismiss this process before considering the value it might provide those being observed. Anyone can debunk it, but few try to make it work, and it does provide focus for discussion and behavior. 1. Count and post in a public place the frequency of something happening every day in your classroom or other operation. 2. Point a Big Blue Arrow at the frequency you want to have occur more or to improve more. 3. Don’t discuss with those you observe to get the frequency count, or what or why you did what you did. 4. When change does not occur for some, point a Big Red Arrow at the lowest frequency.5. I’ve also used small blue and small red arrows pointed to the second preferred and second least preferred frequencies. These provide participants with more datapoints to calculate what risks they want to encounter. 6. Consider whatever information those observed share with you about what people did to get the Big Blue Arrow. Someone or more will tell you. Did I address your interests? Other questions? I appreciate these exchanges. Hope they help a student.
Travis, I forgot to mention that more of this learner center approach exists on a previous blog post at http://tabletpceducation.blogspot.com/2008/10/learning-with-tablet-pcs-research-faqs.html Did I capture correctly teacher concerns for the development of an automated learning behavior analyzer? Do my responses make sense? I’d appreciate feedback from you and other teachers who have time and interest. I plan to review these FAQs, etc. next week at a conference. Teacher input before then will help insure teacher voices in this research development process. Thanks.
I am intrigued by the blue/red arrow data idea. It is indeed a different idea than the one to which I referred in a previous post. I was referring to “lesson study” where several teachers identify a needed skill; construct a lesson to address that one skill (additional skills are not part of the study); each teacher teaches the lesson, some teachers observe the students; results are taken and the lesson adjusted to maximize the learning of the skill. Reteaching occurs as needed until the lesson teaches the skill to all students. In this way it is a inspect what you expect. So now I have a new idea to use….blue and red arrows. Thanks.
Your joint teacher project sounds useful. What results have you seen? I’ll watch for them on your blog. And please let me know here or on your blog how the Big Blue Arrow system works for you. More later here about business models and practices for learning increases. I look forward to your comments.