The Politics of Blocking

It was pretty nice of iNACOL (the online learning group) to give out copies of Liberating Learning by Terry Moe and John Chubb at the ALEC Conference last week. It is a pretty easy read that I finished on the plane to Mississippi yesterday.

I wish I had read it five years ago.

Moe and Chubb give you a primer on the political strategy of the teacher’s union. They call it the politics of blocking. The key points they make are dead on:
1. Teacher’s unions are very powerful at the state and local level
2. It is much easier to block legislation than it is to pass it
3. If it looks like it might pass – they can push for a delay – request lengthy study for a few years
4. If it starts to pass, you can always load it up with a ton of junk amendments to make the implementation impossible
5. If it does pass, immediately start attacking either through the courts or new legislation the next year

While the politics of blocking is a cute name, it is also the politics of wearing you down. ABCTE really could have used this information when we started as I learned all of this the hard way.

One thing they leave out of the politics of blocking is that we need a politics of moving to counteract. If education reforms wants to ever become a “movement” instead of disparate entities pushing for single agenda, it will need to have a state level group in every state pushing just as hard.

The theory they put forth in the book on how education will ultimately change is that technology, both in innovation and in information, will rule the day. Technology is cool and parents want it. Unions are resisting online schools because of the fear of job losses. But eventually, parents will demand greater technology in the classroom and as the information about efficacy of teaching and schools continues to proliferate, the demands will increase.

They are correct and tangentially agree with Disrupting Class by Christensen et al that technology will save education. They just disagree a little on the method that will make this happen. They also put forth their view of the “education of tomorrowland” – but I will write about that at the other blog.

100 years of tradition unhindered by progress

We used to have a similar tongue in cheek motto at the Naval Academy where traditions could not be undone by progress. And now I see first hand how education continues to struggle with modernizing the classroom in spite of amazing technological gains in the last 20 years.

Tom Vander Ark looks ahead to the next 20 years and feels like we are finally, reluctantly, going to change – but only if we get some for-profits in the mix with the non-profits to drive that change. The working paper has been released by AEI with a forward by Rick Hess who continues to champion entrepreneurship in education.

Vander Ark is formerly of the Gates Foundation and now runs a venture capital group for education companies. So he has seen the issue up close and personal. He puts forth a pretty great picture of where education has to go and his paper deserves a quick read.

In the recent Metlife survey of teachers, the issue: “More teachers (43%) agree that their classes have become so mixed in terms of students’ learning abilities that they can’t teach effectively, compared to 39% in 1988.” His fix is World of Warcraft. Not really but it does give me an excuse to try the game. His actual fix is to use a World of Warcraft like software system to completely customize education delivery that adapts to the level of the student.

If you know any good homeschoolers, you know that most of them can educate their children in half the time. Our schools are rapidly inefficient because time is lost on bussing, meals, announcements, paperwork etc. Every day we are lose incredibly valuable time on task to things that don’t further our student’s education. Yet there is technology available today that could deliver the content more efficiently and at the level of each individual student helping them grasp the knowledge they need to succeed.

Our teachers are right in identifying one of the main problems in education today. The wide variation in knowledge and skill level of their students makes it nearly impossible to teach without the use of technology. Yet the only way we currently use technology in our schools is to have students do some research on the web and to create some great powerpoints in their group projects (usually completed by half the students in the group). We are teaching to the middle and losing more and more kids on the ends.

Vander Ark is correct - One hundred years of tradition unhindered by progress has to change - - it is just a matter of how fast and how many student lives are wasted while we wait.