Sparks Ignite Imagination

6/09/2009

A Federal Role in Education?

As we stand on the brink of national standards for education, perhaps we should take a step back and look at the the Federal role in education and what it has done to education so far.

The United States Constitution states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to regulate or fund elementary or secondary education. The federal role in education is a violation of the 10th amendment of the United States Constitution.

The federal government formed the Department of Education (ED) in 1979

Some politicians warned against the ED.

“No matter what anyone says, the Department of Education will not just write checks to local school boards. They will meddle in everything. I do not want that.” Representative Pat Schroeder (D-CO) 7

“A national Department may actually impede the innovation of local programs as it attempts to establish uniformity throughout the Nation.” Representative Joseph Early (D-MA) 8

“We will be minimizing the roles of local and State education officials; we recognize that the States are responsible for the education policies of the children in the is country.” Representative Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) 9

“This is a back-room deal, born out of a squalid politics. Everything we had thought we would not see happening to education is happening here.” Senator Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) 6

Every dollar parents send to Washington is a dollar they don't have to spend directly on their children's education. Most education tax dollars sent to Washington fund the federal bureaucracy; far less than half of each dollar is ever returned to local schools. More importantly, federal school dollars come with strings attached. The more money we give to education bureaucrats, the more power they have to dictate how local schools are run.

When federal spending increases, local schools are forced to do whatever it takes to get their share, even if this means adopting one size fits all policies mandated in Washington. In other words, federal money is used as a club to force schools to surrender more and more of their decision making authority to Washington.

Although statistics show that only seven percent of an average school’s budget is subsidized by the feds, local districts complain about massive paperwork and red tape required to receive these skimpy funds. A 1991 survey of Ohio school districts found that each district was required to fill out an average of 330 forms, of which 157 were from the state and 173 were from the federal government.4 The federal government, responsible for only seven percent of the budget, causes 55% of the red tape.

The List of Programs:

Knowledge Dissemination and Utilization

Office of Postsecondary Education — Congressionally-Directed Grants

Qualified Zone Academy Bonds

Goodling stated, “This massive list of federal education programs clearly demonstrates what many of us had suspected for quite some time that Washington is out of control and out of touch.” Pointing out a huge stack of papers required for all the Education Department’s programs, McKeon remarked, “The Clintons say that it takes a village to raise a child, but that is only because it takes a village to fill out this paper work.”
Obviously, ever-increasing federal control over our schools has failed the nation's children and lowered educational standards.

Parents and teachers know what is best for their schools at the local level. The key to reforming public education in America is returning local control back to our public schools.

NOTES
Berthoud, Dr. John E., Who Got It Right? What Proponents and Opponents of the Creation of the Department of Education Promised & Predicted, The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, January 18, 1996, p.11.

5/02/2009

Compassion

Developing a sense of compassion for others is a complex interplay between life experience (learned) and temperament (innate). When an infant is born and begins to experience the world it begins to determine if the world is a safe and nurturing place, or an uncomfortable scary place. A baby who is left hungry, crying and uncomfortable will learn that the world is a bad place that cannot be trusted. A well cared for baby will usually explore the world with curiosity and trust.

Take these two children and put them on the school playground.
Each falls down and scrapes a knee. Does someone help them? Does someone laugh at them? How does the child react to this?

They see a child get knocked down by a bully. How do they react?

You may think that the poorly cared for child would not have compassion and the happy child would be concerned, but that is not how it works. A happy child who has no experience of bullying or bad treatment may have no compassion. The sad child may well have compassion.

The difference lies in who the child identifies with. A child may see the bully as powerful and successful. If a child identifies with the "powerful" bully, they will likely show no compassion for the victim. On the other hand, a child may be able to relate to the victim recognizing how awful it feels to be victimized. If a child identifies with the victim they will probably be compassionate.

You can teach compassion if you can help someone to identify with the victim and recognize the pain. You can teach bullying if you make the bad guy appear powerful or rewarded for the behavior. Consider this when you think about television and movies and the messages the media is sending. Who is portrayed as powerful and successful? How are victims portrayed? Who will children identify with when watching?

When we think about ways to stop bullying in school, it is important to remember these factors. The torments of middle school and adolescence serve to provide experience, both personal and vicarious, of the bully and the victim. This is a teachable moment through which young people can develop character, empathy and compassion for others with the guidance of knowledgeable adults.

4/26/2009

Micro Management: Further thoughts about management

Insulation at the top continues to be a problem in the workplace today. However there is another pervasive problem in the world that make even those who have jobs unhappy at work. The micro management of just about everything has become unbearable.

Lets start with an area I know very well, public education. The education of children is one of those duties not mentioned in the constitution and lies, therefore, in the domain of the states. Along comes the federal government sticking a foot in the door with programs providing money for free lunches and subsidized milk. Money is good. Food is good. Desegregation and Public Law 94-142 Education for the disabled are wonderful, they just didn't get fully funded.

Here we are in the 21st century and we have the Federal government dictating "adequate yearly progress," mandatory standardized testing, and all children at grade level by 2014. The micro management is insidious. Soon there will be national standards for public education, which, did I mention, is a function of the states.

Perhaps we can agree on some general competencies every child should have. I think high school graduates should be able to paint a realistic portrait in acrylics. They should be able to express a variety of emotions through multi media art. Graduates should be able to describe the color wheel and it's uses.

Some may think that this is not essential knowledge, but to a child with an artistic bent it is like food and water. The competencies that state standards require in the area of mathematics are unreasonable to me. Why can't I have expectations of competence in the arts? High schools in rural area teach animal husbandry. Should all high school students study agriculture? It is a pretty useful skill. Certainly more useful than calculus has ever been to me.

I truly fear national standards. Schools are already a trial for children with learning disabilities. Imagine if you couldn't graduate high school because you couldn't run the mile in under 10 minutes, or bake the perfect pastry? Does it make any sense?

So that is how I see the federal government heading toward micro managing education. Here is what I see in the workplace in general.

The people at the top are dictating every aspect of the jobs of underlings without any training or experience doing the underling's job. There is little trust in the worker. The worker has little to no input in the process. A big business is no longer a good place to work for anyone but the upper eschelon.

Again the government is also having it's say in how the worker does the job. Government regulations micro manage, executives micro manage, and quality systems measure, measure, measure. Does any of this impact the outcome?

I would argue that the best indicator of the health of a company is the morale of it's workers. When workers feel needed, trusted, and valued, they will make a good product and provide excellent service. Angry, fearful, undervalued workers have other things on their minds. quality and service come second or even third.
The belief that you can control the work you do is essential to job satisfaction. When workers are micro managed they lose that sense of control over their work.

In Beyond money: toward an economy of well-being (2004) Martin E. P. Seligman argues that job satisfaction is decreasing.

Domestic policy currently focuses heavily on economic outcomes, although economic indicators omit, and even mislead about, much of what society values. We show that economic indicators have many shortcomings, and that measures of well-being point to important conclusions that are not apparent from economic indicators alone. For example, although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction during this period, and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust.

Will the current economic situation caused by incompetent management at the top serve to further the oppressive micro management of the American worker? Will the failure of top management serve to strengthen indusry's reliance on the worker as expert on his/her job? Will workers quit working as employees and become self-employed consultants?

Stay Tuned.

4/25/2009

Blind Leadership

Insulation at the Top: A Problem of Blindly Decisive Leadership or Will the last person out please turn off the lights.
Originally published on September 29, 2005.

I have been mulling this over for days and it came together for me when I realized that the problems I saw in the last school district I worked for are similar to the problems I see in the current Bush administration. When the person on the top keeps himself insulated from the advice and concern of the people on the front lines, all hell can break loose and he will be the last person to know. By that time, the people who know the most, who are most capable of fixing the problems, will be long gone.

When the new superintendent in the district gathered the employees to introduce himself, he made one point perfectly clear. He was a military man and he believed in the chain of command. The thing he disliked the most was an “end run.” After asking around amongst the males in the building, I discovered that he meant by-passing your boss to talk to the bosses boss. A football analogy in a female rich environment should have tipped me off to the problems to come.

Now I am from the school of “Do what you think is right, ask forgiveness later, if necessary.” I was hired to do a job. I have the training and the experience necessary to do it well. Let me do my job and trust me to know what I am doing. If you have a question about what I am doing, ask me. I was now working in an “Ask permission now, not forgiveness later” environment.

OK, I can give that a try. I dutifully wrote up action plans. I met with my “stake holders” and got consensus. I collected data. I worked with my team to assess the data and make a plan. I submitted my plan. My boss submitted it to his boss.

And there it sat.

Deadlines arrived and went.

Crises occurred and I was called on to jump in and solve them.
But still my plan to prevent problems sat on the Assistant Superintendent's desk.

I asked about it and was told that it is on the A.S.’s desk.

And here is where it gets crazy. My boss tells me that his boss (The A.S.) doesn’t want me to implement the plan. Forget the research, forget the data, forget that it is fully funded at no cost to the district, she just doesn’t think we should. “Well what does the superintendent think?” I ask.

“He hasn’t seen it.” was the reply.

As you can imagine things started to fall apart, not just in my department, but all over the place. The Social Workers were calling all over the district and rallying the teacher’s union because the A.S. changed the assignments for the coming year in clear violation of the union contract. Parents started filing for Due Process hearings, a legal proceeding over a child’s rights because the A.S. didn’t move on some things were legally mandated. Principals were frantically trying to cope with class consolidations and then splits midyear, disrupting the student’s education, straining the teachers, and annoying the parents. These are just a few of the problems that the layman can comprehend. There were multitudes of problems too technical to go into.

The superintendent had no idea about any of this. The staff all over the district had been micromanaged to death by someone with no understanding of the complexity of each individual’s role in the whole.
What is a person to do? Well, the best people left for greener pastures like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Those left behind were forced to pick up the slack.

I had many conversations with a curriculum coordinator who had a lifetime of experience in his role. He was one year away from retirement and was really struggling with the decision to stay or go. When I told him I had to leave for the sake of my health, he decided to leave administration to go back to the classroom for his final year.

Now, how does this relate to the Bush administration?
I see many people who are well trained and experienced in their respective fields, finding that their work is meaningless if it doesn’t fit into the president’s view of the world. These same people are not content to maintain the status quo. They leave, and in doing so, leave the organization weaker and less capable than before.

For example, Richard Clarke the chief of counter terrorism in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations had been predicting a major al Qaeda attack on the United States with such intensity that it is hard to comprehend that it was allowed to happen. The intelligence personnel who knew that there was no evidence of WMD’s but could only watch helplessly as our president destroyed the credibility of our intelligence agency, like Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker (May 12, 2003) quotes a former intelligence official, “One of the reasons I left was my sense that they were using the intelligence from the C.I.A. and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn't like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write the stuff.” The military veterans of Vietnam who understood the the difficulties and complexities of regime change, like Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, who told Congress that it would take hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to adequately secure postwar Iraq. Then we had the resignation of four Cabinet officials, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, and most famously, Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

This looks familiar. Why did these people leave in droves?
Rand Beers resigned as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Combating Terrorism in March 2003 "I came to the conclusion that rather than being part of the problem, which I was within the administration, I wanted to be part of the solution." Paul O'Neill, who wrote in his memoir about his unsuccessful fight to get the president to take the ever increasing deficit seriously. There's Christie Todd Whitman, who appears in O'Neill's memoir recalling her own unsuccessful struggles to get the White House to acknowledge the scientific data on environmental problems. All are now gone.

Now look at the country. What do we have? A mess.

We have the possibly preventable loss of the World Trade Towers, thousands of lives, and our sense of security. We are embroiled in a no win situation in Iraq which has cost us peace and our standing in the world. We have lost our prosperity and burdened our children with an uncountable debt. We have lost a great American city and our reputation for egalitarianism. And president Bush is the last to see it.

By keeping himself insulated from reality, surrounding himself with those who agree with him, and staying away from the front lines of life, Bush has allowed the country to deteriorate. And the worst part is he has alienated those who are best able to bring the country back.

When I was struggling to maintain quality programs in the school district, I was furious with the rank and file who watched the slow rot happening all around and would not stand behind those who were fighting to prevent it.

For five years now I have raged at the obvious mismanagement of this great country’s power, our military sons and daughters, our reputation, and our natural resources. I have watched the rich grow richer while more people find themselves poorer. I watched my basic freedoms swept away in the name of preserving freedom. And I have watched others stand up and speak truth to no avail.

I find that I again feel the need to leave, only this time it is not a job that is disappointing me, it is my country. I miss America. I am looking for a new country to believe in. Any ideas?

Related Read:

Clueless at the Top: While the Rest of Us Turn Elsewhere for Life, Liberty, and Happiness
by Charlotte Childress

Added April 25, 2009:
It was a long and frustrating three years since I wrote this. Thank you USA for helping me elect Barack Obama.

1/07/2009

Exercise

Standards - accountability - compete in the world - standardized - data driven - scores - benchmarks - stakeholders - job skills - communication - calculation - strength - endurance - talent - brain-based - average - below average - small - medium - large - class size - student:teacher ratio - theory - fact - beauty - art - science - belief - population - equality - gifted - technology - knowledge - most - all - competence - understanding - style - learning - play - work - money - pain - sorrow - people skills

1. Please use the word bank above and sort these terms into two categories, measurable and not measurable.

2. Please use the word bank above and sort these terms into two categories, important, and not important.

3. Please use the word bank above and sort these terms into two categories, school responsibility, not school responsibility.

4. Please use the word bank above and sort these terms into two categories, life, and not living.

12/02/2008

Vision

The eyes are often compared to windows as openings through which you see out and others see in. The muscles around the eyes provide an enormity of information about one's emotions and reactions. The eyes communicate an enormous amount of social information through eye gaze, or what one is looking at, and joint attention in which you catch another's eyes and then look at something together. Eye contact with another person has cultural meaning as well. In some cultures averting your gaze is a sign of respect. In others, averting the eyes communicates deception.

The eyes can tell a lot about your health. Yellow eyes indicate jaundice. blood shot eyes show stress and fatigue. The doctor looks into your eyes to observe the optic nerve giving him a glimpse into your brain. And, for some time now, eye exercises have improved educational performance.

Eye exercises have been prescribed to improve vision since ancient times. Orthoptics is the medical term for eye muscle training procedures which address eye teaming and visual clarity (acuity) only.
Vision Therapy is designed to correct eye movements and visual-motor deficiencies by enhancing the brain's ability to control eye alignment, eye teaming, eye focusing, eye movements, and visual processing. Visual-motor skills and endurance are developed through the use of specialized computer and optical devices, including therapeutic lenses, prisms, and filters.
The practice of NLP or Nerolinguistic Programming has been around since the 1970's. One of NLP core skills is The Eye Accessing Cues which indicate whether a person is thinking in images, sounds, self-talk, or through their feelings. Some NLP experts consider eye movements to be an aid to thinking since they stimulate different parts of the brain.

The latest understanding of eye movements and how they relate to behavior is quite intriguing.
Many years ago I read about a therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. It involved bringing up disturbing memories and performing specific eye movements.

Analyses of scaled self-report data from Vietnam War veterans receiving inpatient treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder drawn during a program evaluation study suggested inpatient treatment as provided by the program resulted in significant improvement in the areas of Anxiety, Anger, Depression, Isolation, Intrusive Thoughts (of combat experiences), Flashbacks, Nightmares (of combat experiences), and Relationship Problems. Comparing the relative effects of the incremental addition of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Relaxation Training, and Biofeedback found that EMDR was for most problems the most effective extra treatment, greatly increasing the positive impact of the treatment program.Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 8, No. 2. (30 April 1995), pp. 337-342.

This therapy has proved so useful that it is used in many kinds of emotional therapy. It is endorsed by the British National Institute for Clinical Excellence.
Vision is closely related to balance, and if the middle ear and the visual system are not in agreement, poor balance and vertigo may occur. The middle ear tells the brain the position of your head based on the force of gravity. This is called the vestibular system. If your eyes are telling your brain that you are moving, and your middle ear is saying that you are not moving your vestibular system is confused. The brain can be trained to rely more on the middle ear for balance, and less on the visual system. Try standing on one foot. Try standing on one foot with your eyes closed.

Some therapies for Learning Disabilities and ADD combine vision and balance. The Dore Program has had great anecdotal success with dyslexia and ADD using exercises requiring the continuous involvement of the cerebellum in balance and coordinated eye movements.
The Learning Breakthrough Program is a system comprised of specialized equipment and activities that use balance, challenge, and sensory integration techniques to stimulate the neural networks in the brain. Bal-A-Vis-X is a series of Balance/Auditory/Vision eXercises, of varied complexity, all of which are deeply rooted in rhythm. The integration of vision, balance, sound and movement improves individual performance and attitude.

Eye Hand Coordination Exercises http://www.disaboom.com/Health/visualrehabilitation/visual-rehabilitation-eye-hand-coordination-exercises.aspx

Vision is an integral part of brain function that, along with balance, has influences on all areas of human behavior.
http://www.creategenius.com
http://www.cafepress.com/createholiday

10/05/2008

Making Meaning at the Ballet

I was at the Ballet today. The Kirov ballet, now the Mariinsky Ballet, performed Giselle this afternoon and I attended.

It was glorious. The impeccably trained Mariinsky dancers performing the story of the frail Giselle's betrayal at the hands of the deceptive Prince Albrect was perfection. And though today's Albrect managed to live through his encounter with the Willis, I like to think that there is sweet revenge for young women who die of unrequited love.

But what sparked me to write was not the joy of the dance. I was inspired by a mother and child sitting near me in the theater. As soon as the curtain went up the questions began. "Who is that?" " What is he doing?" "What does that mean?" "Why did he do that?" This distraction was far enough away to keep me from shushing them, but close enough to set me to thinking about the educational value of the experience for the child.

The story behind most ballets is complex and often ridiculous. Swan Lake defies logic. But the program usually offers up a summary of each act and today was no exception. Additionally, the pantomime in Giselle is rather obvious. Perhaps the mother did not know or have time to explain the story or the meaning of the pantomime. But I wondered what would be a good response to these questions?

I concluded that the child could have been told that the parent didn't know and the child would have to imagine for herself. Answering the questions with facts was not only bad manners but also bad for the child's education.

Ballet is art and as such is open to interpretation. The story behind a ballet is expressed through the movement and the music. The observer brings her point of view to the experience and makes meaning for herself. By telling the child what is going on, the mother deprives the child of the opportunity to make meaning.

So multiple opportunities were lost today. The opportunity to educate the child in proper theater etiquette was neglected both prior to and during the experience. Perhaps worse, was the loss of an opportunity for a child to stretch her imagination.

Putting aside the fact that talking during a performance constitutes a breach of the social contract, there are ways to respond to these questions that will pay off in the long run. Responding, "I don't know, what do you think?" allows the child to follow her own reactions to the art before her eyes. Is this a happy, scary, or dangerous scene? Does the man know the girl? How does the mother feel? How do you know? These questions, instead of answers, help a child develop the kind of thinking that will make art accessible and enjoyable. They point the way for making meaning of the experience.

There are many aspects of the performance that convey meaning in a ballet. The set and lighting convey place and time. Giselle opens to early morning outside a cottage and ends at daybreak in a graveyard. The music adds to the mood and sets the tone. Giselle's theme music is light and lively when she is happy. The same tune takes on an ominous tone when Giselle is betrayed. The costumes communicate who is a field hand and who is royalty. The dance steps, the arrangement of the dancers, the shapes made on the stage bring meaning to the scene. In act one Albrect and Giselle dance a playful hide and seek between the moving rows and lines of the corps. In act two, the corps forms walls and barricades between Giselle and Albrect.

These elements of the dance do not have to be completely understood to enjoy the ballet. The beauty of the dance the costumes, and the music can sustain the audience. There is enough fuel for the imagination. Left to draw conclusions, make connections, and uncover symbols, the imagination will bring fullness to the interpretation of art.

Children should attend the ballet. Undoubtedly questions will be asked and poor manners displayed, that is the nature of learning. Such frustrating experiences would be a touch less annoying if they truly served to open the hearts of the next generation to the glories of the arts.
What do you think?