Did you get a chance to read my recent post on creating a culture of "doing" instead of "knowing" in schools?  It has sparked a ton of interest and a bunch of great thinking -- both here on the Radical and in the other spaces that I mentally wrestle in. 

The strand that challenges me the most, however, was best articulated by John Spencer, who wrote: 

I don't think it's a culture "of this, instead of this." Paulo Freire was right when he said it needs to be a cycle of action and reflection. Too much of one and it becomes shallow, close-minded activism. Too much of the other and it becomes useless intellectualism. They're both necessary.

John's point is a simple one:  "Instead" thinking is often unhealthy when it creeps its way into schools -- and to suggest that knowing is fundamentally unimportant would be foolish.

In fact, it would be nearly impossible to successfully take action without a foundational understanding of the content behind the issues and ideas that you care the most about. 

Bradley Zakarin shared similar thinking in Twitter when he wrote:

@plugusin Artificial lines b/t do/know (or action/research) hinder student pursuits at both ends of spectrum. Can DO better w/ KNOWLEDGE.

— Bradley Zakarin (@bzeducon) January 29, 2012

Long story short: Balance matters, right?

Here's the thing, though - There IS no balance in schools today.  Curriculum writers and politicians have slapped together courses of study that leave NO ROOM for doing. 

Take the North Carolina sixth grade science curriculum as an example.

We tackle everything from a study of the layers of the earth and the formation of minerals to the way that light, sound and heat transfer energy.  We look at why humans should protect soil, how space exploration has benefited mankind, and how species adapt to their habitats. 

We talk about the differences between the planets.  We look at earthquake and volcano patterns.  We learn about convection and conduction.  We wrestle with symbiosis, mutualism and parasitism.  We examine food chains.  We study the parts of waves -- both transverse and longitudinal.  We look at convex and concave lenses.

We study the parts of the eye and ear.  We discuss the Law of Conservation of Energy. We explore the differences between potential and kinetic energy.  We learn about how the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon influence the earth.

Are you starting to get a sense for just HOW massive the knowing part of our curriculum really is?

The results are really quite simple:  There's not a whole heck of a lot of time for doing in classrooms.

Here's a tangible example of how this changes the instructional decisions made by teachers:  Marsha Ratzel -- a buddy of mine teaching science in Kansas -- introduced me to the Science for Citizens website yesterday. 

She describes it like this:

Science for Citizens offers regular folks like me (if I'm regular I guess) the chance to participate in science projects from right where we live, doing pretty normal stuff and then sending in what we learn to the principal investigators.

Can't get much more "doing" than that, can you? 

But here's the hitch:  While I LOVE the idea of getting my kids involved in projects that would give them a chance to be a part of a much larger community of practicing scientists -- a lesson I think is pretty darn important for them to learn -- I literally WORRY about incorporating any of the projects into my classroom because I'm already  a month behind in my curriculum. 

The moral of the story is that I believe in balance too.  We can't throw the content baby out with the bathwater.  "Instead" thinking really isn't any healthier for schools than "Yeah, But" thinking.

But let's not pretend that what we have in schools now is a finely balanced knowing-doing experience. 

From my point of view, we're not "doing" much more than sprinting our way to know-where.

Any of this make sense?  Do y'all feel that the knowing-doing balance is out of whack in your worlds too, or do your kids have plenty of chances to take an action-stance towards their content -- and more importantly, their communities?

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Related Radical Reads:

What If Schools Created a Culture of Do INSTEAD of a Culture of Know?

Stuffing Kids with Content

Brainpop and the Overloaded Curriculum

Skills Matter More than Tools

Blogger's Note: Excused the rough feel of this post, y'all.  I'm running late this morning but I wanted to do some transparent reflection before heading back to #educon.  Hopefully something here will spark your thinking too.

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So I'm here in Philly this weekend for #educon -- one of the highlights of my professional year -- and I left last night's panel discussion on sustaining innovation with a TON of unanswered questions.  Here's just a few that are roiling through my mind right now:

Can innovation happen without remarkable leadership?

I've spent the past month reading I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee #59.

One message that comes across loud and clear in the book is that Larry Page and Sergey Brin were the driving force behind Google. Their choices and attitudes and ideas and believes permeated through every decision and action and organizational direction in the early days of Google. 

That made Google much more than just another startup company in Silicion Valley to Larry and Sergey.  Instead, it was literally an extension of their core beliefs -- about the role companies should play in the world, about the ways that workplaces should be structured, about what "don't be evil" looks like in action.  

Don't you think that's true for The Science Leadership Academy too?  Don't you think that in some ways, the remarkableness of SLA is an extension of their remarkable principal Chris Lehmann?

So the question for me is what happens to SLA after Chris is gone? 

Isn't it possible that SLA's next principal will be a well-intentioned guy or gal who unintentionally squelches what SLA has become? 

The sad truth is that there just aren't a ton of Chris Lehmanns out there, so can we really believe that SLA will remain the inspiring place that it is today under the stewardship of someone else?

And if not, shouldn't school districts spend more time and money on principal professional development programs to find and to feed and to grow their most innovative leaders?

What role does accountability play in either encouraging or hampering innovation?

At one point in last night's conversation, every panelist preached about the important role of failure in the life of an innovator.  Successes were just the tip of their professional icebergs, argued robotics genius CJ Taylor.  Failures are adorable added Alex Gilliam -- the founder of Public Workshop.

Their thinking lined up nicely with Steven Johnson's work on the evolutionary nature of sustainable change.  Growth doesn't depend on out of the box thinking.  Instead, it depends on a willingness to think at the edges of your box -- even if that thinking results in failures because you are pushing your intellectual comfort zone. 

But I couldn't help thinking about the impact that consequences have on our willingness to push ourselves to the point where failure is a possibility.  Aren't we more likely to stand squarely in the center of our boxes if we know that failure will lead to embarrassment or professional and personal ridicule?

And if so, how do today's grading -- and cudgel-based school accountability -- programs stifle innovation in our schools?  More importantly, is there anything that we can do to foster innovation even when we remain shackled by these practices?

Is innovation even possible in large organizations?

When they were asked to define innovation last night, the panelists used words and phrases like "nimble" and "ready to react and respond."  A sense of action shaped their perceptions of innovation -- and that resonates with me.

But as a guy who works in one of the 20 largest school systems in America, that also has me worried because there's nothing nimble about my district -- and while I think our leaders have a commitment to innovation, I worry that it will never happen simply because we're so huge.

Is it possible that small schools and districts have greater innovation potential than large schools and districts?  And if so, why the heck are we still building 2,000 student schools and cobbling together 100,000+ student school districts?

More importantly, why are we so fixated on standardizing everything in education?  Wouldn't we be better off if we looked at schools as innovation incubators -- an idea that Clayton Christensen pushes for in Disrupting Class -- and encouraged as much diversity within the local context as possible?

Finally, what the heck are we thinking when we put our faith in the federal government's ability to successfully encourage innovation in schools?  Are we REALLY convinced that centralizing educational choice at the national level is going to make us MORE nimble and responsive and innovative as a system?

I'm not.

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Related Radical Reads:

Innovation Interview Questions

Innovation and Intellectual Collisions

Teaching Innovation with the Curiosity Box

Cranky Blogger Warning: From time to time here on the Radical, I feel like a ranting lunatic driven by emotion rather than solution-oriented blogger driven by reason.  Now might just be one of those times.  Take what I write tonight with a grain of salt -- or a gallon of gin.  Dealer's choice.

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Poke through my thoughts about technology's role in public education and you'll hear me preach over and over again about the importance of working to transform teaching REGARDLESS of the number of computers you have in your classroom.

That's a very personal message simply because I don't live in a 1:1 world. 

Heck, I don't even live in a 10:1 world.

Like most teachers, I've spent the better part of the past decade making due with limited access to labs with dozens of computers in need of Flash updates.  Sure, we've got a few laptop carts -- but they've sadly become dilapidated wrecks that we can't afford to replace. 

#soundfamiliar?

For the most part, I've tried to be tolerant of that reality. More importantly, I've consistently encouraged anyone who bothers to listen to be tolerant of that reality, too.

"It's not like your schools and districts don't WANT to provide you with access to the kinds of digital tools that you need in order to change teaching and learning in your classroom," I preach.  "It's just darn near impossible to appropriately outfit classrooms given the limits of district budgets."

There's some truth in there, right?

Times HAVE been unusually tight.  Geez - here in North Carolina there hasn't even been money to give teachers cost-of-living adjustments in the past 4 years.  Where ARE we supposed to get the cash to invest in classroom technology.

#soundfamiliar?

But I'm sick of being tolerant, y'all. 

I'm sick of hearing critics hammer teachers for being resistant to change while I'm STILL sitting in cut-and-paste classrooms full of textbooks, glue sticks and safety scissors.  I'm sick of educational soothsayers conjuring up visions of 21st Century learning environments that I'll NEVER be able to create with the three working computers plugged into the corner of my classroom. 

I'm sick of telling my students that they'll have to wait until they get home to answer the questions that they care the most about.  I'm sick of standing in line behind twelve other teachers waiting to make photocopies because handouts are the only instructional resource that we have consistent access to. 

#soundfamiliar?

Most importantly, I'm sick of pretending that I stand a chance of convincing kids who understand just how personalized and engaging learning can be that my ridiculously quaint, completely unplugged, intellectually standardized classroom is anything OTHER than a big, fat waste of time.

The genie's out of the bottle, y'all. 

Like Scott McLeod recently argued, our kids KNOW that traditional learning environments are irrelevant -- and pretty much everyone with a pulse KNOWS that our schools need to change, but NO ONE is willing to put their money where their mouths are. 

You (and I don't care if "you" are a pundit, a parent or a politician) want to see my instruction change?

Find a way to give me some new tools to experiment with. 

I don't care how you do it. Force through some ridiculously sick bond referendum earmarked for technology and technology only.  Figure out a way to make Bring Your Own Device Programs work in your communities.  Pass the hat at Chamber of Commerce meetings. 

But whatever you do, quit ranting about the crappy job I'M doing until YOU'RE actually willing to pony up some cabbage or to help cut through red tape to create solutions that give me a fighting chance of actually doing my job well.

Quit crying about the dioramas my kids are making when the supply closet is chock-a-block full of crayolas.  Quit acting so surprised that my kids aren't networking with the world when the only lenses that we have to look through are dated textbooks.  Quit asking for "timely feedback" when I'm collecting data by hand with clipboards and post-it notes.  

I guess what I'm saying is quit asking me to perform instructional miracles.

My well of professional tolerance has run dry. 

#soundfamiliar?

(Glad I got that off my chest.  I almost feel better already.  Now where's my red checking pen? I have essays to grade.)

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Related Radical Reads:

How Limited Technology Budgets Failed My Students

More on the Challenges of Wondering in Schools

Your Data Dream. My Data Nightmare

If you've read the Radical for any length of time, you'll know that I pretty much despise the carrot-and-stick approach to managing teachers and students that seems to be all the rage in education right now (see here, here and here).

What's completely wild is that many of the top organizational thinkers who are working largely in fields beyond education -- including Authorspeak Keynote presenter Daniel Pink -- agree that incentive programs almost NEVER work.

Download Slide_ThePerfectCarrot

Chip and Dan Heath -- authors of a TON of great reads including The Myth of the Garage, a completely free Corwin eBook -- are no less critical of our fascination with incentive programs than Pink.

In Myth of the Garage, they compare incentive programs to the popular urban legend of a Darwin Award winner who strapped a rocket engine to his Chevy Impala looking for the ultimate joy ride only to end up "as a human flapjack" on the side of a lonely Arizona mountain.

The Heaths write:

Incentives are like that jet engine.  There's no question the engine will take you somewhere, fast, but it's not always clear where.  Or who you're going to mow down on the way.

Yet incentives are still the first resort of most managers.  We all think we're smart enough to create the perfect carrot.

(Kindle locations 357-363)

So what makes incentive programs so dangerous -- particularly in fields like education?

According to Chip and Dan Heath, incentive programs inevitably cause well-intentioned people to fall victim to a focusing illusion.  Instead of taking multiple measures into account when judging performance, we overemphasize the single variable that we are attempting to measure.

In other words, when all you are worried about measuring is how fast your car can fly down a dry desert lakebed, you tend to forget about the mountain that you're sprinting towards at 300 miles per hour. 

The Heaths write:

"To be fair, there are some contexts where one variable dominates.  If you're employing a field sales rep who is selling a simple, self-contained product, then it probably makes sense to tie incentives to the sale.

If you're traveling a long, straight road, the jet engine will get you there faster.

But chances are you don't live in a one-variable world.  In your complicated, squishy, matrixed world, if you're dreaming up an incentive plan, you're almost certainly in the grips of a focusing illusion."

(Kindle locations 386-391)

Now, I don't know about you, but I can't think of a MORE "complicated, squishy, matrixed world" than education. 

The honest truth is that we -- teachers, principals, parents, policymakers, community leaders, students -- DO care about multiple variables when looking at the outcomes of education.

Sure we want students to become better readers and writers.  Sure, mathematical competency is an essential outcome for every student. 

But in an era when incentives -- and pretty darn serious consequences -- for both teachers and students have been tied to just two testable variables, I've GOT to believe that we're in the grips of one seriously wicked focusing illusion too. 

My only hope is that we'll come to our senses and switch off the rocket before we run out of road.

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Related Radical Reads:

Bulldozing the Forests

The Monster You've Created

Statistically Snookered

The Unintended Consequence of Incentive Programs in Schools

Original Image Credit: Minty Python’s Frying Circuits 5/52 by Neal

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on December 23, 2011

In one of the more surprising decisions that a public school district has made in recent memory, the Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado has started selling advertising space on student report cards.

For $90,000, Colorado's nonprofit education savings plan has bought the right to slap a big, fat advertisement on the bottom of every student report card for the next three years. 

In a district with 86,000 students who presumably get four report cards per year, that works out to about 3 cents per placement. 

Now, I understand WHY JEFFCO has been forced into this ridiculous decision:  Schools everywhere are feeling the pinch of poor economies. 

That means we either need to find new revenue streams -- which is the choice JEFFCO has made -- or we need to cut expenses even more than we already have.

#brokeyall

But doesn't this scare anyone besides me?

In my horribly pessimistic mind, I can see the "next steps" playing out in sickening ways:

Local businesses will buy the right to print coupons on the bottom of student report cards as a part of behavior incentive and/or academic rewards programs. 

As skeptical New Zealand educator Allan Alach pointed out in Twitter today, this is the PERFECT "socially responsible" marketing plan for Burger King, McDonalds and Pizza Hut, isn't it?

For every A he earns, Johnny gets a coupon for a free Whopper when a large drink and a side of fries are purchased.  For every B, little Johnny will get a free Biggie Size upgrade on any Value Meal purchased.

And OBVIOUSLY -- like my equally skeptical buddy Chris Wejr mentioned on Twitter today -- kids with Fs will get coupons for free tutoring sessions at local learning centers. 

Recognizing that some customers are worth far more than others, businesses will start negotiating different rates depending on the schools that their advertisements run in. 

"We'll give you 1.1 cents for every ad you run in that poor, failing, inner-city school," the conversation will go, "and 3.8 cents for every ad you run in the affluent suburbs."

Worse yet, some strapped-for-cash district leader will buy into the "some communities are worth more than others" argument and hold out for 5 cents per ad in the rich schools. 

In a seemingly spontaneous moment of sheer brilliance, some business leader will suggest marketing different products to families of different ethnic groups or socio-economic status.

In the worst case scenario, stereotypical assumptions about the interests of families of different races or classes will drive choices for advertisements.

"How about museum coupons for kids in the suburbs and Putt-Putt Golf and Games coupons for kids in the inner city?" the supposedly harmless thinking will go.

#sickeninglyprobable

In the best case scenario, new marketing companies will come in and offer parents the chance to choose the types of coupons and advertisements they want to see on the bottom of their kid's report card.

"Would y'all prefer food coupons or entertainment coupons?" the thinking will go.  "We offer both.  How GREAT is that?!"

#barelytolerable

In another seemingly spontaneous moment of sheer brilliance, some district leader will start selling the rights to print advertisments on interim reports, too.

Why stop at formal report cards, right?  Our school sends home grade sheets a few times per quarter.  If we're slapping ads on report cards, why NOT slap ads on those interim reports, too?

Sure, half of our interim reports never make it home -- but they've GOT to be worth someething, right?

And what about that "beginning of the year" paperwork that goes home every year: Supply lists, student data sheets, course outlines.  That's prime marketing real estate too, isn't it? 

Aren't parents more likely to be on the lookout for papers early in the year -- and if so, can't we make MORE money by selling ads on THOSE kinds of documents? 

#endlesspossibility

In a final seemingly spontaneous moment of sheer brilliance, local charter and private schools will begin buying ad space on the bottom of report cards in failing schools and districts.

Recognizing that this could put their own schools out of business, district officials will balk. 

Feeling jilted -- and losing easy access to a potentially huge market for their services -- the private and charter schools will sue, claiming that they are being unfairly discriminated against by a public agency.

The trial will last 2 years and cost taxpayers $2.2 million dollars to defend. 

Crazy stuff, isn't it?  What makes it crazier is that every one of my fictional scenarios is TOTALLY possible. 

So here's another solution:  Why don't we start providing our schools with the cash that they need in order to educate our children WITHOUT having to sell advertising space on student report cards.

Is that REALLY asking too much?