edu-urgency?

Understanding the target audience is critical to the success of any business. Understanding the business model of your company is rather important as well. If you don't know why and how you make money, any success is a fluke.

How do schools or school systems "make money"? If a school is like a restaurant - the chef is the principal, the sous-chefs are faculty, the maitre d' is the vice principal, and the waiters are the staff. The differences (in no particular order):

1. A chef knows immediately if his work is successful, the principal doesn't
2. A chef gets paid by his customers, the principal doesn't
3. Chefs get fired if their product isn't good, the faculty has tenure
4. The restaurant (except in Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares) succeeds by giving it's customers the best, a school succeeds by meeting its funder's targets
5. A restaurant is inspired to be special, unique and ever-evolving to attract the best clientele, a student has no choice, and will attend school no matter how un-special, average, and boring it is.

Conclusion - schools are not set up to care about their customers, just their funders. The business model for learning in this country bears almost no accountability for the satisfaction or success of its customers. The decentralized model of learning in America theoretically avoids this issue by operating "close to the customer" and being driven by the expectations of parents (theoretically closest to their children). Boy - that's really worked well hasn't it!

Instead of student-driven, adapted to local requirements, direct accountability, we have inefficiency, inconsistency, budget shortfalls, and poor leadership. More than one quarter of high school students fail to graduate. Last year more than 1.3 million graduates required remediation (inability to read, write or do basic math effectively) before entering college or university.

The situation is dire, but there's no urgency or imperative for change (I'm thinking of something at the level of "national security" on September 12, 2001). We are capable of rapid and dramatic change, we just need to feel the urgency - we felt it after 9-11, and IMO the Education crisis in this country is much, much more serious.

Moreover, we're not short on benchmarks for success in our very own backyard. Seattle Girls' School and High Tech High are proof that learning greatness is possible, and can be successful. Why are they unique? One reason is the brilliance & strength of their leaders, the other is the fact that they sit outside the system. No doubt there are many innovators within the system as well - some that I admire are in my blog roll. They should all be the rule and not the exception.

How do we create a structure that allows SGS & HTH to be the norm? To start, let's federalize learning. The distributed model has failed, let's centralize. Let's redefine success - schools must be more accountable and directly tied to the end result of their work - successful graduates. 

BUT - we must only Federalize the "what" not the "how." The Feds should finance Education, and they must define success in a way that is external to the K-12 schools. It's not about erasing creativity and local context, it's about creating a national mandate for learning outcomes - the "what." The "how" should still be in the hands of schools and teachers - they're the ones who understand their own students and community and how best to serve them.

The great thing about this approach is that no school gets left behind. Funding should be available to all schools whether rural, urban, inner city, or suburban. Every school should be held to a single standard of accomplishment, and budgets should not be victims of local or state circumstances. Many of us live in States where budgets are being cut, and education is being made to pay the price - that's not an acceptable scenario.

We must create an apocalyptic sense of urgency about Education in this country and then take drastic measures.