Pursuing Excellence: cultural rivalry disguised as common market?

Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven aint goin' there… -- Thomas Arthur Dorsey (1899 - 1993) Walk All Over God's Heaven

"Excellence in All Things!" A friend was hired as the headmaster of a small (70 students, grades 9 - 12) private school, the dominant if not sole admissions criteria of which was the parents' ready ability to pay the tuition. This school touted its ability to transform reluctant or lackadaisical children into "Ivy League" students. In fact, scholastic achievement, as one might soberly expect, was rather variable.

At a school board meeting, several of the governing members proposed that the headmaster post and preach the slogan, "Excellence in All Things!" The headmaster suggested that such action would only provoke derision from their rather sophisticated teenagers and likely, also, a certain disdain for the competence of the staff. He, the headmaster, would personally be happy if each student could show better than mediocre accomplishment in a few areas of endeavor.

A particularly vociferous board member remonstrated that it was the headmaster's and teachers' duty to educate all the students to adopt the slogan and strive to actualize it. But another asked, "Which subjects should be favored if it turns out that time or other resources run short?" Thus began what turned out to be neither a very long nor very comfortable "discussion" among those present at the meeting.

Creating More Hamster Wheels. Many of us can look back over many, many years to see the sacrifice of the adequate, the good, even, to the pursuit of the excellent. Yet we seldom see memories of such pursuits raise much apprehension of yet another treadmill exercise. Is our communal memory so weak, our resources so plentiful or our embarrassments so forgettable? What accounts for this Sysiphean proclivity (in almost every area of organizational life)?

One kind of explanation for cavalier attitudes toward excellence comes readily to mind: disregard of how ideas of "excellence" vary even within the markets pursuing it.

Broadly characterized, a market is a (theorized) group of people looking to acquire what they perceive to be a benefit, some thing or state of affairs perceived to be of positive value. These market members pursue an exchange via some medium, be it money, labor, time, attention, material items, or the like.

These and related notions are quite run-of-the-mill. However, here we mean to include in our considerations "externalities," beneficial or damaging effects affecting persons or organizations which are not themselves involved in the markets creating those effects. The motivations of school directors and staff, paying parents and the students involved may be -- indeed, usually are -- somewhat different, despite school slogans proclaiming, say, "Our school community works together in pursuit of excellence!" (See SLOGANS: junkfood, dead-weight or poison?.)

Weak Markets Markets can be weakened by attrition or disorganization. If groups that are willing to bear the costs of pursuing "excellence" are lacking, of insufficient size or disorganized, "excellence" remains little more than a vacuous shibboleth. This is often seen with the promises so easily bandied about in our political campaigns: hopes for benefits are much more easily raised than are the sacrifices, e.g. taxes, to pay for them.

Sometimes a purported benefit is perceived to "cost" too much. Just as the initial costs and future upkeep may "price" a car "out of the market;" so, also, might the burdens of a social relationship with some persons, "high-maintenance" individuals, leave them unbefriended.

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. — Baudelaire

Though many people will agree on the face of it that "excellence" is better than "mediocrity," lack of agreement as to what the term, "excellence," delineates may cause an actual market to dissipate.

A potential market may not coalesce because of disputes about which criteria exactly should be used to describe the hoped-for benefit. This is a general problem in every area of life with vaguely described benefits, such as security, responsibility, ownership; and, not least, achievement, education and excellence.

Consensus is often only apparent. Sloganistic terminology abounds. Practical criteria are either missing, or lost in controversy. Leaders of long established institutions, family, schools, churches and governmental entities, may not to be able to find common criteria of excellence that serve each of their particular institutional interests. (See Engaging Conflict: a Leadership Necessity?)

So, the pursuit of "excellence" and the quarreling about its "true" meaning are not the high-minded undertakings as they often made out to be. They're just fancy forms of rivalry; nonetheless, culture-clashes.

But,... better rivalry than warfare.

For further examples pursuing these issues, see "Sacrificing Public Education to "Pursue Excellence"?


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--- EGR

Stringencies Generate Dysfunctions: why things can "suddenly" go wrong.

edited 7/28/18

"It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry." Albert Einstein, 13 March 1949, New York (NY) Times.

"Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even bringing gifts." – Laocoön in Virgil's Aeneid, Book II

With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon. — Elon Musk

The Raising-Standards Trade-Offs. What is Einstein's point? It is that even though there are criteria used to determine student proficiency in some area – which may well work for someone's intended purposes-- there may be a dysfunction that arises from these very same criteria.

Criteria are comprised from definitions of "adequacy," which when "inappropriately applied" may undermine something that is generally more important in many fields of endeavor: curiosity.

What is Appropriate? For example, a scalpel, no matter how well constructed it is, would likely be a poor choice as a toothpick. This "inappropriate" use contributes to its dysfunction as it cuts through gum and cheek. But "inappropriate" is a vague term: it can cover actions which are unorthodox, or dangerous, or untraditional, or distasteful, or immoral, or improper, or ineffective, or inefficient – among others. Situation, for one, is a major contributor to our judgment as to appropriateness.

But major contributors, too, are the concepts, the definitions of which influence our criteria for judgments of "appropriateness. " Tests of all sorts, for example, "intelligence", are invoked as benchmarks for criteria. But it is a much vaguer notion of "appropriateness" which helps us decide which tests, among others, are the right instruments to support of judgments of adequacy. In general, we have to see how a possible decision situation meets criteria of

a. attention (cue);

b. interest (concern); and

c. involvement (control).

(For more on this, see Rationales for Intervention: From Test to Treatment to Policy)

It's no news that any action has results that can be considered as either positive or negative depending on contexts and interests of the persons making the judgment. But it's important not to confuse a test-error positive, i.e, false positive, with a "true" positive with later costs, i.e. a non-erroneous positive test result, that produces post-test negative consequences. (On what makes a "true positive" "true," see Classification Error in Evaluation Practice)

For example, John, who is sickly, gets a clean bill of health during an Army physical exam prior to induction; he is inducted and then reports for duty. In contrast, Harry, gets the same passing "fit for duty" score, is inducted and then goes AWOL.

Contingent Dysfunctionality (CD). You give a friend a shopping list. Your friend comes back with groceries that you had on your list, but you don't recognize many of the brands that you would buy yourself. Later you discover that though many of the items are satisfactory, there are other you find repulsive. Your specs were met, but a lot of undesirables got through. This is an illustration of how contingent dysfunctionality (CD) is brought on by both greater specificity of your list and by the inability of mere conceptual screening, i.e. a lists of concepts (item names), to sift out potentially dysfunctional items for other kinds of situations, i.e. food preparation instead of the original grocery acquisition.

Why CD surprises or disappoints us is that all criteria are situation-dependent functional. It's just that, as we construct our criteria of acceptability, we tend to regard only the situations we want to promote (or have others promote) as of prime importance. We create our own "elephants-in-the-room" by ignoring what we deem "not pertinent to the task."

Any criteria (-- concepts are covering terms for sets of criteria --) may be carried over into new situations for which we have little or no experience in dealing with the variations they may induce in items identified by the criteria. Thus their appropriateness may not be challenged with much more than some misgivings about the "novelty" of their application. (Imagine doing a performance of Hamlet at the beach in a hurricane, wearing swimsuits and knee deep in the tide! Might we not have difficulty judging its quality as a performance even if acted by fine British performers?)

Explicit criteria which attempt to clarify a concept, may also be a flood-gate for CD's that are non-functional for the situations we initially formulated them for. However, in later, relatively similar situations , these criteria may become active enough to concern us. (See Autonomous Car Collides with Bus: an illusion of abstractions?)

The Many Guises of CD. The criteria accepted to specify a concept define what I will call here, for want of a better term, an "elite," relative to a given population of items (thing, actions, persons, etc,) in a given situation, or for a given purpose for given persons. The more stringent the criteria, likely the fewer the items are that accepted into the elite. This reduction of members of an elite is the usual purpose of attempts to "raise standards," or "tighten admissions," or "increase quality."

The thesis of this essay is that by increasing the stringency of criteria with respect to one situation (or group of situations) elites will collect members which are dysfunctional in other situations not in the original. (Literature majors tend to be quite dysfunctional in mathematics.) These contingent dysfunctions are not necessarily intentional, but often are either disregarded, overlooked or dismissed as being of low probability, or of negligible long-term cost.

Common examples are:

a. A college football coach "beefs up his line" with students who turn out to be academically inept. Their grade-point average may disqualify them from playing.

b. Farmers breed cattle for reduced fat content which turn out to be less resistant to common diseases.

c. Traditional monarchies accept as "royal consorts" persons with royal family histories, disregarding their genetic hemophilia. The consorts themselves turn out to be hemophiliac. Their illness may impair their ability to govern.

d. Car companies develop automobiles which are "self-driving" but which turn out to be unable to recognize and handle a range of low-frequency emergency situations easily recognized, if not well-handled, by humans. Issues of risk and responsibility may arise.

e. From the perspective of the people of ancient Troy, the Wooden Horse -- now referred to as "The Trojan Horse" -- which they accepted as the gift of defeated Greeks honoring the Goddess Athena, led to Troy's destruction.

,

The Trojan Horse is an exemplar of most, if not all, scams and illusions. What is important here, in considering its status as an example of CD, contingent dysfunctionality, is understanding for whom the horse is contingently dysfunctional. Clearly, it is a CD for the Trojans, not the Greeks. The Trojans misinterpreted – actually, accepted the explanation given them by the apparently left behind Greek, Sinon -- and despite the warning of other Trojans, took it to be a religious statue; and, not a special-forces invasion ploy.

Perhaps, if instead of letting the statue stand untouched overnight as they celebrated their seeming victory over the Greeks, the Trojans had set it afire, the relative CD-status described in the previous paragraph would have been otherwise.

For examples and to pursue these issues, see Evaluating Learner Strengths and Weaknesses: 
the Impediments of Formalism )

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--- EGR

The Consistently Successful Educator: A Will-o’-the-Wisp?

... one way of looking at success patterns ... is that that people who are in high positions have never been in one place long enough for their problems to catch up with them. They outrun their mistakes. -- Robert Jackall (1988) Moral Mazes. The world of corporate managers. New York: Oxford. p. 90

As headmaster of a private school and, later, as a professor of education, I was privy to negative comments and rather scandulous informational items about private and parochial schools that I had never heard in my previous 25+ years as a teacher in the School District of Philadelphia.

Nor did I read or hear about such things in the media. Papers, pundits and politicians seemed only to focus on the ills of public schools. Private and parochial schools -- and, more recently, charter schools -- were presumed to be good, despite what investigators might have discovered if only they had bothered to examine them carefully or think about what they were supposed to accomplish. (See, for example, Cookson. & Persell (1985) Preparing for Power. America's Elite Boarding Schools. See also, The Teacher as Technician.)

This narrow focus away from the private and religious sectors of education can probably be understood partly by entrepreneurial interests in diverting to themselves a portion of the vast and seemingly discretionary public school funds. Normally, private and parochial schools have tight budgets. More importantly, however, is that control of public school budgets is accessible by the clientele of papers, pundits and politicians. (See Control in the School: Illusions and Realities)

So it has come to be that “School Reform” in this USofA does not mean making private or parochial schools better. Public schools, as some Americans have been griping for 120 years, are the ones that need reform. So “reformers” even go abroad to look for cures for presumed public school ills, to find that philosopher’s stone that will turn base public metal into private gold. (See School “Success”: hoping for miracles. )

But why go to other countries? Why not just import the practices and methods used in private and parochial schools to transmute the failures of public education into the presumed superiority of private/parochial schools? Why not sacrifice what may be crucial to public education to the holy grail of excellence -- whatever “excellence” is supposed to mean? (See What Works in Schooling: the “Newfanglers” versus the “Oldfashioned.”)

The ideal of the public school, as a kind of factory with clear goals efficiently pursued, by which public schools are judged by a religiously and socio-economically diverse public results in a misperception of public school failure. This is because there is little practical consensus among papers, pundits, politicians and their clientele as to means and ends the public schools should be pursuing.

The ills of public schools, to the extent they are not imaginative fabrications, are not generally school generated. Rather, they are brought about by hasty practical compromises on broad public controversies over culture, law or economy; for example, over sex education, access to sports and the need for arts/music education. However, private and parochial schools are not public business. Thus, if they are mediocre or worse, they are left to their own devices. (See The School Failure Mythology .)

Practitioners and administrators in public education lack sufficient power to determine what is to be put into practice as an effective method, scientific knowledge or no. Political and economic concerns tend to override technical pedagogy.

In private and parochial education consensus issues are generally kept “in house”. But consensus issues are so important in public education that a language of vague slogans that celebrate as they obfuscate, has been invented to control discourse and decision-making. (See Slogans in Education)

Large amounts of public funds are at stake. This is a real power struggle. (See Power in Schooling Practice: 
The Educational Dilemmas)

To examine these issues further, see Increasing Teaching Efficiency


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--- EGR

Politics vs. Efficiency: the realities of American public schools

Confidence in golf means being able to concentrate on the problem at hand with no outside interference.-- Tom Watson

Imagine how you would feel if you had to get the approval of a committee for every little thing you did. Don’t you remember how it felt in school when you had to raise your hand to get permission to go to the bathroom? Did you ever have to wait? Did you ever have an “accident?” Do you wonder why many kids think of being in school as being in prison?

On the other hand, have you ever watched shoppers crash through the doors of a supermarket or department store to be first at a sale? People sometimes get trampled and hurt, but a lot of people get bargains, too.

Both of these approaches, tight control and free-for-all have benefits and costs. Tight control favors the group (generally, its “leaders”) over the individual. Free-for-all favors lucky individuals over the group.

American public schools are caught pulled in two conflicting directions: trying to efficiently deliver services to individual children and trying to work within constraints identified by democratically elected officials, whose main concern is not, and cannot (officially) be, individual children.

To examine these issues further, see Two Faces of American Public Education


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--- EGR

Too Many Broths Ruin the Cook

Too many cooks spoil the broth -- Proverb

There is only so much time in a teaching day. There are only so many things a teacher can do. Adding to the already overstuffed schedule doesn’t get more things done, unless they are done less than well.

Teachers classroom activites fall into three main groups: instruction, organization and discipline. If one of the groups expands, one or two of the others must suffer. This is not nuclear physics.

If kids have not been sufficiently socialized at home to contribute, or at least, not to interfere with instructional or organizational activities, then the teacher must waste the instructional time of the cooperative students on disciplinary action. This is not nuclear physics.

If school districts insist on dumping more and more faddish items into the curriculum, then less and less gets done. The essentials suffer. The kids miss out or do not develop those skills needed for their later years. This is not nuclear physics.

If administrators interrupt classes with non-urgent public address messages, or with special un-preannounced assemblies, it wastes teacher time in helping along his or her charges. This, also, is not nuclear physics.

What is so hard about applying common sense in schools?

------To investigate this issue further see See "What Can a Teacher Do?"

Cordially,

-- EGR

Schools Can Be Just Too Big

The dinosaur's eloquent lesson is that if some bigness is good, an overabundance of bigness is not necessarily better. -- Eric Johnston

In the 1930's there were about 127,000 school districts in the United States of America. By the late 1980's they had been consolidated into slightly over 15,000 much larger units. Bigger pots, is seems, were thought to make better soup. Do we still think this is true? Is it time for a change?

No doubt some can point to many benefits gained by such consolidation. But who exactly gained those benefits? And who paid the costs?

University students who are prospective teachers want to be told there is no connection between what goes on in a classroom and the organization of the school. After all, why not close their classroom door and shut out the world? Can't they just "raise their expectations"?

Prospective teachers also want to know how to be "effective." That is all. They do not want to hear that important factors are not under their control, unless, with equal though contrary confusion, they give up the struggle, citing them as insurmountable.

Would-be teachers tend not to believe that school consolidation can have much effect on what they do. Much more important, they imagine, is their personal verve and dedication. This "Man of La Mancha-complex" often persists well into their careers. Being true to their glorious quest, their hearts, perhaps, will lie peaceful and calm when they're laid to their rest. Fine for them, but what about their students?

To examine these issues further, see Really Want Change? Deconsolidate the Schools!

-- EGR

Will That Dog Bite? Will That Applicant Be an Effective Teacher?

The proof is in the pudding. -- Proverb

A recent (2009) article asks, in its title, an intriguing question: Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?. The authors propose testing potential teacher recruits for two factors: “cognitive skills” and “non-cognitive skills.” On the basis of their tests they claim they can predict likely future student academic achievement, thereby reducing or sparing school districts the costs of probationary appointments.

When I applied for the Peace Corps in 1964, I and the other applicants were subjected to two kinds of tests: one for cognitive skills; another, for non-cognitive skills. Those of us who “passed” them nonetheless participated in programs with various outcomes: some successful and some not. I have never run across any indication that program successes or failures showed any correlation with Peace Corp Volunteer scores on either test.

What seems to be going on here with this “predictive testing” is an example of what some psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error -- ignoring contextual and environmental factors by locating all causality, all responsibility, in the individual person.

The tests mentioned in the article will likely be very popular with school boards and parents because they basically wipe the slate clean when it comes to asking what influence, and what responsibility, these groups have for student achievement.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Increasing Teaching Efficiency: 
the evaluation of method


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--- EGR