It was the other Tony Bennett who sang that song, of course. But former Indiana and Florida state superintendent Tony Bennett probably ought to be asking himself that question.  As Tom LoBianco of the Associated Press reported, Mr. Bennett manipulated his own school grading system so that a favorite charter school–run by a major financial supporter of his–got a grade of A instead of the C that it deserved.

“They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work,” Bennett emailed his Chief of Staff (who now is Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s chief lobbyist).  All this went down less than a year ago, just before Bennett was voted out of office.  He was immediately hired to head Florida’s public schools, a position he just vacated after LoBianco reported his secret manipulations.

The blogosphere has been going wild, and those on the left are positively salivating. Mr. Bennett is the driving force behind Chiefs for Change, the right-leaning group of state superintendents of education.  That group’s name has morphed into “Cheats for Change,” “Chiefs for (Grade) Change,” “Cheating Chiefs for Change,” and on and on.  They see this as another skirmish in the on-going battle being waged over/against public education and are hoping that this fiasco will help more people see the folly of demonizing teachers and traditional public schools.  That’s their ‘big picture,’ and they may be seeing things correctly, but let’s look more closely at what happened in Indiana.

Mr. Bennett screwed up on several fronts.  He changed the rules for a charter school but did not act to help some traditional public schools in essentially the same situation.  He did everything in secret, apparently forgetting that, as an elected public servant, his official business was neither secret nor private.  And, judging from his language, he was motivated by ego (he had promised the school’s founder, Christel DeHaan, an A!) and his fervently-held privatization ideology.

It’s not a stretch to call this behavior hypocritical.  Mr. Bennett was happy to be known as Mr. Accountability–until his own accountability system turned around and bit him in the butt.  Then, rather than eating a helping of crow and facing up to possibility that he might have created a lousy system, Mr. Accountability cheated.  Pride goeth before a fall.

But what about Mr. Bennett’s ‘accountability work’?  How trustworthy was it?  Matt DiCarlo of the Shanker Institute examined Mr. Bennett’s school grading system and found out that poverty, not quality, was the chief determinant of a school’s grade. “Almost 85 percent of the schools with the lowest poverty rates receive an A or B, and virtually none gets a D or F,” he wrote.  More than half of the schools with the highest percentages of kids living in poverty received “an F or D, compared with about 22 percent across all schools.”

I am reminded of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” particularly its Seventh Commandment. That final commandment originally read ‘All Animals Are Equal.” However, by the end of the allegory it has morphed into “All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others.”  Rules are for other people, Mr. Bennett?

It’s unclear whether what happened in Indiana amounts to a “Paying for Grades” scandal.  Ms. DeHaan, a major supporter of Republican causes, donated $130,000 to Mr. Bennett’s campaigns, and apparently an additional $15,000 after the grade change.

(By the way, how about a shout-out for the Freedom of Information Act, a tool which allows reporters like LoBianco access to documents. Where would we be without FOIA?  Where would our democracy be?)

Another intrepid reporter, Scott Elliott of the Indianapolis Star, has written extensively about the charter school in question, Christel House. After visiting it, he reported that it is in fact a darn good school.  Elliott writes about how educators there have gone the extra mile to see that students have transportation–a huge issue in poor communities.

So to summarize: A good school gets a bad grade, as do some traditional public schools. In response, the state superintendent bends the rules in secret, rather than air out the problems inherent in his own approach to grading schools.  Mr. Bennett is a flawed human being, but so are we all. And so let’s not keep the focus on him.  Let’s look instead at the idea of grading schools.

We need an accountability system, but it must measure quality and effort, not poverty or some characteristics than an ideologue might love or hate.  It’s probably too much to insist on a single letter grade; students get marks in English, Social Studies, Algebra and so forth–why shouldn’t a school get multiple grades?

Now ask yourself what a school should be graded on. How important are scores on bubble tests?  How much should graduation rates count?  Attendance and truancy?

What else counts? How about ‘hours of recess per week’ and ‘hours of art and music’ and ‘time devoted to project-based learning’ (more is better)?  How about counting ‘hours spent on test-prep” and ‘teacher turnover,’ where less is better?

We need to measure what we value when it comes to public education.  In public, Mr. Bennett, in public.

And what kind of fools are we if we fail to see what happened in Indiana as a wake-up call?

Please take this forced-choice, 2-question test before continuing.

1. The primary business of public schools is to produce:

A. Educated students
B. Knowledge

2. Which more accurately describes the structure of public schools?

A. Teachers are ‘labor,’ and administrators are ‘management’
B. Students are ‘labor,’ and teachers are ‘management’

My hunch is that many of you selected ‘A’ as the better answer to both questions. After all, that’s the traditional model of school in which teachers teach and students learn. That is often known, pejoratively, as ‘the factory model’ in which teachers, the workers, teach facts and figures to students, who emerge from this assembly line after 12 years as ‘educated.’

Would most American businessmen and women select ‘A’ as the correct answers?

Probably, and therein lies the great paradox, or perhaps the confounding contradiction: Unhappy with the current system, American business devotes energy and money trying to ‘reform’ it. Someone needs to tell them that what they are doing is akin to buying faster ponies for the pony express. Faster ponies won’t get the mail delivered on time, and ‘reformed’ schools won’t provide the workforce that business needs.

(Nor will ‘reformed’ schools produce the healthy citizenry our nation needs, which means that business is on our side. They just don’t realize it–yet.)

Here’s what we know: Public school graduates do not possess the skills and capabilities that matter most to the CEOs of GE, duPont, Xerox, Amazon, JPMorgan/Chase and about 100 other leading companies. As a consequence, American companies are having difficulty finding the skilled workers they need. By some estimates at least 40% of corporations are leaving positions unfilled or are exporting the jobs they cannot fill at home. At a meeting of The Business Council in Chicago in May, duPont CEO Ellen J. Kullman spoke of having to screen over 600 résumés to find a few candidates worth interviewing (let alone hiring).

What does business value? For nine out of ten CEOs, the essential skills and capabilities are ‘work ethic,’ ‘teamwork,’ ‘decision making,’ ‘critical thinking,’ and ‘computer literacy.’ That’s according to a survey of 134 CEOs done by The Business Council and the Conference Board, whose ranks include most of America’s corporations. (101 CEOs responded.) Aristotle taught us that ‘we are what we repeatedly do.’ Applying that lesson to schools is simple enough: students ought to be engaged in activities that teach or reinforce those desired skills.

Unfortunately, these five skills are not taught in America’s classrooms. In fact, of the nine most valued skills, only two–‘basic reading and math’ and ‘writing and communications’–are school subjects. (The CEOs ranked them 6th and 7th.)

How well do the schools teach those two skills? Not very, the CEOs report. Asked to rate the capability of their current workforce, just 23% rated it as ‘very capable’ in basic reading and math; the ‘very capable’ rating for writing and communication drops to 15.5%.

In other words, schools are not emphasizing most of the skills businesses need, and the ones that school do stress–reading, math, writing and communication–they are not teaching effectively.

Why don’t our schools teach what business wants? It’s not as if American business hasn’t been involved in, and generally supportive of, public education at the local and national levels. The problem lies in the (now outdated) perception that teachers are the workers and students their product. That view must be scrapped before matters improve.

Here’s a brief history: In the last part of the 20th century, “school-business partnerships” were in vogue. These locally driven efforts often involved volunteers from businesses helping out in the schools, while their companies donated equipment and materials. When “partnerships” fell out of favor–probably because the results weren’t clear–they were often replaced by internship programs that put young people into ‘the world of work.’

Today many business leaders–impatient for results–support charter schools or charter school organizations like KIPP. Others put their prestige and dollars behind Teach for America, College Track, the Posse Foundation and other tightly focused programs.

The imprint of business is clearly visible at the national level. Although only two business leaders and one small businessman (a dentist) served on the 18-member commission that produced “A National at Risk” in 1983, its language and message could easily have been written by the US Chamber of Commerce. Its warning–our schools were ‘drowning in a rising tide of mediocrity’–sparked the school reform movement that continues today.

And while the first President Bush hosted the inaugural National Summit on Education in 1989, business soon took over. Summits #2 and #3 were convened by IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner at IBM headquarters in Armonk, NY, with President Clinton an invited guest. These meetings and subsequent National Commissions coalesced around a central theme: the schools’ failure to produce enough high-caliber graduates was threatening our country’s economic leadership.

To business’ way of thinking, graduates were ‘product’ in a straightforward factory model paradigm: teachers were given raw material–kids–to turn into productive, capable young adults. In that factory model, teachers are the workers, so it’s not surprising that business leaders–management by definition–have not been natural allies of teacher unions.

If schools are going to improve dramatically, everyone–but especially the business community–needs to realize is that the old ‘factory model’ paradigm is no longer valid. Because of the information revolution, students–not teachers—must be the work force. They must become ‘knowledge workers,’ and their ‘product’ is knowledge.

In this new paradigm, teachers are now part of management, a concept that some people may have difficulty dealing with.

Here’s one way to understand what has changed. Before the internet era, schools served three primary functions: they (along with libraries) were the repository of knowledge–kids had to go there because that’s where knowledge was stored. Schools also socialized children–that’s where boys and girls, Catholics, Jews and Protestants, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans got to know each other. And, of course, schools provided custodial care so parents could work.

Today only #3 is unchanged–working parents still need a safe place to leave their children. But schools are no longer ‘the repository of knowledge,’ because today’s children swim in a sea of information, 24/7. However, ‘information’ is not knowledge, and so in this new paradigm our schools have a new duty and challenge: they must help teach young people how to sift through the flood of information and determine what is true. That’s the ‘work’ that students–now knowledge workers–must be doing, formulating questions and finding their answers. Unfortunately, our outmoded schools are little more than ‘answer factories’ where students regurgitate (often on bubble tests) what they have been told.

As for socialization, it’s not an exaggeration to say that kids have access to hundreds of apps that serve that purpose. It’s like pen pals on steroids. So ‘socialization’ takes on new meaning with our children, who are, in the popular lexicon, ‘digital natives.’ Today schools need educators who understand that their job is to transform these digital natives into digital citizens, not an insignificant distinction. These young digital citizens can use technology to create knowledge–their work. But when they are not encouraged and allowed to do this, many will–out of boredom or malice–use the dazzling variety of tools we call ‘social media’ to harass and abuse the most vulnerable among them.

If we allow schools to be regurgitation factories where students are mere product; if we judge teachers simply based on the test scores of their ‘product;’ and if we allow schools to ignore the awesome potential of technology, then we will have schools where the brightest students are bored and the most vulnerable are bullied.

In this new paradigm, where students are knowledge workers, what should schools look like? Recall Aristotle’s lesson: “We are what we repeatedly do.” If we do not want adults who do little more than regurgitate, then they should not do that day after day after day in classrooms. Instead, they must be developing the skills and capabilities that we want them to have as adults. It’s a tall order: Students must master the ‘basic skills of numeracy, reading and writing and the ‘new basics’ that include speaking persuasively, listening carefully and critically, working collaboratively, and the use of modern technology.

While this new paradigm, students as ‘knowledge workers,’ can be seen in hundreds of schools, the fact is we have nearly 100,000 public schools. We are a long way from the tipping point. Are we moving, educationally speaking, in the right direction?

We might be. America has embarked on a huge national experiment called the Common Core, a set of common standards for math and English embraced by all but five states. This moment of seminal change offers an opportunity for American business to speak up and demand a ‘common core’ where students repeatedly do what will serve them in good stead as adult citizens, parents and workers.

No one needs to create a curriculum out of whole cloth to teach decision-making, teamwork, a strong work ethic, communication and critical thinking. Those skills are fundamental to most extra-curricular activities: playing sports, working in theatrical productions, playing in a musical group, and producing the school newspaper, radio or TV program or yearbook. In those activities (let’s get smart and call them ‘co-curricular’), students are clearly the workers, and their work products are tangible.

That new/old thinking–”We are what we repeatedly do”–can transform public education, make school much more interesting and challenging for students, reverse that rising tide of mediocrity….and cure American business’ persistent headache.

Time Magazine has give us its list of what it calls the 12 greatest summer reads of all time, but summer is for more than “beach blanket blockbusters.” It’s also a good time to relax with a well-written wonkish book or two about education. Below is my list. Please feel free to add your own.

Hope Against Hope, by Sarah Carr. (Bloomsbury Press, 2013)
The distinguished journalist gives us the inside story of schooling in New Orleans since Katrina and the flooding in 2005. She focuses on three schools and the people inside them. It happens to be a wonderful companion to our film, “Rebirth,” which will be available on Netflix in the fall.

How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough (Houghton Mifflin, 2012)
One of the most important education books of the past decade, in my opinion. If you haven’t read this book, I suggest you start your reading with it.

The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined, by Salman Khan (Twelve: Hatchett Book Group, 2012)
Not to be missed. Not to be missed. Not to be missed.

Trusting Teachers with School Success, by Kim Farris-Berg and Edward Dirkswager, with Amy Junge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).
The subtitle tells it all: “What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots.” A hopeful book that I gladly blurbed.

Improbable Scholars, by David Kirp (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Anyone who suspects that change is impossibly difficult must read “Improbable Scholars.”

California high school teacher David B. Cohen also recommends”Improbable Scholars.” Here’s what he wrote: “Kirp uses a detailed study of Union City, NJ, along with some shorter profiles of other districts, to argue that there’s no great secret to successful education reform. There are a few predictable common elements in successful districts, and they don’t require lots of think-tank engineering and experimentation: early childhood education, stability and patience within the system, commitment to a viable and cohesive curriculum, strong supports for teachers and students.”

Closing the Opportunity Gap:  What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance, edited by Prudence L. Carter and Kevin G. Welner  (Oxford University Press, 2013)
This is an important book of essays because of the focus on the all-important and often overlooked opportunity gap.

Civic Work, Civic Lessons: Two Generations Reflect on Public Service, by Tom Ehrlich and Ernestine Fu (University Press of America, 2013)
Full disclosure: Tom and his wife are dear friends. That said, this is a very thoughtful book by a veteran public servant and an up-and-coming leader.

Multiplication is for White People, by Lisa Delpit (New Press paperback edition, 2013)
The author of the classic “Other People’s Children” provides new insights into continuing problems.

The Reading Workout, by Chris Beatty
I have not read this. It’s on the list because the author suggested–in a tweet–that I include it, and I believe that chutzpah should be rewarded, at least some of the time.

Picture this: You are heading to the doctor’s office for your annual physical. As you approach her office, your doctor calls out the window, “You don’t need to come in. Just walk back and forth a few times while I watch. That should be sufficient.”

Crazy, right? You wouldn’t trust that diagnosis and might find yourself a new doctor.

That analogy is a pretty fair description of the survey and analysis released by the National Council on Teacher Quality, “Teacher Prep Review,” last week. The NCTQ report covers 608 schools and colleges of education, about half of the American programs, awards stars, issues warnings, and generally lambastes the field.

But, like your doctor looking out the window and making a diagnosis, NCTQ did not visit campuses or sit in on classes. The authors read course catalogues and syllabi and from that very limited view drew conclusions. Flawed, right?

Now go back to your doctor. Suppose she sees that you are walking with a pronounced limp and hears your rasping cough. She can be pretty confident about concluding that you are not in good health. She might not know exactly what is wrong with you, but she knows you have health problems.

That’s the weird thing about the NCTQ study: it’s a deeply flawed report that is fundamentally correct. Teacher education is just not very good, which is what the report says, even as it gets a lot of important details wrong. For example, it mislabels a lot of specific college and university programs.

Of the 608 institutions studied, only four received the top rating, four stars. Roughly 160 programs received zero stars, and another 301 just one star. Of the 608 programs, only 100 received three or more stars. Pretty grim.{{1}}

Why no campus and classroom visits for NCTQ? The answer can be found in a footnote on page 78: only 1% of institutions agreed to participate. When the study was originally announced, I was in the room when the leader of one very prestigious school of education explained that her institution would not be participating because she–and most leaders–believed that the study would be biased and unfair. NCTQ’s leader, Kate Walsh, had a long history, she said, of being anti-schools of education, and she and her peers believed that Walsh was beginning from her conclusions and would be working backward to find evidence to support them.

Walsh strongly defends the study and its methods, citing a dozen pilot studies prior to beginning the survey work and the thoroughness of their analysis and review. But her own views are both strong and well-known. Not one to mince words, she said to me last year that she could not stand Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford’s teacher education program because “she’s an out-and-out liar. She gets up on stage and tells lie after lie.” (Stanford’s highly regarded programs received 1 ½ stars and 2 ½ stars, on a scale of 0-4.) {{2}}

For more, listen to Jane Williams’ interview with Kate Walsh (.mp3). Walsh tells Williams that teacher education is ‘wholesale mediocrity.’ She says that she began her research with what she calls a common assumption–teacher education was a problem–but says she conducted the study without bias. And Williams, a real pro, pushes Walsh hard on her support for Teach for America.

How can a shallow study get the big picture right? For one thing, the admissions policies are public record: only 25% of schools of education require that candidates come from the top half of their academic class. The other 75% apparently can accept anyone. (In Finland, all prospective teachers must be in the top third!)

The NCTQ study asserts that three-quarters of schools of education do not instruct prospective teachers about effective ways of teaching reading, certainly the essential foundational skill. From reading syllabi and course catalogues and not finding references to established research findings, NCTQ’s President Walsh asserts that instruction is “loosey-goosey,” with professors urging their students to “find their own ways” of teaching reading, instead of making sure they understand the importance of phonemic awareness, phonics and comprehension.

I have only anecdotal evidence in this particular area, but my experience supports Walsh.

Why does this matter? Well, our teacher training institutions graduate about 200,000 teachers every year. Those who get jobs end up teaching about 1.5 million kids in their first year. If the rookies are not well prepared, then those children are the losers. And since first year teachers are often given the worst assignments–struggling kids, perhaps children living in disadvantaged circumstances–that’s a double whammy.

In a conference call with reporters the day the report was released, Walsh said that most schools of education look down on the idea of ‘training’ for teachers. Many professors believe that ‘training creates automatons,’ she said. That makes no sense, she said, because, if teaching is a true profession like medicine and law, then teachers require training, just as doctors and lawyers do. As far as I can see, the report does not provide evidence for that assertion, so that may be just Walsh’s opinion.

Walsh believes in a market solution. People thinking about teaching will read this report and choose institutions that earned three or more stars, she said. This pool of educated consumers will force the zero-star and one-star places to shape up. Apparently she’s assuming that her study will be revised and updated every year, much like the US News & World Report rankings of colleges. And perhaps she believes that the 99% of schools of education that boycotted this time around will be shamed into participating.

I don’t think the market will solve the problem, and I don’t expect schools of education to overcome their aversion to Walsh.

It might help if schools of education were forced by their universities to raise their admission standards. Then matters would have to improve, because ed schools would have to sell themselves. Better qualified candidates would expect more from their professors.

If more of education’s heroic leaders like Larry Rosenstock of High Tech High decide to train teachers, the system will have to improve because it will have real competition.

But in addition to raising the bar for prospective teachers, we need to make it easier to be a teacher. Right now systems throw rookies into the deep end of the pool, telling them to ‘sink or swim.’ That has never made any sense, and it makes even less sense now in a time of widespread teacher bashing. Programs that provide one-year teaching internships make sense. School districts that arrange for rookies to spend their first year watching and learning make sense. Schools that make time for teachers to watch each other teach are doing the right thing. Changing how schools operate will keep good people in the system longer, and that should be our goal.

Here’s my bumper sticker: “Harder to become, easier to be”

—————-

[[1]]1. Arthur Levine, the former President of Teachers College, Columbia, did his own study in 2006 and concluded that 10% of programs were strong, 20% were poor, and the rest–70%–mediocre. That’s slightly more optimistic than the NCTQ study. Dr. Levine, however, visited campuses and classes.[[1]]
[[2]]2. That debate continues. Here’s one link. [[2]]