Toward the permanent past

My memory is average – not the best, not the worst. An idea or a concept is easy for me to remember, a name or a year – much harder. I may go blank on a name when I unexpectedly see a familiar face. For most people of my age, some words just become irretrievable in a conversation, only to surface again later, when they are not needed. Hundreds of conversations a month are part of my routine; most involve decisions, small and large. A few months later, I often remember the conversation, but cannot recall what the agreement was. In rare occasions, I have absolutely no recollection of even having a conversation. This happened perhaps 4-5 times in my life, one last week. It is both funny and embarrassing, when a colleague sent me a copy of an email exchange, of which I had absolutely no memory. Often, it is somewhere in between – I have a vague memory, but cannot recall neither the details of the conversation, nor the decision. And of course, sometimes, for whatever reason, I remember very clearly a particular dialogue that happened many months, or even years ago. Memory is a strange and unreliable thing. It is known not only to fade, but to recall incorrectly, filling the gaps with imagined details as vivid as reality, and yet wholly invented. We would all do much better if we remembered how human memory works, and what it is capable and not capable of doing. It is hard to believe that another person does not remember a conversation which you remember clearly. And yet it is very common. When someone recalls a conversation very differently, with details that seem invented – we all suspect ill intent, what else? But it could be just one of the many malfunctions of memory – yours or the other person’s.

It is fascinating to observe how the human society changes. We live through the writing revolution 2.0. The first one allowed recording certain important conversations. Neither law nor commerce is possible without writing, a solid if very limited image of the past. But now we have a way to write down much more - exponentially more, and easily retrieve what is needed. On the eight day God created email and Google. Many if not most of decisions involve email. And when they don’t, I usually either write an email or ask others to write an email to me. Those things are indestructible, and live forever, if you only know how to archive. Google Desktop is another wonderful helper. It searches and indexes your entire hard drive, and will instantly find emails, files, even web pages you visited containing a specific word or expression. Those things are vastly superior to old manila files with paper. The direct result of this artificial memory enhancement is, I believe, reduction in human conflict. Thirty years ago, if there was no memo typed on a typewriter (a huge investment of time), different versions of the past would inevitably clash, lead to misunderstanding, to mutual accusations, and to conflict. Now, I search Google Desktop, and it three seconds it brings every email and every file that has to do with the conversation. The past is becoming more and more permanent, and less and less a collection on competing stories. The past is a clear picture with many more details.

One day, everything will be recorded, and all events will leave a permanent impression  – all conversations, small talk, important and unimportant decisions, all gossip and table conversations; all sins and moments of grace. How is it going to change us, when we cannot deny and rewrite the past? What would be the world in which every fact in every memoir could be checked, and literally every lie exposed? This is not about privacy – we should fight to keep our personal histories private. However, just imagine that even our work lives will be completely recorded?  But also imagine your private life had a record – only if for your own personal retrieval. Would you want to know what you told your child or your spouse on February 12, 1991, at noon, in case you disagree what exactly happened?  My guess is – we will get to used to it, we get used to anything with time.

Defensible rules: A short story in emails

Here is an epistolary short story;  it is a series of quite recent emails, slightly abbreviated. The exchange is between me and two people from another institution.  

C., “Thesis and Dissertation Specialist” to a doctoral student: Your request [to schedule a proposal hearing] was faxed Friday night at 5:37 pm.  At this point, since it’s within one week, we cannot process it without an emailed explanation from your advisor as to why it must take place without the two weeks requirement, and at that point, I will get a decision from Dr. W. [Dean of Graduate School].

Sasha to C.: S. and I are co-chairs, and we forgot to file the written portion form on time. I do not remember what the rationale for the two weeks gap was in the first place, so it is hard to argue why there has to be an exception.

C. to Sasha: It is Graduate School Policy to turn in the forms at least 2 weeks prior to the Exam/Defense. When in doubt, turn in the form, even if the written comp results have not been turned in yet.  Her request should have been turned in by January 18 at the latest, but preferably earlier. Her written comps arrived on the 18th.  Per the Request to Schedule a Doctoral Examination form “This form must be turned into the Graduate School at least two weeks prior to the Exam/Defense. The deadline is Thursday at noon. Exceptions to this rule must be accompanied by an explanation of the late request and will be considered on a case by case basis. No exam/defense will be allowed with less than one week prior notice.”  We are unable to approve the request for February 1. Please reschedule and submit another date allowing the 2 weeks notice. 

Sasha to C.: A citation from the rule book is not a rationale. What was the rationale for the initial rule?

C. to Sasha: The Graduate School policies are the foundation of our school, and were set for years before I started here, so I’m not aware of the original rationale. Deadlines are in place to allow everyone time to get through all of the required processes and maintain high quality in our work. We appreciate  your efforts to help us maintain our high standards of education at [the university].

Sasha to C.: The origins are probably going to the age when things needed to be mailed, or delivered through a courier service. But in any case, holding on to policies without understanding their rationale is not the best way of maintaining the high standards, don’t you think?

C. to Sasha: Neither is ignoring policies. We have made changes where we feel they are necessary to keep up with the digital era. Deadlines are still necessary to maintain order. Please have her reschedule and get the forms turned in in a timely manner.

Sasha to C.: I would not feel comfortable enforcing a rule intent of which I do not understand. I consider it to be my ethical responsibility to know why I am telling “yes” or “no” to someone for whom it is an important decision. That is what makes me a professional and a public servant. Otherwise, it all becomes a game of power without any tangible benefits for the students or for the general public.

C. to Sasha: I am saying no because you and the student did not meet the policy deadline. I do understand the meaning of a two-week deadline and the policies which I am enforcing. I do not know why our forefathers chose to write the rules the way they did, but I respect that they did so with the student’s best interest in mind. I understand that when I came into the graduate school 5 years ago, I helped clean up those policies and clarify them to fit not only the traditional student but the off-campus community as well. It is my responsibility to make sure the faculty and students follow the stated rules, policies and procedures. I’m sorry if you don’t like that.

Sasha to C.: It’s not that I don’t like your answer; it’s the fact that you don’t have one that bothers me. You’re not saying “I don’t know, but will find out for you.” The message is quite different – that we are supposed to trust every rule without questioning it. I am sorry, I grew up in a country where you were supposed to tell on your neighbors to the authorities – and most people did not, because they have questioned the rule, and obedience without questioning just rubs me the wrong way. This is not about [the doctoral student’s] proposal.

Dr. W, the Graduate Dean to Sasha: I understand that it must feel like we just sit around and come up with silly policies, but honestly we don’t. The rationale that guides this decision is that oral comps, dissertation proposals and dissertation defenses are to be open to the public and the policy indicates that they must be announced twice during the two weeks prior to the date of the event.  The student missed the deadline.  All we are asking is that the comps be moved one week later so it can be publicized as required.

Sasha to Dr. W.: To be honest, I knew that. I was just bugged to no end that she would not know the rationale and be perfectly comfortable enforcing the rule. And she had the audacity to tell me to basically get lost and stop asking questions. She did not say – I am terribly sorry, I don’t know the rationale, but will find it for you. No, it was like – rules are rules, get along with the program. This is no way to talk to a faculty member, hope she will get it one day.

Housekeeping

A couple of programs are thinking or already started to re-map (sequence) their curriculum. These are critically important tasks, which I will support very enthusiastically. Every program should consider doing something like that.

Curriculum drift is quite natural; it is actually an evidence of a healthy program. When programs are designed or redesigned, there is usually a broad agreement on what should be taught in each course. However, people tweak their courses, change them a little, improve, and try new things, as they should! An unintended consequence of it is that curriculum pieces drift apart: gaps and redundancies form, expectations begin to vary, and program coherence deteriorates. Fractures appear between core course, and even among several sections of the same large course. Individual courses may actually improve with time, but the program as a whole may suffer. For example, students would read the same book two or three times in different classes, but never learn other important texts or concepts (everyone assumes they learn it somewhere else). Students may hear about the basic difference between formative and summative assessments three or four times, but never actually manage to build or critique either. Lesson plan formats is another drift-prone entity. There are dozens of them around, most are not substantially different from each other, but have different structure and look. Yet every instructor has a favorite, and student never have a chance to improve on what they have already done in a previous course.  I observed very similar concepts to be sometimes called differently in different classes, so students do not see the connection, and cannot build on existing knowledge. A group of students told me that in their various practicum courses, one may get no experience working with small groups of kids, or miss the on-on-one tutoring, depending on which individual instructors happen to teach those. We may have two sections of the same class, but field component in one is twice the size of that in the other.  A student may write three substantial papers in one section, and none in another.

The only way to fix the curriculum drift is the academic housekeeping; really routine maintenance. It is not a big deal if done frequently, but as it is the case with any maintenance, defer it and problems accumulate. Ironically, most accreditors miss the curriculum drift entirely; curriculum cohesion is not on their radar screen. They would only request one official master syllabus – who has time to read them all? But we should mend and align our programs anyway – it gives students better experience, and makes them more effective teachers. We also look a lot better in our students’ eyes, if we act collectively. Our professional judgment is the biggest accrediting body.

There are several ways of curriculum alignment/sequencing. One can just collect all syllabi and map what is being taught now. Gaps and redundancies would become visible. Here is an example:

Course	Main texts	Key concepts	Key assignments	Skill/indicators

A teacher preparation program, together with major is probably about 40-60 credits, or 12-20 courses (depending on how well the major is integrated with the pedagogy cycle). But completing the table is a lot of work, and syllabi are always imperfect reflections of reality.

Another way of doing it is taking programs apart, and sequencing, for example, literacy cycle in Elementary, or the Foundations cycle (Ed Psych, Social Foundation, generic methods, content methods, etc.)  in Secondary. It is much more feasible, for you could have 4-5 people around the table, rather than 20.

And finally, faculty can just start with not what is, but go straight to what should be, skipping an entire time-consuming step. It would be the same, or a similar table. Identifying a few cross-program curriculum threads, as well as common expectations is the essence. Some ideas and concepts are course-specific; only a few can be managed to go from course to course and develop. And those are not necessary global ideas, but also very simple things like the lesson plan format or a writing rubric everyone uses. Programs do not have to get it all – just a few stepping stones to cross the creek. One interesting trick is to start with a curriculum map that is addressed to students, rather than to other faculty. It forces to use simple. Straightforward language, and encourages students to understand their own program of study, which may add a little pressure for faculty to stay within the negotiated limits.

I asked Chairs to plan departmental or program retreats and submit curriculum sequencing agendas and budgets. Perhaps we could manage to do some of this work right after the end of the school year, or right before the next one begins. When I see faculty sitting around the table and talking about curriculum, my heart sings. That is what we should e doing, not running around trying to write accreditation reports, collecting student work samples, and filling out paperwork. 

An incubator for innovations

My personal organizing system is fairly simple. From any meeting, I usually walk out with a piece of paper, which has doodles on one side and a list of actionable items on the other. Back in the office, I take the list of actions, and do one of several things: If an item can be dealt with immediately, I try to do it on the same day, unless it is really crazy – send an email, make a phone call, or ask someone to perform a task. If it is important, I try to create an Outlook task with a reminder. Items that require a longer process are moved on my to-do list, next to the monitor. Other actions, after consideration, are ignored as not worth pursuing. After all that, the piece of paper goes into the recycling bin, which is very satisfying. Whatever comes to me through e-mail follows the same logic: messages sit in inbox until they are processed in one of the same way. If I am waiting on a reply, they go to the “Waiting” folder.

Yet there is a class of things on my lists that are very difficult to process. Those are ideas that cannot be acted on, but interesting enough to not throw the paper away. They either come from whoever I meet with, or they occur to me during the conversation. Here is an example. One of superintendants I met with last week, said that our student teachers should think about how they can be useful in the schools of their placements. For instance, they can share some new technology, or a new science lab experiment, etc. Now, that’s a very interesting thought. What if we asked student teachers to prepare a presentation for their cooperating teacher, and perhaps for other teachers in the school. Something that could be valuable in the process of a regular peer—to-peer professional exchange? A professional development requirement? The problems are a ton: we already have too many requirements, there may be no chance to present it at school, etc. Yet the potential payoff could be significant – our partners might develop an expectation that RIC students always come in with something new to share. That would change s lot I our relationship.

Another superintendant asked if we can offer a data literacy workshop for teachers – how to read and interpret assessment data, and use it in the new teacher evaluation system.  That’s not a new idea, but it made me thing that someone  could offer the simple service of taking someone’s data and making it digestible with summary tables, graphics, and interpretive statements. Can our School serve as a think tank for the local schools? We have plenty of people who could do it, but no organizational way of processing such requests. Anybody wants to set up a small business? There will be demand for sure.

Those are just two small examples. The point is – we all probably have these ideas that are too vague and unproven to be immediately evaluated and converted into actions. But they may be promising enough to keep them alive. That’s my question for today – how do you keep them alive? How do we let them grow, incubate them, give them a chance to prove their worth? Innovation is really a systematic process – ideas have to be invited, collected, supported, nurtured, and examined; most of them would have to be rejected. But a small percent could turn out to be very fruitful. And there is always a chance that one of them will change everything. One of my fellow Deans said we need a system to incubate new programs, especially those crossing the boundaries of Schools. That’s a great idea; we also need an incubator for ideas.

Anyone, an idea about what to do with all the ideas? 

On planning

How much of long-term planning should we do? On one hand, it seems silly not to have a strategic plan of some sort. And the School has developed a good one before I came on board. On the other hand, things change faster that we can say “strategic plan.” For example, the School has planned to develop new graduate certificates. However, the suspension of I-Plan and uncertainty about the future certification made these efforts much riskier. Another example: we spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to synchronize the national accreditation visit with the State approval process – only to discover that the latter is suspended. We need to be flexible and opportunistic, especially now, when the whole profession is in flux, and our future is uncertain.

Here is another consideration: how much should the big plan change with the new Dean? I find all the ideas laid out in the plan sensible, but what should I do if I see a different set of opportunities, and perceive different things as priorities? What if I don’t believe certain projects will work out? What if I have certain expertise that can be used, and lack some other expertise, and the combination does not quite fit the plan neatly? It does not seem like I should hide any ideas and misgivings; I was hired to think and lead, not to just accept and follow. However, the last thing I want to do is to damage something valuable, or overwhelm people with changes.

I don’t want to be all philosophical and contemplative; this is just a request – do let me know if you think I am neglecting something important – either from what was planned, or something that just came up.

VISION 2020

OK, it’s time to get proactive and define our own destiny. The public wants us to do that, our profession has moved and our partners in the State expect us to define how exactly we are going to improve quality of teaching. I believe we should build a coalition of various groups, and identify a specific agenda for teacher education in this State. Here is a rough draft below, developed with input from PC’s Dean Brian McCadden and URI’s Director of Teacher Education David Bird. I am calling on faculty members to organize and think about what we need to achieve. I don’t care if the draft below would change dramatically. As long as we have a short least of achievable objectives, and get our partners to join us, we will be in a good shape. The goals should be few, very realistic but still aspirational, and be placed in the context of the national and professional conversation. We need to get a clear vision. Let’s just do it!

VISION 2020: Goals for Teacher Preparation in Rhode Island

Teacher preparation institutions are inviting K-12 and community partners to develop a common vision for teacher preparation. We want to bring together the State’s educational reform agenda and the latest thinking in the teacher preparation profession to create a partnership dedicated to building innovative and comprehensive state framework for teacher preparation. We are inviting others to provide input:

1. Teacher candidates will be
o Recruited primarily from the top half of their class
o Required to demonstrate competency in all key teaching skills
o Will be licensed when they can prove impact on student learning
o Followed by their teacher preparation programs into the first years of teaching for mentoring, support, and research

2. K-12 Partners will
o Play a major role in designing teacher preparation programs, their assessments, and outcomes
o Take part in evaluating teacher candidate readiness
o Be supported and encouraged to play an active role in teacher preparation
o Help provide data on teacher performance to teacher preparation programs

3. Clinical instructors will be:
o Master teachers who demonstrated positive impact on student growth
o Specifically trained to provide coaching and mentoring
o Closely connected to full time college faculty
o Recognized and rewarded for their work

4. Teacher preparation programs will
o Implement clinically based model of teacher preparation
o Focus curriculum on student achievement
o Develop strong research components to use student performance data for program improvement
o Eliminate gaps and redundancies in programs, accommodate changing needs of K-12 partners, and reflect and surpass best national practices of traditional and alternative models

Potential Participants
RIACTE, RIDE, RIBGHE, Kids Count, RI Foundation, NEA, AFT, RIASCD


What do we do next?
1. Submit your comments, suggest your ideas on this public forum. Mention your name.
2. We will set up a faculty meeting to discuss where we are going, and who else do we need on board to get there.
3. We will also reach out to other programs, our K-12 partners, and other potential players.
4. We make it an actionable plan.

Starting over

If the Earth did not have this weird tilt in its axis, we could have been very different species. But it does, so we have seasons, which force us to live within specific cycles. It also spins, which not all planets do, and gives us day and night. The time is given to us as a predictable and inevitable change. We even add to that by creating an arbitrary date in the middle of the winter to start over again. Why start each year mid-season? - Probably, because we want more seasons. We need an opportunity to forget our failings, and fantasize about the future, about how things now will be different, and how we will exercise, eat well, and be organized, and even nicer to others. Even though it is somewhat predictable, we still perceive time as a wave of newness rushing towards us like at a sea shore.  We want to both keep our memories, and yet not let them dictate every future step. The belief in newness is a way of archiving, and somehow discounting the past.

Time is such an interesting thing to think about, because – can you see? – both hope and possibility come from our relationship with time. The difference between the past and the future is freaking profound: We cannot do a thing about the past, but we know it. We can do a lot about the future, but have no knowledge of it. Things we know – we cannot change; things we can change – we don’t know. What a bummer of a world; too bad there isn’t any other. The universe quickly hardens right behind our backs; push and the cement of completeness will not even budge. And the other end of the universe just barely appears out of the fog ahead – visible enough to be scary, but not clear enough to be comforting. What do we do? We chat! We drag the past with us, portending it is still malleable. We pretend the future is real, and can be predicted, prepared for, and tamed.

The New Year for me is the crunch of snow under my feet, and a cold wind stealing my breath when we face each other just the right way. I was probably four or five, and my mother was taking me to the day care, so early, it was still dark. I was all bundled up as only children in Siberia are dressed – almost round, with a scarf over my mouth icy and wet. When I squirm, - and squirm I must - the lights in snow crystals grow large, large, and huge before disappearing. My eyelashes are sticky, but it is really warm. There is no past, and no future; none of that stuff. Yes, one can exist without time, and without the need to start over. It just does not last long.  

Academic freedom is a contract

1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure started it all. It is a short and simple statement, which is very often misunderstood. The preamble is especially easy to miss. “Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.” The intent of the document is quite clear: the society must recognize that scholars and teachers know something that the public in general does not and therefore should be trusted to research and teach the way they see fit. However, in exchange we promised to use the freedom for the common good, and the deal must be verifiable.

The recognition of freedom is not therefore given to us individually, but to professional communities to which we belong. For example, to get hired, one needs a doctoral degree, which is conferred by other scholars. To publish a paper, one needs a collective judgment of peers on merits of it, which is done either through peer review, or subsequent critique/study replication, etc. Grant proposals, IRB, tenure and promotion are all instruments of collective judgment. In other words, nothing about the academic freedom is arbitrary or whimsical. You’ve got to prove your point to your peers, even if the public in general, or your dean won’t understand anything you’re saying.

This obligates us to collaborate on program development. No one can claim academic freedom as a simple right to do what one pleases in classroom. If you know your version of the class is inconsistent with those of your colleagues, you are obligated to talk and make an effort to convince each other, using actual evidence and rational argument. If there is no agreement among you in the department, appeal to research and opinion of the professional organization. When no consensus exists, it is fine to experiment, but the results of your experimentation should be discussed, and made public. The same applies to all instances of the curriculum drift: courses once designed as a sequence drift apart, and create gaps or needless overlaps in what students should know. Texts and methods get outdated, or isolated and marginal. Our knowledge of the field may get rusty or lopsided. Our programs may get out of sync with the most current thinking in the field; we may miss important research. Those things are impossible to do alone; we all need colleagues.

We have relatively weak institutional controls to maintain quality of teaching. For example, there is no blind peer review of syllabi, and no routine peer observation. We rarely demand actual data on student growth in our classes (the irony of teacher preparation – we expect our students to develop a work sample, and to actually assess their student learning, but don’t do what we preach). How many of you routinely do a pre- and post-assessment in your own classes? Raise your hands… one, two. When the institutional controls are week, we need to create them, and in the meanwhile strengthen ethical controls. Academic freedom is a deal based on trust; if public loses trust in us, the deal is off.

It is very tempting to just talk yourself into believing how good you are. “I know I am doing a great job in my classroom, and don’t need anyone to check on me.” I don’t know how many times I heard this in one form or another. But hey, how do you know it? If you cannot explain it to your colleagues, how can you prove it to yourself? Oh, you just feel good? You see it in students’ eyes? You receive thank you notes? Would you use any of these “data” in your research? If not, why do you believe it is good enough for teaching?

We all need someone to check on us, and it better be a colleague (next door, or across the country), than the heavy hand of state agencies, accreditors, or administrative types like me. Because you know what? When a dean comes to your classroom or looks at your syllabus, she or he probably has no idea how your field works. In those cases, you should claim your academic freedom and stick to it. But you cannot claim academic freedom against your peers, and you are obligated to be a part of a community. And the community must prove it acts for public good, not to promote its own interest. That was always a part of the deal. 

Teacher quality as an ethical dilemma

Social institutions and systems cannot work on legal rules alone. Even such hard core mechanistic ones as financial markets depend on a degree of trust and an informal understanding of what is ethically acceptable and what is not. When people rely on regulations too much, the systems eventually collapse. Teacher education is not an exception. In the end, we put our names, our reputation, and our conscience behind every student we graduate. We are in this profession, because we want to be supportive and nurturing to all students. However, our ultimate ethical responsibility is to children our graduates will one day teach. The test is very simple: would you like to have this particular individual to teach your own children, nephews, nieces, or grandchildren? If you are not comfortable with the idea for any reason, you should do something about it.

The screening mechanisms we have are imperfect, and could not be counted on to work all the time. GPA, course grades, and observation forms – all are needed to provide a degree of objectivity to the process, but in the end, it is your professional judgment, and your personal responsibility. Someone can get good grades and try really hard, but just not have the right personality or enough knowledge and ability to be a good teacher. Someone can lack social skills, or have a disability incompatible with teaching. Just like blind people cannot be allowed to fly your airplane, a severely dyslexic person cannot be an elementary teacher. Moreover, such students often do not know or do not want to believe it. But it is not fair to them also to give out false promises, and condemn them to a life of professional failure. They are adults, and can make their personal choices in every respect, except for this one. We belong to a profession, and must protect school children against someone who can potentially cause a lot of harm.

In a recent conversation, a colleague brought up the fear of law suits if we dismiss someone without a proper procedure. It is true, that dismissing or counseling students from a teach preparation program should not be arbitrary, or motivated by personal irritations or dislikes. The rule of thumb is this: if you are the only one who is worried, find other colleagues and cooperating teachers who have the same concerns. Put these concerns in writing – at any point. If they are critical, send them forward immediately. If they are borderline, make it a personal task to follow up on the student at the next stage of the program.  Involve program coordinators, chairs and the Dean’s office. Can you explain your concern to other professionals? If yes, go for it, but don’t worry too much about having a good story for a broad public. It is not necessary. I remember a few years ago one of young program coordinators told me she wants to fail a student teacher. I looked at transcript – nothing unusual there. Why, I ask? – The student lied about her mother having cancer and about other weird things like that. We check the facts, talk to cooperating teacher, and realize the student does have some serious personality problems; she is a habitual and imaginative liar. We’re not psychiatrists, but we just know this student in this mental state cannot be an effective teacher. I am not sure if a non-educator would have the same reaction, but I argue, we should not really care that much. We dismissed her from the program, and took some heat from parents, of course. There were threats of law suit, but it never materialized. Again, our primary ethical obligations are not to our student, but to her potential students. That is a special feature of teacher education, which demands a different moral calculus. 

The fear of legal action cannot cloud our professional judgment. First, it is greatly exaggerated. No lawyer will take on a client who has very little chances of winning a case. Dismissal from a professional program is almost never a winnable case, unless there are signs of discrimination based on unrelated factors. But even if a case goes to court, our collective professional judgment, outweighs whatever myths the fear of legal actions create. Second, if laws were perfect, who would need ethics?
Some students argued with me that they have received good grades and good recommendations before, and therefore cannot be excluded late in the process. My reply is this: just because we made a mistake with you one or a hundred times before does not mean we are obligated to make the same mistake again. The opposite is true – we should correct our own mistakes.

And finally, if you have a good case and your colleagues are with you, I will back you up with all I’ve got. Let’s just make a commitment – not a single bad teacher will come out of our College. And it cannot be someone else’s concern. 

Personal lives

Emergency rooms and OR waiting areas are tense places. I spent some time in them this week with my son who had to have an emergency back surgery (he is OK and recovering). It was hard to concentrate on work, although hospitals now offer internet access. Among other things, I was thinking about all my colleagues – these three have been fighting cancer, that one broke her hip; another person’s father or mother is dying, someone else is going in for a planned surgery. But someone just simply had bronchitis, and someone else I don’t know about had sick children, broken transmissions, family troubles, or financial crises. How do they all cope, and how do I know where my requests, demands, and messages come into their lives?

Somewhat disparagingly, It is called personal life; as if a life can be anything but personal. One is supposed to keep it separate from work, or so I was told by someone.  But can we, really, any of us? – nope. It affects us, and sometimes in ways that are not easy to trace. I found myself, for example, very cranky and critical (more than usual anyway) when I came back on Wednesday. Why? Because I am worried about my son, because I wonder if I could have done anything to prevent his injury; perhaps one more word of caution, one more doctor visit could have made a difference. I am frustrated because unlike Windows, real life does not offer a system restore point. But that’s just a theory; this may very well be a mild flu or something else entirely.

We are not rational beings, far from it. Our subconscious minds do things for their own strange reasons. We do not understand much of our emotions and reactions, sometimes until later, sometimes never. And if we do not understand or fully control our own actions, how can others? This is way humans have developed the judgment gap, the ability to suspend judgment. “Well, he is rude but who knows what’s going on in his life?” “She is absent-minded lately, but it will probably pass when she works through her issues.” That sort of empathic imagination is not given to us at birth; it is something we struggle to build; some with the help of religion, some without. It competes against our very basic need to defend ourselves, to counter aggression with aggression. If someone is rude to you, you must feel very secure to blow it over, and allow for complexities of a human psyche. If you are threatened, the empathic imagination shuts down, and forgiving becomes very difficult.

I am thinking – how can we help including our colleagues’ personal lives in the fabric of our work lives? How do you mix and blend, helping both be good and worth living? Is it a too tall of an order? 

Rhode Islanders

This is the fifth state I live in (after Indiana, Washington, Ohio, and Colorado), plus two different cities in Russia (Novosibirsk, my home town, and Moscow). Regional differences are my private delight. Some people enjoy looking for big essential differences. For example, I am often asked about cultural differences between Russians and Americans. I find those conversations very boring and generalizations mainly wrong. Both countries are extremely diverse on many different levels, and almost anything you say about them in general sounds false. However, the tiny variations of accent and affect between, say northern Colorado and Northwest Ohio seem to be fascinating and somehow more profound to me. For example, people in Novosibirsk generally walk slower than the Muscovites; Siberians hate waiting lines and everyone in them, while Muscovites tend to be somewhat more social in line and enjoy a good talk with strangers. One small thing that always gives away Russians in America and Americans in Russia is the eye contact with strangers: quick and intense for Russians, longer and inconsequential for Americans. Ohioans can say “I am fixin’ to…” in a sense “I intend to…” I have not heard that in any other state.  Coloradoans still keep the pioneer spirit – it is very easy to talk them into trying something new. Seattle is a city with subtle and sophisticated culture, which you can miss entirely if you stay there for a short time.

Because this is my private hobby, I don’t have to be right about anything. This is just a way for me to feel more at home in a new place. We tell ourselves stories not only to learn about the world, but to create a frame of reference, to domesticate our experience. If I can at least understand or pretend to understand just one rule in the new place, I feel better.

Here is my scoop on Rhody. When a driver facing you wants to turn left, you should blink your headlights, and let him or her go. It is expected, and makes a lot of sense on narrow streets with heavy traffic. You’re not going very fast anyway, so why not unclog traffic going in the opposite direction? If you don’t, you can get a finger. Traffic lanes are more optional, so you should be hyperaware of your environment. Someone may drive on the wrong side of the street, so you need to scoot over to the shoulder. But there is always enough space for you to scoot over – that’s the rule. Russians also have a whole set of informal traffic rules, not written anywhere, but clearly understood by most people.

Rhode Islanders are not quick to smile; you have to deserve it. They are more of a wise-cracking, get-real bunch, rather than the sunny and smiley Westerners, or chill-and-let-others-chill Seatleites. Ohioans tend to be exaggeratingly polite and welcoming, but it actually takes much longer to get closer to them; there is a clear line between the locals and the outsiders. Of all places, I found Ohio to be the only place where my foreignness mattered for a while at least.  In Rhode Island, once you pass the initial test, and proves to be not a jerk, most people seem to be very helpful and open, with actions more than with words.  I had several experiences with DMV and other offices, where clerks all look somewhat unwelcoming, but are also willing to look the other way when your paperwork is not exactly perfect. The partings are inevitably much warmer than the greetings. This seems to be a place with a stronger working class subculture, which I can relate to. Believe it or not, my working class neighborhood in Siberia was not that different from those in Providence. People will be suspicious to BS in all its forms, and expect some solidarity in the common purpose to defy the authorities. But they are not above trying to take you for a ride, if you look like gullible.

Of course, there is the Rhody accent. I still cannot hear the differences between local variations within it, and perhaps never will. But there is also a specific mannerism in speaking – more loud and more direct; “I am telling it like it is” seems to be the subtext, which I rather enjoy. In the Midwest and in the West, I sometimes get in trouble by arguing with people. While in Eastern Europe disagreement is a sign of respect (I am taking you seriously if I bother to challenge your thinking), it is not in the Western half of the United States, and I suspect in the South. You need to give out other signs of respect first, and only then can you openly disagree. Here I find a number of people who like me enjoy a good argument, and mean no disrespect by it.

There are probably others who think differently, but they have not come out yet and told me so. Please do if you’re one of them. We all come from somewhere, and bring assumptions with us. The big differences are easy to spot and deal with; the small ones can often go unnoticed and be attributed to ill intent rather than to a cultural accident. 

What do we want from the State?

There is a group of deans and directors of teacher education, RIACTE. We have met twice, trying to find our way into a more engaged relationship with the State agencies in general, and RIDE in particular. That we want a seat at the table, and contribute to solving the State’s education problems, is a given. It is a little more difficult to figure out what is it we – meaning all teacher preparation programs - really want from the State. From my point of view, we don’t want too much:

1.       A sensible and less burdensome state approval process. What we have right now is an outdated, excessive bureaucratic exercise spelled out in an 83 page document. It consists mainly in providing a host of different charts, almost entirely on inputs. If we at least could use our national accreditation (which can also use some streamlining, no doubt) for the purposes of state approval, it would give us a gift of productive time. It is not that we don’t want to be regulated; not at all. We just do not want to produce mountains of useless paperwork, that’s it. Something closer to the audit model would work much better. Come and see what we do – talk to graduates, read our internal documentation, our reports, our data, and make an informed judgment on the integrity of our programs. Instead, we are asked to produce things we do not normally use for our operations, and things that are unlikely to improve the way we work. This encourages cynicism and discourages professional responsibility.  As we prepare to submit all of the needed information electronically, it becomes less and less clear why RIDE wants to send 20 people to review us, and why do they insist in staying in Providence hotels. Why not review all materials online and just send 2-3 people to talk to faculty, partner schools, and to our candidates.  

2.       We need a support system to follow up on our graduates. Teacher preparation should be a system for long-term professional training, which integrates pre-service training with meaningful induction and professional development. Right now, there is no meaningful state-wide induction system, and no professional development system. It is very difficult for us to conduct any follow-up activities, not just because no funding exists to support it, but mainly because there is no system to tap into.  (We cannot even get information on how many our graduates were hired, and where they work. Eventually, we are supposed to get data on student performance linked to teacher identifiers, which in turn should be linked to their teacher preparation program. That would be a very interesting research data, but I doubt it can be readily used to evaluate quality of our programs.)

3.       The State is planning to revise its teacher certification, which is probably a good thing. We would like an opportunity to discuss some clear distinction between initial licensure and added endorsements, mobility between types of licensure, etc. In general, an opportunity to provide input in policy decisions would be welcome. Policy-making is a messy business, and often leads to unintended consequences. Teacher certification changes may lead to revisions in multiple programs, which is very costly, and tend to distract us from program improvement. A simple opportunity to provide input into the process is quite vital to our work.

There are probably other things we need and want. In the end, we want to be useful, and treated as a partner and as resource rather than as an obstacle and a passive object of regulations. 

The Pen and Line case

Here is a great case study for an organization development course. This is, of course, an imaginary scenario.

A new Dean comes to a School that has decided to adopt a new electronic portfolio management system called Pen and Line (P&L). This is a second attempt for the School – the first one failed because the previous provider went bankrupt. The School has gone through a thorough process this time, evaluating several commercial providers, and the committee has unanimously selected P&L. It seems to have everything one may need for building a School-wide assessment system, with some great reporting features. Although no one had any illusions about the time investments into learning and customizing the system, the long-term benefits seemed potentially very high. Having a unified assessment database with multiple users would eventually save a lot of time and human resources. The Dean, however, still had nightmares from similar efforts at another institution and with a different commercial provider, that took five years instead of one year, and still did not provide an adequate solution.

Projecting too much from previous experiences is never a good idea, because it substitutes actual history of an organization with one’s fantasy; the fantasy will eventually collide with reality. After some internal debate, he admitted being wrong, delegated authority to a small but very capable implementation committee, and just asked them to go slow and begin with a small scale pilot.

There would be no story, if it went reasonably well. In a healthy organization, leaders should be told to back off, and to delegate; people should be able to correct each other’s mistakes. However, the committee, initially very enthusiastic about the platform, started to discover problems – none of them separately seemed too big, but together they just reached the level when the group should start worrying. It is probably worth it for students to pay $80-90 for a product that works well, but is it for a product that does not? Now, this is not a proof the Dean was right all along; no one had the understanding of the system, and he certainly had no greater knowledge than anyone else. The difference between stupidity and an accurate prediction is often explained by random chance.

Here are some problems: there does not seem to be way, for example, to enter lesson observation evaluations without creating an individual account for each cooperating teacher, and bringing them on campus for training. Given the significant size of the program, and very fluid cooperating teachers’ body, this would mean committing vast resources, and possibly causing a lot of frustration. There is no way to use evaluation instruments other than rubrics. There is no way to combine 5-scal rubric with a 2-scale rubric. The company’s customer support is very weak, documentation almost non-existent, which only means the School should hire someone to develop all these. Some of the features were never piloted before, so the School is actually providing an important field testing for the company, for free. However, let us not forget the strengths: the program has a great data reporting capabilities; it looks and feels modern, sophisticated, the company behind it seems to be stable, and there is a chance the bugs will be fixed at some time in the future.

There are two very important complicating factors:

No one knows of a much better provider. Adopting any other system may mean throwing away all the precious P&L expertise already acquired, only to buy into another product that may have a different set, but perhaps the same number of problems. Going back to paper and pencil with manual data entry is almost unthinkable – not because it is necessarily more expensive, but just because it would project a wrong image to students and partner schools. It is really going backward in the digital age. There is another – intermediary – solution, with using a free product that is not as sophisticated, especially with respect to reporting. It would meet most of data collection needs, but does not offer a true portfolio option (which could be easily shared with the world). In other words, none of the alternatives are perfect or risk-free. 

Some faculty and programs took the implementation plan very seriously, and already invested their time in P&L. The product works well for smaller programs, and very well for individual classes. What is more important, the early adopters told their students to buy the product, motivating the request by the impending School-wide implementation. However, there is another group of faculty that do not see the need for the new system, feel they were not consulted enough about adopting it in the first place, and are generally tired and simply do not want yet another darn thing to learn. This happens to be a particularly difficult year, because it is the accreditation report writing season. The demands on faculty time are pushed to the limit; a revolt of a sort is not out of the question. The School leadership is now stuck in an unpleasant situation where either of the two decisions – to go ahead and eat the cost whatever it is, or to pull the plug on P&L – is guaranteed to offend and alienate someone. There is probably a group in between that does not care one way or another. However, this is not about the numbers. The early adopters are a very important group – they try things out, they take risk, they support the School’s initiatives. How can you afford to alienate them, considering they have not done anything wrong, other than trusting you? The active resisters are also a very important group; they keep the organization healthy by providing pushback and keeping the bureaucratic expansion in check. Those two are what ecologists call “critical species:” not necessarily most numerous, but a system falls apart without them. 

The case study question for an aspiring manager/leader: what would you do? Keep in mind the group dynamic question: how much of an active role can the Dean play, considering he made a mistake of projecting past experiences and micromanaging once already? Who should decide and how? How does one make a decision in the absence of hard evidence? Consider group dynamics within the leadership group and between the leadership and all other faculty groups, with their diverse interests and cultures.

Analyze the situation and find a balanced solution. Consider general options below, but seek other creative options:

1. Commit to the product unquestionably, and implement as soon as feasible. Benefits: reduces the gap in implementation, provides stability for the early adopters, and enhances credibility of the office. Risks: What is the level of problems with the product will turn out so high that we cannot sustain it long-term anyway? We simply do not know the extent of challenges yet. 
2. Pull the plug now; let programs use the P&L if they chose to, but switch to the intermediary no-frills-product for all School-wide data needs. Benefits: we know it can work, and it is free to students. Risks: The no-frills product may also have bugs; it still requires development and testing, and it will never get to a true portfolio level. Another risk: it is plain embarrassing to do that; we look like fools. 
3. Delay full implementation, and continue piloting for at least another semester. Alternatively, ask the early adopters to pilot, wait with everyone else. Advantages: We will better understand the extent of the problems and feasibility of solutions; learn about the cost of implementation. Risks: We’re getting deeper into the product without guaranteeing that it will be fully adopted. This maybe just an unacceptable risk for the early adopters. It also creates a disincentive for active resisters – they may never believe us again. I n addition, keeping data in different places defies the entire intent of the project: creation a single data management system.

Isn’t this an interesting case? I bet someone can come up with a simple and elegant solution, which will keep everyone happy and yet provide the School with a useable, flexible, and modern data collection and reporting system. If you want to try, submit your comment here – signed or anonymous. The comments are moderated, because of spam robots, but all relevant ones will appear within a day.

Getting there

In most cases, we know what is the right thing to do, but how to get there is a much more difficult, and I would say, a much more important question. It is actually fairly easy to see what is wrong in the world – both in the larger world, and in our small world. Imagining how it should be is also not that hard. The large swaths of the territory in between tend to lay unexplored. People who go there are my heroes, even if they sometimes get lost. They come up with ideas about how things should be changed, revised, improved, and approved. To every objection, they have yet another idea, another plan of actions.

My son is reading Dostoyevsky now, and I was reminded about his descriptions of Russian intelligentsia: people who cared deeply about injustice, and knew how a just and kind society should look like, but never cared enough about how to get there. Their problem was in misunderstanding of the Czar’s authority. They simply saw the beginning and the end of the journey, and assumed that one in power should be either very evil, or very stupid not to make the journey. Till this day, most people identifying themselves as intelligentsia perceive authority as something unclean, if not outright evil. Having never had been in power, they do not understand how it works, its limitations and challenges. Only for some very brief periods of time some of them tried to run the country, every time with disastrous consequences. The optimism and moral outrage quickly turn into cynicism: if it cannot be changed right away, then it cannot be changed at all. That’s where I am the least Russian, hopefully.

Peoples with democratic traditions have overcome this disease, to various degrees. Many Americans, for example, took part in running something – a PTA, a club, a block party, a car pool. They have been to elections, where their voice actually mattered. Any illusions about a simple way from A to B tend to dissolve by adulthood.  But the human impulse behind it such an illusion is always in place; it is natural and one has to train oneself out of it. It goes like this: when A is so bad, and B is definitely so much better, why doesn’t someone DO something about it? Like, RIGHT NOW? Well, probably, because there is no someone, or someone does not have enough authority, resources or time, or someone simply has no idea how to cross that stretch of land.

This is all, of course, about the coming elections. Go and vote for someone who you think has a better idea on how to get there from here. 

Talking Points, sound bites, and other useful ammunition

Last night, I had a long conversation with someone very thoughtful, and knowledgeable about educational reform. Basically, she asked two things: how do you respond to various criticisms on the quality of teacher preparation, and what kind of innovation is happening at RIC. I tried my best, but in the process realized that I don’t have a list of talking points. Thinking on the fly is not hard, but formulating your thoughts is. And because I felt inarticulate last night, here is my attempt at the next morning come-backs, if you know what I mean.

1. Teacher quality is poor, - one should always ask, in comparison to what?

a. In historical terms, our graduates now are better prepared than any generation of teachers before them. Our grads know more about child development and learning theory than older generation of teachers; they know more about how to teach reading, numeracy, and other basic skills. They know much more about differentiated instruction, diversity, and English language learners. They have stronger content knowledge, and are more carefully screened.

b. In terms of international peers, there is no reliable data for these kinds of comparisons. However, there is no reason to believe that our new teachers are less prepared than those in any other country in the world.

c. If you are measuring up against an ideal – what a beginner teacher SHOULD look like, then no one can measure up to that. This is a moving target, and tends to be unrealistic. None of the pictures of an ideal teacher are based on any kind of research.

d. If you are comparing an average graduate to an exceptionally bright and charismatic young teacher that sometimes is also highly effective, it is a mistake, too. Just because exceptional talent exist does not mean we can count on millions of superheroes to fill the ranks of the most numerous profession. Traffic laws and roads are not designed with NASCAR drivers in mind; we should not assume the education system can operate as if every teacher had extraordinary talent.

2. Blaming teacher preparation for persistent achievement gaps in American schools is like blaming police academies for persistent crime, or blaming medical schools for persistence of the seasonal flu. How about blaming schools of social work for persistence of poverty? Where the problems are systemic, and solutions are elusive, looking for a scapegoat is a natural tendency, which reasonable people should resist.

3. Like in all advanced professions, pre-service training is only the beginning, and intensive in-service training and support are simply necessary. That need has been neglected for many years. Turning an 18 year graduate of a regular high school into a competent beginner teacher is already a miracle we accomplish in four years. Turning an 18 year old into an expert teacher equal to someone with experience is simply impossibility. We never promised that, and never will.

4. On innovation. While a radical redesign of teacher preparation is theoretically possible, not one has proposed it yet. Therefore, we concentrate on improving the existing approaches by learning to collect better assessment data, by organizing curriculum, and by improving quality of field experiences. We realize some people expect a more dramatic story, and a silver bullet, but we are not willing to produce a dog and pony show to entertain the public and harm our real work. It is an ethical and professional choice, not a lack of imagination.

5. We do have a lot of things to improve. For example we need to prepare teachers for classroom assessment, working with special needs and ELL kids, etc. You really need to be a professional to understand most of it. Just because you have children does not make you an expert on education, no more than having eyes makes you an ophthalmologist.

6. The way we are regulated by the State does more harm than good. Its review is all input-based, and takes our time and energy away from really important conversations about improving our programs. NCATE accreditation is marginally better, but the balance of time we spend on it versus actual improvements is still negative.

I am not saying we should always be on defense, but we simply must find a way of inserting our story into the public discourse. To do that, we need to make it accessible, and at least somewhat interesting. We should begin by challenging the most common myths, and knowing our evidence. For example the myth is that American education in general is in decline. That’s is simply not true by any account. International scores are slowly rising, the achievement gaps among ethnic and racial groups is still very large, but slowly shrinking. Teaching preparation is improving. What really does us all damage is the endless series of short-lived spasmodic attempts at reforms, which serve the purposes of building political capital in next election cycle. A lot of work is put in developing programs, which are abandoned as soon as there is a change of guard in state and federal offices. As an example: we looked at the list of state-wide initiatives which the State wants us to teach to our students. The document was revised in 2009, but about half of these initiatives are already defunct. Who can have any trust in reforms if none of them stick long enough to produce any results?

The why of the how

If you have not seen the row of maples next to the Henry Barnard School, you definitely should. Wait for the next sunny day, and go. It is the beginning season of almost unbearable beauty. The color, the smell, the lazy movement of those leaves – all this will awake some wonderful memory of another fall, a memory you forgot you had. I remember my leafy Siberian places. I remember the contrast between the dark-haired pines, arrogantly ignoring the autumn, and the blond and read-haired deciduous species, desperately flaunting their new dresses, and shedding them at the same time.

Our minds are more likely to keep good memories and suppress bad ones. But there isn’t nearly enough memories floating on the surface, - not enough to feed our emotional selves. That is why you should go and see the maples next to HBS. They are available all the time, no appointment necessary.

That is what I do when I am tired or lose focus. We all have deal with many complicated tasks, with people who are just too many and too much, with lack of time, and with some nonsense that has to be done anyway. This entire onslaught we call life nowadays. This is not what human beings were originally designed to do. Our ape ancestors did not know multitasking, speed reading, report writing and deadlines. So we tend to lose the ability to remember why we’re doing all those things, and concentrate on the how they must be done. Maybe you’re different, but I need remindters. The how is an important question, but without the why it quickly runs out of room, corners itself, panics and becomes unanswerable.

And what I discovered over the years, is that the why does not reside in one’s beliefs, or priorities, or in jobs or whatever else looks like a reasonable habitat for the whys. No, the why resides in the maple tree leaves, and can be found there in most sunny October days. Of course, your why maybe living in a different place than mine; I just know they all like to hide and love to be found. It’s the hide-and-seek game for the whys; the hows prefer tag. 

Always start from the end

How do you design something new? - a new teacher evaluation system, a process of transition to new state curriculum standards? But also, how do you put together a faculty evaluation process, or a new graduate program; a new student teaching application, a new way of paying people for practicum and mileage, etc., etc.?

In one of those groups that think about implementing a project, I was involved in an interesting conversation. The leaders of the project argued that we need to first agree on principles, to lay out what has to be done, what is the right thing to do, and only then lay out specifics, address questions about logistics, feasibility, and perhaps scale the plan back. I was arguing that one should always start from the end, from specifics and the limits within which you operate. You need to see how much time and money (which is ultimately, the same thing) you can have sustainably over long time, then translate it into what maximally can be done. Then you need to visualize, to paint the picture of the end result. The next step is to share that picture with all people affected, so they are not scared of the future, and can ask questions about what really bothers them. And only then you should go into how to get there, which is the planning process.

My opponents argued that if you start with limits and specifics, you never set goals that are large and ambitious enough. My way, they say, encourages more-of-the-same kind of thinking. I am not sure that is true, especially for significant change that involves thousands of people who by necessity cannot be all included in the deliberations. If you set up abstract goals and principles, but do not communicate specifics, people will all imagine the worst case scenarios for their particular circumstances, where the new way of doing things works against them. As a consequence, you end up with resistance before you even have done anything. The imaginary stories take root in people’s heads, and soon become reality of its own.

However, if you start with telling people a story, paint a picture for them (but also show a form, a sample, a time estimate), that becomes a part of their imagination. People who are affected but excluded will always feel vulnerable, so they need to be able to ask their questions right from the start. If you tell them – oh, wait, we did not get there yet in our process, we will figure out how to do this later, - this does nothing to reassure them. It is just a poor communication practice. It is especially worrisome when very significant, fundamental (but unexpected) questions are put on “we will get to that later” list. Every time you do that, the anxiety level goes up, not down. It decreases confidence in your team’s ability to complete the change.

You can be both ambitious and start from the end. Just tell the person affected how this new thing is going to work for her or him. Is this going to be fair? Burdensome? How is it going to benefit each of us in the end? Educators have been the unwilling participants of perpetual reforming for many decades. Hosts of national, local, and district-wide initiatives were either not completed, or degenerated into a joke. Many have become suspicious of reforms – not because they are against change or don’t see the need for it, but because education reforms have never been implemented especially well. Most, I would argue, were not good ideas to begin with. That fact alone should merit a different approach to communication. You cannot simply make your journey from the abstract to the concrete public. In fact, you will be better off to keep your preliminary deliberations completely secret, until you have some clarity on specifics. By the time you go public, you need to start from the end.

Do I always follow my own advice? I wish that was true.

The information puzzle

This week, I spent quite a bit of time playing with information. I was finally able to edit directly the School’s site (it will take another couple of days to publish the updated version), we were able to launch the bare-bones site for  NCATE and RIPA Institutional reports (it is called http://RICreport.org), and we had another go at the on-line student teaching application. I actually enjoy this kind of work immensely. Every time a simpler, more straightforward way of conveying information is found, it makes me happy. Where does it come from? I am not sure; perhaps a hobby, an inclination.

Sometimes I wonder if a dean should be spending his time cleaning up the School’s website. Not normally, not routinely. But at this point of my life here, it is extremely useful. Understanding of information flows is understanding of the organization. Understanding something is simply organizing one’s thoughts, telling a coherent story about it.

Here is an example: NCATE and RIPA reports are both due in May. They have somewhat similar content, but very different structures. For example, NCATE wants to know about our technology resources in Standard 6, while RIPA  - in Standard 2. We of course, could write two separate reports, but the problem is – each has to come with hundreds of pieces of evidence. It just becomes a logistical nightmare to collect and organize all of this stuff. However, we figured out that a website does not have to linear, and it allows the same document to be easily attached to two different outlines. Why is it important? Well, if you are working on the description of technology, we must wait until you’re done to incorporate it into the report, and you would put it in two different places. And then we discover an error, or additional piece of information – we then need to edit both places, and make sure it still connects to the previous and subsequent text. A website, however, can be used by all the members of the team as a working instrument – many pages can be edited at the same time, and retain their links.

Anyway, for me it is like a puzzle or chess – a somewhat abstract game of solving information flow problems. But in the meanwhile, I think I start to understand what we actually need to collect and how we should present the good work we do. I would not like to do it all the time – meeting with people, talking, listening are still by far more important and enjoyable parts of my work. But I like my puzzles, too. 

Rainy mornings, worthy projects, and good stories

Autumn is not here yet, but you can smell it. The tiny pungent aroma of wet leaves, still deciding whether to turn or not. The slow lazy rain openly invites all procrastinators and homebodies to stay put, get a Netflix movie, and do nothing. It is wonderful morning for me to break my usual frenetic pace and just think about things.
One of the issues I tried to tackle this week is that of our various partnerships, grants, and public service projects. Which ones should we support, and which we should not? And to what extent can we do it? All wondering comes from ignorance. Several requests for different kinds of support made me realize I have no method of deciding.
What if you found out your Dean has used School’s money to support a particular charity; let’s just say www.iorphan.org , which I happen to like. Just cut a check from one of our accounts, and sent it to them. Would that be OK? - Of course, not. I do not have faculty and administration consent, and there is nothing in our mission that would justify this kind of expenditure. Note, the project is undoubted worthy, and deserves support. But the intrinsic worth of a project is not enough.
OK, what if you found out we provide reassigned time for someone who offers free or deeply discounted classes to teacher of… let’s say Anthropology, in Rhode Island? This feels closer to what we do, and perhaps should be supported. But maybe not? The job of a Dean is really not that closely supervised, and I am not likely to be questioned on decisions like these. However, I always want to have a good story as if somebody asked.
So, let’s slice it. First, any kind of material support should be connected to our mission, which is, if you have forgotten, “is to prepare education and human service professionals with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to promote student learning and development.” Anthropology teachers pass the test, but Russian orphans do not.
Second, the needs of the community are immeasurable, but we have very limited resources. The public (represented by the Board of Governors) wants us to keep tuition low. If we teach for free, or offer deep discounts to one group of students, how is it fair to other groups of students? For example, we run a graduate class for Anthropology teachers for $50 per credit, and charge other students $342 per credit. The latter are, in effect, subsidizing the former. But did we ask students if they like to help out? Did we ask the taxpayers of Rhode Island if they would like to help out Anthropology teachers specifically, at the expense of, say English teachers? No, we did not. Therefore the project cannot drain resources from other programs, and it should at least pay for itself, no matter how worthy it is.
However, things get complicated when a subsidized project actually has direct benefits to our main programs. For example, if we manage to get a status of Peace Corps Fellows site, it may help us recruit completely new population students, which will increase revenues and help everyone. Just the free advertisement of RIC on their website is probably worth good money.
Here is another example of a paradoxical logic, from my previous institution. A colleague was asking for substantial reassigned time to edit a major national journal with 40,000 copies circulation. How is this not a pet project? How does it benefit the rest of us? I argued that every time the journal is printed, 40,000 people will see the name of the institution on its cover page. This kind of publicity costs a lot, and we are getting a great deal doing it for a few thousand dollars a year needed to replace him. Should everyone who edits a journal get the same perks? Of course not, the logic of equality does not apply here. A small journal with only a few dozen readers will not provide nearly enough exposure to justify the cost. It is also easier to edit.
That’s some of the thinking that goes into assessing all the worthy projects for material support.

Incentives and the Goldilocks Zone

Much of this week, I have been thinking and talking about an incentive system for off-campus programs. I was also reading several recent books on higher education Educational Theory asked me to review. All books express concern over commercialization of the nation’s colleges. The decline in public funding forces many universities into endless pursuit of revenues, and may undermine their public purpose. It is all true, and there are many things to worry about. However, let’s look at a typical state college as a form of labor arrangement. It works reasonably well for traditional students who come on campus to get a degree. There is a well-defined distinction between instructors and a range of support services, from IT to the Bursar, to health center, the library, etc. Each specializes on one function, and because we concentrate a large number of students on campus, the economies of scale make it all work.

This arrangement fails spectacularly, when we are trying to go into the world of working professionals, such as teachers, or school psychologists, or principals. They don’t want to come to campuses anymore, and expect educational services to be available either at or close to their work places, or on-line. They want education to fit into their very busy schedules, families and commutes. These needs dictate cohort-based, hybrid or online, flexible schedule, but high quality programming from an accredited, reputable institution. But to put together and to see through a successful cohort, we need to send someone to another location, and be a jack of all trades: a marketer, a recruiter, a cashier, a mobile library and bookstore representative, an academic advisor, and a registrar and financial aid officer. While many faculty members actually can do all of these things, it is entirely unclear why they would. A full time faculty is guaranteed a teaching load and a stable salary on campus; it is entirely unreasonable to ask people to increase their workload.  

It takes a different economic model, and a different system of compensation to get the off-campus behemoth moving. Many universities across the nation have realized it, and established cash-funded programs, financially distinct from state-funded programs. It goes something like this: a group of faculty believe there is a need for a graduate program at a specific location. They use their own social and professional networks, find out exactly what people want and need, and then create a cash-funded cohort. The institution decides whether the project is financially viable and academically rigorous (because remember, our reputation is our most valuable asset). After that, the initiator(s) do most of the leg work recruiting students, helping them to register, to buy books, to use campus technology, etc. In exchange, the cohort coordinator and instructors are paid stipends. At the end of the program, whatever profit the program generates, is divided up between the originating unit and the central administration.

The model works well, but it needs a careful balance. If the incentives are too strong, it may suck the life out of existing on-campus programs. Full-time faculty members become too preoccupied with cash-funded operations; they also tend to convert some viable on-campus programs into off-campus ones, just because pay is a better. If the cash-funded operations empty your campus, you end up wasting significant resources. It is unlikely to happen, because of the constant demand for traditional undergraduate experience, but it may.

If the incentives are too weak, they do not generate the needed level of initiative and effort. If you’re running out of space and capacity on-campus, and do not grow off-campus, you’re also losing opportunities and hurt your institution. The cash-funded programs need to be in this Goldilocks zone – not too hot, and not too cold. It also needs to be highly predictable. If you keep changing the rules every year, people will avoid taking risk.

Another inevitable side-effect of any “capitalist” system is inequality: some units just have naturally more opportunity to earn supplemental income than others. If you see a colleague next door buying laptops and cameras, and you have nothing but the bare paycheck, you start feeling unloved and forgotten. So the deal must have some way of sharing the riches, or it will collapse. Some honest conversations need to take place on what exactly does one promise to do, if one accepts the cash-funded program stipend. Those working exclusively on campus will then know exactly what they don’t have to do, because of the campus support services. There are other nuances. For example, you need to make the cash-funded courses be available as both in-load and overload, otherwise staffing flexibility is greatly reduced. To do that, you need a protocol for transferring money back from cash-funded accounts into the state-funded ones. Other quirks and deformations are possible, and you can only do so much to anticipate them. And we chronically lack time to do anything in a measured way, with all precautions. To start something in the Summer of 2011, we need recruit students in November. To recruit students, you need a clearly defined program. To get to the program, you need an incentives policy in place. To get a policy, you need to talk with at least a dozen people, and more than once. 

Assessing the assessments

Speaking forcefully to an audience with which one does not share a long history is dangerous. One subconsciously refers to one’s own experiences, and the layers of meaning associated with it. The audience refers to its collective experiences, and to the semiotic fields created by it. It is like carrying a conversation from one company to the next; you might be right in substance, but have an undesired effect. I would like to apologize to the Assessment Committee, the Director of Assessment, and all those involved in the developing of the School’s and programs’ assessment system, if I sounded dismissive of the work they have done so far or have planned for the future. It was not my intention at all. The work they have done so far is very impressive, and is certainly one of the much better examples I have seen or heard about. That is why I am still very confident we will get through accreditation by NCATE and RIDE next year, although with some considerable effort. My intention was only to encourage all faculty members to take charge and ownership over their parts of the assessment system, and make it a priority to use the data for actual decision making, and to improve what seems to be too burdensome or ineffective. That is the difficult part – to make all these instruments and data sheets actually work.

Most schools of education around the country are going through more or less the same journey. It started with NCATE’s new standards developed some 15-20 years ago, and requiring institutions to build comprehensive assessment systems, which rely on performance data. That was light-years ahead of the rest of higher education, and no one knew exactly what they want. NCATE made a huge mistake of requiring too much and being too specific (they are trying to fix it now, with various degrees of success). As a consequence, most schools, especially large and complex ones, scrambled to produce some data – any data to satisfy the expectations. Because there was very little incentive or tradition to collect and use data, many faculty treated it as a burden, as another hassle from the Dean’s office. No one had good technology to quickly aggregate and return data back to faculty. As a result a combination of not-so-good quality of data with late or difficult to read data reports emerged. By the quality of data I mean just how informative it is.

If I were given a task to develop a student teaching evaluation instrument, which must cover a number of SPA standards, plus a good number of state standards, I just made a long list of indicators, and check marks, with a rubric spelling out each indicator at 3-5 different levels. To begin with, those standards are not always well-written. Then I was not paid for doing this, and no peer review was conducted. I produced something that looks good and covers a lot of ground, but… let’s just say, not very useful. In the end, I got “flat” data – every student is OK or excellent, on every indicator. We also tend to mingle the function of passing students for the class with the function of providing them with meaningful feedback: the former is high stakes, and discourages honesty; the latter should be kept private, and merciless. Formal evaluation and coaching do not mix well. OK, so you I this report, with boring data I myself produced and inputted, and I lose faith in the whole enterprise of assessment, so I tend to be even less honest and less careful providing the data next time. That creates a vicious cycle I like to call the compliance disease. It is not because someone did a poor job; we all got it, because of the institutional restraints we operate in.

Most thoughtful assessment folks across the country understand the problem, to a various degree. However, they lack explicit mechanisms of fixing it. For one, there is only so much you can push on faculty before they rebel. You just convinced everyone to collect and report data, and now what?... Come again?... You want us to go back and revise all instruments one more time? But it is imperative that faculty own assessments. It is very hard for an assessment coordinator to openly challenge instruments designed by faculty, because the authority is supposed to flow from faculty members through elected members of the Assessment Committee, to the assessment director and to the dean. But authority is a funny thing – everyone says they want more of it, but no one really wants to have it. Many assessment coordinators have recognized the symptoms long time ago, and are now moving to the next generation of assessment systems. My aim was really to help Susan, the Assessment committee and program coordinators in what they are already doing, not to hinder their important work. Again, my apologies if at the meeting I did not express my full confidence in them.

What would the next generation of assessment look like? It will have fewer, simpler, more practical but more robust instruments, very selective but very focused collection of data, efficient technological platforms (such as Chalk and Wire) for instant input, analysis, and dissemination of data, and firmly institutionalized process of using data to improve instruction. But most importantly, it will require a change in the culture of assessment. The new culture will have faculty being active participants, fully engaged into constant re-design of instruments, and not passively taking orders from the Dean’s office. The last thing we want is compliance for the sake of compliance (we also do not encourage rebellion for rebellion’s sake). What we want is engaged critical minds that share the purpose, and are in dialogue about the means. We need to get this assessment thing right, because there is simply no other way to proof our worth to society. We need to be confident that our measures make sense to us and to our students. Then they will make sense to any accrediting agency.