Waiting for “Waiting for Superman”

In 2000, I was an aide to a U.S. Senator and played a very minor role drafting an important bill, the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  However, the bill I was working on went nowhere.  A bipartisan group moved very quickly on another reauthorization bill, one with a catchier name: No Child Left Behind.  

By the time the law was passed and signed, I was no longer working for that senator.  Instead, I was working at our state’s Department of Education, where my work, along with that of my colleagues, would entail implementing NCLB.  

I remember pouring through the text of the bill and being astonished by the new requirements that would be put on states and school districts as a result of it. I said to my wife, who does not work in education, “Everything will change as a result of this new law.”

My wife’s response was very interesting and I remember it as if it were yesterday. “’Everything is not going to change in education," she said.  "Kids will still come to places called schools, learn from people called teachers and bring home backpacks filled with stuff called homework.”  

My wife was right. To most people, schools did not fundamentally change as a result of NCLB, just as they did not fundamentally change as a result of other school reforms after the release of the watershed 1983 report on education, A Nation at Risk.  In large part, education has not changed because people have not wanted it to change.

The reason for this is simple: the idea of what school “is” is so much a part of our culture that changing education is tantamount to changing people’s minds about what a school should be.

Now, here is the kicker… Those on the outside, like my wife, are okay with the fact that education has not changed fundamentally.  The familiar is comforting.  My wife knows the system, she knows what it means to be in fourth grade and she likes it when our kids are assigned to work with flashcards because that's what she did when she was a child.

Education leaders, those whose life’s mission is to innovate the system, see caring parents like my wife as maddening because they are not pushing for innovation.  My wife and those like her are not against innovation or continuous improvement.  However, “school reform,” in their minds, means tinkering around the edges of a system that already works.

The idea that “schools work” is central to how most people make sense of the US education system.  We can see in our research that most people like their kids’ schools.  Even people who do not have a strong connection to the schools in their community because they do not have school-aged children believe that their schools are generally doing a pretty good job.

However, my wife’s perceptions, and the perceptions of parents and community members around the country, are likely about to change.

“Waiting for Superman,” the new film from director and producer Davis Guggenheim, is a powerful one that will shake the public’s perceptions about America’s public schools.  As with any good film, it presents some people as villains, others as saints and mostly points to ways in which the system should and could be fixed if only we, as educational leaders, were paying close enough attention to the problems.

The challenge for educators is to not be caught flatfooted.  The ideas presented in the film are not new; they are things that education leaders have been working on for years.  With this in mind, we in education should see the film as a blessing, one that will create new advocates for our efforts and a public that embraces change.

As educators, we must work to focus the public on efforts underway to improve the system and get people to understand that we need them to become engaged and stay engaged.  

The most important thing we need to do is to ensure that we do not lose the faith of the public.  Nothing will do that more quickly than speaking of these issues as if they are only theoretical or far off.  The film will create a level of urgency with which we are not familiar in education, and we need to be ready to speak of the issues that we have been wrestling with for years.  Most importantly, we must do so with the same passion as the scores of the newly converted, including, by the way, my wife.

Communicating During Challenging Times

A piece I recently wrote, entitled “Race to the Top, NCLB and Why My Mom Doesn’t Care” will be included in the August issue of The School Administrator magazine.  In it, I write about one of the themes that plays a part in many of my presentations on effective school district communication: school leaders must clearly articulate their messages without relying on names and acronyms that only a school of education graduate would understand.  

Providing clear, consistent messages in communicating is key to any school or school district communications effort, but in these difficult times, we have to do more than simply be clear.  

One of the thing that I have learned through the surveys and focus groups my firm often administers is that across the socioeconomic spectrum, community members are nervous about their financial futures.  And frankly, with all of the bad news out there, who can blame them?

So when it comes to public schools and the use of taxpayers’ money, community members are more than a little concerned about how their dollars are being spent.  In essence, they expect the public sector to do what they are doing: checking out where money is going and trying to become more efficient.

This is not only a normal and rational reaction in an economic downturn, but one that should be expected and, I would argue, welcomed.

Not only does it give schools and school districts a chance to communicate with their communities about how they are stretching tax dollars and seeking new efficiencies, it provides an opportunity for sharing how public schools are playing a central role in economic development by ensuring that students have the skills and knowledge they will need to keep our country successful.

With that in mind, the central job of everyone working in public education is to welcome those who want to know how we are creating value for tax dollars with open arms.

These are tough times for school and school district leaders.  In accepting this, let’s not forget that we have a unique opportunity to communicate all that is good about our schools with our communities, and to ensure that the best days of public education are still ahead of us.

The Commoditization of Public Education?

One of the things that has been coming up repeatedly in the surveys and focus groups our firm conducts is that there is often a difference in perspective between older community members and younger ones.

Most often, it is the older residents who believe that the true benefit of their local school district is that it affects the greater good, and that the community as a whole profits from strong community schools.  When they speak of public schools, older residents most often identify the schools in their community and often with great pride.

"My kids went to the local schools and they did well in life," is something I often hear from older community members.

Nowadays, many parents have so many educational options for their kids that their perception of public schools is colored by the range of educational programs offered in traditional and virtual settings.

As a result, modern parents increasingly report perceiving public education as something of a commodity. Their school is simply one educational option out of many they could have chosen and as a result, often don't identify strongly with the school.

With new education options availible, it is increasignly important that you don't let your school become a commodity.  Articulate a vision.  Promote your school's brand.  Tell your story and get others to tell it for you.

The Toyota Way?

For many years, starting from when my wife and I were in graduate school, we drove a Toyota Tercel.  The car was fuel-efficient, great in the Wisconsin snow and, despite being small, was very roomy.  It was a gift from my mother-in-law when she upgraded to a larger model.

We drove the car for years, until long after we finished grad school.   

The car wasn’t flashy, in fact, it was quite stodgy, but I received a lot of remarks about it.  More than once, when filling up at the gas station, a fellow patron would comment on the car.  Similarly, my mechanic, friends, family and others, would comment when they saw me drive up.  

It was remarkable that so many people had so much to say about the car, and that what they said was very similar, generally a variation of “Toyota’s a great car-maker.  That car will last forever.”

I believe that every person and organization has a story.  It is a story that is constructed over the years by that person or organization’s collective actions.  The story about the car and the belief that my friends, family and fellow gas station patrons had established was: Toyota equals quality.  

But lately, Toyota has received a lot of bad media attention as a result of faulty accelerators, and there has been a general assertion that all is not right with the company.  For Toyota, this has been a significant shift, and a quick turnaround.  Unfortunately for Toyota, its positive reputation as a car manufacturer has been rapidly undermined by a few weeks of negative news.  

If I still drove that car now, my guess is that my friends and family would urge me to get it checked out to ensure that it was safe.  With all of the bad news the company has received, Toyota is no longer synonymous with quality in people’s minds: Toyota equals unsafe.

No one knows where Toyota will go from here, but my guess is that its ability to recover from this situation has as much to do with its ability to begin telling a new, positive story as its capacity to understand that it now has to re-establish its reputation.  In other words, it has to rescue its image.  For Toyota, this means months, if not years, of talking about the company’s commitment to quality and safety.  It means a lot of very effective communication.

The problem with school and district leaders is that they make the mistake of thinking that things will “blow over”.  What they often don’t realize is that bad news sticks.  Bad news changes people’s perception of schools and districts – often unfairly – and a failure to proactively address this often produces years of negative stories.

With that, I have a question for you.  What is your school or district’s story?  Has bad news changed that story from a positive one to a negative one?  Are you just waiting for it to “blow over”?