with education, you can't throw money at the problem.

[ulysses]

It's different with business. Let a businessman do some truly stupid shit for a few years, and the problems he creates can be solved with a few hundred billion, some millions of which go toward his golden parachute.

But with the schools, it's the fault of the slack teachers. That's why schools should be run on a business model (because business has a much better handle on things), so that when they're truly run into the ground, their problems *can* be solved with a few hundred billion.

[sandnsea]

Have you seen "the blueberry"

You'll know it if you have, if you haven't, I will happily get it for you. It perfectly rebuts the business model of schools.

As does your point about business needing billions when a school is supposed to run on nothing.

[ulysses]

3. I haven't.

I'll look for it, though.

[sandnsea]

4. Here

I don't think the author is known.


"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!"

I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial, icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice-cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry flavour as the "Best Ice Cream in America."

Second, that educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! Continous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced: equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I had finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared to be polite and pleasant--but in fact, she was a razor-edged, veteran, high-school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream." I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, ma'am."

"How nice," she replied. "Is it rich and smooth?"

"Sixteen per cent butter fat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.

"Super-premium! Nothing but triple-A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coining.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie. "I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! Mad that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not business. It's a school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"

And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material; they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for they are a liable revenue stream and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when and how we teach to give all children a maximum opportunity to thrive in post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.

The most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve. Therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools; it means changing our society.

[ulysses]

5. I have seen that, yeah.

Good stuff. :)

[Fumesucker]

1. Excellent post, I'd never looked at it quite that way before..

When education becomes just another business, then we can bail it out with a trillion or two.

[ulysses]

2. makes sense, doesn't it?

I can drive a business into bankruptcy as easily as the next guy. Give me a few million to do it with a school so that I can get even more for a bailout.

Brilliant!

[seabeyond]

6. i dont know where all these rotten teachers are. i see the problem in the parenting of children

above and beyond what any fault is of the schools, adm and teachers. i see adm and teachers struggle, fight and put in the time trying to get kids responsive to school with no help from the parents. i have had kids in private and public schools. i have had kids in the poor schools and the rich schools and the only common denominator is seeing adm and teachers working their fuckin ass off and the children they do have issue with is because the parent isn't involved, connected to the kid and putting in the time

i am so damn tired of listening to people across the nation blame the schools when i watch my children excel because of those very teachers and the adm that they have had. and how receptive every teacher, councilor and principal have been in the numerous times i have been down at the school

do you think maybe the reasons the kids excel is because i know everyone at all the schools my kids have attended and at anytime they know i will be there if they need me for anything.

put the blame on the parents

no

govt cant fix it. nor can the teachers

parents need to get their collective asses in gear.

or the kid fails.

[Igel]

7. I went to sucky public schools.

Not so many dropouts, but almost nobody went to college. Lots of kids in "10th grade math" learning how to add fractions. Below average on standardized tests, no AP classes at all--we never even heard of them. The teachers were all fairly young ... with experience, they moved.

Oddly, as I graduated the working class population was becoming mostly unemployed, and moved out in the next few years. In moved a lot of white collar workers.

Within a decade the percentage of students attending college went past 50% and soon approached 90%. The school was scoring way above average on standardized tests. The teachers that were there were happy they hadn't been able to transfer to other schools, and some that had transferred out wanted back in.

The "slacker" teachers that couldn't make the working class kids score average on the standardized tests, much less go to college, suddenly were able to make white-collar class kids excel.

Teachers can do more, in some ways. Usually by going above the call of duty, and getting parents involved. It's the home culture--however that's determined--combined with peer pressure. Teachers often have to fight those to make headway. Money doesn't do it.

For example: My grad program, in the humanities, was top-notch. Yet there was peeling paint, falling ceiling tiles, ancient computers, and we could see daylight through some cracks in the wall. Cold in winter, hot in summer. It was at a good research university; the crappy conditions didn't matter to the quality of research or learning, and the building was slated for seismic renovation so there was no incentive to improve it. The point: you want to learn or you don't.