Re: [xmca] Centralized vs. Distributed decision-making in schools

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Jay,
I appreciate the expression of shared purpose within your statement,

The more radical changes that are needed may not require a socialist
revolution, but they do require a basic change in the moral and political
calculus by which we determine just how much say students have a right to
have over their own lives and their own educations.

Linking to the thread on *ways* of knowing or understanding, maybe we
should start by *showing* this moral and political calculus as the first
step before *asserting* or *analyzing* what are the qualities required.
"Look and see"
The question *What forms of action [activity] are ideal in order
for students to have a right over their own lives?" could be answered by
*showing* examples or case studies of *this ideal form* before trying to
analyze *this* form.

In other words, lets find cases which already exist and make videos, write
descriptions, etc.
Your examples in Australia were examples that *impressed* me.

Larry
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:

>
> Returning to the conversation after an absence …
>
> Part of the point I was trying to make was about the need for more than
> just teachers to be involved in decision-making at the local level. Many
> local school districts in the US are rather autocratic, with
> superintendents making too many of the decisions, and many schools also
> have autocratic principals. There is a very authoritarian streak in the
> field of Education in the US. For all that American ideology touts us as
> the freedom-loving people, and castigates the Germans as autocratic and the
> French as overly centralizing, I believe this country is much more
> authoritarian in its basic leanings that is usually acknowledged.
>
> But we also have a counter-tradition, a sort of populist libertarianism,
> which has regrettably been co-opted by the right. If you don't like your
> dictator, then you want to be free to do as you please. But if there's a
> problem or crisis, then you want a dictator to go in and solve it by
> telling everybody else what to do.
>
> This contradiction is alive and relevant in educational policy. No one
> wants somebody else telling them how to run their local schools, but a lot
> of people want someone to tell everybody else how to run theirs. Locally
> libertarian, globally fascist.
>
> The problem on the ground with decentralized control of schools is that
> the local people don't have any very different ideas about how to do
> schooling compared to anyone else. Our educational tradition is a
> monoculture. The classroom-curriculum-testing model, the age-graded
> sequencing, all the structural features -- most of which I would argue are
> seriously dysfunctional for the 21st century -- would remain untouched on
> the whole (with of course the occasional local exceptions).
>
> The primary local force for real change in how schooling is done and what
> gets taught are the students themselves. They know how much they hate the
> current system and how phony and ineffective it is. And they are endlessly
> creative (or at least imaginative, even if many of their ideas won't work
> out). At the LCHC today we talked with the co-organizer of a pretty
> successful umbrella group of after-school programs, and it was very clear
> that the core of their success is the fact that they listen to the students
> about what the students want, and then piggyback other kinds of learning on
> top of the buy-in the students have for their own ideas about what they're
> interested in learning.
>
> I certainly agree with Peter than if teachers had more freedom to teach as
> they wish, some of them would do a much better job (and some of them would
> not). If they did not have to teach for a fixed curriculum and test, they
> COULD be more responsive to how they perceive the real needs of their own
> students (or not). But I am pretty sure that most of them would continue to
> teach both what and how they've been teaching, and their students would be
> only marginally more satisfied if at all with their educational experience.
> The more radical changes that are needed may not require a socialist
> revolution, but they do require a basic change in the moral and political
> calculus by which we determine just how much say students have a right to
> have over their own lives and their own educations.
>
> Power to the Teachers! Power to the Students!
>
> JAY.
>
> Jay Lemke
> Senior Research Scientist
> Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
> Adjunct Full Professor, Department of Communication
> University of California - San Diego
> 9500 Gilman Drive
> La Jolla, California 92093-0506
>
> New Website: www.jaylemke.com
>
>
>
> On Apr 1, 2012, at 7:23 AM, Michael Glassman wrote:
>
> > Hi Peter,
> >
> > Perhaps I am idealistic and looking through rose colored glasses, but I
> simply do not remember this level of corruption since before the New Deal -
> from top to bottom.   You have anecdotal evidence - there was not as much
> of a revolving door between those who create the policies and those who
> make money off of those policies - and there is are larger data sets -
> income distribution has not been this skewed since the guilded age.
>  "Always was and always will be" and "This is the best system we have" I
> have found to be not very constructive ways of looking at the world.
> >
> > And yes, that's my point - that is the way things are now and
> rearranging administrative structures probably won't help and may even make
> things worse.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Peter Smagorinsky
> > Sent: Sun 4/1/2012 10:03 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: RE: [xmca] Centralized vs. Distributed decision-making in
> schools
> >
> >
> >
> > Michael, I think I can say with confidence that these things are
> happening right now, and have been happening for as long as I can remember:
> "If you send eudcation decisions back to the local level I worry that
> teachers will face the same problems.  Even now principals and school
> boards run around touting how their test scores are superior to the
> community next door and that's why they deserve power and a raise.  It
> might even have the reverse effect of pitting administrators even more
> against teachers, and administrators demanding complete power because they
> are the "bosses."  Parents, especially those in marginalized populations,
> are still dependent on general information sources for what is a "good"
> school and will many will be conned into believing test scores tell them
> something of extraordinary importance."
> >
> > It'd be nice to get rid of corruption. But that seems pretty idealistic
> to me. I doubt if it's worse now than in previous eras, if my reading of
> history is accurate.
> >
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Michael Glassman
> > Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2012 8:28 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: RE: [xmca] Centralized vs. Distributed decision-making in
> schools
> >
> > I've been following this excellent discussion because it is close to my
> heart.  These days I am thinking more that the problem lies in process, not
> in structure - and until we change processes that changing structure is
> more or less rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  As long as we are
> following a suffoicating neo-liberal model where the goal is a bottom line
> that is easily measurable, offers very easy results that people can
> aggregate and compare, and we believe that success is measured in the
> aggregation, I do not believe it matters whether education is structured
> through a centralized model or a distributed model.  We also need to do
> something about the pervasive corruption within our society.  If you send
> eudcation decisions back to the local level I worry that teachers will face
> the same problems.  Even now principals and school boards run around
> touting how their test scores are superior to the community next door and
> that's why they deserve power and a raise.  It might even have the reverse
> effect of pitting administrators even more against teachers, and
> administrators demanding complete power because they are the "bosses."
>  Parents, especially those in marginalized populations, are still dependent
> on general information sources for what is a "good" school and will many
> will be conned into believing test scores tell them something of
> extraordinary importance.
> >
> > Any change in education I think won't happen from a top down change in
> structure, but a grass roots organization within individual communities,
> including development of information sources and open discussions about
> what a worthwhile education system means.  It also has to be combined with
> the idea that every student have the same amount of resources.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > ____
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> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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