Open response to Stager's complaint

The Noah Principal: No more prizes for predicting rain. Prizes only for building arks. Louis Gerstner

One of my favorite educational scolds, Gary Stager, yesterday excoriated "the most popular, hired and prolific members of the EduBlogosphere" for not jumping up and down about the recent findings that showed the Reading First program was not as effective as promised. He writes:

Literacy dominates my esteemed colleague's thoughts about education. Therefore, I find it shocking that there is so little [read: none] discussion of the news that the federal Department of Education has concluded that Reading First, the $6 billion shock and awe approach to literacy education at the core of No Child Left Behind, has FAILED to improve the reading comprehension of American students.

Why the silence among EduBloggers? Is this issue unimportant? Should we ignore the calamity created by Reading First just because it doesn't mention Twitter, Apture, Ning or other made-up words?

Or, are you waiting to be told what to think by Tom Friedman or Daniel Pink?

First let me say that I am positive that I am not even on Mr. Stager's radar, so this did not hurt my feelings in the least. But I have a much different take on whether Reading First was shamefully neglected as a topic of discussion among the bloggers I like to read for a few reasons:

1. I too was shocked, shocked to learn that politics and money and cronyism have ever played a role in education in this country. What will they discover next - that politicians have affairs? That governments sometimes spend money on stupid things?  Gary takes great pride in predicting Reading First would not be a success. Ya know, Gary, guessing this didn't require the skills of a Nostradamus. Sorry. And while this is a case of politics influencing education, most of us think of ourselves as educators first, political pundits a distant second. Or tenth.
   
2. A great many of us at a school district level simply have not been impacted by Reading First, didn't buy the product, didn't sacrifice other programs. Those bloggers working in schools tend to write and be interested in what they know and what impacts them. On a fundamental level, as long as federal funding accounts for about 3-4% of my district's financing, I will invest about 3-4% of my energy on federal issues. Even NCLB has had less impact on how a state decides to enforce it and district's to have it impact what they do as a result of it.
   
3. A great many bloggers would prefer to write about the positive, offering concrete suggestions about how education can be improved on a daily, personal, school or classroom level. I think we take Emily's to heart when she writes: "I dwell in Possibility-- A fairer House than Prose." We need people like you, Gary, with that 20,000 foot view. It's just that the stuff here on the ground is of more immediacy, more interest, more importance to many of us - even Nings. It's naive, I suppose, to think we can make change by celebrating the positive rather than crticizing negative, but ya just never know.
   
4. As a corollary, many of us have a pretty accurate perception of the limits of our influence (which I explored more fully here), knowing where we can most make a difference. Besides ranting - and belaboring the obvious that politicians (on both sides of the aisle) are clueless and corrupted by special interests - what in the Sam Hill do I have to contribute to this discussion, to urge my readers to do, to act in a way that will actually change a system? I'll certainly share this information within my own district to make better informed decisions about our reading efforts, but what more? Venting feels good, but does it do good?

Gary, I sincerely appreciate YOU writing about this. It does need to brought to all educators' attention. But the world only needs (and can take) so many Gary Stagers!

I like my bloggers building arks - not just predicting rain. 

www.vegetarianfriends.net/
 

Excuses, excuses

The Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating
(Once again via Stephens Lighthouse. How does he find these things?)

Read the list and then here is the challenge:

1. Make a list of your three most bothersome excuses.
2. Turn each excuse into a powerful question, starting with the words "How can I?" or "How can we?" (For example, if your excuse is "That's R&D's job," you might ask "How can I make innovation my job?" or "How can I help my team take more responsibility for innovating?"
3. Brainstorm each question -- alone and with your team.

My excuses..

1. It's not broken. Why fix it?
2. It involves a power shift and somebody will get mad.
3. I don't have the energy. 

In a sense, I object to innovation for innovation's sake. It's a means to an end. Not an end in itself. Is that my 4th excuse?

What keeps you from innovating? What are your excuses? 

Disillusionment Curve

 

The graph above represents my imperfect remembering of a concept I learned once upon a time - early 90s, I think.

The theory is pretty simple: the higher your expectations of a thing, the deeper your dissatisfaction/disillusionment when experiencing the thing itself. The lower your expectation, the less disappointed you will be. And the less deep your unhappiness, the sooner, easier and more likely your return to satisfaction.

I am sure there is an official name for and far better explanation of this concept. It's similar to Moore's Adoption Lifecycle or Gartner's Hype Cycle, but I believe it pre-dates either of these. If anybody can supply a name and more authoritative source, I would be much obliged.

A number of things brought the concept to mind this week:

• I finally got a chance to study Jeff Utecht's Stages of PLN adoption on the Thinking Stick. I like that he adds perspective and balance to the path many take in learning and using social networking tools for professional growth. (He did forget denial, anger and bargaining ... oh, that's Kubler-Ross's stages of death. Never mind) Jeff's is a good "adoption" model.
  
• Spring was here. My expectations for the weekend were very high. But there was an inch of snow on the ground this morning, it's now 28F at midday, and the winds are gusting up to 30mph. My satisfaction level will be rising very slowly.
  
• My department has been pitching pretty hard all the benefits of the new student information system we're implementing next school year. How does one establish a balance between over-selling and working up real enthusiasm for change?

And for some reason, I woke asking myself: "What should be our technology department's priority: Making people happy or making people productive?" I recognize there is a correlation. But do we make people unhappy in the short term for productivity increases that eventually result in greater happiness?

As if I really had that much control anyway...