Looking Around The Corner

Despite not knowing what the future holds, we can maintain our orientation by holding fast to our vision and values. This commitment will serve us well no matter what unfolds in the days and weeks and months ahead regardless of the economic trials and tribulations that await us. Our vision is focused on providing opportunities for learners at all ages and stages to meet their potential. Our value is centered on optimizing the benefits of a school with an enrollment that is low enough to cultivate caring relationships of breadth and depth between and among staff members and learners. We will remain small and think BIG.

The New York State Department of Education has approved our proposal to offer on-line classes in a manner that will be cost effective and still meet certification requirements. This decision, together with a $10,000 donation made to the school by a businessman who encouraged me to use the money to "plant seeds" in Green Island like I had at my previous work assignment, will allow us to expand our learning opportunities and provide classes from among a menu of nearly 200 different courses. This will enable our high school learners to extend themselves and enhance their learning portfolio as they prepare for competition with graduates of other high schools for admission to the college of their choice. Transcripts will be more robust and attractive to college admission representatives. This will permit us to convert idle time in study halls into unique and productive learning experiences. The donation means we can increase opportunities in spite of the reduction in state aid. The donation will meet the expenses associated with training a teacher and a site coordinator necessary for the program's infrastructure, as well as offer us 25 "seats" per semester for learners who meet expectations and responsibilities required of the virtual high school on-line courses.

But this is only one thrust in a strategy to expand instructional possibilities in the near future. We need to develop a school-to-work program that will create four 10 week internships for our seniors. This series of internships would place seniors in shadowing experiences designed to afford them a close-up view of potential careers. We would need to train a staff member in developing and the program and adjust their schedule so they could have the afternoon to coordinate the many different relationships with workplace personnel.

Additionally, we must engage in partnerships with the many colleges in our area so that our seniors could avail themselves of the chance to take college classes during their last year in high school. This would largely rest on our ability to schedule classes required of seniors in the morning so that they could be released to either internship programs or college classes.
The virtual high school classes can begin as early as this coming September. The last two proposals will need time to arrange the school's master schedule, train staff, and prepare mutually beneficial relationships with area workplaces and local colleges.

Beyond our objective to enrich learning experiences of our high school learners is the goal to persuade existing learners enrolled at Heatly to remain at Heatly instead of transferring to other private or charter schools in the area. The loss of learners deprives us of state aid (and consequently results in concomitant budget cuts that eventually have a negative impact on other programs) and increases our transportation costs (we are required to provide transportation to resident learners who enroll elsewhere, so this added expense also reduces our budget and weakens programs). Together, these two side effects of learners transferring out of Heatly shrink opportunities for those who remain.

We owe it to all learners to respond in a proactive and convincing fashion that asserts our value and vision.

Building Bridges

This Blog entry juxtaposes a recent success story at Heatly with the public's need to perceive education as a bridge between the past to the future. The first part of the this evening's entry is lifted from our district website and may be familiar to visitors of that news source. It appears in italics.

"Six physics students from Heatly School recently participated in the 2011 Model Bridge Competition and (a Heatly learner) went home with first prize. The contest was held at the Albany Marriott Hotel as part of the Capital District’s 31st Anniversary Celebration of National Engineers Week. More than 100 high school students entered the competition.

Students worked during and after school to build model truss-type or arch-type bridges using only balsa wood and carpenter's glue. Each model was judged on its aesthetics (appearance and quality of construction) and then weighed and loaded to failure by a testing machine. Cash prizes and certificates were awarded for first, second, and third place in three categories: efficiency, load capacity and aesthetics.

(A Heatly learner) took home first prize in the load capacity category. This win builds on last year's success when two students took home second place in the load capacity category.

The model bridge contest, which has been a tradition at the Capital District celebration for more than 25 years, is sponsored by the Foundation for Engineering Education, the Mohawk-Hudson Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Eastern New York Chapter of the Association for Bridge Construction and Design. Activities associated with National Engineers Week are designed to raise awareness of the contributions that engineers make to our daily lives."

Education is similar to bridge building. Learning a skill or concept allows you to be transported across an otherwise insurmountable challenge to arrive at a new location. Picture one side of a deep ravine to represent what you know. The ravine itself symbolizes the unknown or a vexing problem or an issue. The bridge is designed to overcome the challenge by teaching the concept or skill necessary to arrive at the other side of the ravine. That destination reflects newly acquired knowledge or skills.

Famous Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget offered a simplistic explanation of learning when he stated that our mind is at an equilibrium until we are confronted with the unknown or a new proposition. The inability to understand the unfamiliar causes disequilibrium. That intellectual disruption is not resolved until we are able to restructure our thinking, mitigate the discrepancy, and inculcate the experience into a new mental framework - and equilibrium returns.

Education, in particular public schools since they willingly accommodate any member of society, (as opposed to charter schools and private schools that can exercise selective measures in who enrolls in their schools) represents a platform for transforming individuals. The experience can stimulate enduring change to those who avail themselves of the opportunity to expand their perspectives and stretch possibilities. Public education retains the vestige of that rags to riches theme embedded in our cultural narrative - the prospect that anyone can accomplish great things and become a difference maker if they apply themselves and take advantage of the accessible benefits. Public schools aim to democratize knowledge by appealing to people of all walks of life, many of whom would lack hope were it not for the opportunity to attend public school.

Just like the award winning bridge constructed by Heatly's champion builder, education rests upon the strength of triangles that more efficiently bear weight and stress than other geometric designs. The three sides of the triangle of education involve human capital, a meaningful mission, and appropriate resources.

Our bridge will be severely tested this budget season on its ability to bear loads, just like the competition with the participants from Heatly. The stress will come from the area of resource allocation. The significant reduction in state aid (22% less money from the state than last year) will challenge our capacity to meet with success with less than adequate financial resources. We certainly hope that our political representatives can discover the means to restore aid to schools so we can transport learners across whatever gaps they have between the known and unknown, between the present and the future, and between who they are and who they can become.

Home-Schooling 330 Learners

    

*Some of the content of this Blog posting has previously been published as part of an article I prepared for a statewide journal a few years ago. I have adapted it to personalize my experience at Green Island.

                  How to Home-school 330 Learners

Public schools are confronted by multiple threats to their customer base. Charter schools, parochial schools, and various forms of private schools have attracted growing numbers of children. Parents have become more conscientious consumers in seeking opportunities to further the education of their children. Additionally, there is another educational option exercised by an increasing amount of parents. According to a 2003 study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics there are approximately 1,100,000 children being educated at home, a surge of over 600,000 more children since 1996. (NCES July 2004)

Despite the statistics presented above, the number of children receiving instruction within their home is fairly invisible. That is, these children are learning in individual houses blending inconspicuously in neighborhoods everywhere as opposed to learners attending non-public schools in buildings that by their size distinguish them unmistakably as schools. However, public schools, like any business hopeful of remaining viable, should not overlook the potential of home-schooling as an alternative available to parents. 

According to research conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, there are three primary reasons that parents elect to home-school their children. First, 31% of parents choosing to home-school cite the environment of public schools as a motive. Second, 30% of parents identify religious or moral reasons for their choice. Third, 16% of parents state that their decision was based mostly on a lack of confidence in the quality of instruction at their local school. (NCES study July 2004)

Rather than ignoring the loss of learners or indulging in a defensive response, public schools could benefit by examining the critical attributes presented by competing learning programs. In particular, this Blog post addresses the primary reason parents elect to home school their children as reported in the NCES study; the environment of the school, and suggests features that we have introduced or emphasized at Heatly in an effort to simultaneously improve our performance and thwart the loss of learners to home schooling –-- or charter/private/parochial schools.

How can we position our school to prevent a continued loss of learners from impacting public perception of the school, decreasing state and federal funds, and reducing programs and staffing?

We must make a concerted attempt to address the reason that was most often referenced by survey respondents who had decided to withdraw their children from public school and deliver instruction at home. That is, their perception of the public school environment as unsatisfactory.

The Heatly School of Green Island is a very small, single structure school district with a professional and support staff of approximately 60 serving 330 learners of all ages, at all stages, between Kindergarten and 12^th grade. Every learner lives within a fifteen minute walk of the school, which enhances the feeling of community that exists within the school building. It is not much of an exaggeration to employ the time worn cliché of “one big family” to describe the school atmosphere. I know, I know, everyone says that - but let me explain.

How many other school districts can say that the office staff knows each and every one of the learners? Not only by name, but in almost every case they also know the back story of each individual. That degree of familiarity engenders a sense of care, compassion, responsibility and engagement between adults and children. It’s a relationship that reflects a personal investment. I particularly enjoy observing this dynamic whenever I witness people passing in the hallways. There’s an overt acknowledgement and acceptance found in few other school districts.

I recall how impressed I was when, during my tour of the building as part of the extended interview process; the 12^th graders leading me around the school were greeted warmly by the children in the elementary grade classrooms we entered. They referred to each other by name during these exchanges. That demonstrative rapport was very appealing to me as a candidate to lead the school system.

How many other districts can report that the learner population is greeted almost every morning by the superintendent as they walk up the sidewalk to the entrance of the school? Or that any learner in the school, together with three friends of their choice, can sign up to have lunch with the superintendent in his office? Do parents of children in other districts see the superintendent at every home varsity athletic game or Parent-Teacher Organization meeting? Would they even recognize the superintendent of their school district? Have they ever received a personal letter or phone call from the superintendent of their district? (I’ve even made a few home visits)

My commitment to engage with the learning community isn’t just common sense, there’s a real benefit to this illustrated in an example from the business world. One characteristic, among many, that a tremendously successful retail giant uses to distance itself from its competitors and thereby gain economic advantages is to employ a greeter at the main entrance to their store. This individual is congenial and cordial, oftentimes retired or semi-retired people the age of grandparents who likely evoke fond thoughts of our own grandparents. The original purpose behind the greeter was to deter theft. The reasoning behind the practice is to personalize the initial interaction between customer and corporation. This brief introduction, a welcoming gesture of a hearty hello, a simple smile, and a comment on the weather… puts a face on a store.

We’re a public school and the superintendent must be public. I’m the leader who has to stand before the community in times of need or when difficult budget decisions have to be made. I want the residents to know who it is that’s delivering the information and decisions. Maybe some will disagree with what I have to say, but these are often emotional issues and require personal communication and interaction, from someone they know, not from an empty suit.

Let’s return to that same giant retail store mentioned earlier in this Blog posting for another example of the value of relationships. This same store has an expectation that all employees acknowledge and offer help to any approaching customer who comes within six feet of them, and sustains the relationship as the customer moves about the facility. Would be thieves are usually thwarted by the interactions and innocent customers appreciate being acknowledged and assisted. The environment of schools can be nurtured with the same method.

Learners at Green Island receive instruction in small classes. This accentuates the potential for a deep and enduring relationship between teacher and learner. At the high school level, where parents of learners in much larger high schools worry about their son or daughter feeling lost amid the mass of humanity at a crucial juncture of social and emotional growth, our teenagers are not only known by the teaching staff, the learners receive more than one class and one year of instruction by the same teacher. Furthermore, since we are a single structure school learners can regularly connect with their former teachers who they see as they traffic in the hallways and in shared common areas of the school. Again, this familiarity enables the teachers to gain a deeper understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and interests of the individuals.

The same is true of our support staff. The learners routinely interact with the lunch monitors, custodial staff, nurse, and secretaries over an extended period of time as they progress from grade to grade. A number of our staff members live within the district and therefore harbor a significant personal commitment to our success.

Board of Education members welcome reports from both elementary and high school student council groups, as well as representatives of other groups. The fact that the members know the learners and their families only heightens the meaning and relevance of the presentations. These are not ephemeral and disposable moments, but instead contribute to the fabric of the organizational culture at Green Island.  

Though it may strike some as an odd reference, one of the more interesting connections I’ve observed is the manner in which learners and adults intermingled during home basketball games. At other schools where I’ve worked the adults and learners are often seated in separate sections of the bleachers and East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. However, at Heatly, while there are groups of learners located here and there, these groups are interspersed with pockets of adults. And the groups don’t just sit in proximity to each other, they interact.

That may be among the most notable signs of a caring school district atmosphere but definitely the most exceptional is the ritual of graduating seniors departing the building after the ceremony and forming a receiving line on the front lawn of the school. Pictures are taken and the community members form a long line that snakes along and allows congratulations to be extended to each graduateincredible experience.

I suspect quite strongly that my observations would surprise some at Heatly because it’s always been like this. They may perceive these perceptions as normal and assume that all school districts present themselves similarly. Unless they’ve lived elsewhere and attended other schools, how would they know and understand what a unique school environment they have in Green Island?  

Finally, years ago when my wife and I were preparing to sell a home we scheduled an Open House to entice buyers. The realtor stressed that people buy homes, not houses. The Open House encourages buyers into your house, making the buyer feel at home encourages them to sign the check. The realtor advised us to bake a loaf of bread or an apple pie just prior to the event so that interested visitors would smell the familiar aromas and think of a home rather than a house. It works!

There are a lot of school buildings and a lot of schools. One is a pile of bricks surrounded by a parking lot; the other is a secure and comforting home away from home where children spend much of their waking hours each weekday with adults who commit to their development. We want visitors to our school district to detect the difference between a building and a school. We feel confident that we can help visitors distinguish between the two by presenting a caring environment where people really matter.

        

The Water Hole

There's an old African proverb: "When the water hole dries up, the animals begin to look at each other differently."

Let's hope that this adage does not ring true during the present and persistent economic crisis that is inflicting a ravaging financial storm upon school districts throughout the state of New York. The funding source is drying up and school districts are growing anxious and scared.

This is no time for advocates of public school education to allow their voices to dissipate by screaming with reckless abandon at any and all perceived threats. Nothing is gained by individual districts or schools pointing their fingers at a long list of grievances involving funding procedures and practices. Instead, I believe the preferred strategy would center on the few leverage points that contribute the most toward this fiscal plague.

Nor are charts, graphs, power point presentations and cold data a convincing platform. People may be persuaded by numbers, but rarely are they inspired by them. Instead, accessing emotions is more likely to induce change and engagement. Narratives in the form of stories represent a valuable vehicle for conveying information. After all, it comes down to people and feelings, not numbers and calculations.

Let's look at an excerpt from the book, Influencer: the Power to Change Anything, by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzer for a recommended direction for those wishing to express disdain for the significant reductions in state aid (Green Island is scheduled to lose 22% of its funding from the state compared to last year's allocation). The authors refer to a study that examined how memorable and credible stories are in the retention levels of people.

The research method identified three different groups of graduate students pursuing a Masters degree in Business Administration. It’s important to note that the curriculum in such a program leans heavily on data and formulas and numbers of all kinds. “Each group was provided with exactly the same information. In one case, the students were given a verbal description that contained facts and figures. Another group was given the same information – only it was presented through charts and tables. The final group was provided the same details presented as a story. To the researcher’s surprise, when tested three weeks later, not only did those who heard the story recall more detail than the other two groups, but they also found the story more credible. MBA students gave more credence to a story than cold hard facts. Concrete and vivid stories exert extraordinary influence because they transport people out of the role of critic and into the role of participant. Stories often keep the listener from offering counterarguments in the first place. The final point of differentiation between stories and verbal persuasion is human emotions. Stories, when told well, stimulate genuine emotions. Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through traditional conceptual reasoning, but through direct stimulation – by feelings, not by thinking. Using stories also invites listeners into sharing personal experiences.”

Public school education serves as a conduit between generations that allows our society to extend itself toward a future of greater possibilities and prosperity through the support of taxpayers who preceded the beneficiaries. Education is an inheritance we receive from those before us. Education allows us to sustain progress and continue to advance via innovations and adaptations. Our competitive edge as a nation has been fully supported by an educated citizenry and high rate of literacy. Our almost mythic fiber, woven into our history, recounts the rags to riches stories of Abe Lincoln reading by candlelight in a log cabin, and Thomas Edison's rise to fame through perseverance and grit. It is a belief in the opportunity for anyone with a dream and hope to elevate themselves through an educational experience available to all, and aspire to make a difference in the lives of others.

No matter when anyone ends their formal education, their support of education should never end. Just as we were the recipients of the funding supplied by community members when we attended school, so should we offer the same support to children as an investment in our very own future - the days we are retired and rely on the productivity of these children who have become adults, taxpayers, citizens, and neighbors. Here's a quote from one of the founding fathers and early presidents, Thomas Jefferson, who stated - "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people...they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."

What's Cooking?

What's cooking at Heatly?

There's always something going on. I have no difficulty in discovering issues or activities to write about in this daily Blog. For instance, I could explain to you how our Board of Education is so dedicated that we were involved in an executive session last Thursday evening when all of a sudden the school lost power ( I don't mean the board's ability to govern the district, I mean the electricity went out as a result of a large fire not too far from the school). The first agenda item for the meeting was an acknowledgment of March as Music in Our Schools Month. The elementary chorus followed the adage - "the show must go on." With the soft glow of emergency lights in the gymnasium offering enough illumination to set an unusual atmosphere, the group performed admirably as they presented a wide range of musical selections. I used two flashlights for a well intentioned but rather poorly conducted light show spotlighting chorus members. They were great and their efforts were well received by an appreciative audience.

I enjoy the opportunity to interact with learners of all ages at Heatly. It's unusual for a superintendent to have an office within a school building. The fact that my office is on the main floor (second story) of the three story building places me in middle of things with respect to proximity to the K - 12 learners.

Although the process of constructing a budget has captivated much of my time, literally holding me hostage in my own office as I work to develop an economic plan in the wake of a 22% loss in state aid projected for next year, I have still been able to find time to escape and get involved in school activities. In addition to observing classrooms for teacher evaluation, I have had chances to be more actively involved. Two instances in particular come to mind.

During the recent February winter break (is there ever going to be a break from winter - yesterday was our fourth snow day!!) the student council sponsored a snow tubing excursion to West Mountain. That was a great relief from the confines of the office. My wife and I attended the event as chaperones in support of the student council advisor who organized the trip for a group of eighteen high school learners. It was very exciting, especially since it was an experience made even more interesting because two of those eighteen learners were encountering their first real winter. I am referring to the two junior high learners who moved here from Algeria earlier this school year. It was great to witness the fun they had as they raced down the snow covered mountain in their tubes. All eighteen participants from Heatly appeared to enjoy themselves. I can also attest that they all represented our school with the very best behavior. It was terrific!

More recently however, I was invited in to prepare crepes for a high school French class last Friday. While I can't speak French, I have long enjoyed savoring French food. Making crepes usually marks special occasions in our family and it's one of the few times I'm allowed to seize control of the kitchen. This is largely due to my lack of skill in making much else beside toast and cereal. I am not anticipating any offers to join the television food network channel. I can assure you that Bobby Flay won't be coming to Heatly for any competitive cooking event.

Just like people are advised to follow their heart when searching for meaning in their life, I follow my stomach when deciding my direction in the kitchen. Since my interest is inclined toward sweets, these crepes were dessert crepes. That's the only type I really make. I brought the crepe maker in after creating the special batter the night before. The members of the class were able to lather the crepe with Nutella and then choose from a variety of fruits (apple slices, cherries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and bananas) to insert in the crepe before either sprinkling coconut flakes or sliced almonds over the folded crepes and finally covering the dessert with homemade whipped cream. Several did all of the above. They were polite, gracious, and diplomatic in their comments on the food. It was a pleasure to help out in the class and to also allow the teenagers to see me in a far different perspective than normal.

These are just two examples of opportunities that attracted me to Green Island. I was interested in exercising influence across all grade levels after serving as a principal at the three different separate levels of elementary, junior high/middle school, and high school. I wanted to put everything together. Most importantly, I wanted to pursue this goal with a district that was small enough to provide experiences to interact directly with the people we serve - kids between the ages of five and eighteen.

By the way, in closing, there were no reports of illness by anyone indulging in the crepes!!

Tap, Tap, Tap --- ?,?,?

Who hasn't sung the Happy Birthday song? Everyone knows Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Songs like Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Mary Had a Little Lamb are also on the lips of nearly all of us before we leave third grade. As we progress through school we commit additional songs to memory, like The Star Spangled Banner, or America the Beautiful. Yet, as familiar as these songs are, we require a cue or context in order to identify them.

Let me cite Dan and Chip Heath's book, Made to Stick, once more to demonstrate a point critical to the objective of this Blog entry. The authors refer to a simple exercise called Tappers and Listeners to explain what they refer to as the "Curse of Knowledge." They used a reservoir of 120 common, universal songs like those noted in the previous paragraph to challenge the ability of listeners to identify the title of the song as it is being played by someone tapping out the tune on a tabletop. The listeners predicted before hand that they expected a 50% success rate. However, in actuality, listeners only guessed correctly on 2.5% of the songs.

The outcome was puzzling to the tappers, since it was an easily recognized song and they were tapping out the tune in a clear fashion. Even repeating the song failed to appreciably increase the level of success among listeners. It was baffling. Try it with someone to check for yourself.

But, think about this. When a tapper taps the song they are hearing the song in their head as an accompaniment to their tapping. Meanwhile, the listeners can’t hear that internal tune – all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code. The Heath's contend that the source of the tapper's frustration regarding the listener's difficulty in identifying the song is that once we know something we find it hard to imagine what it was like to not know it.

I've shared this at a recent faculty meeting as a reminder that teachers must avoid ending up like the tappers. They are fully aware of, and intimately acquainted with, the objective of their lesson and if they don't properly introduce the objective in a context of value and meaning and relevance, then they may experience the same disappointment as the tappers had when the listeners couldn't recognize a simple song that "everybody knows!"

That's not the point of this Blog entry though. Instead, I want to address an area where public school educators often victimize themselves. We assume that everyone in the community we serve knows what we do each day. That belief may be enhanced because nearly everyone has gone through school themselves and school staff then imagine that experience will be enough for others to figure out what we do.

We entered this profession because of a passionate belief in the virtue and value of transforming others by imparting knowledge and skill - who can argue with that? So we take for granted that the general public shares in this opinion. We therefore presume that everyone understands, accepts, and appreciates the noble endeavor of school staff committed to growing young minds. That is the tune we are humming in our head as we tap, tap, tap. And, when the public can't identify the song - as in voting down annual operating budgets, or attacking the rights of collective bargaining, or denigrating the mission and performance of public schools - we are left bewildered and disappointed.

There are many reasons that the general population may not identify the song we are tapping. First, statistics reveal that approximately 1/4 of the public have a school age child attending public school. That is surprising compared to what the same ratio was twenty-five years ago. Families are smaller, or there are no children in the home, or the children are too young or have grown up and graduated from school, or the children attend an alternative educational setting. For example, the rise of Charter schools, together with the number of private and parochial schools, provides an increasing option for parents as conscientious consumers shopping for the best service for their child's future. Add to this equation the source of the fastest increasing alternative - home-schooling, and you can see how only about 1/4 of the housing units in any community have a direct connection with the local public school.

It's a challenge to elicit a majority vote affirming the annual school budget, especially during a depressed economy, if only 1/4 of the housing units have children in school. It's clearly not enough to expect that delivering a quality instructional program will in turn convince voters in the community to financially sustain the teaching and learning process when the vast majority of people eligible to cast ballots have no direct contact or communication with the school.

I believe there are two key leverage points that require attention when attempting to enlist people to express confidence in the efforts and purpose of the public school. The first rests with ability of the school leadership to define and differentiate expenses and investments. The second is recognizing the need for schools to market their services and successes to those people without children in public school.

It is essential that those taxpayers without children attending public school understand how an effective and efficient school contributes to value in the immediate community. For example, housing values are often impacted by the perception potential buyers have on the local school. Whether the buyers have children or not they can appreciate that the re-sale of the house, in the form of supply and demand, may be influenced on the quality of the school.

At an expanded level, regardless of whether or not a housing unit has a child attending public school, we all pay the cost of ineffective schools which experience high drop-out rates that subsequently inflate unemployment levels (particularly during a depressed economy) and the numbers of people dependent on tax supported social service programs like welfare and medicaid.

If a person views schools in terms of spending and expenses, then it's easier to pull the lever down on a No vote on the school budget - especially if the person doesn't have children in public school. However, if a person recognizes that a productive and successful school adds value to the community, local and otherwise, then they may be more inclined to support the school budget by voting in the affirmative.

Similarly, in order to reach the homes of people without children attending public school, we must utilize multiple methods of conveying our purpose and our product. We can't limit our interactions with this target audience on one day of the year - the day of the budget vote - and expect their approval. It's difficult right now to manage meaning in communications when much of what the public reads in local papers, or hears on the radio and television, about public schools is often negative; such as budget reductions, lay-offs, and program cuts. But schools must be convincing, creative and committed while shaping the message and meaning of their viability as an economic engine preparing college and career ready graduates who will become productive citizens and taxpayers that in turn deliver benefits to others.

Public school education represents a significant factor in our nation's quest to maintain a competitive edge among the members of the world community. Public school education merits an earnest investment if we expect to remain a global leader.

One things is for certain - we can't keep on tapping out tunes, louder and slower, in a futile effort to get the listener to understand what we now and hear inside our heads (schools) if we expect to earn their investment.  

Sleight Of Mouth

I am still upset that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used the bully pulpit of the State of the State Address to intentionally insert a misleading statistic embedded within a political sound-bite to distract the audience and redirect their focus on his perspective of the issue.

Specifically, I am addressing his statement assessing education in New York - "First in spending but thirty-fourth in results." The numbers and the use of the word spending, at a time when the economic crisis casts spending as a nasty word, together with his use of numbers, conspired to produce a sentence that subsequently defined the issue on his terms. This strategy is often referred to in the adage, "You name it, you frame it."

Cuomo was effective in his delivery; capitalizing on the large audience of people in attendance and relying on the media to expand the audience through film, print, and Internet. Given that newspaper editors and television producers recognize that the shortened attention of readers/viewers and the overwhelming blizzard of messages available via the Internet combine to reduce messages to twenty second blurbs on television or big headlines-small articles in the newspaper, Cuomo bet that the 1st but 34th statement would become repeated and repeated as the gold nugget sound-bite.

The phrase certainly was featured in media reports and it echoed throughout the cavernous political terrain left vacant by reason and distanced by time. That is, his 1St and 34th refrain gained traction and ran off before anyone had the opportunity to question his use of the statistic and counter his hollow data.

Mark Twain once opined, "A lie will travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

While it may be true that New York is first in its investment in education, here's a more accurate measure of educational performance by an impartial and objective study featured in Education Week entitled Quality Counts 2010 (http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2010/17src.h29.html) which identifies New York as second in educational achievement among the fifty states.

Let's turn to two of my favorite books to explain why Cuomo's strategy was effective, even if it was incorrect.

First, from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzer.

"It's called Representative Heuristic. For example, take a simple quiz. What is the greater cause of death in the world each year? Suicide or homicide? Fire or drowning? Most people select homicides and fires because these are the catastrophes they see more often in the news. Suicides are generally kept quiet for reasons of privacy and fired make for dramatic live coverage. Since we see homicides and fires on the news more often than we see suicides and drownings, we assume that this sample represents the underlying whole, when in fact it greatly distorts it. Death by flood and suicide are more common, but we apply a simple mental heuristic, fall victim to an inaccurate data stream, and rarely do we know that it’s happening.

Since managing the data stream relies on numbers to change people’s cognitive maps (as opposed to personal experience), the data have to be fresh, consistent, and relevant if they’re going to have much of an impact."

Now, let's look at Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath.

                 

"Data enforces boundaries.

When it comes to statistics, the best advice is to use them as input, not output. Use them to make up your mind on an issue. Don’t make up your mind and then go looking for the numbers to support yourself.

There are 50% more people who die in the U.S. by suicide each year then by homicide; 9 times more die annually from tuberculosis than from floods; and 80 times more deaths result from asthma than tornadoes. The general public is startled by these points because of what is called “availability bias.” That is a natural tendency that causes us, when estimating the probability of a particular event, to judge the event’s probability by its availability in our memory. People remember things better because they evoke more emotion, not because they are more frequent. People remember things better because the media spend more time covering them (perhaps because they provide more vivid images), not because they are more common.

Researchers found that thinking about statistics shifts people into a more analytical frame of mind. When people think analytically, they are less likely to think emotionally."

I am a magician and so is Cuomo. The difference is, I perform magic for entertainment whereas Cuomo performs magic for political gain. Cuomo’s assertion is wrong on many levels and incorrect in many ways. However, advocates of education may have lost their voice in this battle, overwhelmed by a general public, that when asked to complete the sentence “First in spending but…” will more than likely reply “…thirty-fourth in results.”  It may be too little too late. Unfortunately, those people who will suffer the most from the effect of Cuomo’s claim are too young to vote…