The Chalkboard Project's Thinking Box

It's time to be more precise about this thing I call the thinking box. The challenge for the Chalkboard Project is to understand why the design of the government system of providing educational services resists change. To the extent minor reforms cover up and put off discussion of the basic system design and its inequitable consequences for the massive educational underclass, its efforts boarder on being immoral.

One of the things the design of our system of government schools does is to send a huge stream of public money, over $5 billion, from the state school fund to the districts. It is going to an educational bureaucracy (I mean simply a government-owned organization designed to be centrally controlled at the top and implemented at the lower levels by government employees). Public achooling is organized as a classic form of government bureaucracy. The huge bureaucracy that teaches and administers depends on the revenue stream from the state. Their memberships in the big education organizations are devoted to preserving and making this system work. Improvements and minsor changes to make this system work better are tolerated and sometimes even valued but always fundamental is to protect the basic design of this system. The system design places public education services under government control and this government box defines and restricts what is possible in all the subsequent reform processes.

Under a bureaucratic system, there is no freedom allowed to enter this sector by other providers. The districts are the exclusive providers of public education. Educators who have everything to lose and little to gain have powerful incentives to protect their livelihood by preserving this basic design. So who would change it? Perhaps some disinterested outside party but the likelihood of some non-governmental organization having the will and resources to take on the problem of system design is small simply because the system is huge and most people who know anything about its complexities are those who work inside the system and who have a vested interest in seeing that it doesn’t change; the system by design is a legal revenue stream imposed by state law that provides the beneficiaries with direct and guaranteed source of jobs, salaries, and benefits.

In short, it is government that excludes any other providers from having direct access to the state school fund. And quite naturally protecting this government control is crucial to those who depend on this design. In the legislative battle over a charter bill, the OSBA lobbyist said, "We will never allow anyone else other than school districts to have access to the state school fund." They would allow a charter bill only if charter schools were financially kept under the control of districts, and that’s is what the legislature delivered. At the time, the legislature simply didn’t have the will or political muscle to overcome the vested interests of the big education organizations.

The result of public schools being protected by the legislature’s legal framework in which it created the exclusive power of districts to provide all public education services has a devastating consequence for the kids. The schools are protected from having to change and improve because the incentives, the rewards, don’t depend on kids learning. Revenues are guaranteed whether the kids learn or not. If some kids, in fact, if most kids fail to thrive and learn, it has no consequence for the adults who run the system. About 1/3 of the 3/4 of the students who make it through to graduation make it to the level of the 10th grade CIM standard, and this massive failure of government schools remains a relatively constant condition over the decades. Failure has no consequence. In fact, schools may even get more money to correct failings.

This isolation from performance means "reforms" don’t much affect the level of performance because what can be changed in such a protected system are largely trivial reforms that are acceptable to the system. It means that these minor reforms won’t much matter for the kids; the adults will allow minor changes within the system as long as the system design that creates the exclusive power by government school districts to be the sole provider of public education services remains in place.

And because public education services are free and open to all, this structurally rigid system also creates a structurally rigid class of educational haves and have nots. We wouldn’t have an achievement gap problem except that we have universal public education that is supposed to be equitable. Kids differ. Differences in performance will appear. But it’s not differences per se that makes the system inequitable. It is its rigidity, its lack of possible educational mobility available to kids. The system prevents possibilities for low end students to be better served. Low students have little opportunity for something better suited to their needs. We wouldn’t have a rigid class of educational have nots except that we have a rigid government controlled single provider system. Centralized government control does that to a society. It is immoral to the degree it shuts down opportunity for people to innovate and create new methods for delivering education.

The idea of opportunity versus government control is generally true. Free societies do, of course, create poverty so to speak simply by contrast with the rich but poverty in a free society is not a rigid class imposed on individuals; it is not a rigid condition. In a free society individuals have income mobility unrestricted by government and dependent only on individuals’ work and constructive activity.

Public education is different. For students who cannot afford private schooling, there is almost no educational mobility. Immediately upon entering kindergarten, students quickly sort into rigid classes of educational haves and educational have nots due to a single age graded standardized method of educational delivery that makes almost no accommodation to individual intellectual differences. Students who are mismatched with the instructional program at first grade and to the intellectual progression of instruction in primary school will be mismatched throughout their school careers. The correlation between entering level at first grade and performance at graduation is startlingly high. Their status as an educational have not will remain constant up through graduation if they make it that far. Their low grades correlate with being at risk of dropping out. They simply don’t fit to the system. Even though failure to learn and thrive is immediately apparent among some students, the system does not change or accommodate its basic design to the needs of students. It sorts kids by age, not need.

The public school system is a rigid and unforgiving system of instruction because delivery is based on sorting kids by age and moves along them along year by year regardless of whether they are learning or not. The people running the system aren’t bad. It’s the system design that causes the problem. The system provides educational services without regard to students because the system is designed to pay the districts to provide educational services, not learning. The incentives—salaries, jobs, benefits—have no connection with kids’ learning. The incentives aren’t aligned with the mission. We simply don’t pay for what we want. We pay to have a bureaucratic system, not learning. Of course such as system creates a rigid class structure of haves and have nots. By design, change by individuals or organizations is not allowed.

The general principle is: Freedom is required for there to be healthy constructive efforts and intelligent problem solving.
Nathan Rosenberg, and L.E., Jr. Birdzell state this principle, that change requires freedom, in their book How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World. "Growth is, of course, a form of change, and growth is impossible when change is not permitted. And successful change requires a large measure of freedom to experiment. A grant of that kind of freedom costs a society's rulers their feeling of control... The great majority of societies, past and present, have not allowed it. Nor have they escaped from poverty." The public education system has la low measure of freedom. Low students cannot escape their intellectual poverty because our state does not yet allow the kind of freedom necessary to change and development. Those who now have control simply have no good reason to give up their control.

The lack of freedom in the system means that because of the exclusive, protected status of the districts, reforms which attempt to make schools improve never work very effectively if at all. Depending on the studies’ designs, reforms like reducing class size or increasing teacher standards or increasing funding show miniscule or no correlation at all with student performance, and sometimes even negative correlations. Outsiders, even the legislature, don’t’ own the schools and put simply, don’t run the schools. Even if there is some good thing we want schools to do, what can be imposed can only be done by legal mandate and because those things must be carefully specified to be imposed, they tend to be simplistic and trivial things that end up having little direct connection with the actual educational activities of students, particularly those who are struggling to learn.

If there is to be real change and significant improvement, there must be redesign of the system fundamentals, the arrangement that gives exclusive control to districts. Who can do this? The government school system is huge; it consumes half the state budget; it has a long history of complications and refinements that increase its controls; it reaches every square inch of the state; and it has many big education organizations whose powers come from having obtained legal entitlements to dues, fees, memberships, and mandatory bargaining locked in place by law. It is a government system. It is centrally controlled. It is coercive. And it will oppose anyone or any organization who dares attempt to change it.

That idea of a design based on giving exclusive power to a single district organization inside a geographic boundary is the thinking box of reform talk. The box is not discussed, only the reforms. Reforms are small, politically easy. System redesign is huge, politically challenging.

The problem with good intentioned efforts to reform schools, like the Chalkboard Project, is that reforms serve as Band-Aids that prevent an honest discussion of the important issue of system design, and by doing so, deflect serious change in system design. Reforms usually involve all the stakeholders and they often attempt widespread citizen participation to give them legitimacy but these processes serve only to continue the myths upon which the current design depends.

Organizations working for education reforms are the enablers that serve to maintain the existing system design by keeping the system going in the face of its massive and consistent failure to serve all kids. Doing minor reforms covers up the underlying system design problem and to that extent, they are disingenuous, misleading, and immoral.

Evil or Stupid?

When Steve at Cascade Policy Institute shares with me a particularly arrogant or harmful case of a policy he encounters that is clearly at odds with the truth of the matter, I always wonder if it is a case of simply being stupid or if it’s a case of being evil. Most simplistic reductions are wrong but in this case, reasons for blatant bias can always be collapsed into one or the other of these two categories.

In cases of blatant bias, sometimes an editorial writer will come right out and ask the question of motive as happened today in an Investors Business Daily editorial. The editorial pointed out that media bias often distorts the fundamentals of the US budget deficit. The case in point was a major newspaper headline that stated the "Budget Deficit To Set Record" which is certainly not an objective characterization and at worst, intentionally misleading. In fact the deficit is currently shrinking. It went from 6% of GDP in the 1980s to a surplus of over 2% in 2000 then to almost 4% deficit, and now is declining toward 1.9% of GDP estimated for 2007. Looking at the trend line leads the editorial writer to "Wonder whether this is due to ideological bias or economic ignorance…"

Before, or if, we want an honest discussion of public policy, we must agree on the facts. In this case, even though we may want the government to control its spending far better, beginning with disingenuous assertions of fact gives no common ground for rational discussion. We instead wind up in arguments over whether the characterizations of the facts are misleading, and that factual argumentation forestalls rational discussion of policy issues based on objective and shared understanding. But by trying to push for agreement on a more objective description of the deficit, by setting it into a trend line for example, it also makes it appear that we are defending a particular position, in this case, the Bush administration when what we really need before we defend a policy is a solid foundation of factual description of the problem.

If media bias is intentional, as apparently it was in the Rathergate case with the purpose of making the Bush administration look bad, then we can do little more than condemn and dismiss. Motive is hard to prove. But where bias is due to lack of understanding, then there is a possibility for overcoming this ignorance. The ignorance problem seems to be what we face in the debate over school funding in Oregon.

The mainstream media consistently characterize our public education systems as suffering many years of cuts in the education budget, as being underfunded, as having a problem of stable funding. I and many others don't agree with the characterization. Before we can discuss proposals, we have the preliminary problem of first reaching agreement on the facts. We can’t even say that the "problem" of lack of funding is a fact. It is only a characterization of the situation which depends on some huge, hidden presumptions.

It is certainly true that the current monopoly system of government schools cannot control its costs and attempts to reduce services instead. There is almost nothing in the system design that inhibits rising costs and inefficiency except altruistic and enlightened management, and, of course, stubborn taxpayers. It is far easier to blame the legislature or the taxpayers than it is to look inside the black box to figure out why it is so inefficient. But it is not true that funding is necessarily inadequate for public education, only that it is inadequate for delivering public education using government schools in their current, protected state of operation. Trying to adequately fund government schools to be the exclusive means for delivering public education is impractical and no one has ever been able to show what an adequate level might be. It is simply never enough. There is always more that needs to be added. We mustn’t confuse adequate funding of government schools with adequate funding of public education.

But on the other hand, we could find out what adequate funding for public education might be. There are other means for delivering public education. Charter schools, for example, are not government owned schools but are public schools because they deliver public education. They operate at far lower cost than do government schools. Private schools may be more efficient. In terms of direct cost to the taxpayer, homeschooling is the most efficient.

The way we could arrive at facts regarding adequate levels of funding for education would be to allow many providers other than the government schools owned by school districts to offer public education and then compare the relative costs and efficiencies. These are real facts that could provide benchmarks from the actual operating costs of providers in the education industry.

The Oregon Quality Education Model is not based on such empirical facts of comparison. It is based on a committee who looks at government school costs only and then tries to determine what an hypothetical, adequate level of funding would be. The committee no doubt does believe in their analysis as somehow objective but since their analysis is so tightly controlled by the box containing their thinking they can only see government schools as synonymous with pubic education. They are not even close to glimpsing what is possible.

Deep down, we all agree government schools think they are underfunded. We all probably also agree that charter schools, private schools, contract schools, voucher schools, homeschooling all cost less than government schools. But what isn’t happening is putting the two together. Inside-the-government-school-box-thinking is all we get. We don’t hear the facts of the lower costs by other providers discussed at the same time with funding government schools. Now there may be huge political challenges in opening the delivery of public education to providers other than the districts’ government schools but that certainly is no reason not to be open and honest about the facts of adequate funding of public education.

Adequate levels of funding does depend on what kind of system we use to deliver the product. Restricting our view of the facts and our policy proposals only to blindly and thoughtlessly continuing to protect and support the government monopoly as sole provider is itty bitty thinking. When we trade off giving more choices, more education, to more kids for fewer choices, limitations of service, to fewer kids, we are thoughtlessly advocating policy with immoral consequences. The immorality of the position is to subordinate kids’ public education to protecting and funding government schools.

Thought Shows

We can’t see the mental machinery people carry around in their heads but since Arthur Conan Doyle added Sherlock Holmes’s quirky deductive powers to crime stories, detective shows featuring intelligence at work solving problems have been popular. The differences between the smart and dumb detectives make for great plot and dialogue. The latest in this genre is a mathematician hooked up with his detective brother in Numb3rs.

I like shows that celebrate the triumph of human intelligence over situations. I’d love to see the biography of Richard Feynman, my son’s favorite scientist, used as a rich source for a TV series. These kind of shows give weight to the idea that the logical/deductive powers that come from developing an understanding of logico-mathematical systems is a powerful reason for studying mathematics in school.

Mathematics as the valid forms of all kinds of diverse, intelligent thought is often trivialized when people try to justify the importance of mathematics in the school curriculum. The tendency is to reduce it to knowing specific content—so we can use the formula for area to compute how much carpet we need to cover our living room floor. The power of mathematics is much more general. It lies in the rich mathematical forms the mind uses to organize and make sense out of things. But it’s hard to separate the mathematical form of thought from its content so mathematics looks topical to most people, even to the extent that is appears unrelated to most thought. But research is getting us there.

Too bad we can’t yet recognize the huge differences among the different forms of thinking about the content of education reform just yet. I’m sure we’d find the differences in their forms would define a scale of intelligence from overly simplistic models to advanced, valid forms. Imagine if we had the IQ score for the Chalkboard Project’s inside the box thinking or politicians’ thinking about education and reform before an election. How would politicians campaign if voters knew their education reform IQ?

Moving Towards Rational Thought

As regards how to move our thinking box toward a more rational and sharable form of thought, Deacon at Power Line has some useful thoughts on objectivity:

"Second, I think that distinctions can usefully be drawn among several concepts that are often assumed to be interchangeable: bias, objectivity and neutrality. 'Bias' is usually used pejoratively; I would use it to mean reporting news in a way that is in fact slanted, while purporting to report it neutrally. I would say that the New York Times is biased, but Power Line isn't. 'Objectivity' I understand to mean, essentially, fairness. Being objective means to weigh evidence and arguments fairly, as, for example, by reporting that President Bush turned in a mediocre performance in a debate, even though the person making that judgment supports the President. I would say that Power Line is objective, or at least tries to be, while 60 Minutes is not objective. 'Neutrality' means indifference as among competing parties, candidates or ideologies. Power Line is not neutral; neither is the Washington Post. There are probably a few truly neutral news sites or commentators, but not many."

If he means by fairness that a description put forward corresponds honestly to the thing being described without actively distorting it, then I would agree. It would imply some intellectual work and self-discipline in order to get things as close to right as possible. In other words, using some intellectual process that would seek correspondence with the thing being discussed. "Fairness" would then mean giving up the laziness of merely marking assertions in favor of something others would agree to and consider as a "fair" characterization.

The relative value of things is another matter. We may objectively capture the essence of something without necessarily valuing it. To value something means it is preferred over other things. To have a conservative bias might mean lack of objectivity or it can mean what Deacon seems to mean when it refers to actively choosing one point of view among competing views. That choice of course could be based on an irrational, religious-like act of faith in one viewpoint or it could be based on a more rational method of wisdom which attempts to compare and coordinate the various viewpoints along a scale of good to bad as to their relative moral efficacy in conducting human affairs.

"Not everyone will agree with my definitions; maybe no one will. But I think it is helpful to distinguish among these various concepts. In general, 'bias' is not a term that it is helpful to apply to commentators, as opposed to reporters. Paul Krugman is a liberal and Ann Coulter is a conservative. One could say that they are both 'biased' because they argue for a particular point of view, but that would be meaningless and unhelpful, in my opinion. With respect to commentary, which is what we at Power Line generally do, the relevant questions are: Are the facts accurately and fairly represented? Are there other, obviously relevant facts that are omitted from the analysis? And, are the arguments made on the basis of the facts logical and persuasive?"

These are rich thoughts as they push us to make comparisons and distinctions among writers and perspectives according to their facticity, comprehensiveness, fairness in representation, and rationality. Should we actively pursue these methods of comparison, the relative value of the various perspectives regarding their truth and morality should become clear. That is why we can say some perspectives (for example, those governments based on protecting freedom and justice) are better than others (based on centralized control and force).

"People often refer to blogs as expressing 'opinions,' just as some columnists are referred to as 'opinion columnists.' Indeed, some newspapers take the position that the usual concepts of truth and falsity are inapplicable to opinion columnists because everything they write is, by definition, only an 'opinion.' (The New York Times, for example, has only recently abandoned this view.) This seems to me to be silly. No columnist or blogger who only expresses his or her opinions will last long. The question is: how persuasively does the commentator support his or her conclusions (call them opinions, if you want to) with facts and logic?"

If I am not reading too much into this, I believe this is a very hopeful idea. If we pursue objective and rational discussion, we can transcend mere assertion of opinion that is relatively worthless. He seems to be saying, we needn't be stuck in a relativistic quagmire of throwing assertions at each other. The truth can and will emerge from actively seeking facts and rational discourse.

The Subjectivity/Objectivity Problem

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WHOSE BOX OBJECTIVELY DESCRIBES OTHER BOXES?

If we're going to look at boxes that contains people's thinking, like the Chalkboard Project, how exactly do we do this so we know we are objective and not just constrained in our own thinking by another box that is as blind to things as the other boxes we are analyzing? We must begin with at least an objective description of the thinking boxes that control people’s thoughts. But even this first step of an objective description itself is fraught with problems.

Which box do we know to be truly larger than all the other boxes such that we can assert it is the best own to use as a container for the lessor boxes? Don't we fall into the problem of simply having to subjectively assert that our box is best so that then we can go on to pretend we are objective in our thoughts about others' boxes?

I said the Chalkboard Project. is an example of Inside-The-Box-Thinking. Since CP is still in infancy, that assertion perhaps needs to be interpreted as more of an hypothesis yet to be demonstrated than a fact. But the real problem is how do know it is limited to a single perspective and not itself including a broader view of other perspectives? How do I know I am more objective in my analysis than they are? Perhaps they would just as easily accuse me of ittybitty thoughts. Whose thinking box is bigger? We’ve got to face the problem of the source of these thinking boxes, the subjectivity/objectivity problem. The problem is a general one and comes up in many forms. Usually it remains implicit, sometimes it pokes through.

For example, this month’s Atlantic had a piece including some history of journalism touching on partisanship in the media. The CBS Some good thoughts come from the blogosphere debates about whether blogging or the media should clarify their political bias and write from a perspective or whether they should try to be "objective" and unbiased in their reporting

DISCLOSURE

The thinkers in the blogosphere I’ve highly regarded for their respect for rational and factual analysis such as Powerline commonly think that having a bias isn’t necessarily bad if the respect for rational discourse and the facts is maintained and if there is disclosure. A comment from John Hadjisky to Winds of Change.NET: Everything's A Commercial extends this principle of disclosure to paid versus unpaid blogging. As he looks at the issue within the general problem of how bloggers should deal with moral blindness in blogging he says:

"It will be hard, but the basic idea is quite simple: disclosure. Demand it of the blogs you read...provide in the blogs you write. Once we have an expectation of disclosure, the same give and take process that works reasonably well debugging the MSM will expose blogger foibles just as readily."

"We shouldn't set as our gold standard 'free commentary' any more than we should set as our gold standard 'objective journalism'. Every paper, and every blogger, will have a certain take on what is worth commentary, and what is not, and how to give equal time to "the other side"—or not, if it is an advocacy piece one is writing."

"What I'm saying is, I'd rather read two blogs or papers, each with a declared point of view, than one blog or paper that claims to be objective. In my experience, the closer writing gets to "objectivity", the less able the writer is to lay out a coherent narrative or story. The story is what makes people read all the way to the end, and more importantly, it's what helps the mind retain the ideas and information in the piece. The mind likes stories, and has to work much harder to simply recall a balanced collage of objective facts that don't fit together well."

"The reader can always get balance by seeking out the other side...whereas, a reader not interested in the other side will simply gloss over the parts of an "objective" piece they disagree with."

COMPARISONS BY RECIPROCITY

It is not mere assertion of moral superiority of one’s ‘objective’ position but the active comparison of one view to another that establishes a superior and inferior ranking. But comparison necessarily infers a third position at work that does the work of capturing each of the positions being compared. So it would seem that the ability to describe another’s position objectively would entail describing it so objectively that those who hold the position would agree that it is an honest portrayal. So in describing and analyzing positions, we can tell when a writer is using non-objective language that is biased in some way because those holding the position will disagree with the portrayal. If I wish to be objective, I must insure my descriptions, for example, describing liberals as "tax and spend big government types," are ones that liberals would agree objectively capture their position. So are we objective if we describe liberals as tax and spend big government types? Our test is to ask them if this is an accurate description.

Another example. If we describe an conservative legislative program as "tax breaks for the rich," would this be an objective description? Our test would be to ask conservatives.

OBJECTIVITY AS A PROCESS OF TRYING TO REMOVE SUBJECTIVITY

Objectivity means we remove our subjective bias in describing something such that our description reflects only the actual qualities of the thing we are describing and not our own perspective. It is not that there is no ‘grain of truth’ in our subjective references. To call liberals "tax and spend big government types" does contain a reference to an historic propensity for liberals to seek government solutions to societal conditions. To refer to "tax cuts for the wealthy" does refer to an objective fact that those paying the most in taxes do receive larger reductions in their tax bills than do low income citizens. But in both cases, the labeling also adds a subjective component to the objective component by its choice of ‘loaded,’ subjectively chosen words to refer to the object of thought.

In both cases, it is not that the labeling is wrong so much as it is not the language the opponents would use to describe their position. Liberals probably don’t think in terms of how to increase the size of government. They think in terms of how to use to solve a "problem." (Scare quotes can be a bias technique but in this case, I want to use the quotation marks to note that labeling something as a problem is an integral part of the favored solution. Poverty is a condition, not necessarily a societal problem. It tends to be defined by the political class as a problem when they believe government must do something about it.) They focus on the ends, the social condition such as poverty, they are trying to solve, not the means of solving it using government. Government is not their goal but it is their means to their goal. But the opponents, of course, focus on the aspect of the expansion of government which is true but not necessarily relevant from the liberals point of view. While we all may agree poverty is not necessarily good, we fundamentally disagree on the means for curing it. At heart, most if not all public policy issues are only issues because the disagreement is about means, not ends.

POSITIVE SUBJECTIVE BIAS

With labeling, the converse is true as well. Writers may use positive subjective labeling in describing a favored position just as they may use negative labeling to describe the opponent’s position. Instead of attacking others opposing ‘big government’ solutions as ‘heartless,’ we can present our own view with a positive subjective bias as ‘compassion for the poor.’ Again, the test is to ask the other side if they agree with the label; is that the way they would describe our position? Do they think the program really does exhibit compassion for the poor or does it increase dependency on government? It’s not so much that "compassion for the poor" is incorrect as it ignores its "big government" component of the means implicit in the goal. Another example: which side of the reform debate is about saving the public education of the lower class from destruction by current conditions? So bias is the two-fold attempt to use subjectively negative labels for the opponent’s position and subjectively positive labels for our own favored position. The way out is comparison of the two by seeking agreement form the other side for the characterizations of each side.

THE PROCESS OF MOVING TOWARD OBJECTIVITY

Objectivity doesn’t mean numbers, and subjectivity doesn’t mean judgmental reasoning. Objectivity means adapting thought more closely to the object being known by removing more of the distortions of our subjectivity. It means finding replacing more subjective methods of describing things with more objective methods.

The task of objective description of the various thinking boxes that shape people’s values, facts, solutions, and reasoning itself requires that we use some thinking box of our own; and we use such a box either implicitly or explicitly. There is no privileged ground, no purely objective thinking box, within which we can view and describe other people’s thinking boxes without any subjective interpretative aspect. But we can replace subjective judgments with more objective methods of description that attempt disclosure and use comparisons, and multiple perspectives. We force our subjective to become more objective by subordinating it to a method using comparisons that seeks agreement from multiple perspectives with our own perspective. We remove ourselves from the assertion of a privileged position.

The process of comparison and multiple perspective forces us to expand our box so we are less dependent on subjective assertions driven by our personal values, forms of thought, selective facts, and biases by seeking a thinking box based on a more widely shared system of values, facts, and forms of thinking. As soon as we talk to others different from ourselves and we attempt to reach agreement as to objective descriptions of our various thinking boxes, this attempt forces us to coordinate the multiple perspectives and moves us towards more objective and verified descriptions of thinking boxes. We don’t get rid of subjectivity. We transform its personalistic techniques into more objective methods others can also use and thereby move toward common agreements. We replace its subjective methods of assertion with more sharable methods that allow for common agreement. It means honestly attempting to understand others thinking and to confirm our understanding with them. To understand doesn’t necessarily mean subordination of our thought to others but it does mean we don’t simply reject, or worse, actively distort other thinking boxes in an attempt to prove ours as best. If our thinking box is the most advance and the best, it will emerge as more true from a process of objective investigation and understanding of the various perspectives.

NEXT—MOVE BEYOND DESCRIPTION TOWARDS EXPLANATION

We need to find out more about the thinking of CP. We are a long ways from having an objective description of it. But even if we obtain agreement in some objective descriptions of the various thinking boxes, we still have a long ways to go before we can explain why and how the various thinking boxes arise inhuman thought and remain so stable.

Chalkboard Project—Inside-the-Box

The Chalkboard Project gave me a wonderful example of that mysterious phenomenon of inside-the-box-thinking that I find so fascinating. The Chalkboard Project is absorbing much of the talk and reform efforts around the state, something that now appears unfortunate for reformers and the kids. Why? Well, from indications so far this ITBT is producing remarkably trivial ideas. As it is turning out, it is presenting itself as an effort that fundamentally wants to keep and preserve the existing dysfunctional system by trying to patch it up and give it more money. The CP's strategy of public discussions seems to be based on the hope that citizens will somehow figure out how to make the old government system of schools work better. That's not leadership.That's stasis. CP apparently thinks citizens are supposed to have answers for taking the existing system arrangements of government schools for granted and making them improve. Of course it won't happen. These failures of the maisntream system to educate all kids and to decrease its efficiency over time are deep problems of system design. Neither can this democratic process CP is using turn citizens into researchers and developers of fundamental change in the system. Of course, without fundamental change, the system will never be able to control its costs. and so CP must assume its effort will be coupled with finding more money for public schools as well.

None of the ideas CP has proposed so far are new; they are things we all agree it would be nice to have—reduced class sizes, improved teachers, individual student ed plans, clearer budget documents, and all the rest. In spite of the inference by CP that the people running the schools need to be told what to do, educators are not dumb, and educators certainly have long believed it would be nice to have all the things CP is discovering long before CP placed them on their wish list. But wishes aren't a strategy for reform even if we all agree it would be nice if we had better educational practices, more qualified people, and lots and lots of money. Even citizen involvement isn't a strategy for the challenging problem of redesign and change of the system. That's a leadership responsibility achieved through some serious research and development.

The real problem for CP isn't to compile a wish list of all the wonderful things we'd like. The fundamental problem for CP is figure out exactly why, if these reforms are all good ideas, why don't schools adopt them themselves? Educators aren't stupid or evil. What is it about the public system of government schools such that good ideas don't spread, are even prevented? If the Arthur Academy Charter Schools are doing a better job that district schools, why do they face so many obstacles from the mainline system? We have a system that can't change and improve itself, and in spite of its massived failure, it won't let anyhone else have a try. That's clear from decades long reform failures. The system is not self-improving. It is fundamentally about stasis. So the big problem for CP (if it really is interested in solving public education problems) is to figure out what causes stasis? What is it about the design of the system that blocks change and pushes it towards inefficiency? Why must someone else outside the system try to 'make' the schools change, and why is money always the issue? Since system redesign is not about programs or in what the schools do or in its people or operating procedures or money, that process focused on finding the fundamental causes for the dysfunctions in the system would have nothing to do with polling and citizen discussions. It would look for more like an R&D process by experts trained in educational development.

But even if CP were to understand the basics of system redesign so it could shed at least a little more insight than currently we hear in Oregon (and I can’t find any indication from CP so far that CP is aware of even the introductory material in the field of system redesign), it still faces a much more complex problem of how exactly it can help the leaders responsible for the system develop out-of-the-box thinking. In fact outside-the-box thinking isn't all that difficult but it does require considerable study and intellectual effort. For years Education/Evolving has been offering direct help to state level policy leaders who want to rethink system design. But still, the real challenge, once understood, may be how to help those who are responsible for the design of the system, or who could take the lead, understand system redesign. It is, of course, the legislature who is responsible for the design of the public school system, and it must change the rules, not the citizens. The challenge for CP is the political problem: how to help legislators develop their understanding and plans for system redesign.

CP says nothing about these problems; it apparently takes the box for granted. As a result, it must take the dysfunctions caused by this inside-the-box thinking for granted. It will have to assume the system must have more money. But those dysfunctions are hurting the kids and causing inefficiency in the use of resources. It is no longer a moral position to protect the system from itself. Giving your profligate teenager more money for his allowance won't help him learn to manage his finances. If we love our teenager, would we protect his profligate ways and give him more money or would we sit down with him and help him tackle his money management? Citizens do not understand why the system results in dysfunctional results. Presupposing CP understands the causes inherent in the design of a system of government schools that produces the dysfunctions, its mission should focus on helping leaders understand how to redesign the system so that schools are accountable, efficient, and serve all kids.

Even the Chalkboard Project's Mission is misguided and vague. Is its mission really citizen discussion? What kind of mindset thinks citizens are the source of a serious effort to understand the causes of failure of the system and develop system redesign plans? Does the medical profession convene a bunch of citizens to solve a health problem and then develop medical treatments? It is not the role of citizens, in spite of advocates of democracy, to investigate, design, and develop better systems. Citizens are properly in the evaluative role of consumers who choose among products once developed and offered by organizations. Citizens don't design IPods and vote to say we all want these before Apple has designed and developed them and then offered them to the public. Citizens shouldn't be asked to design school programs. Educators should. Change involves research and development involving an expertise that can produce the new and better. Where the Chalkboard Project got the roadmap for its work is a mystery. Certainly not from any businessmen or organizational change experts. That is why their program is so frustrating to change-oriented educators.

The very process of finding a consensus, attempting to discover the common opinions about education reform, dooms CP. Talking only to the active supporters of the existing system means CP will only hear about Band-Aids for the existing system. Almost by design CP seems to want to exclude the hard facts of system failure or to hear from those with the fundamentally different ideas focused on system redesign. CP's agenda apparently is to enable the dysfunctional system to continue in its current design. This seems obvious since CP has done nothing to actively include the large segment of experts and citizens who disagree with their limited conception of reform and what is possible. Besides talking only to the protective organizations and supporters of public schools who are against any kind of fundamental change, CP hired no consultants, save one, who actively discuss system effects and system redesign. And none of the Resources and Links it gives, again save one to the Oregon Education Coalition, support discussion much less advocacy of change of the existing system.

Unless it makes some remarkable change in direction, the Chalkboard Project's process is by design an inadvertent (or purposive? I hope not) effort to protect the existing system against change. It's within-the-box thinking apparently directed to shoring up a failing system; so far it has added nothing new to the political debate about schools and apparently is going to support anti-change, anti-reform. It is a terrible waste of an opportunity since it is one of the few organizations free of direct, vested interest in maintaining the status quo that has resources that could help the legislature understand and redesign our dysfunctional system. Good for the adults in the system but too bad for you Oregon kids carrying those signs.

CP's Homework Assignment

After looking at the poll results back in June, RoguePundit saw some conceptual weakness in the Chalkboard Project. He's right on. CP polled citizens, parents, students, teachers and others to find out what they want from their schools. But polling is a diversion that CP took, and it suggests CP may not be a good learner who can focus on a problem to investigate and understand it. Can CP investigate and understand ed reform? Those of us impatient for serious ed reform and leadership don't think the problem lies with citizens and their involvement. We assign leadership to CP. CP is the one who is studying our ed system and proposing reforms. We will have to evaluate and grade CP on the basis of its research and leadership, not citizen involvement.

Polling is not research into the problems of public schools. It seems a bit of a diversion to the real task of doing some serious investigations and development of solutions for Oregon's education problems. CP's poll was a pretty serious effort but even so, I'd guess RoguePundit (Studying Our Schools) wouldn't give it better than a C grade. But even so, where does that leave us? At best, polling might find some levels of political support for various hopes that people wish the system would produce but polling is not a reform tool. At best, it might be used politically for pressuring legislators for one thing or another. But what exactly?

Do we tell the legislators they better make the schools better, lower the drop out rate, increase attendance, raise test scores, increase its efficiency, and all the rest of the things we want? How exactly is the legislature to do this? It doesn't own or run the schools. What strategy should the legislature adopt? To answer that, what we need is serious study into public education problems as CP suggests it is intent on doing as "information broker." So let's see how good a learner CP is, what kind of reports it can produce. The first step is some objective description of the condition of public schooling.

Of course honesty about the objective state of public schooling will necessarily sound pretty negative. After all the glaring inequity of the achievement gap, the inefficiency compared to private and charter schooling, the drop out and attendance rates, the failure to get 3/4 of the kids to 10th grade standards by graduation, etc. all do paint a dismal picture of massive failure by the mainline system. Being honest about this context is politically risky. Already we hear charges that CP is too negative.

But even if CP does manage to produce an objective study of public school performance, descriptions are not causes. CP will still need to get to the causes, the design of the means of production, so it can understand and explain exactly why the current arrangement for delivering public education fails so miserably. (Hint to CP, the current arrangement for delivery is a district system of schooling operating with protections within geographic boundaries to be the sole provider of public education that almost exclusively uses government schools and a monopolized, heavily unionized labor pool.) Your assignment, CP, is to explain why the design of this system delivers such dismal performance and efficiency. And most importantly, if you do get to this far in your assignment, then give us the causes for why change and improvement of this system is so difficult. This defines the "information" we need.

Please be very clear that we haven't asked for solutions yet. We want to know you understand the problem and its causes first before you rush to solutions. So the research comes first, then the development process of solutions. So your homework, CP, is to answer two questions. First, "Why after decades of reform have things not gotten significantly better while costs have risen?" That question is the easy one. The second question is the hard one. "Once you understand how the system must be redesigned, how exactly can the powerful political opposition to redesign be overcome?"

In our grading, we will have to hold CP to high standards since it is putting itself front and center in solving Oregon’s education problem and announcing rather arrogantly, that it will solve Oregon's education problems by "bringing together" Oregonians who are "polarized, paralyzed, and apathetic about what it takes to make sure every child receives the kind of education that will lead to success…" Such self-centered condescension and blame will lower its grade, and make it difficult for CP to get the help it needs in developing its understanding of its assignment.