Comments on: Education as Business

By: pabel

pabel — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:43:00 +0000

Adexterc -- Thanks for the comments and book suggestion. Found a copy of the book at B&N online: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Master-Teacher.... Will consider picking up and reading a copy. Again, thank you.

By: futzinfarb

futzinfarb — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 06:03:41 +0000

I suppose it's so easy as to be unsporting, to point out that in these closing days of 2008, even running business as business has lost just a bit of its cachet. So let's try this angle instead: to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail – “Business is ruthlessly efficient, (whack!) and here's something that's not working like it should (whack!), it's called education (whack!), let's hammer away!” Except that sometimes what looked like a particularly large nailhead, warranting extra oomph during the downswing, turned out to be the back of a Swiss watch, perhaps with some grit in the works that needs to be cleaned out, but a Swiss watch nevertheless. Over the past two decades even as I questioned the business model being pursued by Detroit automakers, I never presumed that they should adopt the management model of my educational institution. Would that the would be Hank Paulson's of the world reciprocate.

By: adexterc

adexterc — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 03:09:54 +0000

I agree; merit pay would solve a great many problems. The issue is how to measure merit. Does it mean a class of silent students bent over books? Is it a noisy, boisterous class excited but not always on task? Show me ten excellent teachers, and I'll show you ten very different classrooms. Who judges? On what criteria? Please do not say test scores. That is like IBM judging folks on white shirts and blue ties while other companies ate them alive.

By: ljm

ljm — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:59:43 +0000

The one issue where I break with the teachers unions is merit pay. Teachers do make the difference, and to attract better teachers you need to have salaries that are competitive with more lucrative careers. Now, in the geographic areas I'm familiar with, that means paying people a lot more than they're currently paid. The question then is, who pays that extra money? (It sounds nice, but making substantial cuts in other areas may not be feasible.)

By: adexterc

adexterc — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:44:27 +0000

I wish you had not said “….. like business.” The NCLB is a corporate factory model that just does not work. There is no factory extant that can handle the variety of inputs that schools do. A better metaphor would be a county fair. Peter Drucker points out that, “teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed the tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching, we rely on the naturals; the ones who somehow know how to teach.” You are correct; teachers are at the core. There are other problems; poverty and health are huge, but teachers can sometimes overcome even these. The roadblock to improved education is the search for simple answers. The classroom is a very, very complex system requiring nuanced solutions. There is a book out there, Master Teachers making a difference on the edge of chaos, that discusses the role of teachers in education. I admit I wrote it, but still it has been very well reviewed.