Okay, Jere, you asked for it! From an outsider's perspective, what must
public education do? That's much too big a question, obviously, so I take
the approach suggested by the joke: "How do you eat an elephant? Answer:
One bite at a time." And I guess I've come to learn that if everyone takes
their bite, pretty soon the elephant's digested. So, here's a bite or two.
You write:
>we have no measurable product, and our customers and ou[r] product are
>the same: students!
I'd suggest that teachers might start taking their own bite of the
elephant by letting go of such barrier beliefs as these.
It simply isn't true that you have no measurable product! You may not be
able to agree on "the one best way" to measure it, but that isn't the same
thing. There are plenty of other professions who also believe that they
create value that is unmeasurable -- yet as a society we have agreed to
accept certain ways of evaluating their worth (even if our judgment
changes from time to time.) Think of painters, for example. We measure
them [I'm not saying it's a perfect metric!] by how much their paintings
bring at auction, by "adding up" the judgments of art critics, by the
personal pleasure viewing their work brings to us, by how prominently
their works are displayed by museums, and several other ways. I think
measuring the effectiveness of teaching is at least as possible, but we
must first let go of the expectation that there is "one best way."
I also like to suggest that your customers and your product are not
identical, not because students are not customers but because they are not
the ONLY customers. Businesses who hire your students are also customers,
as are the various "communities" of which your students become parts, as
are the parents who purchase your efforts, etc.
A tricky thing about students as customers is that most of us former
students agree that we are best able finally to judge the effectiveness of
our teachers only many years later. However there are many things that
students can judge almost instantaneously -- such as how interested they
are in what they are studying, how easy it is to learn, etc.
A tricky thing about communities is, who is to speak for their interests?
So we put government in place of geographically based communities; and we
can put learned societies in place of communities based on expert
disciplines; and we can put a "panel of your friends and neighbors" to
stand in for the neighborhood; etc.
--"John W. Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>