Merrill Vargo

Merrill Vargo

The unacknowledged crisis in public education is not teacher quality just teacher motivation. The engine of any major change process in any man arrangement is people. We cannot modify education without the enthusiastic and heartfelt participation of teachers, administrators, and, ultimately, students. As longtime reformer Michael Fullan puts it in a recent paper, "The key to system-wide success is to situate the energy of educators and students every bit the central driving force. This means aligning the goals of reform and the cardinal motivation of participants."

This should exist obvious. But 1 event of the last decade of "instruction reform" has been to discourage, demoralize, and disempower teachers. Whatsoever review of any of the various surveys of teachers confirms this. If yet in doubt, do your own data collection: Find a teacher and ask. And so put yourself in their place. Outsiders to education may think that including test score data equally role of teacher evaluation makes obvious sense – simply coming on superlative of a decade of focus on scripted curriculum, high-fidelity implementation of adopted textbooks, high-stakes accountability, teaching to the exam, and massive layoffs, it feels to teachers like one more accident. It is lucky for u.s.a. – and for kids – that teachers are a tough and committed agglomeration of people. But nosotros need to stop taking them for granted.

All this means that, as California gets more serious about implementation of the Common Core, we need to think clearly well-nigh a couple of things. First, Common Cadre has huge potential to reenergize teachers and revitalize public educational activity. It is good stuff, because information technology is about educational activity and learning, and teachers who are exposed to the Mutual Core by and large are responding with enthusiasm. Just let'south face information technology, if we implement the Mutual Core every bit No Child Left Behindwith a more challenging test and fewer resources, teachers volition non find this approach to exist motivating.

And so, what'due south the alternative? If we took on Mutual Core from the perspective that this is our take chances to reinspire a generation of teachers, what would nosotros do? First and foremost, nosotros would go along this goal front and center. 2nd, we would exercise a lot of talking with teachers. Third, we would go on in heed what we know about change management: In brief, effective change processes engage both hearts and minds and they too are connected to a concrete plan that does non require people to endeavour to modify everything at once.

This is the claiming: No 1, whether kindergarten instructor or corporate CEO, can manage complexity in multiple dimensions. We demand to do what Bit and Dan Heath in their book Switch call "shrinking the modify." But we need to shrink it to the right thing, which is not testing or accountability or ownership a textbook and teaching it or teacher evaluation or information. All these are things nosotros need to call up about afterwards. What nosotros need to lead with is a focus on a collective effort – teams of teachers and administrators working together to explore these new standards, understand what teachers across the nation are doing and learning most them, and build new systems whose goal is the continuous improvement of teaching and learning.

There is no elementary audio seize with teeth in this approach. Merely it is the only approach that can work.

Merrill Vargo is both an experienced academic and a applied skilful in the field of school reform. Earlier founding Pivot Learning Partners (then known every bit the Bay Surface area Schoolhouse Reform Collaborative, or BASRC) in 1995, Dr. Vargo spent nine years teaching English in a multifariousness of settings, managed her own consulting firm, and served as executive director of the California Establish for School Improvement, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that provides staff evolution and policy analysis for educators. She served as Manager of Regional Programs and Special Projects for the California Department of Education. She is also a member of Full Circumvolve Fund.

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