Commenthing on Jerry Becker's post of Feb 12, 2013 10:22 PM (a link to the original post is provided below my signature):
Article in The Atlantic: "Great Teachers Can't Save .... Schools" Gerald Graff & Steve Benton
The article is useful - but just how could people actually use it?
Well, one first has to draw some 'elements' from it.
Also, as you go along, get hold of ALL available ideas of all stakeholders, by posing them appropriate 'trigger questions' about the 'Mission' proposed for the school education system. A very large number of elements would most likely result. (Even from a glance through this one article, I've extracted over 30 elements).
But there is no point in just creating 'lists of things to be done or overcome'. We have DO something specific - and it is simply not possible to DO (or even to think of DOING) all the elements on the list.
What's needed at this point is to discover just how each of the elements in the list "MAY CONTRIBUTE TO" (or "HINDER") each other (and to the 'Mission' of your public schools). This is possible to do using the 'Interpretive Structural Modeling' (ISM) process invented by the late John N. Warfield.
Effectively developed and interpreted, such a model would turn out to be an effective Action Plan to accomplish the Mission: the elements at the lower levels of the model CONTRIBUTE to models at the higher levels. Thus, the focus should be to find out which of the lower-level elements are being performed satisfactorily. Those that aren't being performed satisfactorily will enable us to find out further things to do to get those done.
This process, systematically done, will usefully guide on specificaly what to work on day by day. I.e., even if the list comprises thousands of elements, we just need to fucus on the few elements at the lower levels of the model and this is quite 'do-able'.
Further, this process can help individual teachers to "improve their teaching"; or individual students to "improve their learning" (of any specific subject desired), and so on. This is a univerrsally applicable process - and all it needs are 'ideas' from stakeholders in the issues under consideration.
Here, as a starter, are some 'elements' drawn from the text of the article:
1. Quality of individual educators 2. Influence of individual educators 3. Value added to a classroom by individual educators (estimated at $250,000 [US]) 4. Value to individual student of excellent teacher 5. Effective curriculum 5a. Value added by effective curriculum 6. Currently disconnected and muddled curriculum 7. Disconnected, muddled curriculum worse for students than bad teacher 8. Ensuring students receive consistent message about the "Dos and don'ts of academic practices" 9. Ensuring teachers are aware about the intellectual work they have to stimulate their students to do 10. Ensuring that students are adequately aware about the intellectual work they should do in school 11. Ensuring intellectual growth of students 12. Enabling creativity and problem solving abilities of students 13. Enabling students to express themselves correctly (grammarwise) 14. Enabling students to express their inmost feelings through writing 15. Enabling students to develop a strong thesis 16. Enabling students to figure out the right answers to problems posed 17. Enabling students to understand that every answer leads to further questions 18. Enabling students to develop themselves intellectually 19. Enabling students to develop themselves emotionally, spiritually 20. Enabling students to develop as human beings 21. Enabling students to make up their own minds 22. Enabling students to become aware of themselves as thinking, reasoning people 24. Discovering what may be the real needs of students in a class 25. Enabling teachers to design their classes to meet the real needs of students 26. Ensuring students and teachers understand each other effectively 27. Ensuring students are not confused about why they are in school 28. Ensuring students are clear in their minds about the purpose of their schooling 29. Preparing students for college 30. Enabling peer group discussions between students 31. Ensuring students do not lose their enthusiasm to learn 32. Ensuring students do not become cynical or disillusioned about school 33. Ensuring students do not drop out of school 34. Becoming articulate citizens and workers 35. Learning lessons needed for productive, useful and happy life 36. Ensuring students do not become confused by discrepancies and contradictions between different classes 37. Improving individual teaching performance 38. Giving students a clear and coordinated picture of how academic work is done 39. Etc, etc., etc. (Only a small number of possible elements have been extracted).