Where have all the students gone?

In my last post
about the product of the public school not actually being the students, as is commonly thought, I forgot to mention something which I think is important. So important, in fact, that I can’t believe I forgot it. Let’s just say I ran out of time.

In that post I suggested that any business intending on longevity has to exercise some control over the raw materials out of which the business will make their products. I used the example of a McDonald’s franchise which must purchase beef, buns, and tomatoes. That franchise must have the right to reject any of those myriad raw materials to ensure the quality of their products.

A better metaphor, possibly, is that of a computer company. One of the components of a computer is the hard drive where information is stored. However, a hard drive must offer more functions than just the storage of information. It must also be able to be formatted, the process of compartmentalizing the entire drive for the logical storage of information and erasing information already on the drive if that case exists. A hard drive must have save capabilities for storing information and a good one should be able back up information in case something damages the working portion of the drive. Once the computer has been constructed, the user should be able to make the computer display the contents of the hard drive, and should also be able to manipulate the contents as well.

The connections between the student and the computer are obvious. Computer companies can’t sell computers with bad or broken hard drives, and they won’t stay in business long it they try. They reserve the right to reject inferior hard drives and other materials for the sake of their products. As I said in the last post, schools can’t do that. This fact seriously weakens the argument that an educated student is the product of the school.

As I began this post I said there was a second understandable reason for the argument that the student is not the product of the school. Let’s stick with the computer company metaphor. Let’s imagine a computer company that annually puts some computers on the market which are top of the line. These computers represent say, the top three percent of all the computers the company produces. One might wonder why the best products of this company are reduced to a single digit percentage.

However, that fact is not as alarming as the knowledge that half of the computers that enter the market will have to endure a serious upgrade if they are to function at a higher level, and about 20% of the products left the production line before they were actually ready for the workplace and will enter the market doing the lowest level functions.

Again, one is left wondering how this company can stay in business, when the most significant fact about this company’s product development is revealed. At the close of every business day, computers take a break from downloading information onto their hard drives and leave for private residences. They return the next day, but spend the weekends in those homes as well. Not only are the products gone for the evenings and weekends, they are out of the factory for weeks at a time, both at Christmas and during the summer.

Most alarming is the fact that the computers not only stay in homes during this time, but the content of their hard drives is accessible by every person who comes in contact with the product. Other people can add to the content, erase content downloaded in the factory, or replace factory-installed content. Not only can others alter hard drive, any part of the computer can be damaged while it is outside the factory.

With this knowledge, it is understandable that many of the computers coming from this factory can’t work at all or don’t work well. In light of the development practices of this company, what is truly amazing is that three percent of the computers leave the factory able to function at the highest levels.

The Business of Educating

For the longest time, and I'm talking about my 30 year career, I believed that the "product" of the public school was an educated teenager. The graduate was the product and the customer was the grateful community.

I don't think that way anymore.

What needs saying first, is that if we are going to think at all about a public school in terms of product and customer, then we are thinking about the public school as a business. And it's about time we did. Now I know the Superintendent has always thought of the school as a business. He or she sits in the big office and juggles federal funds, title (enter Roman numeral here) funds, daily attendance rates, and the occasional angry parent or disgruntled teacher. But for the most part, It's about the numbers to a Supt. and numbers mean business.

But it's well past time that the entire community began thinking about the public school as a business. Because the business of education in America is failing, as bad as an American auto maker, and for just as long if not longer too. And if our educational system is a business, then we had better know what our product is and who our customers are, for if we can't identify those components and agree on them, we've got a snowball's chance in July of survival.

So for years we've thought the product of the American school system was an educated child, but when a business model is applied to schools, that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Can anyone imagine a McDonalds serving hamburgers with moldy bread and freezer-burned beef? Of course not. But that's what they'd be serving if they had no control over the raw materials from which their finished products come. If they couldn't reject bad bread and beef, they'd be serving inedible food to their customers. So they reject bad raw materials at the entry stage.

No component of the food service industry will accept less than best materials from which they make their products. However, they do accept all customers and serve them as well as they possibly can. In stark contrast, the public school takes all students at age 5 who can show legal residence in the school's district. It doesn't matter whether the child has ever been read to, can distinguish a number from a letter, was raised in an environment of love, understands the concept of another's feelings, sharing, taking turns, or can respond to their own name. The public school takes them all. In fact, the Court has determined that the school district is required to accept children who cannot see, hear, speak, walk, or any number of physical challenges, and even those who have criminal records. How can these be the raw materials for a school system's products?

They sound a lot more like customers, don't they.

But that's a different post.