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jokeeffe2007, January 2, 2007 (view all comments by jokeeffe2007)
Just what teachers everywhere should be doing more of: writing vision statements and mission statements.

The Professional Learning Communities movement is the latest educratic fad to be dumped on the already overburdened shoulders of American teachers, and as with every fad before it, the gurus touting PLC rely on the old advertiser?s trick of distancing their product from all its previous incarnations: ?Sure, you?ve seen this all before, but now it?s NEW and IMPROVED!? Or, as Blankstein puts it in pseudo-academic fashion: ?Parker Palmer (1998) indicates that most professional development (and books like this) answer the ?what? or ?how? questions.?This book answers those questions in detail. In addition, we address the two questions often ignored, yet crucial to success: Why am I doing this, and who do I need to be to succeed?? Putting aside the thinly disguised arrogance of attempting to tell American teachers whom they should be and what they should believe, this statement presumes that a dozen other progressive education reformers such as John Dewey, B.F. Skinner, and William Glasser never wrote ?books like this? making similar appeals ?in detail,? and that every proponent of every education gimmick before now did not also claim to have the solution?multiple intelligences, outcome-based education, cooperative learning, problem-based learning, brain-based learning, connective math, whole language, and dozens of other hotly promoted ?research-based? contrivances. Could it be that our well-intentioned friends at the HOPE Foundation are on to something none of us ever thought of before? Golly, what are the odds?

Consider the book?s title, which is taken from a false analogy involving the infamous Apollo 13 lunar mission. Blankstein likens teachers to Mission Control and our students to James Lovell and his crew, off-course and facing utter disaster. He conveniently ignores the fact that it was the very reality of failure and its consequences (certain death) that motivated both Lovell and his team; nothing Gene Kranz and Mission Control did or said would have made any difference without the cooperation of Apollo?s crew. Today?s students have been so protected from themselves by coddling parents, shallow curriculum, and reduced standards that they are blissfully unaware of the danger they face as incompetent and illiterate adults. They?ve never been made to experience the consequences of failure and thus have nothing but contempt for our warnings and our repeated attempts to motivate them. Imagine if after Kranz and his ground team radioed Apollo 13 with their instructions to save the dying spacecraft and its men?instructions which they had worked feverishly and round the clock to produce at great cost to their own health, safety, and comfort?the Apollo had radioed back with answers like ?But why do we have to work so hard?? or ?This is boring. We don?t feel like doing it,? or ?Our parents are going to sue you!? If Blankstein and others who share his FINO? philosophy get their way, this is exactly what future generations of American astronauts will be like.

Consider, too, the trademark symbol (?) that follows the title, indicating that it is a commercial property. One can only wonder why a nonprofit group would feel the need to trademark its ideas, unless, of course, it intends to maintain an exclusive franchise. The list price for the paperback edition of Failure Is Not an Option?, according to the HOPE Foundation web site, is $32.95?more than double the average list price of $15.77 for an adult trade paperback in 2002 (The Write News, June 6, 2003). How many school districts, itching to appear progressive and cutting-edge, have bought into this latest ruse from the Olympian pinnacles of the educrat aristocracy? At $32.95 apiece, assuming every teacher and administrator at an average-sized urban district were given a copy, and not taking into account any bulk-purchase discounts, then said district will have spent approximately $100,000 on FINO?, enough to purchase a state-of-the-art computer lab or buy a personal copy of Moby Dick for every high-school junior in the district (not that they?d read it in today?s culture of text-message literacy). Assuming a 50% bulk discount, which is unlikely and would still leave the purchase amount above the normal market price for books of its kind, then the district will have wasted about $50,000?at least one teacher?s salary.

Here?s a new paradigm, everyone: return to substantive teaching and learning, value teachers for their expertise in the subjects or grade-levels they teach; leave psychology to the psychologists, motivation to the counselors, and social problems to the social workers. Take curricular and monetary power away from principals and superintendents and give it to campus department heads. Send every midlevel ?facilitator,? ?leader,? and ?coordinator? back to the classroom and force them to teach again. Slash the salaries of these puffed-up politicos and distribute the remainder to the teachers. Define ?failure? as any student who reaches the 12th grade without mastering the things they should?ve mastered as competent and literate adults; distinguish between those who can?t learn and those who won?t learn (you?ll find the vast majority of unsuccessful students belong in the latter category), and subject them to the pressure of failing grades and lost privileges until they earn their way up. Let them experience failure in school before they experience it in the real world, where the consequences will be far more disastrous for us all.

None of this will ever happen, of course. For one thing, it?s too harsh and politically incorrect, and for another, it?d put the gurus-and-gimmicks crowd which Blankstein and his organization represent out of business. The vast and swelling industry of education consultants, with their junk books and videos and their insulting, overpriced ?professional development seminars,? are the real winners every time a new silver-bullet scheme like Professional Learning Communities gets minted and shipped out. They?re parasites on the nation?s schools; they don?t exist to support us, as they so smugly claim?we exist to support them. No matter that many of these groups and individuals operate under the imprimatur of 501(c)3 nonprofit organization status; while most nonprofits pay relatively low salaries to their employees, executive-level salaries are often in the six-figure range (The median salary for chief executive officers at nonprofit organizations with annual budgets of $25 million or more was about $176,800 in 2002, according to the Congressional Budget Office). Furthermore, it?s unclear what, if any, restrictions apply to people like Blankstein regarding book royalties, consulting fees, etc.

So go on, you superintendents and principals. Go on, you intellectually shallow educrats. Buy up copies of FINO in bulk at the public?s expense and force it down the throats of your school faculties. Take away the precious time your teachers could?ve spent planning lessons, grading, calling parents, and improving their own competence (in subject matter, not pedagogy), and force them to use it having meetings about meetings, discussing insipid acronyms like CLI (Courageous Leadership Imperative) and HRO?s (Highly Reliable Organizations), constructing pie-charts and pyramids, and generally acting like the kind of mindless ?interdependent? cooperative learning groups to which you?d like us to reduce our students. Some of us SRT?s (Self-Respecting Teachers) aren?t falling for it, and we never will.

In the words of PT Barnum: This Way to the Egress?

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Product Details

ISBN:

9781412909341

Subtitle:

tm: Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement in High-Performing Schools

Author:

Blankstein, Alan M.

Publisher:

Corwin Press

Subject:

Leadership

Subject:

Aims & Objectives

Subject:

Academic achievement

Subject:

Educational leadership

Subject:

Administration - General

Subject:

Academic achievement -- United States.

Subject:

School improvement programs -- United States.

Copyright:

2004

Publication Date:

June 2004

Binding:

Paperback

Language:

English

Illustrations:

Y

Pages:

288

Dimensions:

8.95x5.98x.58 in. .85 lbs.