This is not from the Onion

Taiwan-China relations were dealt a severe setback yesterday when it was found that Taipei Zoo’s “pandas” are not what they seem.

Zookeepers discovered at feeding time yesterday that the two pandas are in fact Wenzhou brown forest bears that had been dyed to create the panda’s distinctive black-and-white appearance.

The Taipei Zoo’s head of ursidae ex-procyonidae care, Connie Liu (劉長春), said she became suspicious when the pandas, Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), began to spend almost all of their waking hours having sex. Pandas are notorious for their low libidos, which make them difficult to breed in captivity.

“Let’s just say Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan would tuan yuan at every chance,” said Liu, referring to the combination of the panda’s names, which means “to reunite” in Mandarin. “They would do it doggy-style and every armchair zoologist knows that pandas favor the missionary position — when they do it at all. Their behavior caused chaos. Children screamed and parents became irate.”

Less humorous, but equally valuable panda insights can be found here. (And a full explanation, as noted by Michael in the comments section, can be found here.)

Newspapers are to Journalism as Schools are to _____

I've been thinking about posting something regarding the collapse of newspapers for a while. The Rocky Mountain News goes under, the Strib declares bankruptcy (and who would have thought 18 months ago that the PiPress might actually wind up in a stronger position that the Strib?) and now the Seattle Post-Intelligencer goes web-only. Meanwhile online, MinnPost seems to have all the best writers that the Strib fired. I'm not entirely sure what I was going to say . . . something about this fascinating intersection between technology and economics and social good, no doubt. Whatever I would have written would have been pathetically un-insightful compared to Clay Shirky's BRILLIANT essay on the subject.

Shirky steps back far enough to understand that what is going on in newspapers today is not about recessions or advertising or even news. It's about the technological revolution through which we are living.

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

Not only is the piece fascinating for its economic and historic insights, but it also struck me as a viable analysis of not just newspapers and journalism, but schools and education as well.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

Is that not true of what public education faces today as well? Would we not value from a conversation focused not on 'improving our schools' but on 'educating our children'? Shouldn't we be 'doing whatever works' rather than 'preserving the institutions' that are failing?

Like newspapers, the current economic model of public education has come undone and most of us involved in educational reform are spinning our wheels, trying to 'fix' something that, at least as it is currently delivered and conceived, may not be fixable.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that public education is beyond the pale or that we can't successfully educate children. Shirky makes a critical distinction between journalism (a vitally important social good) and newspapers (one particular economic model for delivering said social good that worked for a while but is now irreversibly failing). Likewise, perhaps we should be distinguishing between the social good we want (a meaningful education for all children) and our current delivery model for that social good (schools whose fundamental structure and processes have not altered in over 50 years).

The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses

Are we in education, not doing exactly this? Searching for a facelift through curriculum or teacher preparation or merit pay or [insert your favorite reform-du-jour here] to save our old forms of organization (schools, tenure, grade-levels, six-hour school days, 9 month school years).

I certainly don't have a fully baked idea of what the alternative to these structures looks like. (Sharky would argue no one does in a revolution of this sort.) But I worry that if we continue to spend our energies focused on the structures and organizations that are failing us we risk losing not just our public schools, but our commitment and society's investment in public education. Just as newspaper subscriptions slowly trickled away from publishers, so too are families (particularly in our cities) finding alternatives to the rigid system we have in place.

Newspaper editors are well-intentioned, intelligent people fighting hard to preserve the invaluable service they provide our society. Let us hope that educational leaders and reformers learn from their experience.

Society doesn’t need newspapers schools. What we need is journalism education. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism education and to strengthen newspapers schools have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism education instead.

A Hangingon Contest!

While it ain't quite time for the revival of the hangies, it is time for some reader participation in these parts. So we're having our first online contest, stolen, in true blogger form, from elsewhere.

I've long been a fan of Barbara Wallraff's Word Fugitives in the Atlantic. (I actually prefer Word Court, but have grown to enjoy Fugitives nearly as much.) Word Fugitives is a contest for readers to create a new word.

And I am in search of a word.

The other day at work I was explaining to my boss how our organization is suffering from . . . "the opposite of synergy." Unlike effective organizations where different people's work seems to enhance the value of other people's work, building upon one another toward a common goal, our organization seems to have lots of people working really really hard and achieving less and less. A lack of focus, vision and discipline means we're achieving less than the sum of our work. So . . . what's this called? What's your nomination and explanation for a single word encapsulating this thought? Use the comments link (yes, tis a shameless plug for comments) and feel free to submit multiple nominees.

Why School Reform Fails: A Case Study

A valuable article in Sunday's Strib about Q Comp, Governor Tim Pawlenty's "performance pay" system for teachers. The article notes that 99% of teachers in districts that participate in the Q Comp program receive the financial incentive it awards. It also notes that the districts participating in the program have shown no discernible improvement in their achievement levels due to the system. There is much we can learn from this simple tale of reforming a-go-go.

A GOOD IDEA . . .
Q Comp was supposed to reward highly effective teachers. Who doesn't like the sound of that? The idea was to begin moving away from the current system, which rewards teachers based on two criteria--their own educational achievement (coursework and degrees) and experience (number of years teaching). Unfortunately, these two criteria haves no correlation to the results toward which we want teachers to strive like quality instruction or student achievement. Creating a system that does reward these results, if only partially, is one of many areas reformers seek to change in our public education system.

RUN THROUGH THE POLITICAL PROCESS . . .
Even the Governor cannot simply dictate such changes. Public education is, after all, still public, which means that systemic changes are run through the sausage factory of legislators, school boards, unions and bureaucracies before being enacted. Many times, such as this one, the results of the factory no longer resemble the original intentions. While Q Comp started off as a way to reward highly effective teachers, it became an enhanced version of the compensation system we already have in place. Teachers are rewarded in Q Comp for taking more classes, sitting through more professional development, discussing more books and generally spending more time focusing on things that ultimately do not improve the quality of education, well-intentioned they may be.

DOESN'T CREATE CHANGE . . .
The culture of education permeates more than just schools. What I mean by this is that public schools believe nearly every challenge we face can be solved by . . . more education. Professional Development is a way of life for teachers and school districts, even if the results are non-existent. When faced with poor performing schools, teachers or principals, the first reaction is always to provide more training. (Whether or not training is the problem.) Q Comp, as it currently exists, helps feed this culture of focusing on inputs and training rather than on outputs and results. The system rewards performance--but essentially that performance is jumping through additional professional development hoops, not changing behavior.

OR THE INTENDED RESULTS . . .
Needless to say, it should not be a surprise that Q Comp is failing to have any impact on student achievement. Even if Q Comp did, in fact, reward those teachers who demonstrated great practice and high quality instruction, it is pretty doubtful that a single change to the compensation system alone would have a meaningful impact on student results.

THEREBY PROVING REFORMS DON'T WORK.
See? What did all this hard work and reform get us? Nothing. Teachers unions can now say with confidence and well documented data that performance pay doesn't work. Conservatives and anti-school folks can look at Q Comp and show how we're pouring even more money into schools without getting anything in return. Reformer-types can claim the program was so water-downed as to be worthless. School districts can blame the state for creating a new program that didn't do what it was supposed to.

Meanwhile back in classroom after classroom . . . .

Miscellaneous

.:Two quick education articles for review: First, a very appealing idea around teacher pay from (of all places), Alabama. (What if we actually began providing teachers with promotions?) Second, a new study shows our schools our increasingly segregated. (With not nearly enough analysis in my humble opinion on how our schools likely represent the segregation of the communities in which we live.)

.:So I got see Leonard Bernstein's Mass the other night. I must say I found myself squarely in the middle between the two camps of critics on this one. Was it filled with pop pablum, lurching from one idea to another without much regard for cohesion or wholeness? You betcha. But it also had moments of astounding beauty--musically and visually. The Street Singers had most of my favorite moments and I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed the dancing. I'll listen to this again and am glad I had a chance to see it (since it is rarely fully staged) but I'm not sure I need to see it again.

Up next: Faust on Thursday; The Two Gentlemen of Verona a week from Saturday and trying to squeeze in Spring Awakening this weekend.

.:Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Just lazy.

.:Honestly, I haven't taken the time to figure out an opinion on the whole bailout/stimulus package thing. But I must say the chutzpah of the Republicans is a wonder to behold. Now? Now you guys expect us to believe you care about government spending? As if your party has any credibility at all on this issue?

.:The original really is better. I had become so accustomed to seeing the posters and knock-offs of Shepard Fairey's portrait of President Obama that I had no idea how vibrant and powerful the real thing is.

.:An inauguration haiku:

Winter day of hope
As millions watch in wonder
Good speech but not great

Tuesday, January 20