Indistar: Taking the Creativity Out of School Improvement Through Standardization and Imposed Conformity

"The problem with conformity in education is that people are not standardized to begin with." Sir Ken Robinson, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education

Let's face it, our public education system is still all about conformity and standardization. We talk a lot of rot about "innovation" and "thinking outside of the box," but in reality, many educators still adhere to the faith that there are a list of single "research-based" indicators that exist somewhere out there that can guide our schools to the promised land. Companies manufacturing educational products know this, and make all kinds of promises that their products will lead us to the "Land of Eternal Achievement." A perfect case in point is a new product that the state of North Carolina has adopted to ensure conformity and standardization of school improvement planning. This product is called Indistar.

When you check out Indistar's web site, it is immediately clear they've got their "marketing shoes on." (Check out their web site here:  http://www.indistar.org/). Immediately the promises of educational prosperity hit you square in the face with "Your Leadership Team's Best Friend." It promises that schools can "get better together." Basically, it is school improvement software that promises to help school improvement teams to academic prosperity through helping them implement its "research-based indicators."

As a principal and educator who has experienced this product for one year, I am afraid it most likely will lead, not to academic prosperity, but ensure that your school conforms to what the makers of Indistar see as an "effective school." This software isn't about empowering schools to find creative solutions to the problems they face; it is about forcing schools to apply a list of "research-based indicators" so that they conform to a single image (Indistar's) of what an effective school should look like.

It was Fenwick English (2003), educational leader and scholar, who once said, "To reduce such claims (of effective schools) or "school improvement models" based on de-contextualized behaviors [emphasis mine] on a 'research base' which itself has been standardized in 'right truth-seeking methods,' is to resort to hegemonic practices which can only be supported via political enforcement [again, italics mine]. In other words, the whole idea that one can create a list of 'de-contextualized behaviors' that will somehow solve all the ills and problems of the schools, can only be supported if it is made mandatory, as North Carolina has done. Its claim of all being 'research-based indicators' is its claim to legitimation, but what is left out of the equation is that all of these 'de-contextualized behaviors' happened in very contextual situations that may or may not be applicable to other schools. Educators would do well to be 'skeptical' of any organization, company or even other educators who throw around the term 'research-based' as support for their product. And, just keep in mind that just because they provide a 20 page bibliography, or larger, and links to research articles, that again does not necessarily translated into an effective product for every school or district. The number of bibliographical entries or research articles does not automatically mean a 'valid technology.' Anyone with an APA manual and Google Scholar can make a bibliography.

Besides its rather ponderous claims of helping schools to "get better together," the reality is that Indistar is just another one of those miracles of marketing. That explains why North Carolina has rushed to force schools across the state to adopt it. The gist of Indistar is rather simple. School improvement teams assess their school against a ponderous list of so-called "research-based" indicators to see if their school measures up to them. If they feel they have met the indicator, they must engage in the massive undertaking of collecting evidence to show they have met the indicator. They submit this evidence online, then a voice from the cloud above reviews their evidence to judge whether that evidence meets the indicator. If the judgement is that they have, they then move to the next indicator. They do this until they have made their way through a hundred or so indicators. Voila, once they have met all the indicators they should have reached the "promised land of academic achievement aplenty." If they find themselves wanting with an indicator, then that indicator becomes a school improvement goal. The school works to make that indicator happen, provides evidence, then they submit that evidence to the cloud judgement seat, and if judged in affirmative, they can move on to the next indicator. That is "school improvement" according to Indistar. What better way for district and even state education administrators to actually "control" the schools under their charge! This is truly a great tool to "manage from a distance!"

The whole problem behind Indistar and products like it, is the faith that there are "prescriptions" out there that will fix any school problem that exists. We've been trying this approach to improving schools for more than the last 30 years, and I dare say we are not any closer to making education as a whole better. In fact, in many ways we've only made it worse. We aren't going to improve education by using software like Indistar to impose what is believed to be a set of "research-based" prescriptions on our schools, because the problems in our schools are very often unique problems that require creativity and innovation, not simple application of what some researchers in the ivory towers of quantitative research have found to be true.

Products like Indistar are not innovative; they are simply high-tech regurgitations of all the prescriptive, management from a distance strategies we've been engaged in for the past 30 years or so.

I have not doubt that the makers of Indistar mean well. I am also aware that, like so many innovative products, it makes claims based on "success stories" and with its slick web site where it markets a Utopian future for those who dare to use its product. Sadly, as a user of this product for a year now, I would say it is more about making sure schools conform to someone else's idea of school improvement rather than giving schools the freedom to be really creative in solving their problems.

The problem with Indistar and products like it is that schools are not standardized to begin with, so applying a list of so-called research-based prescriptions are not likely to bring the same results in every case, and that is a major problem with this product. The problems we deal with in our schools are very often local contextual issues. We really don't need more software to help us resolve these issues; we need the freedom to approach the unique problems we face in a creative manner.



English, F. (2003). The postmodern challenge to the theory and practice of educational administration. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.

Robinson, Ken. (2016). Creative schools: The grassroots revolution that's transforming education. New York: Penguin.

The End of Ed-Tech Evangelism: Using Your Critical Faculties to Question Tech Obsession

One of the identifying characteristics of my blog, this blog, has been that it "advocates for the use of technology." Since the very first post here, I've often joined the educator chorus of singing the praises of "technology in education." Now, a few years later, I am beginning to wonder, in the spirit of Nicholas Carr, that perhaps I've been more "evangelist" than educator when it comes to "advocating for technology." I've been "spreading the gospel of technology use in the classroom and in my role as principal" for several years now, and I've come to some certain "Carrisian" (if I may invent a new word) realizations about technology myself which can be summed up thus: Technology is no panacea; it doth not an effective educator make.

Before the virtual spitballs start flying in my direction, let me explain myself a bit further. Being a "Tech Evangelist" gets it all wrong. There is "no gospel of ed technology." There's nothing to convert people to, and there's no salvation to be found in outfitting out classrooms with gadgets galore. Placing 30 laptops in a room does not necessarily transform that room into the new center of learning in Western Civilization. Why? It's simply this: the greatest feats of learning are not always found on the screens of our smartphones and tablet screens. No matter how much we try to convince ourselves, that "tech is better," sometimes a pad of paper and our favorite fountain pen is a much better way to engage our thoughts and the world.

Educators, I'm afraid, have been "spreading a utopian view of technology," as Nicholas Carr calls this technoevangelicalism, for some time now. I've engaged in that myself. I've been guilty of viewing any educational progress as "essentially technological." And, this means, I've been a part of the problem of "legitimizing" all these edupreneurs and opportunists who bombard my email inbox every day with promises of sure entrance into the "academic achievement promise land" if I will only purchase their products. Educational technology is the land of opportunity for many; including those who peddle snake oil and latest elixirs that cure every ailment in our schools. By being uncritical and faithful to the ed tech creeds, I am just as guilty as anyone of enabling that "commercial culture" that puts the profits of self and others ahead of what is sometimes best for the students in my building. No more.

If anything, ed technology needs it's own version of "Food and Drug Administration" that forces these edpreneurs and technoevangelists promoting their wares to provide solid evidence of their claims. Educators are a trusting lot. They want so much to believe that the nice gentlemen plugging his software program or tech device, or any other educational ware, really wants what they want: what's best for kids. But, while that may be true, understand that he is out to sell a product, not take care of your students.

We have the greatest "FDA" faculty in our heads as educators. We talk about critical thinking and independent thinking, then we need to exercise it when it comes to any educational product or technology. Anyone can claim their product is "research-based" and the best thing to happen to education since chalkboards. Yet, we are ultimately responsible for using this critical faculty to ask the tough questions of anyone promoting a product or even idea. We owe it to our own integrity and most of all to the kids we face each and every day.

By spreading a utopian view of technology, a view that defines progress as essentially technological, they've encouraged people to switch off their critical faculties and give Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and financiers free rein in remaking culture to fit their commercial interests" Nicholas Carr, Utopia Is Creepy and Other Provocations

Tribute to Joe Bower and His ‘Love of Learning’

I’ve been disconnected for a bit due to the demands of being a school administrator and as a student working on my on education, so that explains why I missed the passing of one of the most passionate educators I’ve met online, Joe Bower. For those of you who didn’t know Joe Bower, he is the author of the blog For the Love of Learning, and was an advocate for transforming schools into places where real learning happens instead of the focus on grades and testing that so currently preoccupies educators, politicians, and policymakers. He and I connected on a number of occasions through Twitter on issues of authentically assessing what students know rather than “bubble-sheeting” them to boredom.

Joe Bower and I never physically met, but through the power of social media and the Internet, we met and connected on several occasions, and it was clear that I met a true advocate for changing education in ways that make it better for children. His ideas concerning doing away with grading and testing and focusing on providing students with opportunities to show exactly what they could do fits so well with my own thinking about teaching and learning. His voice in this area will be missed. I encourage all educators to visit his blog Love of Learning and experience his ideas for making education better in the 21st century. Joe Bower the advocate for children and for authentic education will be missed. He truly loved learning and shared that with all of us.

How Current Educational Leadership Makes Itself Powerless

Most current principals and school leaders are quite familiar with the discourse that calls for them to focus on their “circles of influence” and just ignore those things over which they have no control. Stephen R. Covey has become the gospel for educational leaders.

For example, if a school principal of a high-poverty school points out the abject poverty that her students live in from day-to-day is hampering their achievement, she is immediately reprimanded and corrected with, “Just focus on what you can control, not those things you can’t. Besides, that’s just an excuse.” The thinking behind these statements elevate the myth that poverty does not matter. All one needs to do is “Pull themselves up by the bootstraps” and they will succeed.”

The underlying belief of all this is, “Poverty is an acceptable part of life. People who live in poverty do so because of their own mistaken choices.” It is this belief that underpins so many school leadership trainings I’ve experienced. Focus on the management tools, and ignore the conditions kids live in outside the school.

The ordered silence (and it is ordered because those who speak are silenced and dismissed) about poverty is the same as saying those who push policies and practices that are pomoting income desparity and poverty are right and to question what they are doing is “political.” It is this thinking that has disemboweled educational leadership today. There’s no “guts” or courage for standing up to those societal and political practices that are hurting children. School leaders are made simply “managers” of a system as it is rather than advocating for a society and a system that gives everyone a fair chance.

When did educational leadership mean subscribing to a societal program that leaves more kids behind than ever?

When did being a school principal who is advocating for the dire needs of the kids in his school become labeled as excuses instead of calling attention to an American society that does not take care of its own?

When does it ever mean that a school leader can’t critique federal, state, and local educational policy, and question political decisions made by our government and state poltical and educational department leaders?

Have we so adopted the hierarchical, non-questioning business approach to just carrying out the latest federal or state mandate so that we can “keep our jobs?”

That is why America still leaves so many children behind! Educational leaders have been neutered and reduced to “business managers” whose job is to follow orders unquestionably. They are encouraged to have a vision “as long as it fits into the program, where the program is guided by federal and state poltiical mandates.

Until educational leaders, from the classroom to the state and federal levels shed the mind of educational managers of the latest mandates, and begin to question and advocate as well as call attention to society-wide policies that are hurting kids, public education will be just as powerless and inffective as its leaders.

Schools Need Intellectual Leaders Too!

“The role of the intellectual is to expose new ways of thinking: to make people see the world around them in a different light, to disturb their mental habits and to invite them to demand and instigate change.” Johanna Oksala, How to Read Foucault

I want to propose a radical idea: School leaders need to be “intellectual leaders.” If you look at any one of the hundreds of books about educational leadership, you see the words, “instructional leader,” “micropolitical leader,” or “managerial leader,” but what’s missing is the idea of “intellectual leadership.” Educational leaders, as I see it, should also be “intellectual leaders."
If there ever was a time “intellectual leaders” are needed it is now. Intellectual leaders who “expose new and old ways of thinking about education and its practices” are needed in the face of an onslaught of privatization and corporatization. Educational leaders have often blindly accepted the “corporate agenda” for schools often without question. They have bought the idea that “If it works in business, then it will work in education” mantra. They have come to accept without question an audit culture that places results in the form of test scores above anything else. They have blindly followed politicians into this by accepting massive amounts of federal money with chains attached to drag public education in places of destruction. In a word, educational leaders are complicit in the destruction of public education and the destruction of the teaching profession with their unquestioning acceptance of the latest brand of educational reform to travel downward from on high.

What is needed to counter this downward spiral? Intellectual leaders willing to expose these mandates, these policies to the scrutiny of critical examination. Intellectual leaders who don’t just accept as gospel that tests are the equivalent of learning and that test scores are the only worthwhile measure of learning. It is intellectual leaders in the schools who would scrutinize and resist policies bad for kids, and bad for public education.

One other thing about intellectual leadership: it also involves “distubing the mental habits” of others within the school organization. These others also need to question the reasons "why we have always done things this way” or “why we are going to do them this way now.” With the questions, spaces for resistance open up for true leadership. Change begins with seeing outside the boundaries; not with accepting the boundaries as given.

"The intellectual is not the moral conscience of society, his or her role is not to pass political judgments, but to liberate us by making alternative ways of thinking possible."Johanna Oksala, How to Read Foucault

5 Ways to Be a Skeptic in Today's "Reformy" Educational World

“Good skeptics change their minds, according to the best evidence available. There is just one thing to be loyal to here, reality.” Guy Harrison, Think: Why You Should Question Everything

In a time of education reform peddling and of vendors selling wares claiming that this program increases student achievement and that this program will improve graduation rates, what serves an educational leader well is to be a strong skeptic. As Guy Harrison says in his book, our loyalties should lie with reality. It should not lie with friends who have left education and are now selling some latest educational ware. Our loyalties do not lie with unquestioningly listening to latest edict that comes down from the federal government as the answer to all of our school’s educational shortcomings. Our loyalty does not lie in unquestioningly implementing unfounded programs and practices. Our loyalty should lie with demanding that all of the above be demonstrated with scientific proof and reason that what they claim is true.

In his book, Think: Why You Should Question Everything, Guy Harrison offers a useful framework for being a skeptic when it comes to those making outrageous claims about anything. As the late Carl Sagan once wrote, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and any educational resource salesperson or educator pushing a pet program, saying definitively that their product or practice raises test scores, needs to provide evidence to that fact, and testimonial quotes from another school district leader or teacher is not sufficient.

Harrison offers all of us a thinking approach to question those who approach us with these kinds of claims. He encourages us to utilize the scientific process when we “bump up against weird things in everyday life,” and I must say that in my 24 years in education, I've seen some pretty weird and outrageous educational claims.

Here’s Harrison’s steps to exercising skepticism toward extraordinary claims and my own suggestions for how it would apply in a school leadership role.

• Ask questions. According to Harrison, asking questions is critical. We should not passively accept what we are told by policymakers, politicians and even educational researchers making claims. Educators are notorious for sometimes being sheep and avoiding asking the tough questions. As Tienken and Orlich state in their book, The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myths and Lies, "Education professionals have a history of not asking why." Being educated, you would think educators would explode with questions in the face of educational claims, but too often they fall prey to arguments of authority or because someone has 90 years experience as an educator, as if that's somehow a substitute for real proof. Sometimes the right question, according to Harrison can derail the most invalid claim. Being an educator-skeptic doesn't mean you are being disrespectful. It means you are being loyal to reality and not to an idea, policymaker, boss, or friend.
• Observe. This is something educators sometimes don’t do well either. We need to do as Harrison suggests and “look and listen with deliberate effort.” When some policy or educational practice is implemented, and even before, we should observe it for how it works and how it affects others. Our job as educators should never be guardians of the latest educational fad or program. The burden of proof isn't on us; it's on those who push the practice. We shouldn't be marshaling evidence to defend someone else's practice. We should be willing to simply look at the evidence and decide for ourselves whether it is working as it should. And, as advocates for children, we should be willing to speak up when practices harm children and learning or are a waste of resources.
• Research. Harrison reminds us that “If you look for it, it’s not difficult to find credible information about most claims.” We should do our own “fact-checking.” As educators most of us have experience with research and how its conducted, so you would think we would demand that information we receive about a product or practice have the best scientific support and rationale. Take the claims about using value-added measures  in teacher evaluations and how it can increase student achievement. There’s no research to support that claim no matter where you look. Intuitively it makes sense, but those who advocate for its use in teacher evaluations don’t have an ounce of support for the practice, yet we've implemented it across our entire state as well as others. Educators owe their students and themselves to conduct research about claims made from outside education and from above and within.
• Experiment. So many things we do in education are obviously not subject to scientific experimentation, after all, try telling parents at your school that you’re experimenting with their kids and see how far that gets you. It’s just not ethical sometimes to perform blind studies on our students. But, that does not mean that we can’t look at the research and see if someone has examined a practice or reviewed its effectiveness to see if there is any basis in the claim. We only need to look at the effects of policy on our kids and teachers to see how it is working. We can also engage in our own case studies and collect information from those who experience the program or practice. That is data too, and perhaps the best data because it tells us how a policy and practice is affecting our students and staff locally. We should constantly study how policy and practice affects what we do.
• Share ideas and conclusions with others. As Harrison points out, this is a “great way to get feedback from people who may know more that we do about a claim.” We aren't trying to debunk or discredit. We should be trying to get at the truth. We should share how policy, practices, and products actually are working in our schools.

As Harrison points out, “Smart and honest people are sincerely wrong all the time.” The person pushing the latest education reform initiative or a new instructional approach certainly may be sincere and honest. Their intentions may be saintly; they want to do what’s best for kids. But that does not mean we give them a pass due to their saintly intentions. In the end, the obligation for proof should ideally fall in the laps of the sellers: those pushing new educational products, new policy, and new practices. But, when such proof or support will not stand up under the scrutiny of questions, observation, research, experimentation, our obligation is still with reality and our students.

Harrison definitely makes clear what can happen to unsubstantiated claims when he states, “Only hollow beliefs tremble when confronted by reason, and only false claims collapse when skeptical thinking is applied.” In an age when new reforms and approaches are being flung in our direction at light speed, skepticism should definitely be in our leadership toolbox. We owe to ourselves and our students to subject all claims to reason and thinking.

Adopting a Digital Disruptor Mindset to Transform Education

“When people adopt technology, they do old things in new ways. When people internalize technology, they find new things to do.” James McQuivey, Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation

When it comes to engaging in innovation with technology, the mindset we take toward technology is extremely important. We can either take a "technology adopter" mindset or we can take a "digital disruptor" mindset. As James McQuivey states in his book, Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation, "Digital disruptors think about opportunity differently." To the technology adopter it's always about the technology. How can I use the technology to help me do the things I currently do better? In contrast, a person with a "digital disruptor" mindset sees the technology as the means to engage in entirely new and different possibilities. Which leads me to ask the question:  Which mindset  predominately drives technology policy in your school or district? Is it a "technology adopter" mindset  or a "Digital Disruptor" mindset?

In case you're wondering, here's some characteristics of each.

Educators with the "technology adopter" mindset:

• Immediately view a new technological device as a means to do what they have been doing, better. This type of thinking limits the view of technology as only being able to enable teaching and learning as we have been doing it under a 20th century, industrial-age school model. Some examples of this kind of thinking is using e-texts to simply replace physical textbooks. There is no change in pedagogy, just a change in how the information is delivered. Another example of this thinking would be viewing the computer as simply a more efficient means to deliver a multiple-choice test. The power of digital lies in its ability to complete reinvent assessment, not perpetuate the old.
• See technology’s potential limited by current practice. In other words, technology adopter-educators see only their current teaching practice and are not open to any other. "It's worked for hundreds of years, so why change?" is the attitude. Technology then becomes the means to deli ver what is seen as time-honored traditional forms of teaching and learning, such as lecture or heavy use of textbooks. Technology will never be used innovatively when educators limit it's potential to their current understanding of educational practice.

The opposite to the "technology adopter" mindset is the "digital disruptor" mindset. Those in education who adopt this mindset become:

• Educators who imagine new ways of doing things. Armed with new technology, they use the capabilities of those technologies to reinvent teaching and learning. These educators have been trying to do that with new online learning environments, new instructional models such as PBL and maker-based classrooms. This mindset views technology as a way to completely reinvent how we teach kids. For example, we don't just purchase e-reader devices and e-books. We ask questions that leading the use of these to transform our instruction and student learning.
• Educators who see the unlimited potential of technology to disrupt current education practice. Education is a system that is stubborn and resists efforts of transformation. That's why seeing technology's potential as a "disruptive" influence is often times viewed as a negative. Cell phone and social media bans are good examples of that. Yet, if we adopt the view of technology as and opportunity to disrupt, to turn upside-down what we do in schools, we have the potential to transform education into a system that meets the needs of every child.
• Educators open-minded and willing to let go of the old when it fails. This is a tough one for many in and outside of education. It's as if for every step forward in reforming education, we move three steps backward because of a nostalgic view many hold toward their own schools of the past. They brag about how schools in the 30s and 40s, even 50s did so well, yet forget that dropping out of school was a legitimate career path then, and schools could, and did, discard kids as defective raw materials when they didn't conform. Those schools in the past did do a good job for some, but aren't sufficient in an age where the expectation is that all kids learn. With the digital disruptor mindset, nothing is held sacred when it comes to transforming education.

We can choose the mindset with which we approach technology and its potential. The mindset we choose will determine whether we engage in transforming our schools or whether we simply continue to tweak an outdated education system. We can choose the mindset of a technology adopter, which means we continue to look for ways to enhance an obsolete, 20th century model of education, or we can choose the mindset of a digital disruptor. The digital disruptor mindset means we employ the technology to engage new opportunities for reinventing both teaching and learning.

Being a 21st School Leader Means Having the Courage to Question Reform

Author Alfie Kohn writes in his collection of essays entitled Feel Bad Education and Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling,”

“All around us---including in the field of education of education---we meet people who have lost their capacity to be outraged by outrageous things, people who, when they are handed foolish and destructive mandates, respond meekly by asking for guidance on how to put them into practice.”

I can’t help but wonder sometimes if public educational leaders are nothing more than lemmings when it comes to educational reforms. It’s as if some kind of unspoken rule in education is that you practice the doctrine of “Don’t question the mandate!” We have politicians, fresh from standing on top their soapboxes, tossing educational mandates our direction at the speed of light, and it seems, at least to me, few have the guts to really ask the tough questions about whether these measures will really be good for education and for our students.

Is courage somehow sucked out of those aspiring to be school leaders when they pass through these school administrator training programs? If ever there was a need for leadership and a willingness to stand up to policymakers wielding reforms, now is that time.

We have politicians across the United States pushing reforms that are detrimental to public education, and instead of asking tough questions about the rightness of these reforms, school leaders fall all over themselves trying to find ways to enact what ultimately is tired, bad education policy. Example One---the Common Core Standards. The Obama Administration shoves a set of standards down the throats of 40 plus states, and instead of looking critically at those standards, school leaders accept them, and immediately jump to implementation. No administrator I know has asked tough questions like: Why do we need an nationally standardized curriculum? Is it so that we can test our kids to see what they learn or so we can compare, and the state with the highest test scores can brag? Why these standards and not others? Instead, the question I hear most often from school leaders is: How do we implement those standards. It’s almost as if administrators feel the need to blindly accept this latest “reform” that made its way down from Washington. It really doesn’t matter whether it’s the federal or state capital that these reforms come from. Educational leaders move immediately to implementation.

School leaders in this country are in big part responsible for these endless pendulum swings we take in education, simply because there’s a total lack of courage and unwillingness to ask tough questions about the latest reform our politicians are peddling.
Here’s a proposal I would make to those seeking to be 21st century school leaders. Consider the following when that next “reform” flows down from the powers that be.

• Don’t be afraid to ask questions. And ask the tough ones. If our education system is every going to be sound, and if reform is going to truly happen, there has to be willingness to shine the light of reason on what is being proposed.
• If policymakers get uncomfortable with the questions we ask, then we need to keep asking. Courage means being willing to ask the tough questions, and sometimes, that’s going to make people uncomfortable. But, ultimately, they should defend their ideas with reason, not with intimidation.
• There’s nothing wrong with being a skeptic. We need to demand answers to our questions about new education policy. Of course, those who create this policy don’t have to answer, but there is satisfaction in knowing that we’ve been willing to ask the tough questions.

Educational leaders, I think, have lost their capacity to be outraged at the foolish reform ideas being proposed in our nation’s capital and in state capitals around the country. Asking tough questions is not a sign of insubordination. It is a sign of courage, and as leader I hope I never take such questions asked of me in that way.