Young: Corporate, top-down control is illness besetting schools

WACO, Texas — The Dallas Independent School District has a commendably revolutionary idea. So why join the chorus calling it idiotic?

Because it is.

Not the overriding idea. That's bright. What's idiotic is enforcing it by top-down decree, as in, "Everyone will adopt this bright idea. Herewith the memo ..."

First, what's commendable: A new DISD policy does something that has been lost in the age of "accountability" — acknowledge that not everybody learns at the same pace, and try to operate accordingly.

However, operating accordingly across the board by decree is fraught with problems, as is indicative in the new DISD policies:

— Teachers must accept overdue assignments. Principals will decide if students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.

— Students can retake a test they've flunked and keep the higher grade.

— Teachers cannot give a zero unless they call parents and make "efforts to assistance students in completing the work."

Critics, headed by teachers, say that having said district-wide policies will encourage students to sandbag and drag their heels. I'd say that's as likely as night following day.

So, why say Dallas ISD's idea is still commendable, at least in the abstract? Because I've seen it work. One of my sons' best teachers, Mrs. Robinson, operated her high school science class by many of the above precepts.

She didn't care so much about grading. She cared about learning. To her, retaking a test was immaterial as long as a student learned the material. The same with homework assignments. Turned in late? No problem — if Job 1 was met: work done, learning achieved.

Lenient? Well. Mrs. Robinson was students' best friend if they were learning. She was no one's pal if they were screwing off.

The secret to her success in getting children to strive was in the pact she had established with them, a student-teacher trust.

Trust. How we need that again in our schools. Unfortunately, we have policies built on mistrust, and built around traps.

Traps for the teachers. Traps for the students. Sadly, since we've established them through public policy and "accountability," those traps are foremost in our minds. The learning is secondary.

It wasn't to Mrs. Robinson.

But I guarantee you, even though her students could retake tests, she'd be repelled by a policy that told all teachers they had to do as she does.

She'd say that she could only do what she does because she established trust. Others succeed using strict, no-excuses guidelines. They find their own formulas to get students to buy into what they're about.

I could imagine a district showing teachers how Mrs. Robinson's methods work. I can imagine her coaching her peers. I can't imagine a school district ordering everyone to teach like her.

Tragically, top-down, one-size-fits-all edicts are the state of education policy, and the principal corporate agents are state capitals and the nation's capital.

This has led to standardization at every turn. Though we may want to believe as much, standardization is not education.

In many ways, Dallas ISD's policy is the flip side of the darker side of standardization. The more common design is to make "accountability" so rigid, so factory-style that students don't really master material because the accountability machine must move on.

Instead of doing great work, inspired work, they too often do the bare minimum.

My son has an affinity for science because his high school science teacher put learning first and wasn't fixated on grades. Which meant the students weren't, either.

But if his high school had ordered all of his other teachers to do the same, it wouldn't have worked.

Teaching is not assembly-line work. Teaching is the creative process. Unfortunately, even when policy makers have a good notion, they still want robots to implement them.

John Young writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald.