Giving technocracy an even worse name

Gary Imhoff writes in the introduction to themail:

Another laudatory article about Chancellor Michelle Rhee was published last week: Clay Risen’s “The Lightning Rod,” in the November Atlantic Monthly. However, as the article’s title indicates, Risen already sees some of the problems Rhee is creating. Although Risen is clearly cheering for Rhee, he calls her “controversial” and gives an almost fair hearing to her critics.

Most importantly, he understands what is at stake in Rhee’s and Fenty’s dictatorial stance toward public education, and frames the argument well in his last paragraph: “It is to answer a basic question about the nature of urban governance, a question about two visions of big-city management. In one, city politics is a vibrant, messy, democratic exercise, in which both the process and the results have value. In the other, city politics is only a prelude, the way to install a technocratic elite that can carry out reforms in relative isolation from the give-and-take of city life.

Rhee’s tenure will answer whether these two positions are mutually exclusive — and, if they are, whether public-school reform is even possible.” Fenty and Rhee see themselves as part of that technocratic elite, isolated and above having to respond to the democratic mob over whom they rule, and not to be questioned or challenged by citizens or their representatives on the city council. Risen’s question answers itself; of course the two positions he describes are mutually exclusive, and lasting reform of any public agency can only be brought about through a democratic process in which citizens are full participants.

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Hey, I am big on technocracy. But when you do it, you can't screw it up, you have to have a deep and wide fundamental understanding of the subsystems, processes, structures, culture, and issues that shape the system you are trying to change-innovate-transform.

Almost by definition, if "technocracy" is focused on fixing people rather than on building robust and resilient systems that support and strengthen the people who do the work and receive the services, it isn't technocratic, because it isn't system based. Therefore it is more than likely to fail.

My observation (and I don't have children) is that the changes in the school system thus far are on trying to hire "superstar" teachers and principals who then must work without any fundamental support structure for either the school or the classroom. Even the most able people cannot succeed without structure and support (see the factors leading to job dissatisfaction as discussed in Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory).

Some of the most interesting successes in education today, in Montgomery County, Maryland's Title I schools, and the Region 5 District in New York City covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, under Superintendent Kathleen Cashin, show the necessity of building strong systems and processes that support principals, teachers, and students at many levels.

From the New York Times article, "Bucking School Reform, a Leader Gets Results," about Dr. Cashin:

Where Mr. Klein insists that school administration must be reinvented to reverse generations of failure by generations of educators, Dr. Cashin, a product of the old system, insists she can get results with a clear instructional mission, careful organization and a simple strategy of every educator’s being supported by an educator with more experience.

According to the article "Staff Investment Pays Dividends in Md. District" from Education Week, 3% of the annual budget for the Montgomery County School System is spent on staff development, including hiring, because "investing in choosing the right people and providing them with the right kind of training builds a shared culture of language, goals, and methods" focused on achieving outcomes. A followup article published earlier this year, "When "Unequal" Is Fair Treatment," demonstrates the effectiveness of this complete approach, highlighting MCPS success in achieving high outcomes from lower income schools.

What we need is a superstar "system" that supports and develops people--principals, teachers, support and resource teachers and staff, children, and parents--at all levels. Until we get that type of approach, Chancellor Rhee and Mayor Fenty are likely to fail, giving us technocrats an even worse reputation.