| Kathy Emery From Chapter 2 of The Business Roundtable and Systemic Reform: How Corporate-Engineered High Stakes Testing has eliminated community participation in the developing of educational goals and policies. The economic reasoning behind business leaders’ interest in educational reform resonates with two earlier periods of educational reform as I discussed in Chapter 1. The timing of the adoption of systemic reform suggests that the BRT decided to initiate the third major educational reform in U.S. history as part of the second major economic transformation in U.S. history. As mass-production replaced craft-production (circa 1870-1915) so now is lean-production replacing mass production. Lean production was developed in Japan after WW II. Lean production techniques have enabled manufacturers to reduce the size of their inventories (they carry fewer parts) and increase the reliability of their product through the introduction of “quality circles” at each stage of design and production. Every worker in the company, from industrial designers to assembly line workers, participate in study groups that research and discuss the means by which they can detect and resolve defects at every stage, not just with the finished product. These innovations allow manufacturers to reduce drastically the time it takes to make a product, and eliminate recalls as well as reduce overhead costs (Womack, 1990). Lean production was first adopted by Toyota in the 1950s. By adopting lean production techniques, Japanese vehicle manufacturers were able to overtake U.S. manufacturers as the world’s leading producers of motor vehicles by 1978. Ford, to avoid bankruptcy, was the first U.S. corporation to adopt lean production in 1981. General Motors and Chrysler, not yet facing bankruptcy, were resistant, choosing instead to close their least productive plants from 1987-1990. They choose to experiment with lean production by hiring Toyota to manage a reopened plant in Fremont, California (Womack, 1990; p. 244, 82). It was during this same period that the number of Japanese “transplants” in the U.S. increased significantly. Honda, the first major transplant, opened its vehicle assembly plant in 1982 (Womack, 1990; p. 241). The success of Japanese car manufacturers, the increased productive capacity of lean production, and the ability to make more reliable products at less expense caused many MBA programs to incorporate the principles of lean production into their curricula. Many CEO’s sent representatives to study the Japanese techniques. The result of study and partnerships has resulted in various forms of lean production being adapted to production throughout the United States during the 1980s. The adoption of lean production by American manufacturers has not followed the Japanese model exactly. There are too many cultural and historical differences for copying to be exact. One of the modifications that U.S. CEOs have made to the Japanese model is to draw upon their historic relationship with education. The American people were threatened by a “crisis” in the educational system beginning with the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, the year after lean production began in Honda’s Ohio plant. In 1989, the BRT hammered out its agenda for systemic reform, in the midst of plant closings brought on by the competition of lean producers. That educational reform accompanied production reform is not a coincidence. Part of the evidence supporting this assertion lies in the historical patterns of the past as I have outlined them in Chapter 1. Another part lies in the similarity between the skills required in lean production and the skills promoted by the BRT’s educational agenda. One characteristic of lean production is “total quality control” (TQC) which is sometimes referred to as Total Quality Management. Simply put, TQC is the process by which the detection and fixing of defects happens at every stage in the development and production of a product. The truly lean plant has two key organizational features: It transfers the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to those workers actually adding value to the car on the line, and it has in place a system for detecting defects that quickly traces every problem, once discovered, to its ultimate cause. "This, in turn, means teamwork among line workers and a simple but comprehensive information display system that makes it possible for everyone in the plant to respond quickly to problems and to understand the plant’s overall situation . . . . Every time anything goes wrong anywhere in the plant any employee who knows how to help runs to lend a hand . . . . Building these efficient teams is not simple. First, workers need to be taught a wide variety of skills . . . then they need encouragement to think actively, indeed, proactively, so they can devise solutions before problems become serious. Once lean production principles are fully instituted, companies will be able to move rapidly in the 1990s to automate most of the remaining repetitive tasks in auto assembly and more. Thus by the end of the century we expect that lean-assembly plants will be populated almost entirely by highly skilled problem solvers whose task will be to think continually of ways to make the system run more smoothly and productively" (Womock, 1990; p. 99). For a factory to run “more smoothly and productively,” it needs workers to take on increased “tasks and responsibilities,” have a “wide variety of skills,” learn how to work in “efficient teams”, and be able to “think actively”. These “highly skilled problem solvers” are perhaps some of the kinds of employees that Edward Rust and the BRT CEOs have in mind when they call upon the public school system to have “high standards for all” for the purposes of increasing the numbers of highly skilled workers. In raising the bar for everyone, systemic reformers expect that more students will master advanced academic subjects. The reformers also expect that by insisting on site-based decision-making, teachers will use a variety of teaching techniques such as group work to teach “problem-solving skills”. Corporate CEOs certainly wish to have some workers who can “do more now than they did a generation ago” and they want more of them than they need. But equally important, they want to keep control of the kinds of problems to be solved. Those who are presiding over the transformation of the economy want to increase the numbers of graduates who are able to work in groups to solve highly complex tasks. Many educators are attracted to and co-opted by the rhetoric of systemic reform because it promises to be more challenging. But the promise is an empty one. The state standards coauthored by members of the Business Roundtable reveal the business leaders’ inability to allow real problem solving to be taught in the schools. To teach real problem solving, it is crucial that the student be able to choose the problem. Otherwise students are merely completing a task. To complete a task, one needs to rely on habitual activity, rarely needing, if at all, the kinds of thinking involved in problem-solving (i.e., the processes of fact gathering, hypothesis development, testing ideas, putting ideas into practice, revising hypothesis, etc.). The BRT envisions teachers having the authority to teach the habits with which their students will complete the tasks determined by statewide standards. While couched in terms of “problem-solving skills,” an educational theory and system based upon state standards eliminates problem setting, a crucial step in real problem solving. No real problem solving can occur if the student is never able to pursue “a matter of curiosity” to the point of articulating it “in such a way that it becomes amenable to inquiry that is relatively systematic” (Arnstine, 1995; p. 113). To tell a student what to learn and when to learn it, however complex the learning may be, is the surest means of preventing that student from being engaged in the material. Without engagement or interest, none of the dispositions necessary to successful problem solving are developed. "Solving problems isn’t just a mechanical procedure; it calls for more than a set of skills. It requires attitudes and dispositions like the courage needed to acknowledge the existence of a problem that has to be dealt with; the patience and persistence required when a problem isn’t easily resolved; a willingness to risk, to seek help and to give it, to accept personal responsibility, and to admit error" (Arnstine, 1995; p. 129) For the quality circles in lean production to work effectively, workers need to learn to “think outside the box.” The mass production model required a high degree of specialization. There was no requirement that an employee make connections between what his job was with what other workers were doing on other tasks. Lean production requires workers to create interdisciplinary teams, as it were, in order to understand the implications of how their job impacted upon other’s jobs. The rhetoric supporting the BRT educational agenda and the new, TQM structure they are attempting to put into place reflects the CEOs’ concern that both teachers and students learn to “think outside the box.” But in looking at the actual standards being written, it seems as if American CEOs are unwilling to let go of “the box.” They seem to merely want to make “the box” bigger in the hope that high school and college graduates can learn to “problem-solve” without learning to “problem-set.” The Business Roundtable’s choice of an example from the National Center for Education and the Economy’s (NCEE) New Standards reveals their confusion over the concept of problem-solving. In the example, the language of problem solving easily turns into simple task completion. According to the NCEE, “hands-on learning” and “long-term group projects” develop “problem solving” (sic). In developing the “tools and techniques for working with others,” elementary school students can Work with others to achieve a shared goal, to promote on-the-job learning and to respond effectively to the needs of a client. "The student works with others to complete a task; that is, the student * reaches agreement with group members on what work needs to be done to complete the task and how the work will be tackled . . . * consults with group members regularly during the task to check on progress completing the task, to decide on any change that is required, and to check that all parts have been completed at the end of the task." The “tasks” listed above will not lead to problems to solve and the development of the dispositions necessary to solve those problems unless the students have an interest in them, i.e., unless students are allowed to choose topics and teachers work to arouse the students’ curiosities. State standards and tests are less and less likely to provide room for student choice given the BRT’s desire to make the standards as “specific” as possible. The BRT Virginia coalition, for example, referred to this narrowing of choice as “more specific and rigorous.” The 1989 standard: “Students will explain how scientific and technological changes have made major impacts on society” was rewritten in 1995 to be “more specific and rigorous.” The 1995 version: “The student will analyze and explain the effects of the Industrial Revolution, in terms of . . . how scientific and technological changes, including the inventions of Watt, Bessemer, and Whitney, brought about massive social and cultural change . . .[not environmental or political?]” [my emphasis] (BRT, 1996; p. 25). The latter version is, indeed, more specific, although teachers are left to figure out what is more “rigorous” about analyzing as well as explaining. While the BRT seems intent on promoting standards which reduce problem-solving to task completion, it also seems equally intent on eliminating the concept of interpretation. Both reveal a refusal to relinquish control of the goals of education as well as the goals of production. When writing standards, BRT advises business leaders to make sure that “educational jargon” is eliminated for the purpose of “clarity.” The illustrative example provided reveals that what is being eliminated is the need for students to construct their own meaning from the text. BRT (1996; p. 22) writes: "Here is a draft standard for reading in Washington State that was rewritten after business leaders and others complained it was difficult to understand. The revised version uses clearer language, for example, omitting the phrase, “construct meaning,” which is educational jargon. Washington Standards, Before Revisions Essential Learnings: Reading 2. The student reads to construct meaning from a variety of texts for a variety of purposes. * comprehends important ideas and details * analyzes and synthesizes * thinks critically * reads to learn new information * accesses information to solve problems and perform tasks Washington Standards, After Revisions 2. The student understands the meaning of what is read. In order to meet this standard, the student will: * comprehend important ideas and details * expand comprehension by analyzing, interpreting, and synthesizing of information and ideas * think critically about authors’ use of language and style, purpose, and perspective, and know how to apply ideas to new situations" What is made “more clear” in the revision is that the business community wants to control what students and their workers “think critically” about. By replacing the student’s need to “construct meaning” with the requirement that the student must “understand the meaning of what is read,” the authors of the Washington Standards are narrowly defining what “thinking” means. A further indication of this appears in Education Trust’s analysis of the reading portions of a variety of standardized tests. The Education Trust’s team of analysts considered the New York Regents exam and the Massachusetts state exam (MCAS) to be the “best” exams of all available state K12 tests. These tests stood out because they had “written, open response questions” to “sophisticated and varied reading passages”. Such a characterization, however, is misleading. “Sophisticated” apparently means “dense with single spaced text and no supplemental decoration” (Education Trust, 1999; p. 23). “Open response” is misleading since the reading pieces were “clarified” for the students by a set of multiple choice questions which “acted as scaffolding to support students through their timed writing tasks” (Education Trust, 1999; p. 21). To emphasize that textual meaning comes from an “authority” rather than from the dynamic interaction between reader and text, the analysts strongly urged that the writing required on tests should not be dominated by “personal and reflective essays” since “the writing needed in college and in work is not primarily concerned with personal feelings or ruminations, but with analysis, reporting, summary, argument, persuasion . . . connected either to reading or observation” (Education Trust, 1999; p. 25). Apparently students are to be trained to write about what is given to them in a way that does not involve their interests or values. While the demands of lean production require workers who can “think actively,” the new standards for the New Economy reveal the limits CEOs wish to place on such thinking. Instead of investing in worker-organized study groups, newsletters, institutes and other supportive structures that was done in Japan after World War II, American CEO’s expect the public school system to take on the responsibility of producing employees who are highly skilled at and highly motivated to solve complex problems. That they think systemic reform will accomplish this reveals the extent to which they cannot truly problem-solve themselves. For if they could, the CEOs of the BRT would realize that their goals of maintaining control in a hierarchal system and having motivated, disciplined, and thoughtful employees are mutually exclusive. |