Human resource frameworks in education

Education (human Resource Frame)

Cuban, Larry. (2004). The Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can't Be Businesses. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press.

American democracy is founded upon the principle that an educated citizen is required to make the institutions of government truly functional. It is also assumed that commerce functions better with an educated workforce. To guarantee that all individuals, regardless of their background, have access to schooling, America has long had a strong commitment to making equal and fair access to public education possible for all its citizens. However, as with so many aspects of American public life, perhaps because educating the workforce to make America 'competitive' is used as a justification for expenditures on education, business has had a disproportionate influence upon school policy, ever since the 19th century.

In his book the Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can't Be Businesses Larry Cuban examines the long, but in his view, often futile and even destructive relationship between public schools and modern enterprises. Cuban begins with a study of the current relationship between schools and business, which is highly influenced by organizational theory, as well as provides a broad historical overview of business involvement in public education throughout American history. He ends with recommendations that stress the need for a return to an ethical rather than an economic paradigm when examining the needs of school systems.

Today, CEOs are called in to 'improve' schools by increasing scores of student performance on standardized exams, graduation rates, and college placements. These management theorists and gurus apply Total Quality Management buzzwords like 'Zero Defects' and 'Continuous Improvement' to school performance even though the idea of an entire student body with 'Zero Defects' is absurd. Cuban opens the preface his book the Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can't Be Businesses with a telling anecdote that illustrates the core principle embodied in the title of the book. Imagine a premium ice cream company that produces blueberry ice cream receives a shipment of rotten blueberries. While a company can discard or return an inferior ingredient product, public schools do not have that luxury. Students must be educated, the troubled and disadvantaged as well as the gifted. This is the inherent problem with 'benchmarking' and measuring school performance based upon statistical gradients, or awarding teachers merit pay.

Standardized testing like 'No Child Left Behind' assumes that the success of schools can be measured in numerical, preferably dollar terms and that by withholding funds to poorly performing schools, and denying educators and students their 'bonuses,' like an underperforming employee the school employees will strive to do better to get more money. But what if a teacher is teaching students who are malnourished, for example? Setting a benchmark for reading performance may not be the first needed step for her students; instead she may need to ensure they are fed in body before they are fed in mind. Standardized testing assumes that teachers are not trying to help students, but quite often they are, although when compared with the performance of students from other schools, their efforts may not be evident on paper.

Because of 'No Child Left Behind' even good teachers may feel forced to teach to tests if the funding for their school district depends upon it, a demonstration that standardized testing reflects a lack of respect for teacher's professional judgment 'on site.' Standardized test preparation also takes time away from creative activities that can really engage students with learning, and may even better reinforce skills needed in business, like critical thinking, writing, and working with others. Often teachers know better than administrators or managerial professionals what is needed in their classroom. One of the problems with education is that although schools superficially seem to be structured on a hierarchy similar to a corporation with a board of directors, not all managerial principles apply to schools. Schools are not factories and students are not end products. A teacher may know better what a classroom needs than a principal, a principal may know better the challenges of his or her school than someone comparing the school's results to a very different institution in another county. Finally, slashing costs is not the ultimate goal of the Board of Directors, as it is in a corporation beholden to shareholders.

According to Cuban, we have been expecting both too much and too little of our schools. We expect to engineer the future of our children changing the curriculum and using schools to provide the solution to economic problems, or making schools and teachers competitive with one another through 'voucher' systems and merit pay. We think that by increasing the days students spend in school we can quickly remedy long-standing problems like American students' failure to compete with their peers on math and science tests internationally. We think schools can improve a faltering economy, and widespread socioeconomic injustice. But we still do not address the unique needs of students in schools. The principles of education are based on individualization, and good teachers treat every classroom as a unique environment. Businesses are based upon standardization, and adhering to regimented procedures. In business there is a clear goal -- to make a profit, unlike schools. Schools have different goals with different students. For some students, preparing to enter college is the goal, for others it is a vocational career, and for some of the very poorest children, simply getting regular meals and medical care, so they can feel secure enough for a few hours to acquire basic skills is the most realistic goal.