Brianna’s Blog: ED5100/ED6150

As we already established in class last week, much of the text on the MCPS website we are looking at has a very business-like tone. As I read on, I found even further evidence of this. In the section entitled, “An Introduction to Baldrige,” we discover that these educational theories are based on business criteria developed by former Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldridge. Apparently, someone decided to adapt them for an educational setting at some point, though the connection is fairly unclear. There is one sentence in particular that is rather disturbing. In describing the origination of the Baldrige initiative, the website says, “Designed to help American business and industry gain a competitive edge in the global market, the Criteria reflect current best thinking on organizational practice.” I couldn’t help but be bothered by this correlation between business organization and education. In a way, I guess this viewpoint makes sense, however, if one accepts that the American public school system is designed to churn out a very specific kind of student. Students that unquestioningly accept American ideals and learn to promote them are the gems of a public school system in a country that uses its’ schools to manufacture consent. While this sounds extreme, it is important to question what is being taught and promoted in public schools. On this MCPS website, there is a mixture of governmental agenda and student friendly, “learner-centered” jargon that sometimes disguises it. What at first appears as forward thinking and even somewhat progressive educational ideas are countered with idealistic and unrealistic claims about what Baldrige will do for students.

In thinking specifically about “classroom culture”, I think there are some valuable points within this Baldrige system. It stresses the importance of creating a classroom culture that best fosters students learning needs, and also about establishing this culture from day one. I agree with this idea, but can also see how it might be hard to tell teachers so prescriptively how to manage their classes. I think much of the classroom culture must begin with and come from the teacher. Being that every teacher is different and has his/her own distinct ways of managing a class, there will be very different ways in which classroom culture is established and maintained. In its’ discussion of establishing ground rules, there is a link to a picture of ground rules for an art classroom. It seems to be an elementary classroom, from the looks of it, and includes classic rules such as: treat others as you would like to be treated, listen carefully when the teacher is talking, follow directions etc. While these are fine rules, what about the Baldrige system guarantees that students will follow these rules more than in a “normal” classroom? Is the idea that if the students are asked to come up with these ideas in collaboration with the teacher at the beginning of the year, they will be more likely to follow them? On a smaller scale, this was implemented at Cook last semester when the students were asked what we needed to have in a successful classroom, and rewarded when they followed those rules. Their behavior did not seem as perfect as the MCPS website alludes student behavior to be under such a system. That is one of the biggest criticisms I had with this website. It seems to sugarcoat everything in order to make the Baldrige system appear to be the perfect solution to all classroom woes. There is a link to a word document that covers some basics of establishing ground rules that I found pretty straightforward and helpful. I appreciated this part of the website simply because it was realistic; and while I appreciated some of the ideals of classroom management that the MCPS site emphasized (classroom that fostered trust etc.) as a future teacher, I could not relate so well to its’ failure to acknowledge an imperfect system.

As a government run site promoting a public school system, I have to admit the overall tone makes sense. I wouldn’t expect a site like this to highlight problems or failures of a district, so the optimism has a place. I am curious to look around now and compare this to other school district sites. I don’t know that many other sites will really go into this much detail and depth about a learning initiative or mission such as Baldrige. I’ll report back any interesting findings…