Ted Mallory

January 20, 2021

Dr. Jill Biden
Secretary of Education
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20202

Dear Mrs. Secretary,

I’ve been a middle school/high school educator for nearly thirty years. I believe that we desperately need to alter the direction of our schools in the United States. 

In our rush to standardize learning and testing and demand accountability from schools, we have created a hyper-competitive culture of intolerance for uncertainty, demand for comparison, and homogeneity. We rely on extrinsic, behavioral rewards and punishments, as if students were subhuman animals. These demands have exacerbated already crushing problems of inequity, inequality, discrimination and unrealistic expectations on children. 

Is it any wonder that our nations’ levels of anxiety and depression are reaching unprecedented levels? The Center for Disease Control cites a 2018 article in the ‘The Journal of Pediatrics,’ as reporting that the diagnosis by primary care providers of children aged 6–17 with anxiety disorders increased from 5.4% in 2003 to 8% in 2007 and to 8.4% in 2011.

Meanwhile, a push to privatize education in America promises to increase our racial, economic and ideological divides. According to a 2015 study by Stanford University’s Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, the proliferation of charter schools in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina led to an increase in “stratification of schools and segregation of students by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, special education designation, behavioral attributes, and neighborhood.” They even found a “decline in test scores by the stratified tiers of schools in the charter system, with the overwhelming majority of white students attending the top tier schools.” They also noticed that due to a variety of admissions requirements, “exclusion methods,” and state educational policies, instead of parents or students genuinely having “school choice,” schools were selecting or choosing not to admit students.

Before the advent of No Child Left Behind in the late 1980’s and early 90’s, what made the American public school system the envy of the world was our innovation and the creativity and individuality of our graduates. We need to return to the progressive education philosophies of the early twentieth century.  Our emphasis should be on nurturing and encouraging curiosity, flexibility, adaptability and a tolerance for ambiguity. Above all we have to find ways to instill intrinsic motivation in children. 

The Harvard Business Review reported on a 2018 study which concluded that “self-initiated and future-focused action to change oneself or the situation, can positively benefit individuals and organizations.” Employers aren’t looking for workers who can successfully answer standardized test questions They’re looking for creative problem solvers.

Just last week, I had lunch with an attorney for a major university hospital and a regional newspaper publisher. The lawyer had been mayor of a city of about 8,400. The publisher has a circulation of about 20,000. She recently became a U.S. citizen after coming here legally from Nicaragua nearly thirty years ago. He was born to affluent white parents in central Iowa. 

They both agree that a problem with both our schools is that we use nineteenth century methods to teach students how to live in the late twentieth century, when we need to be using twenty-first century methods to prepare kids for the twenty-second century.

Instead of an industrial-age, standardized, hierarchical, “assembly-line” model for schools we’ve been pursuing for decades suggested to us by political lobbyists and well intentioned billionaire philanthropists, we need to consider a community-based, organically organized model like the “agricultural” ecosystems suggested by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D in his book ‘Creative Schools.’

Ironically our conservative, corporate, capitalist inspired model is based on command and control of administrators and governments. What we need are unique, adaptive, “climate controlled,” grass-roots systems relying on collaboration of teachers and local stakeholders, including students and their families. It’s ludicrous how teachers are untapped resources in their own schools under our current model.

Work by education psychologists and theorists as diverse as Abraham Maslow, William Glasser, Jim Fey, and Ruby Payne reinforce Robinson’s contention that we need compassionate communities which support learners and teachers while making them feel included and valued. We need to differentiate and whenever possible, individuate learning so that we stress relevance without sacrificing rigor. And we need to make sure that we open doors of opportunity for learners regardless of their background or their parent’s incomes. 

Opportunity breeds hope and hope yields optimism, which has always been what truly made America “exceptional.” Striving for equality, liberty and justice for all are what have always fed America’s optimism.

We need to open doors of economic opportunity, cultural opportunity, political, social, and personal opportunity. We’ll do that if we holistically promote child development with concern for their health, recognition that all aspects of their development is interdependent and if we care for them as individual human beings rather than regarding them as statistics or mere data figures.

Two excellent concepts which we should use are Sugata Mitra’s philosophy of child-centered learning and Simon Sinek’s philosophy of servant-leadership. These should be required learning for all teacher and school administrator candidates.

Good luck to you and your husband as you repair and rehabilitate your respective offices.

Sincerely,

Ted Mallory

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Adamson, F., Cook-Harvey, C. & Darling-Hammond, L. (2015). Whose Choice? The Processes and Effects of Charter School Selection in New Orleans Stanford, CA: Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.

Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
Vol. 6:221-248 (Volume publication date January 2019) First published as a Review in Advance on November 7, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012218-015302

Bitsko RH, Holbrook JR, Ghandour RM, Blumberg SJ, Visser SN, Perou R, Walkup J. Epidemiology and impact of healthcare provider diagnosed anxiety and depression among US children. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. Published online before print April 24, 2018