Would you like fries with that?

1. Would you like fries with that? Created by Paul Newton from Tom Fiddaman’s blog: http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

2. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. The underlying problem space is very messy and hard to articulate quickly, but I think the essence is simple. Educational outcomes are substandard, creating pressure to improve. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

3. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. In at least some areas, outcomes slipped a lot because the response to pressure was to erode learning goals rather than to improve. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

4. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. One benefit of No Child Left Behind testing is to offset that loop, by making actual performance salient and restoring the pressure to improve. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

5. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. Other intuitive responses (red loops) also have some benefit: increasing school hours provides more time for learning; standardization yields economies of scale in materials and may improve teaching of low-skill teachers; core curriculum focus aligns learning with measured goals. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

6. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. The problem is that these measures have devastating side effects, especially in the long run. Measurement obsession eats up time for reflection and learning. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

7. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. Core curriculum focus cuts out art and exercise, so that lower student engagement and health diminishes learning productivity. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

8. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. Low engagement means more sit-down-and-shut-up, which eats up teacher time and makes teaching unattractive. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

9. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. Increased hours lead to burnout of both students and teachers. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

10. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. Long hours and standardization make teaching unattractive. Degrading the attractiveness of teaching makes it hard to attract quality teachers. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

11. Education is a mess, and well-motivated policy changes are making it worse. Students aren’t mindless blank slates; they know when they’re being fed rubbish, and check out. When a bad situation persists, an anti-intellectual culture of resistance to education evolves. http://blog.metasd.com/2010/05/would-you-like-fries-with-that/

12. Poor education diminishes future educational opportunity, and thus the money and knowledge available to provide future schooling. The nest of reinforcing feedbacks within education meshes with one in broader society. Note: the sketch appears not to match the wording in the sentence above. I think I’d reword the sentence as follows: Poor education diminishes future educational opportunity, by reducing the money and knowledge available to provide future schooling.

13. Economic distress drives crime, and prison budgets eat up resources that could otherwise go to schools. The nest of reinforcing feedbacks within education meshes with one in broader society.

14. Dysfunction reinforces the perception that government is incompetent, leading to reduced willingness to fund schools, ensuring future dysfunction. The nest of reinforcing feedbacks within education meshes with one in broader society.

15. The nest of reinforcing feedbacks within education meshes with one in broader society. This is augmented by flight of the rich and smart to private schools.