A Minnesota public high school was so committed to obeying its fire drill policy to the exact letter of the law that it forced a female student–dressed only in a swimsuit, and sopping wet–to stand outside in the freezing cold for ten minutes. As a result, she suffered frostbite.
Administrators wouldn’t let the student retrieve her clothes, sit in a car or wait inside another building, according to WCCO.
The trouble began when a small science experiment triggered the fire alarm at Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. Fourteen-year-old Kayona Hagen-Tietz was swimming in the school pool for health class at the time. Her clothes were in her locker, and a teacher told her that there was no time for her to change. Hagen-Tietz was rushed outside–still wet and dressed in only swimsuit.
It was 5 degrees below zero in St. Paul that day. With the windchill, it was 25 degrees below zero.
Hagen-Tietz asked to wait inside an employee’s car, or at the elementary school across the street. But administrators believed that this would violate official policy, and could get the school in trouble, so they opted to simply let the girl freeze.
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Does No One Think In The Education Field?
I've read recently that common sense isn't a blessing, it's a curse--because you have to put up with the multitudes that don't possess it. Among those multitudes are the administrators at this school:
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17 comments:
Come on Darren, those administrators were doing the right thing. It's the organization they work for that's skewed and in being skewed skews the perceptions and actions of its employees.
Public education administrative personnel don't get patted on the head for showing initiative, thinking outside the box or being daring. They get no benefit from taking chances or exercising their judgment. Quite the opposite in fact. So they act like the administrators in the story you're quoting but the fault lies with the institution of public education.
No. I still believe in individual responsibility, and in choosing (what you may perceive to be) the harder right instead of (what you may perceive to be) the easier wrong.
Here's my problem, though. In this case, obviously the school was wrong. If noting else, doing swimming, in the winter, in Minnesota. But ... you very selectively support zero tolerance laws ... sometimes, they make sense to you, sometimes, they don't. Pick a stance: and the correct one is, zero tolerance is never, ever , ever correct. Let the freaking administrators apply their judgement, in EVERY case. That's their job ... if they do it badly, remove them.
That poor kid! I'm shivering just reading about it!
You're certainly entitled to believe what you will but that's not my point.
The public education system inclines its employees to act as those administrators in Minnesota acted. That's because the public education system, by its nature, doesn't reward creativity, industry, self-reliance and the acceptance of responsibility.
The structure of public education makes putting that girl in a car an act of courage. It shouldn't be but the public education system doesn't reward the application of common sense and it does reward slavish, rule-following.
If you want those administrators to act differently then the system they're employed by has to change. Otherwise they have no reason to change and won't.
Hmmm...where have I heard that before Darren?
"...could get the school in trouble"
I wonder what a slam dunk lawsuit will do?
wow....just wow.
allen .. i suppose you're referring to me, but I think you made exactly the point i was making. Allowing administrators to use their judgement WOULD be a major change to the system. It may need more, but it would be a start...
No max, I'm not referring to any particular individual but to the "ground", organizationally speaking, on which you stand.
It tilts in the direction of risk- and responsibility-avoidance. But there's no major change that could be made to the public education system that would change that. The bias is built into the structure of public education and as long as that structure exists administrators will be rewarded for slavishly following idiotic rules and even insisting on more idiotic rules, stupid edu-crap ideas will prevail over ideas that actually improve education, ideas the reduce costs will generally be ignored and ideas that require budget bumps will be touted as the next, great thing in education.
The more immediate reason for this bias is the institution of the school district. In the larger sense though this bias flows from the political source of the public education system but by excising the central administration from public education schools immediately become more responsive to parental concerns thus encouraging just the sorts of actions and thoughts a school district suppresses and punishes. That would be charter schools which do quite nicely without the services of the central administration.
Long-term though the pressures of politics is unavoidable and if it isn't central administration functionaries making their selves indispensable it'll be state education administrators seeking the same sort of power. Ultimately, the solution's to get rid of public education and it's my belief we're in the opening stages of the process of doing just that.
maxutils: Competitive swimming has been a winter sport (varsity and JV) in high schools for decades. Unlike the other places we have lived, where both swim in the winter and have meets together, MN has girls swim in the fall and guys in the winter. However, USS teams are year-round and often train in the same pools used by HS teams (and, in schools with pools, also by PE classes). The short-course season is fall-winter and the long-course season starts in May and runs into August. There are lots of problems with this incident but use of pools in the winter is not one of them.
allen (in Michigan) does make a valid point. People respond to incentives, whether for better or for worse. And the structure of institutional incentives within the public education bureaucracy rearward a slavish adherence to established policies and procedures—regardless of real-world consequences. This is, unfortunately, a common feature of large bureaucratic organizations everywhere. The adherence to established policies and procedures becomes an end in and of itself, completely divorced from whatever purpose or goal those policies and procedures were originally intended to serve.
That being said, however, I think Darren is also quite right in insisting that we should expect administrators to exercise at least some minimum level of good judgment in the discharge of their day-to-day duties, especially where the welfare of a student is directly involved.
For the administrators at the school in question in this case, my preferred remedy would include tar and feathers. That’ll change the incentive structure.
Anonymous ... thanks for the info ...nonetheless, teachers usually are aware of times when fire drills are to occur -- so choosing to have them in the pool was bad judgement on the teacher's part, or ineffective communication on the administration's part. A real fire? well, okay. But when was the last time we had a school burn down with anyone in it?
allen, i meant referring to my comment, not me, personally ... but if you've been following my posts over the years, and I know you have...I believe both in public education and incentives. I support publicly funded education (It should be required up to a certain level, whatever we choose that to be ...I like K-12), I support unions, and I support vouchers. Not charter schools -- that, like every voucher program I've ever seen, is completely elitist. The people who apply to charter schools are the parents of people who would succeed anywhere, because their parents care enough to try to get them away from the kids whose parents care enough to get them away from the kids whose parents don't ... and those schools usually have rules that require significant buy in. Same thing with most vouchers ... parents still have to pay taxes to support everyone else's education, and then can receive a voucher for an amount much less than what it costs to pay tuition ... so those who deeply care, and are better off, benefit. So ... let's go with a REAL voucher system. Take whatever amount the state currently uses for education; cut each parent a check, per child, each year. Let them spend it as they wish at any school that meets minimum standards ... while maintaining a public school system which will always accept that check as payment in full ... let the competition begin. But the mere act of needing to sign that check over, even to a public school? Automatic buy in; no more slavish responses from schools fighting for students. And... you're paying no more in taxes than you already do.
I'm not so much disagreeing with Darren as pointing out the "man-up" solution isn't really a solution at all. It may be an expression of impatience or anger with the results the current system produces but it won't do a thing to change the system and thus the results.
Administrators are run of the mill human beings, there being no particular winnowing process, so if we want administrators to act as these administrators should have acted the environment in which they work has to have the right structure of accountability, responsibility, incentives and punishments. The current system obviously doesn't provide that environment so it's the system that has to change if you want the those employed by the system to act differently.
"Tar and feathers" may be eminently satisfying to call for but it won't do a thing to change the behavior of public education administrators.
allen-- I think you're being to kind to administrators. I've got your back on this one. In my career, I've worked for three who were really good. Two of them, did everything to support logic and common sense, always. (both of them hired me, too.) The third ... new what was the right thing to do, and usually did it ... unfortunately that one wasn't the head person, and sometimes got vetoed. Everyone else? As the saying goes ... those who can, do; those who can't teach; those who can't teach, administrate.
One of three a bad apple? Doesn't sound like such lousy odds to me and I've never worked in the government sector; only the private sector where poor management's supposed to have dire consequences. Turns out, not so much although in defense of the private sector if you are lousy enough for long enough the headsman's axe will fall.
To respond to your observation though, in an environment where not much is expected of people it really can't come as a surprise to discover that not much is delivered.
Besides, as I pointed out above, there's no winnowing process that separates those who can, and those who can teach from those who can't do either. If there is any filtering process it's certainly informal and probably an outgrowth the sort of thing that rationalized making that poor girl stand around in a wet swimsuit in sub-zero weather.
I can see, however, how over time the same factors that led the administrator to do what he/she did would also tend to drive out people who can't bring themselves to make that sort of decision.
Actually, not one out of three ... more like 2.5 out of 12-15, were worth their pay ...
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