http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03educ.html

In the New York Times Education Life pull out today there is a listing of "10 Master's of the New Universe" profiling ten masters degrees that will be popular, I guess, in the coming years.

The link above is about masters programs that combine the MBA with a traditional masters in education. Harvard has a new program, Stanford has offered one for quite some time evidently. The point is, the piece makes a point of stating that these degrees are about getting people to turn troubled schools around.

Seems that, according to the tone of the piece, that the big problem in failing schools, especially urban schools is leadership. So of course as we have watched the business world crumble over these last two years, the university elites who teach teachers and rarely get into a classroom themselves decree that what we need in the public schools are MBA trained leaders. You know, the ones that lead great companies such as Enron, AIG, and Lehman Brothers. This is not to say that all MBA recipients are crooked operators or in some way not appropriate candidates to become educators. But, this perception that education needs to be saved from educators is specious at best.

Does medicine need to be save from doctors? Does the law need to be saved from lawyers? (OK...may be you got me on that one.) The piece does not offer one educationally sound reason an MBA trained principal of a school would be preferable other than the ability to fundraise and talk with other MBA type people. The Harvard Program wants to attract people that may be were thinking of going on to law of b-school but instead want the chance to change education. The toxic environment that currently exists in many schools between faculty and administration will surely be changed for the better by someone with that background.

What is an MBA any how? Does it really hold as much cache now as an MD or a JD? Am I to believe that a recent MBA graduate from one of these programs has as much or more to offer than an administrator that came up through the ranks and possesses a Ed.D.? Having worked in the corporate world, and seen what the environment is about, what it does to people, I can say, I am not so sure.

May be, a better way to fix education is to take its best practitioners and see if they are up to the task of leading? May be principals, central office administrators, and school boards can be on the look out for those motivated, goal directed self starters that want to change education (they do exist) and enable, encourage, and guide them in ways that can be of assistance to themselves and the education community as a whole. Yes, the system has problems and hopefully all of those people out there that are changing careers will bring in some will become good, effective educators. But, please spare me the condescension. We need and deserve better than that.

In summation

I have some essays to finish up for my doctorate applications, so I will use this as a little warm up for that task.

Though I try to resist the temptation to wax nostalgic in general, or mark the big transitions that are based on our some what random parsing of time, I find myself awake early as usual with the new year and the passage of time on my mind. While it appears to have become fashionable for the media to bash the expiring decade (and with good reason, I might add), I have to say that until the bashing started I did not feel any worse or better about it that any other I have lived through.

Then again, does it really matter? Life goes on, change happens regardless. Sure, these arbitrary milestones bring about the sort of criticism and assessment to which I refer. I remember it well from ten years ago. And the ten years before that too.

So, instead of tearing apart and picking on everything we did in the past, why not actually focus on the future. That is not to say forget the past. Respect and accept and move on. No matter what, there is work to be done and we can ill afford to chalk it up to the random numbering of our time keeping systems.

So, I don't know what to call the last decade, and don't care. (Though, Aughts, does seem a bit dandy to me...) As I look at the decade coming up there are many things to be enthusiastic about. Change is the one constant. The end of one thing means the beginning of another. Platitudes, to be sure, but that does not mean that there is no truth to them.

Happy New Year and get to work. Holiday season is over and our problems and challenges still await us. I for one, can't wait.

First Thoughts

False modesty is unbecoming, so I will not go on about how I am not sure that I would even want to read my own posts. Suffice to say, I am hoping that someone finds something interesting here, but more than anything, I would like this to become some sort of document or archive, for my own edification and archival purposes, whatever they may be.

Thanks for checking in.