Failure IS an option

Failing actually is a good thing. When we pay attention to what went wrong, and why, it only and invariably prepares us to succeed in the future.

I am about to do a very unpopular thing — I am going to take issue with a well-loved, passionately affirmed expression that education folk love to invoke. “Failure is not an option” has filled individuals and organizations with hope, fortitude, and good old-fashioned fire in the belly since it was made legendary in the 1995 movie “Apollo 13.” In that film, Ed Harris, playing NASA flight director Gene Kranz, delivers a stirring speech to his team, passionately declaring that “failure is not an option” in their efforts to get the imperiled Apollo 13 astronauts home safely. Thankfully and due to a multitude of heroic efforts, all three astronauts did finally return home safely. “Apollo 13” was a monster hit, and, ever since, “failure is not an option” has become a rallying cry for any effort that is both really hard and really important.

Just to set the record straight, I loved “Apollo 13.” I also appreciate and admire the sentiment behind the expression. Although most of us have never been trapped in space, many of us have been in situations where the stakes are very high and there is a lot on the line, so much so that you just have to believe you can make it work. Since educating students is also really hard and really important, it is easy to understand why these words resonate with educators. We want to believe the mythology that education has the power to save anyone, no matter how dire his or her situation may be, and that all it takes is a group of committed people who refuse to leave anyone behind.

Why are education leaders and policy makers so unwilling to accept that some amount of failure is predictable and that lessons learned from failure have some important utility?

Unfortunately that kind of Hollywood ending is pretty rare in education. Despite good intentions and plenty of hard work, organizations, programs, and policies fail as often as they succeed. But, unlike other industries, educators do not see the value in these failures nor do they feel very comfortable talking about them. When a program or policy fails in education, there is very little effort devoted to figuring out why. Instead, much energy and brainpower is devoted to political posturing, finger pointing, and blame gaming. While this is satisfying to some, it usually does nothing to contribute to a knowledge base that could presumably inform future policies and programs.

A different approach

Other industry leaders approach failure quite differently. For example, the tech sector devotes enormous resources to research and development, a process that acknowledges failure as an essential component. As any engineer, scientist, or data geek will tell you, the process of trial and error, the act of learning from and building on each mistake is key to success. The same holds true for the medical industry. Can you imagine a group of doctors or researchers declaring at the outset of a clinical trial that failure is not an option? Within these sectors, innovators and leaders know that failure is and must be an accepted part of the learning process.

I have often wondered why education leaders — policy makers in particular — are so unwilling to accept that some amount of failure is predictable in all endeavors and that the lessons learned from failure have some important utility. Perhaps the problem begins with the expectations and goals that are set at the outset of most education reform efforts. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress agreed on a lofty set of education goals that included ensuring that all children were ready to learn (whatever that means) when they start school and that the high school graduation rate increase dramatically to at least 90%. All of this, by the way, was supposed to happen by 2000. While the politics and passion behind those goals were powerful, did anyone really think the nation’s public education system — inequitable in its funding structure and struggling in its ability to close a complex and persistent achievement gap — was ready and able to produce such results? Were we not in some way setting ourselves up for one thing we declared an unacceptable option?

The same holds true for the expectations laid out in No Child Left Behind. Despite a chorus of apprehension and concern from experienced educators and policy makers, the Bush Administration set a bar for all students to be proficient by the 2013-14 school year. I am not sure anyone believed it was possible to accomplish that goal, but the politics at the time were such that it became the law of the land. And now that the deadline is here, and we are nowhere near reaching that high bar, it is as if that goal never even existed.

Uncomfortable with failure

It is strangely ironic that educators and education policy makers — people who have devoted their lives to the learning process — are so uncomfortable with failure. One explanation may be that no one in this field wants to think that they are not doing everything in their power to help and serve students. The commitment that drives most people into education is not about money or prestige. It is about trying to make a difference despite the many challenges that exist within the system. I suspect that level of commitment is exactly what Gene Kranz and his now immortal NASA team must have felt as they tried to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts home.

Somewhere in the process, there has to be room for failure. Only then do we have a reason to hope for success.

But in truth, the space program was built on failure. Another great film about the space program, “The Right Stuff,” (based on the novel by Tom Wolfe) told the story of the original Mercury astronauts and the birth of the American space program. One of the best parts of the movie is when the viewer bears witness to all of the mistakes, failures, and catastrophes that occurred on the way to sending men to the moon. With every mistake or miscalculation, there was a retreat back to the drawing board and a concerted effort to learn from that mistake in order to make the next attempt better for it. It would be wonderful if somehow educators were allowed that same kind of latitude.

As educators and policy makers, many of us have sat at the right hand of failure. We helped develop programs and policies that had the best of intentions but, in the end, went nowhere. In his wonderful book, I Used to Think . . . And Now I Think . . . (Harvard Education Press, 2011), Harvard University education professor Richard Elmore asked 20 education leaders to reflect on past school reforms. The authors wrote about strategies they once believed in or theories they once held dear, bravely confronting the fact that they may have been wrong or that time and experience had changed their way of thinking. The spirit of Elmore’s book is not about giving failure or miscalculation a free pass, rather it is about the value gained from experiences that are good and bad.

The road to the top

As a devoted reader of The New York Times Corner Office column, I have read countless interviews with leading CEOs about how they operate and what the road to the top has been like for them. To a person, each one talks about being influenced far more by their failures than their successes. I can’t imagine any education leader saying this publicly. The culture of education would simply not tolerate it. If we expect education leaders to take our children and our schools to new heights of learning, then perhaps we should more firmly embrace what NASA teams have known since they first sent a man to the moon: Somewhere in the process, there has to be room for failure. Only then do we have a reason to hope for success.

CITATION: Ferguson, M. (2013). WASHINGTON VIEW: Failure IS an option. Phi Delta Kappan, 95 (4), 68-69.