'Keep it simple, stupid' sometimes is too simple

While some proposed solutions are compellingly straightforward, our education system requires harder, more complex fixes to provide the higher achievement and equity we seek.

Engineers, designers, and lifestyle gurus have embraced the expression “Keep it simple, stupid” (also known as the KISS principle) for over a half century. Clarence Leonard “Kelly” Johnson, a Lockheed Martin aircraft engineer, is credited with coming up with the phrase back in the early 1960s when he was trying to capture the idea that most systems work best if they aren’t overly complex. KISS became a popular design principle for the U.S. Navy, and corporate leaders, designers, and everyday folk across the globe soon embraced it.

While the expression rings ever true today — just think about the multitude of passwords you need and forget on a daily basis — some aspects of life simply are not simple. Social concerns like health care, immigration, housing, and education are among the most challenging for policy makers and legislators. Despite efforts of would-be politicians to find a 10-word solution to every problem on earth, some issues are so complex and have the potential to have such long-term effects (good and bad) that they demand solutions that are equally matched.

At the national level, politicians, policy makers, advocates, and foundations have for years tried to find the silver bullet solution for the nation’s education woes. Sadly, most never lived up to the promises and expectations. The National Education Goals, originally developed by the nation’s governors during the first Bush administration and later incorporated into the Clinton administration’s Goals 2000: Education America Act, defined eight laudable goals that public schools should meet by 2000. Unfortunately, policy makers put more thought into the goals than into how state and local leaders would achieve them. Suffice to say the year 2000 came and went — and all we got was a No Child Left Behind T-shirt.

How can we expect one educator, no matter how gifted, to consistently overcome poverty, abuse, or countless other factors that hinder student achievement for large numbers of students?

NCLB, with its simple promise to ensure that all students would be proficient by 2014, also failed to meet its mark for reasons most educators know all too well. While the history of unsuccessful efforts to improve public schools is too dense to catalog, most share a common characteristic: They tried to find a simple solution to a very complicated and nuanced problem.

Which brings me to Donald Trump . . .

Donald Trump has managed to conflate not one, but two of the nation’s most complicated policy issues: education and immigration. Offering remarks about immigration in late August, Trump expressed disdain for the DREAM Act (pending legislation designed to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented children living in the U.S.) and vowed to end birthright citizenship. He also has said the U.S. should deport all undocumented citizens, characterizing them as a drain on public schools and other local services. When asked if he meant to deport illegal children as well as adults, he said he would “keep the families together.”

This kind of oversimplified answer to an enormously complex problem does not help anyone. Does candidate Trump mean that everyone gets deported, no matter how long they have been here? In his effort to “keep families together,” will Trump deport children in the midst of their education? I can’t imagine anything being more of a drain on public dollars than tossing away years of educational investments made in children who want to learn and work hard to become legal citizens. Add to that a majority of Americans, despite their precocious enthusiasm for Trump, don’t seem to agree with his stance on immigration. A recent Gallup poll showed that 65% of Americans favor a path to citizenship for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.

In Trump’s worldview, complex issues like education and immigration can be fixed easily by simply “getting tough” or building a bigger wall. Trump has perfected the art of “simplifying” by willfully ignoring complicated details and predictable consequences. For him, keeping it simple means leaving the policy mess for someone else to clean up.

Obama, too

In the spirit of nonpartisanship, another example of a policy fix far too simplistic for the problem it was meant to address is the Obama administration’s use of teacher evaluations to drive improvement in schools. Acknowledging the research base showing that teacher quality has a huge effect on student learning, the Obama administration developed the competitive Race to the Top grant program and made teacher evaluations — based on student test scores — a major component. At the heart of what would become (and still is) an epic controversy in the annals of education reform was the plan to use student test scores to evaluate the performance of each teacher. Teachers who did not “perform” faced dismissal.

While the history of unsuccessful efforts to improve public schools is too dense to catalog, most share a common characteristic: They tried to find a simple solution to a very complicated and nuanced problem.

For many, this plan seemed to unfairly place all of the responsibility for educating students in one simple place: at the feet of their teachers. When you consider the complex assembly of actors and conditions that influence a student’s ability to learn and grow in school, it’s not hard to understand why the administration’s single-minded focus on teachers met with such anger. How can we expect one educator, no matter how gifted, to consistently overcome poverty, abuse, or countless other factors that hinder student achievement for large numbers of students? Did the administration really think a competitive grant program would simply and effectively address the need for a high-quality teacher in every classroom? Suffice to say, the administration’s plan did not play out as expected. However, the proposal did shine a light on the need for a more nuanced (and yes, complex) conversation about how best to fairly evaluate teacher performance.

And ESEA . . .

Finally, we have the issue of the appropriate federal role in education. As Congress continues to muddle through the reauthorization process for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the boundary lines of federal power are once again at the center of negotiations. For some, a decade of NCLB testing requirements followed by the Obama administration’s perceived overreach on issues like the Common Core and the NCLB waivers now demand a federal role that is decidedly back bench. For others, a strong federal role remains the nation’s best bet for promoting and supporting equity.

Unfortunately, instead of taking time to analytically reflect on what federal investments in education have or have not worked, the simple solution is shaping up to be “pass the buck down to states and districts.” Leadership and involvement at the local level is likely not a bad thing in our federalized system of public education, but asking understaffed state departments of education with limited resources to somehow manage even more work and responsibility seems like yet another overly simplistic solution to complex issues and circumstances.

The fact is that our nation’s public education system and its promise to provide a free and equitable education to ALL its citizens is anything but simple. It is a complex endeavor that has and will continue to challenge America for decades to come. Now more than ever, the demographics of the U.S. present schools with an increasingly diverse population of students. At the same time, the global economy is changing what it means to be ready for college, the workplace, and civic life. Despite all the change, uncertainty, and challenges that stand in the way, we still seek equity and justice for all students. Even when we fail, at least we do so striving to meet worthy goals. There is no way any of this is going to be simple.

Citation: Ferguson, M. (2015). WASHINGTON VIEW: “Keep it simple, stupid” sometimes is too simple. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (3), 74-75.