Treat the Symptom. And then?

Day after day, week after week, the news stories keep coming:

• Narcan, approved for OTC sales earlier this year is starting to appear on pharmacy shelves.
• Government and non-profit groups work frantically to find alternative sites to “house” the unhoused as the state and city begin sweeps to shut down homeless encampments.
• Another state has approved universal free breakfast and lunch for students.

And so on and so on.

Stories like these share two critical components in common.  The first is that they are describing solutions to address an immediate need, an identified crisis.  The second is that they are classic examples of “treating the symptom” rather than attacking the root cause that produced the symptom in the first place.

It is easy, and fashionable in certain circles, to criticize solutions that “treat the symptom” and to cast the people that propose them as short-sighted and reactive, contributing little, if anything, toward the ultimate solution of the underlying problem. From one perspective, that criticism is well-founded. “Treat the symptom” solutions are often nothing more than stopgaps, unlikely to solve the complex, or wicked, problems that are causing those symptoms.

From another perspective, however, sometimes you need a stopgap, desperately. Right now. Increasing numbers of people from all walks of life are dying from drug overdoses, unhoused people in cities across the county (even relatively small cities here in Maine) need a safe place to live today, tomorrow, and the next day; and kids are coming to school hungry.

I also find the three examples presented here interesting for what they represent.

The Opioid Crisis is complex. Increasing the availability and accessibility of Narcan and Fentanyl test strips are “harm reduction” strategies, which along with other harm reduction programs such as sterile needle exchanges and supervised consumption sites (i.e., safe spaces to consume already obtained drugs) are considered a critical “pillar” in a multi-faceted approach to dealing with and solving the drug addiction and overdose problem in the United States. Nobody is suggesting Narcan as the sole approach or solution to the Opioid Crisis.

The recent experience here in Maine when the city shut down one homeless encampment demonstrated how these complex problems can be interrelated. Only a few of the unhoused people in the encampment site accepted the alternative shelters offered because of issues related to drug use. Sometimes, it’s not enough to focus on only one aspect of the problem even when addressing an immediate crisis.

Universal school breakfast and lunch programs are fascinating on several levels. First, there are the equity and fairness arguments offered in support of and in opposition to bills proposing such programs. Second, there are what I refer to as the “non-food” benefits offered as reasons why the programs are necessary. Top among these is ending “food shaming” in schools due to kids being singled out for receiving free/reduced price lunch or for the type of foods they bring from home. (Anyone who has ever brought a sandwich with Italian table cheese to school knows what I’m talking about.)  Following close behind are arguments that a single policy for all students reduces the logistical and administrative burden on schools. Third, of course, there is the immediate crisis to be solved argument: kids are coming to school too hungry to learn well.

Finally, although it takes me a little far afield from the purpose of this post, it’s also possible to view universal school breakfast and lunch programs as just the latest example of one of the most fundamental questions related to beliefs about public education in the United States:

Can the offerings and environment children experience within school offset any and all disadvantages those children may face outside of school?

Even if you think that the answer to that question should be obvious, you will probably agree that policies and practices across the past 60 years make it clear that the answer has been anything but clear and obvious. Anyway, a discussion for another day.

The first key takeaway from today’s post is that there are immediate problems and crises that must be addressed, and the solution to those problems may not be directly related to the big picture problem that you are trying to solve.

Therefore, solve those immediate problems to the best of your ability (with Narcan or motel rooms or free lunches), but don’t stop there.

Feed kids so that they aren’t hungry. Ensure that schools are inclusive, safe and free from all types of violence, including gun violence. Those are prerequisites.

Then what?

It was while considering the “then what?” question this week that I was reminded of two principles relevant to schools and school accountability.

The first hearkens back to a lunch time conversation with Rich Hill. (Rich never ate lunch alone in his office, and a highlight of working with him at Advanced Systems and the Center was joining him at a table in the lunchroom – all were welcome.)

On this particular day at the Center, Rich had just returned from a meeting and couldn’t wait to share an observation made by one of the meeting participants. (I believe that it was Tom Fisher, widely recognized as “father of the FCAT” program in Florida, although it may have been Bill Schafer, regarded by me as “father of the talking pencil” – a short-lived, but highly appreciated feature on the Maryland assessment website.)

The simple and astute observation was that you cannot have the same people (or a single set of people) responsible for solving immediate crises, short-term challenges, and long-term problems.

Aside from the fact that the three cases most likely require different skill sets, the simple fact of the matter is that immediate crises are always going to take precedence and demand all of the team’s attention because they are “immediate”, and they are “crises” – it’s all kind of right there in the name. And if there’s one thing that we know about public schools, it is that there is a steady supply of immediate crises.

For several years, that principle informed thinking about the type of issues that I chose to tackle while at the Center as well as my thinking about the role of the state, district, and schools, in education reform.

The second principle is that principals (i.e., schools) are always going to be focused on immediate crises; noting that it is the term “immediate” that is more relevant than the term “crisis” in this instance. Local educators are always going to be primarily focused on meeting the needs and learning of the cohorts and classrooms of individual students who are in front of them today. That is their job, and in most cases, that is their vocation. That’s why they are there day after day, week after week, year after year.

And therein, lies our Catch-22 with regard to state assessment accountability.

Catch-22

Catch-22: a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.

For any number of good reasons, we have decided to focus accountability at the school level. One of those reasons is that school is where the teachers and kids are and where learning takes place.

While accountability has been limited primarily to Title 1-centered indicators like achievement in reading and mathematics, the gap between what schools were focused on (teaching kids reading and mathematics) and what we held them accountable for (achievement in reading and math) wasn’t that great.

Now, however, there is a push to change, to expand, what is included in accountability systems.

As long as we are going to keep state and federal accountability policy centered at the school level (i.e., school accountability), however, it is only fair that we focus those accountability systems on issues related to the “immediate” issues that are (and will continue to be) the focus of local educators – that is, the learning and well-being of individual students.

But the more accountability resources and attention we devote to immediate crises, the less we have left for those short-term challenges and long-term problems at the heart of education reform.

It’s a wicked problem.It’s a Catch-22.

The solution seems to be that we are going to have to adopt a much more expansive view of accountability.

When designing accountability systems, we will have to think outside the “school box” we have created and make thoughtful decisions about who is responsible for what and whom should be held accountable for what all throughout the education system.

That approach is going to require a lot more than simply changing a few indicators in our current accountability systems.

It’s not going to be easy to fix accountability, but we need to do it sooner rather than later. It’s an immediate crisis.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay