The Blueberry Story

Just found The Super's Blog from a comment here.  Neat.  But, ... on it they have "the Blueberry story."  Read it if you like.  It involves a businessman lambasting a group of teachers during "inservice" (really?  how in the world did that happen?).  Afterward, a wise English teacher straightens him out by getting him to see that he can reject bad ingreadients for his blueberry ice cream, but the school cannot reject "defective" students.  I am sure readers of this blog (both of you!) can point out the fallacy in this analogy.

Comments

[Dave Shearon]

Leigh, I agree with you that most accountability systems do not produce appropriate data for comparisons of schools, much less teachers. (For one that does, see http://www.shearonforschools.com/TVAAS.html.

For more discussion on The Blueberry Story and my take on it, see http://daveshearon.typepad.com/daveshearon/2005/03/the_blueberry_s_2.html.

[Leigh]

The point of the article is that we cannot fit all students into the same mold. Yes, schools need to be accountable, but what has to be recognized is that not all students are starting with the same background. Students who grow up in poverty stricken areas are not as ready for the demands of education. Students with learning disabilities need more time to develop skills. I am an educator in a public school, a tough alternative center where over half my students have had problems with drugs and alchohol, many are enamored with the gangster life, others have been abused by their parents and live in group homes. I had one girl with a wide array of problems because her mother is a meth user, and used during her pregnancy. We made huge progress with her, but because a standardized test only cares about how close they are to where they are "supposed" to be, that growth is not seen by the public. All they see is that she failed, and we are to blame. Here is another example: Teacher A works with "high risk" kids, much of her class reads far below grade level. She implements all the best practices, does everything she is supposed to do to nurture these children and develop a love for reading, lowest (based on test scores) children gain 2.5 years of educational growth, but her class causes the school to fail because they still didn't have a high enough number that performed at grade level.
Teacher B works in a less diverse school setting. She has very few students who are struggling, some students who are average, and if she does a pretty good job guiding them towards learning the objectives, they will do just fine, as well as a handfull of students who would are already performing "at grade level". When testing time comes around, the scores indicate that the kids that just needed a little guidance made their 1 years growth, the kids who were struggling made about 1.5 years, and the handful of what we usually call gifted students, made 0 years growth.
How do we fairly judge teachers? Under the current system, teacher B would be called a succes, and teacher A would be called a failure. Teacher B hardly had to do anything but be there, while teacher A was tutoring after school, developing lesson plans tailored to her students needs, working her tail off. That is what the blueberry story is about. We can't always judge teachers or education based on the year to year outcome. It is a service, we have to provide an opportunity for all children to develop their potential...

The service industry example is flawed. You use a health club...how many health clubs force clients to attend? Every member of a health club chooses to be there. There is no requirement to attend. A college or university would be more comparable to a service organization. A public school is not.

[Super_Blogger]

Well, since I started this "fruitful" discussion by posting a link to The Blueberry Story, I thought I would add my .02.

Everyone is being way too analytical. The main point to the entire story is one I am sure we can agree on. The point is that people keep trying to make analogies between "business" and "school" and very few of them fit very well. Hence all the satire pieces on The Super's Blog. That, my colleagues, is the point, at least from my view.

Vollmer's story is that he used to be critical of public schools and think that he had the answers. The closer he got to public education the more his perspective softened. It is now to the point where he travels the country trying to help build confidence in public schools when others are trying to tear it down.

The Blueberry Story points out one difference. We accept all children with open arms and hearts. We don't, can't, and won't send any "blueberries" back. We work with people, not products.

There are no "throw away" children.

The Super

[Paul M. Jones]

Well, the entire ice cream concoction is the education end-result ... not sure how the cream, flavoring, fruit, and churning fit into the various portions of the learning process ...

[Dave Shearon]

Paul, you are so close! Children aren't blueberries, but neither are teachers! One problem with this analogy is that it uses a product production and sales business as the model. Teaching is a service industry. So, let's use a service example:

A health club: the clients would be the children and the trainers would be the teachers. What are the trainers selling?"

Here's another hint. It's a common saying from the world of sales. "No one ever needed a 1/4 inch drill bit -- what they needed was a 1/4 inch hole."

[Paul M. Jones]

I mentioned this at Carnival of Education, but I'll say it here too. The "blueberry story" drives me nuts. Children are not blueberries; they are consumers of ice cream. *Teachers* are blueberries, and should be returned or released when defective or of insufficient quality.

[Jennifer]

Good point. I have heard Vollmer at a couple of events and have liked what he has to say.

He asserts, for what it's worth, that the school does sell public confidence. This is his angle as a businessman, he can show us how to increase confidence in public education.

[superdestroyer]

But to use the blueberry analogy, what schools do not is slap the permium sticker on virtually everything (graduating people who cannot read or write) and then criticize anyone who wants to test the product (the students) for quality.

[Nancy]

Are you alluding to the fact that education is compulsory and ice cream is not?

[Dave Shearon]

That's a good point, Nancy. Humans are not "defective." But the falacy in the analogy is far more fundamental. Here's a hint: The businessman sold ice cream. What do schools sell?

I'll post another hint tomorrow, also.

[Nancy]

The best I can think of is that the fallacy lies in the use of the word "defective"...as in we shouldn't be comparing our students to defective berries because, of course, children are not "defective"...
Have I hit it?

[EdWonk]

I've enjoyed the Super's Blog for some time. They've contributed to The Carnival Of Education. It's a lively read.