Talking to the Other Side

By Jim Vail

Readers of Second City Teacher have to read this one.

You know, we constantly lament how God awful corporate education reform is for the obvious reasons.  It is a way to privatize education, bust the unions, over-test children, close the public schools and implement a radical program that does not take into account the well-being of children and their special needs.

But I just spoke with an old friend from my university days who turned into a successful CMIO - or Chief Medical Information Officer.  He is the guy implementing a computerized system in the hospitals and doctors' offices to make health care more efficient.

Let me tell you, hearing him first speak about efficient services via the collection of data told me this is exactly what the education reform people are thinking.

And let me add, it does sound exciting.

He told me how the doctors can respond more quickly to the patients' immediate needs, and thus avoid more serious problems down the road.

His work has been funded by the government, via the Obamacare program.  Basically, the health care industry's version of Race to the Top.

Once you pinpoint the problems in the doctor's reports, you create a much more efficient system and save costs, and ultimately help more people, my friend says.  

Just like the use of data in the schools, which will free up teachers to focus on the real problems students have and respond to them immediately. 

It clicked when he said enforcement.  To get the doctors to buy into a program where there is extra work to learn the computer programming, the government is funding the incentives and enforcement.

Just like Race to the Top is putting real teeth into the No Child Left Behind (no more unfunded mandate), by funding the enforcement to make the teachers more accountable.

I had some questions.  

Obamacare was implemented with the approval of the insurance and drug companies who milk the system, charge ridiculous drug prices, deny claims and force many Americans into bankruptcy via astronomical medical charges.

How, then, could the insurance companies go along with a new Obama-sponsored health care system that would guarantee more efficiency, but would then eat away at their profits?

Easy, give them 40 million new customers via the mandate to insure everyone (no matter how lacking the mandated health insurance is).

Or how about Obamacare making it illegal for the elderly to go north to buy cheaper drugs in Canada, home of socialized medicine?  So much for the free market.

Another giveaway to the drug companies to get them on board, my friend said.

Let's say this, those at the top have wonderful ideas on how to make this world a much better place.  And there is truth to what they say.  

To say we are not more efficient teachers today due to this enforcement, and fear, and incentives, is to deny a certain truth about mandating efficiency.

You can get caught up in it all, as long as you're not one of those dinosaurs they want to eliminate.  

But we need the critical thinkers today.  That is, in my view, the most important skill you can teach a child today.

So critical thinking involves asking many questions.

But to ask those questions, you need to fully understand the plan at the top.