The future belongs to the competent

It’s only the third week of January, but I’ve already read three articles that have really hit home. The first was a column in The New York Times by the conservative writer David French. I don’t always agree with him, but I generally find him to be smart, compassionate, and self-reflective. And this quote from the article knocked me out by capturing the essence of our moment here in San Francisco:

The future won’t belong to the populists, the progressives, the liberals, or the libertarians. It will belong to the competent, and the first movement that actually meets the practical demands of the American people is the movement that will establish an enduring political future.

This is also a good description of how I frame my work as a math teacher. There can be no equity of outcomes if we don’t ensure that our students develop their own competence and a deep trust in their abilities to pursue it. 

Teachers cultivate competence in students using two “channels” of instruction. The first channel is what most educated adults think of when they think about “good teaching.” It’s the channel of textbooks and homework and skills development and standardized testing, as well as of third-grade literacy and eighth-grade math outcomes. It’s important, but superficial, which is why it’s never enough on its own to make powerful and lasting educational change.

But there’s a second channel of instruction that’s always “on” as well, and experience has taught me that it’s far more important to children’s learning — even though it’s a lot more subtle. This is the channel through which we adults actually model the kind of competencies we are telling students they’re supposed to be developing. 

This is the acid test. The unconscious mind transmits signals and messages through our actions that reveal the truth of our commitment. 

Children are brutally honest mirrors. No matter what messages you think you are telling your students (or your children), you are always also constantly sending them a stream of other unconscious messages — and these messages reveal to the watching mind whether you are walking your talk … or not. 

Children watch and they implement what they see revealed in the unconscious transmission channel of your actions. Their judgments about consistency are inescapable.

This is the main difference between a deeply impactful teacher and a merely efficient one. The impactful teachers long ago stopped trying to hide from or cover up their inconsistencies. They learned to face the mortification of their own exposed reality, and they made the conscious decision to learn from them. 

If you’re committed to this path of teaching and learning as a teacher or a parent, you have to learn how to lower your defenses, integrate feedback, and move on. Otherwise, you never improve — and you never improve learner outcomes.

Like it or not, this is how children learn. They watch how adults behave as learners, and they use what they see to judge whether what you’re preaching is worth mastering and carrying forward. 

This kind of honesty is bracing. It asks you to judge yourself truthfully. Are you making a positive effort to become the kind of competent adult who brings positive change into the world — or not?

That’s what makes it the most profound and powerful channel for student learning. 

The future belongs to the competent.

It’s also a useful summary of what’s been missing in our work as citizens and as stakeholders in the activity of our Board of Education.

As a voter, as a taxpayer, and as a teacher, it’s been maddening and exhausting to watch SFUSD’s Board of Education screw up the same kinds of things year after year, month after month, meeting after meeting. Those same old bad habits keep raising their loathsome reptilian heads. But if decades of meditation practice have taught me anything, it’s that the only way to do better is to notice and reflect on what you catch yourself in the act of doing — notice and reflect, notice and reflect, because noticing is what ultimately shifts the energy.

And being a human of a certain age, I’ve also learned that sometimes you just have to find what you can control that will help you to stay grounded on the path toward progress.

That’s why when I read John Trasviña’s column on the board’s first hiring mess of the year and Meredith Dodson’s excellent analysis, I knew exactly what I needed to do.

As a teacher, one of my superpowers is my ability to take objective criteria for improvement and turn them into an actionable rubric for learning and growth. So that’s what I did.

Now I’m asking for your help.

Being citizens, it’s our job to keep our elected officials accountable, but how do we do that? We need to invent feedback mechanisms that accomplish this goal. I’m hoping this new SFUSD Board of Education Meeting Viewer Scorecard can give us a starting point for having this particular public conversation.

Hear me out. Some cities have professional football teams. We have a world-class dysfunctional school district. So let’s start where we are, learn from it together, and we’ll keep moving forward from there.

I propose that we turn this Viewer Scorecard into a virtual data analysis event. This seems more constructive than a drinking game. Every two weeks, after the Board of Education meeting, I’ll post the Viewer Scorecard form for that meeting. Everybody can vote. Parents can vote! Voters can vote! Kids can vote! Pets can vote!

The point is to gather feedback — regularly and across time — and provide that feedback to our Board of Education.

I’ll post our results within a reasonable period, say, a week.

Here’s the Viewer Scorecard for the Jan. 14, 2025 meeting. I promise not to object to your assessments, as long as you promise not to object to mine. We shouldn’t have to be the same. That’s what being in community is all about. 

What I do care about — and in this, I care very deeply — is that, as a community, we start measuring how our Board of Education is doing in its regular meetings. It’s our job to help close that feedback loop.

Following Dodson’s structure, I’ve created a feedback system for Board of Education meetings. It asks five easy questions based on the criteria San Francisco parents identified, and it measures your assessment of those criteria on a simple, five-point Likert scale. There are also a couple of bonus questions, which I reserve the right to share or not, depending on whether the responses seem helpful or just gratuitous.

Our purpose is to start down a path of continuous improvement.

I’ll post links to the results on the San Francisco parents Facebook page so we can keep track and discuss them together.

Given that SFUSD’s structural deficit is so large we have to lay off 535 teachers in February, it’s pretty clear that voting once every four years will not be enough. We’re going to have to wade into this mess.

I hope you’ll watch the meetings — or the rebroadcasts — and tell us what you think.