1. What is an outlier?
“Outlier” is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience.
This past week, I finished Malcolm Gladwell’s newest nonfiction release, Outliers: The Story of Success. If you are unfamiliar with Gladwell’s work, he straddles a unique set of literatures to feature research driven conclusions about unique behavioral trends in the public sphere. His two previous bestsellers, Tipping Point and Blink, paved the way for a new genre of literature that has sometimes been criticized for flippant conclusions and poorly founded generalizations. In spite of these critiques, I have always enjoyed Gladwell’s works and happily include Outliers as one of my favorite books of 2008.
In Outliers, Gladwell examines the understanding of success in the United States as seemingly incomplete. He argues, convincingly, that we as a public need to be aware of the larger macro forces behind individual success stories. When asked why he wrote Outliers, Gladwell gave the following answer…
In the case of Outliers, the book grew out of a frustration I found myself having with the way we explain the careers of really successful people. You know how you hear someone say of Bill Gates or some rock star or some other outlier—”they’re really smart,” or “they’re really ambitious?’ Well, I know lots of people who are really smart and really ambitious, and they aren’t worth 60 billion dollars [referring to Bill Gates]. It struck me that our understanding of success was really crude—and there was an opportunity to dig down and come up with a better set of explanations.”
My hope is not to provide a review of Outliers, but instead to apply Gladwell’s thesis to a pressing problem that he begins to address in regards to education. How can we take and apply the lessons of Outliers, the idea that success is not simply a function of genius and hard work, but rather a combination of hard work and unique macro circumstances that prepare a person to be a successful outlier?
Let’s take Gladwell at his word and apply his thesis to an important pressing problem of today – education reform. You might wonder, how do you apply the concept of success at the individual level to a massive subject like education reform? Success at all levels, argues Gladwell, comes from exposure to certain experiences. In one of the final chapters, “Marita’s Bargain: ‘All my friends now are from KIPP’,” Gladwell talks about the presence of KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter schools and their attempts to transform large under performing urban areas.
At KIPP charter schools, a few lucky children are given the opportunity to attend an innovative school that works to mitigate several programs associated with urban education: for example, the lack of after school programs and insufficient extracurricular opportunities. Children at KIPP schools are given increased opportunities to work on their problem solving skills, additional time at school where they can interact with their teachers, provided a vision that prompts students to think about a future college degree, and (in one of the most interesting concepts) have school on the weekends and limited summer vacation.
All of these unique opportunities are incredibly limited in large urban public school districts. In my brief time as a teacher with Teach for America, I have seen firsthand the failings of large urban school districts. Does KIPP accurately address all of the missed opportunities that children in urban schools face? Probably not every single opportunity; however, the creators of KIPP schools worked to create an environment that would provide children the chance to escape decaying urban school districts.
The following questions arise…
- What important lessons from KIPP can be implemented in larger struggling urban school districts?
- Should the school year be altered to create additional extra-curricular and academic experiences for low socioeconomic and under performing school districts?
- In what ways can education policy at the national level mimic the successes at the local level of a KIPP charter school?
- In what ways can policymakers reform earlier education initiatives to create an environment that provides additional opportunities for low performing school districts? How can we make every public school offer the chance to make a child an outlier?
I don’t claim to have any answers to the previous questions; however, I hope that after reading Gladwell and looking carefully at the problems, we can start to identify trends that can transform the face of public education.
Jan. 5, 2009 at 10:08 am
John
A few follow-up questions. If gladwell’s lessons are drawn from case studies of high achieving individuals, do we need to modify the applications before we apply to a highly different situation. 1) For example, even though intelligence is a smaller part of the equation than in other people’s situations, it still has to play a role… so should we craft different situations for people of different levels of intelligence?
2) Is our goal with schools to create ‘outliers’ or just capable individuals for life/ the workforce? (e.g. not everyone will be a bill gates… so what should the goal be?)
3) I think the extra-curricular question is an interesting one… I wonder what types of sports develop some of the character/ leadership intangibles that make a difference for kids motivation and effort (sports, music, etc.)… could those or should those be required?
Jan. 5, 2009 at 11:15 pm
“2) Is our goal with schools to create ‘outliers’ or just capable individuals for life/ the workforce? (e.g. not everyone will be a bill gates… so what should the goal be?)”
To what extent does KIPP depend on outliers? Could KIPP function if it were staffed by the sorts of teachers we actually get?
Jan. 5, 2009 at 11:58 pm
good point Tuuk… I wonder if ‘great teachers’ are more crucial to top education than systemic curriculum change
Jan. 11, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Peter and Peter, sorry for the slow reply.
I’ll first try to answer Peter B’s questions. In the text, Gladwell does not reference the KIPP situation to illustrate that all KIPP students are brilliant children. In my opinion, he uses the KIPP analogy to provide an illustration for what it looks like to create educational facilities in the inner city that are capable of producing outliers. Children that attend large, public urban schools face more obstacles to receive a quality education than say a child in a well staffed suburban school district. To this extent, children that may have the chance to be an outlier in society are not given the opportunities that say a Bill Gates or another similar outlier may have had when they were a child. Again, KIPP seeks to provide opportunities for children to remove themselves from their current situation in the city.
In response to the extra-curricular question, finding ways to channel children into healthy, productive outlets is very much needed given how the family system has collapsed upon itself. In the book, Gladwell cites research showing that inner-city children learn more on average each year than their suburban high performing peers. However, the children from the city do not have the same opportunities that their suburban peers have for extracurriculars and during the summer months (i.e. going to the museum, summer camps, reading with parents, library visits, etc.) KIPP seeks to reverse this trend by providing the children with those opportunities built into their charter education program. I would advocate for required extra-curricular activities to some degree. Provide the kids with a variety of options (athletics, music, dance, poetry and literature) and let them choose their path that they find most acceptable. Figuring out the logistics could prove cumbersome; however, if children do not have the necessary systems in place at home to be a functioning member of society then perhaps our school system can take up part of the challenge. Perhaps I can address this fully in a new post if people find the topic interesting.
Tuuk, I believe competent teachers are a necessity in the public school system. Capable school teachers are desperately needed. In respect to the quality of teachers at KIPP, the schools employ a variety of teachers from a variety of backgrounds. If you are not familiar with KIPP, it was started by two Teach For America alums. They model the best practices used by TFA teachers across the country and have created a school system that embodies the TFA vision from the very early Pre-K levels.
One thing unique about KIPP, they hire first year TFA Corps Members. From my own personal experience being a first year Corps Member, I am by no means a veteran teacher and have had very little formal education towards a teaching degree. A lot of veteran teachers would probably look at my credentials and consider me an unqualified teacher given my background. Given all that information, I could still be hired at a KIPP school if they thought I fit with their vision for high standards and significant gains. I think KIPP schools rely on highly motivated, driven educators who want to make a difference in their kids lives – whatever the cost. Maybe these types of teachers are outliers in the education field, I’m not quite sure. However, I think any teacher is capable of working at a KIPP School as long as their vision coincides with significant education gains for every child.
Feb. 5, 2009 at 4:37 pm
[...] New Outliers in Urban Education [...]