Optimally Crazy in Education
Last week I wrote about the potential benefits of signaling crazy outcomes during a negotiation. If a credible signal is sent it can shift the power of the negotiation in favor of the side willing to do crazy things, like walk away from a lucrative deal or blow up the world. Negotiating in this manner may be effective but it creates an adversarial environment where compromise is difficult to achieve, both sides cannot truly trust each other and brinksmanship pushes each side to extreme positions they would not necessarily adopt in more flexible situations. Think about the Cold War or the current right-left political climate where extreme positions are regularly adopted and celebrated.
This type of negotiation also exists in the education arena. Negotiation is an enormous part of education policy and contributes a great deal to the rancor that exists in much of the debate.
There are many issues in education that many people don’t agree on. I’m going to oversimplify things to a huge degree here so bear with me. What much of the conflict boils down to is a labor vs management relationship…with a whole bunch of other stuff added on. And it defines the debates we have. It pushes people to extremes they don’t normally occupy. Think about the major issues in play in education reform today. There are concerns that charter schools and