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OurBlook interview with Joe Puggelli, head of the Seattle Academy
 Many people in the United States are highly concerned about improving the quality of education. They believe schools are underfunded and students are underperforming, and some have shown their dismay by joining the voucher and charter school movements. What do you think is the state of education in America ... its strengths and weaknesses?
JP: The great strength of American education is the great strength of this country: We are the one truly universal nation, the only one in which a broad and deep human diversity ... thank God for immigrants ... does not turn back upon itself because of its differences but is instead united and transformed by the theme of The American Dream. This rich human laboratory produces the creativity and spirit of innovation that has saved us before and will save us again, despite the bumbling of politicians and bureaucrats, who, at best, favor the right answers to the wrong questions and, at worst, serve their interests over the interests of our young people.
The great weakness of American education is that we have do not have enough outstanding teachers, we do not know with any precision how to measure effective teaching, and we therefore find it difficult to distinguish the mediocre from the good and the good from the great, and we therefore don’t know how to hire effective teachers; nor do we have a clue about how to train people to be teachers; nor do we know how to develop mediocre teachers into good teachers and good teachers into great teachers; nor do we in administration know how to support good teachers in a way that makes them want to stay in the profession.
We have, metaphorically, a national educational “team” with talented athletes and a coaching staff that is not bringing out the best in our athletes. Fortunately, because of our great strength, our educational athletes are so good that even poor coaching cannot screw them up too badly.
What are the goals of the educational system, and are they what you think they should be?
JP: We are so confused that I do not know what our national goal is. I know what it should be: to do the right thing for each kid. And to do the right thing for each kid, we have to have teachers who know the kid well enough to know what the right thing is for that kid.
How has the major school reform movement ... No Child Left Behind ... impacted either positively or negatively the educational system? Should it be continued or scrapped? Are there any improvements that could be made?
JP: The “No Child Left Behind” act reminds me of the operations plans I was given in Viet Nam: the plans sounded good, looked good, and made for great briefings and presentations, especially by people who never got their boots muddy, but the plans bore little if any connection to the reality that we saw on the ground. And we lost.
You are the head of a 6-12 independent school in Seattle. Please tell us about the accomplishments you have achieved at your school and what problems there might be that you wish to tackle.
 JP: We have tried to replicate strength I described above and to eliminate the weakness: We get interesting kids from interesting families from interesting backgrounds (we believe in a broad-based definition of diversity, including diversity of learning styles and, very important, socio-economic diversity). We have a unifying theme: to prepare kids for college and for life; and we have the kids do a lot of interesting things; we give them outstanding coaches (whom we hire carefully and develop assiduously); and we try to avoid doing stupid stuff to de-motivate the students or the teachers; and we produce interesting graduates who are skilled, self-reliant and engaged.
Educationally, how does the United States compare to other countries? What methods and conceptual concerns from other countries could the U.S. incorporate into its educational models?
JP: Clearly other countries (Japan and China, for example) train kids to do well on standard tests (which are almost as effective in measuring reality as were the operations plans in Viet Nam). But I notice that the best foreign students frequently come here for college and graduate work and many stay here.
How might social media and ever-changing technology improve classrooms and the learning environment for teachers and students? How might they be impeding the educational process?
JP: When we started our laptop program years ago (we were the first in Seattle and among the first in the nation), we said that we would, come what may, follow this polestar: The educational dog must wag the technology tail, not the other way around.
Dr. Bill Burnett of Stanford notes that kids today, because of technology and social media, have in some ways much better social and collaborative skills than we did. But he also points out that kids today often have inferior “physical social skills,” i.e., the ability to function well face to face and/or in a group. We believe that one can combine physical social skills with Internet social skills.
Will education in the U.S. get better or worse?
JP: It depends on whom we listen to. But as I said, our national team is good enough so that bad coaches can’t screw it up too badly.
Is there anything else you'd like to say about any aspect of this topic?
JP: Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students of a very good teacher will learn a year and half’s worth.
(Joe has a B.A. in Russian studies from SUNY Binghamton and a master's degree in Slavic languages and literature from Penn State. He served in the Army and CIA, and coached football and wrestling in New York. Besides being principal of the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, he teaches English.)
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