Do you have to be anti-change to be pro-business?

A few months ago, I heard an interview with one of the leading metal baseball bat manufacturers. They were lobbying hard against regulations that would require little league players to use wood bats.

Today, Chris point us to this story about emissions. The car makers continue to lobby hard, or even sue, over emission rules. Wendy's, as previously discussed, is working hard against a rule in New York requiring they post calorie counts. It's common wisdom that government regulation is bad for business, and especially bad is regulation that requires change.

I don't get it.

A few years ago, the FTC changed the law about how wide apart the bars in cribs for children had to be. Wide spaces between bars end up strangling kids and breaking arms. The law only applied to home cribs, which meant that hospital cribs weren't covered. Hard Manufacturing, my favorite hospital crib company, took the regulation to heart and alerted every hospital in the country that the cribs they were using weren't deemed safe for home use... so why use them in a hospital? What do you think happened to crib sales? It was a huge few years as the cribs were replaced (and the kids ended up safer).

Wendy's did the best when they were growing with the launch of salads. Not when they were copying McDonald's over burgers. Change is their friend.

If I were a leading bat company, I'd formulate a 'slower' metal bat that would be just as safe as wood... and unbreakable too. What a marketing coup! Then I'd lobby like crazy for change.

If I were Ford Motor, I'd lobby as hard as possible for the strictest emissions regime in the world. If you're losing the game, change the rules. Start over. Be the only major car company to produce 100% zpev or hybrid cars.

Business as usual is almost always lousy marketing, because there isn't a lot of room for growth. The opportunities kick in when an external force requires a brand new story, when consumers are choosing to pay attention because they've got no other choice.

It's easy to argue against change. It disheartens shareholders and even employees. But external change is the most likely lever of growth, because it puts you back on the agenda of attention.

- Seth Godin [Seth's Blog]
9:27:55 PM    

91.2% of Class Time in Their Seats.

USA Today is reporting on a new comprehensive study of elementary school classrooms that is being published in this week’s Science magazine. Aside from not being overly engaged, the study of over 2,500 classrooms showed that “The typical child in the USA stands only a one-in-14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience.”

Did I mention I have two kids in elementary school? Did I mention I already knew this?

More engaging are some of the nearly 100 comments that the article has garnered due to the new USA Today bloggy style. I didn’t read them all, but I found this one especially charming:

Perhaps the problem is the fact that the formerly drugged up hippies of the 60/70s is the gerneration that are control of not only the government, but also run the colleges, universities and news outlets. These are also the same peace and free love people who do these studies.

Well, there ya go.

Technorati Tags: teaching, schools, education

Listen to this podcast [Weblogg-ed] [Bill: Education - International]
9:25:27 PM    

TAFE sees future success in company partnerships. The head of TAFE Tasmania says the future of the organisation lies in working with local corporations to create unique training courses. [ABC News: Business Stories]
9:22:55 PM    

Testing teachers?.

Labor’s plan (released yesterday) to test the literacy and numeracy of teacher education graduates has - to my surprise -¬[sgl dagger]met with approval from the Australian education unions. According to the Age:

But Labor’s plan was welcomed by the Australian Education Union and the Independent Education Union, whose federal secretary, Lynne Rolley, said: “What teachers want is a genuine commitment from the government to work collaboratively to improve the literacy and numeracy standards of all students.”

What puzzles me about this is how a non-zero fail rate will be politically sustainable. Suppose we tell 5% of teacher education graduates that although they have studied teacher education for 2 (or 4) years, they cannot work in a school because their literacy and numeracy standards aren’t up to par. Would¬[sgl dagger]Australian universities¬[sgl dagger]really stand for it?

The other thing to bear in mind when thinking about additional teacher tests is that they have a dual role: both as a quality filter and an administrative burden. In a report on US teacher certification, Sara Mead and I summed up the evidence on the latter point:

On the other hand, there is substantial evidence that certification barriers prevent some individuals from entering the profession. Obtaining teacher certification, even through an alternative route, typically requires prospective teachers to make significant investments of time and money in completing coursework requirements for teacher certification. Public Agenda found certification and education requirements are a major reason young people decide not to become teachers, and that 55 percent would be [base ']Äúa lot[base ']Äù more likely to consider teaching in the absence of these barriers. Since those with the most attractive non-teaching options are most likely be deterred by administrative impediments, high barriers likely lower teacher professional quality. If teacher training requirements have relatively high pass rates or are lacking in rigor, but are administratively burdensome, the net effect can lower teacher quality. That is what researchers Joshua Angrist and Jonathan Guryan found to be the case. Also, while teacher testing increased pay, they found it did not result in an increase in the proportion of teachers drawn from high quality colleges, nor did it boost the fraction of teachers who taught in their field of specialty.

Bottom line: a literacy and numeracy test with a 100% pass rate will lower teacher quality, not raise it.

[Andrew Leigh]
2:05:06 PM    

Plane lands on golf course. Theage.com.au - Wed Apr 11, 04:57 am GMT [News4Sites - Australia Education]
1:58:00 PM    

Teacher feud results in gashing wound. Theage.com.au - Wed Apr 11, 05:06 am GMT [News4Sites - Australia Education]
1:57:23 PM    

Labor plan to lift skills of teachers. Theage.com.au - Wed Apr 11, 05:00 pm GMT [News4Sites - Australia Education]
1:56:56 PM    

Reconfiguring government-public engagements: enhancing the communicative power of citizens. This working paper considers the implications of emerging trends in online communication, such as social networking tools and blogs, for governmental engagement with the public. [Creative Economy : Topic Articles]
1:49:32 PM    

Labour Force, Australia. Unemployment rate for March 2007 decreases to 4.5% [Australian Bureau of Statistics]
1:36:46 PM