Response to the Principal's Letter.

Your children went home with a letter from Mrs. Dupont regarding the "ubiquitous" program, the Leader In Me. In the letter the principal praises the program for many of its assumed positive qualities, but it contains many discrepancies and false claims.

Mrs. Dupont mentioned St. John's county school administrators "felt" their success is attributed to the Leader In Me program or as Mr. Moore calls it a "never ending process". There are 18 Elementary schools in the St. Johns County, only three are Leader In Me schools. Those schools have been successful before Leader in Me was implemented. Other St. John's County elementary schools have been A rated since 2001 and some even earlier. To credit the county schools' accomplishments to Leader in Me,  is an irresponsible, vacuous statement.  In fact, FranklinCovey recently eradicated its claim that the program leads to higher academic achievement after teachers and parents expressed their concerns. Today, they state on their website, the program leads to "promising results" with a disclaimer included.

We all want our children to succeed, to be happy, but how we get them there might be a subjective matter in many households, and many schools. Some schools chose to have an elective STEM program to prepare our kids for the jobs "do not yet exist", others like Old Kings Elementary School imposes a self-help book on our kids.

A program, a language that may seem to fit into the corporate world doesn't mean it's appropriate for our elementary school kids.

Eagerly trying to mold our kids,  into the 21st Century jobs that " do not yet exist", a terminology adopted by Covey from the "Glossary of Education Reform" ,yet we are ignoring free programs that will prepare them for  a job in the 21st Century, like Computer Science, " The Hour of Code" .  According to LinkedIn, Statistical Analysis was 2014's most in-demand skill.
The "21st Century skills", is an indefinite body of skills that no 7 habits can address. But I wonder how the 7 habits develop critical thinking? Which one of those habits improves the critical thinking and how does any of the habits contribute to the scientific literacy and reasoning, also a 21st Century skill. How will memorizing, reciting habits that some students do not understand, unleash children's curiosity, creativity?  How does the 7 habits teaches basic statistical concepts and  programming skills?
Do we want them to develop and cultivate "habits" deemed righteous by a corporation whose largest profit margin comes from "Leader In Me" ?
These habits may seem innocuous to some parents, but some of us recognize the fluff and  strongly disapprove of this program and wish,these were the questions the principle, the educators would've asked themselves before they unanimously embraced  the contract.
The contract indeed funded by I am a Leader Foundation, whose CEO, E. Boyd, Craig serves as the head of FranklinCovey Co.,Mrs. Dupont did not disclose the $5100 Annual Commitment Fee plus travel expenses associated with coaching, the school is responsible for.

Many schools hold "leadership days" or  community events  to showcase all the great things going on in  their schools, in hopes of recruiting other schools to adopt the program. Recognize the multilevel marketing strategy?

All Flagler County district schools can become Leader In Me Schools, all of us will use the FranklinCovey "common language" in our households, as Covey prefers, wear the same shirts, fly the same flags and live by Stephen Covey's 7 habits, "a distillation of Mormon teaching", says Clayton Christensen, a director of FranklinCovey.

It is beyond unfortunate how our supposedly intelligent educators cannot see the fundamental intentions inherent in this program .

Old Kings Elementary has lost its authenticity and became a FranklinCovey Co. "Leader In Me"  Corporate school.

" Leader In Me" : An overrated product .

What did you learn in school today? It’s the starter to routine, casual conversation we have every evening at the dinner table with our daughter, a first grader at Old Kings Elementary in Palm Coast.

That evening the answer was unlike any my husband and I had heard. Our daughter started reciting words we’d never heard from her before. “Be proactive.” “It’s a win-win.” “Seek to understand.” “Sharpen…” She couldn’t articulate the rest. But she offered to perform a routine that she’d obviously practiced several times.

Eagerly, she told us about the school project she is working on, writing the “Seven Habits”  on a visual aide as a classroom project. I suddenly remembered the flags flying on school property, reiterating the “Seven Habits.” The following day, all the teachers at drop off sites were wearing the same blue polo shirt with a “Leader In Me” logo.

I started to have flashbacks to my childhood. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain where you were rigidly taught the right behavior, the right words, the right greeting. There was no room for choice, no room for individualism. Struggling to understand, my American-born spouse compared it to New  Age Teaching and Scientology.

Old King Elementary selected the “Leader In Me” program as its character-development program. The school claims this program will raise leaders and prepare them for 21^st century jobs.

The program is based on Stephen Covey’s best selling self-help book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Covey, who died in 2012, was an author, educator and motivational speaker with a degree in business administration and a doctorate in religious education. He was a devout Mormon who fought his critics until his death regarding the religious aspects of his books and his principles.

The company implementing the program at Old Kings is FranklinCovey , a training and consulting business established in 1997 when the Covey Leadership Center merged with Franklin Quest, a time-management company. The publicly traded, for-profit company had $191 million in revenue last year. FranklinCovey’s “Leader in Me” program promises higher academic achievements and a decrease in disciplinary issues, and it teaches character and leadership.

But other than anecdotal evidence, there are no independent studies, data or statistics to verify FranklinCovey’s claims. The company in its own literature boasts of “the power to improve organizational culture in ways important to teachers, students, parents, administrators, and district board members.” But it presents no hard data to justify the claim. A 2012 Johns Hopkins University study commissioned by FranklinCovey concluded that the program “positively improved school climate.”But the study is based on observation, not data.

The Staten Island School of Leadership in New York is praised in StyevenCovey’s studies as indicating “promising results” as a result of the Leader In me program. But test data collected in when the program was in effect at the school shows scores dropping in that time frame.

Our children are becoming fluent in a corporate language that includes phrases like, “Be proactive, synergize, think win-win.” The habits are repeated to our students every day in every class and are incorporated in classroom activities. Classroom walls and hallways are decorated with the “Leader In Me” marketing materials to instill the seven habits into our children and teachers.

Flagler County Schools’ Curriculum Director Denise Haymes confirmed to me that the Leader in Me program did not go through the same rigorous review as the core curriculum since it’s part of Old Kings Elementary’s flagship program. That’s a district-wide, careers-driven initiative that gives schools ample latitude to implement programs that intersect academics with the business world. Some programs have more tangible value than others.  Nor did Haymes personally researched the program, instead choosing to rely on data provided by FranklinCovey’s marketing arm. Yet the “Leader In Me” curriculum accounted for 40 percent of the graded assignments in Social Studies last quarter at Old Kings.

The promise of all our children becoming “leaders” by indoctrinating them with some corporate training manual buzzwords in a cult-like environment is repulsive. It is equally terrifying to watch how easily our public schools are willing to give up our children to over-intellectualized fluff with no content, and a slyly marketed program.

All this at a cost of $57,000 for the first year alone. If continued next year the price will reach $68,000. Flagler schools and taxpayers aren’t picking up the tab. It’s funded through a private grant from the “I am a Leader Foundation,” whose CEO, E. Boyd Craig,  worked alongside  Stephen Covey for years and is still serving as  the head of FranklinCovey Co.'s Stephen R. Covey Group.

The company’s goal is to spread the program in all public school districts. After all, it works best when we all speak the same common language, when  we all students, teachers, community members are embedded in their culture of leadership.

Can you imagine if we used that private grant to invest in arts and languages, in science for all kids, for all classrooms? If we used that grant to invest more in our teachers? Or to invest in our exceptional education students? Maybe then, my child, instead of reciting some corporate-tailored phrases would learn who was the first President of the United States.

Old Kings Elementary school could raise very smart kids who will be prepared for 21^st century jobs not by memorizing expressions or formulas that suppress their individuality, but through their knowledge, their true academic intelligence. Nothing could dash what hopes I have for my child’s education more than that sort of corporate hold on the public school curriculum.

I cautiously hope that our school board members will carefully review and revisit this program and will not allow its further implementation in  our public schools. In the meantime, we  are proactively seeking to understand the process of transferring my child to a different school, which shall be a win-win for all of us.  

This article was  published in : FlaglerLive.com : http://flaglerlive.com/72427/leader-in-me-indoctrination-sanford/