AssortedStuff

This is a long, rambling post since it draws on several different sources, together with a large mixture of thoughts from last weekend’s EduCon (and I’m not entirely sure I’m making my points :-).

Anyway, let’s start with a post from earlier this week in which Seth Godin asks Who Will Save Us?

He’s discussing ongoing efforts to rescue the publishing industry but it got me thinking about how much has been written around the theme of “saving” public education as well.

And Godin’s warning to media applies equally to us.

If by save you mean, “what will keep things just as they are?” then the answer is nothing will. It’s over.

Politicians and education “experts” talk a lot about school improvement and reforming the system.

But take a closer look at their ideas makes clear that their overall goal is to maintain the status quo, and make it even quoier if possible.

Evidence of that comes from the article from the Post, also this week, about possible “fixes” to NCLB and especially changes in the adequate yearly progress (AYP) provisions of that law.

Much remains unclear about how Obama would hold schools accountable for results. Experts call it unlikely that the president would seek to junk a results-oriented system that is ingrained in 50 states and the District. In fact, the administration will still rely on those data to compile lists of struggling schools it wants to turn around.

Except that “results-oriented system” doesn’t work. And the administration won’t get rid of it because it’s “ingrained”.

Even worse, that ingrained system, with “results” based entirely on high-stakes standardized testing, has actually made American education worse over the past decade, by obsessively narrowing both the curriculum and teaching methods to focus only the tested topics.

So now we come back to EduCon and specifically to an unscheduled discussion that followed the session I facilitated.

One that boiled down to the idea that the conference gathers together some very smart and dedicated educators for intelligent conversations, but where’s the change to make all these ideas a reality?

Will is asking very much the same thing in his reflections on the weekend.

But while most in attendance want to change the classrooms and the schools they work in, that vision of change is still amorphous. Jon Becker wrote about that fact pre Educon, and I hope he follows up with more thoughts post. I mean David Warlick and others were talking about creating a new story for education like four years ago and we still don’t seem to have a handle on it.

It was a theme that was running around in my head for those three days and one that I heard from others attending, especially those of us who have been part of this event going back to 2007 EduBloggerCon where the idea for EduCon was born.

Ok, what do we do about it? How do we turn lots of good ideas into action?

How do we get our communities to realize that the top down process of teaching and learning no longer works?

That students must take an integral role in both the planning and execution of their own education?

That we need to trust teachers make good decisions for their students and not just follow the script leading to the spring tests?

If you’ve read this far, you probably understand that I have many more questions than answers, and even those need a whole lot more thought.

The ideal would be that this growing EduCon community turns into a grass roots effort to truly change American education one school/district at a time.

Of course, it’s going to take more effort than just getting together once a year to talk and connecting through social media the rest of the time. Maybe the theme of next year’s EduCon needs to be, in the words of the King, a little less talk and a lot more action.

Because it’s frustrating to watch our “leaders” (local, state, national, take your pick) pushing programs to “save” American education when it should be clear that our kids need something better than reinforcing the status quo.

1 comment change, education, educon, reform, school

Front page of this morning’s Post, above the masthead, in space normally reserved for major, earth shattering events, comes the news…

The 2010 “challenge” index for DC-area schools has been unleashed on the unsuspecting, and largely statistically clueless, public!

The method for computing this highly-publicized ranking of high schools hasn’t changed.

Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2009 by the number of graduating seniors. Tests taken by all students, not just seniors, are counted.

Also not changed is the glorification of the taking of tests, while factoring in nothing about how student actually score on them.

As with the 2009 release, the list includes something called the Equity and Excellence rate, defined as “the percentage of all seniors who have had at least one score on an AP, IB or Cambridge test that would qualify them for college credit”.

Which is also not an entirely accurate number since colleges make their own decisions as to what score on an AP test will earn credit. Or whether the student will get a pass on taking a similar level prerequisite course instead of credit.

So, what exactly is the purpose of the assembling the “challenge” index in the first place?

The rating is not a measure of the overall quality of the school but illuminates the one quantifiable factor that seems to reveal best the level of a high school’s commitment to preparing average students for college. [my emphasis]

The ONE quantifiable factor. Love to see the study supporting that contention, much less the concept that college is the best goal for every student.

While the Post seems to be avoid a “best” tag, it remains to be seen if Newsweek (owned by the Post), when they likely publish the the national version of the index in May, will refrain from billing Mathews’ list as the “nation’s best high schools” as they have in the past.

Ok, I know it’s probably a hopeless cause to continue ranting about this incredibly shallow assessment of high school quality year, after year.

Especially since both politicians and the press seem to be obsessed with reducing everything done in school to simple, headline-friendly numbers, something for which the “challenge” index is tailor made.

However, it would be great if more people would take a critical look at this and other hyper-simple schemes for assessing the complex process of teaching and learning.

By the way, I thought you added the possessive to a name ending in ’s’ by simply adding an apostrophe. Or am I wrong that the proper punctuation is supposed to be Mathews’ list not Mathews’s list? I’m sure I make plenty of grammatical errors around this place, but I have an excuse. There are no highly trained and paid copy editors around here.

3 comments ap, challenge index, high school, jay mathews, washington post

Ok, the iPad was announced yesterday and, as far as I can tell, the world remains pretty much the same.

I’ve watched the video of the presentation, read some of what the geeky tech blogs have to say, and, at this point, I’m 80% sure I’ll be buying one when they go on sale.

I know, I know, the device has it’s shortcomings (oversized iPhone? so what?), there will soon be cheaper competitors, and Apple will probably release a new version with more features in time for the next holiday season.

It still looks like a very cool device – and sometimes you just can’t explain the iWants. :-)

However, included with the many, many stories about Apple’s latest object of tech lust (including the front page of the Post!?) are some breathless predictions of it’s potential effect.

This tablet will save the newspaper industry! It will revolutionize electronic books!! The iPad will transform education!!!

Crap!

As with any other new technology, it’s not the hardware and software that matters.

Putting a digital version of The New York Times on the iPad will not convince people to pay for it again unless they convince them of some compelling new value in that format.

In the case of education, nothing gets transformed if institutions latch on to it as a textbook replacement, a digital notebook, an expensive electronic replacement for a Trapper Keeper.

Change in how teachers teach and students learn will not flow from putting the same old curriculum materials on a tablet and then using it with the same teacher-directed lessons, primarily focused on preparing kids for standardized tests.

Mobile communications devices such as the iPad will only have an impact if they become individual learning platforms that regularly change to meet the needs of the person carrying it.

Anything less, is simply one more gadget for the school toy box.

2 comments apple, education, geeky stuff, ipad, prediction

Over the past few years, I’ve delivered a few rants (here and elsewhere) about the wastes of money and time that are interactive whiteboards.

But I’m just one of those evil central office types who never had one in my classroom. What do I know?

So instead read the reflections of a 6th grade language arts teacher who experimented with an IWB in his classroom for a year and then told his school to take it away.

His whole post, Wasting Money on Whiteboards…, is worth reading (as are the comments and his follow-up post) for some excellent insights on technology and learning.

I’d go even farther, though, and argue that even WITH time and training, Interactive Whiteboards are an under-informed and irresponsible purchase.

They do little more than reinforce a teacher-centric model of learning. Heck, even whiteboard companies market them as a bridging technology, designed to replicate traditional instructional practices—making presentations, giving notes, delivering lectures—in an attempt to move digital dinosaurs into the light.

Do we really want to spend thousands of dollars on a tool that makes stand-and-deliver instruction easier?

If we could turn control of learning over to students, we’d probably see motivation AND academic growth levels rise all at once. Classrooms would become innovative places that students were drawn to instead of the snooze palaces that they seem to be for so many kids today.

If those are the outcomes we most desire, then why are we wasting money on Interactive Whiteboards—tools that do little to promote independent discovery and collaborative work? Sure—you could argue that when used as an instructional center, whiteboards become more interactive, but that is one REALLY expensive center, don’t you think?!

(emphasis is mine)

So, with IWBs we waste money on a technology that reinforces a “teacher-centric model of learning” and does “little to promote independent discovery and collaborative work”.

That’s IWBs in a nutshell!

4 comments interative whiteboards, teaching, Technology, waste

Predictions of what will happen next year should be viewed with great suspicion.

Those dealing with what will happen in the next five years are pretty much worthless.

However, these four big predictions about the web’s near term future I think fall into the no-duh category.

1. The Web Will Be Accessible Anywhere

It’s pretty clear that many of us want to be connected, at high speeds, from anywhere we go. Those numbers will only grow and the infrastructure to do it is rapidly expanding as well.

2. Web Access Will Not Focus Around the Computer

Certainly not around those devices that we currently identify as “computers”.

3. The Web Will Be Media-Centric

Is that a prediction or a statement of current reality?

4. Social Media Will Be Its Largest Component

Again, a trend that is well underway.

I wonder when (or if) these trends (you can’t really call any of them “predictions”) will significantly affect schools and the American education process.

After all, none of them fits particularly well with the traditional teacher-directed educational structure we continue to cling to.

When it comes to using the web, schools work hard to control the times, locations, and circumstances under which access will be allowed, at least for the vast majority of the people involved in the learning process (ie. students).

In most schools and districts, we insist that the equipment used by teachers and students look like a “normal” computer, often locking them up in formal “lab” settings or slightly less formal “mobile labs”.

And, of course, the media used in most classrooms is still overwhelmingly text-based (even when using screens) and we actively discourage anything that looks like social media.

So, is the American education system immune (or just oblivious) to these major shifts in the way the world outside communicates and uses information?

How long can we prevent the future (or the present for that matter) from leaking into our classrooms?

Picture: me, myself and I – in a crystal ball by Michal Kolodziejski. Used under a Creative Commons license.

No comments change, communications, education, prediction, social media

When it comes to most web filtering systems the philosophy seems to be to try and find all the evil stuff on the web and then block it from being delivered to computers used by students.

“Evil”, of course, is a subjective qualifier and almost all the electronic nannies I’ve been subjected to adopt a sledgehammer, all-or-nothing “solution” to the process.

However, what if you approached the problem from another, smarter direction?

That’s seems to be what some schools in England are trying when it comes to YouTube, one of the web resources most frequently blocked by schools despite offering a rapidly-expanding amount of great teaching content.

Instead of blocking everything on a page, this particular filter screens out objectionable fluff around the edges of a video while letting the teacher-selected material show through.

Teachers say that they would use YouTube to access videos of scientific experiments that are too dangerous or complex to perform in the classroom, scenes from Shakespeare’s plays and footage of other cultures or foreign landscapes. The system is dependent on teachers submitting videos for approval. It then filters out content surrounding the footage and links to other films. A selection of suitable material is then created for other staff to use and for pupils to look at.

The article plays up the fact that this system will cost the schools up to £10,000 (about $16,000US) depending on the number of computers using the system, but that shouldn’t be the point.

We already pay large sums of money for the heavy-handed approach. Is there any good reason the all-purpose filters we use now couldn’t be configured to do the same thing?

Obviously, it’s simpler (and cheaper) for filtering companies to just block every site containing any material that might possibly offend someone, somewhere – and then unblock some pages when they get complaints.

But for the amount we already turn over to these “services”, we should be able to get intelligent electronic gates, programmed to be responsive to the needs of the people who should be trusted to differentiate good from bad when it comes to instruction, namely teachers.

1 comment england, filtering, youtube

From PHD Comics, an excellent explanation of why the K12 math curriculum should include annual healthy doses of basic statistics.

And it’s simple enough for even those back-to-basics types who believe we can’t possibly teach math concepts until we’ve drilled any possible interest in mathematics right out of the kids.

Actually, any adult claiming to be a “journalist” should be required to display proof they’ve taken a basic stat course.

1 comment fun stuff, media, news, statistics

Next weekend I’ll be heading up to EduCon 2.2, the most unique conference I’ve ever attended.

For one thing, it’s relatively small, although with 500 people registered this year, it will be a little more crowed than the first one in 2008 where 75 or so of us showed up, not knowing what to expect.

But the big difference with EduCon is that the sessions, for the most part, are not lecture/demo presentations or hands-on workshops. And it is not a conference about technology.

The concept of EduCon-founder, and principal of the Science Leadership Academy, Chris Lehman was to get a bunch of interested and interesting educators together to have conversations about how we can change schools to better fit the way our students learn and the real world in which they live, as well as to grow networks of people who would continue those discussions long after the conference ended.

I’ll be leading one of those discussions and, while my topic does address technology, it’s concerned with why schools have remained isolated islands of status quo over the past twenty years, while the rest of the world has been fundamentally altered by computers, networks, and communications tools.

My session is titled “Why Has Technology Failed to Bring Substantial Change to American Schools (and what can we do about it)?” and this is the short description, the in-50-words-or-less explanation of the session in a way that will attract an audience.

The authors of Disrupting Class ask “Why haven’t computers brought about a transformation in schools the way they have in other areas of life?”. Excellent question. Join us for a discussion of what we can do to change that situation. Bring any and all ideas to share.

The proposal for this session grew from my growing frustration with American education and the two-faced embrace of techie tools while at the same time rejecting the transformative possibilities they offer.

Schools in the US have spent billions of dollars in just the past decade to buy laptops and software, install networks, connect classrooms to internet, and train teachers.

However, walk down the halls of your average American school, especially high schools, and you’re likely to see a teacher-directed, lecture-demo formatted lesson, with little or no technology use by either teacher or students.

Over the past few years, the most visible example of technology use in the classrooms of our overly-large school district has been interactive whiteboards, devices which chain teaching to standards of the previous century.

Talk all you want about “student engagement” and “interactivity”, these boards are little more than expensive electronic extensions of blackboards and chalk, controlled by the teacher, and locking the learning focus on them, not the students.

Anyway, IWBs are a topic for another rant and only a small piece of the discussion that I’d like to have in Philly.

If you’re coming to EduCon, please join us at 12:30 Sunday afternoon for what I hope will be a wonderful exchange of ideas on this topic.

And don’t think you must agree with the premise to participate. Feel free to let me know that I’m full of crap and that I’ve missed the mark entirely. Bring evidence of my cluelessness, however. :-)

If you’re not able to be at the conference in person, you can still attend and join the discussion online through the generous efforts of Elluminate who will be providing an interactive room for each session.

Links to the Elluminate rooms will be available from the conversations page on the EduCon site.

Now, if they can just keep the snowy weather out of town for the weekend, we’ll be golden.

2 comments chris lehmann, conferences, conversation, educon, philadelphia, schools, sla

You should probably be careful anytime you include a date in the name of a big reform project.

That date will eventually arrive and it’s likely people will check to see if your reforms actually happened.

Case in point is Renaissance 2010, the high profile attempt to overhaul the Chicago city school system, created by none other than our current Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

So, 2010 is here, how did they do?

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city’s school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.

Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found.

The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 — that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn’t lived up to its promise by this, its target year.

Oh, but it gets better.

Following in the footsteps of Bush’s Texas “miracle” that became No Child Left Behind, Duncan is now incorporating all his wonderfully successful ideas from Ren10 into Race to the Top, the latest meaningless, not to mention expensive, educational-buzz-term-based national school reform program.

Duncan is using an unprecedented $4.35 billion pot of money to lure states into building education systems that replicate key Ren10 strategies. The grant money will go to states that allow charter schools to flourish and to those that experiment with turning around failing schools — all part of the Chicago reform.

Just as the previous administration assigned magical powers to high-stakes standardized testing, the current group is putting it’s faith in charter schools as an all-purpose educational cure-all.

Actually, the charter concept is not a bad one: allow educators to adapt schools to fit the needs of students instead of the other way around.

The execution, on the other hand, in most places has been mediocre at best (criminally dismal in too many cases) largely mirroring that of the Chicago “renaissance”: throwing lots of cash at charters to achieve mixed results.

Of course, there is a middle ground between the all-stick-and-no-carrot philosophy of NCLB and the quiz-show-competition, scattershot approach that is at the core of RTTT.

But finding it is going to require far more complex thinking than most of our national education “leaders” seem to be willing to consider.

No comments arne duncan, chicago, education, nclb, race to the top, reform

By way of io9, the geeky science fiction (or is that redundant? :-) blog, comes The Evil Futurists’ Guide to World Domination: How to be Successful, Famous, and Wrong.

So what advice do they offer for those who want to have a career in spouting predictive BS?

Be certain, not right.
… no matter what you do, no matter what you believe, be certain. As Tetlock put it, in this world “only the overconfident survive, and only the truly arrogant thrive.”

Sounds like advice for anyone running for public office as well.

Claim to be an expert: it makes people’s brains hurt.

And research proves it!

No expertise, no problem.
… knowing you’re not an expert should make you more confident in your work. And confidence is everything.

One simple idea may be one too many.
Having a single big theory, even if it’s totally outrageous, makes you sound more credible. Having a Great Idea also makes it easier for you to seem like a Great Visionary, capable of seeing things that others cannot.

Get prizes for being outrageous.

Does calling something “award winning” have any meaning these days?

There’s a success hiding in every failure.

Don’t remember your failures. No one else will.

Fact checking is a lost art that desperately needs to be revived.

The author claims “The citations are all real. But no, I don’t really mean a single word of it.”.

I’m not so sure. Maybe he will in the future.

Image: Future City by ILMO JOE, used under a Creative Commons license.

1 comment experts, future, prediction, satire