Will

So, this is really thin, early-morning thinking, but I’m trying to describe what I think are the three competing narratives around schooling at the moment. To be honest, I think I’ve done a pretty bad job of it, but I thought I’d post it up anyway to see if some of you might help me flesh it out a bit more clearly. 

Here they are:

1. Schools are broken. The way forward is to make schools better by doubling down on traditional outcomes, state-mandated standardized tests, school choice, and test-based accountability for teachers. The state decides what will be taught and when it will be taught, and, importantly, what will be assessed. Technology’s dual role in this is first to “personalize” delivery of the curriculum to each student using adaptive learning platforms and, second, to provide all students access to “the best teachers” and “best content” available via the Web as a way to increase efficiency.  ”Student learning” is defined by comparison test scores year to year and is “managed” by the system. Policy makers and businessmen who are, for the most part, not educators, are chief drivers of reforms. 

2. Schools are not broken, but can be improved. The way forward is to make schools better by reducing the emphasis on standardized tests, rethinking teacher training and assessment, and increasing local control over school decisions. Thinking about curriculum and classrooms is rooted in traditional systems and structures, and schools are still places where state-created outcomes are delivered to students. Technology’s role is to support instruction and student learning, which is measured primarily by teacher created assessments and summative evaluations. Traditional educators are the primary drivers of change thinking and reforms.

3. Schools as currently constructed are not broken but increasingly irrelevant. Abundant connections to content, knowledge and people created by the Web requires a fundamental rethinking of traditional structures and systems. The way forward is to change the emphasis on student learning from “what” to learn to, instead, “how” to learn. Technology’s role is to support both students and teachers as inquiry, discovery based learners with an emphasis on creating, connecting, collaborating, and sharing authentic, real-world work. Learning is assessed by performance, achievement of teacher-student negotiated outcomes, and contribution. Educators and connected learners are the chief drivers of these reforms.

My biggest struggle is with #2. I’m pretty clear what this group doesn’t want (see #1), but I’m not totally sure what they advocate for, especially in terms of the role of technology.

Anyway…be gentle. ;0)

David Sirota on Michelle Rhee:

That’s where Rhee’s little-noticed but incredibly revealing comments come in. As grass-roots opposition in the local community understandably rose up to oppose her destructive policies, Rhee made quite clear what she and her movement thinks of the notion of local control of schools and community involvement in education policy:

MICHELLE RHEE: People said, “Well, you didn’t listen to us.” And I said, “No, I listened to you. I’m not running this district by consensus or by committee. We’re not running this school district through the democratic process.”

FRONTLINE: [on camera] It’s not a democracy.

MICHELLE RHEE: No, it’s not a democracy.

If a statement like that about public schools isn’t offensive enough unto itself, remember that Rhee made it not as some outside observer. She made it while she was holding public office. Yes, that’s right: A person who held a democratically accountable office was making clear that the national “reform” movement she leads believes that schools are no longer and should no longer be controlled by any kind of democracy.

Pretty much sums it up. Yet this is a woman who is raising millions if not billions in support of undemocratic reforms. 

Seymour Papert (1998):

The presence of digital technologies is rapidly moving us into a period where learners can learn what they need to know on their own agenda rather than on the predetermined agenda of a curriculum. We will soon be able to give up the assembly line model of grade after grade, exercise after exercise.

It would be naive to believe this could happen without resistance from the education establishment—which includes several multibillion-dollar sectors of the education industry as well as huge bureaucracies with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. I grant that most people who make and apply curriculums are underpaid and motivated by the welfare of children. But this does not alter the fact that present-day schools, to which…they have to cater in order to sell their products, are relics from an earlier period of knowledge technology.

I think the emphasis now has to be on the transition. We know from where have come. The question is where we end up. At the core, it’s about how we provide the cultures and systems and supports that marry the public good of community schools with the powerful freedom to learn which we and our children in connected spaces now enjoy. (And, importantly, how we extend that freedom to those who don’t yet have access to it.) 

Next week, let’s spring forward on more than just the clock. 

Brian Hoffstein:

Deciding what to juice our minds with and what to outsource to the machines has no definitive answer. However, rote memorization, knowledge regurgitation, and anything inside-the-box will only have depleting effects on a growing creative class. We need more artists and entrepreneurs, engineers and programmers. People that dream, and know how to make that dream come true. This is what our education system needs to embrace, this is what our Renaissance is all about.

The irony of all this - if the past is any indication of the future - is that the innovation in education, to teach the skills behind creativity and execution, will not come from the bureaucrats but rather the innovators themselves. Just as a painter teaches painting, and a pianist teaches the piano, it will be an entrepreneur who dreams, designs and builds the platform that can effectively teach entrepreneurship. But the time is here and now, with cell phones outnumbering toilets in the developing world, we must democratize this novel art form and empower individuals to paint their own canvas.

And the frustrating part is that the dreams of the policy makers and, in many cases, the parents of the kids we teach are decidedly less lofty. Those dreams are ignited by a vision of schooling, not a vision of learning as it might exist today. Once again, the context for having these conversations needs to be modernized if our Renaissance will truly come about.

Terrence O’Brien on NewsCorp’s new tablet offering:

Amplify aims to be not just a tool but a platform for managing a 21st century classroom. Where past efforts to incorporate tablets into a K-12 environment have been satisfied with simple (and carefully controlled) social features and some reference materials, this actually offers features to teachers aimed at delivering instant feedback and differentiated instruction. Everything from taking attendance and blocking distracting apps, to polling students comprehension and pushing supplemental materials to those that need it can be managed from the educator’s unit. There’s also the ability to build custom lesson plans called Playlists, that can incorporate material from locally stored textbooks, pre-loaded Khan Academy videos and the internet.

Wow. Sounds just great. Is there anything in this vision that supports kids as learners rather than as consumers of a curriculum that teachers manage and deliver? Managing. Blocking. Pushing. Incorporating. 

Good stuff. No really…I mean it. Can’t wait.

UPDATE: This description from USA Today might be even better:

What’s perhaps more significant, Amplify will give teachers the ability to both monitor and control what students do with the device. Teachers can conduct lessons with an entire class or small group and can instantly see what websites or lesson areas students are visiting. A teacher dashboard allows them to take instant polls, ask kids to “raise their hands” virtually and, if things get out of hand, redirect the entire class with an “Eyes on Teacher” button that instantly pushes the message out to every screen.

Wow, again.

Audrey Watters, in her most excellent post deconstructing Sugata Mitra’s $1 million TED prize award from last week:

I have questions about this history of schooling as Mitra (and others) tell it, about colonialism and neo-colonialism. I have questions about the funding of the initial “Hole in the Wall” project (it came from NIIT, an India-based “enterprise learning solution” company that offers 2- and 4-year IT diplomas). I have questions about these commercial interests in “child-driven education” (As Ellen Seitler asks, “can the customer base be expanded to reach people without a computer, without literacy, and without any formal teaching whatsoever?”). I have questions about the research from the “Hole in the Wall” project — the research, not the 15 minute TED spiel about it. I have questions about girls’ lack of participation in the kiosks. I have questions about project’s usage of retired British schoolteachers — “grannies” — to interact with Indian children via Skype.

I have questions about community support. I have questions about what happens when we dismantle public institutions like schools — questions about social justice, questions about community, questions about care. I have questions about the promise of a liberation via a “child-driven education,” questions about this particular brand of neo-liberalism, techno-humanitarianism, and techno-individualism.

Here’s my question: What happens to these questions (and others) that we need to be asking about schools and classrooms and learning in general? How do we answer them? How do they enter the larger debate which, by and large, has and is ignoring them?

Whether you agree/believe/get tingly about Mitra’s work or not, and regardless how you feel about the whole TED approach, this award does, I think, serve a positive purpose in our little corner of the student-centered reform world here. There are now whole bunches of more people considering the role of schools, the value of technology in learning, and the new paths that are opening up to learning. In many cases, his vision is going to pull this conversation to a different place. There are lots more questions being asked. I think, on balance, that can be a good thing.

But only if we’re engaging in those conversations critically. Only if, like Audrey, we’re willing to read further, to engage in the debate, to articulate our own thinking around it not just to those we know in our local communities but in our online communities as well. Only if we’re brave enough to take the learner’s stance and say “I’ve got an opinion, but I want to know more.”

This is hard, especially in the online space. And it’s not just the idea that online spaces can bend toward an uncivil, almost bullying tone. It takes a confidence and boldness to engage. This is not easy even for someone like me who has been doing it for a dozen years or so. My brain explodes when I think of all the people (many of whom I know) who are just much smarter than I who might read this and might chuckle at my ignorance.

Yet I’ll read and I’ll write because I want to know more, and I want those who might read this to help me clarify my thinking, and I trust them to do so with civility and not disdain. But I also know full well that the vast majority of people who read this won’t engage either here or elsewhere. 

Which, as almost always, brings me back to my kids. How do I/we help them help them want to learn more, help them understand the value of engagement, and help them become able to navigate the rough spots in all of this? I’m not sure Mitra’s vision is the definitive answer, and as Audrey suggests, there is much more a potential public good in community schools that can be replaced by grannies in the cloud.

But it does beg that ongoing question that we still need to push: are our schools and systems helping our kids develop into the types of modern learners that will flourish in this  modern world? And if not, what do we do about that?

Valerie Strauss:

Nine in 10 principals (93%) and teachers (92%) say they are knowledgeable about the Common Core.

Nine in 10 principals (90%) and teachers (93%) believe that teachers in their schools already have the academic skills and abilities to implement the Common Core in their classrooms.

Teachers and principals are more likely to be very confident that teachers have the ability to implement the Common Core (53% of teachers; 38% of principals) than they are very confident that the Common Core will improve the achievement of students (17% of teachers; 22% of principals) or better prepare students for college and the workforce (20% of teachers; 24% of principals).

Statistics from the most recent MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, and just another piece of research backing up what I (and many others) have been seeing and hearing anecdotally in my travels around the country talking to teachers. And while I know we need to define “achievement” and “workforce,” those numbers are a pretty severe indictment of the Common Core if accurate.

But I’d love to be asking a number of other questions of these teachers and principals  (and I’ll put my guesses as to what the answers would be in parenthesis):

• Do you have the skills and abilities to learn with online social media? (21%)
• Are you knowledgable about and regularly engage in personal and professional learning opportunities online? (20%)
• Do you regularly engage in discussions about learning with technology with your teachers (or with your principals)? (8%)
• Do you take responsibility for your own professional development? (11%)
• Are you “literate” as defined by the National Council Teachers of English? (5%)
• Are you encouraged and supported to innovate with technology in your classrooms and schools? (18%)

(Add your own below if you like.)

Feel free to push back on those guesses, which, I’m sure, many will think to be too low. I’m basing my responses on visits to dozens of schools with thousands of teachers in the last year.

And please don’t read my guesses as “teachers suck.” There is no blame here; we happen to be teaching and leading and learning at what may well be the fastest, hairiest moment of change in education ever. It’s no surprise that we’re struggling to catch up. But I do think every educator has a responsibility to get moving in these directions.

The larger point is this: in three years we can get everyone up to speed on the Common Core, a set of standards that have problematic origins and implementation, for which we don’t have an assessment, and around which people are profiting bajillions of dollars, but we can’t seem to make much headway on getting our practice wrapped around a much larger, more profound, more important shift in the way we and our kids are going to live and work and learn with technology.

Disconcerting at best. 

Arthur Camins

Student’s social, emotional and academic well-being are inextricably interdependent and deeply intertwined within the chemistry, structure and development of the brain. We know this from research, but we all also know it from personal experience. Despite this knowledge, these affective components of effective education are severely under-emphasized in education policy. We need to draw upon these everyday experiences to describe a new storyline, a counter narrative to Race to the Top for what needs to be done to improve education for all children.

Let’s just be clear: Race to the Top was a money grab. The Common Core is a money grab. Teacher evaluation reform is a money grab. Policies opening up school choice and privatization are a money grab. Any potential good from any of these initiatives was poisoned in the implementation.

Andrew Leonard:

The kids who are cutting their teeth on Khan Academy videos for help with their chemistry and calculus homework will grow up correctly assuming that there will always be low-cost or free educational opportunities available to them online in virtually any field of inquiry. They will naturally migrate to the best stuff and be less and less willing to pay for crap. This will cause a lot of trauma for the educational establishment, but that’s not the problem of the next generation that wants to learn.

Which means our best service to that next generation is a focus on helping them develop into amazing learners, able to take full advantage of all the opportunities they will have available to them.

Alex Reid on the National Council Teachers of English updated release of their literacy framework:

What NCTE recognizes is that English should be the means by which such literacy is acquired (at least in the US, which is the nation in “National Council”). To that I say, “good luck.” Good luck providing this professional development for existing teachers, who are not prepared to do this. Good luck finding university English departments with faculty to provide this literacy to the general population of college students, let alone educate preservice K-12 teachers or graduate students who will become university faculty. Good luck finding English departments who even remotely view digital literacy as a subject that even marginally concerns them, let alone one that would be central to their curriculum in the way that print literacy is now. As I suggested above, I think you’d have better luck selling the average college English department on becoming grammar-centric than you would on becoming digital-centric.

…The truth is that if this was 2003 and a department recognized that digital literacy was going to become the issue that might make or break their disciplinary future, then by now they might have four or five digital scholars hired and a couple tenured. Maybe they’d be in a position to deliver this content today. But few departments did that. This means the transition is likely to be rocky.

Rocky, indeed.

danah boyd:

Building lifelong learners means instilling curiosity, but it also means helping people recognize how important it is that they continuously surround themselves by people that they can learn from. And what this means is that people need to learn how to connect to new people on a regular basis.

And:

Are you preparing learners for the organizational ecosystem of today? Or are you helping them develop networks so that they’re prepared for the organizational shifts that are coming?

This is why we need to develop our own networks now. I know we’re in this hugely messy transition period into this self-directed, self-organized world, but at what point do we start making this a requirement rather than an option?

Read the whole post. 

Ryan McCarthy:

The dirty secret about the web media business is that there’s a massive oversupply problem. Everyday, content creators are producing more journalism, more think-pieces, more interactive graphics, more photo galleries, more tweets, more slideshows, more videos, more GIFs, and more deviously socially-optimized Corgi listicles. All of that is being distributed via more channels on more devices. This creates more supply for display ads, web media’s favorite and still growing revenue generator. All that supply, however, drags down ad prices…

…a wide swath of media — journalism included — is becoming less and less valuable as the Internet gets bigger.

I’ve been saying for quite some time that if you want to get a sense of what’s in store for education, look at what’s happening to journalism. Reporters and writers are now everywhere. Content and news is everywhere. It’s changing the very nature of the business. 

Same for education, just that now it’s content and teachers that are increasingly everywhere you turn. The economics are the hard part…what happens when you need scale to make a living? What happens when teachers find themselves competing with other teachers for students? What happens when school is something your organize for yourself?

Pretty sure we’re about to find out…

Just a quick update on the Triangle Learning Community Middle School that I’ve blogged about here before. Founder Steve Goldberg reports that he’s just signed a lease, and that there will soon be some serious inquiry-based, student-directed learning going on in North Carolina this fall.

From the outset, Steve’s been building on fundamental ideas for progressive schooling enriched and immersed in connective technologies. Just a snip from his website:

It’s not time to reform existing schools (created in an industrial age where it sort of made sense to go from French to Biology to English every 50 minutes) — it’s time to re-think what’s possible for 21st century learners.

 TLC students will pursue real-world project-based learning. Unlike most middle schools, where students move from teacher to teacher and switch subjects every 45 minutes, we will build a strong sense of community with a team of two learning facilitators working in concert to create the best possible learning environment for the twenty students who will be a tight-knit learning community for three years. Students at TLC will spend their days together in thoughtful blocks of time.

It’s interesting to see how educators like Steve are forging their own path and finding ways to innovate around the idea of “school.” He’s articulating a valuable vision for what school might become.

I really urge you to check out what he’s been up to and to continue to think about ways to “rethink” our own systems and practices to move in the same direction. 

From Teachers and Policy Makers: Troubling Disconnect in the NY Times:

Michael Petrilli, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a pro-charter education analyst with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, worries about this lack of exchange. He recently conducted an analysis of Twitter and the tens of thousands of followers of Ms. Rhee, who is pro-charter, and Ms. Ravitch, who is anti-charter, and discovered that only 10 percent overlapped. Just as conservatives gravitate to Fox News and liberals to MSNBC to hear their preconceived notions and biases confirmed, Mr. Petrilli speculates that those in education are now preaching solely to the converted, a phenomenon known in the media world as “narrowcasting.”

Worse, in Mr. Petrilli’s view, those who follow Ms. Rhee tend to describe themselves in their Twitter profiles as policy makers or otherwise removed from the immediate realities of the classroom, while Ms. Ravitch’s devotees are typically self-identified practitioners: principals and teachers on education’s front lines. Surely these folks should be talking to one another, but in Mr. Petrilli’s experience, they often aren’t.

No doubt an important finding. Read the whole thing. 

But I wonder this: do either of these groups, the reformers that follow Rhee or the practitioners who follow Ravitch, really have enough of a context for modern learning to have a fruitful, relevant discussion even if they were talking to one another?

I ask that really sincerely.

I totally respect the work that those advocating against test based reforms are doing, and I support that pushback every chance I get. But I’m not convinced that the changes they would put in place even lightly take into account the fundamental shifts that are occurring regarding learning and the literacies required to flourish in the world as it exists outside of schools. If we can get rid of the tests, what do we get? Fairly traditional classrooms and curriculum without the tests?

That “context for modern learning” piece is the missing layer in all of this, I think.

You?

Joe Coleman:

We’re now at a point where curators rule the content world, by collectively deciding whether content gets amplified or lost. As a result, quality of content is again starting to win out over quantity, with an assist from smarter search algorithms and the death of content farms. As power continues to shift to the curators, great long-form content continues to increase in value, as it’s shared and consumed by more and more people. Today, one exceptional, widely shared essay is far more valuable than a thousand disparate tweets.

The “better filters” conversation is an important one. But I don’t think it’s just about algorithms. At the end of the day, while the technology can help us aggregate potentially relevant and interesting content and information, if we don’t have the “curation” skills to make sense of it for ourselves, it doesn’t really matter much.

And, while curation may mark the return of the long form essay, just because it’s shared doesn’t mean it will get read. There is still a lot more work and thinking to do about how to cultivate reading and writing habits in ourselves and in our children that reflect the opportunities and challenges of this writing-rich moment.

Like…now that our kids have access to an authentic audience, why don’t we give them all sorts of opportunities to write about the things THEY care about in ways that have a real purpose and meaning in the world. Becoming a great writer starts with developing a passion for writing, something we too often extinguish in schools.