Tom Liam Lynch :: New Literacies, New Literatures

It was a quiet match, literature fans, but it happened again: Shakespeare pounced Milton in a curricular smackdown. When the Common Core Standards were unveiled recently, they came with a series of recommended texts for study in multiple disciplines, including English.  Sam Dillon of the Times writes:

…the English standards do not prescribe a reading list, but point to classic poems, plays, short stories, novels and essays to demonstrate the advancing complexity of texts that students should be able to master. On the list of exemplary read-aloud books for second and third graders, for instance, is James Thurber’s “Thirteen Clocks.” One play cited as appropriate for high school students is “Oedipus Rex,” by Sophocles.

Battling over Books

The debate about which books to read when has been ongoing for decades.  Even going back to the 19th and 20th centuries, colleges put out reading lists of the literary works they expected students to have read.  These reading lists determined which books were taught in high schools.  So what? Each college had its own list!  Secondary schools were caught in a corner: either prepare students for a specific school’s entrance exam or give them a rounder exposure to texts, but leave them unprepared for college admissions.  As for the Common Core, there are five works that are deemed required:

High school juniors and seniors must study the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Also, said Susan Pimentel, a consultant in New Hampshire who was lead writer on the English standards, “Students have to read one Shakespeare play — that’s a requirement.”

One Shakespeare a year?  I respect the fact that Shakespeare is so lauded in our schools–and has been for generations.  Still, why not add others to the list of required reading, or, don’t require any single particular author.

Consider Milton Over Shakespeare

A few years ago, I refused to teach a Shakespearean work to my 10th grade students.  My rationale: Milton was more interesting, more rewarding, and had a certain novelty with students because he wasn’t Shakespeare.  We didn’t read all of Paradise Lost, but we studied three books closely.  When I shared with colleagues my Miltonian mission, they replied that Milton was far too difficult for high school students.

Difficult?  Milton?  Well, yes, of course he’s difficult.  And so is Shakespeare.  The difference is that teachers have myriad resources to teach Shakespeare well–movies, Folger’s Library, just to name two main ones.  Milton’s got nothing.  But Milton could have whole communities of educators whose mission it is to teach him.  They could create social networks and resource sharing points and thereby make Milton as accessible as Shakespeare.

But, there’s less hope of that happening now.  Thanks, Common Core.  Thanks for ensuring this particular literary treasure–or paradise–remains lost to pedagogues.

(Haven’t read Milton recently?  Click here.)

A recent NPR piece discusses the tension between college graduates on the one hand and the needs of business on the other.  From the story:

Researchers had asked hundreds of business leaders and human resources managers across the country to assess the professionalism of recent college graduates, and the results were sobering.

“What we found was that there are a set of qualities, characteristics that these people would like to see in new college graduates,” says David Polk, a York College professor. “Unfortunately, they tend to be lacking.”

Before continuing, it’s fair to ask: is it the job of schools to instill these kinds of qualities?  On the one hand, it seems reasonable to say that one goes to school in order to get a job and advance in one’s career.  On the other hand, aren’t schools tasked with teaching rounder things: to expand one’s thinking, to critically analyze problems, to appreciate the history of oneself and others?  When did corporations begin to dictate what colleges teach?  When is such dictation OK and when is it definitely not?  The skills they are asking for, according to this piece, include:

the ability to communicate and listen respectfully, motivation to finish a task and attention to appearance. But Polk says researchers pointed to one area where recent graduates stand out: “There’s a sense of entitlement that we’ve picked up on, where people think they’re entitled to become, let’s say, president of the company within the next two years; they’re entitled to five weeks of vacation.”

Putting aside one’s vacation demands, are students entitled to an education different from the demands of the economy?  Are schools–and here I include K-12, as well as colleges–educating students according to their own educational missions or to the mission statements of companies?

Michael Horn recently wrote about the value of for-profit educational companies in improving education.  His lead-in sets the stage:

If President Obama wants to achieve his goal of returning the United States to its former place atop all countries in higher education attainment by 2020, he is going to need the help of for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan, Corinthian and DeVry, as his own Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said recently.

He goes on to argue that those in education who would exclude for-profit companies from informing education reform are missing something. Yes, he says, there are good and “bad actors” in the for-profit sector; the same is true in the non-profit sector.  (I agree completely.)  He then cautions the reader that we must take the opportunity to learn from these organizations about what it means to teach and to learn innovatively.  (I agree again. Proponents of Pure Public Schooling like Alfie Kohn or the recently 180′d Diane Ravitch might well get uncomfortable the moment we allow schools and businesses to get too close…)

One main point Horn makes is that online learning opportunities “allow [students] to learn anytime and anywhere, many of these students would have no alternative to gain a formal education given the demands of work and family.”  He says this in response to critics who say that online learning is a poor substitute for the “real” kind of learning that happens in schools.

Horn’s defense is a problematic line of thought, I think.  It lauds the convenience of taking courses online without even so much as winking at other very crucial questions: especially the quality of the courses online.  Convenience for convenience’s sake is hardly a hardy argument for education reform.  What good is being able to take courses anywhere, anytime, if the course quality is shite?

This is not to say that all online courses are of poor quality.  Far from it.  It is to say, however, that to defend for-profit online educational companies on the grounds that are convenient–without equal attention to the quality of content that is conveniently accessed– is a weak defense indeed.  Convenience without quality is not compelling.

Horn could, for example, have discussed how some for-profit companies go to great lengths to ensure rigorous content.  Or, how some companies craft questions that challenge learners to go well beyond the simple multiple-choice blotting that naysayers claim makes up non-brick-and-mortar schooling.  Doing so, Horn could have then launched into a highly defensible tirade about the shaky quality of many “real thing” curricula.  How many teachers, he might have asked, fail to assess their students’ learning with a frequency that even comes close to online courses, which are constantly giving formative assessments?  Or, how many schools have purchased out-of-the-box curricula that denies teachers the opportunity to design curriculum and forces entire classrooms of students to move in step?

These questions aren’t asked.  It was a missed opportunity.  I myself can’t buy in to the idea that for-profit educational companies are good because they are convenient for students.  It is itself an all too convenient argument that avoids a crucial discussion we ought to be having: Are students getting quality courses at their convenience?

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A few days ago, I shared that I was beginning a study of 19th century textbooks to compare them to 21st century online courses, both in teaching literature.  It was with this topic in mind that two pieces jumped out at me: one new, and one old.

The Times reported recently that the NYC DOE’s new practice of buying textbooks has left smaller vendors and publishers in the dust–or pulp, I suppose.  The DOE argues that it is too large to try and manage the myriad vendors involved in purchasing and that in the end it costs the city more money because they aren’t getting the kinds of discounts they can get if they streamlined the process to only big companies.  The result:

In its first year, city school officials say, the streamlined process is on target to save $18 million. But, much as large book retailers have pushed out independent sellers, some of the small local companies that used to deal directly with the schools say they may be forced out of business, at a cost, they contend, to students.

It’s hard to argue that a public school system should save that kind of money by simply sharpening operations. 

What really interests me here is the relationship between the realities of educational business and knowledge.  Textbooks, after all, are used to teach students some sampling of academic disciplines.  What happens to the quality of academic content when some textbooks are admitted into the schools market and some not?  There is a necessary relationship between finances and knowledge in this instance.  This relationship is nothing new, historically. 

In 1871, this cartoon ran in Harper’s Weekly:

It shows the infamous Boss Tweed and his accomplices launching the city’s school textbooks out the window and replacing them with others.  The back story here is that the books being defenestrated are published by Harper’s–owner of Harper’s Weekly, in which Thomas Nast famously used his political cartoons (like this one) to draw public attention to the embezzling of the Tweed Ring–and the textbooks the rotund Tweed is replacing Harper’s with are those of his own publishing company or others in his circle of influence. 

Then, as now, there is a question to be asked: what is the relationship between the politics and business of schooling–which are necessary, I’d argue–and the quality of disciplinary content offered to students?  There is a tension, at least 150 years old, between economy and epistemology. 

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This recent speech was posted on ED’s web site.  In it, Secretary Duncan criticizes teacher preparation programs.  He spoke:

In a speech last fall at the Teachers College at Columbia, I noted that education schools have long been treated as the Rodney Dangerfield of higher education. Colleges of education have traditionally been the institution that got no respect—yet still they are described as cash cows for other, more academically-prestigious departments of the university.

Once teachers finish their preparation program, they enter a profession that continues to treat them as something less than highly-skilled professionals. Smart induction policies and well-designed mentoring for new teachers is the exception, rather than the rule. Professional development is generally of poor quality. Pay is based not on your performance in the classroom or your impact on student learning but rather on your credentials and time spent in the job. Performance evaluations of teachers are largely a sham.

So, how do we explain this paradox of on the one hand revering teachers, yet on the other hand, failing to elevate the teaching profession?

In the context of the current political climate, it seems like these questions fit conveniently with hot topics like of teacher tenure, teacher training, and the use of online courses and blended learning models to broaden the school day.  The iZone work I am a part of in NYC is one example of a major city trying to better understand how new approaches to teaching and learning might be used in over 1500 schools.

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Just moments ago, I submitted my second certification exam.  It’s a fifty-page review of studies related to my own present and future work.  In it, I ask a series of questions to guide the review:

- Why don’t policymakers read educational research?
- Why don’t researchers write for policymakers?
- What gaps exist because policymakers and researchers don’t read and write for each other?
- What assumptions about reading and writing underlie this gapbetween research and policy?

I’m becoming particularly interested in learning more about policymakers and implementers as readers, non-readers, and re-readers.  Many thanks to Jon Becker who replied to my last post and gave me invaluable direction. 

The next steps include meeting with my adviser for breakfast Friday, discussing the kinds of studies this lit review lends itself to, and beginning preparations on a dissertation proposal for a hearing in the May.  If you have any ideas, leads, or links, please send them along!

** On another note, I’m also beginning now to prepare for a reading of Paradise Lost to my son, Declan.  These tender, but literary, posts will pepper the blog in the months to come. **

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I was in the hospital with my new son one night a few weeks when I saw that one of the authors of Disrupting Class, Michael Horn, replied to my previous blog posting.  My son is three weeks today; his father finally has a chance to reply to Horn.  Horn wrote a comment to my posting that begins:

While I appreciated the kudos, a “good catch” does not adequately respond to my point.  Even Horn’s later series of rebuttals do nothing more than dodge the core of the critique.  At the heart of the posting is the concern that the authors of Disrupting Class knowingly misrepresent and dismiss research and scholarship in the field of education.  As a result, the Disruption Theory they create is inherently groundless.  Though it is compelling–no one would argue that the book has had great effects on education policy and reform–it neglects to seriously consider what is going on in actual schools with actual students, and it doesn’t consider what experts in education have to say about those realities.

I agree with Horn that much of educational research doesn’t prove causal relationships (if you do X students will ace their exams).  But that doesn’t mean you disregard it completely.  The weakness of Disrupting Class‘s stance toward educational research is that it finds value only in the answers to questions, not the questions themselves.  What questions would have been raised in their book if the authors had seriously considered educational research? What questions, then, would policy-makers and educational leadership have asked?  Questions, after all, are far more disruptive. 

Here’s an example.  One of the gaps I point out is that the authors make “the hasty assumption that adolescents’ use of technology means they can simply learn from it.”  Horn replied to this critique (which was the third in a list) that “we pointedly don’t rely on point #3 that you cite. Others write about this, but we ourselves don’t hinge our argument on this point.”  I’m sorry, but Horn and his colleagues pointedly do rely on students’ use of technology to learn.  If you remove students-using-technology-to-learn from Disrupting Class there is no book.  Who uses the online courses they speak of?  How do the authors imagine students sharing content they create?  And let’s not ignore the fact that not all students learn well in online courses; not all students have any interest or natural skill in posting materials for classmates to learn from. 

If the authors had consulted–just as one example–Donald Leu’s study in which he compares students’ offline and online literacy skills they might have disclaimed that research shows students’ offline and online literacy abilities have no direct relationship.  Great online readers might be shoddy offline readers.  And vice versa.  If they had considered even just studies that compare students online and offline lives, they might have explored certain realities of applying their theory to a school system: not all students are digitally literate; students’ social digital literacies don’t simply apply to online schoolwork; not all traditionally successful students’ talents translate to the online world; not all students even have equitable access to online worlds and therefore to those crucial online skills. 

The above response, I might add, says nothing about the authors’ disregard for the roles of teachers in student-learning.  While they do compliment educators for their hard work, they don’t seriously consider what it means, for instance, to disrupt teacher education using their framework.  Nor do they consider the setbacks and advances being made in the professional development of educators.  Their solution is to take a master teacher like Jaime Escalante and broadcast him to as many students as possible.  I wonder what kind of relationship Escalante would form with his students in such a scenario.  After all, wasn’t it his ability to connect with his classes that made his success possible? 

In sum, we need a real series of exchanges in which the educational research community dialogues with the authors of Disrupting Class.  Ideally, there would be a think tank in which some organization (a university, consulting group, a city) would invite the book’s authors and an array of educational scholars to the same table to talk about ways to ground so influential a book.  The authors of the book might dismiss educational research, but researchers are also quick to categorically dismiss the book.  Disrupting Class has been incredibly influential and is shaping education reform around the world.  Scholars who ignore that simple truth are too tangled in their own academic robes to see that real principals, teachers, students, and parents are and will be affected by this book.  Time to disrobe, if need be, and to seriously consider what it means to disrupt.

NB: There are other critiques of the book as well. One especially thoughtful review is by John Sener.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan held a town meeting in which he demonstrates the problems with words like “creative” and “innovation” in conversations about policy.  It always seems to stumble:

“We need to be much more creative and innovative in how we do things,” Duncan said. For instance, students today use cell phones and PDAs on a regular basis, he said, so coming up with creative ways to deliver content and curriculum involving technologies that students like to use is one way to grab students’ attention.

With all due respect to Secretary Duncan and eSchool News, is there not some incongruity between the ideas of creativity and innovation when used to talk about delivering content.  What about the notion of learning as something more than content to be delivered, banked, deposited, dropped off, absorbed, etc.? What about the idea of students constructing knowledge together?  which, is something new technologies lend themselves to quite well.

On May 15, 2009, the New York City Chancellor of Education announced the launch of NYC21C (now called iZone), which is a research and development initiative intended to strategize a city-wide plan to make 21^st century teaching and learning a reality in the city’s fourteen-hundred plus schools.  Several NYC Department of Education offices are collaborating for this initiative, including the Office of New School Development, the Division of Instructional and Informational Technology, and the Office of Strategy and Innovation.

The vision for iZone comes from various sources, including consultation with business leaders worldwide.  In addition, one noteworthy book called Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation will Change the Way the World Learns, by Clayton Christensen et al., of the Harvard Business School, has also been consulted to guide the iZone initiative.  Chancellor Klein provides a public blurb for the book.  Klein writes:

Provocatively titled, Disrupting Class is just what America’s K-12 education system needs–a well thought-through proposal for using technology to better serve students and bring our schools into the 21st Century. Unlike so many education ‘reforms,’ this is not small-bore stuff. For that reason alone, it’s likely to be resisted by defenders of the status quo, even though it’s necessary and right for our kids.  We owe it to them to make sure this book isn’t merely a terrific read; it must become a blueprint for educational transformation (np).

What’s more, the chancellor has cited the book as one of the main works influencing his own approach to urban education reform (Green, 2008).  In addition, the book’s concepts and language pepper the iZone literature. Innovation is a key concept and word to the authors of Disrupting Class, the subtitle of which places much emphasis on “disruptive innovation” (np).

It is more than reasonable to say that Disrupting Class, along with other sources, influences the way in which initiatives like iZone are enacted all over the country.  It is a book written from a business/administrative vantage point.  In the upper left-hand corner of the book’s back cover is the word “business”, clearly directing the bookseller where to shelve it.  The book does indeed raise important questions for educators.  However, the book also has a blind spot which must be identified and addressed so that the efforts of education reformers consulting the book can adjust their own systemic course of action.  The blind spot I speak of is most evident in the seventh chapter called “Improving Education Research”.  Next, I suggest that this circumvention of educational research leaves in its wake major gaps in Disrupting Class.  These gaps suggest three hasty assumptions underlying the book: 1) the hasty assumption that teachers can’t be taught to integrate technology into their classrooms; 2) the hasty assumption that innovative teaching and learning is simply a matter of outsourcing academic content to distance learning companies; 3) the hasty assumption that adolescents’ use of technology means they can simply learn from it.  Finally, I offer suggestions for New York City’s iZone initiative to address the gaps in these authors’ argument.

Gaps in Class

“So many talented, committed people,” the authors begin, “work so hard to improve public schools and yet get disappointing results because the research they follow is preliminary and incomplete” (161).  The short seventh chapter of Disrupting Class builds a case that educational research is well-intentioned but less than useful.  They argue that much of education research doesn’t go far enough in its work because it emphasizes description, not prescription.  It fails to show causality.  The same kinds of causal relationships that exist in the observable world—like gravity’s effects or the breaking point of metals (both are analogies used in the book)—should be observable in educational settings if the research is done properly.  The goal is to achieve a quality of educational research that allows administrators and teachers to reliably predict what will and won’t work in school reform.

To be clear, the book’s general idea that some educational research is strong and some is weak is hardly contestable.  More contestable, however, is the casualness with which they dismiss educational research as a whole.  For instance, in support of their claim that educational research is simply limp, the authors include a footnote at the end of the chapter’s opening paragraph.  The footnote seeks to show support from scholars outside the paradigm of business management and begins as follows:

There is a host of articles that criticize education research from vantage points different than ours.  One such study by the National Academy of Science evaluated educational research and found that it had “methodologically weak research, trivial studies, an infatuation with jargon, and a tendency toward fads with a consequent fragmentation of effort.”  Other scholars point out that these research studies are often too narrowly focused on pedagogical or curricular factors with no reference to the underlying culture and its effective (174).

But, in fact, the quotation above is taken completely out of context.  The full quotation (Atkinson & Jackson, 1992) tells a different story.  It’s worth quoting at length as it reveals an important gap in Disrupting Class with regard to its view of educational research.  I’ve italicized the quotation from the excerpt above to emphasize its intended context:

The undistinguished reputation of education research is also partly attributable to some of the work.  There has been some methodologically weak research, trivial studies, an infatuation with jargon, and a tendency toward fads with a consequent fragmentation of effort. The committee, however, does not share the widespread negative judgments about the contributions of research to the reform of education.  Our review of research-based programs to improve teaching, strengthen curricula, restructure institutions of learning, and assess and monitor the progress in US schools has convinced us not only that research can improve education, but also that it has been demonstrably useful (20).

As is plain to see, the quotation that Christensen et al. use omits crucial words like “partly” and “some”.  They start the quotation right after a pivotal qualifier and stop the quotation right before the authors’ admission that they don’t “share the widespread negative judgments about the contributions of research to the reform of education.”   The paragraph says the opposite of the authors’ contention: it says that there are some who say educational research is weak, but they themselves don’t agree. The authors of Disrupting Class fail to take seriously and treat rigorously educational research that might support or contradict their own ideas.  When one looks at the educational research they do cite in footnotes, it represents only a cursory glimpse of some educational specialties.  The studies aren’t scrutinized and don’t appear to deeply inform the authors’ ideas and recommendations.

(more…)

Rigor is a tragic word in education.  On the one hand, it has gravitas–it conveys a history of academic excellence and challenge.  On the other hand, it gets volleyed around in educational politics with the whim and witlessness of a group of school children playing hackysak during lunch. 

This is the word that is being hacked and sacked in education now.  Some policy makers have hesitations about the Race to the Top initiative, especially as it concerns the relationship between the state and the fed.  Ed Week writes,

Some House lawmakers suggested the initiative could help address the frequent criticism that the 8-year-old No Child Left Behind Act, the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, allows states to set their own academic standards.

That policy inadvertently encourages states to reduce rigor so that they can clear achievement targets, said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the education committee and an author of the NCLB law.

As a result, “the quality of education a student may receive is left up to their ZIP code. It’s a matter of geographical luck,” he said. “Having 50 different standards in 50 different states undermines America’s education system.”

I smell a rigor argument afoot.  The “quality”, they say.  Such a simple word that means precisely nothing.  The worry is that we are embarking on a national standards campaign with accompanying exams.  I’m not completely convinced it would be such a bad thing; certainly not as bad as what post-NCLB has been.  It behooves schools, collectively, to have some common language or point of assessment.  But the language must be precise. And precise language takes time.  That’s my own worry: I don’t object to national standards on any principle; I don’t even object to national exams if they are created smartly and if they are prevented from dominating instruction.  What I object to is dodgy rigor–the word without the vigor.

I came across this statistical overview of the US’s education system according to UNESCO.  Take a look:

Notice anything strange?  Look again, here:

I appeal to my teacher friends and colleagues here: Of the last ten distinct classrooms you’ve walked into (even counting your own), how often did you see fourteen students per single teacher?  I’m not sure where they got these number from, but someone needs to tell UNESCO, “Stat can’t be right!”

This article explores reasons why education doesn’t get the press coverage it deserves. And when it does, it joined at the hip to political topics:

Pearson Evaluation Systems has created a totally computer-based test to license teachers. 

I’m all for experimentation in new ways of teaching and learning.  I have a hard time buying the idea that Pearson “developed the NES program to help states make sure the educators they certify are prepared to teach effectively in 21-st century classrooms.”  That’s an absurd notion–that because someone sits at a computer to take a series of content-heavy lessons and exams that they are then ready to be in a room with live students.  It’s especially strange when much research–and the Secretary of Education–calls for pre-service teachers to spend more time in classrooms with students working on craft.  An Ed Week article adds that NCATE is taking Pearson’s work very seriously:

James Cibulka, president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), agreed that NES, as well as other teacher-certification tests, should be aligned with rigorous standards. But he also said it should be just one of multiple measures of a candidate’s effectiveness.

“NCATE welcomes innovative approaches to assessing teaching candidates in pre-service programs, those seeking licensure, and recently licensed teachers, such as NEC is developing,” he said. “Raising the bar for those entering the teaching profession is one important strategy if America is to succeed in raising K-12 student achievement and closing the achievement gap.”

I am befuddled and bewildered.  But I’m also open to learning more.  So, Pearson, let’s hear it.

Is this what it comes down to: more time in school = better learning?  No, it isn’t.  Though supporters of longer school days and years would like to argue the prior, it is more accurate to say this: more time in school (preparing for exams) = better learning (preparing for exams).

I’m not saying I don’t favor longer school days and years.  I might be very much in favor of it.  What I am not in favor of is the way in which learning has been equated with test scores.  It is most troublesome when I read an article like this one in Ed Week, in which

The first national database of schools that have added learning time to their schedules, which was set for release this week, suggests that the extra time might play a role in boosting middle and high school achievement.

The National Center on Time & Learning, which assembled and analyzed the database, found a moderate association between increased time and how well students did on their states’ standardized English and mathematics tests compared with their peers in nearby schools on regular schedules.

On the one hand, aren’t the success of exams like the ones discussed here predicated on their uniqueness.  Isn’t teaching directly to the test the kind of thing that makes the measurement of such assessments bogus?  On the other hand, is this what learning has neatly become: filling in bubbles and scoring high on tests?

The article calls attention to charter schools in particular, whose success with student achievement is being well documented (Harlem Children Zone was in the spotlight on 60 minutes just last night).  But, if the context of success is limited to learning out-of-context, what good is it?  Edublogger Richard Bryne writes the following about the 60 Minute segment:

One part of the segment that I didn’t agree with was the focus at the end on trying to figure out which one thing is making [founder Geoffery] Canada’s school successful in closing achievement gaps. As they said in the segment, “trying to boil it down to pill form.” If people are serious about closing achievement gaps and want to use Canada’s model, they’ll need to adopt all of his strategies, not just the “boiled down” version. The full segment is embedded below.

I’m inclined to agree.  At the same time, test scores have such weighty status because the education world isn’t presenting any other quasi-convincing form of measurement. Talk about a tough pill to swallow.

The Times reported on recent flair ups between public school advocates and charter school supporters.  Jenifer Medina writes:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made charter schools one of his third-term priorities, and that means that in New York, battles and resentment over space — already a way of life — will become even more common. He and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, have allowed nearly two-thirds of the city’s 99 charter schools to move into public school buildings, officials expect two dozen charter schools to open next fall, and the mayor has said he will push the Legislature to allow him to add 100 more in the next four years.

It’s fairly well known how charter-friendly NYC is.  What I find problematic about Medina’s article is the way she sets the stage.  She describes a librarian who took pains to redecorate and renovate her own library for her public school students.  Then, her principal agreed to give the library space to a charter school in the building. 

This isn’t a fair anecdote to introduce a discussion on charter schools.  It might begin a conversation about shoddy leadership–a principal who doesn’t involve invested members of staff in decision-making–but has little to do with the greater tension between charters and publics.

The Institute of Education Sciences new director John Q. Easton.  It’s expected that there will be a shift in the kinds of educational research the government supports.  Education Week writes:

The shift “is kind of an interesting next step for IES,” said Gerald E. Sroufe, the director of government relations for the Washington-based American Educational Research Association.

“Clearly, the emphasis was on rigorous research methods,” he added. “I think the new method is going to be to look at what would make research more relevant.”

Under Mr. Whitehurst, the institute’s first director, the agency moved early to increase funding for studies using randomized controlled trials and other rigorous methods in response to widespread dissatisfaction among policymakers and practitioners with the quality of education research.

The agency also created the What Works Clearinghouse, which vetted the research evidence on education programs and policies and made the results widely available on a user-friendly Web site.

One wonders, in light of these shifts, what it would look like for research on the local and school and classroom level to be more supported.  How can hundreds of millions that the IES has in its pockets work not only for systemic change from the state and district level up, but from classrooms too?

In this piece from Harvard Education, school leaders grapple with bringing the system of departmentalization to elementary schools. (Gerald Gaff writes extensively about departmentalization’s role in secondary and college.) Opponents say that learning is more than just conveying content to students; it’s social, emotional, and communal.  In these testing times, however, even our youngest learners might find school to be quite different than their parents.

Here’s what I read on Ed Week:

The state Board of Regents on Monday approved a reform plan for teacher preparation that would place far more emphasis on classroom experience.

OK. Few would argue that giving pre-service teachers more time in the classroom is a bad thing.  In my work with graduate students in a teacher prep program, I find that more time in classrooms, in front of classrooms, and talking about classrooms the better.  But then, I read this:

It also would streamline the process for experts in other fields to become teachers and allow cultural institutions and research centers to award teaching degrees.

Streamline means “speed things up” and cultural institutions and research centers means, well, who knows.  This is concerning.  Pre-service teachers need more time in classrooms, not less.  Speeding up the teacher preparation process might very well put more under-prepared adults in classrooms with our students most in need.  Not a recipe for success, I worry.

Some more specs from Ed Week include:

The reforms proposed Monday would:

• Base evaluations of prospective teachers far more heavily on classroom performance, through both live and videotaped monitoring.

• Reduce the academic requirements for professionals in other fields who want to become teachers and can demonstrate their expertise by passing rigorous subject-area tests. Their training would then focus on teaching skills.

• Allow cultural institutions, research centers and nonprofit organizations to certify teachers. Colleges and universities dominate that role and would continue to be key players.

• Offer bonuses of as much as $30,000 to teachers in shortage areas who accept positions in high-needs schools. Steiner said there is a “deep need” for teachers in science, technology, math, engineering, special education and English as a second language.

The New York City Department of Education’s system for assessing schools’ achievement comes under fire again from the New York Times.  Disregarding that this piece comes out well after the mayor’s election is safely secured, the article points out that not all schools are held to the same standard, even though the systemic differentiation is justified on the grounds of helping IEP students, ELLs, and other who have been historically underserved.  The Times writes:

Several of the city’s largest high schools that have struggled for years received low grades on the progress reports, and those schools have a high population of black and Latino students, as well as special education students and English language learners.

One high school principal in Queens, who declined to be named for fear of punishment, said that the school had received more needy students in recent years and that it was difficult to help them catch up.

“I don’t disagree with holding us to a higher bar, but not all schools are being asked to do the same thing,” the principal said.

In conversations I’ve had with a principals recently, this sense that the city’s assessment system is unfair and doesn’t fairly represent schools’ successes pervaded.  For instance, if schools are rewarded for the “growth” they make year to year–that is, moving from a B to an A–what reward is in place for an already successful high school?  In another instance, if schools are rewarded for reaching out to students’ homes, is it really fair that whether you are a school of 100 or 5000, you get only one parent coordinator to help you do that? 

To be clear, I think a system of comparing and developing a strategy to improve schools is vital to the city.  I also think the assessment method is in need of assessment itself.

If only students could just play games and learn, all our problem would be solved. 

I mean that with a wink an a smile, of course.

Still, this piece in Ed Week this morning caught my eye.  It’s about various game-based learning sites that help students learn about financial literacy.  This seems to be becoming all the rage: Quest to Learn opened a few months ago, which is a NYC school in partnership with NYU’s Institute of Play–the whole model blurs lines of traditional learning and is built on various gaming theories.  Florida Virtual School has a course that gets a lot of press in which students learn about history by playing a role-playing game.  Even NYC’s School of One, written up as one of Time Magazine’s 50 greatest inventions of the year, sought to automate and differentiate learning by creating daily “playlists” for students. 

It’s worth considering voices like that of the UK’s David Buckingham.  In contrast to the ra-ra cheers of James Paul Gee and Marc Prensky, Buckingham notes that the scholars in greatest support of game-based learning don’t really scrutinize it.  They just give it the old homecoming cheer and dance. 

Quite a lucrative game of their own, you might say.

In a piece from Education Week, Pedro Noguera of NYU School of Education criticizes the Secretary Duncan’s recent scolding of teacher preparation programs.  The most notable quote from Professor Noguera, as Ed Week notes as well, is the following:

It makes no more sense to blame schools of education for the failings of public schools than it does to blame business schools for the collapse of the country’s financial sector.

A NY Times article recently explored how the New York State Board of Regents is considering opening up “alternative” programs to granting teachers certification.  On the one hand, thinking out of the box is more often than not a good thing for bureaucrats to do.  On the other hand, it makes teaching seem like training, not a “sophisticated profession”.  In the words of Teachers College vice provost William Baldwin,

“I could identify critical shortages in health care, such as primary care physicians, and I don’t think people would be open to allowing certifying doctors that came from an alternate path,” he said. “I think they are responding to the right concerns, but I am not sure this is the right solution.”

I agree.  I also think educational leaders like Teachers College need to take the lead on reforming teacher preparation because, up to this point, a couple weeks after Secretary Duncan’s speech, no one else is offering a plan.

The feds want to hear from others about what Web 2.0 learning could look like. 

[...] even though today’s Web 2.0 tools can spread information broadly and quickly and foster collaboration on such projects, the effort has apparently been slow in attracting recommendations from educators and ed-tech experts that could help guide its development, some people in the field say.

“The new plan is a critical component to moving education forward in the digital age,” said Donald G. Knezek, the executive director of the International Society for Technology in Education, or ISTE, based in Washington. “The draft is shaping up to have all the right placeholders focused on learning and effective and competent teaching.

“But the important thing now is to put the meat on those placeholders,” he said, “so they have got to have educators and sophisticated education leadership to get their ideas in there.”

I would point their attention to what we’re doing right here in NYC and the iZone (formerly known as 21C).

A report from the Everyone Graduates Center has come saying that 9th grade is unusually good at holding students back.  What seems to be a study that focuses on a particular year of study could equally be interpreted as a reflection on a wide disconnect between middle schools and high schools in terms of what is taught and assessed, not to mention how in both cases.  Here’s an table from the study to consider:

From Pics for Blog

I created wordles for two of the Secretary of Education’s recent speeches: one given at Teachers College, Columbia University and one given to the US Chamber of Commerce’s Education and Workforce Summit. 

Speech 1: Audience, leaders in education —

Speech 2: Audience, US Chamber of Commerce –

Earlier this week, the USDOE put Karen Cator in charge of the educational technology initiatives.  Cator has both experience as an educator and was an Apple executive.  Education Week wrote:

The long-awaited appointment comes at a time when interest in how technology can be used to improve education is growing as more K-12 schools offer online courses, use mobile technologies such as cellphones and laptops, and put in place high-tech data-analysis tools.

“We have a lot of work to do because now there is a huge opportunity” to capitalize on federal funding for educational technology and put new tools to use to improve teaching and learning, Ms. Cator said Tuesday at a meeting of the State Educational Technology Directors Association in Crystal City, Va., where her appointment was officially announced. “We need to craft an entirely new research agenda around this issue so people can’t write that technology doesn’t work. We know it works…”

My reading screeched to a stop with that last line.  We know what works? “We” might include Ms. Cator and Secretary Duncan, but it doesn’t include education researchers and scholars.  “know” and “works”, especially when used so near each other and in a sentence about education, are more often than not used with conviction to hide just how little we do “know” about what “working” is at all. 

One thing we can know, however, about the sentence is this: The word “what” works fine.