Online learning needs to go social.  So says the founder of Einztein.com, a free course search engine, which is well worth a visit and a browse.  In his piece on Mashable! recently, Marco Masoni writes:

What’s required are innovative approaches to course design that set aside old models of instruction where theory often trumps actuality. Online course providers must embrace the web’s potential to match students with the kinds of timely knowledge and skills that address current issues head-on, and enable them to thrive in the global marketplace.

Yes, the web’s potential to make learning experiences dynamic and real-time is seemingly limitless.  And exciting.  Still, when I search through what’s out there using Einztein’s site, I’m disappointed.  Like iTunes U, Einztein allows users to connect with myriad courses and online instructional videos.  I did a search for Milton, for instance, and it linked me to Yale’s Open Course on the poet.  That’s not what disappoints me.  In fact, it’s incredible that these kinds of courses are available for free to anyone with internet access.  What does disappoint me is that for Masoni (and Apple, for that matter) learning still resembles one-way communication from an expert to unknowing students.  Students are empty vessels whose minds are to be filled with factoids and figures.  He skips scrutinizing this point and jumps eagerly to the use of “real-time” lessons:

It’s not enough for a course to be accessible online, it must also be designed in a way that keys into the digital pulse of current events, trending topics and insider knowledge endemic to the web.

No.  It’s not enough for a course to be accessible online if it used as a way to perpetuate the kinds of monolithic teaching that are iconic of traditional means of instruction.  I think the merits of real-time learning are not talked about enough.  Still, it is what students do with the information they learn that matters.  If all a student does is watch a professor lecture on Milton for nine hours and take an exam (which I myself might enjoy immensely) have we really innovated teaching and learning?  The medium is not enough, not without equal attention paid to pedagogy.

In her piece on college textbook costs, MoneyWatch’s Lynn O’Shaughnessy not only lists a $1,215 communications encyclopedia, but also adds this quick insight:

One reasons why more students don’t turn to the Internet for cheap college textbooks is because many college bookstores, which are more expensive, don’t release the names of required college textbooks for classes until the last minute. To get the cheapest textbooks possible, contact professors this summer so you’ll have plenty of time to find the best textbook deals.

As I’ve described elsewhere, this might be another reason to work toward students writing their own textbooks with the teacher’s expert guidance.  Certainly in this age of free and shareable media, these kinds of prices will remain a distant superlative.

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I came across this piece recently about the rise of digital textbooks.  In it, two experts on the topic take questions in a chat setting.  For instance:

Moderator: Katie Ash: Brian – do you want to go into a bit more detail about what exactly is going on in California, and what the different phases are?
Brian Bridges: @Katie. digital textbooks can be as simple as an electronic version of a print book, which is exactly what we’re reviewing right now. College professors and CK-12 have created a number of excellent books which can be printed out or can be read on devices. Digital books can also be web sites or interactive.
Neeru Khosla: @Caryn. Digital Textbooks is not just text, but it is next generation textbooks leveraging technology to make content available in various formats
Brian Bridges: Phase One of the Free Digital Textbook Initiative focused on downloadable PDF textbooks in math and science.
Neeru Khosla: including print on paper, as well as on web and mobile devices

Granted, this is “phase one” of the digitization of textbooks.  Still, I’m left asking myself: why are the adults still the ones writing textbooks here?  It’s a fair inference from the whole transcript that adults remain in the role of expert.  But, why?  Wouldn’t students learn mountains of knowledge and skills if their only task for the year was to write a textbook for other students on, say, an introduction to chemistry or English literature?  They could then share it with other students and schools and update it collaboratively.  For free. The role of the teacher, then, is that of editor: verify accuracy, project manage, and stay out of the way when needed to.

That’s exactly what students at one NYC school did a couple years ago when they created a rap album review for the NYS chemistry Regents exam.  They rapped a review and the teacher made sure the right topics were covered and that the information was clearly and accurately conveyed.  Then she got out of the way.

I am re-reading a book by education professor Sheridan Blau about teaching literature.  He describes a profound realization he had four decades ago: the work he did assembling content to teach his students was precisely the work the students themselves needed to be doing.  And, they couldn’t ever do that work because Professor Blau would walk in to his classes prepared to teach what he had learned.  The paradox is this: so long as adults prepare the content for students, students can’t prepare it for themselves.  It is the preparation of content–or, the curation, perhaps–that effects learning.

I do indeed think that the textbook industry is undergoing a major transformation.  Between online textbooks, the influx of devices like the iPad, and the surge in Apps for sale, there is little direction for this to go but up.  But, transformations in technology do not mean transformations in pedagogy.  A transformation in pedagogy would have students writing the textbooks for other students, sharing those online, and even voting on which ones were most effective.  That would be transformative.  Downloading PDFs of adults’ own learning of the content? Hardly.

NYC’s iZone and Huff’s Oversimplification

As NYC creates its virtual school, there have been many articles that have begun cropping up about online learning versus offline learning.  Huffington Post’s Scott Olster wrote about it most recently:

New York City’s Department of Education launched the NYC Innovation Zone in April, a $10 million initiative in which 81 schools plan to test a variety of education methods, from expanding the hours of the school day, to using virtual education for advanced placement and credit recovery courses. Approximately $1.5 million of the $10 million budget is slated to be devoted exclusively to purchasing virtual credit recovery programs, according to school spokesperson Matthew Mittenthal.

The Innovation Zone is the city’s first major investment in virtual education. Until now, the city has lagged behind a national expansion of virtual schools and online learning programs.

Other cities have dabbled in virtual learning and the city seems to have learned from their lessons by diversifying their approaches to what virtual schooling could look like.  Olster’s article makes it seem like the city is focusing on AP and credit recovery, though.  He leaves out of his post the city’s pilot with blended schools, for instance, where up to one third of the teaching and learning will take place online while operating withing current brick-and-mortar parameters of the school day.  Oddly, Olster focuses much of his attention on schools that are not actually part of the iZone.  For a clearer representation of the work, see Gotham Schools or the DOE’s iZone site.  The piece also falls into the pitfall of presenting virtual schooling as an offline/online dichotomy.

The Dichotomy Problem

“Dichotomy” is a useful word here.  Business consultant Stephen J Gill uses the word when he writes about those who argue that online learning is more economically efficient and therefore necessarily better than face-to-face instruction.  In his words:

The problem with this argument is that it implies that all Web-based training and conferences are superior to all in-person events. The important question is not, “Is online better (or cheaper) than in-person?” The important question is, “What types of learning interventions for what results and under what circumstances are more effective?”This could include Web-based only, in-person only, blended or a multitude of variations within and among each of these broad categories.

For him, to think of it as online versus offline presents a “false dichotomy” and limits innovation.

What “Dichotomy” Teaches Us about Dichotomies

I’d like to tap into my love of words and literary theory here to offer another take on dichotomies.  In fact, the history of the word “dichotomy” brings much to the current discussion.  Most familiar is the definition of dichotomy that denotes the splitting of a whole into two parts.  Its etymological ancestor, diakoptos, breaks down into “dia” being Greek for two or across and “koptos” meaning to cut:  To cut in two or through.

Another definition of dichotomy, also stemming from the ancient Greek, is to break through.  In this sense, dichotomy means something very different from the creative splitting of a whole.  Here, quite different than above, dichotomy means to rupture a surface.  While not denotatively a negative action, it does connote destruction with little sign of affirmative generation.  This destructive meaning is furthered by others, including “to receive a deep cut” and “to cut off”.  In these definitions, dichotomy is very dark indeed.  And bloody too.

And yet in another definition, this one less bloody, dichotomy extends more metaphorically into social acts like conversation.  Rather than the fleshy slicing and lacerating above, Aristotle in his Rhetoric uses the word in reference to poor conversants who interrupt and cut short conversation.

Finally, the word has also been used to refer to the counterfeiting of Greek coins.  The creation of something that has the likeness of the original.  In this case, it merits unpacking what both the original and the duplicate represent.  The original coin serves as a common currency, a promise of an individual to both another person and a society that a debt would be honored.  The duplicate, however, endangers both the individual relationship between debtor and debtee, but also it is a selfish act that threatens the economic well-being of the whole.  Though at first this meaning of dichotomy seems a far cry from the others, it is, perhaps, a combination of these others.  It is both the creation of two from one and it is the a destructive disruption to all.

Advice for Mr. Olster of Huffington Post

Despite its etymological ambivalence, the use of dichotomies continues all around us today.  Even if it’s not explicitly used–or, especially when it’s not explicitly used–it is an effective rhetorical device to make a compelling point.  For example, pitting online learning against offline learning.  Or, as Scott Olster does (perhaps unintentionally), suggesting that virtual learning is gaining traction solely in opposition to the brick-and-mortar realities of schooling.  (For a rounder sense of what is possible in blended learning environments, t check out this op-ed by two iZone principals. Or, read postings by someone who works with teachers to use technology innovatively in their work.)  I would argue, along with Aristotle, that what Olster achieves when using a quiet and untroubled dichotomy is an interruption, an aborted dialogue, a rhetorical shout or barbaric yawp that in turn issues a deep intellectual cut to others.

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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Facebook and Google have been the subject of prying eyes lately as concerns about their handling of users’ private information. Google’s Buzz, remember, broadcasted user contacts without consent.  As learning goes virtual in NYC and around the world, it’s worth asking:  is learning a private act?

To some extent, school is a very public space.  Teachers address many students at once, students inevitably know each others’ grades, and reading aloud is as likely to reveal much about a reader’s fluency, or lack thereof. Still, when is learning private and when is privacy essential for learning?

It seems to me that there isn’t a straight answer to this question. That might make it even more important. What if we have this unspoken assumption that public and social learning is always a good thing? (Not much of a stretch, in my experience.)  I think we might gain much insight from posing these kinds of questions to our students.  How might they respond?

I blogged a few weeks ago about the return of super-lecturers. Though I meant it only half in jest, I now think that balancing the public kinds of learning with a new focus on private learning could give us greater insight into students’ learning habits.

Another side of the issue has to do with the kinds of information learning management systems gather about kids. Could students argue that software which tracks how long they take to answer a question a breech of their pedagogical privacy?   What can online course providers learn from the missteps of Google and Facebook? That is, aside from “don’t get caught”!

I’ve become rather fixated on the claim that our 21st century schools are encumbered by a 19th century “industrial model”.  On a certain level, I understand it: large comprehensive high schools, compartmentalized courses like cogs in a cognitive machine and the like.  The danger of this presupposition, I think, is that it can leave the quality of 21st century “advancements” gone unchecked.

The Quotations

Here are some of the quotations I’ve found (and I’ll ask for yours, too, if you know of any)!  They are:

“Just as in the early stages of other industries’ histories, society’s expectations and behaviours actually conformed to the standardization; Americans no longer expected customized learning. Much of the support behind this standardization–categorizing students by age into grades and then teaching batches of them with batches of material–was inspired by the efficient factory system that had emerged in industrial America.” – p. 66, Disrupting Class by Clay Christensen et al.

“As we transitioned to a more urban, industrial era at the turn of the twentieth century, however, effective teaching and learning consisted of “bath-process” large numbers of students in assembly-line schools to teach the Three R’s–and so to assimilate rural workers and immigrants into the new requirements of work and citizenship.  For the most part, these are still the schools we have today.” – p. 256, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner

“Businesslike efficiency and vocational education in secondary schools and colleges were seen as critical to preparing students for work in an industrial economy that was then competing with Great Britain and Germany.” -p. 9, Oversold and Underused by Larry Cuban

Each of these books argue, in part, that certain technological progress, like Web 2.0 tools, hold the key to breaking with this antiquated model.  While I’m not saying that what these authors are saying is false, it would be facile to say that simply because something is more recently technological–like, say, the digitization of academic content–it is necessarily better.

Are there other quotations you’ve come across yourself that might fit well with the ones above?  Please, pass them on!

19th Century NYC Textbooks

I was elated to learn recently from my friend that if I was on the move to identify popularly used English literature textbooks from 19th century NYC, I need look no further than across the street.  Standing on the steps of Tweed Courthouse (the current home of the NYC DOE) you can see the Municipal Archives.  There, I will find volumes of documents for review.  Specifically, there are Board of Education Annual Reports that might well have, among many other things, a listing of the textbooks ordered in schools.  (Many thanks to David Ment of the Municipal Archives for his clear and quick direction!)

Once certain textbooks have been identified and acquired, I’ll begin the study to better understand just what is so different (and the same) about the old textbooks and the new online courses.

Herman Melville, the Teacher?

While immersing myself in New York of the 1800s, I’ve learned that one New Yorker and author–Herman Melville–did himself teach in a school upstate.  It’s not clear what he taught, though he did focus on the classics, we do know that he had on his person an introductory book to teaching called The District School.  In it, John Orville Taylor makes many direct arguments about what good education is and is not: he holds no punches in telling parents they need to do their part and painting a picture of new teachers who have no ideas what they’ve gotten into.  Melville did only a couple years teaching; then he did other things: like write Moby Dick.

Still, for your amusement and edification, here is The District School, in its entirety.

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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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.

The New York State Board of Regents has proposed that they improve schools in the state by lifting the cap on charter schools.  They also suggest a serious effort to tie teacher pay to achievement. 

It’s not unfair to liken these proposals to a dance–a choreographed one set to the tune of the USDOE’s Race to the Top parameters.  Edweek notes,

The proposal seeks to lift the cap on the number of charter schools, now set at 200. State officials note New York could get the most “points” toward the competitive federal grants if the cap was doubled to 400 charter schools.

The proposal would revise state standardized tests so they more closely track student performance on national tests, and offer a uniform curriculum and tests in the arts, economics and multimedia computer technology.

The plan would link a teacher’s job evaluation to student performance under improved tests and as part of a variety of factors. It would also improve teacher training by colleges and mentors.

I get very nervous with the use of test scores as a weighty measure of educational effectiveness.  That having been said, I do think the work of charter schools deserves more credit than teaching unionists often give.  Though I have seen some eerily scripted charter schools, I’ve also seen some eerily scripted public school programs (“You will teach this mini-lesson to your level two blue readers at 11:25″).  At the same time, I find the idealists’ cry that schooling must be a public service hard to swallow when our classrooms look like so many of them do. 

Do I think we should privatize education? Not completely.  Do I think public schools can learn from private schools and charters?  Absolutely.   

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.

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.