Danielsaurus.com :: Daniel Bigler eats web stuff and talks about it.

The Marshmallow Test for Future Achievement?

Continuing with the testing craziness, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman debunk an experiment that supposedly predicts a kid’s future success based on whether or not they can hold off eating a marshmallow.

What I’ve always wondered about this study, though: what if the kid just doesn’t like marshmallows?

Feb 21, 2010 :: Tagged under: early childhood education, education, nurtureshock, testing :: #

The New Child-Testing Craze

The latest from “Nurtureshock” authors Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman.

Feb 21, 2010 :: Tagged under: early childhood education, education, nurtureshock, testing :: #

A Quick Fix for America's Worst Schools

By Gilbert Cruz for TIME Magazine.

Alright, a few quick thoughts here:

There is no “Quick Fix” for education. If there was, we would’ve found it long ago.
While I’ve been generally supportive of charter schools as a mechanism that would allow for a broader spectrum of educational philosophies and more focused school leadership – I don’t see how turning the charter school idea into, in essence, a corporate takeover of schools is at all a good idea. If the Duncan education department is serious about making charter schools work, they’ll have to lay out some pretty clear guidelines for parties who are interested in setting up charters (including the requirement that they be a nonprofit and articulate a clear educational vision and philosophy).
We’re relying on the same criteria for measuring school performance as before when establishing charter schools, but not stopping to consider whether the measurement tool itself is faulty? Depending on your own purposes for education, there’s a valid argument to be made that you just can’t simply quantify the true benefits of education into testing and congregate school scores. Something more’s gotta go.

Mostly, though, I think if we’re to be serious about education reform, the number one question that has to dominate our efforts has to be: What is education really about?

The actual mechanism or mechanisms for how we enact education reform matter far less than the philosophy that drives our efforts. Education in Sweden and the Netherlands, for instance, operates on a voucher-based but seems to consistently fulfill their cultural expectations for education (as well as rank consistently high in global education ratings). Sure, I think there’s zero chance that a voucher system would be (immediately) a good thing in the states – but the point is, in Sweden and the Netherlands it seems to work fine as a mechanism, given their cultures and philosophic expectations of education.

I’m not providing much of a fleshed-out answer here, but I will say this: My instinct is that the real key to “fixing” education doesn’t at all lie in the mechanical elements of structure – but rather, in the cultural arena, with how we approach education altogether.

Feb 15, 2010 :: Tagged under: charter schools, education, education reform :: #

"Let’s Banish Critical Thinking"

In the first of his multi-part series, K.D. Washburn considers the role of “Critical Thinking” in education – and makes the case that it’s been long since time we banish the phrase in favor of a different, less complex model. He also calls for a balanced acceptance of the role of memorization in learning – yes, I as well first went, “Ugh, memorization” – and he makes a strong argument for it’s use in education, when emphasized appropriately.

Meanwhile in his second part, Washburn expands on the four “core processes” of learning: experience, comprehension, elaboration and application. The practical takeaway in understanding these concepts – which Washburn lays out well – is immense for educators and anyone else who works with kids.

Washburn promises more posts on the subject in the future.

(Via Bethe Almeras.)

Feb 15, 2010 :: Tagged under: education, learning :: #

Turning a School Bus Ride into a Rolling Wi-Fi Zone

The New York Times:

On this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops.
Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students call it the Internet Bus, and what began as a high-tech experiment has had an old-fashioned — and unexpected — result. Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared.
“It’s made a big difference,” said J. J. Johnson, the bus’s driver. “Boys aren’t hitting each other, girls are busy, and there’s not so much jumping around.”

Man, kids these days… why, back in my day, we just had our Gameboys to play with. And, more often than not, they had black and white screens. BLACK AND WHITE SCREENS. Can you imagine the horror?

Feb 12, 2010 :: Tagged under: buses, education, schools, technology :: #

The Junior Meritocracy

A piece about the increasing pressure – on parents and schools – to test children’s intelligence at increasingly young ages, for admission to kindergarten. In-depth in a way that only the New York Magazine or the New Yorker can be:

Given the stakes, it’s hardly a surprise that New Yorkers with means and aspirations for their children would go to great lengths to help them. Rather, what’s surprising is that a single test, taken at the age of 4, can have so much power in deciding a child’s fate in the first place. The fact is, 4 is far too young an age to reach any conclusions about the prospects of a child’s mind. Even administrators who use these exams—indeed, especially the administrators who use these exams—say they’re practically worthless as predictors of future intelligence. “At information meetings,” says Steve Nelson, head of the famously progressive Calhoun School, “I’ll often ask a room full of parents when their children started to walk.” Invariably, their replies form a perfect bell curve: a few at 9 and 10 months, most at 12 or 13, a few as late as 15 to 18. “And then I’ll ask: ‘What would you think if you were walking down the street, and you saw a parent yanking a 1-year-old child up from the sidewalk, screaming, ‘Walk, damn it?’ ” The same, he says, is true of a system that insists a child perform well on a test at 4 years of age. “Early good testers don’t make better students,” he tells me, “any more than early walkers make better runners.”

Feb 12, 2010 :: Tagged under: education, intelligence, kids, standardised tests :: #

A Continuing Conversation About New Media and Education

Part two of a series of posts from Henry Jenkins, about “Learning in a participatory culture.”

Feb 12, 2010 :: Tagged under: education, kids culture, kids media, technology :: #

'Playing to Learn' – The Obama Administration and Education Reform

Susan Engel, writing in an Op-Ed last week in the New York Times, paints a portrait of what classrooms would look like if our educational policy really aligned with what we know of how learning works:

The Obama administration is planning some big changes to how we measure the success or failure of schools and how we apportion federal money based on those assessments. It’s great that the administration is trying to undertake reforms, but if we want to make sure all children learn, we will need to overhaul the curriculum itself. Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.
In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does. Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on.
…
What they shouldn’t do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.
Along the way, teachers should spend time each day having sustained conversations with small groups of children. Such conversations give children a chance to support their views with evidence, change their minds and use questions as a way to learn more.
…
Our success depends on embracing a curriculum focused on essential skills like reading, writing, computation, pattern detection, conversation and collaboration — a curriculum designed to raise children, rather than test scores.

The piece has garnered quite a bit of discussion, and I think it clearly sums up where we are with education reform today. With a full year’s worth of aggressive overhaul in the Obama/Duncan Education Department now behind us, it seems that now we’re starting to collectively ask the pertinent question: What is education for, and if we’re serious about crafting a system to meet that need, what would our classrooms really look like?

On this, Engel seems to hit the mark perfectly.

Related: Lori Pickert offers an annotated excerpt of the piece, with links to relevant writing of her own – extremely useful if you want to dive in and flesh out some of the concepts Engels puts forth. Nancy Flanagan also offers followup to some of the criticism around Engels’s piece, reaffirming Engel’s message that education should be constructivist in nature and centered around children’s inquiry and discovery – if only, indeed, because that’s exactly the approach other countries that are surpassing the U.S. in educational results are taking. And there’s nothing nonsensical about that.

Feb 09, 2010 :: Tagged under: education, education reform, nclb :: #

Pushing Junk Food Out of Schools

The Obama administration plans a massive drive this week to change the foods that schools offer to children – banning candy and sugary beverages from school lunch rooms and vending machines, in exchange for more nutritious fare.

And while the story the Times shares of Mrs. Almond and her candy cart is touching (though I imagine she can just as easily fundraise with anything else), you truly don’t realise how awful the junk-food-in-schools situation is until you spend time in a school. To that end, don’t miss the ‘Fed Up with School Lunch’ project – one teacher’s attempt to eat (and blog) school lunch every day for an entire year.

Just a head’s up, though: It’s disturbing.

Feb 08, 2010 :: Tagged under: education, fastfood, food, nutrition :: #

10 Best Things We'll Say to Our Grandkids

A bit of an old piece from Wired Magazine, but I can’t help but be attracted to #3 on this future list of “how things were in the old days”:

3. Televised contests gave cash prizes to whoever could store the most data in their head.

Hopefully in the near future the same thing will be said about education, tests and grades in general (in a past, no-longer-present tense). When our schools are about helping kids learn how to use data, how to aggregate and manipulate it meaningfully – instead of simply memorising it to regurgitate later on a test – that’s the day I’m looking forward to.

Jan 26, 2010 :: Tagged under: education, technology, the future :: #

"Waiting For Superman"

The Hollywood Reporter interviews Bill Gates and David Guggenheim at Sundance, discussing with them their work in the new Guggenheim-directed documentary about education, called “Waiting For Superman”:

Gates, 54, sees [his participation in the documentary] as a way to teach Americans just how far the U.S. system has fallen and how to redeem it.
“There aren’t many movies about education, and it’s a complex problem to explain. So Davis, by taking some students and letting you get to them and their desire to go to a good high school, makes it really emotional, and that’s what only a great storyteller can do.”
Guggenheim focuses on everyday students who want a better education but can’t seem to get it. He talks to experts like Gates and Geoffrey Canada, chief executive of community organization Harlem Children’s Zone, and challenges the roles of administrators, teachers’ unions and others directly involved in U.S. education.
“This movie is a controversial movie because it deals with some uncomfortable truths about public schools. It doesn’t pull any punches … and it attacks even some of the progressive ideas,” Guggenheim told Reuters.

Can’t wait to watch it. It looks very much like it will be the U.S.-based sibling to Lord David Puttnam’s excellent U.K.-focused “We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For” documentary.

Jan 24, 2010 :: Tagged under: documentaries, education, education reform, movies :: #

Why the "Crap" in Your Kid's Life Can Be a Good Thing

By Daniel Bigler :: Sunday January 24, 2010

I’d love to get more into this discussion, but here’s the short, Daniel’s-got-homework-to-do version: Lori Pickert homeschools her two boys, but in a very cool project-based, Reggio Emilia-inspired way. She was recently commenting on how we tend to dichotomise reading and video games – putting them in opposite corners and expecting them to duke it out for our kids’ attention and time – but when, in reality, they can be very complementary activities.

I thought this was a very solid way of looking at it, and so I said (in the comments) how stories that we find our kids interacting with often now take shape within trans-media universes – think of “Star Wars” as an example, which is now represented in two trilogies of films, a cartoon TV show, countless books for all reading levels, video games, toys, trading cards, the pair of underwear I’m wearing right now (ahem)… it just goes on. Overkill on the platforming and commodification? You might think so at first. But it’s all about the connections – kids can explore the same idea or story (even “Star Wars”) through countless varying iterations, platforms and approaches, in ways that cater to all learning styles. In short, taking a single concept and exploring it in these different ways is educationally, neurologically one of the best ways kids learn. This is the same idea behind the Project Approach, as well.

That idea – that connections are good, and connections between media (between reading, TV, video games, and other activities) are even better – led into this new post by Lori, entitled “Limits Can Be So… Limiting.” She uses the piece to emphasise that we tend as adults to prioritise or value children’s activities over others – for example, saying that “Reading is better than watching TV,” and “Playing outside is better than playing video games.” We tend to label a lot of the stuff and activities in our kids’ lives as “crap,” simply based on our own values – our own preconceived notions of what kids “should” be doing. But how are we really so sure that what we think is bad (or, at least, less good) for them really is all that bad? It’s something to think about, and certainly makes you question the notion of “crap.”

But all of that is now, actually, just a lead in for this – a follow-up comment to Lori’s piece, made by Patricia:

I recently read Michael Chabon’s book of essays “Manhood for Amateurs” (and am re-listening to the audiobook, it’s so good.) Again and again throughout the book, Chabon returns to the notion of the “crap” in kids’ lives, and how it’s not necessarily a bad thing. He writes of “making something new of what you have been given by your culture”. And really, Chabon is the poster boy for the idea of learning from “crap”: he spent his childhood immersed in the world of comics, which I’m sure might worry some parents. But what did he grow up to do? Win the Pulitzer Prize.
For a book based on comics.

All I have left to say: I absolutely love it.

Tagged under: education, learning, michael chabon, project approach :: #

California's Charter School Revolution

By Daniel Bigler :: Sunday January 10, 2010

Alan Bonsteel, president of California Parents for Educational Choice, comments for the San Francisco Chronicle about what he sees as the coming impact of the Los Angeles school system’s recent mandate to convert almost a third of its schools to either charter or magnet schools:

This is public education’s fall of the Berlin Wall. The old model of the compulsory, one-size-fits-all, factory-style public school is being tossed on the scrap heap of history, to be replaced by upholding the U.N. Charter of Universal Human Rights, which guarantees the right of parents to direct the education of their children.
Someday soon, all of our children will be enrolled in schools that their families have freely chosen and that give them the sense of community, even of family, that will keep them in school and get them safely to graduation day.

Some bold hopes, and I do want to believe a “fall of the Berlin Wall” moment is close at hand for education.

As always, though, the capacity for positive change is up to the overriding philosophy of education behind such efforts. The Charter School Movement may or may not provide such a breath of fresh thinking; it is, in a sense, philosophy-less – at its core simply a mechanism to hand over control from a centralised structure to local bodies. If you were an optimist, you could say that charter schools are an attempt to tear down bureaucracy, empowering local schools, their administrations and finally their teachers to do what they think is best given their own unique context. Theoretically this could indeed allow for a broader diversity of educational approaches and philosophies, like the use of emergent curriculum and project-based learning methods – teaching philosophies that are far more child-centred and process-minded, and I believe the key to real innovation and reformation in America’s Education.

That said, there’s a certain wariness toward charter schools that comes when folks such as Bonsteel portray them not as laboratories to experiment with innovative educational approaches, but as bastions of parental choice in education.

In order for them to be successful, there needs to be some differentiation for society-at-large between the Charter School Movement (as a mechanism to allow for broader philosophic diversity in education) and an educational system based on vouchers (which allow for parents to theoretically “choose” what they see as their child’s best education). Vouchers turn education into an economic good and encourage parents and communities to treat it as a commodity, whose value is derived from test results and academic achievement; charter schools allow school administration and faculty a relative degree of autonomy, and a sense of permission to experiment with educational structures and approaches to see what best fits the community of kids they serve.

Really, it comes down to this question: Who is education about?

If it’s about society and the desire to maintain the status quo, then the standardized one-size-fits-all public education model we have now is the way to go.

If it’s about parents and what they want, then implementing a voucher system will do the trick in delivering the goods there.

But if education is going to be about the children themselves, then we need to come up with a system where their voices are heard and incorporated into the process, and where teaching practices and school structures are immediately responsive to their needs. And that’s no easy thing to pull off, even if you have the charter school mechanism helping you out.

Tagged under: charter schools, education, education reform :: #

LA Times: "Classroom Management Key to Successful Teaching"

That’s stupid; meeting kids where they’re at and making school about them is the key to successful teaching, and to say anything else is just educational bullshit.

Meet kids where they’re at, honestly and on their level, and everything else — classroom management included — will fall into place naturally.

Dec 14, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, teaching :: #

A Tale of Two Charter Schools

The Washington Post examines two major new studies on charter schools and their effectiveness, compared to public schools.

The bottom line? With contradictory findings from each study, it’s a wash.

“The people who said [the charter school movement] was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread were wrong,” said Robert Maranto, a University of Arkansas professor of education reform, who counts himself in that group. “The people who said it would be a calamity were equally wrong.”

The rest of the article is spent weighing and dissecting the two studies and their methods and findings – bickering, I suppose, about the technicalities. Fundamentally, though, I think we’re asking the wrong question; instead of comparing charter school results to public school results (typically by means of standardized test scores), we should see how the two structures can work together on a macro level.

As a means of educational reform, charter schools have to be more than just a change of administration: charter schools have to be vividly distinct, fundamentally different in core philosophy and approach. That’s when the charter school funding mechanism works best – when it gets needed, adequate funding to alternative approaches, schools that will re-consider the core fundaments of education. That studies like Hoxby’s and Raymond’s can even examine the same standardized results of charter schools worries me; it means we’re not making the most of the charter school opportunity.

Dec 01, 2009 :: Tagged under: charter schools, education, education reform :: #

Assimilation of Change

A few weeks ago, I was trying to figure out what was bugging me about all of the talk around President Obama’s recent education reform efforts.

As others have said, “Everybody calls themselves a reformer.” But what really is “reform”? We’ve seen too many hyped, large-scale efforts that have fallen flat to know that that isn’t reform. And we’ve seen some very inspirational work being done on the ground, in individual classrooms and schools, but some would question whether that’s reform if it’s impact doesn’t extend any further.

The question is, how to marry the two. It’s this friction, between the macro-level structures that often can be seen as “getting in the way” (despite their overall necessity) and the micro-level work within classrooms, that has often been what’s stopped well-meaning “education reform” from taking place. And I believe it’s this relationship we’ll have to understand if we want anything good to actually happen.

Gever Tulley, founder of The Tinkering School, recently highlighted one aspect of this macro-micro relationship that I think is fundamental:

The rate at which an education system assimilates change is inversely proportional to the level of hierarchy. Students will always be threatening the stability of the system by introducing technologies and behaviors to the classroom long before the administration is prepared for it.

Give a kid the opportunity to explore and learn about something they want to learn about, and the speed at which they’ll do so is breathtaking. Good teachers know how to inspire and capitalise on this motivation, and great teachers can pull it off with all 20 or 30 kids in their class.

There’s no way an education administration can keep up with that. There’s no hope at all that they can develop suitable measures, tests, and structures fast enough, that will do justice to the children themselves or to the future they’ll live in. Most administrations are instead just trying to feign stability, and try to maintain the status quo for however long they can.

I think real reform will mean putting aside efforts that either emphasise macro-level fixes or disregard them completely for micro-level change. The trick will be to marry the two, making them as aligned, complementary, and frictionless as possible.

If you’re a person at the top, this would mean to empower the people at the bottom and make it as simple as possible for them to do what is best. If you’re a person at the bottom, this would mean to recognise the well-meaning intentions of the people at the top and let them know what it’s really like in your classroom, what your kids really need, and how they can help.

It’s this macro-micro relationship that will need all the work. I think we’re lucky to have a President who understands this relationship well (having worked many years as a community organiser at the bottom), but it will take everybody involved to be vividly aware of and respectful of this relationship – its shortcomings, potential, and the responsibilities it bears – for meaningful change to happen.

Nov 24, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform, gever tulley :: #

Places of Education

The early childhood schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy – widely acclaimed to be among the best in the world – have a saying about their classrooms: “The environment is the third teacher,” alongside parents and teachers themselves. This very visceral connection that children have to physical spaces and places (PDF) is too important to neglect, and yet so many of our classrooms are poorly kept, uninspired, and ill-maintained.

“A school needs to be a place for all children, not based on the idea that they are all the same, but that they are all different.”
-Loris Malaguzzi, Founder of the Reggio Emilia schools

With this in mind, GOOD Magazine has a selection from Lissa Rivera’s photo collection, “Places of Education.” It’s interesting to consider classrooms in such a detached way, that perhaps only a photograph can provide: when we step back and really see how these classrooms and places of education are, I think we begin to question what implicit assumptions and expectations they communicate about education the process of learning.

Among my favourite of Rivera’s photos:

I feel like I could spend all day in this art studio at The Windsor School.

Nov 23, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, kids environments, reggio emilia :: #

Jemina Lewis Asks: "Is Homework Really Necessary?"

No.

Nov 23, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, homework :: #

Just Deal With It.

By Daniel Bigler :: Wednesday November 18, 2009

On Tuesday night I got the chance to attend the premiere of a new documentary about education in the UK and US, called “We Are the People We’ve Been Waiting For.” Inspired and guided by Lord David Puttnam, it features interviews with many high-profile figures and educational experts sharing their personal experiences and views – including Sir Richard Branson, Germaine Greer, Henry Winkler (The Fonz!), Bill Bryson, and the ever-excellent Sir Ken Robinson.

This thought-provoking film offers unique insight across generations and nations, and reveals a very inconvenient truth about education. The world is changing rapidly – but our education system is not keeping pace.

I was thrilled when I first heard about it, and now having seen it, I’m deeply impressed. It is an excellent, well put-together film – one that is both informative and yet provoking, without any sense of cloy – and I just don’t feel I can really do it justice. I’ll simply point you to The Guardian’s background piece about it, “Welcome to the Real World,” and encourage you to see the film when you can. I will say that I am absolutely thrilled that it is now out, though, and will hopefully be seen quite a lot in the upcoming months. The Edge Foundation and several other think tanks and education bodies are promoting the film, and The Guardian is hosting an online debate about education, as well as distributing free DVD copies of the documentary in one of their upcoming issues.

This is one conversation no one should ignore. We can’t let our own misplaced expectations and failings around education get in the way of the next generation. As one young man in the audience said afterward during the film’s Q&A, “Just deal with it.”

Kids want to learn. We now just have to make a system that will let them.

Tagged under: education, education reform, movies :: #

"Obama's Vision for Education"

A very different response to President Obama’s education plans and his push for charter schools:

The Obama administration has an education plan that was written by corporate-style ideologues. They are determined to fasten a business plan on the schools and will not be deterred by arguments or evidence. If incentives and sanctions work in the business world, then by gum, they will work in education. If deregulation is what the corporate sector wants, then why not foist it on the schools as well.
So, the outline of the Obama education vision is emerging. It is a business plan, designed by people who know nothing about schools and care nothing about evidence.

I don’t agree with much of Diane Ravitch’s interpretation of Obama’s plan, but it’s worth reading. As I see it, though, her clarity about the situation is compromised by her desire to peg Obama’s actions onto simple motivations: “The president seems eager to turn over as many public schools as possible to private management. I find it laughable that so many of his critics call him a socialist and a man of the left, when in education, he is quite obviously a force for privatization of public education.”

There are many ways you could describe Barack Obama, but I would argue “unnuanced” is not one of them. I think Ravitch does the President a disservice in trying to simplify his motives or paint them as anything but sincere and fully appreciative of the scope of the problems at hand.

I’m with her in being hesitant of several aspects of the new education plan – teacher performance pay being chief among my concerns – but I believe Obama understands fully the intricacies and details of these. And while Ravitch reads Obama’s “off script” story about his daughter’s poor science test grade as a sign that he doesn’t really understand the difficulties teachers face, I think it’s a demonstration that he understands all too well these difficulties – and the reality that a complex variety of factors contribute to children’s “progress” in school.

Nov 14, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform :: #

A Battle of Words Over Charter Schools

Following up from the thoughtful look by Jessica Luallen Horton at Obama’s and Duncan’s recent “Race to the Top” educational initiative, teaching veteran Nancy Flanagan considers more specifically the role of charter schools in public education:

Ideologically, I’m with Dewey on this one: I want the best possible education for all children, the kind of carefully chosen options my own children had.
One more thing: I think that positioning charter schools as the opposite of public schools, rather than a necessary supplement to public education, has poisoned the discourse. And—it goes both ways. It’s not just public schools and public school teachers being skeptical (or downright nasty) in their remarks about charter schools. Public school academies—charters—seem to be bent on repeating the worst sound bites about public schools, whether they’re strictly true or not, thereby displaying the aphorism that your mother repeated when you were seven years old: you don’t make yourself look better by tearing someone else down.

The many charter schools I’ve visited have been just cutting edge in their practice – there’s no other way to put it. They’re innovative in ways that just aren’t fathomable in a typical public school structure, because they’re allowed to do things differently. They’re allowed to question. And as Flanagan mentions, they also have “potential resources that public schools do not, beginning with positive public assumptions and PR” – which go a long way in building up a supportive culture for the school and children.

Despite the assumed structural problems associated with allowing them recourse to public resources and funding, charter schools play a crucial role in contributing to the “Broader Dialogue” about Education. At a time when we need more than ever to be asking those big questions of what education is really all about, charter schools seem to be the ones doing just that.

Nov 13, 2009 :: Tagged under: charter schools, education, education reform :: #

The President's Race to the Top

From August 2009: A very thoughtful, thorough analysis by Jessica Luallen Horton of President Barack Obama’s and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s new “Race to the Top” competitive grant initiative for schools across America.

Of the 19 criterion that the Department of Education proposes to use in order to evaluate each state’s applications for funding, Horton found several elements that she feels deserves great merit – like the increased support of charter schools, which spur the advancement of educational ideas – but also elements that she feels undermine teachers’ efforts, for instance by tying their performance evaluations with those of their students.

Well worth a read.

Nov 13, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform :: #

"We Are the People We've Been Waiting For"

By Daniel Bigler :: Thursday November 12, 2009

A new trailer is out for an upcoming full-length feature documentary that asks the Big Question about education.

The world is facing huge challenges, and they’re growing daily in severity, in scale, and in complexity. It’s no exaggeration to say that they’re not going to go away; indeed, they will get worse – unless we can start to find solutions, and find them soon. If we are going to survive, we desperately need the next generation to be smarter, more adaptable, and better prepared than any that have gone before. Our only chance is to improve the way we teach our young, to find a way that makes the most of their talents, and a way to help them face the challenges of the modern world. So the question is: Does our current education system work?

The trailer includes excerpts from interviews with many renowned educational experts, including one with Ken Robinson – where he lays out the fundamental problem, explaining how public systems of education were originally implemented to meet the needs of the industrial economy. In this rapidly changing, dynamic, globalised new world, though, we have to ask: “How is this helping our children in terms of what they’re going to be as adults? In 25 years time, a time we really don’t know what it’s going to be like, how adaptable are they going to be? How versatile are they going to be? And how confident are they going to be?”

Watch the trailer here, and I’d say see this film as soon as you possibly can:

Tagged under: education, education reform, kenrobinson :: #

What the Meep?

ABC News:

“Something happened and one of them said ‘Meep,’” Bob Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University, said. “And then they all started doing it.” The meeps, he said, came from all of the students in the class in rapid-fire succession. When he asked them what that meant, they said it didn’t really mean anything.
“It’s almost like they look at you like it’s a silly question,” he said.
But meeping doesn’t seem to be funny to Danvers High School Principal Thomas Murray, who threatened to suspend students caught meeping in school.

What the meep? Threatening to suspend kids for having… you know… a pulse?

Nov 11, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, kids culture, muppets :: #

Obama's A+ Grade for Education Reform Ideas

Ruben Navarrette Jr., special to CNN, shares how he thinks President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan deserve an A+ grade for their efforts to overhaul the American education system.

Like no president in recent memory — except maybe George W. Bush, who diagnosed that schools are often afflicted with “the soft bigotry of low expectations” — Obama gets it.
What Obama “gets” is that America’s public schools often underperform and help cheat students out of brighter futures for three main reasons:
1) There are low expectations, not just for students but also for parents, schools and whole communities that are written off as not able to compete academically. Too many educators let themselves off the hook by telling themselves that poor kids from struggling backgrounds are somehow incapable of learning as well as kids from wealthier communities.
2) Too many educators and politicians treat public schools as if they exist for the benefit of the adults who teach there rather than the kids who are supposed to learn there. Because teachers have unions and students don’t, everything — including the length of the school year — is geared for the convenience of the work force and not the clientele.
3) Those intent on preserving the status quo resist tooth and nail any attempt to hold them accountable by linking teachers to the performance of their students or, in an idea that Louisiana is trying and that Duncan smiles upon and would like to see spread to other states, tracing back teachers to the schools of education that produced them.

Mr. Navarrette is sure that Obama and Duncan aren’t winning any popularity contests among the nation’s teachers, but, he maintains, they’re doing the job that needs done.

The column is well worth a read if you have any interest at all in American education; there’s quite a to digest, both in the column itself and in the context of education reform as a whole – and I truly don’t know where I stand on certain reform issues. I have this frustration, I feel, with the inevitable disconnect between the micro-level work being done within America’s classrooms – and the macro-level debate of policy and funding. My natural inclination is to simply trust teachers to do the best for their children. Macro-level institutions, though – which in many ways may feel redundant to teachers – are often nevertheless very needed, and play a powerful role through their policy in either aiding or hindering teachers’ work.

The question that Obama and Duncan now face is this: How do we make these macro-level systems as frictionless as possible, to allow for quality, reflexive teaching practices in the micro-level classroom?

Nov 09, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform :: #

Putting Kids in Charge of the Banks

While I’m sure many would wish it were true for the whole of America’s financial sector, it’s actually being done as part of an initiative of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills to broaden the scope of the curriculum in schools.

Mike Smith, of Change.org, shares:

It’s done in math by teaching the subject in a wider context – linking it to business practices and giving students more basic financial skills. Partnerships are made with credit unions, and students have in some schools then set up their own branches to understand marketing, finance, and in turn teaching younger schools by operating a bank-in-school program for middle and elementary schools.

I think video game maker Wil Wright would be proud.

Simulation in any of its forms has, as Wright says, a unique ability to “re-map our intuition” and recalibrate our instinct – by taking long-term dynamics and compressing them into very short-term kinds of experiences. Playing banker in seventh grade (or playing cops and robbers in first grade, or barbershop in preschool) helps kids hone their own perspectives and skills now so that they’re ready and capable to engage in real-world, long-term dynamics in the future.

Nov 09, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform, simulation :: #

Resisting The "Special Classes For Gifted Children" Allure

The Jewish life-oriented Tablet Magazine has a fresh, sensitive, and perhaps above all wonderfully nuanced take on the dilemma many parents of “gifted” children seem to find (or perhaps put) themselves in: the choice of whether or not to place their child in special “gifted” classrooms and programs.

Marjorie Ingall reflects on some of the personal reasons why she didn’t, uses Andrew Clements’ wonderful books “Frindle” and “The Report Card” to add a literary perspective to the problem of “grade-obsession” in America, and finally paints a beautiful portrait of the life of her seven-year-old daughter’s wonderful “ordinary” classroom.

It’s a great read.

Also don’t miss this earlier column of Ingall’s, in which she shares the whole process she originally went through to reach her decision in support of regular neighborhood schools.

After mulling over the research on kids and praise, which I wrote about a few months ago, I decided that a gifted and talented program might not be healthy for Josie. She’s already hypercompetitive, afraid to get the wrong answer. I want her to heed the clarion call of Ms. Frizzle in “The Magic School Bus” books and TV show: “Take chances! Make mistakes! Get dirty!” And I think a school that appeals to citizenship and cooperation is more likely to keep her an adventurous, enthusiastic learner than one that makes her worry all the time about whether she’s truly gifted. All kids have gifts and deserve to have them recognized.

Nov 07, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform, giftedchildren, grade obsession :: #

Discrimination Creeping Into Grading Practices

Debra Viadero reports for Education Weekly about how Indian teachers are subtly influenced by cultural discrimination in grading students from different caste groups.

Nov 05, 2009 :: Tagged under: education :: #

Ken Robinson: "How Schools Stifle Creativity"

So you remember that TED Talk from 2006, the one where Sir Ken Robinson discussed how schools kill children’s creativity? The brilliant one, the one that everybody loves? The one that’s been downloaded 3.5 million times, in more than 200 countries, and viewed probably 20 times more than that?

Sure you do. If you don’t, feel ashamed, then click over and watch it.

Anyway, Ken Robinson recently spoke with CNN – as part of their new TED Talk Tuesdays series – about the origin of the talk, why it’s been so successful, and how it “changes the conversation” people have about education, as he puts it.

As always, Robinson’s insights about education offer so much – and he portrays a clear, vibrant way forward:

Reforming these systems is not enough. The truth is that we are caught up in a cultural and economic revolution. This revolution is that is global in scale and unpredictable in nature. To meet it, we need a revolution in the culture of education.
This new culture has to emerge from a richer sense of human ability. To shape it, I believe we have to leave behind the manufacturing principles of industrialism and embrace the organic principles of ecology.
Education is about developing human beings, and human development is not mechanical or linear. It is organic and dynamic.
Like all living forms, we flourish in certain conditions and shrivel in others. Great teachers, great parents and great leaders understand those conditions intuitively; poor ones don’t. The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.

It won’t be easy to change our thinking and culture about education, but like Robinson, I believe it’s something we must do. I hope we’ll all embrace the challenge.

Nov 03, 2009 :: Tagged under: creativity, education, education reform, kenrobinson :: #

Scholastic Backtracks on Excluding Gay Friendly Book From Fair

So the Scholastic “Harbinger of Commercialised Crap, Not Books” School Book Fair organisation decides to demand that an author revise her book before they’d ship it out to schools for their book fairs – specifically, asking her to leave out some “naughty words” and beyond that, change a homosexual parenting couple in the story to a heterosexual one.

The company sent a letter to Myracle’s editor asking the author to omit certain words such as “geez,” “crap,” “sucks,” and “God” (as in, “oh my God”) and to alter its plotline to include a heterosexual couple. Myracle agreed to get rid of the offensive language “with the goal—as always—of making the book as available to as many readers as possible,” but the deal breaker was changing Milla’s two moms.
“A child having same-sex parents is not offensive, in my mind, and shouldn’t be ‘cleaned up.’” says Myracle, adding that the book fair subsequently decided not to take on Luv Ya Bunches because they wanted to avoid letters of complaint from parents.

But! Lo and behold, people have gotten wind and have been, um, firmly chastising Scholastic for the move. So now Scholastic is backtracking – probably realising that it’s bad (although perhaps originally unintentional on their part) to think of censoring books out of a nationwide school book fair set-up (that not only do they have a disgusting monopoly on, but have increasingly crapped up with commercialised toys and not books) just because said book portrays homosexual family structures.

What I really want to know, though, is what David Anaxagoras is asking: Since when is “Geez” suddenly too harsh of language for kids? I suspect if the people making this decision had spent any time actually in a school, they’d encounter a lot worse of language than that from the kids.

If we expect literature and books to make any difference in kids’ lives, then we have to not sacrifice their honesty for what’s politically smart.

Oct 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: book fairs, commodification of childhood, education, kids books :: #

The Teacher Salary Project

By Daniel Bigler :: Wednesday October 28, 2009

We Love You So shines the spotlight on one of the most overlooked issues in education reform: teachers’ salaries.

It’s dangerous to underestimate the societal value of quality public education. And yet we routinely overlook the economic problems with our school system, perhaps because they aren’t seen as urgent or media-friendly enough for the 24-hour news cycle. Luckily, The Teacher Salary Project is helping shed light on the people and stories behind under-funded public schools.

There’s the rub: good teachers will never be fully valued for what they do. But the Project, based upon an essay Dave Eggers wrote, is sure doing a good thing in trying to raise a little bit of awareness at how remarkably low teachers’ salaries are, considering the monumental task teachers undertake when they walk into the classroom. Anybody who’s spent even a little time in their shoes know that they deserve a lot more.

Now along with salaries, if we could also just make schools a lot smaller and more personable in size, get a little community-minded thinking going on at an administrative and policy level, and spark some good ol’ Democratic Schooling culture and respect for children in classrooms, I think we’ll be well on our way to a good thing.

Tagged under: dave eggers, education, education reform, teachers :: #

Is Educating for 21st Century Skills a Fad?

The Washington Post’s Jay Matthews discusses the push for “21st Century Skills” in Education, and Peter Pappas responds. I’m not gonna wade into this one, but suffice it to say I’m leaning more toward Pappas.

Oct 12, 2009 :: Tagged under: education :: #

Brilliant Words from Jamie Oliver

In an accompanying bio-piece in the New York Magazine’s annual Food Issue, Alex Witchel talks to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver about his work, life, and community activism – including talking about a project of Oliver’s where he helps train disadvantaged youth to work in the restaurant business.

Nestled in there was this truly sage bit of insight I couldn’t help but be impressed by:

“Look, I think the brilliant and beautiful thing in life is that anyone can do anything,” he said. “When I used to go to special needs, we got laughed at, but we’re not supposed to all be academic. What is education? A bunch of stuff that people think we should know. Ultimately if you can put a wall up, if you can paint, if you can work with other people and, most important, if you find out what you are good at, that’s the key. Kids can do detailed, technical things, and they can do them well. Have you seen them on skateboards and surfing? It doesn’t have to be a BMX, it can be a pot and a pan and a knife, but we wrap them up in cotton wool and treat them like babies and they’re not.”

Kids really are capable of the most impressive things. They just might not be things we expect, or value – and when we don’t recognise our own biases in this, that’s the tragedy.

Oct 11, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, empowerment, kids :: #

Boy Fakes Kidnapping In Order To Lose Bad Report Card

By Daniel Bigler :: Monday September 14, 2009

Here’s a story from Alabama that shows just how industrious kids can be when they take matters into their own hands. A young boy decided to fake his own kidnapping, in order so that he could get away with not bringing home a bad report card.

The Huntsville Times reports:

The Ed White Middle School student claimed a man in a red, beat-up car grabbed him after school at the intersection of Trail Ridge and Grizzard roads and forced him into the vehicle.
“I’m going to take you somewhere and kill you,” the boy claimed the man said. The boy also said the man had a pistol.
The boy then claimed to have jumped from the vehicle – without his bookbag, which contained the report card – and ran to his grandparents’ house.

He later confessed to the incident, and his grandfather called the police to explain. The police, meanwhile, say the boy faces no charges at this time. But the last sentence is my favorite part of the article:

The whereabouts of the bookbag and report card are unknown.

I might be glib, rebellious and unfit for parenting by saying this, but this young man’s act impresses me so much. It’s a perfect example of the precious few ways kids can gain power as individuals in society, and the lad showed a great resourcefulness and understanding of adults’ irrational fears and social taboos in choosing to fake his own kidnapping in order to get out of a negative, adult-controlled situation. Hey, if you know the folks aren’t going to be too pleased with a bad report card, why not try to get rid of it in the most impactful way possible?

This is also a powerful but depressing example of how we adults unfortunately too often use Education as a controlling measure over kids. ‘Bad’ report cards are a clear societal ‘faultline’ allowing us to peer into the heart of society and see what we really think of kids. We sadly judge them based on their academic progress, and so much of their inherent self-worth — and worth to others — becomes wrapped up in what grade they got on a test.

“My dog ate it” is, though, one way kids fight back. And I’m delighted to see this kid improve upon the technique in such a creative way.

Good for him, I say.

Tagged under: childhood experiences, education, sociology of children :: #

Comparing 'Open Education' Against 'Open Education Resources'

Important thoughts to consider for education and education reform in general:

Looking at this another way, take formal education. In a university you would not say that owning a text book and syllabus, and having access to assessments and assignments is equivalent to engaging in a course that incorporates them. Throw in supporting technical frameworks – even open ones – and it’s still not the same thing.
Certainly the resources facilitate the experience, but ultimately it’s the presence of people – of communities, networks or groups – and the social structures and relationships that shape them that provides the greatest context and relative value to the experience.

It’s all about the people… structures and resources only make a difference when they’re used in the service of strongly committed, diligent, and open people. I love the way Mike Bogle puts it: “Open education is a mind-set; it’s a way of working. You don’t produce openness, you are open.” (Via Milton Ramirez.)

Aug 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform :: #

Over-Prepared for Kindergarten

Jacqueline Stenson, writing for MSNBC:

Long gone are the days when parents signed their kids up for kindergarten based on whether their birthdays met the school’s cut-off, and youngsters simply showed up on the first day, where they played, snacked and napped. Perhaps they had attended preschool, but if they did, they almost certainly didn’t have any summer tutoring to make sure they really were ready for kindergarten.
Today, many children go to two or three years of preschool and some stay on for another year of pre-K. Like Rubesch, some parents have begun signing their kids up for summer classes or one-on-one tutoring to improve their reading, math, writing and overall “kindergarten readiness.”

There’s a lot of ground covered in Stenson’s article, from an examination of the more societal-based trends of academic acceleration and attempts at educational reforms, to parenting paradigms and the contemporary question many parents are asking, of “How much preparation is too much?” Most of the issues at hand are well addressed in the Alliance for Childhood’s report from earlier this year, “Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School.”

I’m glad to see this as part of MSNBC’s “back to school” coverage, though. It takes time, but slowly we can see that many more modern families are, if not finding the right answers, at least asking the right questions.

Aug 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, free range kids, kindergarten, play, sociology of children :: #

Looking at Schools as Farmers' Markets

A perfect comparison of the world of American education from Peter Pappas:

The testing regime is turning our kids into a high-yield, uniform commodity. Rows and rows of competent, standardized students, that can be delivered according to employers’ specifications for a “skilled workforce.” Children “force fed” in test prep programs in efforts to quickly “fatten” the scores to meet AYP. Like the cornfields and feedlots that are disconnected from local ecosystems, the movement toward national educational standards erodes at local control and innovation.
Fortunately when I got to the conference I saw another side of contemporary education – innovative teachers. It was like walking into a sustainable farmers’ market.

This is why I love the idea of Community Schools. The more we base our practices and systems on the children immediately before us, and the surrounding communities around them, the better our Education will be. It’s not all that different from locally grown, fresh organic foods – it’s just better that way.

Aug 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform :: #

Banning Bicycles as a Way to Get to School

Banning bicycles as a way for kids to get to school, for fear that they’ll increase the risk of a child getting hit by a car?

That’s what it looks like is happening in New Jersey. Leigh Ann Von Hagen, a planner at Rutgers University’s NJ Safe Routes to School Resource Center:

Banning bicycling to school is way too common throughout our state. We are in the planning stages of conducting a statewide survey to find out how often bicycling is banned. We are also developing a model policy for walking and bicycling to school. It is true that teenage driving is significantly more dangerous than students bicycling when you look at crash statistics. Yet, no schools consider banning teenage drivers.

Also, sadly, bicycles have also been banned by some school districts in other states in the US. Isn’t it obvious that the alternative – more cars, as parents dropping their kids off at school instead – is only going to involve more car accidents?

Not only does banning bicycling eliminate a safe route to school – but consider what bicycles offer children in terms of self-autonomy and developing their own independence. I think we’re losing out on more than a safe route to school here.

Jul 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: bicycling, education, free range kids :: #

A Public Education Inspired by Harry Potter

By Daniel Bigler :: Wednesday July 22, 2009

Texas educator Joel Radkins (at least that’s as best as I can surmise his name) wonders what lessons schools in our public education system might learn from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:

There is a certain “magic” about Hogwarts that does make it a place of wonder while still being a school. I wonder if the millions of children who read about this wonderful place realized that it was….school. I think this is one of the major reasons JK Rowling made such a successful storyline because most of the story takes place in a school. Not just any school though – a school built on imagination.

While many of the questions and suggestions Radkins raises about how schools might meet this challenge are practical, some are more philosophical and foundational in nature. For instance: “Can our foundation for schooling be for teaching each child as an exceptional child?” When the wretched sugary character of Miss Umbridge, a Ministry of Magic stalwart dispatched to keep an eye on Professor Dumbledore, joins the Hogwarts teaching staff in the fifth book, we’re given a very real manifestation of this underlying battle of school philosophy: Umbridge claims early in the book that schools should be for preserving the old ways, curiosity and innovation should be stifled, and students are expected to fit within the Ministry’s established concepts and not be spectacular. Radkins is right, Rowling didn’t just throw this in as a sub-plot: this gives body to the very real philosophical battles over education that are taking place all over the world, and even if readers didn’t notice it, I think it’s one reason why we’re instantly made to loathe Miss Umbridge so much.

How a school and its faculty regard itself and their mission clearly has an impact.

One of the commenters on Radkins’ blog raises the question of whether private education is perhaps better suited to a Hogwarts-style education – and indeed, I would have to say that at my ownexperience going to a small, private school bears this out rather well. Teachers did eat lunch with us, learning experiences weren’t confined to books, and the school’s walls and classrooms very much reflected the lives of us students. There was a certain dynamic synergy to the school, that changed and evolved with each new group of students coming into it.

My general perception, though, is that this kind of synergy has more to do with the size of a school – small versus big – than whether it’s public or private. The Coalition for Community Schools has some incredible research that shows the immense benefits to student’s learning when they are purposely and intentionally small, and when staff, faculty, and school boards work together to have schools be reflexive of and integrate the broader community around them. And while I always dreaded it as a child, perhaps there’s something to the idea of boarding schools: children simply have to become apart of a community, and because they’re detached from their external lives and families, they’re also free to be regarded socially and conceptually within the school as much more competent individuals. I’ve not read much about boarding schools, simply because they’re typically unheard of here in America except as a last resort for “behaviorally challenged children,” but the concept is worth thinking about when we put it in this light.

Hogwarts clearly shows an enormous potential for education, demonstrating many of these ideas clearly: it’s a small school – about 100 students in each year – that has become very much a community among its students and teaching staff. The school is also very well-connected to the broader wizarding society it’s apart of, and receives enormous support and respect from this world – Hogwarts isn’t just an institution, but the pride of the wizarding world. Its educational philosophy is wrapped up utterly and completely in the children themselves – not an external economy or society – and the school’s teachers, despite the eclecticism of their individual teaching styles, all seem to be led with the well-being of their pupils in mind.

But most of all, Hogwarts shows itself to be a home – a true home – for its students. A place they can feel comfortable in. A place built on relationships, where they they can be with their friends and school family, living and learning together.

I have to wonder if that’s where the real magic comes in.

Tagged under: education, harry potter :: #

Attention: the Real Reason Why Kids Have Trouble In School?

Recent pediatric studies are suggesting new reasons for why a kid might have trouble in school:

A study in last month’s Pediatrics shows that the greater a child’s attention problems at age 6, the more likely that child will perform poorly on tests of math and reading in the last few years of high school. Contrary to some of their own expectations, researchers found no connection between achievement and behavioral problems, whether they were aggressive actions (such as children pushing classmates or lashing out at the teacher) or issues like depression or withdrawal.

And… I never read the rest. Maybe you can tell me what it says.

(But how’s this for a postscript: It’s really good that at least science – if only education would get there too – is getting away from the ridiculously regimental and outdated behaviorist concepts and frameworks that have driven most of our collective policy and work with young children.)

(Another postscript: If you’re at all interested in childhood ADHD, there’s some good stuff in here. Julie Schweitzer, a co-author of the aforementioned study, points to mounting evidence from the field of neuroscience that suggests “that ADHD has its roots in a person’s physiology” – and while she doesn’t come out and say it, her remarks do subtly lend credence in my mind to the “Hunter vs. Farmer” theory of the causes of ADHD, which posits that some people are genetically predisposed with ADHD-like symptoms, to help them better thrive off short, periodic episodes of excitement and action. While those with ADHD appear to lack focus generally, often they also have the ability to hyperfocus on particular tasks or objects when they’re uniquely engaged in them. Speaking personally as one with ADHD, I experience “hyperfocus” quite a fair bit.)

(The last post-script, I promise: The “Tools of the Mind” method mentioned in the article is, indeed, pretty fascinating. I can see a lot of future educational potential to it.)

Jul 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: adhd, attention, education, learning, science :: #

Computers in Kids' Homes = Lower Scores?

Duke University professor Jacob Vigdor reaches a perhaps unexpected conclusion about what kind of an impact having a computer present in their home does for children’s academic performance.

Peter Martin, reporting for The Age:

When year three to year eight students in North Carolina take end-of-year tests, they are also asked a number of other questions, including whether they have a PC at home and what they use it for. Using five years of answers to compare the average performance of each student before and after their home acquired a PC, Professor Vigdor found the computer made their results significantly worse in reading and mathematics.
“The bad effects fade somewhat over time, but even after five years they are still negative,” he said.

Vigdor’s explanation is that computers, while offering some new, helpful affordances to children’s studying, also introduce games, email, social networking, and other distractions to kids – that ultimately take their attention off of the homework the computer was originally supposed to help them do.

Not bad in and of itself, no. But the crux of Australia’s concern about all of this – reporter Peter Martin and The Age are both Australian – is that their Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has made putting computers in the homes of families with children a centerpiece of his educational policy. And in that sense, based on the kinds of results the Australian government are expecting as a payoff for this investment, maybe helping parents put computers in every home wasn’t such a great plan.

I do have to wonder personally, though, whether this is one of those instances where the world changes far too fast – and education is still struggling to catch up. Vigdor might believe home computers hurt children’s academic performance in school, but are the expectations of what “academic performance” looks like really that accurate – or meaningful at all? And since when are we only concerned about how children do on a test?

Always, I think, we should be looking at things in terms of Affordances vs. Impacts. The home computer might have, as Vigdor finds, a (negative) impact on math and reading scores – but the opportunities it affords children are easily too numerous to list.

Jul 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, technology :: #

A Summer Without School or Camp

With the current economy, parents are finding they can’t pay for summer camp this year, just as school districts are finding they can’t pay for summer school.

This might be bad news for some parents, but it is definitely good news for free range kids everywhere.

While I had to laugh at how the New York Times tried to make summer school into a fun and nostalgia-inducing thing for kids – I tend to think most kids instead regard it as hell – they make a fair point in saying that a lack of summer school options tends to have a disproportionately worse effect on lower-income families. Many of these families perhaps live in less play-friendly or safe neighborhoods, in addition to having fewer resources and finances to spend on “constructive” outlets for the summer hours – and without summer school, these kids might just otherwise end up at home in front of the TV.

Still, not having summer school around – regardless of how important you portray its benefits – doesn’t necessarily have to mean kids’ summers are devoid of substance, no matter the kids’ socio-economic status.

As Parent Dish points out – in considering summer without another hallmark pastime, that of summer camp – there’s plenty of pluses to not doing anything:

Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, psychiatrist and author of “The Overscheduled Child,” tells Newsweek. “Boredom is not necessarily our children’s enemy. It can stimulate [children] to think, create, and hear the soft murmurings of their inner voice, the one that makes them write this unusual story, draw that unique picture, or invent some new game.”

It really is all a matter of perspective. We don’t have to have our schools and camps direct every moment of summer for our kids “so they won’t get bored” – and we don’t even have to worry about making those three months out of school “productive.”

If we just turn off the TV, give kids a library card and a couple of bucks, and send ‘em off on their own with full permission to roam the neighborhood, good things are bound happen.

Jul 08, 2009 :: Tagged under: camp, education, free range kids, summer :: #

If Education Was a Job

What if our elementary and secondary schools were looked at as employers? What would a job description for a place at school look like? Would “exceptional bladder control – bathroom passes are limited” be a work requirement?

Jul 03, 2009 :: Tagged under: education :: #

California's No-Textbook Plan

California is certainly close to the heart of educational reform in America these days – or, at least, they’re the ones taking all the new chances and experimenting with the system. One proposal that has recently been put forth to deal with the costs of education in the state is a quite simple one: to simply do away with classroom textbooks altogether, in favour of online educational resources.

Andrew Watt considers the debate:

Yeah. I bet the scribes said the same thing about papyrus scrolls when the parchment codex came along. And the Humanists felt the same way about manuscripts and printed books in the late 1400s.
But the ‘new generation’ didn’t care about the tactile feel of scrolls, or codices (pl. of codex), just like the new generation today doesn’t care about the feel of pages. What they care about is the information. They care about the story, not the medium in which that story is stored. They will only read the book for as long as that is the convenient form in which to access the need information and narrative.

I think Watt has his finger on the pulse of it – and I do think that information previously relegated to textbooks is certainly going to make it’s way into a largely only-digital format. This might well become the ‘Where’ of the future of information. But there is also the matter Watt only hints at – and that is the ‘How’ of information. Most good teachers, especially in the younger elementary years, have recognised that information doesn’t always have to come from authoritative, ‘textbook’-like information sources.

Consider the power of the narrative; consider a well-crafted, intentionally told story. Think about those Usborne books with the illustrated diagrams and cross-sections. How many of us as children got more information from a non-fiction picture book, or illustrated Usborne book than we did from a textbook? I know I certainly did. Even fictional picture books, like “Henry’s Freedom Box,” can and have been used at every age to share our history, in engaging and meaningful ways. Often these do more for good education than what we’ve long regarded as “traditional” educational materials and informational sources.

We might be in the midst now of asking ‘Where’ information will be held and retrieved for the next generation of children, but if this information is put together the same way as always – in textbook prose and feel, just simply in an online repository – and if we’re serious about improving our educational system to better match the way our kids learn, then I think we’re asking the wrong question. The real question is not ‘Where’ information is, but ‘How’ it is presented.

Is it engaging and meaningful, whether online or off? Or is it simply a dry, dull collection of meaningless facts and statistics?

Jun 13, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform, story, textbooks :: #

Secretary of Education Offers New Motivational Tool to Teachers

So it’s been a couple of months since Arne Duncan has taken up residence in the U.S. Department of Education. How’s he holding up?

Pretty well, apparently. Here’s news of one of the new, scientifically-proven motivational exercises that Duncan is supporting as part of the continuation of No Child Left Behind:

A teacher takes her class outside the school building and divides children into teams of five. One child lies down on the ground on his/her back and four of his/her teammates hold him/her there by sitting on his/her arms and legs. Then the teacher slowly pours a gallon jug of water over the child’s mouth and nostrils in an exercise known as water motivation. Team members make sure to keep the supine student in place.

Teachers’ union president Randi Weingarten accompanied Duncan on his “listening tour” to different schools across the country, where he first proposed the new motivational tool. She reportedly “danced the fandango on the table in front of the speaker’s dais” upon his announcement.

Anything to keep the education status quo going, apparently.

(Okay, I shall not make fun of NCLB anymore. I shall not make fun of NCLB anymore. I shall not make fun of NCLB anymore…)

May 28, 2009 :: Tagged under: arneduncan, education, nclb :: #

Physical Spaces in Support of 'Whole Child' Education

The story of Manassas Park City Schools, and how the innovative redesign and renovation of their physical school facilities intersected with – and in many ways inspired – the school system’s rich Whole Child education.

School buildings deteriorate and have to be replaced or community growth mandates the need for new structures. Children enter those buildings, look around, and decide whether they feel valued and welcome. Teachers often spend as much if not more time in their respective school buildings than they do anywhere else, and a community speaks volumes through the leaders it chooses, the programs it creates, the culture it nourishes, and the physical spaces it designs for learning.

May 26, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, kids environments, wholechildeducation :: #

Here's to Teachers

“What we’re striving for,” the textbook publisher explained, “are materials that are teacher-proof.” My face revealed my incomprehension. “You know, materials that can be picked up by anyone, and as long as they do exactly what the teacher’s guide says, they will have taught a lesson.”
“You mean, like a script?” I asked.
“That’s not a term we like to use,” he replied, “but that is the idea.”

Experienced teacher and education blogger Kevin Washburn recounts his experiences in the world of education – with textbook publishers, curriculum guides, and set standards – but concludes that only one thing is important in inspiring real student learning and achievement. What’s that one thing?

You guessed it: teachers.

Invested teachers who care about their students are, as the research shows, the most important thing for educational success in schools. Not curriculum, not textbooks or technology – but teachers. And inspiring and equipping great teachers through quality professional development is exactly where schools should be spending their money. It might be messy and uncertain – less predictable and “safe” – to have our entire education system depend on teachers and their students… but in the end, aren’t they what education is all about?

“My own extremely strong belief, based on decades of work in the field, is that the best way to improve education is not to focus primarily on the curriculum, nor on assessment, important those these things are. The most powerful method of improving education is to invest in the improvement of teaching and the status of great teachers. There isn’t a great school anywhere that doesn’t have great teachers working in it.”
– Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

May 26, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, kenrobinson, teachers :: #

Do Longer School Days Work?

Here’s the quick answer to the question policymakers are asking of whether they can simply “fix” poor education by making schooldays longer and extending the school year: No, no they can’t.

A recent $100 million dollar investment to improve a Florida county’s lowest-performing schools by doing just so utterly failed, according to the effort’s final report.

The School Improvement Zone was a three-year push at 39 elementary, middle and senior high schools throughout the county. Students participated in a specialized reading program and had a longer school day than students at other schools. They also had a longer school year.
The zone was former Superintendent Rudy Crew’s pet project. It was praised in education circles across the country.
But the investment yielded few results when it came to student performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests, according to the district analysis. And both students and teachers said they were exhausted by the extra hour a day in the classroom and the heavy workload.

It’d be great when they realize that successful education isn’t so much a matter of quantity, but quality. Just as “real” education can’t be reflected on a test, “real” school reform can’t be a simple matter of money or time.

“Education is not preparation for life, but is life itself.”
– John Dewey

May 15, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, education reform :: #

Playing on Playgrounds Yields Better Math Students

A recent study, whose efforts initially emerged out of the Boston Schoolyard Initiative (an public-private partnership in the mid-1990s to restore Boston’s playgrouds), considered an important question: whether renovated playgrounds had an impact on student achievement.

From Boston University’s campus newsletter, BU Today:

“I really wasn’t expecting to find anything,” says Russell Lopez, a School of Public Health assistant professor of Environmental Health, citing the relatively small sample of schools. “I thought, even if there is a real effect, there are so few schools involved that it doesn’t have a lot of statistical power.”
When Lopez studied the 2003 results of the fourth-grade English language MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System), standardized tests that almost all public school students must take, he saw no discernible differences between children at the 70 schools with new playgrounds and children at schools with old playgrounds.
But when he looked at math scores, he saw a very different picture. In schools where fourth graders had new playgrounds, 25 percent more kids passed the math MCAS. And that remained true after he and his team controlled for factors such as demographics and the number of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches.
The researchers suggest several reasons for the association between better schoolyards and improved test scores. It may be that students at schools with upgraded playgrounds get more physical activity, which may make them more willing and able to learn once they’re back at their desks. It could also be the result of more parental involvement in the schools. Or, Lopez says, “It could be that students and teachers feel better about going to schools that are not dreary, jail-like settings and that look more inviting. That might set up people to want to learn.”

While Lopez acknowledges the limitations of his ecological study, I think we’d do well as a society to consider education from a more ecologically-aware, holistic vantage point. Lopez gets this, too:

Lopez believes his findings are particularly important at a time when the slumping economy is forcing schools across the nation to tighten their belts. “I worry that the first thing that gets cut is the outdoor space,” he says. “There are a lot of people who think that it’s not important, that all kids need is reading, writing, and arithmetic. And I think what this shows is that getting kids to learn is a broader experience. How places look and how they’re used are as important as what goes on in the classroom.”

Apr 25, 2009 :: Tagged under: education, kids environments, nature, play, playgrounds :: #