By requiring industry-based credentials for CTE students and encouraging all students to interact with industry professionals, Louisiana’s Jump Start program is revolutionizing career education
In Louisiana, only 19 percent of high school students go on to receive a four-year college degree. There are plenty of high-paying jobs available for the other 81 percent, but matching students with these opportunities and making sure they have the right credentials—like a two-year degree or industry certification—has always been a challenge.
For years, Louisiana students have been able to earn a Career Diploma as an alternative to a traditional academic diploma. But the program was seldom used, and students working toward a Career Diploma weren’t being adequately prepared for jobs in high-demand fields.
In short, there was little or no connection between Louisiana’s career education strategy and its workforce needs. State leaders knew they needed a better approach.
As an English teacher in Oklahoma’s Moore Public Schools, I was recruited by some textbook providers to help them create content. It was a lot of fun, and I was happy to make some extra money doing it. But there are so many teachers in our district who are much more talented than I am. If I was developing curriculum materials that school systems across the nation were purchasing, they certainly could be doing this, too.
So when I became a technology integration specialist for the district, one of my long-term goals was to leverage the expertise of our teachers in creating high-quality digital content.
Teachers are already scouring the web for videos, articles, and other free instructional resources, then pulling these together into coherent lessons and adding their own valuable context to help students understand the material or promote deeper lines of inquiry.
My thought was, why don’t we take some of the money we’re hemorrhaging on expensive, print-based textbooks that aren’t interactive and don’t effectively capture students’ imagination—and use it to pay our teachers more money for their efforts instead?
Our vision is to create a central repository of exemplary digital content that is developed and curated by teachers, for teachers in our district. All teachers would have access to these shared instructional materials. Not all teachers would be required to contribute, but those who do could receive a stipend for their work if it’s approved as a district-vetted lesson or unit.
This would allow us to use our most powerful assets—our teachers—to their fullest potential, while also recognizing and giving value to teachers for the lesson planning and content creation they already do so well.
That’s important, because in Oklahoma, our teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation—and many leave the profession after only a few years. Honoring their talents and contributions could help stop this mass exodus of young teachers as well as veteran content experts and keep them in our schools.
To realize this vision, we needed to have a technology platform that would support teachers in creating and sharing digital lessons. We found this platform in Ogment, which helped us create curriculum by making it easier to grab digital content, including what we found on the web, and turn that into useable lessons for our classrooms.
Part of the problem is not the lack of resources, but rather the overabundance of resources. Every teacher knows how much great content exists online—but managing it all can be a nightmare. Ogment has let our teachers clip videos, articles, games, and other internet resources and put them into lessons or presentations with a simple drag-and-drop process. Then, they can embed questions within a lesson to check for students’ understanding or prompt further discussion—and they can easily share their lessons with other teachers.
Our teachers have used the service to “flip” their classrooms and even personalize instruction. For instance, Tiffany Truesdell, a math teacher at Westmoore High School, says she has used Ogment to make customized lessons for her students.
“I can assign a lesson that presents all the material, and as students go through the lesson, I can have questions that check for their understanding just as if I were presenting the material in class. I can pull videos from any website to enhance the lesson, and if I only want a small section of the video, Ogment lets me assign just that portion of the video in my lesson,” she says.
“Ogment also allows me to differentiate a lesson. For example, if I have a student on an IEP who needs multiple choice, but I want the other students to have a free response question, I can create the lesson once but with differentiated questions. When the questions come up, it will give the IEP student the multiple choice question instead.”
Mrs. Truesdell’s example shows that with the right technology, our district can build a shared repository of lessons that is truly usable. More importantly, a system like this allows our teachers to apply their talents and reignite their passion for creating great content.
We are working toward a model in which we pay teachers extra for the content they create and share through this tool. We’re not there yet; we’re still trying to free up the funding to be able to do this.
But when we come up with the funding to realize our vision, we’ll be able to pay our teachers extra for creating and sharing top-notch lessons—rewarding teachers for their work and restoring professionalism to the field.
Brandon Wilmarth is a technology integration specialist for Moore Public Schools in Oklahoma.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has written a blistering letterto the Department of Education’s acting Education Secretary John King regarding how the department handles student loan fraud.
In the letter, Warren accuses the department of not having a proper handle on student loan contractors, and specifically cites its relationship with Navient, formerly known as Sallie Mae.
In 2014, the Department of Education and Navient reached a settlement of $100 million due to Navient’s role in violating a federal law that pinches interest rates at 6% for servicemembers.
Warren’s issue isn’t necessarily with the settlement, it’s that the department has failed to oversee its relationship with Navient.
As the company holds millions of student loans, the department’s relationship with Navient hasn’t been impacted even as the company was found to have broken the law.
Moving forward, Warren not only wants the department to reassess its position with Navient, but wants to know why the company hasn’t been penalized further.
To put some fears to rest, the department launched an internal investigation into Navient’s loan practices and found that a small percentage of those who borrowed were not receiving the federally mandated rate.
Warren notes the Department of Education’s Inspector General revealed that the department’s internal investigation into Navient was flawed and erroneous.
Towards the end of the letter, Warren writes that the findings of an independent review of the department’s handling of student aid are that companies that are responsible for supervising student loan debt receive protection from the Department of Education when they break the law.
As students and former students grapple with how to pay back student loans and are harassed by the likes of companies like Navient, the information presented in Warren’s letter is damaging and sad.
If the Department of Education is indeed offering protection to companies that break the law, and are failing to properly shelter students from these organizations, it proves why so many students have little faith in college affordability and the government’s role in helping them.
It’s been almost a half-decade since education communities started pushing for an iPad for each student in classrooms. The amount of individualized learning available on tablets that are equipped with Internet technology is virtually limitless, making customized learning more possible than ever. Many school districts are still trying to reach this standard, of course, but in the areas where the iPad-to-student ratio is 1:1, that connectivity is making a positive difference.
Recently, Carl Hooker, the creator of iPadpalooza and director of innovation and digital learning at Eanes ISD (TX), was honored as 2016’s Thought Leader of the Year by PR with Panache!Hooker was recognized for his district’s personalized learning initiative that has put iPads in the hands of 8,000 students. He’s also the founder of iPadpalooza – an event that brings together global education leaders to talk about the role of technology in classrooms and beyond. Hooker is the author of the Mobile Learning Mindsetseries that approaches the technology of learning from a positive place.
In 2014, Hooker was also named Leader of the Year by Tech & Learning.
What leaders like Hooker are getting right is this: technology can benefit teachers and students when it is implemented correctly. Screen time can never replace the benefit of one-on-one teacher contact — but in classrooms where individual attention is scarce (and that’s most of them), tapping technology for customized learning can be a complete game-changer. Finding ways to extend technology resources to the schools that need it the most should be a goal of any progressive education advocate because within technology is the capability to reach more students with more customized learning experiences.
**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**
A guest column by Gary Hamilton
The terrible tragedy at a church in Charleston, the circumstances surrounding the death of Sandra Bland, the anniversary of Michael Brown’s shooting, and countless acts of racially-motivated violence have once again reminded us that racism still continues today. Messages of hate and prejudice – the Confederate flag, the inequities in our systems of justice and education, and the media’s standard response to events involving people of color – continue to cause feelings of fatigue and isolation.
It is still hard for us as a country to fully acknowledge the racism that permeates the US. Especially in our schools, where we too often dodge or soften conversations about racial issues.
To bring about healing and impact change, I believe that teachers must have difficult conversations about race in order to bring about unity and understanding. We have the platform to achieve this, but we need to step away from the shadows of implicit messages. We have to speak openly and guide our students as well as each other through these challenging issues.
Teachers must be able to talk openly about racial issues.
Educators frequently engage in heated professional discussions with one another, yet when topics of race emerge we feel that we must walk on eggshells. To me, this is a serious problem. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of understanding each other and feeling free to share our cultures and histories. Our differences sustain who we are, and in order to create pathways for our students to feel accepted for who they are, we must foster these conversations.
I often find that some of my white colleagues stumble when speaking about issues that specifically affect the black community, if they address them at all. Maybe they feel uncomfortable and worry that I will place blame on them. Maybe they are unsure how to present their questions without offending me. But to eliminate the pitfalls of sugar-coated explanations or weak rationale for terrible acts of violence that occur, we need to be able to talk openly and honestly about racial issues.
How can we foster this? We can engage in controlled, passionate, solution-oriented conversations. In these conversations, we need to remember to leave our judgments at the door, to remain open-minded, and continue to demonstrate respect, even when we disagree. It is also important to assess the tone of the room, as some conversations are not ready for those who tend to play the devil’s advocate. Starting with validation can place individuals at ease and increase the likelihood of a healthy discussion. As educators, we can encourage these conversations with our students, their parents, and with one another.
Conversations about race are important to clarify generalizations.
I fear that my students may see the surveillance footage and media images of the man responsible for the Charleston attack, and think that the odious crimes against black people are perpetuated by all white people. The myriad of recent events where white police officers have abused their authority and acted with unwarranted violence towards black people keeps this belief afloat. Not having the space to ask questions openly about events such as these leads to stereotypes, fear, and hate.
We must acknowledge the danger of our country plunging into the abyss of racial divides. We were once and in many ways continue to be a country that treads lines of black versus white issues. We must prevent students from viewing the world through this lens by teaching them how the tainted ideology of a person can negatively impact all people. It is important to not distort the truth, but the format we use to tailor and present the truth is essential to how it will be processed.
We must remove the spotlight from the bad guy.
The spotlight should instead be shined on the inequalities within our justice system and our education system and the detrimental impact this has on minorities. It should be shined on strengthening gun control and safety laws and the increasing need for readily accessible mental health services. We need to stop focusing the perpetrators of these crimes and start focusing on systemic inequities that spur racism.
I trust that we are a nation that understands the menu for healing, but we cannot atone for ferocious acts without examining the root causes of racially-charged hate crimes. It is time that we move away from a place of fault and blame and into a place of realistic improvement for all people.
As we embrace the families whose loved ones have been lost through senseless acts of racially-motivated violence, we must recognize that history is repeating itself and that racism is still alive and well today. This truth is masked by the media and by our daily interactions with one another, where we avoid conversations about racial issues. To move forward, we need to have difficult conversations about the racism in our country. We can start these conversations in our classrooms.
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Gary Hamilton grew up in the Dallas Independent School District, and is now a 5th grade special education teacher at Wheatley Education Campus in Washington, D.C. He has been teaching for 9 years. Gary is an America Achieves Fellow, a teacher trainer for the Flamboyan Foundation, and a Teacher Selection Ambassador for the District of Columbia Public Schools.
As the first tech company to announce its diversity statistics in May of 2014, Google admits to poor numbers again in 2015. A whopping 70 percent of Google’s workforce in 2014 was male, while just 3 percent of its U.S. staff was Hispanic and only 2 percent were Black. Google diversity, or lack thereof, is just a small sampling of the industry as a whole, though.
For 2015, overall gender Google diversity by in large remained the same. However, there was slight improvement with a 1 percent increase in the number of women in tech positions. There was also a slim increase in women in leadership positions within Google. However, the same can not be said for Hispanic and Black representation, as they remained at 3 and 2 percent respectively, and only 2 and 1 percent in technology-focused jobs.
How can Google diversity improve?
Though the figures are alarming, Google has committed to rectifying the situation and has invested nearly $150 million in diversity goals for 2015.
Google diversity funds are being used to recruit on non-Ivy League university campuses, which include state schools with diverse student bodies and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (or HBCUs). Current employees are being trained and participating in diversity enhancing projects. The investment is also being made in computer science education for girls and diverse underrepresented populations. Although 72 percent of Google’s leadership team is white, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, is Indian-born and committed to diversifying the company.
It’s clear that Google diversity numbers are incredibly lackluster. There is a huge imbalance in gender and minority representation. At the same time, Google deserves recognition for bringing this information to light and prompting the entire tech industry to take a closer look at its diversity figures. With Google’s investment of hundreds of millions of dollars, the proper steps are being taken to ensure that more women and minorities get into computer science and engineering programs and eventually, tech jobs in the first place.
**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**
Maria Klawe, Harvey Mudd College
I’ve been passionate about increasing women’s participation in computer science for more than 25 years. While the number of undergraduate women pursuing some STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields like biology and chemistry has steadily increased over the past couple of decades, women’s participation in computer science (CS) has actually been declining.
Indeed, within the last 20 years the percentage of undergraduate women who received CS degrees plummeted by almost 40%. According to the National Science Foundation, in 1995, 29% of bachelor’s degrees in CS were awarded to women; by 2012, the most recent year for which NSF data is available, only 18% of CS undergraduates were women.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) reports even lower numbers. CRA’s annual Taulbee Survey of over 100 major computer science departments in North America found that by the mid-2000s, the percentage of women graduating with CS bachelor’s degrees averaged 14%.
For me this issue is both personal and global.
Working to remove barriers
I’m a mathematician and a computer scientist. Back when I was getting my PhD in math, there were very few women in my field. Despite receiving discouragement because of my gender, I worked hard.
And I excelled. I went on to take up leadership roles in many places – at IBM, University of British Columbia, Princeton and now at Harvey Mudd. I’ve been the first woman in nearly all these positions.
I know the struggles that can hinder women when they are working in a predominantly male field. I also know firsthand how computer science and technology make for a great career, offering a good income, work-life balance and opportunities to travel. They also offer a chance to make significant contributions to the world, by working on important societal problems.
I want young women to have these opportunities.
I’ve been working on this issue for decades. When I came to Harvey Mudd College in 2006, the CS department was averaging only about 10% women majors. The faculty had decided to make significant changes to attract more women.
They redesigned their introductory computer science courses to focus less on straight programming and more on creative problem-solving. They included topics to show the breadth of the field and the ways in which it could benefit society.
In order to reduce the intimidation factor for women and other students with no prior coding experience, they split the course into two sections, black and gold (Harvey Mudd’s colors), with black for those who had prior programming experience and gold for those with no prior experience.
This worked wonders to create a supportive atmosphere.
Making the field exciting for women
Instead of traditional homework, which can be isolating, the faculty assigned team-based projects so that students coded together. And most importantly, they made the courses fun. The intro CS courses went from being the least-liked course in our core curriculum to being the most popular.
After the courses were introduced in 2007, we saw an immediate and steady increase in the percentage of female students majoring in CS. Within four years, we went from averaging around 10% women majors to averaging 40%. We have continued to average 40% since 2011.
In addition, faculty created early summer research opportunities designed for students who had completed only one or two CS courses, and encouraged their first-year female students to participate. A number of studies have shown that research experiences for undergraduate students increase retention and confidence in STEM fields, factors that are particularly important for women and minorities.
Harvey Mudd’s female students who participated in early CS research projects indeed reported greatly increased interest in the discipline and a boost in confidence. They realized they could do the work of a computer scientist and that they enjoyed it as well.
Even today, there aren’t enough women entering the field of computer science.Harvey Mudd College, CC BY
We also send large contingents of women students each year to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing,the largest conference for women working in technology fields. At this event, students get to see role models and are excited about the many amazing technology career paths they can pursue.
Other institutions are starting to take up our approaches.
The National Science Foundation’s most recent (2012) report shows that computer science has the lowest proportion of women receiving bachelor degrees of all the STEM fields. The percentage dipped to a mere 11% from 2007-2009 and gradually returned to 14% by 2013-2014.
Computer science should be a required part of secondary education, but a lot of schools don’t have computer science teachers. Most young people who go to college today have not had much exposure to computer science.
We also have to combat the cultural belief that some people are simply born with math, science or computer talent and others are simply “not good at it.” There’slots of researchthat shows that persistence and hard work play a much larger role in success in any area of science and engineering than “native ability.” Another serious challenge is posed by the media portrayal of careers in technology, which builds certain stereotypes.
I want people to think about how we can change our images of who we consider to be competent in technology. At the moment, the image of the computer scientist is limited to a white or Asian male.
One thing we know for sure is that you get better solutions if you have more diverse teams working on them. We need the female perspective to get the best solutions to very pressing problems.
Need for diversity
We also need more African Americans, Latinos/Latinas, poets, football players and artists involved in creating technology. Right now there is unfilled demand for computer science grads and not just in the tech industry.
I want computer science and technology to be a world that embraces everyone who has passion, ability and interest, whether they look like the dominant group or not.
Today, computer science touches all industries. Its products are embedded in our daily lives. Addressing the significant problems of the world – from climate change to health care to poverty – will involve technology.
I think the world will be an incredibly exciting place and we will see amazing technological developments when we create a much more diverse tech community.
One kid, one clock, and one set of handcuffs set the nation ablaze this week. Ahmed Mohamed was detainedby officers from the Irving Police Department for bringing a homemade clock to school that his teacher mistook for a bomb.
In an effort to defuse the clock–and the situation–the police were called and Ahmed was arrested for bringing a “hoax bomb” to school.
Officials later learned that Ahmed’s faux bomb was just a homemade clock and he had no intention of harming anyone. It was all, as stated by the police, just a misunderstanding.
If only misunderstandings were that simple.
Since the melee, Ahmed has been invited to the White House, MIT, and Facebook for his creativity. Each organization or group has shown support for Ahmed due to his unfair arrest.
But the unfairness tagged to his arrest has more to do with Ahmed’s culture and skin color than safety.
Ahmed Mohamed was born in America, is Muslim, and his parents aren’t native. The stereotypes associated with Ahmed’s existence led to his arrest, not a clock misidentified as a bomb.
According to study by the University of Pennsylvania, students of color, specifically black students, are suspended at a much higher rate than white students. While Ahmed isn’t black, he is considered to be a student of color.
The study also notes that in 84 districts within the 13 states studied, “blacks were 100 percent of students suspended from school.”
This perpetuates an unfortunate theory that students of color are pushed towards prison instead of higher education.
Ahmed is a curious kid who enjoyed putting things together and fixing broken electronics. He was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school, which on so many levels, means that a part of his creativity was doused due to racism, stereotypes, and ignorance.
We need to push more kids like Ahmed to advance boundaries, not punish their ability to blow by them.
Too bad Ahmed’s lesson about how rules are applied to certain students, culture, and races were learned through his ability to be creative.
President Obama continues to forge ahead with education initiatives that are sure to get people talking. As reported by the Washington Post, the Obama Administration will try to end a 22-year ban on prisoners ability to attain Pell Grants for college. I can already hear the arguments that “deserving” citizens should receive this money – not those society has deemed unfit for outside life. That’s just the reason these inmates need the Pell Grant chance, though.
During a visit to the Maryland Correctional Facility in Jessup, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch talked about the need to provide education opportunities for inmates as a way to reduce the recidivism rate.
“In their visit to Jessup, Duncan and Lynch announced that some inmates of state and federal prisons will be eligible soon for federal Pell grants through an experiment called the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program. The experiment, to be launched by fall 2016, would provide an exception to a ban enacted in 1994 that made prisoners ineligible for Pell grants,” the Post reports.
While the ban has to be lifted by Congress, the President has the ability to experiment by offering Pell Grants to a limited number of prisoners who are within five years of release.
The president is likely to receive push-back from Congressional Republicans when he decides to work around the ban, but allowing prisoners access to higher education prior to the end of their sentences would eventually save the federal government millions of dollars. It would mean better lives for these former prisoners too, making it an all-around good initiative.
In a move that may possibly alter how state legislatures do business, the Hamilton County Department of Education has filed a lawsuitagainst the state for breaching “its duty under the Tennessee Constitution to provide a system of free public education for the children of this state.”
The basis of the lawsuit is that the state has failed its students by failing to properly fund the state’s Basic Education program. According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the suit claims that the state “pays only for 10 months of teachers’ 12 months of insurance.”
But that funding shortage for teacher pay and benefits is around $600 million by way of Nooga.com.
The state’s legislature did recently sign off on the governor’s budget, which included about $175 million for teacher pay and benefits for 2015-16.
Still–seems to be too little, too late.
The attorney representing Hamilton County is attemptingto get the judge presiding over the case to give the lawsuit class-action status as more school districts are set to join the lawsuit.
Of course this lawsuit hits at those who run politics in the state of Tennessee. In essence, state lawmakers in charge of funneling money towards public education have choked it off for one reason or another.
Lack of revenue, a need to increase taxes, diverted funding to other places, and etc., may all represents reasons why the state’s public education system has been under-funded. This suit aims to hold the state accountable and to give students a fair shake.
For what it’s worth, funding public education is a struggle for many politicians. Specifically in Tennessee, politicians have a constitutional mandate to capitalize the state’s basic education program, but higher education cuts into that funding since it is technically funded voluntarily.
This will, at the very least, force lawmakers to focus on how BEP is funded. Either that or it will start a war between public education officials and state senators and representatives. If so, students will be caught in the middle.
Hopefully this may all be avoided and a compromise reached. Funding public education is essential to the success of any state as the students being taught today are those participating in the state’s future workforce.
