Policy & Reform

Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Creating and Sustaining Educational Change 101

Edpolicy, edreform, school reform, put kids first,

When considering school reform, it may be advantageous for administrators to think of their schools as businesses. If the structure of the school were to reflect the business model, we would work from the assumption that students in the school system are customers, schools are the businesses, teachers are the employees/supervisors, and the administrators are the CEO’s.

In any business, the customers needs always come first. The reputation for customer service is the best advertising a business can receive. Keeping this savvy business strategy in mind, the business of the school should be to create learning opportunities that lead to greater academic achievement. If educators make lessons fun while adhering to the curriculum, the graduation rate will increase dramatically. If children feel safe and entertained, they will want to come to school. It is the educator’s task to make sure students learn to love to learn, while it is the administration’s task to support their efforts.

The most critical question administrators must confront is: where do we begin? Beginning reform by tackling several goals at once is noble, but not recommended. When trying to start reform in a complex environment such as a school, administrators need to focus on one task at a time. When making decisions, the administration needs to be sure to complete all steps of the reform in sequential order, using a strategic way of thinking.

In some cases goals can be independently accomplished. Departments will be able to achieve short-term goals while accomplishing the larger goals. In education, the improvements that matter the most are those that directly concern children. In order to create the necessary improvements, school districts must be reformed in ways that will sustain change. The ability of a school district to sustain reform should be of the utmost importance to the superintendent and the board of education.

Three conditions must be present in order to sustain reform. First, administrators must come to an agreement concerning the issues that have made it necessary for school reform to take place. They must be open and honest and refrain from blaming others for the issues that exist. All individuals directly and indirectly involved in the school reform must share a common vision.

Administrators should try to come to a consensus regarding the purpose of education and the roles of the faculty and staff.  They also need to agree on the rules and guidelines that will support the implementation of the reform, while respecting cultural beliefs of the faculty, staff, and students. Finally, administrators must communicate the current issues of the school and the vision for the future to stakeholders. Those who support and participate in reform need a clear vision of the common goal. Administrators must paint a reform picture that alleviates fears, and entice all to buy into the vision.

Communication is the key to running and sustaining a successful school when creating concrete reform. All participants and key administrators must agree to communicate with each other their understanding of the school reform, including their concerns. The administrators and participants must have a shared understanding of the issues the district faces, as they must learn to articulate, analyze, and explain the issues in a similar way.

There needs to be a common vision concerning students, schools, and the allocation of resources. Administrators must also anticipate new trends and issues preventing reform. Once the obstacles have been identified, it is the duty of the administrator to articulate these trends and issues to the powers that be, i.e., superintendents and school board members. Finally, the most important communication between administrators and staff is how to create reform that provides a quality education for all students.

Communication must also take place among the school district, superintendents, and the board of education in an intentional and ongoing manner. They must continuously reflect in an open and honest way on the effectiveness of the reform, and successfully communicate between departments in the case of promotions, retirements, or sudden resignation.

When creating school reform, administrators should consider communicating with community members. Community members and parents have a lot to contribute when it comes to school reform and they should be encouraged and allowed to do so. Parents and educators undoubtedly have a genuine concern for the needs of students. Why not place the important decisions concerning our students in the hands of the people that have the children’s best interests at heart?

Administrators should also consider teachers as a major part of school reform. Reform is considered a success or a failure based on the students’ performance, but teacher performance is inextricably linked to student performance. Through positive teacher-student relationships, genuine learning can take place in the classroom. Teachers know their students and the educational practices that work best in their classroom.

In schools across the nation, the people in the best positions to create positive outcomes have little to no control over the changes that are made and how they are implemented. Too often, the most critical decisions concerning the educational system are made by people without the capacity to understand the inner workings of the individual school and what it takes to ensure no child is left behind.

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, list, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

3 Ways to End Anti-Gay Bullying

With the Supreme Court’s decision this year to recognize same-sex marriage and promote marriage equality, it is clear that attitudes toward individuals who are LGBT are changing. However, anti-gay bullying is still an issue today, and is a major concern especially with cyber-bullying on the rise.

Furthermore, biased and homophobic comments are rampant in many schools, with a staggering 90 percent of LGBT students experiencing verbal harassment related to their sexual orientation.

Regardless of a teacher’s personal ideology, as educators we are bound to uphold a code of tolerance and acceptance. Here are three ways to ensure that LGBT students feel safer and more accepted at school:

  1. Disallow discrimination based on sexual orientation. The National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development have all passed resolutions asking their members and all school districts to step forward to improve the educational experiences of LGBT students. These resolutions call for providing a safe environment, support groups, and counseling options for LGBT students and by employing anti-harassment rules and practices.  In nine states, the state government has instituted legislation prohibiting the harassment and discrimination of LGBT students. We need to continue this trend until every state has these rules in place, in every district and school – no exceptions.
  2. Expand “inclusion” policies.  There are some schools in which LGBT students are accepted and accommodated.   Same-sex couples are invited to school dances and there are unisex washrooms for transgender students.  School districts in some states include LGBT students in non-discrimination policies with the goal of making schools safe places for all students, parents, faculty and staff.  However, there are also states where it is illegal to even utter the word homosexual and in which the word homosexual (or lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender) can only be portrayed in a negative light within the classroom.  This makes it difficult for teachers to teach about sexual orientation diversity or to make their classrooms and school environment safe and accepting of LGBT students.  Regardless of location, teachers can explain to students that they don’t have to agree it is okay to be gay or lesbian, but they do have to agree that it is not okay to discriminate against them.
  3. Promote LGBT student groups.  It is important that all students, regardless of who they are or their sexual orientation, have a safe environment in which to learn and grow as an individual.  Gay and lesbian organizations have been at the forefront of trying to create safe and accepting environments for LGBT students.  Students have also taken up the cause and student groups have begun springing up in schools all over the country.  There are currently approximately 4,000 Gay-Straight Alliance Groups registered with the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN).  These groups are alliances between straight and LGBT. They work together to support each other and promote education as a means for ending homophobia.

By schools taking the reins on this issue, real change will eventually be realized.

What are you suggestions on how we can improve the school environment for LGBT students?

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform

Who should monitor homeschooling?

Robert Kunzman, Indiana University, Bloomington

Should homeschool parents have complete control over the content and outcomes of their children’s education, with no external assessment or evaluation from the state?

The Texas Supreme Court is exploring this very question as they consider the case of the McIntyre family versus the El Paso school district, which involves allegations that the homeschooled McIntyre children did little or no academic work and that their parents refused to provide any evidence of such work.

After having studied homeschooling practices and policies for more than a decade, I contend that states need to find a middle ground – a modest set of expectations for homeschoolers that protects children’s basic educational interests while still leaving plenty of room for curricular flexibility.

What does the law say?

The fact is that homeschooling regulations vary widely from state to state.

In a 1994 decision in Texas Education Agency v Leeper, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that “homes in which children are taught in a bona fide manner from a curriculum designed to meet basic education goals” would qualify as private or parochial schools under the Texas compulsory education law.

However, there is no regulatory mechanism that exists in the state to assess whether basic education goals are being met by homeschoolers. In fact, Texas is one of 11 states that do not require families even to notify educational authorities that they homeschool their children.

A few states, such as North Dakota, require homeschool parents to meet certain educational requirements. Other states, such as California, stipulate that homeschoolers must study subjects similar to public schools. And some states, such as New York, require parents to submit curricular plans each year.

About half of states mandate some form of assessment through portfolios or standardized tests. But the interesting part is that most of them also have loopholes that excuse parents from actually reporting the results.

What kind of regulation makes the most sense?

In my view, most of these requirements are neither appropriate nor effective. Authorities can approve curricular plans, but such documents may have little to do with what actually occurs during the year.

Indeed, much of the value of the homeschooling approach rests in its inherent flexibility to customize learning experiences in ways that work best for individual children. While portfolios of student work at the end of the year might be revealing, they are also difficult to evaluate consistently and efficiently.

With this in mind, standardized basic skills tests hold the most potential for protecting children’s basic educational interests while leaving room for curricular flexibility.

Few of us would deny that children need basic skills of literacy and numeracy in order to function independently as adults. Certainly all the homeschool parents I’ve spoken with over the years would share this view.

I suspect that the vast majority of homeschoolers would have no trouble passing basic skills tests. And even for students who struggle with basic skills assessment, the next step would be a closer look by the state to understand the context, rather than an automatic assumption of educational neglect.

It’s also worth pointing out that basic skills requirements need not dictate the shape or method of homeschool curricula; there are countless ways to cultivate such basic skills in children – from highly structured curricula to student-directed projects to experiential learning.

What are the other skills that need to be developed?
PearlsofJannah, CC BY-NC

But is a good education only about the development of basic skills?

While the answer to this question should be obvious, there is plenty of reasonable disagreement about what other skills, knowledge and dispositions children should develop – and whether such expectations should be standardized for each child.

Regulations to protect the most vulnerable

Why insist on this sort of oversight?

After all, homeschool advocates such as the Home School Legal Defense Association and the National Home Education Research Institute claim that the average homeschooler performs significantly better than public school students on standardized tests.

The plain truth is that no such evidence exists. Wide-scale studies of homeschooler test performance have been based on volunteer samples, often with testing conditions far different from those of public school students.

And even if we knew that the “average homeschooler” compared favorably with public school students, that would say nothing about the experience of children whose parents use homeschooling as a cover for educational neglect or worse.

Homeschool advocates will also point to data showing no correlation between the amount of regulation in a particular state and the test scores reported by homeschoolers in those states.

But here again we run into the problem with volunteer samples – it seems highly unlikely that homeschool parents who neglect their responsibilities would even have their children take such tests, much less report the results.

Finding middle ground

Plenty of reasonable disagreement exists about what constitutes a great education. But we should all be able to agree that all children have a vital interest in gaining basic skills of literacy and numeracy.

Protecting those interests, while also honoring the role of parents in shaping their child’s educational experience, means finding a middle ground between intrusive regulations and having no oversight at all.

I agree that homeschool parents should be given wide latitude in the shape of their curricula and the experiences they provide for their children. But a complete lack of external accountability leaves too much room for neglect and abuse to go undetected.

A modest set of expectations such as annual reporting of enrollment and basic skills testing would go a long way toward protecting children’s interests while preserving homeschool freedoms.

The Conversation

Robert Kunzman, Professor of Curriculum Studies and Philosophy of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers, Uncategorized

What gets students motivated to work harder? Not money

Matthew G Springer, Vanderbilt University

Rewarding teachers financially for student achievement is an increasingly common practice, despite mixed evidence as to whether it improves results. Some scholars have instead suggested paying students.

But giving kids cash for grades and scores hasn’t proved straightforward either. So maybe the answer isn’t monetary.

Could students be better motivated by something as simple as a little formal recognition?

While I was serving as director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, my colleagues and I sought answers in the decisions of various actors in American public schools.

The results may surprise you.

Which incentives encourage positive behavior?

Much of public policy can be characterized as attempts to influence individual behavior and decision-making in organizations.

Those who design and evaluate incentives typically operate under the crude assumption that the “target” is a rational actor (processing all available information and quickly identifying the behavior most likely to be the best one for his or her well-being).

So, policymakers end up offering seemingly beneficial public services at little or no cost. But they still meet with disappointment.

Our recent study attempted to better understand the response to a different kind of incentive – for one of the arguably more imperfectly rationale segment of our population: early adolescents.

We explored how incentives – monetary and nonmonetary – might encourage behaviors that lead to increased student learning, such as daily attendance and afterschool tutoring services (free but chronically underutilized).

We found that adolescents do not respond to incentives in ways that can be easily predicted by economic theory. But the right kinds of incentives could well lead adolescents to engage in behaviors likely to enhance their learning.

Money makes no difference

Here’s how we did our study.

We selected 300 fifth to eighth grade students in a large southern urban school district who were eligible for free, afterschool tutoring services.

Prior research had shown that these particular tutoring services were relatively high quality and had, in fact, increased student’s test score performance. We then randomly assigned these students to one of three groups:

  • a reward of US$100 (distributed via an online platform) for consistent attendance
  • certificates of recognition, signed by the school’s district superintendent, mailed to the student’s home, again for consistent attendance
  • a control group, which received no experimental incentives.

Offering students money made no difference.
Howard County Library System, CC BY-NC-ND

We found that the students who were offered up to $100 for regular attendance were no more likely to attend sessions than if they were offered nothing at all.

In other words, money made no difference.

Alternatively, when students received a certificate of recognition for attending tutoring sessions regularly, the differences were dramatic. The students in the certificate group attended 42.5% more of their allotted tutoring hours than those assigned to the control group.

Gender, parents and peers

Gender also played a role. Girls were significantly more responsive to the certificate of recognition than their male counterparts.

On average, girls in the control group attended only 11% of the tutoring hours assigned to them. However, girls receiving the certificate attended 67% of their allocated hours, representing a six-fold increase.

What’s more, the boys that received certificates attended more than two times as many of their allocated tutoring sessions in comparison to the male control-group students. But the girls in the group that received the certificates attended nearly twice as many of their allocated tutoring sessions than the boys who were eligible for certificates of recognition.

Overall, sending certificates directly to the parents seemed to have been effective. One reason for this could be that parents were more likely to reinforce the child’s extra effort when the certificate was received at home.

Often in school settings, parents are not hearing positive news when they are contacted by their child’s school – and this might be especially true of these students who qualified for tutoring services.

This is one time where the parent heard: “way to go, keep it up.” And they heard it directly from the district superintendent.

In addition, a student’s effort was not necessarily observable to peers, which could have helped facilitate the positive response.

Prior research suggests that the promise of certificates and trophies presented in a class or at a school assembly in front of peers might not necessarily act as a positive incentive. Academic achievement can often result in diminished social status among peers, especially for minority students.

Human behavior and education policy

Indeed, a recent study of a performance leaderboard system that publicly ranked students in a computer-based high school course in Los Angeles Unified School District was associated with a 24% performance decline.

The authors attributed this to students trying to avoid social penalties by conforming to prevailing norms.

For these reasons, working with the family to encourage and reward academic behaviors may hold more promise, compared to working directly through school settings where peer pressures and norms play an important role.

Policymakers and philanthropists in New York and Memphis are currently trying to interrupt a cycle of generational poverty through the Family Rewards Program. It is providing cash rewards to families who improve their short-term health care, education, and labor market participation and outcomes.

The impact results of this program are still awaited. This program doesn’t test other forms of incentives such as certificates.

But there are important implications for education policy discussions and whether cash should be the primary driver of human behavior, particularly for adolescents.

The results of our study show that children’s learning behaviors to incentives change in unpredictable ways. And these behaviors aren’t easily accounted for by models of individuals as rational decision-makers.

Our study provides evidence that for policies to influence adolescent behavior, they may need to draw from research and theory beyond classical economics or behavioral psychology, including what we are learning about the teenage brain and it’s sociocultural environment.

In short, we need to look at policies that are less Adam Smith and little more Friday Night Lights.

The Conversation

Matthew G Springer, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education, Vanderbilt University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform

Education: “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent” (from A Bronx Tale)

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding a 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.**

Public schools are engaged in underachieving and under-educating. Low goals are set but rarely reached.

Commentary from Bruce Deitrick Price

When you talk about wasted talent, people immediately think of an individual wasting his or her talent. It’s always a sad story but an individual story. A person makes bad decisions. Little by little that person is on a road where he will not be able to develop his talents to the fullest.

But what about a society where children have their talents wasted for them? Not by a lobotomy or by drugs. No, their talents are squandered by systematic planning and careful effort. The technical name for this is social engineering. A more popular name is “deliberate dumbing down.” Savor that melancholy phrase. And now let us ask, but how could it happen? Here’s the general blueprint:

If the kids can run a 100-yard dash, you make them walk. If they can dance all day, you make them sit in a chair. If they can learn a new language every year, you don’t teach new languages. If they can learn to read and enjoy books, you don’t teach them to read or you give them books you know they will hate. If they like math, you find ways that are difficult and cumbersome, until finally they can no longer learn to do math. In short, you use methods that don’t work. That’s how you give every child a handicap, a limp, a disability, something that will keep them from reaching their potential.

Public schools in America have been skilled at this for decades. That’s why the 1983 Nation at Risk report  could conclude that our public schools are so bad they must have been designed by a hostile foreign power. Very hostile.

When you look at the resulting mediocrity, and the counterproductive approaches used to achieve this decline, you start thinking about what might have been. You realize you are looking at a landscape full of waste and sadness. You think of Bruegel’s panoramic vistas of dying and destruction. In some of those famous pictures, everyone is  visibly wasting away, if not already carved up. Or you think of broken and blasted terrain like the battlefields of World War I, where all the soldiers seem to be walking wounded. Everywhere there is a sense of defeat.

Don’t you imagine exactly such images when you read that “Nearly Half Of Detroit’s Adults Are Functionally Illiterate”?

But now we’ve stepping on the gas. The Common Core has ratcheted the whole process to a new level. Many children start their school years unhappy and never recover. They come home each day depressed or anxious. They mutilate themselves. They fall sleep crying at night. They have nightmares. According to one of the century’s most memorable headlines, “Little kids cry and pee their pants.” (See short video for why this is happening.)

Louis CK famously summed up the insanity: “My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry.”

(Quick memo to our obtuse Education Establishment: school should be fun; you’ll get better results that way.)

Robin Eubanks maintains a website called Invisible Serf’s Collar where she  argues that slavery is the insistent motif  throughout public education.  Children have metal collars around their necks. Perhaps you can’t see them. But you will notice that the children are becoming intellectual cripples. One blog post, several months back, was titled “Censorship Before the Fact: Prescribing What the Child Does and Believes Invisibly.”

Well, isn’t that the whole essence of slavery, that humans are not allowed to have a life of their own or thoughts of their own?

Look what we are losing. Americans once prided themselves on their freedom to choose, to develop in different directions. The schools were supposed to enable that individuality. But John Dewey, starting 100 years ago, crusaded against individuality. He wanted all the little children to be similar, even interchangeable.  The school’s real job is to hammer down the differences, and extinguish the individual sparks.

Naturally there is a great deal of waste. That’s Dewey’s goal, whether he wants to admit it or not. Imagine millions of children all of whom will be 25% or 50% less than they could be. Try to add up all that loss, in the child’s life and society’s life.

That’s not to say there is suffering. If a person is brought up in the twilight, they do not miss bright days. They have never seen them. No, the children are just slowly squeezed and shaped to fit a smaller mold.

Behold the mediocrity and unnecessary failure, all created by policies instituted by our Education Establishment. You have to be impressed by how  implacable they are. People all over America are lamenting the crazy homework that children bring home. The kids are crying  and the mothers are upset. Does the Education Establishment apologize? Does Bill Gates say he’s sorry for causing all this pain? Does Jeb Bush back away from Common Core? No, they just make excuses and keep on grinding down the public.

The saddest thing in life is wasted talent. Our K-12 schools are full of it.

Only one policy can save us. We must try to raise every child as high as each child can be raised. Forget Dewey. Don’t be fooled by so-called “social justice”  as that is often merely code for leveling.

We can do so much better. Kids have to master the 3 R’s and then they can learn geography, history, science, the arts, and whatever else you want.  This is precisely what everyone has been doing around the planet for thousands of years. It’s not rocket science. You want rocket science? That would be the weird, perverse voodoo that our Education Establishment uses to slow everything down.

As noted, we can easily do much better. The question really is, how long will Americans put up with the current nonsense?

———————

Bruce Deitrick Price explains educational theories and methods on his site Improve-Education.org. For tips on initiating reform, see his: The Bill of Rights for Students 2015.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

Reforming K-12 Education: How the Activists are Doing It

By Matthew Lynch

Activism when it comes to public K-12 education is flourishing. Laws regarding K-12 education are no longer simply handed down and enforced without pushback – student, parents, teachers and outside activists have a larger voice than ever when it comes to the decisions impacting the future of their public schools.

After some thought, I came up with the most impactful things (in no particular order) that education activists have done in the past few years when it comes to K-12 education:

Student-driven change. When it comes to the paths of their educations, K-12 public school students are standing up for their rights more than ever before and empowering positive changes in their learning experiences. In April, over 100 Chicago Public Schools students made news when they skipped their standardized testing to protest the tests instead. Speaking to the press, one CPS student said that the protest was designed to draw attention to the fact that “standardized testing should not decide the future of our schools and students.” Student-led zombie flash mobs took place in front of the Philadelphia School District headquarters to oppose the closing of public schools in the city. Hoards of students in other cities like Denver, Providence and Philadelphia followed suit and spoke out against the advance of high-stakes testing and school closing. They rallied together and marched relentlessly to prove their strong dislike against standardized testing – and the belief the effects are not a true measure of success in the real world. While there may have been some parental encouragement behind the scenes, these students appeared to act alone in their pursuit of a better public school learning experience.
Parents as reformers. In California, the parent-led “trigger movement” made waves as parents demanded more from failing public schools. Dessert Springs Elementary School in Adelanto is an example of a school that was transformed from a consistently failing school (students had reading scores in the bottom 10 percent of the state) to a public charter that better served its student body – all because parents took a stand and demanded the change. The Lone Star State had some big news this year when a coalition led by parents was successful in petitioning the state to reduce by two-thirds the number of tests required to graduate high school. In 2011, the state required at least 15 high-stakes tests on students prior to earning their diploma. Two years of hard work later, the Texas legislature passed an education bill reducing the number of tests to five.

Activists stepping up. During 2013, civil rights advocates found an audience with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In January, these public-school supporters gathered in DC to discuss their grievances to the Department of Education. The Journey for Justice came as Chicago was on the cusp of closing around 50 schools, and New York and Philadelphia had voted to close more than 20 each. These activists had every right to speak up – research shows that the closing of public schools in urban areas has the biggest negative effect on Latino and Black students. Mass school closures often shake up communicates and disrupt children’s learning, among other effects on displaced students. Perhaps the biggest public school activism success story for 2013 was the teacher union-led Scrap the Map in Seattle. After months of protesting Washington’s mandatory MAP standardized testing at Garfield High School, a decision was made to make the test optional for students throughout the state. In 2013, public school activists came out en masse and took to their local, state and federal legislators to protest detrimental closings and other public school legislation.

Pushing for increased funding. In 2013, activists were vocal about the need for stronger programs in science, technology, engineering and math. Thankfully, President Obama listened. His 2014 budget includes $3.1 billion in investments in federal STEM programs – an increase of nearly 7 percent over the budget of just two years ago. Of that total, $80 million is intended to recruit 100,000 well-qualified educators and another $35 million is earmarked for the launch of a pilot STEM Master Teacher Corps. The rest of the money will go to supporting undergraduate STEM education programs and investment in breakthrough research on the way STEM subjects are best taught to modern learners. At the urging of advisors and activists, the president realized that demand for STEM-related jobs is there and the money allocated to STEM learning initiatives will better prepare today’s students for the worldwide workforce.

Supporting Race to the Top. Over the last 2 years, education activists have continued to support the president’s incentive-based Race to the Top program, which was launched in 2012 and it rewards states that are willing to reform their education models to best adapt to modern student learning needs. The Race to the Top initiative has raised standards for learning to reflect a push toward college and career readiness. Each year, the program gives even more in federal funding to states that prepare plans for reforming their student offerings and 2013 was a big year for it. To date, the program has allocated more than $4 billion among 19 states that have shared well-developed plans to improve learning standards, teacher effectiveness and struggling schools. The states that have been granted the funds represent 42 percent of all low-income students in the nation – making the initiative an effective way to close the achievement gap and equalize funding in areas where schools may struggle based on their geographical location.

Lobbying for college affordability. College affordability activists urged the president to make earning a college education more affordable for all Americans and convinced him that this will impact future K-12 classrooms. In August 2013, the President announced plans to assign a ratings systems to colleges by the 2015 school year that takes items like tuition, graduation rate, debt and earnings ratios of graduates and percentage of low-income students who attend into consideration. The grand plan? To base the amount of federal financial aid colleges receive on the rankings system by 2018. The overall principle is not to call out colleges but rather to make them more accountable to students, and to ensure that every American with college degree aspirations has the actual means to make it happen. Long term, this will impact the quality of teachers in the classrooms, particularly in urban settings where research has shown that the most effective teachers are generally those who come from the same background. More lower-income college students earning degrees will have a positive impact on the entire education system and the college scorecard initiative is a step in that direction.

What would you add to my list?

photo credit: Steve Rhodes via photopin cc

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Policy & Reform, Teachers

STEM Learning Must Go Beyond Memorizing Facts and Theories

By Steven Korte

There is a growing global demand for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) professionals. At the same time, experts in science education are calling for students to become more “scientifically literate.” This call, however, is about more than filling jobs.

A basic understanding of scientific concepts, processes, and ways of thinking is critical for students to succeed in the world of today and tomorrow. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2014 report on the results of the international PISA 2012 science assessment, “An understanding of science and technology is central to a young person’s preparedness for life in modern society.”

This means that students must go beyond memorizing science facts and theories; they must gain experience with the tools and practices of science. Technology can help. While technology alone does not create scientific understanding, it represents a key tool for promoting inquiry investigations.

A substantial body of research confirms the positive impact of inquiry-based instruction on students’ understanding of science, including substantially higher learning when compared to traditional instruction. Further, education experts specify that technology is most effective in supporting student learning in science when it is used in an inquiry context. Indeed, blending technology into data collection, analysis and visualization as part of inquiry-based instruction has been shown to deepen students’ understanding, and increase their motivation and interest in science.

Districts transitioning to or implementing STEM programs should consider the following points:

  • Lab investigations and technology tools should be connected with classroom experiences, including lectures, readings and discussions. Lab experiences and technology are much more effective when fully integrated into the curriculum and the flow of classroom science lessons.
  • Whether teachers choose to use a structured, guided or open inquiry format, lab activities should give students the opportunity to apply the scientific process to their learning. These activities should allow them to question and investigate; make predictions; collect, analyze and interpret data; refine their questions; and engage in argumentation from evidence. This builds problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills, as well as “soft skills” such as communication and collaboration.
  • Inquiry-based investigations inside and outside the classroom should engage students in real-life scientific and engineering practices. Students should also have the opportunity to use real-world tools to make data meaningful for them while they “do” science.
  • Traditional labs can be time-consuming and classroom sets of industry equipment can be prohibitively expensive. Be sure that lab investigations and technology tools are specifically designed for instructional use to save time and money, and reduce frustration. For example, traditional cell respiration labs are typically complex and inaccurate. In a respiration lab activity built to facilitate student understanding, the setup for a carbon dioxide or oxygen gas sensor should be simple, so accurate data can collected in minutes with minimal frustration.
  • To maximize your technology investment, make sure tools such as sensors and probes are compatible with any classroom environment and work on a variety of platforms, including iPads, Chromebooks, Android tablets, Mac and Windows computers, and netbooks. In addition, make certain the tools match the ability levels of your students.
  • A key part of the scientific process is the sharing, analysis and discussion of data. Consider how students’ data will be transmitted from tools, such as sensors, to their computer or tablet. Will it be done via a USB or wireless connection? Will the data be transmitted directly to the student’s device or will it go to the cloud first? Can students do this themselves or will they need teacher assistance? Allowing students to get their data faster gives them more time for analysis and discussion, which is key to building scientific understanding.
  • When possible, consider investing in multi-measure sensors that allow for the collection of multiple, simultaneous measurements in a single sensor, e.g. for areas such weather, advanced chemistry, or water quality. This not only helps keep costs down, but also helps conserve instructional time by reducing the time it takes to set up sensors and collect the data.
  • If inquiry-based instruction is new to your district, conduct professional development workshops that guide teachers to begin with more highly-structured activities and then move students, over time, to open-ended investigations where they take more responsibility for planning their activities. Each stage of this transition should informed by teachers’ assessments of students’ readiness to complete learner-led investigations.
  • Instructional resources and professional development workshops should also provide suggestions on ways to scaffold student capabilities. This will ensure that teachers can provide multiple levels of guidance and support for investigations. It will also help teachers to select the level of support that best matches their students’ skills and experiences, so they can accomplish challenging tasks.

Across the country and around the world, teachers are effectively implementing inquiry-based science instruction that takes advantage of technology tools for collecting, analyzing and visualizing data. When students “do” science, rather than simply read about it, they deepen their understanding, they develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills, and they retain more content knowledge. They are also more motivated to learn and to continue building their science literacy. This is not only critical for students who decided to pursue STEM careers, but also for life in the modern world.

Steven Korte is the CEO of PASCO Scientific, a developer of innovative teaching and learning solutions for K–12 and higher education since 1964.

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Matthew Lynch published in Parental Involvement, Policy & Reform, Teachers

Stop blaming poor parents for their children’s vocabulary

Paul Thomas, Furman University

While the reading wars in education have raged for decades, most people agree that literacy is crucial for children and that the path to strong reading and writing skills begins in the home. But focusing on poor children’s parents may actually be the real problem when trying to increase their success in school.

In a recent article in the New York Times, journalist Douglas Quenqua looked back 20 years to a “landmark education study which found that by the age of three, children from low-income families have heard 30m fewer words than more affluent children, putting them at an educational disadvantage before they even began school.” He detailed new research by Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, professor of psychology at Temple University, challenging the importance of the quantity of words a child hears and emphasising the quality of language in each child’s home.

That “landmark study” refers to a 1995 study by American psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley. They concluded that the key to children’s language development is quantity of words they hear. And that an important way to evaluate early years child care is the amount of talk actually going on between children and their caregivers.

What the New York Times article fails to mention is that in 2009, education researchers Curt Dudley-Marling and Krista Lucas discredited Hart and Risley’s claims as being biased in favour of middle- and upper-class children. They showed that the study’s research design, limited population studied and biases reflected assumptions about the impoverished. Thus, Dudley-Marling and Lucas argued that Hart and Risley’s claims should not be generalised to the whole population.

Also absent in these debates is the recognition that whether we identify quality or quantity of vocabulary, we remain trapped in a “deficit perspective” of language. Deficit perspectives are those that identify a person or a condition by what is missing – in this case, parents talking to their children in a certain way. That deficit often reflects biases and stereotypes.

Blame the poor

Hirsh-Pasek’s claims about the quality of words children hear complicate a simplified view of language as merely how many words a child knows. But the broader discussion remains trapped in a perspective of blaming impoverished children’s parents.

Ultimately, a shift in focus from the quantity of words a child hears to the quality of those words does not usher in a step-change in policy. This is because the myth persists that the flaws of impoverished parents are passed to their children – and so the impoverished continue to be blamed for their poverty. The deficit must be filled: first it was more words, now it is higher-quality words.

Neither approach turns our attention away from the victims of poverty and toward the social conditions creating it. This results in differences in language among social classes – often related to grammar or vocabulary – that reflect not failed people but an inequitable society.

Such debates simply allow cultural stereotypes to determine what research matters publicly and politically – and how. Whether we argue that impoverished parents fail to share the same number or quality of words with their children when compared to middle-class or affluent parents, we are still blaming those parents and not the social inequity driving poverty.

Giving children more or higher quality vocabulary teaching without addressing the roots of social and educational inequity exposes that simply embracing ongoing research is not enough in education. Without first setting aside our cultural biases, research fails us and our students.

What messages get through

In a recent article on The Conversation, Dennis Hayes lamented that a study in the UK shows education often fails to link practice to research. Back in 1947, American educator and former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, Lou LaBrant expressed a similar concern about the “considerable gap between the research … and the utilisation of that research in school programs and methods.”. This lack of research-driven practice in the classroom spans decades and stretches across national borders.

Further complicating this failure is distortion by media who disproportionately cover think-tank press reports (often not peer-reviewed) compared to more rigorous university-based research.

Psychology professor at Florida State University, K. Anders Ericsson has confronted this problem since journalist Malcolm Gladwell has misrepresented his research and made popular the misleading 10,000 hour rule – that greatness only comes by a defined amount of lengthy practice.

Ericsson has called for not allowing research to remain primarily in the hands of journalists: “At the very least [media coverage of research] should not contain factually incorrect statements and avoid reinforcing existing misconceptions in the popular media.”

As the ongoing concern for the literacy of impoverished children shows, research can be the problem and not the solution, if we view that research through the lens of stereotypes and assumptions.

Yes, we need to link research and practice in education, but we must do so while guarding against oversimplification and biases, especially those perpetuate deficit views of impoverished families and children.

The Conversation

Paul Thomas, Associate Professor of Education, Furman University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform

3 Reasons to Start Sex Ed in Kindergarten

Talking about sex to a classroom full of five-year-old kids is likely to make some teachers and parents uncomfortable. But that is the approach that the Netherlands is taking and it is working. This week marks the start of “Spring Fever” week in the Netherlands where primary school students learn about sex education.

It may sound strange to the average American, but here’s why it just might work to start sex ed earlier rather than later:

  1. According to studies by the Word Health Organization and the World Bank by way of org, the Dutch have “one of the lowest” teen pregnancy rates in the word and “nine out of ten Dutch adolescents used contraceptives the first time” they chose to have sex.
  2. The children learn about the psychological aspects of sex, too. The information given to young students isn’t the typical data presented by your high school football coach who’s stuck leading the health class’s discussion on sex ed. Students learn about “sexual diversity and sexual assertiveness” and the aim is to create a healthy environment that will encourage students to know that “sexual development is a normal process.”One key component of the curriculum is for students to feel comfortable with themselves and that “sexuality also has to do with respect, intimacy, and safety.”

This, obviously, is a variation from what we see in America. Sex is still a taboo topic for many as the subject isn’t a school requirement as it is in the Netherlands. PBS‘ story regarding sex ed shows data from the Public Religion Research Institute that “nearly four in 10 American Millennials report that the sex education they received was not helpful.”

  1. Abstinence-only education simply does not work. Some states still teach abstinence as the only form of sexual education and it has not helped in lowering America’s teen pregnancy rate or reign in the growth of STD’s among teenagers.

While this type of liberal approach may not immediately work in America, it is definitely worth exploring. Teaching kids the importance of self-worth through sexual education will increase their confidence and aid them in making better decisions as they mature.

Continuing the closed minded approach about sexual education works to the detriment of our students and we will continue to reap the benefits of the bad educational decisions we’ve made, which may be an increase rates of teen pregnancy and STDs.

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Matthew Lynch published in list, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

3 Reasons America Needs School Choice

There are a lot more options for receiving K-12 education today than when I was growing up. Long gone are the days when parents had to pick between the public school in their district or paying pricey private school tuition out of pocket. The rise of public charter and magnet schools, state-led voucher programs, online learning, and homeschooling options has meant that parents now have no reason to settle on the closest school or pay a premium to avoid it.

Do so many options undermine the purpose of public schools though? Should all of the energy that is going into building, naming and analyzing these other schools really be channeled into strengthening the basic schools that the government gave us?

In theory, I suppose there is an argument for refocus of educational pursuits where schools already exist, instead of creating new versions. But that theory hinges on the false assumption that given the chance, public schools would find the motivation, both within and outside school walls, to improve. Since the 1918 decree that all American children must attend at least elementary school, public schools have been considered a basic right. That widespread access certainly led to a better educated public but in the process the privilege of learning has been lost.

That said, I am in favor of school choice because:

  1. We are lagging too far behind on a global scale to reject this option.

Despite spending more on public education than France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil AND the U.K. combined, the U.S. lags behind these nations in math and science. Only 25 percent of high school graduates have the literacy skills they need to get a job. What’s more, every 26 seconds a U.S. student drops out of high school. In the democratization of education process, indifference to learning has risen and the standards at public schools have dropped.

Giving parents the freedom to choose their child’s school is a movement that strives to improve education at ALL schools through the old-fashioned business concept of competition. Public charter and magnet schools are tuition free, just like public schools, but must make some promises in their contracts in order to stay open. If these schools of choice habitually do not reach their goals, they close. Can the same be said of public schools? The accountability level that these young additions to the public school arena bring ensures that students achieve more – and if they don’t, those schools do not stick around long.

  1. Parents are empowered to improve the quality of their children’s education.

School choice is not simply about non-traditional public schools though. The movement goes much deeper than that and empowers parents to take the reins of their children’s learning paths. Since 2007, the number of K-12 students enrolled in online public schools has risen an astonishing 450 percent. Home schooling is also on the rise as 1.77 million K-12 students are homeschooled – a number that has more than doubled since 1999.  Parents are pushing back against simple acceptance of educational opportunities based on geography; they are still choosing traditional public and private schools but only after educating themselves.

  1. School choice helps students in low-performing states.

Mississippi, which ranks last in student achievement in the nation, does not have charter school options just yet. It seems to me that any attempt to offer solutions to this cycle of student non-achievement would be welcomed, especially since public charter and magnet schools have shown some success in other low-performing states.

Public schools can still thrive in a school choice environment. Options like charter, magnet, private, online and homeschool curricula are not meant to undermine the nation’s public schools but to build them up through shared quality standards. There is room for all choices in K-12 schools and students benefit from the options.

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