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In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

Parents want what is best for their kids and most will say that they just want them to be “happy.” Children’s education is important to parents, but so is the promise that they will get a job someday. Well-rounded approaches to education are not favored as strongly as focused learning programs that emphasize job skills and applications. Academic engagement, therefore, has been weakened by the belief that children should only go to school to learn marketable skills.

This is nothing new, particularly in American culture, as schools have long been viewed as vehicles for job-readiness. A student reading books from the traditional literary canon, whose authors are often referred to as “dead white guys,” is not truly preparing for a career or a way to make a living. The lessons gleaned from the words of Shakespeare or William Wordsworth do not have a marketable application – unless, of course, their reader ends up a scholar of either author. The importance of those lessons, therefore, is diminished by the general public (which includes some teachers and administrators) who believe that students should instead focus on what will be used in making a living. In other words, if it won’t help your lifetime earning potential, what good is it?

The Emphasis on Economics

The mission statement for the Common Core Standards, issued in 2013, includes this phrase: The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. There is also a sentence talking about the standards strengthening Americans’ place in the “global economy.” There is no mention of intellectualism or education for knowledge’s sake. The Common Core Standards target practical reasons for knowledge attained in K-12 learning, lending support to the idea that everything taught must have a marketable application.

This emphasis on career-driven learning furthers the stereotype that people who seek knowledge for the sake of simply knowing more are “eggheads” or “nerds.” Has the recitation of poetry ever landed a person a promotion? When was the last time that an understanding of the satirical works of Jonathan Swift earned a person that sought-after raise at an annual review? People who waste time with wisdom that they cannot sell are seen as un-American, elitist and abnormal.

This push toward teaching skills as opposed to content has certainly been a longstanding part of American culture, but today it is exacerbated by the Internet. Schools do not have to be the places where students find classic works of literature, or are introduced to scientific theories, because all of that information is readily available with the click of a mouse. Schools, therefore, should seek to present as much knowledge as possible but should focus more succinctly on skills not easily attained through a search engine – or so the common belief goes. While it is true that a student who is savvy when it comes to attaining and maximizing information will fare well in the current K-12 system, and the workforce beyond, the reduction of knowledge and understanding to the finding and repetition of facts is anti-intellectual in nature.

Gaining an Advantage through Delayed Education

At an alarming rate, parents are voluntarily “red shirting” their children old enough for Kindergarten, citing social concerns or even worse, the desire to have an athletic advantage in the years to come. A report from Stanford University and the University of Virginia found that as many as 5.5% of children begin Kindergarten late as a result of parent preference. Lack of academic skills at the same level as peer students has always been a valid reason parents or educators decide to hold children back in grade levels, but should factors beyond actual learning achievement also be considered?

Proponents of parental choice when it comes to Kindergarten redshirting say that while academic merit can be measured, emotional impacts cannot. The separation anxiety that accompanies a child who goes to Kindergarten “too early” can have a negative impact for the rest of the student’s K-12 career, and beyond. These are certainly strong points and in some cases, valid ones. But when redshirting tactics become popular and are packaged as a choice for all children, academic engagement takes a hit. Schools are seen as arenas of socialization first and foremost, and the idea that K-12 education should be just that – education – is forgotten.

Children are inherently social beings, and humans naturally learn to adapt to their individual situations to maximize practicality. So why should schools need to teach either thing? Academic disengagement happens when students do not value the learning which is offered to them. When adults tell children that knowledge is worthwhile only when it helps the learner to enter a higher income bracket or gain promotions, children begin to undervalue other key aspects of their education.

So which is the more responsible approach? Encouraging the pursuit of all knowledge – or building a brighter economic future for our kids and the nation as a whole?

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

It’s often said that children learn more from what they see at home than from any other source in their lives. It’s human nature to look at older humans, particularly ones that live with you, as a guiding light in life. No parent is perfect and the struggle to be the best role models for the littlest eyes is a daily one. When it comes to education, though, it seems that today’s parents are happy taking more of a backseat – despite the potential of their influence.

Why Aren’t Parents Reading?

Perhaps a more direct attack on academic engagement comes from parents’ attitudes, particularly in the earliest years of their children’s lives, about reading and teaching basic skills at home. Teachers talk about it. Administrators talk about it. National campaigns that encourage parents to read with their young children “just 20 minutes per day” emphasize the need for parents to be on hand in early learning initiatives.

But when it comes to parent-to-parent interactions, the issue is nearly non-existent. Where are the heated mommy blog debates about what type of education is best in the early years at home? Even working moms and dads, who get a little more guidance from child care curriculum, should be talking about early learning as eagerly as they talk about the dangers of overpraising their children’s accomplishments or gluten-laden food. Forget heated debates; the conversation on early childhood education does not even exist.

Facts are Inconvenient

Parents’ less-than-passionate approach to education further fuels a larger national epidemic: the ability of American adults to accept questionable theory as fact. Children who are do not see their parents reading or researching the issues that impact their own lives are children who are vulnerable to unfounded paranoia or inaccuracies themselves. Children who are unable to differentiate between hard scientific knowledge that is tested, conspiracy theories espoused by celebrities, and suspect summaries from biased sources are unlikely to make the effort to hunt down real truths in academic settings.

Our popular culture mistakes assertions and correlations for arguments and proofs. If the rise in autism cases and the rise in the number of childhood vaccines coincide, that is enough evidence for a connection to be presumed. If a parent who raised a child on formula later sent that teen to Harvard, then there is clearly no validity in scientific claims that breast milk is indeed a better choice. If a President cannot produce an original birth certificate at a moment’s notice, then it stands to reason that he is an African terrorist infiltrating the U.S. government to further the world-supremacy plans of Islam. Get my point?

Each unfounded argument that is unquestioningly accepted by parents teaches even the youngest children that belief does not need a foundation. Blind acceptance is encouraged, and intellectual pursuits discouraged, when parents allow themselves to be led off the scientific path. The early molding of young minds impacts the ability of children to think critically in academic settings, for better or worse.

For K-12 students to really excel in classrooms, they must have the knowledge pursuit inspiration from home. It will make a difference in the desire level for answers, and will boost intellectualism in the long term.

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

New teachers enter the job with a certain amount of naive enthusiasm.  Experience discourages them rapidly. This is likely true to some degree in every profession, but teachers seem particularly vulnerable to burnout. Compare the attitude of first-year teachers to that of teachers who have put in two or more decades on the job. Perhaps you know people in both groups firsthand. The veteran teachers are likely to lack enthusiasm.  Even if they have a little excitement left, they have generally stopped voicing new ideas or looking for ways to innovate their classrooms and schools. Some of this is the natural consequence of time and fatigue which take their toll on people in every career. But this weariness is intensified by working in a highly demanding job that comes with little support and with much adversity caused by students, parents, administrators and the community at large.

Under Appreciation of Teachers Underestimated

If you think that it is inaccurate for teachers to be painted as martyrs, consider these facts. The National Center for Education Statistics found that the average teacher’s salary was only 3 percent higher in the 2010-2011 school year than it was in 1990-1991. At the end of the 2012 school year, the number of days teachers took for stress-related time off was 10 percent higher than four years earlier. American teachers make only 67 to 72 percent of what a person with a bachelor’s degree should make over the course of a career.

Some professions may be able to implement measurable and reasonable benchmarks for higher compensation. Teaching has too many intangible outcomes that are not valued by the cut-and-dry American policymakers and public. While teachers who demand better working conditions and pay are often portrayed as greedy or uncaring, most educators say that their gripes are not about their paychecks per se but about the value society places on their work. In a culture that shows appreciation through financial rewards, teachers are clearly undervalued.

Teaching Performance and Pay

This issue is further complicated when pay-for-performance rules are implemented. Such rubrics compromise the teaching experience.  They reward teachers for teaching to standardized tests instead of encouraging critical thinking skills that provide a long-term foundation for educational betterment. Performance-based incentives for educators are flawed because they turn students into assets that have an impact on the earning potential of teachers.

Teachers need accountability, but their work rightly includes many immeasurable goals of that fall outside of testable material. All occupations have their own forms of review and feedback, but the constant testing culture of contemporary education leaves many teachers feeling inadequate and under-appreciated.

For teachers to truly lead students out of a state of academic disengagement and into a state of thirst for knowledge, they need to believe that there are people who believe in the value of their vocation. It’s always been understood that children may not naturally cling to intellectual initiatives but if enough adults in their lives do, it can have positive results when it comes to academic engagement. It is a teacher’s job to impart an academic rigor and a love of learning which go far beyond outcomes which can be measured on a standardized test.  Without encouragement from outside forces, that job becomes nearly impossible.

In this 20-part series, I explore the root causes and effects of academic disengagement in K-12 learners and explore the factors driving American society ever closer to being a nation that lacks intellectualism, or the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

It’s no secret that we are living in an information age, one that has lifted data barriers across the world and opened up access to knowledge like never before seen in the history of modern humankind. On the surface, this access to information appears to be a democratization of knowledge – a way that more people can learn about more things in the fastest amount of time. In reality, though, the internet and all its interconnected technology has given rise to less effort put towards the pursuit of knowledge, and more energy focused on simply finding the quickest, easiest answer.

Is Shared Knowledge Best?

This growing challenge to intellectualism in contemporary America is grounded in a rapidly expanding access to information coupled with a complete lack of hierarchy based on expertise. Take sites like Wikipedia, for example. Such Internet sensations are victories for crowd-sourced knowledge that hypothetically offers more than one side to every argument, but they have bolstered the assumption that all knowledge is equal.

Wikipedia is known for allowing anyone, regardless of credentials, to post on its pages for the greater good of shared knowledge. Some other sites are less forthcoming about the credentials of their contributors. Businesses clamoring to improve their search engine rankings commission writing which is disguised as expert information but is actually designed to get consumers to their sites when a certain word or phrase is typed into a search bar.  The writers are more likely to have expertise in sales writing than in areas of knowledge relevant to the products and services they tout. Customer review sites give peers an idea of what to expect from a particular product or company.  In an ideal world these would offer balanced feedback, but in fact they tend to weigh heavy on the negative side; it is in human nature to warn others of danger, not to assure them that the path is safe.

More Info, Less Learning

While attempting to place more power at the fingertips of the people, the digital age is actually distorting the public’s sense of reality, blurring the lines between fact and fiction for many willfully ignorant participants. Just as the removal of limits on religious beliefs spawned many different denominations, some of which led followers completely astray, a limitless online community promotes misinformation on a regular basis. Even the information that is correct comes fraught with anti-intellectual challenges. The information that was once confined to textbooks, library visits or expensive encyclopedia sets is now just a click or brush of a touchscreen away. A child who is given everything from birth and never has to work for any of his possessions will inherently devalue those items. In the same way generations growing up with Internet access devalue knowledge.

While no one would argue against the convenience and knowledge that the Internet has provided on a global scale, ongoing use of its information predecessors is necessary in order to preserve intellectualism. At least some weight has to be given to information in order for the youngest learners to differentiate between well-researched, well-proven facts and the passionate ravings of people with no expertise or training on a particular subject.

If American children are to learn to think for themselves, they need more information than what can be found in a search engine, and they need tools with which to sort out and evaluate the information which they find. But what will make them want to take the long route to data when there are so many convenient shortcuts? That’s the question educators and parents have to broach if there is to be a semblance of any intellectualism when this generation graduates and starts contributing to American society.

Note: The following guest post comes to us courtesy of Santiago Montero, founder and director of Spanish Tutor DC. Santiago has spent more than fifteen years integrating the fields of education and mass media in Europe and Latin America.

Gamified language learning applications are enjoying millions of downloads, and a certain degree of popular prestige, with Duolingo being named Apple’s app of the year for 2013. These apps use points systems, power ups and other game mechanics to make the memorization of foreign vocabulary and grammar rules more engaging and exciting, but are they able to make students proficient in their target language? Thier effectiveness is the subject of debate, but their enjoyability, as demonstrated by their popularity, is undeniable.

Applying game mechanics to learning is an old educational tool, but a natural fit with smartphone and tablet technology has allowed the idea to flourish. Socialization further drives engagement; earning a higher place on the scoreboard than their Facebook friends is an effective motivator for people with a competitive streak. The more cooperative among us might instead appreciate the fact that after each exercise is a chance to read tips and suggestions from other users. Digital badges and golden tracksuits, in addition to linguistic progress, are the rewards in store for those who persevere with the course, though it should be admitted that a significant chunk of Duolingo’s impressive user base doesn’t last longer than the first two hours of use.

These not so little apps have big dreams. They are already aiming to shake up the current language learning landscape and secure a larger portion of the market for themselves. Duolingo has announced plans for an English language learning certification programme, with French and other languages to follow shortly. Such intentions are sure to make the incumbent industry leaders sit up and take notice, as a cheap, but widely recognized certificate that can be earned from your bedroom would be an attractive prospect for those struggling to pay for classes or transportation. Duolingo claims that proficiency with their app is an excellent predictor of IELTS success. Critics point out that potential issues with cheating need to be addressed before Duolingo certificates are to be taken seriously. In many ways, which colleges and workplaces, if any, decide to accept Duolingo certificates will end up being more important than how accurate the test is itself, at least for potential students and employees.

So far the early skirmishes look promising for the apps. Carnegie Mellon University’s decision to partner with Duolingo gives it some much needed academic clout, and lends some believability to claims that a student can reach the same degree of proficiency by completing a Duolingo course as they can by completing the first semester of a typical language course at college. Dissenters say that gamified language learning apps only teach you vocabulary and grammar rules rather than how to actually speak a language, but then again, these same criticisms can be justifiably leveled at many traditional teaching methods. In either case, the development of these apps should be seen as part of a wider trend that is seeing education become more accessible by going online.

Gamified language learning apps are not without their drawbacks. Listening to a polished prerecorded sentence is not the same as trying to understand what that Nicaraguan taxi driver is trying to say, and it isn’t great practice for the natural back and forth of real conversation either. Formality and regional differences are specifics not best taught by ‘one size fits all’ teaching software. It’s also interesting to note that these apps have become so popular at a time when language learning is on the decline in the mainstream education system. Whether these apps will drive a renewed enthusiasm in language learning, or simply confirm that it is the classroom, not the subject, that is causing unpopularity remains to be seen. It doesn’t look like these apps are helping our current academic year of high school Spanish students, but perhaps we’ll see this change as the app gains deeper permeation into this demographic.

For all the shortcomings of language learning apps, the reality is that they don’t need to be perfect, they just need to be better than their competitors. No, Duolingo won’t teach you how to speak Spanish fluently, but then again, nothing does short of moving country or surrounding yourself with native speakers and teachers of your target language. However, these apps do level the playing field a little for those without access to the very best resources. For now, gamified language learning apps should be best thought of as a useful supplement to traditional face-to-face teaching models, and its creators are quick to acknowledge as much. Although, if these language learning apps continue to grow at the same rate that they have been doing, it might just get the IELTs and TOEFLs of the world glancing over their shoulder.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here. 

Note: The following guest post was written by Suzanne Bogdan, regional managing partner at the law firm of Fisher & Phillips in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, office. She chairs the firm’s Education Practice Group, providing counsel to private institutions. She also works with accrediting agencies, including the National Association of Independent Schools.

While school administrators monitor their employee and job applicant rolls for sex offenders, they face another challenge: discovering and restricting sex offenders who are employee relatives, volunteers, contractors, even individuals authorized to bring students to and from campus.

As a practical matter, many schools do not conduct criminal-background checks on these people. Nor do they compare names and photo IDs of visitors with information on a sexual-offender/predator website.

Does a school have a duty to notify parents and employees that an individual with access to campus is a sex offender? Should administrators suggest to parents that they not send their children to someone’s house or a non-school event because there’s a likelihood that a predator will attend?

The answers are not simple. The school could inform its community by posting the offender’s photo on campus, but that individual may have legal rights that prevent him or her from being publicly identified.

Identifying sex offenders

There are numerous and fairly straightforward processes for school administrators to identify and restrict sex offenders who are not employees but have access to the school’s campus and its students:

1. Subject all non-employees visiting or performing work at the school to a search on an established sex-offender database, such as the one run by the Department of Justice. The FBI also has a list of state registries. If the school has the resources, it can swipe driver licenses and run them against an offender database. To be effective, the school must restrict access to one or two campus entrances so that no one slips by.
2. Alternately, assign an employee sworn to confidentiality or hire an outside company to check names that the school collects against those databases. This once-a-year review is not as effective, but it is less expensive. The success of this approach depends on having complete records of employee spouses, partners and relatives and of people authorized to drop off or pick up a student.
3. Compare the names of coaches, volunteers and others who are likely to have unsupervised access to children to a sex-offender list. That includes employees of any firm that operates a program on campus. The best practice is to require individuals to submit to a criminal background check as a condition of engaging in school-sponsored activity, such as a sport.

School administrators often wonder how wide to cast a net to find people with unsupervised access. The best advice is to investigate any individual who can interact with or encounter children on campus without having a cleared adult present. That includes a parent who volunteers for the school play, an adult who leaves his or her parked car to drop off or pick up a child, and a contractor’s employee who uses a children’s restroom.

Lines of defense

Administration efforts to uncover sexual predators will likely produce a disquieting number of individuals. Some may be relatives of school employees, even their spouses. How can this happen? Employees may keep their spouse or partner’s secret because they thought the conviction was in error.

That reasoning absolves no one. As a matter of school policy, each current and prospective employee should be required to report to an administrator any information about a potential campus visitor who is a sex offender or is facing criminal or civil action alleging inappropriate sexual activity with a minor. Employees who fail to follow that rule should be terminated.

Once administrators identify a sex offender with a connection to its school, they must take action to remove or restrict that individual from the campus and school-related activities. This is where the lawyers come in.

The process starts with a scripted conversation with the sex offender, followed by a letter that legal counsel has reviewed. The letter specifies restrictions on that person’s access to campus and school activities.

Some parents will object. They may say that they rely on this person to transport their child to and from school. They may want the individual to see their child playing a sport or appearing in a performance. Graduation brings families together, and parents will complain when the school tries to prevent a cherished relative from attending.

Address each situation as it arises while maintaining a uniform policy. An attorney can be of great value here in crafting a response to each challenge to school rules. For example, a family member may be granted access, but only if the individual registers with an administrator upon arrival, agrees to supervision and restrictions on movement around campus, and agrees to leave when asked.

Protecting students from sexual offenders/predators is not a closed-door process. Parents must be informed of school policy regarding employees, relatives and visitors.

The best approach: Explain the school’s procedures such as criminal-background checks on employees in a school manual. That section should include a disclaimer that while the school makes every effort to keep predators off campus, it cannot say whether it’s safe for children to associate with parents and other adults away from school. The manual should direct parents to reputable websites such as the federal government’s Child Welfare Information Gateway page on sexual abuse where they can learn about sex offenders and how to protect their children from them.

Note: Today’s guest post comes to us courtesy of Sriram Mohan, an associate professor of computer science and software engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Ind. 

Data, more than ever before is the lifeblood of every organization. From media companies to retail stores, data allows organizations to differentiate themselves from the competition. Whether used in market research or in cost reduction efforts, organizations must leverage data to be competitive, and for the most part, they now enjoy access to all the data anyone could ever need.

What most organizations today don’t have ready access to are data scientists who are trained to turn all of their data into actionable insights. Gartner predicts that by 2015, about 4.4 million data science jobs will be available, and only a third of them will be filled. Is there a shortage of people with the requisite combination of programming, data management skills and statistical and mathematical ability?

Yes.  Can we in academia develop more of those people? Absolutely. But we are going to need the help of industry to accomplish that.

As universities nationwide define and create new undergraduates and graduate data science programs, industry can help to make our programs more interesting and relevant for students. We will also benefit from greater access to industry data sets and the latest Big Data technologies.

Data science, by its nature, is abstract, making it difficult to attract initial student interest. But in the real world, data science is applied in many concrete, exciting ways that we can bring into our classrooms. The perceived gap between academia and industry is why I took a sabbatical this past year to work with Avalon Consulting, a Big Data consultancy headquartered near Dallas.

The experience has proved invaluable, however, most, if not all, of what I learned came through hands-on experience in developing solutions. To make data science concepts more interesting and tangible for students, we should provide them with similar hands-on opportunities. To that end, companies should organize contests for students that allow them to work on actual problems with real industry data sets (similar to the Netflix Prize). My university offers students a capstone project that challenges them to solve real-world problems provided through organizations such as Avalon and the U.S. Armed Forces. Such Partnerships are a good start, but to educate data scientists, we need to do more.

Academia needs to stay up to date with the latest Big Data tool chains. Those ecosystems are evolving rapidly, but most of the development happens on the industry side – so much so that academia often finds itself left behind. If we want our students to be aware of the latest changes when they graduate, we must foster a better exchange of technological knowledge between academics and industry.

Industry typically uses summer internships to expose students to the latest technologies. Such experiences could be extended to faculty as well. My colleagues at Rose-Hulman used industry experiences in the past to stay current in technologies such as Google web frameworks, Android development and other programming languages.

Longer- term experiences, such as my training sabbatical, should also be considered. My experience led directly to development of new courses in Hadoop and modern database paradigms. The time I spent working in the ever-changing world of Hadoop and NoSQL databases at Avalon was critical to those courses’ development. Given the rapid pace at which Big Data technologies are now advancing, it is imperative that academia and industry find additional ways to collaborate to better prepare our students for the workplace.

Once our students enjoy greater access to industry data sets and the latest Big Data technologies, we can bring more real-world problems, solutions and stories into the classroom and generate greater interest in data science. The future for these students is bright, but industry collaboration is required to fully meet its demands.

Changes in the New York Common Core test have resulted in higher scores throughout the state,  according to state officials in New York.

The state Education Department lowered the number of points needed to reach proficiency levels in six of the twelve math and English exams given to third through eighth grade students.

Last year the students’ scores plunged on the statewide tests – it was the first round of tests since the new Common Core standards were administered.

The score cutoffs were tweaked following this year’s tests. The state found six tests were harder and four were easier in 2014 than last year. To determine this, they compared how students performed on anchor test questions, the items used on tests in both 2013 and 2014. A more thorough report on the scoring process will be released in a few months.

Fred Smith, a former testing analyst for city schools said, ”The information given out about the test questions does not provide a complete picture, making it hard to judge how much progress students made last year.”

Overall in 2014, the number of city students who passed the math exam jumped from 30.1 to 34.5 percent. The number of students rated proficient in English increased from 27.4 to 29.4.

Mayor de Blasio declared, “It’s a good day for the whole New York City school system.” He explained that students and schools shouldn’t be judged exclusively on tests.

While I think it’s a slippery slope when it comes to score manipulation because it makes proof of progress hard to measure, I do agree with Mayor de Blasio. Schools shouldn’t be judged solely on test scores, so this is something worth applauding.

President Barack Obama is reaching out to Congress and colleges hoping to make the costs of higher education more manageable for students. He wants to make sure that obtaining a higher education is affordable for all Americans.

During his weekly radio and Internet address, he called higher education “the surest ticket to the middle class.” However, the President recognizes that the hefty price tag associated with higher education remains a struggle for many American families and he wants to reverse that with new initiatives.

In Saturday’s address, he highlighted his plan to link federal financial aid for college to the school’s performance. Obama also reiterated his attempts for Congress to pass legislation that allows students to refinance their loans at lower interest rates so more money goes to the students instead of the banks. He shared his hopes to see an expansion of grants and college tax credits for students and their families, and the chance for students to cap their student loan payments at ten percent of their income.

I love what the President is working towards with his new initiatives. I agree wholeheartedly that more students should be able to afford higher education, and not be bogged down with decades of loans to repay after graduation. I hope to see some of his initiatives like lower interest rates, grant expansion and capping loan payments come into effect in the near future. I think these changes will help ease the burden of debt and encourage more students to seek higher education.