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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership

Should schools provide free breakfast in classrooms?

Sean Corcoran, New York University; Amy Ellen Schwartz, New York University, and Michele Leardo, New York University

Child hunger is a serious problem: 48 million Americans, including more than 15 million children, live in households that lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis. In large cities, about 25 percent of households with children do not have sufficient food.

The federally funded National School Breakfast Program has long sought to improve these numbers, by providing a free or low-cost breakfast for students in participating schools. In addition to reducing food insecurity, the program has been found to improve students’ health and nutritional intake as well as their academic achievement.

Even though school breakfast is affordable (or free), meets federal nutrition guidelines and has the potential to benefit children in multiple ways, participation in the School Breakfast Program is surprisingly low. Nationally, only about half of eligible students participating in the School Lunch Program take breakfast.

In fact, in New York City, less than a third of all students take a breakfast each day. This is particularly surprising because breakfast has been offered free to all students since September 2003.

So why are the numbers taking advantage of free breakfast so low? What difference might it make if they were higher?

Why don’t kids eat free breakfast?

There are several reasons that participation in the School Breakfast Program is low.

Why don’t children eat breakfast? sheri chen, CC BY-NC

First, breakfast is offered in the cafeteria before school hours, and many students are unable to arrive to school early, because of transportation or family commitments. Second, children may not be aware that breakfast is served in the cafeteria before school. Finally, children are often unwilling because of the stigma associated with a trip to the cafeteria for a free breakfast.

Introduced more than a decade ago, Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) has been adopted in many school districts as part of the school day. Breakfast is offered free to all students in their classroom at the start of the day, rather than providing it in the cafeteria before the bell. Cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, Detroit, Cincinnati and Newark show high rates of participation.

Here is how it works

Breakfast in the Classroom is given during the first 10-20 minutes of the school day. It typically includes cold, packaged items (such as cereal, bagels, yogurt and fresh fruit). In some schools, breakfast is offered on mobile carts as students walk in the door (“Grab-n-Go”), or as a “Second Chance” breakfast, between the first and second periods of middle or high school.

New York City began rolling out Breakfast in the Classroom in 2007. According to the Department of Education, the program is now offered in nearly 500 of the city’s 1,700 schools. The city serves over 30,000 classroom breakfasts each day. Beginning this year, it is expanding the program to all elementary schools. And there are plans to extend the program to all schools in the district.

Advocates for the program argue that in addition to reducing hunger and food insecurity, moving breakfast from the cafeteria into the classroom will, in turn, improve school attendance and academic performance. Some also argue it will improve student engagement by building a sense of community around eating breakfast together, and provide an opportunity to integrate nutrition and healthy eating habits into the curriculum.

However, critics have raised concerns that Breakfast in the Classroom could contribute to weight gain, as some children consume more calories by eating two breakfasts – one at home and one at school. Or that the program could take away from instructional time at the start of the school day.

What does evidence show?

Our research looked at the early effects of New York City’s Breakfast in the Classroom program. We examined the program’s effects on school breakfast participation, student weight outcomes including body mass index (BMI) and obesity, as well as academic outcomes. We tracked data on student weight and academic achievement at different points of time, to compare students in schools that did and did not adopt the program.

Our sample included students in over 1,100 NYC public elementary and middle schools between the 2006-07 and 2011-12 school years (of which about 300 offered Breakfast in the Classroom at the time of our study).

Does breakfast in classroom lead to obesity? U.S. Department of Agriculture, CC BY

To begin with, we found that serving breakfast in classroom substantially increased school breakfast participation. For example, in schools offering breakfast in classroom in 25 percent or more of classrooms but not schoolwide, the participation rate nearly doubled. The increase was even higher – about two-and-a-half times – for schools offering the program schoolwide.

Importantly, we found no evidence that Breakfast in the Classroom led to student weight gain. We found no impact on BMI or the incidence of obesity. We also found no evidence that breakfast in the classroom reduced academic performance, as measured by achievement on reading and math standardized tests for students in grades three through eight.

Serve breakfast in classrooms

Our study suggests that the program certainly did no harm by taking away from instructional time or increasing student weight.

Other rigorous research on Breakfast in the Classroom has found the program can improve school attendance and increase academic achievement.

Taken together, our results show serving breakfast in the classroom increased participation in school breakfast even when free breakfast was being served in the school cafeteria.

Our work also shows critics’ fears that the Breakfast in the Classroom program will cause weight gain and reduce academic performance due to a loss of instructional time are largely unwarranted. There is no reason, therefore, not to expand Breakfast in the Classroom.

The Conversation

Sean Corcoran, Associate Professor of Educational Economics, New York University; Amy Ellen Schwartz, Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics and Director of the NYU Institute for Education and Social Policy, New York University, and Michele Leardo, Assistant Director of Education and Social Policy, New York University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education

Why the new SAT is a reminder to improve the teaching of writing

Jeff Grabill, Michigan State University

The SAT, the test that many schools require to check for college readiness, has recently gone through a makeover. Perhaps the most significant change is to the writing portion of the SAT, which presents students with new and more complex reading and and writing challenges.

College Board, the nonprofit that administers the test, had earlier announced that the essay in the writing section would be optional. However, many schools in the U.S. require their students to take the writing exam.

Connecticut, New Hampshire and Michigan are examples of such states, where the SAT, including its writing exam, is required, not optional. What’s more, scores from these tests are critical beyond their acceptance and placement in some colleges.

The SAT serves as the measure of the educational progress for all students in each state that adopts the SAT for that purpose. In such cases, the SAT is more than a bridge between high school and college. SAT has become a “high-stakes” K-12 assessment. In fact, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

But are schools preparing students adequately to take the new SAT?

I have been working for a number of years with K-12 writing teachers in Michigan on designing more effective approaches to learning in writing as part of my research. I believe the new writing test is complex and requires skills that U.S. schools are not teaching students.

The new SAT

First, let’s take a look at what’s different about the new writing assessment.

In a break from most standardized writing assessments, the new essay task is not designed to elicit students’ subjective opinions. Rather, its aim is to assess whether students are able to comprehend an appropriately challenging source text and craft an effective written analysis of that text.

Students need to discuss real-world topics in the revised SAT.Vancouver Film School, CC BY

For years, the formula for success on high-stakes writing assessments has been to craft a five-paragraph structure: thesis paragraph, three supporting paragraphs and a concluding paragraph. Within that structure, students are more or less free to say anything, and the more creative and engaging that “anything” is, the better.

Les Perelman, the former director of MIT’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, who helped create MIT’s writing placement test, summed it up, when he said:

It doesn’t matter if [what you write] is true or not…In fact, trying to be true will hold you back.

As Perelman noted, “in relaying personal experiences, students who took time attempting to recall an appropriately relatable circumstance from their lives were at a disadvantage.”

The revised SAT, therefore, is a major shift from “subjective opinion” to an analysis based on a real-world nonfiction persuasive passage.

The table below provides a quick overview of what the revised SAT asks of students. The five paragraph structure is still there, but the intellectual work required of students is vastly different.

The revised SAT. Jeff Grabill, CC BY

Students read a nonfiction argument that may be in the form of speeches, opinion editorials or articles that tend not to have simple for or against arguments but convey more nuanced views. Students are expected to marshal evidence about how the author builds a persuasive argument.

What makes the test challenging?

The first significant challenge is that the new prompt asks students to read rhetorically. Rhetorical reading is a form of analysis that is different from more literary forms of analysis that are likely taught in schools.

For example, the new SAT prompt asks students to notice how an author achieves a purpose, shapes a text for an audience and organizes information to achieve a goal. Students need to be able to analyze an argument pulled from topics across the disciplines.

For students to be able to do this, teachers need to help students become better rhetorical readers and better writers. This new way of reading and teaching reading must be layered into already overloaded existing curricula.

The second significant challenge, of course, is the writing itself.

In the past, success on “high-stakes” writing tests like the SAT could be achieved by following a highly structured formula.

That will no longer work. Instead, students will be asked to make arguments based on their own analytical reasoning. They will be required to marshal real evidence – not made-up events – drawn from the passage to be analyzed.

And students will be required to do this quickly, within a time frame in which they will already be engaged in more complex reading practices.

Writing instruction in schools

The reading and writing required by the new SAT will be new for students and many teachers. Rhetorical reading requires “reading like a writer” and answering questions such as “Why did the author do it this way?” Students will then have to write up that analysis in a way that makes evidence-based arguments.

What’s missing in the English writing curriculum? Dennis S. Hurd, CC BY-NC-ND

Any examination of English Language Arts curriculum in U.S. middle and high schools will reveal a nearly complete focus on literary forms and genres with relatively little writing. The basic values and focus that give us our “English” curriculum date back to a 19th-century shift from classical modes of education toward the study of literary texts. It was a shift from Latin and Greek models of discourse, and, most importantly, instruction in speaking and writing, to a shift to literature in English and a focus on reading and analysis.

The curriculum that resulted from these broad changes over time is “English,” and direct instruction in writing has never recovered. The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, a project to help improve the teaching of writing, argues that writing is the “neglected R” in education. That same report notes that little time is spent on writing instruction – at best less than three hours a week. In a recent survey, 82 percent of teens report that their typical school writing assignment is a paragraph to one page in length.

This evidence is consistent with education researchers Arthur Applebee’s and Judith A. Langer’s findings in their comprehensive study of writing instruction across the United States. As they say:

[T]he actual writing that goes on in typical classrooms across the United States remains dominated by tasks in which the teacher does all the composing, and students are left only to fill in missing information, whether copying directly from a teacher’s presentation, completing worksheets and chapter summaries, replicating highly formulaic essay structures keyed to high-stakes tests, or writing to “show they know” the particular information the teacher is seeking.

Let’s not teach to the test

I work with teachers and schools quite anxious about how to respond.
Anxious parents – mostly parents of students who struggle with language or have learning disabilities – have asked me questions about the revised SAT.

Teacher preparation programs have historically provided little to no preparation in teaching writing to new teachers, though this is slowly changing. Surely, good teachers and attentive schools will develop well-designed approaches to the new SAT. But I believe responding to the exam is the wrong approach and misses the point.

What is required is a comprehensive change in how we value writing and writing instruction. If that were to happen, then more complex writing exams would be taken in stride because our approaches to learning in writing would exceed the demands of any high-stakes test.

The Conversation

Jeff Grabill, Associate Provost for Teaching, Learning and Technology, Michigan State University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Teachers

Straight A students may not be the best innovators

Matthew Mayhew, New York University and Benjamin S. Selznick, New York University

Demand for innovation is at an all-time high. Innovation is now recognized as being key to economic growth strategies in the United States, Canada and countries in the European Union.

As a result, there is an increased need to understand what drives innovation. Certainly traditional research and development, funded by both the private and public sectors, continues to remain a primary source of new ideas and products. But innovation demands innovators.

So where do innovators come from? And how do they acquire their skills?

One place – perhaps among the best – is college. Over the past seven years, my research has explored the influence of college on preparing students with the capacity, desire and intention to innovate.

In this time we’ve learned that many academic and social experiences matter quite a bit; grades, however, do not matter as much.

What influences student innovation?

Our ongoing research, an example of which can be found here, has surveyed over 10,000 full-time undergraduate and graduate students in four countries – the United States, Canada, Germany and Qatar.

Our sample includes a wide diversity of students: those in fields of study often associated with innovation and entrepreneurship (e.g., business, engineering) as well as more traditional majors (e.g., arts, humanities, education); those from differing races/ethnicities and gender identifications; those from different socioeconomic and political backgrounds; and those from families that already include, or do not include, entrepreneurs.

To learn more, we asked students about their innovation intentions and capacities, their higher education experiences, and their background characteristics. We also administered a “personality inventory” to address the question of whether innovators are born or made.

Classroom practices can make a difference. Penn State, CC BY-NC-ND

We conducted a series of statistical analyses that allowed us to isolate the influence of any one individual attribute (e.g., classroom experiences, GPA, personality, gender, etc.) on our innovation outcomes.

Here is what our analyses have revealed so far:

  • Classroom practices make a difference: students who indicated that their college assessments encouraged problem-solving and argument development were more likely to want to innovate. Such an assessment frequently involves evaluating students in their abilities to create and answer their own questions; to develop case studies based on readings as opposed to responding to hypothetical cases; and/or to make and defend arguments. Creating a classroom conducive to innovation was particularly important for undergraduate students when compared to graduate students.
  • Faculty matters – a lot: students who formed a close relationship with a faculty member or had meaningful interactions (i.e., experiences that had a positive influence on one’s personal growth, attitudes and values) with faculty outside of class demonstrated a higher likelihood to be innovative. When a faculty member is able to serve as a mentor and sounding board for student ideas, exciting innovations may follow.

Interestingly, we saw the influence of faculty on innovation outcomes in our analyses even after accounting for a student’s field of study, suggesting that promoting innovation can happen across disciplines and curricula. Additionally, when we ran our statistical models using a sample of students from outside the United States, we found that faculty relationships were still very important. So, getting to know a faculty member might be a key factor for promoting innovation among college students, regardless of where the education takes place or how it is delivered.

  • Peer networking is effective: outside the classroom, students who connected course learning with social issues and career plans were also more innovative. For example, students who initiated informal discussions about how to combine the ideas they were learning in their classes to solve common problems and address global concerns were the ones who most likely recognized opportunities for creating new businesses or nonprofit social ventures.

Being innovative was consistently associated with the college providing students with space and opportunities for networking, even after considering personality type, such as being extroverted.

Networking remained salient when we analyzed a sample of graduate students – in this instance, those pursuing M.B.A. degrees in the United States. We take these findings as a positive indication that students are spending their “out-of-class” time learning to recognize opportunities and discussing new ideas with peers.

Who are the innovators?

On the basis of our findings, we believe that colleges might be uniquely positioned to cultivate a new generation of diverse innovators.

Counter to the Thiel Fellowship, an initiative that pays individuals to step out of college in order to become entrepreneurs, our work supports efforts by colleges and universities to combine classroom learning with entrepreneurial opportunities and to integrate education with innovation.

One of our most interesting findings was that as GPAs went down, innovation tended to go up. Even after considering a student’s major, personality traits and features of the learning environment, students with lower GPAs reported innovation intentions that were, on average, greater than their higher-GPA counterparts.

In short: GPA was associated with innovation, but maybe not in the direction you’d think.

Not GPAs, but being motivated, makes a difference. THINK Global School, CC BY-NC-ND

Why might this be the case?

From our findings, we speculate that this relationship may have to do with what innovators prioritize in their college environment: taking on new challenges, developing strategies in response to new opportunities and brainstorming new ideas with classmates.

Time spent in these areas might really benefit innovation, but not necessarily GPA.

Additionally, findings elsewhere strongly suggest that innovators tend to be intrinsically motivated – that is, they are interested in engaging pursuits that are personally meaningful, but might not be immediately rewarded by others.

We see this work as confirmation of our findings – grades, by their very nature, tend to reflect the abilities of individuals motivated by receiving external validation for the quality of their efforts.

Perhaps, for these reasons, the head of people operations at Google has noted:

GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring.

Somewhat troubling, though in line with concerns that plague the entrepreneurship community, women were less likely to demonstrate innovation intentions than men, all else being equal.

This is a problem, especially given jarring statistics that venture capitalists are funding males – specifically white males – more than any other group.

Such findings also speak to the need for higher education to intervene and actively introduce the broadest range of individuals to educational experiences and environments that spur the generation and implementation of new ideas. Fresh and creative ideas, after all, are not restricted to any one gender, race or family background.

As we say in our forthcoming paper’s finding on gender:

Imagine the explosion of new processes and products that would emerge in a world where half the population was socialized to believe that it could and should innovate.

Imagine indeed.

The Conversation

Matthew Mayhew, Associate Professor of Higher Education, New York University and Benjamin S. Selznick, Ph.D. candidate, New York University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education

Why it’s so hard for students to have their debts forgiven

Neal H. Hutchens, University of Mississippi and Richard Fossey, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Outstanding student loan debt in the United States reached a record US$1.35 trillion in March, up six percent from a year earlier.

About 10 million people who borrowed from the government’s main student loan program – 43 percent – are currently behind or no longer making payments, with more than a third of them in default. Some students are especially at risk, such as those who attended for-profit institutions.

Meanwhile, the loan default rates widely reported by the U.S. Department of Education fail to account for borrowers who default more than three years after repayment begins. These rates also fail to account for the millions of borrowers who are struggling or unable to repay their loans but aren’t included in the numbers because they’ve claimed an economic hardship deferment.

These unsettling numbers raise the question of what happens to borrowers unable to repay their student loans.

The ‘undue hardship’ issue

While individuals with debt they cannot repay often turn to bankruptcy, this discharge option is frequently unavailable in the case of student loans. Such debtors must first demonstrate “undue hardship,” an exacting standard few borrowers are able to satisfy and one not applied to most types of unsecured debt in bankruptcy.

Credit card debt, for example, can be easily discharged as long as a person qualifies to file for bankruptcy protection. The standard also leaves student-loan debtors without the types of options open to businesses in bankruptcy to work with creditors to reduce debt.

Some student-loan borrowers may soon have some relief, however. The Department of Education proposed a new rule this week, for example, that would make it easier for students who are defrauded by their colleges to have their debt forgiven.

That’s a step in the right direction. But more needs to be done.

As higher education legal scholars who have been examining these issues for many years, we have a special interest in the ways in which laws and legal standards support or harm students. The general inability for Americans to discharge student loans under current bankruptcy law represents an issue affecting millions of borrowers and their families.

This and the growing mountain of debt have prompted lawmakers and other observers to warn of another bubble in the making, with potentially disastrous consequences.

How undue hardship was established

The federal role in student loans can be traced back to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which made federal loans available to all students.

In 1965, the federal government shifted from making loans to serving as a guarantor of student loans. An overhaul of federal loan policy in 2010 made direct loans from the federal government the only federally guaranteed student loan program, although loans from other lenders, often referred to as private student loans, are still available.

Until the 1970s, student loan debt received the same treatment in bankruptcy proceedings as other types of unsecured debt. Concerns arose, however, that unscrupulous borrowers had sought to discharge their student loans after obtaining lucrative positions in such fields as medicine and law.

Evidence suggests no widespread pattern of abuse existed, but Congress directed in 1976 that federally guaranteed loans could not be discharged in bankruptcy during the initial five years of the repayment period, absent a showing of undue hardship. Congress extended the undue hardship requirement to seven years in 1990, and in 1998 made the standard applicable throughout the loan’s life. And in 2005, Congress also extended the undue hardship standard to private student loans not guaranteed by the federal government.

Congress did not define the term undue hardship, leaving it to the bankruptcy courts to interpret its meaning. Most courts have adopted the so-called Brunner test (named after a famous court ruling), which requires student loan debtors to make three showings. First, they must prove that they cannot pay off their student loans and maintain a minimal standard of living. Second, they must show additional circumstances that make it highly unlikely they will ever be able to repay their student loans. And finally, debtors must demonstrate that they have made a good faith effort to pay their student loans.

This stringent standard can lead to disheartening results. For example, in one case, a bankruptcy judge denied discharge under the undue hardship to a student loan debtor in her 50’s who had a record of homelessness and lived on $1,000 a month.

In practice, most courts have applied the Brunner test, or similar standards, in ways that make discharge in bankruptcy especially difficult for many student loan borrowers. In fact, a 2012 paper calculated that 99.9 percent of bankrupt student loan debtors do not even try to discharge them. Among the reasons for this low percentage is likely the difficult standard to qualify for a discharge.

Some courts push back

Recently, however, a few bankruptcy courts have interpreted the Brunner test more leniently.

In perhaps the most well-known example, a panel of judges reviewing a bankruptcy decision discharged the student loan debts of Janet Roth, a 68-year old woman with chronic health problems who was subsisting on Social Security income of $780 a month.

Roth’s creditor argued that she could not pass the good-faith prong of the Brunner test because she had never made a single voluntary payment on her student loans. But the panel rejected this argument on the grounds that Roth had lived frugally and had never earned enough money to pay back her student loans in spite of her best efforts to maximize her income.

The panel also rejected the creditor’s arguments that Roth should be placed in a long-term income-based repayment plan that would extend for 25 years. Roth’s income was so low, the creditor pointed out, that she would not be required to pay anything on the student loan anyway. Nevertheless, a remote possibility existed that Roth’s income would rise in the future, permitting her to make at least token payments.

In the court’s view, putting Roth on a long-term repayment plan seemed pointless. Applying a common law principle of basic fairness, the court stated “that the law does not require a party to engage in futile acts.”

One of the judges in the Roth case filed a separate opinion agreeing with the judgment but suggesting that courts should abandon the Brunner test altogether. He argued courts should replace it with a standard in which bankruptcy judges “consider all the relevant facts and circumstances” to determine whether a debtor can afford to repay student loan debts “while maintaining an appropriate standard of living.”

Such a standard would be more closely aligned with how most other types of debt are eligible for discharge in bankruptcy.

So far, federal appeals courts have not taken up the suggestion to scrap the Brunner test, although several lower courts have begun applying it more humanely. The Brunner test, however, is a subjective standard, and debtors experience widely different outcomes when they attempt to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy.

President Obama signs a presidential memorandum on reducing the burden of student loan debt in 2014. Larry Downing/Reuters

Moving toward a more humane standard

Recent actions by the Obama administration on the issue – including this week’s announcement on “predatory” colleges – has accompanied the judicial activity.

For example, in 2015 the Department of Education offered guidance on when loan holders should “consent to or not oppose” undue hardship petitions involving government-backed student debt in bankruptcy proceedings.

The department also recently announced an initiative to address problems in making loan forgiveness available to individuals who are permanently disabled.

In the case of private student loans, the Obama administration has urged Congress to make such loans no longer subject to the undue hardship standard.

Courts and federal agencies can help to humanize interpretation and application of the undue hardship standard and make discharge a more realistic option for some borrowers. Ultimately, however, authority rests with Congress to make any substantive changes to the treatment of student loan debt in bankruptcy.

While likely on hold until after the November elections, the pending reauthorization of the Higher Education Act – the centerpiece of federal higher education policy – presents a key opportunity for Congress to review the undue hardship standard. At a minimum, Congress should give serious consideration to abolishing the standard for private student loans.

Other options include reinstating limits on how long the undue hardship standard should apply to federal student loans or directing courts to adopt a more flexible test for discharge in bankruptcy, such as that advocated in the separate opinion in the Roth case.

With so many student loan borrowers struggling, circumstances suggest the need for Congress to take decisive action on this critical issue on public policy and humanitarian grounds.

The Conversation

Neal H. Hutchens, Professor of Higher Education, University of Mississippi and Richard Fossey, Paul Burdin Endowed Professor of Education, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Higher Education

The real reason more women don’t code

Karin Verspoor, University of Melbourne

I menstruate and I code. I share this perhaps shocking personal information in the interest of full disclosure, and in solidarity with a new satirical campaign from Girls Who Code.

The campaign proposes a simple explanation for the low numbers of women in tech: that our hormonal cycles interfere with our ability to code.

Other explanations offered up in the campaign include that women can’t code because their boobs get in the way or their long eyelashes make it hard to see the screen.

These explanations are obviously ridiculous and therein lies the point. For example, if women can’t code because they menstruate, then there isn’t much we can do.

After all, menstruating is part of our basic female biology. If it prevents us from concentrating, or thinking rationally, or coding … what hope do we have?

According to the Australian Computer Society’s recent figures, only 28% of all ICT jobs are held by women in Australia. The proportion is even lower for specifically technical roles in ICT.

So there is certainly a basis for wondering whether there is a fundamental reason that women are so underrepresented in IT and computing roles.

But I’m not convinced that the latest campaign from Girls Who Code is asking the right question. “Why can’t girls code?” is a question that starts from the assumption “girls can’t code”. Is this really the prevailing attitude?

Boys v girls

There is, certainly, evidence that boys favour other boys when estimating the performance of their peers in science class.

There is also evidence specifically from the open-source software community that there is bias against accepting code produced by women, despite the overall high quality of their contributions.

Anecdotally, most technical women can share a story of a situation where their work wasn’t taken seriously.

Dr Maria Milosavljevic, national manager innovation & technology and chief information officer at the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), told me how when she was the only girl in a year 12 computer science class, every boy in the class offered to “help” her with her assignments because they assumed she would need their help.

The implication seems to be that if boys don’t accept that girls can code, then girls can’t code. To me, that’s horribly paternalistic.

Worse yet is the idea that female biology is not suited to coding, an idea that was recently floated (seriously, I fear) citing a 1999 study of 15 people that identified brain differences between men and women.

Surely, there are biological differences between men and women. Periods, brain structure and so on must exclusively determine what women enjoy doing and what we are good at. Right?!

Girls can code

Let’s start from the default assumption that girls can, in fact, code. Nothing in our biology prevents us from being able to learn how to code.

There are plenty of examples that this is the case – after all, the proportion of women in technical roles is not 0%. And there have been some very high-profile female computer scientists. They include: arguably the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace (1815-1852); the developer of the early COBOL programming language, Grace Hopper; her syster’s keeper Anita Borg; and Google’s first female engineer, now Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer.

Here in Australia, Kay Thorne was one of the early programmers of the CSIRAC computer nearly 60 years ago.

So, I think a better question is: “Why don’t (most) girls code?”

This is a question that has been explored many times, and even one that I have written about previously.

It is generally seen as a pipeline problem, with the challenge being getting girls interested in coding. The solutions proposed involve developing engaging opportunities for learning and creating with tech, demystifying coding and boosting confidence, and highlighting female role models.

Girls Who Code, Code Like a Girl, Go Girl, Go for IT and Tech Girls are Superheros are all organisations working to create these opportunities.

The truth behind the employment numbers, however, is more complex than that pipeline.

While we know that enrolments of females in ICT courses at tertiary level lag behind males, we also know from research done at Harvard that even if women enter employment in ICT, they don’t always stay there.

Beating the ‘brogrammer’ culture

There have been accusations of a “brogrammer” culture in tech that is hostile to women.

Microsoft got into trouble earlier this year for organising a party at a developer event featuring half-naked dancing women, highlighting that even companies that have worked to support women in tech still lose their way sometimes.

Which brings us full circle back to our biology and the idea that girls can’t code. Yes, women are different from men. Yes, women certainly can code.

On the other hand, women don’t want to face sexism or misogyny in the workplace, behaviour that is driven primarily by their biology. If girls are getting the idea that they can’t code simply because they are girls, then it’s no wonder they don’t see coding as a viable career path.

So maybe they don’t code because someone makes them feel that they can’t.

The Girls Who Code campaign oversimplifies a complex problem, and it delivers a message with nuances that may be lost on the people who need most to understand them.

But it has provoked a question about the connection between biology and cultural attitudes towards women in tech that is worth considering. Period!

The Conversation

Karin Verspoor, Associate Professor, Department of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity

What it means to be black in the American educational system

Kevin O’Neal Cokley, University of Texas at Austin

Many people still think that racism is no longer a problem in America. After the election of President Obama, academic John McWhorter argued that
racism in America is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The prominent conservative scholar and African-American economist Thomas Sowell has argued that “racism isn’t dead, but it is on life support.” Harvard professors William Julius Wilson and Roland Fryer too have argued about the declining significance of race and discrimination.

However, as we wind down the final months of Obama’s presidency, the declining significance of race and discrimination narratives seem to be at odds with the lived realities for African-Americans. President Obama himself has faced racist treatment, such as the birther controversy and a member of Congress saying “you lie.” And then, one incident after another has highlighted the painful reality that black men are disproportionately likely to die at the hands of the police in comparison to any other demographic group.

Sadly, racism and discrimination are facts of life for many black Americans. As an African-American scholar who studies the experiences of black college students, I am especially interested in this issue. My research has found that black college students report higher levels of stress related to racial discrimination than other racial or ethnic groups. The unfortunate reality is that black Americans experience subtle and overt discrimination from preschool all the way to college.

Here’s what studies show

The results of a recent survey by the Pew Research Center underscore this point. The survey found that black Americans with some college experience are more likely to say that they have experienced discrimination compared to blacks who did not report having any college experience.

Additional survey results revealed several differences between blacks with college experience versus blacks without college experience. For example, in the past 12 months, 55 percent of people with some college experience reported people had acted suspicious of them, compared to 38 percent of those with no college experience.

Similarly, 52 percent of people with some college experience reported people had acted as if they thought the individual wasn’t smart, compared to 37 percent of people with no college experience.

So, what are the race-related struggles experienced by African-American students throughout their schooling?

Story of Tyrone

Let’s consider the case of Tyrone. Tyrone is a four-year-old black male raised in a two-parent household. Like most four-year-olds, Tyrone is intellectually curious, and has a vivid imagination. He loves books, loves to color and paint, and also loves physical activities such as running, jumping and playing games with his friends.

What’s the early school experience of black kids?
Teacher image via www.shutterstock.com

Behaviorally, Tyrone is also similar to many four-year-olds in that he often likes to talk more than listen, and he can be temperamental. He can engage in hitting, kicking and spitting behaviors when he is angry.

One day Tyrone was playing a game with a friend and he lost. Tyrone got angry and threw the ball at his friend. A teacher witnessed that and immediately confronted Tyrone about his behavior.

Angry about being confronted, Tyrone started to walk away. The teacher grabbed his arm. Tyrone reacted by pushing the teacher away. The teacher sent Tyrone to the principal’s office. After consultation with the principal, Tyrone was deemed to be a danger to students and staff.

He was consequently suspended.

Early years of schooling

On the surface this looks like a simple case of meting out the appropriate punishment for perceived serious student misbehavior. There does not appear to be anything explicitly racial about the interaction.

However, consider the fact that there have been many instances of white students engaging in the same behavior, none of which ever result in suspension. This is the racialized reality black students experience every day in American schools.

Black boys are almost three times as likely to be suspended than white boys, and black girls are four times as likely to be suspended than white girls. Black students’ (mis)behavior is more often criminalized compared to other students.

Black boys are three times more likely to be suspended than white kids.
Children image via www.shutterstock.com

While black kids make up 18 percent of preschool enrollment, they represent 48 percent of students receiving one or more suspensions. Getting suspended matters because it is correlated with being referred to law enforcement and arrested. Black students account for 27 percent of students who are referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of students who are arrested, while they only make up 18 percent of enrolled students. As a general rule, black students do not often receive the benefit of the doubt when they engage in bad or questionable behavior.

School experience

When Tyrone entered fourth grade, teachers noticed a change in his demeanor. His enthusiasm for school and learning had diminished considerably. He no longer eagerly raised his hand to answer questions. He no longer appeared to love books and listening to stories. He appeared to have little joy participating in class activities. His teachers characterized Tyrone as “unmotivated,” “apathetic,” having “learning difficulties” and “a bad attitude.”

Educators and researchers have referred to this phenomenon as “the fourth grade failure syndrome” for black boys. Early childhood educator Harry Morgan suggested that this phenomenon occurred during this time because the classroom environment changes between the third and fourth grade from a socially interactive style to a more individualistic, competitive style.

By fourth grade, a child’s enthusiasm can diminish.
Boy image via www.shutterstock,com

This change in style is counter to the more communal and cooperative cultural learning environment which, according to research, black students tend to prefer. The fourth grade failure syndrome refers to a bias in schools (e.g., cultural insensitivity, disproportionately harsh discipline, lowered teacher expectations, tracking black students into special education or remedial classes) that has the cumulative effect of diminishing black students’ (especially boys’) enthusiasm and motivation for school.

By high school Tyrone no longer identified with school. His sense of pride and self-esteem increasingly came from his popularity and his athletic abilities rather than his intelligence. Psychologist Claude Steele has referred to this as “academic disidentification,” a phenomenon where a student’s self-esteem is disconnected from how they perform in school.

Tyrone is not alone. According to one study based on national data from almost 25,000 students black males were the only students that showed significant disidentification throughout the 12th grade. My research too has confirmed this, although I did not find evidence among black females, white males or white females.

What’s the college experience?

While the narrative of more black men being in prison than in college has been thoroughly debunked by psychologist Ivory Toldson, it is still the case that black men are underrepresented in college. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 887,000 black women enrolled in college compared to 618,000 black men.

Owing in large part to the emphasis of education by his family, Tyrone is fortunate enough to be accepted to college. Excited and nervous about being away from home, Tyrone looks forward to starting his college experience.

Like many college students, Tyrone likes to go to parties thrown by Greek organizations, and he frequently attends parties thrown by black fraternities. While attending one party, Tyrone and his friends became upset when campus police broke up the party because of complaints of loud music and threaten to arrest the attendees.

Tyrone has partied with white friends and knows firsthand that their parties often involve drugs and reckless behavior, yet, as my students tell me, police almost never break up their parties. As it turns out, white fraternities are frequently the perpetrators of racist incidents, which cause Tyrone and other black students to engage in campus protests.

For example, in 2014, Tau Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity at Arizona State University, was suspended for having a racist Martin Luther King Jr. party at which they drank from watermelon cups, held their crotches, wore bandannas and formed gang signs with their hands.

Resilience

To add insult to injury, Tyrone and other black students read opinion pieces in the student paper complaining how affirmative action discriminates against white students and allows less qualified “minority” students on campus.

Tyrone finds refuge in black studies classes, where he learns about theories such as “critical race theory” and terms such as “institutional racism,” “white privilege” and “hegemony.” Exposure to these classes provides Tyrone with the vocabulary and critical analytical tools to better understand the challenges facing black people.

Interest among black students in obtaining a degree remains high.
chandlerchristian, CC BY-NC-ND

So it is not surprising that college-educated blacks like Tyrone are more likely to report experiencing discrimination in college than blacks with no college experience in college environments where racist incidents and racial microagressions are frequently reported. In spite of the desire among many for America to be colorblind, at every level of education black students experience disproportionate amounts of discrimination.

In many ways my research on African-American students reflects my own experiences as a black male negotiating the challenges of being in predominantly white academic environments. The silver lining to this story is that black students are incredibly resilient and there are positive things to report.

In 2016, for example, enrollment at historically black colleges and universities has increased. It is difficult to know if this increase is related to the negative experiences of discrimination black students often experience on predominantly white campuses, but it does suggest that interest among black students in obtaining a college education remains high. According to 2016 data reported in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, black women now have the highest graduation rate of any demographic group at the University of Georgia.

For every positive outcome for students like Tyrone, there are unfortunately also too many negative outcomes for other similar students. The educational experiences of Tyrone and all black students matters should be of concern to everyone.

While education is not a cure all for experiences with racism and discrimination, education can equip us with the tools to better understand, analyze and ultimately find solutions to the tragic incidents we are seeing too frequently involving police killings of black people.

The Conversation

Kevin O’Neal Cokley, Professor of Educational Psychology and African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas at Austin

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Bullying, Diversity, Education Leadership, Equity

Where does anti-LGBT bias come from – and how does it translate into violence?

Dominic Parrott, Georgia State University

In the United States, public support of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community has increased in recent years. These changes are associated with increased visibility of openly gay characters on television, the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage.

Nevertheless, violence against sexual minorities remains a major public health problem in the U.S. and internationally. A recent study concluded that approximately 50 percent of LGBT adults experience bias-motivated aggression at some point.

For every highly publicized act of violence toward sexual minorities, such as the recent mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, there are many more physical and verbal assaults, attempted assaults, acts of property damage or intimidations which are never reported to authorities, let alone publicized by the media.

What spurs on these acts of violence? Can we do anything to prevent them? Fortunately, an extensive body of social science research exists that identifies perpetrators’ motivations and suggests ways we can reduce the likelihood of these acts of aggression toward sexual minorities.

Anti-LGBT bias feels normal if everyone around you seems to support it. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Reinforcing the roots of antigay bias

Prejudice toward sexual minorities is rooted in what psychologists call sexual stigma. This is an attitude that reflects “the negative regard, inferior status and relative powerlessness that society collectively accords to any nonheterosexual behavior, identity, relationship or community.”

Sexual stigma exists and operates at both individual and society-wide levels.

At the societal level, sexual stigma is referred to as heterosexism. The conviction that heterosexuals and their behaviors and relationships are superior to those of sexual minorities is built into various social ideologies and institutions – including religion, language, laws and norms about gender roles. For example, religious views that homosexual behavior is immoral support heteronormative norms, which ultimately stigmatize sexual minorities.

On an individual level, heterosexuals can internalize sexual stigma as sexual prejudice. They buy into what they see around them in their culture that indicates sexual minorities are inferior. Consider the Defense of Marriage Act. This legislation, which defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, denied homosexuals the rights held by heterosexuals. Heterosexuals can incorporate that stigmatizing view into their own belief system.

Sexual minorities themselves can internalize sexual stigma, too – a process called self-stigma. Aligning their own self-concept with society’s negative regard for homosexuality results in myriad negative health outcomes.

The heterosexism of our society and the sexual prejudice of individuals are interrelated, reinforcing each other. When cultural ideologies and institutions espouse heterosexism, they provide the basis for individuals’ sexual prejudice – and perpetration of violence based on it. Conversely, researchers theorize that pro-gay attitudes reduce heterosexism that exists within these same institutions.

Beyond prejudice: a masculinity problem

Many people believe that antigay violence is caused by prejudice. To a certain extent, they’re correct. But when we back up and think about this aggression within the framework of sexual stigma, we can see that the causes of antigay violence run deeper and are more complex than a simple “prejudice” explanation.

Perpetrators of anti-LGBT aggression may or may not hold prejudiced attitudes, but they carry out their violence within a heterosexist society that implicitly sanctions it. It’s these society-level heterosexist attitudes that provide the foundation for three well-established motivations and risk factors for aggression toward sexual minorities.

Heterosexual masculinity is a fundamental factor that starts to explain anti-LGBT violence. To be masculine, one must be heterosexual, so the thinking goes. The logic continues that any man who’s not heterosexual is therefore feminine. In essence, a man’s aggression toward sexual minorities serves to enforce traditional gender norms and demonstrate his own heterosexual masculinity to other men.

Researchers have identified two major aspects of this masculinity-based motivation.

The first is adherence to norms about status – the belief that men must gain the respect of others. The status norm reflects the view that men should sit atop the social hierarchy, be successful, and garner respect and admiration from others.

The second is a strong conviction in antifemininity – that is, believing men should not engage in stereotypically feminine activities. Men who endorse this norm would not engage in behaviors that are “traditionally” reserved for women – for instance, showing vulnerable emotions, wearing makeup or working in childcare.

A narrow definition of what constitutes ‘masculinity’ is at the root of anti-LGBT violence. Tea party image via www.shutterstock.com.

Other norms can also lead to violence under certain circumstances. For instance, recent data indicate that alcohol intoxication may trigger thoughts that men need to be tough and aggressive. Being drunk and having toughness in mind may influence men to act in line with this version of masculinity and attack gay men.

In the most common aggression scenario, an assailant is in a group when he becomes violent toward a member of a sexual minority. The attacker has the support of his group, which can act as a motivator. Indeed, the male peer group is the ideal context for proving one’s masculinity via aggression because other males are present to witness the macho display.

Studies also indicate that perpetrators of hate crimes, including violence toward sexual minorities, seek to alleviate boredom and have fun – termed thrill-seeking. It’s important to note that for thrill-seeking assailants, the selection of sexual minority targets is not random. Given that sexual stigma devalues homosexuality, it sanctions these perpetrators’ strategic choice of a socially devalued target.

Translating motivations into violence

How does a given perpetrator get to the point where he decides to attack a sexual minority? Research suggests it’s a long process.

Through personal experience and from social institutions, people learn that LGBT people are “threats” and heterosexuals are “normal.” For example, throughout adolescence, boys consistently have it drilled into them by peers that they need to be masculine and antifeminine. So when a young boy teases a gay person, verbally intimidates that person or hits him, he gets positive reinforcement from his peers.

As a result of these processes, we learn over time to almost automatically view sexual minorities with lower social regard and as a threatening group.

Recent research suggests two types of threats – realistic and symbolic – may lead to sexual prejudice and a heightened risk for anti-LGBT aggression. It doesn’t matter whether an actual threat exists – it’s one’s perception of threat that is critical.

A group experiences realistic threat when it perceives sexual minorities as threats to its existence, political and economic power or physical well-being. For example, heterosexuals may fear that pro-gay policies such as the legalization of same-sex marriage will make it harder to advance their own alternative political agendas. In this way, they should perceive a gay man as a direct threat to their own political power.

Symbolic threat reflects a heterosexual’s perception that sexual minorities’ beliefs, attitudes, morals, standards and values will lead to unwanted changes in his or her own worldview. For instance, a highly religious heterosexual may fear that a same-sex relationship or marriage poses a threat to his or her own values and beliefs.

Getting to know LGBT people can decrease heterosexuals’ prejudice. Francois Lenoir/Reuters

Can we prevent anti-LGBT violence?

Sexual stigma may be reduced by targeting the processes that lead to sexual prejudice. For example, studies indicate that heterosexuals who have a close relationship with an LGBT individual report lower levels of sexual prejudice. That’s probably because positive feelings regarding the friend are generalized to all sexual minorities.

These kinds of experiences may help lessen heterosexism within various social contexts. But given the widespread nature of bias-motivated aggression and the ubiquity of heterosexism, these individual-level approaches are likely insufficient on their own.

If we’re serious about tackling the public health issue of anti-LGBT violence, we need to try to reduce heterosexism at the societal level. Succeeding at that should lead to corresponding reductions in sexual prejudice and antigay violence.

There are a few prongs to a societal level approach. Changing public policies – things like hate crime legislation, repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” legalizing same-sex marriage – can work to reduce heterosexism. Likewise, positive portrayals of sexual minorities in the media and popular culture can contribute to changing views. Social norms interventions that work to correct misperceptions of LGBT people can help, too.

The Conversation

Dominic Parrott, Professor of Psychology, Georgia State University

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Education News, First Year Teachers, Parental Involvement, Teachers, Testing

Want to understand your child’s test scores? Here’s what to ignore

Stephen Sireci, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Now that the first month of school is over, parents can get ready for the next milestone of the school year – they will soon get reports of the state tests their children took last year.

My estimates show that approximately 26 million students in public schools took statewide tests in reading and math last year. Many of them also took statewide tests in science. These tests provide important information to parents about how well their children are doing in school.

However, my research also shows that when parents receive their child’s test score report, they may have a tough time separating the important information from the statistical gibberish.

What’s more, the results might not even give them accurate information about their child’s academic growth.

Is your child ‘proficient’?

The No Child Left Behind law, enacted in 2002, required all states to set “achievement level standards” in reading and math for grades three through eight, and for one grade in high school, typically 10th or 11th grade. States were also required to develop tests to measure students’ level of “proficiency” on each test.

The new federal law passed in December 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), will continue this practice.

As a result, the test reports parents receive classify children into achievement levels such as “basic” or “proficient.” Each state decides what these classifications are called, but at least one category must signify “proficient.”

These achievement level categories are described on the test score reports, and so this information is easily understood by parents. For example, I find it helpful each year to see if my sons reach proficiency in each subject area.

How is student growth being measured?
Student image via www.shutterstock.com

But children’s test scores in a given year, and their achievement level, are not the only information reported in some states. A new statistical index, called a “student growth percentile,” is finding its way into the reports sent home to parents in 11 states. Twenty-seven states use this index for evaluating teachers as well.

Although a measure of students’ “growth” or progress sounds like a good idea, student growth percentiles have yet to be supported by research. In fact several studies suggest they do not provide accurate descriptions of student progress and teacher effectiveness.

What does it mean?

What exactly are “student growth percentiles”?

They are indexes proposed in 2008 by Damian W. Betebenner, a statistician who suggested they be used as a descriptive measure of students’ “academic growth” from one school year to the next. The idea was to describe students’ progress in comparison to their peers.

Like the growth charts pediatricians use to describe children’s height and weight, student growth percentiles range from a low of one to a high of 99. However, their calculation involves a lot more error than physical measurement such as height and weight. Our research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst indicates substantial error in their calculation.

The scores do not actually measure children’s growth.
Children image via www.shutterstock.com

Student growth percentiles are derived from test scores, which are not perfectly accurate descriptions of students’ academic proficiency: Test scores are influenced by many factors, such as the questions asked on a particular day, students’ temperament, their level of engagement when taking the test or just the methods used to score their answers.

Each student’s growth percentile is calculated using at least two different test scores, typically a year or more apart. The most recent test scores of a student are then compared to the most recent test scores of students who had similar scores in previous years. This is to see which of those students had higher or lower scores this year.

The problem, however, is that each of the calculations carries some measurement error. Further calculations only compound that error. So much so that the results end up with twice as much error. No statistical sophistication can erase this error.

The question is, why are so many states using such an unreliable measure?

Using it for accountability

The use of student growth percentiles is due in part to a desire to see how much students learn in a particular year, and to link that progress to accountability systems such as teacher evaluation.

In 2010, the Race-to-the-Top grant competition invited states to come up with innovative ways of using test scores to evaluate teachers, which paved the way for this new measure of “growth” to be quickly applied across many states.

However, the use of student growth percentiles began before research was conducted on their accuracy. Only now is there a sufficient body of research to evaluate them, and all studies point to the same conclusion – they contain a lot of error.

In addition to our research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, research on the accuracy of student growth percentiles has been conducted by education nonprofits such as WestEd, Educational Testing Service and other research institutions. Researchers J.R. Lockwood and Katherine E. Castellano recently concluded that “A substantial research base already notes that student growth percentile estimates for individual students have large errors.”

However, many states seem to be unaware of these research findings. Massachusetts even goes so far as to classify children with growth percentiles less than 40 as “lower growth” and children with growth percentiles greater than 60 as “higher growth.”

Measuring teacher performance

As I mentioned earlier, 27 states are using student growth percentiles to classify teachers as “effective” or “ineffective.” Research on the use of growth percentiles for this purpose indicates they could underestimate the performance of the most effective teachers, and overestimate the performance of the least effective teachers – the exact opposite of what these states are trying to do with their teacher evaluation systems.

These measures are being used for teacher performance as well.
Teacher image via www.shutterstock.com

A recent report by WestEd evaluated the use of student growth percentiles for evaluating teachers and concluded they “did not meet a level of stability” that would be needed for such high-stakes decisions.

Let’s go back to traditional measures

I believe student growth percentiles have taken us a step backwards in the use of educational tests to improve student learning.

Traditional measures of children’s performance on educational tests, such as whether they are “proficient” in a given year and their actual test scores, give a good idea of how well they performed in math or reading in a particular year.

These traditional percentile ranks are still reported on many educational tests, just like they were when we as parents were in school. Traditional percentile ranks compared us to a national or state group in a given year, rather than comparing us to how other kids in the nation or state were “growing” across different tests they took in different years, as student growth percentiles attempt to do.

Given what we now know about student growth percentiles, my advice to parents is not only to ignore them on their children’s test score reports, but also to contact their state department of education and ask why they are reporting such an unreliable statistic.

Developing measures of how much students have learned over the course of a year is a good goal. Unfortunately, student growth percentiles do not do a good job of measuring that.

The Conversation

Stephen Sireci, Professor of Educational Policy, University of Massachusetts Amherst

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

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

Teachers: Make The Internet Work For You

The World Wide Web can be a powerful tool for educators. The Internet is thick with informational resources, sample demonstrations, and primary source sites. You probably use the Internet every day in your personal life, but have you really sat down to consider what the Web could do for you as an educator?

The Internet is the connection among computers connected to various networks around the globe. These connections allow the sharing of information. Many classrooms use the Internet every day, as a communication tool, as a meeting board, and to conduct research. The Internet has the potential to be used for the enhancement of classroom activities. Teachers can create discussion boards online, where students can upload their thoughts and ideas to provide feedback regarding different activities. All the documents used in class can be uploaded to the same system, and the whole class has access to it. Teachers can see how the different groups are developing their activities and even track learning progress for each student.

The Internet is an excellent research tool if used correctly. Teachers and students alike need to know how to determine whether information is reliable and to become aware of issues such as copyright infringement and intellectual property, to ensure that they don’t incur any unnecessary litigation. Developing research skills is an integral part of subjects such as social studies. In general, all the information needed for a specific lesson can’t be found at one source. Knowing how to find different sources of information, and different points of view on the same subject, is an important part of today’s instruction. The Internet can also be used to facilitate foreign language acquisition, with an extensive variety of online resources, including exercises that give immediate feedback on performance results.

Compile a list of websites that you find most informative. Some of the sites can be for your own edification and for purposes of compiling lesson plans, and some of the sites can even be links to pass on to your students for their own perusal. There’s an entire world out there waiting behind a screen – don’t be afraid to go and access it!

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, First Year Teachers, Teachers

What Teachers Really Want From Their Administrators

Ask any teacher why they chose a career in education, and chances are they will tell you that they have a passion for making a difference in students’ lives, and that they want to help their students learn, grow, and develop so they can be successful. You’re probably never going to hear a teacher say that they went into teaching because they wanted to attend meetings, coordinate an endless number of initiatives, and navigate administrative burdens and “office politics.”

Yet all too often in the modern educational environment, a disconnect between teachers and administrators takes hold, creating frustration, discontent, and burnout among even the most passionate and committed teachers. Far too many teachers claim that they feel their administrators are out of touch with the realities of classroom life, and make their lives more difficult rather than serving as inspiring leaders. Certainly this isn’t the case in every school or district, but with so many teachers struggling with their administrators, it only begs the question “What do teachers want from their leaders?”

Whether you are an experienced administrator, are considering earning a degree — learn more about what an Ed.S degree can do — to become an administrator, or are in the process of working on an advanced education degree, keeping the following teacher priorities in mind will help you be a better administrator.

Model Expected Behavior

Many teachers expect their administrators to model the behaviors that they expect from teachers and others within the school. A principal, dean, or other leader is key to establishing the culture of the school, and teachers appreciate those leaders who adopt a “do as I do” approach to leadership, rather than a “do as I say” approach. Typically, this means demonstrating a willingness to listen and really learn about the issues that are affecting both teachers and students, working collaboratively to develop solutions, and creating a positive atmosphere.

admin-2

Empower Teachers

When teachers are empowered, meaning that they have the ability to help determine the school’s goals and policies, and exercise their professional judgement as it relates to what and how to teach and how to manage their classrooms, they tend to have higher levels of morale and productivity. Teachers aren’t looking to be micromanaged or bogged down by endless policies. They want to be recognized as the professionals they are, and given the opportunity to be creative, take some risks, and make decisions based on what’s best for their students and the goals of the school.

Encourage Collaboration

A collaborative environment is proven to be more supportive of empowerment, and teachers want the opportunity to work collaboratively both with each other and with administration. They want a seat at the table, and the ability to be involved in the decisions that affect their daily work.

Protect Teachers’ Time

Professional development, meetings about school issues, discipline discussions, etc., are all important. However, teachers are very busy, and often overwhelmed by the sheer number of responsibilities on their plates. Effective administrators are respectful and protective of teachers’ time, only holding meetings when absolutely necessary (e.g., sharing information via email or memo rather than a meeting) and limiting the number of administrative tasks, such as discipline and school operations-related tasks, that they are asked to take on.

Provide Meaningful Professional Development

Teachers who do little more than stand in front of the class reading a PowerPoint presentation aren’t generally considered effective. Yet all too often, teacher “professional development” is little more than that. Make professional development opportunities more meaningful to teachers by engaging them, allowing for the exchange of ideas, and encouraging discussion. Teachers want to leave feeling inspired, and like they spent their time wisely, so facilitate that as best you can.

These are but a few of the most common requests that teachers make of their administrators, at all grade levels. Above all, though, teachers want administrators to understand the pressures they are under, and the challenges they face in the classroom each and every day. When everyone works together toward that mutual understanding, and teachers are given the voice they desire — and deserve — than everyone’s jobs will become more meaningful and fulfilling, not to mention just a little bit easier.

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