school reform

Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform, Secondary Education, Teachers

Higher Accountability for College Dropout Rates

There are a lot of metrics in place that gauge the effectiveness of P-12 schooling in the U.S. and shine a particularly bright light on public schools, particularly when they are failing students. Dropout rates are just one of the factors taken into account when these numbers are calculated and tend to weigh heavily on the schools and districts who have low percentages. The same does not seem to be true once the high school years pass though. Compared to P-12 institutions, colleges and universities seemingly get a pass when it comes to dropout rates – perhaps because in the past, higher education was considered more of a privilege and less of a right. A college dropout was simply walking away from the assumed higher quality of life that came with the degree, but still had opportunity to excel without it.

That’s not the case anymore. As of 2013, 17.5 million students were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities.  More than ever, colleges and universities have a responsibility to not simply admit students, but ensure they are guided properly to graduation. In other words, institutions of higher education should not be able to just take their student’s money and say “good luck.” They should provide the tools necessary for students to successfully achieve a college education and anticipate the issues that could prevent that.

Authors Ben Miller and Phuong Ly discussed the issue of the U.S. colleges with the worst graduation rates in their book College Dropout Factories. Within the pages, the authors encouraged educators at all levels to acknowledge that colleges and universities should share responsibility for successful or failing graduation rates, and that the institutions with the worst rates should be shut down. Perhaps the most terrifying suggestion in the book (for colleges and universities) was that public institutions with low graduation rates would be subjected to reduced state funding.

The book was written based on findings from Washington Monthly that ranked the U.S. schools with the lowest six-year graduation rates among colleges and universities, including public ones like the University of the District of Columbia (8%), Haskell Indian Nations University (9%), Oglala Lakota College (11%), Texas Southern University (13%) and Chicago State University (13%). These stats were published in 2010 so they are not the most current available but a quick scan of the University of the District Columbia’s official page shows graduation rate numbers through the end of the 2003 – 2004 school year. The past nine years are nowhere to be found. The school boasts 51.2 percent underrepresented minorities in the study body, including 47 percent that are Black – but what good are those numbers if these students are not actually benefitting from their time in college because they receive no degree?

In the case of Chicago State University, the latest statistics show some improvement from the 2010 ones. The six-year graduation rate is up to 21 percent – but the transfer-out rate is nearly 30 percent. The school has 92 percent underrepresented minorities that attend – 86 percent who are black and 70 percent who are female – but again, what good does any of that do if these traditionally disadvantaged students are not graduating?

In all cases of college dropout factories, the P-12 institutions chalk up a victory on their end. They graduated the students and also saw them accepted into a college. What happens after that is between the students and their higher education choices.

This, to me, is a problem. The accountability for student success extends beyond the years that they are in P-12 classrooms. Graduation from high school, and acceptance into college, should never be the final goal of P-12 educators. That is not a victory. That is only halftime.

As far as the colleges and universities are concerned, higher accountability should be demanded from educators, students, parents and really any Americans that want the best economy and highest-educated population. Public institutions, in particular, should be subject to restructuring or take over if dropout rates are too high. The lack of delivery on the college degree dream at many of these schools is appalling, frankly, and has gone on long enough.

What do you think an accountability system for colleges should look like when it comes to dropout rates?

 

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Year-Round Schooling: 3 Common Arguments against It

In my last post, I talked about the reasons I feel that teachers should get behind the push to support year-round schooling and how more consistent time in the classroom will lead to higher student performance, boosting teacher accountability ratings and accommodating a much more streamlined education process. Today I want to look at the common reasons that people are against switching from a summers-off school calendar to a year-round schooling model.

Rising costs

The summer months are typically the highest ones for energy consumption. In fact, the average electricity bill for homeowners in the summer months goes up 4 to 8 percent. The same concept would be true of schools. Having empty classrooms in the summer months means less money going out to air conditioning and prevents other warm-weather costs from hitting school utility budgets. It may seem like a minor point, but an increase in utility bills for one-quarter of the year really could hurt schools’ bottom lines.

Not enough “down time”

Some childhood development experts believe that particularly when it comes to younger students, time off in the summer months is a vital component of healthy development. The argument follows that kids are not designed to spend so much of their time inside classroom walls and that the warmer, pleasant weather of the summer provides a perfect opportunity to get outside and experience childhood. The problem with this argument, of course, is that most children are not spending their summers frolicking in fields of flowers or running around their neighborhoods, hanging out with other kids.

The days of kids spending their summers outside, communing with nature and getting plenty of exercise, are long past. A recent Harvard University study found that school-age children tend to gain weight at a faster pace during the summer months than during the school year, a fact attributed to more time spent in sedentary activities like watching television or using mobile devices instead of being outside or participating in active pursuits. Not only must K-12 students relearn the academic items, but they must also shift their mentalities from less-active, sedentary ones to sharp, alert learning models – and teachers face the brunt of this responsibility.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that by the time children graduate from high school, they will have spent more time watching television than in classrooms. What’s more – children who watch an excessive amount of television generally have lower grades in school, read fewer books and have more health problems. While some children visit summer camps, or attend child care when school is out, others stay at home, inside, with not much else to do than watch TV or play games on electronic devices. This is especially true for kids who are middle-school age or higher and are able to stay home alone when parents work. The “down time” of the summer months is really just empty time, often void of anything academically or developmentally advantageous.

Scheduling adjustments

For parents with children of different ages and in different schools, a year-round schedule could present serious scheduling issues. This argument assumes that schools would actually adhere to different time off schedules – something that seemingly could be adjusted so that all schools within a particular district or geographic area were on the same schedule. There is also the child care debate that says it would be difficult for working parents to find babysitters for one or two weeks at a time every few months, as opposed to three months straight in the summer. Again though, the market adjusts with demand and it seems to me that child care centers and camps would offer programs when students needed them. Just because those programs are not available now does not mean they would not exist when families were willing to pay for them.

The most common arguments against year-round schooling seem like a stretch, at best. They are based on assumptions that are not entirely grounded and reek more of the fear of change than of actual concern.

What arguments against year-round schooling do you hear? What ones do you agree with?

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Education Leadership, Matthew Lynch, Uncategorized

34 Points on Strategic Leadership in Schools

Modern educational leadership is complex and demanding. Challenges include reestablishing novel national visions, crafting new educational aims for schools, restructuring education systems at different levels, privatization, and diversifying school education, all at the macro-level, and being proactive in facing up to these contextual challenges using various strategies. Strategic leadership is strongly linked to the organization’s vision. Here are 34 points about strategic leadership in the school environment to prompt school administrators to action.

Vision is an essential part of strategic leadership. Without it, school staff and personnel aren’t working towards the same goal and therefore will find themselves at odds, slowing progress and impeding success. The following four points are essential for incorporating leadership vision in the school environment.

  1. Outstanding leaders must have a vision for their organizations.
  2. A school’s vision should be communicated in a way that secures commitment from other members of the organization.
  3. Communication of the vision requires communication of its meaning.
  4. Focus should be given to the institutionalizing of the vision if leadership is to be successful.

The development of strategic direction involves a process in which we don’t just look forward from the present, but we also establish a picture of what we want the school to look like in the future and set guidelines and frameworks on how to move forward to that position. As we have seen above, from the conversations with strategic leaders, there must a clear understanding of the direction the school is headed in. What strategic leaders need to do can be summarized by the strategic leadership points 5-8.

  1. Strategic leaders set the direction of the school.
  2. Strategic leaders challenge and question – they are dissatisfied with the present.
  3. Strategic leaders translate strategy into action.
  4. Strategic leaders prioritize their own strategic thinking and learning by building new mental models to frame their understanding and that of others.

One key characteristic of strategic leaders is their ability to envision the different ways their organization might perform in future. They always have a desire to challenge the status quo and improve for the future. This means that strategic leaders have to deal constantly with their dissatisfaction with present arrangements, while facing the challenge that they are not able to change things as quickly as they might want. Leaders, as change agents in their organizations, constantly ask questions such as:

  1. What are the things taught that have been clearly successful or unsuccessful in the past?
  2. What accounted for the success or failure?
  3. What do we need to do differently in the future?
  4. Which relationships between the school and students, parents, or the wider community have been successful or unsuccessful, and why?
  5. What can be done to change things for the better?
  6. How can we assess what we do to challenge the current understanding and operations?
  7. As a school, are we cruising and strolling or are we challenging and creating?

Wisdom in the context of strategic leadership is defined as the ability to take the right action at the right time. Strategic leaders need this kind of wisdom to successful foster school growth. Here are ten abilities that are central to using wisdom in strategic leadership.

  1. Creative ability to come up with ideas
  2. Analytical ability to decide whether the ideas are good.
  3. Practical ability to make their ideas functional and convince their followers that their ideas are valuable.
  4. To balance the impact of the ideas on themselves, others, and their institutions in the short and long run.
  5. Successful intelligence to adapt to varying situations and challenges.
  6. To balance the interests of various stakeholders in the school setting.
  7. To balance timeframes in a way that allows for optimal work to get done.
  8. To infuse values in a mindful way throughout the school environment.
  9. To align responses to the environment appropriately.
  10. To apply knowledge for the common good.

Strategic leadership is a powerful tool for school reform. These final nine points regarding strategic leadership deal with school reform, and specifically how administrators can create meaningful change within their school environment.

  1. Strategic leaders have a vision of the reformed system and how to achieve it.
  2. Strategic leaders create a broad understanding and support for the reform vision at the highest levels.
  3. Strategic leaders bring commitment of school and district leadership to the reform vision and its implementation.
  4. Strategic leaders rely on the use of interventions to translate the reform vision into practice.
  5. Strategic leaders recognize that, for reform to be achieved, one has to start small, refine activities as needed, and provide evidence that interventions lead to desired outcomes.
  6. Strategic leaders develop system capability and capacity to scale up reform with quality.
  7. Strategic leaders enhance and facilitate development of formal policies that provide guidance and incentives for reform.
  8. Strategic leaders avoid controversy.
  9. Strategic leaders develop capabilities for the next generation of reform leaders.

Strategic leadership consists not only of the vision element in leadership ability, but also encompasses other wide-ranging factors. The question thus remains how we can develop a coherent model that informs us about what strategic leadership truly entails. These 34 points offer administrators a powerful place to start exploring strategic leadership, or to deepen their practice of it in an effort to continue to improve their school’s ability to success.

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Secondary Education

What if K-12 Education Were More Like Preschool?

By Chris Thinnes

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, after all, if high school students were as deeply absorbed in their ‘work’ as five-year-olds are in their play? – Deborah Meier

The other day, a colleague and I preparing for a conference workshop gave ourselves some time to ask ourselves a number of the 30,000-foot questions we rarely take the time to ask. I found myself fascinated by how rarely in our national dialogue about K-12 school reform – dominated by a myopic, nostalgic, and restrictive construct of “college readiness” entrenched by federal education policy and public education debate — we ever dare to pose critical questions about learning theory or teaching practice in college settings; just what K-12 schools are preparing children to accomplish in college; just what colleges are doing to attend to the demonstrated learning needs of their students; or exactly what relevance much of college learning brings to bear either on the developmental needs of young adults enrolled in college, their discovery of joy and purpose, or their fitness for engagement in a democratic society.

Instead, we tend to wed ourselves to sweeping assumptions about the nature and propriety of college-level academic readiness, uncritically accept the principles embedded in it, and plan backwards from that unexamined construct of ‘college readiness’ in all the grade levels that precede it. K-12 education has become as a result, in the public imagination and in many of our schools, an elaborate dress rehearsal for a show that might not, at the end of the day, be particularly well-conceived, written, directed, or produced. But who can tell for sure?

In the shadow of national anxiety about ‘college readiness’ — in which many of us spend our time assessing how well our K-12 schools prepare children for college learning by determining how much their current learning resembles it – I have long found Deborah Meier’s account of the formation of the Central Park East schools a dynamically different challenge and welcome inspiration. When I first landed on these lines from The Power of Their Ideas a few years back, for example, something changed forever in the way I think about teaching and learning:

Just as our elementary school was based on the idea of keeping the traditions of kindergarten going through the sixth grade, so for our secondary school we largely imagined our task as keeping the spirit of kindergarten going for a few more years. I do not mean this to sound condescending or belittling. I see the spirit I’m referring to as fundamental to all good education; wouldn’t it be wonderful, after all, if high school students were as deeply absorbed in their “work” as five-year-olds are in their “play”? (p. 47)

Meier concedes that “I speak here of an old-fashioned kindergarten, one that doesn’t look like first grade” (48), and from that – as well as the increasing and regrettable insistence in recent decades that kindergartens should look more like first grade — I have taken license to ask some of the same questions about preschool and the influence it could bring to bear on older students’ learning.

In the last several weeks I’ve been spending some of my time with kindergarten and 1st grade teachers at a progressive elementary school, helping them explore together how documentation practices and collaborative inquiry protocols, adapted from the Reggio preschool model, can deepen their learning, teaching, and professional collaboration. On other days, I’ve been spending time at an extraordinary Reggio-inspired preschool – observing highly skilled teachers in practice, and participating in shared inquiry and reflection after hours – to learn how such practices are implemented among younger learners still. In off hours, I find myself – as someone who has long been preoccupied by the work of Project Zero in collaboration with leaders of the Reggio Schools since I first stumbled upon Making Learning Visible — continually thinking about how elementary, middle, and high school teaching and learning could be deepened by an explicit understanding, appreciation, and extension of practices in early learning. And in my continued research, I’ve been thinking about the ways these practices represent a dramatically more authentic and effective alternative – in their acuity, their intentionality, their integrity, and their transparency – to many of the problematic notions embedded in current constructs of ‘accountability.’

All the while, I find myself remembering the way that Deborah Meier framed both a construct of early learning, the immense power it brings to bear on our conceptualization of older students’ learning, and the remarkable prospects these principles invite in K-12 schools in a time of transformative change: not only the prospect of more engaged, joyful, and purposeful learning, and not only the prospect of more inclusive, democratic, and devoted learning communities, but also the promise of deeper, richer learning and the extraordinary academic achievement that — ironically, perhaps — inevitably emerges from it. For these reasons I wanted to share an extended passage from The Power of Their Ideas to invite your reflection:

Kindergarten is the one place— maybe the last place— where teachers are expected to know children well, even if they don’t hand in their homework, finish their Friday tests, or pay attention. Kindergarten teachers know children by listening and looking. They know that learning must be personalized because kids are incorrigibly idiosyncratic… Kindergarten teachers know that helping children learn to become more self-reliant is part of their task—starting with tying shoes and going to the bathroom. Catering to children’s growing independence is a natural part of a kindergarten teacher’s classroom life.

This is, alas, the last time children are given independence, encouraged to make choices, and allowed to move about on their own steam. The older they get the less we take into account the importance of children’s own interests, and the less we cherish their capacity for engaging in imaginative play. (In fact, we worry in kindergarten if children lack such capacity, while later on we worry if they show it too much.) In kindergarten we design our rooms for real work, not just passive listening. We put things in the room that will appeal to children, grab their interests, and engage their minds and hearts. Teachers in kindergarten are editors, critics, cheerleaders, and caretakers, not just lecturers or deliverers of instruction. What Ted Sizer calls “coaching” is second nature in the kindergarten classroom.

A good school for anyone is a little like kindergarten and a little like a good post-graduate program— the two ends of the educational spectrum, at which we understand that we cannot treat any two human beings identically, but must take into account their special interests and styles even as we hold all to high and rigorous standards…. We don’t need research on this astounding proposition. (pp. 48-49)

Many of the moments that have particularly captivated me in recent weeks have emerged from intentional dialogue with teachers about the relational elements of children’s learning: purposeful efforts by educators to learn more about individual children’s unique needs and challenges in the context of our relationships with them, and equally purposeful observation and interpretation of children’s dispositions and behavior in their relationships with each other. This makes me wonder—among many other things—just how much we’ve sacrificed in supporting students’ learning, to say nothing of the fullness of their and our humanity, to the altar of academic ‘excellence’ as it’s conventionally constructed, and the slippery signifier of ‘college readiness’ as it currently dominates debate about school reform.

I hope to explore emerging and related questions more in the weeks and months to come. For now, my primary purpose was to share this compelling passage from Meier’s work and to invite your thoughts.

What do we know about children that we have neglected to honor in our commitments to traditional notions of academic excellence? What parts of this collective knowledge must we recapture and reintegrate? How might we draw on early learning practices to enrich students’ social, academic, and ethical development in K-12 schools in the years to come?

What if K-12 education were more like preschool?

Reference:

Meier, D. (2002). The power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem. New York: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1995)

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Chris Thinnes is a veteran independent school leader, an active collaborator with educators from the private and public sectors, and an engaged public school parent. In the 2013-2014 school year, he was honored as a Fellow of the Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence, named one of Carney Sandoe’s “8 Thought Leaders to Follow Now,” and featured as a panelist for the ASCD Whole Child Town Hall.

This post originally appeared on chris.thinnes.me and was republished with permission.

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Waivers, Blueprints and Reform: The Future of Educational Policy

Kids are taught from infancy that every person is special – that each child has his or her own talents and strengths to bring the world. Yet K-12 education policies tell a very different story by implementing blanket assessments and declarations that do not take the individuality of learning into account. How can today’s students be expected to recognize their strengths when they are all treated as one collective group by educators and policy makers?

Reforming NCLB. The Obama administration has made it perfectly clear that plans to redesign the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act because it has “reinforced the wrong behaviors in attempting to strengthen public education.” The current version of the law, No Child Left Behind, is already five years past its reauthorization date and the Obama camp believes that the “pass-fail, one-size-fits-all” mandates deter full learning potentials by punishing students and schools that miss their goals. Any spirited argument of NCLB has those who enthusiastically agree, or vehemently disagree, with the President. What is not up for debate is that NCLB is outdated and does not adequately meet the needs of the American K-12 student population.

In 2010, the administration proposed a Blueprint for Reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that addressed the problems with NCLB and also made recommendations for closing the achievement gap. There has been no official move by Congress to modify and authorize NCLB, so the administration has moved forward with a system of granting waivers to states, and even individual districts, that can come up with a better plan for addressing their own weaknesses in teaching and learning outcomes. NCLB has provisions that allow exactly what the President and his education advisors have done in the way of waivers, making it possible for schools to take control of their learning experiences to meet the needs of their unique student bodies.

A look at NCLB waivers. In 2011, President Obama said that his administration would grant NCLB waivers to specific states that provided rigorous plans to benefit K-12 learning in their communities. As of last week, all but nine U.S. states have been approved for these waivers, along with the District of Columbia and some districts in California. Many of the districts that have been approved for ESEA flexibility have a heightened teacher evaluation system in place that is meant to override Obama’s goal of 100 percent student proficiency in math and reading by 2014.

Just this month eight individual California school districts were granted waivers with the idea that each one would create customized plans that take local influences into account. The eight districts banded together when the state of California decided against requesting ESEA flexibility for this school year. Each NCLB waiver is different. For example, the Colorado Department of Education was approved for a waiver of the 14-day notice requirement to inform parents of public school choice in 2009, while in the same year Hawaii was given a one-year waiver of the requirement to spend 20 percent of its fiscal yearly spending on choice-related transportation.

In the Colorado waiver documentation, the state agreed to still provide public school choice notices to improvement districts. In Hawaii’s application, the governing educational bodies of the state agreed to use the funds released by the waiver to fund specific student needs based on data. In all of the waiver requests, states were required to carefully craft their requests and provide a reasonable alternative. The idea of individual states and districts asking for control over their student directives when it comes to achievement is a smart one that makes up for some of the flaws of NCLB. Every student population is different so one federal mandate regarding assessment can never work for every district, school or student. Even with the NCLB waivers, individual K-12 students are grouped together but at least the waiver makes specificity of assessment and teaching a little bit more possible.

Future of educational policy. Waivers are a step in the right direction when it comes to policy reform simply because they give states and districts a voice in the teaching, learning and assessments processes. Even a complete overhaul of NCLB would mean applying monotonous standards to a diverse K-12 student population, assuming that it included federal mandates again. Giving more power to individual districts, right down to specific schools, is really the right way to address the needs of custom student bodies. But would accountability suffer if there were less demands from the top?

What should be included in educational policy reform to truly benefit the next generation of K-12 students?

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

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Matthew Lynch published in list, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform, Year-Round Schooling

Top 3 Reasons the US Should Switch to Year-Round Schooling

The traditional school year, with roughly three months of vacation days every summer, was first implemented when America was an agricultural society. Learning to read, write, and perform basic arithmetic in classrooms was simply not as important as keeping up family farms and building the nation. The summer months were needed exclusively for farm work.

Since then, we have completely changed as a nation—today, the majority of U.S. K-12 students aren’t spending summers off tilling fields or harvesting crops. However, the idea of summers off from school is alive and well. The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research finds that the average American student receives 13 weeks off of school each calendar year – with 10 or 11 of those coming consecutively during the summer. Barely any other countries have more than seven weeks off in a school calendar. Only around 10 percent of U.S. schools currently use a year-round school calendar with shorter breaks inserted throughout the year.

With the US lagging behind countries such as Korea in terms of academic performance, it may be time to consider drastic changes to our public school system. Year-round schooling might just be a solution—and surprisingly, it could even be one that students will enjoy. Here’s why:

  1. Students will actually remember what they learn.

Year-round schooling means that students do not fall victim to the “summer slide,” or the well-documented phenomenon where students unlearn some of the knowledge they worked so hard to attain when too much consecutive time is taken off from school.

A study released in 2007 by The Ohio State University found that there are really no differences in learning between students who attend school year round and those who are on a traditional schedule. However, the National Summer Learning Association often cites decades of research that shows that it can take anywhere from 8 to 13 weeks at the beginning of every school year for teachers to get their students back up to speed and ready to learn the new grade’s material.

Either way, when it comes to learning and retention, students who attend year-round schools have nothing to lose and much to gain.

  1. It’s an easy way to bridge the achievement gap.

Minority students, students who speak English as a second language, economically disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities are the most affected by the summer fallback. Studies have found that disadvantaged students lose about 27 percent more of their learning gains in the summer months than their peers.

If that is not enough to affirm the need for year-round schooling for minorities, researcher Daniel O’Brien concluded that minority students progress their learning proficiency the fastest during the school year when compared to white and economically advantaged students.

Furthermore, Anna Habash of Education Trust, a nonprofit that works with schools to better serve their student populations, says that for minorities, a year-round school schedule does more than help academically. In an interview with Education News, Habash said that schools with high numbers of poverty and minority students benefit greatly from year-round schooling because it keep students “on task” and leads to more “meaningful instruction” when there are not a lot of academically sound options at home.

Minorities also drop out of high school at rates that are higher than their white counterparts. According to Jessica Washington of Politic365, the solution is year-round schooling. She reports that the national dropout rate is 5 percent, while the dropout rate for year-round school students is just 2 percent. These dropout statistics are not broken down by racial or socioeconomic backgrounds, but if the overall dropout rate is lower for year-round schools, it is likely that the minority dropout rates in this model are also lower. The reasons why dropout rates are lower in year-round setups are easy to deduce: students have less time to adjust to time off from school, and in the case of high schoolers, they have less time to work.

While this inability for teenagers to work and make money in the summer has been cited as a pitfall of year-round schooling, the disadvantages of this are short-lived. High school graduates earn $11,000 more per year than those with a G.E.D. or less, and that number rises to $36,000 more with a bachelor’s degree. Giving up a few summers of minimum wage work in exchange for the higher lifetime earnings a high school diploma affords is a small price to pay.

  1. Students will actually like school.

Students will do more than just learn better in a year-round school.

Teachers and students experience a closer relationship in year-round schools than they do in traditional, shorter-calendar-year schools. In the absence of any long-term break from school, students do not feel detached from the school environment.

The experience of immersion in learning offered by year-round schools, with more time spent in classrooms, proves to be beneficial to many students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in particular, including those for whom English is a second language. Many second language learners who have difficulty mastering English benefit from the opportunity to immerse themselves in English during intersession classes. They also develop better relationships with other students.

Results from research studies show that students in year-round schools are more self-confident, have a higher self-concept, have fewer inhibitions, and feel positive about their schooling experience.

But what about down time? Don’t children need time to just “be kids”?

Some childhood development experts believe that for younger students, time off in the summer months is vital to healthy development. They believe that kids are not designed to spend so much of their time inside classroom walls and that the warmer, pleasant weather of the summer provides a perfect opportunity to get outside and experience childhood. The problem with this argument, of course, is that most children are no longer spending their summers frolicking in fields of flowers or running around their neighborhoods, hanging out with other kids.

A recent Harvard University study found that school-age children tend to gain weight at a faster pace during the summer months than during the school year. Children today spend more time in sedentary activities like watching television or using mobile devices instead of playing outside or participating in active pursuits. Not only must K-12 students relearn the academic items, but they must also shift their mentalities from less-active, sedentary ones to sharp, alert learning models.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that by the time children graduate from high school, they will have spent more time watching television than in classrooms. What’s more – children who watch an excessive amount of television generally have lower grades in school, read fewer books and have more health problems. While some children visit summer camps, or attend child care when school is out, others stay at home, inside, with not much else to do than watch TV or play games on electronic devices. This is especially true for kids who are middle-school age or higher and are able to stay home alone when parents work. The “down time” of the summer months is really just empty time, often void of anything academically or developmentally advantageous.

As the US establishes itself as a knowledge and innovation-based economy, the usefulness of a traditional school year diminishes. There are many reasons changing from our traditional school year to year-round schooling makes sense. As with any adjustments, making the switch would not be easy. However, with all its advantages, it is certainly worth considering.

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

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Matthew Lynch published in International Education, Teachers

Schools are struggling to recruit teachers, survey finds

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post from VoicED

A recent survey, published by the National Association of Head Teachers, has discovered that approximately 64 per cent of schools leaders are findings recruitment for teachers difficult, especially in core subjects such as English and maths.

The survey also uncovered that around 1 in 3 school leaders felt that newly qualified teachers (NQTs), working at their school, were not prepared for the classroom, with reports of NQTs finding controlling classes hard, as well as not being knowledgeable enough in some subjects.

The findings come at a time of increasing concern about the crisis in hiring and retaining school staff.

Of the 1,000 members of the National Association of Head Teachers surveyed, 61.8 per cent claimed that they had faced difficulty finding senior teachers, on the upper pay scale.

40.5 per cent claimed that a lack of talent was the main factor in struggling to recruit teachers, whilst 41.4 per cent said that the main reason was the low quality candidates applying for their positions.

When looking at which subjects are hard to recruit for, the survey found that 40 per cent of the head teachers in the survey were finding it hard to recruit maths teachers, whilst 32 per cent were finding recruiting for English teachers hard.

The survey also discovered that around 33 per cent considered the NQTs at their school to be unprepared for working at a school. Of the 33 per cent who said this, 73 per cent said that this was due to them not being able to manage a classroom.

Also, 58 per cent said that it was because the NQTs lacked subject knowledge and 56 per cent said that it was because they did not understand teaching, learning and child development enough.

53 per cent said that the NQTs were not able to analyse and use data and 50 per cent said that they were not good enough at lesson planning.

Louis Coiffait of the National Association of Head Teachers said of the survey findings:

“It’s time to be frank; we’re facing a recruitment crisis at all stages of the education system. Until we address it at each of those stages, there’s no chance that we’ll have the quantity or quality of head teachers we need in the future.”

The findings were released just a fortnight after a teaching union warned that 2 in 5 teachers are not in the classroom a year of qualifying.

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The VoicED Community is a place for education professionals to share their opinions about topics spanning the entirety of the education sphere – from the curriculum to new resources, and from remuneration to SEN support. This piece originally published on VoicED.org.uk and is republished here with permission.

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, list, Matthew Lynch

3 Reasons Students Don’t Play More Games in the Classroom

Children are becoming acutely acquainted with mobile technology long before their K-12 classroom years. When they arrive at their first organized school experiences, they are often already savvy on basic computers and mobile devices. If their parents used this technology correctly, these kids have had at least some exposure to phonics and math through learning websites, downloads and other applications.

With these new developments, you would expect that children would continue to learn in this fun and easy way—but this is not the case. Research suggests that once these young learners enter a classroom, however, learning through tech “games” disappears. Families may still choose to buy the apps and use them at home but schools are slow to bring gamification of education into their classrooms.

A report by the market research group Ambient Insight found that edtech in the forms of learning games is not making its way into classrooms. Instead of educators making learning game purchases, marketers target parents because they are the ones who buy them. The North American edtech market is expected to grow over 15 percent in the next half-decade but company leaders have candidly said that they will focus marketing efforts on parents, not schools. To paraphrase, targeting schools is simply a waste of time.

So why are games developed for young learners having such a difficult time entering classrooms? Let’s take a look at a few reasons why.

  1. It’s always about the money. Money is a factor and it impacts more than the purchase of the games or applications themselves. K-12 schools are still in the process of creating mobile technology policies and finding the money in their budgets to fund these initiatives. There are also issues of slow internet speeds and low bandwidths that prevent too many students from flooding the network at once. If teachers do not have the right technology in their classrooms, they cannot purchase the games to enhance lessons.
  2. Regulations are another issue when it comes to the quick implementation of learning technology, including games. There seems to be a distrust of games, and in some cases of technology in general, and their place in the classroom setting. By the time teachers can prove the worth of the games they want to use, another game is available with more bells and whistles. For-profit companies that develop these learning games have no hoops to jump through with parents but the same cannot be said of schools.
  3. Too much screen time rots your brain…or at least that is the prevailing belief. Researchers have actually found benefits of these games for young minds. In her paper “Children’s Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development,” Cheryl Olson found that games, even non-educational ones, improve decision-making and encourage self-expression in children. If there is an educational feature, children absorb the knowledge while finely tuning motor and strategic skills.

It stands to reason then that children with access to gaming technology at home are at an advantage. If there was no educational gaming at home AND no educational gaming at school, it would be a different story. Instead, parents that can afford the vehicles for the technology and the games themselves are able to better prepare children for the classroom and academic success – furthering a socio-economic achievement gap. Through educational technology that is readily available to consumers, the advantaged become more so and the disadvantaged fall farther behind.

For all students to benefit from edtech initiatives, schools need to find the funding for better technology suites and cut through red tape more quickly. Otherwise the educational opportunities presented through gaming will never be fully realized and the students will suffer.

Have you found ways to incorporate edtech, particularly when it comes to gaming, into your classroom?

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

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Matthew Lynch

Keeping Public School Libraries Relevant

Public school libraries have always served an admirable purpose in education. In an indirect way, K-12 libraries have given students support in learning endeavors and been a go-to spot for information. With that being said, as the first Internet-generation rises through the public school ranks, libraries need big changes to remain relevant. It is not enough to simply “be there;” school libraries need to reach out to students and pull them in with helpful resources that combine traditional and contemporary theories in literacy.

Many school libraries are already making strides to capture and maintain the interest of students, while others seem to always be trailing just a few steps behind. Programs like the YOUmedia initiative housed at Chicago’s Harold Washington Library incorporate student-led publishing, music as a form of literacy and encouragement in academic pursuits to keep K-12 kids interested in what the library can do for them. Though YOUmedia does not take place in a public school, the open access to urban students and push towards literacy through technology are applicable to school settings.

For public school libraries to keep up with student need, and grab the ever-divided attention of these youth, a blend of traditional and contemporary philosophy needs to take place. The most vital include:

Traditional:

Unbiased, and unlimited, access to information. This is at the core of every K-12 library’s purpose. All students have a level playing field when it comes to obtaining information and learning.

Catalyst for social change. In their own quiet ways, school libraries have provided progressive thought through the materials they have provided over the years. Long before Internet search engines reigned supreme, students were able to research what they wanted in private, without fear of retaliation. Providing access to a wide variety of information has made school libraries an important piece in forward thinking.

Safe oasis. School libraries have always afforded students a quiet, safe place for extracurricular meetings and studies. They have also given teachers a place to escape or quietly prepare for classes without unnecessary distractions. Students and teachers do not have to answer for themselves in a library setting, but can take some quiet time to get ready for what comes next.

Community space. Most school libraries have several areas that can serve numerous purposes. Extracurricular clubs, planning committees or just friends who want to study together can meet in school libraries and have the space needed to accomplish tasks.

Contemporary:

Digital access. Instead of blocking websites or banning mobile devices from within library walls, schools should be finding ways to take part in the digital side of students’ lives. This goes beyond e-book offerings and extends to things like mobile apps and permission-based email reminders of upcoming school library events.

Remote access. Students should have the ability to tap into school library resources off campus. The most basic necessity is an online card catalogue that is browser-based so students can look for what they need any time of day and from any location. Remote access may also mean digitizing archival photos and documents so students can access them from home and use the information in reports and other assignments. There is certainly something to be said of visiting the physical library for learning purposes, but without instant, remote options, students will bypass any help the school library provides in favor of a more convenient route.

Life skills development. Libraries should not simply hand out books, but should take a vested interest in what the information contained means for long-term student success. School libraries should not just act as a support system to other life skills initiatives, but should create their own opportunities to guide students.

Live events. A great way to earn the attention of contemporary students is to engage them in literacy in a live, personal way. This might mean inviting an author for a book reading or bringing in a local celebrity to discuss a book or media trend. School library staff should not be intimidated by geography; technology has made it possible to host these live events via Skype or other video software.

Libraries of the Future:

Experts agree that a blend of foundational values and access through technology are paramount to school library success. Library expert Doug Johnson says that all libraries have three primary responsibilities in the coming decade: providing “high touch environments in a high tech world;” offering virtual services; and standing ground as uber information hubs. Rolf Erikson is the author of Designing a School Library Media Center for the Future and he says that he is very “wary” of tradition because he feels it has kept administrators and library faculty from embracing innovation in the past. He believes that especially at the elementary school level, future libraries need to look beyond mere text materials to provide a learning space, not simply a “warehouse space.”

The Associate University Librarian for Research and Instruction at Temple University, Steven J. Bell, has written extensively on the topic of libraries of the future in higher education and K-12 institutions. He predicts that libraries of the future will have highly automated and mobile reference sections, on-demand collections and entrepreneurial librarians unafraid to learn new technology and implement cutting-edge ideas. Like Johnson and Erikson, Bell is optimistic for the role school libraries will play in K-12 education if decision-makers are willing to break out of the traditional rut.

For school library relevancy to remain strong, librarians and media faculty need not view tradition and technology as isolated ideas. There is really no reason why school libraries should fear competing sources of information. With the right adjustments, K-12 libraries can work alongside the rest of the data students access on a daily basis. Remaining relevant is simply a matter of carrying foundational ideals forward and adapting to an ever-changing information culture.

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

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Diversity, Equity, list, Matthew Lynch

Top 3 Little-Considered Issues Related to Student Diversity

Schools and colleges tout the buzz word “diversity” when talking about their ideal student populations, but ideals and reality do not always add up. Diversity is more than filling a quota, or having a certain number of students from an under-represented minority group in your classroom.

There are many issues to address that will help improve our education system in a manner that celebrates the diversity in this country. Here are three issues related to diversity that you might not even have thought about.

  1. Native Americans are falling through the cracks when it comes to education. Obama wants to dedicate $1 billion to changing this.

Young people in Indian Country are some of the most at-risk in the United States. Many grow up in communities suffering from poverty, unemployment and substance abuse. More than one-fifth of Native Americans over 25 years of age never earned a high school diploma. Of those who attend college, only 39 percent earn a bachelor’s degree within six years.

Administrative officials said the President was inspired to increase funds to better serve this population partially as a result of last year’s visit to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. He and the First Lady traveled to North Dakota and met with young people who shared how drugs, violence and poverty impacted their lives.

President Obama’s budget request includes $1 billion for American Indian schools next year, with millions of those dollars dedicated to restoring crumbling buildings and connecting classrooms via broadband Internet.

The federal government reports that around one-third of Bureau of Indian Education schools were in poor condition last year. This has forced students to learn in classrooms that fail to meet health and safety standards.

I can only imagine the impact $1 billion would make on the Native American community, one that is in such dire need of resources. Students do not deserve to have roofs caving in on them — they deserve to attend school and get an education in dramatically better conditions.

  1. There is a gender gap in colleges now—and the imbalance works against men.

If you have been following education hot button issues for any length of time, you’ve likely read about the nationwide push to better encourage girls in areas like science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The thought is that by showing young women that these topics are just as appropriate for them as their male peers, more women will find lasting careers in these traditionally male-dominated fields.

I’m all for more women in the STEM workplace but with all this focus in one area, are educators neglecting an even larger gender gap issue?

Nationally, over 57 percent of college attendees are female when public and private school stats are combined. Females have been consistently edging ahead of their male classmates since the late 1970s when the percentages flip-flopped. Aside from all-female schools, there are others that have marked disproportionate numbers. Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena has nearly 96 percent females in attendance, and the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center in Memphis has over 93 percent.

There are a few reasons why more young women than men are choosing a college education. The first is that there are more trades that do not require a college degree that appeal to men. The second is that economically speaking, women earn a better living with a college degree than without one in comparison to men. Though there is still a wage gap (in 2012, women earned just 80.9 percent of the salaries of their male counterparts), women see the value their earning potential can gain from achieving a college diploma.

I hear people asking this question all the time: What are K-12 educators doing wrong when it comes to preparing young women for STEM careers? It’s a valid one.

But based on the statistics I’ve listed here, shouldn’t we also be asking this question: What are K-12 educators doing when it comes to preparing young men for a college education?

It all comes down to the weight we assign to the worth of a college education. If a diploma is simply a way to earn more money over a lifetime, then perhaps men are doing the intelligent thing by launching into the workforce early and without student loan debt. That logic is flawed, however, when taking into account the fact that blue-collar jobs are declining in favor of white-collar ones. A young man making a lifelong career decision today simply cannot predict what educational demands will be placed on his field in another 10, 20 or 30 years.

Money aside, there are other pitfalls in a disproportionate number of men going to college. Statistics show that marriages where the couples have differing education levels more often end in divorce than couples with the same educational achievements. And even before divorce is an option, women who set college educational goals may not want to settle for men with less motivation – at least when it comes to academics. If this trend continues, social dynamics may be impacted.

  1. Even as student bodies are becoming more diverse, college faculty remains homogenous.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, just 16 percent of full-time professors at post-secondary institutions are minorities. That means that 84 percent of those in full-time professorships are white. 60 percent are men and 25 percent are white women.

Those numbers decrease slightly with faculty. 79 percent of the “instructional faculty” within this nation’s colleges and universities are white and just six percent are black.

Considering the hiring boom that many schools have experienced since the start of the 1990’s, it’s mildly surprising that not many minorities were included in that growth.

“The Condition of Education: Characteristics of Post-secondary Faculty” shows that there was a 42 percent increase in the number of instructional faculty hired from 1991-2011. During that 20 year period, not many institutions hired minorities to fill their vacant positions.

What’s striking is the gross under-representation of minority professors at America’s higher education schools. While many may be concentrated within Historically Black Colleges and Universities or schools who have a high number of black students, that percentage makes barely a dent in the overall number of black, Asian, Hispanic, and American indigenous who may teach at America’s best schools of higher learning.

While the government is rightly focused on college affordability, we should slightly turn our attention towards why many colleges and universities fail to hire minorities for faculty and professorship positions.

What do you think? Do you think we need to expand our focus on what diversity is and re-think the initiatives we use to increase it?

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

 

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