Dangerously Irrelevant

You can tell a lot about an organization’s priorities from its policy advocacy goals. Below are the national policy priorities for America’s four main national school leadership associations (NAESP, NASSP, AASA, and NSBA) and two primary national teacher associations (NEA and AFT). I’ve also thrown in ASCD just for fun. Take a look at what they say is important to them (i.e., what’s worth fighting for with legislators and policymakers).

Notice the glaring absence of attention to technology-related issues. Other than some advocacy for E-Rate, there’s not much there. ASCD wins my vote for doing the best with this through its advocacy work on “educating students in a changing world.”

What are the implications for integration and implementation of digital technologies into P-12 schools when most of the national school administrator and teacher associations rank this issue low on their list of policy priorities?

1. National Association of Elementary School Principals

2. National Association of Secondary School Principals

3. American Association of School Administrators (superintendents / central office)
(see also AASA’s 2010 Legislative Agenda)

4. National School Boards Association

5. National Education Association

6. American Federation of Teachers

7. ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

[I’m going to state up front that I’m just thinking out loud here. Some of you are not going to like that I even dared to ask this.]

Diane Ravitch: eminent educational historian, former United States Assistant Secretary of Education, New York University professor, and policy-influencer.

Diane Ravitch: author of The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, by far the sharpest analysis of P-12 textbooks and curricula that I’ve ever read.

Diane Ravitch: former proponent of the No Child Left Behind Act, standardized testing, charter schools, and market-based school reform.

Diane Ravitch: current critic of the No Child Left Behind Act, standardized testing, charter schools, and market-based school reform (in her most recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education).

—-

With publication of her new book, many are hailing Dr. Ravitch as one of public education’s great heroes and advocates. I confess that I’m struggling with this. She’s done nearly a complete 180, reversing her position on numerous policy fronts. What she now condemns are issues for which she not only advocated but helped implement during her tenure at the United States Department of Education. And now she thinks they’re all bad.

Should she get a free pass? Should past critics absolve her of her earlier decision-making?

After all, many believe that, thanks to her and others, the negative impacts on students and schools have been substantial, resulting in significant long-term harm to our educational system and society.

After all, it wasn’t like the reasons that she cites now for her reversal weren’t raised as red flags back then. Take a look at the past writings of Alfie Kohn, Susan Ohanian, and others. All of the criticisms that she raises now were cited long ago, at the time of her decision-making.

And so I ask…

What should we do with Diane Ravitch? Welcome her back into the fold of public education advocates? Do we just say, “Oh, hey, glad you now see the light. Thanks for joining us!” Or do we continue to condemn her for past actions, believing that current contrition is not enough?

Your thoughts on this?

My goal for June: 30 days, 30 book reviews. This post is a review of Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling by Rick Hess. My short recommendation? I believe that this is a book that will substantially stretch educators and policymakers and should be required reading for any university educational leadership program’s education policy course.

What I liked about the book

Hess’ essential premise is that we need more innovation and entrepreneurship in K-12 schooling. He believes that the “greatest challenge for teaching and learning is the creaky, rule-bound system in which they unfold” (p. 3) and that school organizations are “so hobbled [by various legacy characteristics] that even sensible efforts will fall short” (p. 3). He advocates for a greenfield approach to schooling, one that clears the ground for innovation and allows reform efforts to proceed unhindered by restrictive policies, mindsets, and other constraints.

This is not just a book about school choice. As Hess notes, greenfield approaches to schooling require “that choice be coupled with opportunities for entrepreneurs to enter the field, obtain resources, recruit talent, try new approaches, develop new products, compete fairly, and benefit from their successes. . . . [We] have paid little attention to the development of the infrastructure, quality control, and policy environment needed to turn school choice plans into greenfield” (p. 33).

In Chapter 2, Hess identifies four tasks that are crucial to greenfield educational reform: “removing obstacles, ensuring quality, and supplying both talent and financial resources” (p. 41). He then describes in detail in Chapters 3 through 6 the issues, the challenges, and some potential solutions in each of those four areas. Unfortunately, as Hess notes, “for all their virtues, [American] schools … are not noted for their embrace of creative problem solvers” (p. 1) and that “the vast majority of superintendents [and principals] have learned to regard precedent-breaking action as risky and conflict as something to be avoided” (p. 61).

I liked Hess’ recognition that we tolerate wide discrepancies in outcomes when it comes to public education but not when it comes to for-profit educational services. For example, he says that “in education, we … are much more squeamish about [for-profit] approaches that may yield uneven quality (even if we quietly tolerate massive mediocrity and unevenness among existing school districts)” (p. 85). I think that’s an important point worth emphasizing. We are so afraid that for-profit solutions will cause harm to students. Of course some will. They already do, and we should work to prevent those from happening as much as we can. But the same is true for public education. We shouldn’t stifle opportunities for innovation for some perceived notion of educational quality that, in reality, is also variable in the public sector. Instead, as he advocates, we need better oversight and better mechanisms for accountabilty, ones that go far beyond - and are more robust and complex than - the simplistic bubble-sheet accountability measures that we have now.

Key quotes

We routinely look at new learning tools and ask only how they might be used to improve traditional classrooms rather than how they might revolutionize schooling. . . . Technology is not a way to augment yesterday’s classrooms but rather a tool with which to revolutionize schooling. (pp. 27–28)

AND

The dysfunction that limns our school systems is like the air we breathe. It’s so familiar and accepted that, after a while, we take it for granted. We forget that things might be otherwise - that there’s no reason choosing to be an educator should mean accepting bureacracy, standardization, and inept management. (p. x)

AND

It is hard to see how even souped-up versions of existing approaches will recruit or prepare the kind of talent needed to fundamentally improve K-12 education. (p. 87)

AND

[An] often overlooked operational barrier is the tendency of district leaders to regard staff time and salaries as sunk costs. . . . Districts typically do not eliminate teaching or staff positions, even if an innovation allows nine employees to accomplish what used to take ten. The result is that school and district leaders have a hard time seeing labor-saving technologies or services as cost-effective. . . . A management style that ignores cost efficiencies in staff time and salaries constitutes an enormous obstacle . . . Rather than ask whether a tutoring program would allow a district to reduce the number of paraprofessionals or whether a more sophisticated diagnostic tool might allow talented elementary teachers to accommodate more students, . . . officials seemingly operate from the premise that technology and service providers must “supplement but not supplant” personnel. (p. 59)

AND

The failure of most [best practices-oriented reform] efforts is due to barnacles that encumber today’s school systems, including inefficient human resource departments, intrusive collective bargaining agreements, outdated technology, poorly designed management information systems, and other structural impediments. Greenfielders do not reject the utility of sensible best practices, but they question the assumption that the best practice mind-set will be enough to overcome these obstacles. . . . If we are to deliver transformative improvement, it is not enough to wedge new practices into familiar schools and districts; we must re-imagine the system itself. (pp. 6–7)

Questions I have after reading this book

• What is the likelihood of us ever achieving even some of the greenfield approaches that Hess advocates?
• What are the best ways to address the “supplement but not supplant” mindsent of school leaders, teachers unions, and policymakers when it comes to technology and personnel?
• Can we get educators to recognize that digital technologies will supplant some of their work - and some of them - and that this will be a good thing for students?

Rating

I liked this book a LOT. I like any book that really stretches my own thinking and pushes me into new areas that I haven’t considered much. This is one of those books and I bet it will be for you too. I give it 5 highlighters (out of 5).

[See my other reviews and recommended reading]

Disclosure

This book was sent to me gratis by the publisher. I was not compensated in any way for this review and was not asked by the author or the publisher to write positively about this book.

As a school law instructor and tenured associate professor of educational leadership, I perhaps have a different view of tenure than most P-12 teachers. As we look to what the future of tenure may be, I believe that it’s important to recognize a few key issues that will shape the discussion and form of tenure in the years to come.

Before we begin, it may be helpful to have a quick overview of the history of tenure. Tenure was created to protect teachers against the personal and/or political whims of school administrators (and, sometimes, parents). Initiated by New Jersey in 1910, educator tenure laws gradually spread across the country. Today most states extend some kind of tenure protection to teachers. Protections typically vest for P-12 educators after two or three years in the profession, unlike their postsecondary counterparts, whose own vesting usually only accrues after six to ten years of probationary status. More recently, a few states have actually eliminated teacher tenure or discussed doing so.

So, with that background quickly covered, let’s get into the big issues. Note that the points outlined below don’t address whether or not teacher tenure is ideologically or educationally desirable. Instead, they highlight popular belief systems about the practice.

Judy Jeffrey announced yesterday that she is retiring as the Director of the Iowa Department of Education. She has been a tremendous supporter of revamping the ways that Iowa schools do business. Her signature legacies may be the Iowa Core and the Authentic Intellectual Work projects, both of which focus on students doing higher-level cognitive work in Iowa classrooms. If we can get both of these implemented AT SCALE (the first is a statewide initiative but the second is only in a few pilot schools), we may actually move Iowa classrooms significantly in directions they need to go.

We are seeing progress on other needed fronts. The number of school districts in Iowa that are implementing 1:1 laptop projects has gone from 6 (2008–2009) to 15 (2009–2010) to perhaps as high as 40 next year (which would be over a tenth of Iowa districts). Some conversations about increasing online learning opportunities for Iowa schoolchildren (currently our offerings are quite meager) seem to be reopening. The discussions that are occurring among Iowa school administrators about moving their school systems forward seem much more robust than they did when I arrived in the state three years ago, thanks to the tremendous thought leadership and professional development that the School Administrators of Iowa has been providing on this front. I am hopeful that we will make some headway on some other essential building blocks that we need to put in place (see my post on educational technology policy priorities and my Iowa series).

Of course all of this could come to a screeching halt. A change in governors and/or the state legislature would bring new policy priorities. A change in Director brings with it the possibility of someone coming in with different beliefs about where the state education system should be headed. We need someone who can keep the momentum going. Who can take the ideas embedded in the Iowa Core and get them implemented well at the local level. Who can change the belief systems of Iowa educators and citizens about what schooling should look like. Who can find ways to facilitate the other necessary structural supports that need to be in place to create a system of schooling that prepares our graduates for the next half century, not the last half century.

I know who I’d like to see as the new Director (anyone got the Governor’s ear?!). How about you?

Rethink Learning Now asks:

Why don't schools with the biggest challenges have access to the biggest talent?

Answer My answer:

Because as educational systems we allow individual teacher preferences and/or union seniority systems to trump what’s best for kids.

If the Number 1 school influence on students’ success is the quality of their teachers, the fact that we often (usually?) give our most disadvantaged students our least-qualified instructors is an indictment of all of us.

Many districts across the country are laying off teachers right now. This would seem an especially critical time to ensure that the kids who need the best teachers get them. Instead, prepare for another summer round of the ‘dance of the lemons’ (or ‘pass the trash’). Shame on us.

[hat tip to Carolyn Foote for the video]

[This is the text of an e-mail I just sent the 7 board members for the Orange County (FL) Public Schools.]

Dear OCPS School Board members,

Greetings from the freezing state of Iowa!

I read with interest the recent Orlando Sentinel article on educators, students, and social media. Before you forge ahead with any policies that target any specific technologies (whether they be cell phones, messaging formats, or online social media tools), I would encourage you to read my short blog post on this:

• No Facebook for you!

The key point of the post is that tools and technologies both change and actually are irrelevant to the underlying issue of inappropriate teacher behavior. If you feel as a board that your existing policies are insufficient (and I would be surprised if what you need already isn't in place), I hope that at least you will not frame them in terms of specific technologies (per my reasoning in the blog post).

I would be happy to discuss this with some or all of you if so desired. All my best.

In October 2007 I wrote:

[M]any administrators dispense with students' 4th Amendment rights in the name of 'safety.' They know what the law says, but community pressures or perceived dangers outweigh Constitutional rights. Many of these administrators are in schools with no history of violence or threats. But Columbine freaked everyone out - if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere - so anything goes when it comes to student rights.

The zealous electronic monitoring of P-12 students and teachers continues. Some is legal, some is not. The use of webcams to monitor students at home without their or their parents’ knowledge is likely illegal. The use of Web monitoring and/or keylogging software to keep track of teachers’ online usage is likely legal, although it fosters a culture of employee distrust. Complicating all of this is school organizations’ obligation to ensure environments free of bullying and sexual harassment.

Too many administrators – driven by spurious media reports, parent anxiety, desires for control and order, and a natural tendency to avoid controversy and cover their asses bases – are all too willing to sacrifice educational opportunities and/or essential liberties in the name of ‘safety.’ Of course we pay a cost for this, one that isn’t discussed nearly enough.

It is unclear at what point we will say, “Enough!” Right now the end to this is nowhere in sight. I’m afraid we’re going to look back one day and ask, “What have we done to ourselves in the name of safety?”

Related posts

• Surveillance society, safe schools
• Cell phone cameras in the K-12 classroom: Punishable offenses or student-citizen journalism?
• Classroom cameras
• Agreement and trust

As part of our never-ending quest to tap into the potential of social media to enhance the practice of school administrators (and the university programs that prepare them), I am pleased to announce that CASTLE has added three new blogs to its portfolio. Two of the three blogs have been in existence for a long while; the third is a new blog by a faculty colleague.

Are we trying to become the Weblogs, Inc. or Gawker Media (or Education Week) of the edublogosphere? No, not exactly. But we ARE trying to assemble a portfolio of blogs that meet the various technology and/or leadership needs of practicing school leaders.

Our blogs

Here are the blogs that we’ve initiated to date (and their topical focus):

1. Dangerously Irrelevant (technology, leadership, and school reform)
2. LeaderTalk (school leadership; group blog)
3. Edjurist (school law; group blog)
4. 1to1 Schools (1:1 laptop programs; group blog)

To this mix, we’ve now added the following (which fill in a few significant topical areas in which we were lacking)…

5. Virtual High School Meanderings (online schooling)

Dr. Michael Barbour, an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University, has been blogging about online schooling for years. As you’ll see if you read it for a while, if it has to do with online schooling, you’ll likely find it at Michael’s blog. Michael posts A LOT; the comprehensiveness of information he provides is astounding. Michael also maintains a virtual schooling wiki or you can follow him on Twitter. Michael’s blog soon will be renamed Virtual School Meanderings to reflect the growth of online schooling in earlier grades. 

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Idaho needs our attention
• Documenting Clovis - End of semester edition
• The impact of opencourseware on paid enrollment in distance learning courses
• Virtual schooling in the news
• Virtual schooling presentations at SITE

6. Educational Games Research (educational gaming)

John Rice is an educator, author, and speaker, as well as a doctoral student at the University of North Texas, who has been blogging about educational gaming since February 2007. I am a learner in the area of educational gaming so I always gain a lot from John’s posts. John does a nice job of looking at K-12 and higher education and also includes a post now and then on corporate simulations, serious gaming, and the like.

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Learning STEMs from McLarin’s Adventures in Oklahoma
• Animating the news: How videogame technologies can alter our perceptions of real live events
• How to design an educational video game: Three important considerations
• Study: Reaction times lowered via video games
• Toy spy robots: A practical way to teach programming

7. School Finance 101 (school finance / policy)

I have known Dr. Bruce Baker, school finance professor extraordinaire, for many years. Bruce is a fantastic scholar. His interests extend far beyond school finance to include a variety of policy and leadership issues. Those of us in educational leadership academic circles know that Bruce is not afraid to take on the establishment and confront uncomfortable political and educational truths. I was delighted to see that Bruce started blogging more extensively last fall and was even more pleased when he agreed to join us. Bruce writes about deep, significant school funding and/or policy issues, but does so in a way that’s accessible to those of us who aren’t experts in this area. You also can find Bruce on Twitter.

Here are some representative posts to get you started:

• Racial achievement gaps and within-district funding inequity
• Why do states with the “best” data systems have the worst schools?
• Pondering the usefulness of value-added assessment of teachers
• NCTQ teacher quality ratings: Where’s the “quality?”
• New Jersey teacher salaries: Spiraling out of control?

I encourage you to subscribe to all three of these blogs for a while. There is some really important information and thinking coming out of all three of these channels. I can guarantee that you’ll learn a lot and gain some valuable resources for your own work.

Next steps

What lies ahead for the CASTLE blogs? Well, we will be shifting a couple of our existing blogs over to WordPress, so you’ll see some visual changes and added functionality in the next few months. We’re going to add some new authors to our group blogs, particularly LeaderTalk and 1to1 Schools. And we’re in conversations with our sponsor, the University Council for Educational Administration, about initiating a blog that deals with school leadership for social justice. If you’ve got some other suggestions for us, or know of a blog that might be a good addition to our portfolio, let me know!

Happy reading!