Dangerously Irrelevant

Are you ready to rethink your acceptable use policies (AUPs)? If so, here are some resources for you:

• Rethinking AUPs

Let me know what you think (and what you might add to the resource lists). I’m always on the search for student and/or employee AUPs that focus more on empowered use rather than hammering on safety/security concerns. We need more AUPs that emphasize YES! instead of NO!

Image credit: Bigstock, man pressing yes button

Does your school organization have a vision for technology-enriched learning and teaching? If so, is that vision one that is shared by the larger community? Many school systems are turning to video to help facilitate a shared vision across various constituent groups. Below is one example, A New Design for Education, created by the Farmington and Spring Lake Park school systems in Minnesota.

Has your school or district made a video like this? If so, please share it in the comments area by Tuesday, April 2. If there are enough submissions, I’ll compile them and make a second post. Happy viewing!

I love to visit schools that are trying to live on the cutting edges of deeper learning, student empowerment, and digital technologies. But, like most of you, I don’t get to do that nearly as often as I’d like. So I’m jealous of folks like Barbara Levin and Lynne Schrum who get to do case studies of innovative school organizations around the country. And of whomever at Edutopia gets to work on the Schools That Work series.

Now I’ve got a new target of envy. Here’s a video of Grant Lichtman describing what he learned from his 3-month, 21-state, 64-school tour of innovative educational systems. Except for the time away from my family, that sure sounds fun to me. Happy viewing!

Area Education Agency 267 recorded a number of my thoughts on leadership, learning, and technology one afternoon last fall. The result is a new video, Education in a Digital World. I think it came out extremely well. Happy viewing!

Mimi Ito says:

parents more often than not have a negative view of the role of the Internet in learning, but young people almost always have a positive one

…

Young people are desperate for learning that is relevant and part of the fabric of their social lives, where they are making choices about how, when, and what to learn, without it all being mapped for them in advance

via http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/what-teens-get-about-the-internet-that-parents-dont/273852

David Sirota says:

The pervasive media mythology tells us that the fight over the schoolhouse is supposedly a battle between greedy self-interested teachers who don’t care about children and benevolent billionaire “reformers” whose political activism is solely focused on the welfare of kids. Epitomizing the media narrative, the Wall Street Journal casts the latter in sanitized terms, reimagining the billionaires as philanthropic altruists “pushing for big changes they say will improve public schools.”

The first reason to scoff at this mythology should be obvious: It simply strains credulity to insist that pedagogues who get paid middling wages but nonetheless devote their lives to educating kids care less about those kids than do the Wall Street hedge funders and billionaire CEOs who finance the so-called reform movement. Indeed, to state that pervasive assumption out loud is to reveal how utterly idiotic it really is, and yet it is baked into almost all of today’s coverage of education politics.

via http://www.salon.com/2013/03/11/getting_rich_off_of_schoolchildren

One of the Iowa Department of Education’s favorite phrases is ‘evidence-based,’ as in “schools and educators should be adopting ‘evidence-based’ practices.” That makes sense on its surface, right? So when the DE issued a press release today touting two Iowa districts that had adopted the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching’s (NIET) Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) – which focuses on teacher leadership and performance-based teacher compensation – I started digging around in Google Scholar for research about the program. I don’t live in the world of teacher leadership/compensation and thus don’t know much about TAP other than that it appears to support the DE’s policy proposals this legislative session (and that Dr. Brad Buck, an amazing school leader that I greatly respect, is the superintendent of one of the two districts). For all I know, TAP could be amazing or it could be puffery…

What did I find?

• A study from Stanford University finding small positive student learning impacts in math and none in reading
• A study from Vanderbilt University finding positive student learning impacts in math at the elementary level and negative student learning impacts in math in grades 6-10 (when controlling for selection bias)
• A dissertation in Louisiana that found no student learning impact in elementary English / Language Arts
• A study by Mathematica finding no student learning impact in math, reading, or science in the Chicago Public Schools (after 4 years)

And, of course, on its web site I found research from NIET itself claiming that TAP is awesome. Indeed, there’s a plethora of publications on TAP’s web site from NIET; agencies such as the Milken Family Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, or the Gates Foundation that have funded TAP; and ideologically-oriented educational organizations. But despite TAP’s claims of ‘a decade-long track record of growth and success in raising student achievement in high-need schools‘ (page 19), the evidence from independent researchers is decidedly more mixed and leans much more pessimistic when it comes to student learning outcomes.

So is TAP ‘evidence-based’ or puffery? Given the greater preponderance of negative findings by outside, independent scholars, it appears to be extremely arguable. Given that uncertainty and its own call for ‘evidence-based’ practices, should DE be basing its 2013 education reform package on the TAP model? (and should it be touting the model via press releases to the Iowa public and media, which know even less about all of this than I do?)

We already know that DE is willing to ignore decades worth of peer-reviewed research when it conflicts with its policy advocacy (see, e.g., recent incidents regarding 3rd grade retention and cutting elementary school recess). I don’t know if TAP falls into this category of willful blindness or not. But I am wondering if the studies listed above were ever presented to those in decision-making positions so that they could make a truly informed decision.

I hope that the initiatives go well for the two Iowa districts that are trying TAP. Their educators are going to invest a great deal of time, energy, and money in the model. Hopefully they will see the results for which they are striving. Until I see further independent research supporting TAP (send it if you’ve got it; maybe I missed some!), right now I’m less sanguine about whether we should be basing tens of millions of dollars statewide to implement the model here in Iowa.

Got any thoughts on this?

[Note that there's also a bigger question here that's always worth considering: What should we do if/when our own governmental agencies fail to apply the same standards to themselves that they wish to apply to us?]

Image credit: What’s your superpower?

A recent New York Times story said:

[Joel] Klein, the former chancellor of New York City schools and the current chief executive of Amplify, News Corporation’s fledgling education division, will take the stage for a surprising announcement. Amplify will not sell just its curriculum on existing tablets, but will also offer the Amplify Tablet, its own 10-inch Android tablet for K-12 schoolchildren.

In addition to tablets and curriculum, Amplify will also provide schools with infrastructure to store students’ data.

An early look at the Amplify tablet revealed a sleek touch screen with material floating against a simple background. If a child’s attention wanders, a stern “eyes on teacher” prompt pops up. A quiz uses emoticons of smiley and sad faces so teachers can instantly gauge which students understand the lesson and which need help.

“We wanted to use the language of the Web,” said Stephen Smyth, president of Amplify Access, the division that produces the tablet, which is manufactured by Asus.

…

Outside the classroom, children can use it to play games, like one in which Tom Sawyer battles the Brontë sisters.

I predict (hope) this whole venture will be a complete bust. Not just because the market isn’t exactly clamoring for another Android tablet. Not just because the Android apps ecosystem isn’t as robust for P-12 students as Apple’s. Not just because having historical literary characters battle each other is both educationally dubious and less than engaging to today’s students. The ‘eyes on teacher’ announcements, the built-in ability to monitor students’ screens at all time, the student response system features, extensive back-end ‘data’ collection and analysis, the push-out from the teacher to all students’ screens, pre-loaded tools, filtering software, teacher-created content playlists, one-button device tracking / locking / erasure … nearly everything about this initiative screams replication and amplification of traditional instructional techniques in which teachers are the focal point and students are passive recipients. All of the features touted by Amplify are ones that amplify control over students’ learning with computers. Need further evidence? Here’s a quote from Klein:

The teacher can personalize (the tablet.)  A teacher can also click on and see what skills (the student) has mastered.

Notice who’s ‘personalizing’ the device. Notice who’s using data analytics to monitor skill mastery. Not the student, that’s for sure.

Who’s going to buy these devices? My guess is probably some large, vulnerable urban districts with deep pockets who 1) are susceptible to the big-time sell from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, 2) think that Joel Klein’s work in New York City somehow was successful and worth adopting (despite lots of evidence to the contrary), and 3) think that a desirable feature for student technologies is the ability to lock them down and control them as much as possible. That means even more instances where poor kids will yet again experience being programmed by computers rather than having the ability to use technology in meaningful, authentic, relevant, and powerful ways.

A school board member recently echoed on her Facebook page a community member’s desire to stop funding the district’s 1:1 initiative. Here are the community member’s comments that were shared by the board member:

Technology is a wonderful thing and is much needed BUT these kids needs to know how to take a pencil and paper, spell worlds with out spell check, make a sentence with out using grammar check an do math with a calculator. Seems all the school board can see is the good sides of everything before buying it. They don’t seem to be able to think of what bad can come from things or if what they are purchasing with other money is redundant. I’d like to see results of an old fashioned math, and spelling test and even writing. Many young people can’t spell these day and only print, have no idea of how to do cursive writing. Schools need to stop “dumbing down” our future which is our children.

Below is my contribution to the discussion on the school board member’s Facebook page…

—

Some quick thoughts:

1. Our information landscape is no longer ink on paper. It’s digital bits in the ether. It’s completely technology-suffused and EVERYTHING is moving as quickly as possible to the Internet. There is no foreseeable future in which the primacy of printed text is not superseded by electronic text and multimedia. Given this fact, how are you going to prepare students for this digital information landscape if you don’t put digital technologies in their hands?
2. Our hyperconnected, hypercompetitive global economy requires that developed countries move as rapidly as possible to creative and services work rather than manufacturing and agricultural work, with an emphasis on higher-level thinking skills rather than low-level fact and procedure regurgitation. All of the job growth in this country is in knowledge work sectors. BUT… knowledge work is done with computers these days. You can’t prepare graduates to do real-world knowledge work in a digital landscape by going back to ringbinders and notebook paper. Do you want your students to have jobs? Ignore the comments about ‘spell check’ and ‘old fashioned math’ (which have no basis in actual data or reality) and instead ask whether your students are immersed in cognitively-complex, technology-suffused learning environments that actually prepare them for the demands of knowledge work after high school. As pretty as it is, we must admit to ourselves that cursive writing is not a 21st century skill and neither are many of the other practices that we are trying so desperately to cling to in P-12 education. The biggest barriers to change are our own mindsets of what schooling should look like, which unfortunately are usually based on a past that no longer exists.
3. It is the job of schools to prepare students to master the dominant information landscape of their time, to be productive workers, and to be successful citizens. All of these require digital fluency, something that is not achieved by a few hours per month in a computer lab. All that said, we also must recognize that change is scary, it’s complex, and it takes time. There’s a learning curve to navigate for students, teachers, parents, and community members. Acknowledge the difficulty of the challenge. Work to make the change as smooth as possible. Learn from mistakes and keep moving forward. Give yourselves time to make the transition. But don’t regress. Don’t give up. Does the district actually believe that NOT using computers is the path to future success for its children? If so, it will be the only one in America that does and it will be dooming its youth to irrelevance. As Abraham Maslow said, “You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety.” In rapidly-changing information and economic environments, we all need to be future-focused, not nostalgic.
4. [School board member], you say that putting technology into the hands of all students is ‘not the way to go.’ Which students get to use technology, then? Which students get to be prepared for the world as it is and will be (and which ones don’t)? Which students are you going to intentionally disadvantage by hobbling their college and career readiness by removing technology from their hands?

I’m happy to have a further conversation with you and/or the rest of the board about this. I work with schools, districts, and communities all over the world as they struggle to meet the needs of students and educators regarding technology. All my best.

SCOTT

Image credit: One-to-one

Here are some quotes from the most recent issue of Educational Researcher regarding text complexity in the early grades, one of the hallmark pushes of the Common Core State Standards:

the CCSS text complexity standards for Grade 3 appear to be aspirational, much like the No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress targets (Shepard, 2008). The small set of studies that have examined text complexity over time does not show that text complexity at Grade 3 has deteriorated. Neither is there evidence that the accelerated targets in the primary grades are necessary for high school graduates to read the texts of college and careers. (p. 47)

AND

Another potential indirect effect on students may be their motivation and engagement. The engagement of reading among American students is already low, as indicated by a 2001 nationally representative sample of fourth graders from 35 countries that ranked the United States 33rd in an index of students’ motivations for reading (Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, & Kennedy, 2003) and 35th out of 35 countries in the revised index of attitudes toward reading (Twist, Gnaldi, Schagen, & Morrison, 2004). At present, there is research indicating that motivation decreases when tasks become too challenging and none that indicates that increasing challenge (and potential levels of failure) earlier in students’ careers will change this dismal national pattern of disengagement with literacy (Guthrie, Wigfield, & You, 2012). (p. 48)

AND

Will the intended outcomes of higher levels of literacy for all students be realized by setting the bar arbitrarily at third grade? Our review suggests that the unintended negative consequences could well outweigh the intended positive outcomes. (p. 49)

AND

Increasing the pressure on the primary grades – without careful work that indicates why the necessary levels are not attained by many more students – may have consequences that could widen a gap that is already too large for the students who, at present, are left out of many careers and higher education. How sadly ironic it would be if an effort intended to support these very students limited their readiness for college and careers. (p. 49)

Hiebert, E. H., & Mesmer, H. A. E. (2013). Upping the ante of text complexity in the Common Core State Standards: Examining its potential impact on young readers. Educational Researcher, 42(1), 44-51.

Image credit: “Cozy” reading spot