Dangerously Irrelevant

First I’d like to say thanks to Scott McLeod for the opportunity to write a post for Dangerously Irrelevant. The topic of student collaboration is one that has been bouncing around in my head for quite some time. I want to disclaim at the forefront that I want this to be a conversation. I want to learn from you. I want you to make me think. This is not the end-all be-all about collaboration. I want to talk about the necessity of this 21st century skill and how I think it dwindles as a necessary skill as students move away from elementary school.

My daughter is almost 6 years old. She just started Kindergarten. Recently she was at a playground with her brother and numerous other kids. As I watched her play, I noticed how comfortable she was going up to kids she’d never met, introducing herself, and engaging these kids in conversation which led to a new playtime opportunity. She was probably doing whatever she could to not have to play with her younger brother for a while.

If you have young children it’s really an amazing thing to watch. She just went right up to these other kids, and started in like she had known them already. Right away I thought about collaboration. Even if it’s in the most simplest form, she is collaborating. It doesn’t matter if it’s in her kindergarten classroom or on the playground. She wants to have a productive play/learning time. That is her goal. It would seem, that she is eager to collaborate for this to happen. I feel like I’ve been a positive guide for her to be this way; but it wasn’t decreed like, “You shall speak to all of your peers and engage them!” I am blown away by her comfort level. Even when I’m in a classroom of younger students (I’m thinking Kindergarten through 2nd grade), I am always intrigued at their collaboration skills (as basic as they may be) to achieve a common goal.

All of this thinking on collaboration and 21st century skills led me to ask this via Twitter, “What field of expertise DOESN’T require some form of collaboration to succeed?” I didn’t get one serious response. My friend Andy Marcinek, however, gets the award for funniest response. “A mime.” Seriously though, how can we say that students don’t need the skill of effective collaboration? I want to hear your thoughts on this.

I have seen tweets and blog posts recently about frustration that teachers are having getting their students to collaborate. These were mainly secondary teachers and library media specialists. It was even an #EdChat topic a few weeks ago: “How do we engage students who find participatory learning uncomfortable?” What do you find most difficult when getting students to collaborate? Criticism from their peers? A bad experience with a previous teacher? It seems like there’s so many factors that can come into play.

How are we fostering this skill beyond kindergarten? What have you found that really is motivating for students to collaborate? What gives them true ownership of their learning? There’s awesome digital tools that aid in collaboration, but those tools don’t MAKE the collaboration. It’s a skill that still has to be fine tuned. It’s a skill we should all be modeling effectively if we want our students to do it effectively. If you’re looking for some great suggestions on how to foster collaboration in your classroom, I would suggest reading Michelle Bourgeois’ post titled:  The Collaborative Classroom: It’s a Juggling Act. In this post Michelle tells a story of teaching students how to juggle and says. “Just like the art of juggling, there are several skills that need to be balanced and constantly monitored in a collaborative classroom to make it all come together.” Please be sure to check out Michelle’s post on how to monitor and keep balance of some essentials in classroom collaboration.

This leads to my questions, “Where does this skill go?” Am I the only one that thinks younger students are better at collaboration than older students? Shouldn’t this be the opposite? This is something we want our students to be better at right? We should be fostering this skill in our classrooms, not hindering it. How often are you allowing students to collaborate? Not to say that awesome things can’t come out of individual thinking, but as I always like to say, “We’re better together.” Sure, one mind can do awesome things, but a collective could really rock someone’s world.

Thanks for reading.

Kyle Pace is a K-12 instructional technology specialist from Kansas City, Missouri. He works with teachers in his district to provide professional development, resources, and strategies to implement instructional technology to impact student learning. You can follow Kyle on Twitter by visiting http://twitter.com/kylepace and you can find his web site at http://www.kylepace.com.

I’ve been pushing Google Apps for a while now. I have been pushing colleagues and speaking to groups and faculties and school boards. I have written at length about it both online and on lined paper. Like a street hustler, I have been teasing out a bit of a taste to anyone who will give me the time of day, and whether they really like it or not, I now have my whole school district on board. I even write a blog about using it.  I know I am passionate about it, and if you want me to, I can tell you why–but that’s not what this piece is about. This story could really be about Skype, or Moodle, WikiSpaces, or Elluminate, or SmartBoard programs. What I am talking about today is WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Earlier this year, the Oregon State board of education announced that it was moving all districts in the state to Google Apps for Education. The decision, several prominent articles speculated, was part of an ever-progressive Oregon approach to technology in education, such that most public school districts might only dream of. This was all accurate, sort of.

Likewise, in the past year, several local districts here in Minnesota also made the leap into the clouds of Google. My own district is transitioning as we speak. So what will all this cloud-visiting and Google App-ing do for students? How will schools use it to write curriculum? What are these relatively major technology shifts going to do for the test scores of the students? Probably nothing. In fact, the likelihood of these 21st-century tools to be able to actually affect change in the realm of standardized tests, authentic assessments, or just good old-fashioned quality learning is meager at best. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The addition of collaborative software, standardized mail and electronic calendars (not to mention the auxiliary tools Google provides like Maps, Blogger, Sites), should pave the way for a new consciousness that leaps the school, district, or (in the case of Oregon) whole state firmly into the 21st century. It should open faculty and administrators to the richness and accessibility of Web 2.0 and cloud-based tools so they can build up to much more data-driven techniques that embed the desired outcomes in a wealth of industry-current technology. Google Apps has the ability to bring students from all over the planet into collaborative work that utilizes higher-order thinking and yet builds upon the benchmarks provided for in the curriculum. 

The problem is that even when offered the keys to a brand new shiny red sports car, it seems as if the inclination is to just let it sit in the driveway. When I have asked teachers and administrators in nearby districts who have gone to Google Apps for Education how they are using it as part of their overall mission or goals, I get blank looks. Many don’t even really know what they have. There are plenty of individual teachers making great use of the Google Apps suite, and some districts are farther along than others, but the overall lack of a cohesive plan to leverage the power of these tools is generally not clear, in its infancy, or just plain absent. In my district these conversations have only just begun, and I can already see how difficult it is. While some users are in full command of interactive document creation and building document forms into formative assessments, some people just struggle with a different e-mail interface. We have a new tool, with no real plans as to how specifically it will lead us to our 21st century goals.

The reason for the apparent leap before you look approach seems to be because of the cost. When a big change is expensive, it requires a lot of scrutiny, lots of data, rationale, test groups, and other cost/reward studies. However, many very powerful Web 2.0 or cloud-based tools are free or at minimal cost to schools. I think this creates the cure before the disease is fully understood. Do I think that schools districts should use Google Apps for Education and other online tools? Absolutely. But I also think that schools and districts need to keep asking how THEY will make these tools effective additions to how they educate a student. Without that understanding or plan, that Corvette isn’t going to get on the open road at all. When I spoke to Corin Richards from the Oregon Virtual School District, a subsidiary branch of the state board of education, about Oregon’s plan, he did mention there was a plan to use Google Apps as a gateway into other technology they used. I think this is a great reason. I don’t think it takes much. But having a powerful educational tool without a reason to use it isn’t much better than not having one at all.

Anthony VonBank has been teaching English and Global Communication in public school for 12 years. He is currently a doctoral student at Minnesota State University in Mankato, MN. His research interests are in education with cloud computing and education reform. He maintains a regular blog about integrating Google Apps in the classroom: teachingwithgoogledocs.blogspot.com.

The Current Landscape

These are challenging times in the current landscape of learning and teaching. The standards movement is pressing upon us and students and teachers are being measured in the narrowest of ways. I know that any and every measurement can tell me something about a child and I fear that focusing on any single measurement can be dangerous. The biggest mistake we can make is to be single-minded. Relying on a standardized score or focusing on only the standards that we are required to teach will not allow us the opportunity to create a variety of rich, interactive, collaborative and thoughtful experiences that enrich learning and teaching.

In the worst situations, it’s not the data that is problematic, but how the data is interpreted, generalized, and misused to make educational decisions. All measurements can be helpful in creating a clear and precise profile of a learner. I tend to lean toward more authentic measurements and what they tell me about students. However, every piece of data is a piece of the mosaic of a child’s learning life. What targets for learning and measurement results can do is clarify the most effective instruction and help us be responsive to each student’s needs. Some knowledge and skills are easily measured. Some are not. When it comes right down to it, a good teacher knows her students well and teaches in response to what she knows abou t the individual child.

I worry that we look at standards and data the way we narrow a Google map search. We can narrow in on the smallest of detail but knowing the big picture is also important. We can consider standards, measurement and data and completely lose sight of the bigger picture. Each educational measure we put in place is part of the whole and we must not forget that. What does a standard or test score tell us about a student’s persistence or level of self-efficacy? How can we support students by giving them the skills they need for more critical thinking, inquiry and thoughtful pursuits?

What Next?

Whether or not we agree with standards and accountability, it is an immense part of the learning landscape. So we need to help others understand the role of standards and accountability in the big picture.

The most important question we can ask when we are presented with any kind of measurement of progress is to ask “What next?” How will we formulate learning experiences that will move each child forward? What will we focus on? What are the strengths of the child and how can we teach from those strengths instead of focusing on the deficits?

It’s not helpful to consider data and assign causation for low and even high performance that is generalized and misaligned. Some educators are “guessing” why students perform the way they do and linking to practices that may not have a positive impact on student learning. In some cases, programs and practices are being implemented that detour us from focusing on 21st century skills.

Let’s Remember

• Stay the course and make decisions based on what’s right for children.
• Embrace 21st century learning.
• Use measurement results to teach from a child’s strengths.

While it’s the most challenging time in education, it is also the most exciting. We are increasing the potential for our students to be active and participatory learners. We are encouraging them to build a learning community both locally and globally that will help them follow their passions. We cannot abandon our efforts to give our students what they will need to help them be successful in learning and life.

Karen Szymusiak is principal of Glacier Ridge Elementary in Dublin, Ohio. She can be found online at twitter.com/karenszymusiak. Karen has coauthored Beyond Leveled Books, Still Learning to Read, and Day to Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop. Her favorite moments are those spent with children. She says, “If we really listen to children, they tell us all there is to know about teaching wisely and well.”

It’s not “OK” for us to simply abstain from teaching kids to think simply based on the fact that we have to administer a test at the end of the year that’s expected to assess something as nebulous as learning.

How about a profound statement? Even if the tests went away tomorrow, very little would change in a lot of classrooms around the country, and teaching kids how to think would still take a back seat to teaching kids what to think. Call me cynical, but I don’t see a lot of teachers releasing their herculean grip from subject content in the name of teaching “21st century skills.” Why? Our education system has never been about innovation and adaptation; it’s been about perpetuation.

How do we reconcile standards and data-driven accountability with the “21st century skills” movement? The first step we need to take is forgetting about the test and teach kids to be curious while asking really, really good questions. I’ll never say that the tests are a positive, but I also won’t allow for them to be the scapegoat for why kids walk out of school without an ability to ask great questions of the world around them. Evidence? Multiple-choice tests existed in almost every classroom prior to the standardized testing movement, and they will exist long into the future regardless of what metric we use to assess student learning.

We also need to practice some serious introspection and ask ourselves what “21st century skills” are. I hear a lot of people boil “21st century skills” down to simply using technology. That’s a pretty myopic and cynical way of looking at the future of human progress. The truth is that “21st century skills” do have to do with adapting to new technologies effectively, but it has much, much more to do with being able to think deeply about topics, solve complex problems, and being capable of synthesizing information to form new solutions. If kids go through school unable to practice these skills, then everything else is for naught.

We kill curiosity in kids the same way that Sir Ken Robinson says we kill creativity. We point our fingers at standardized tests and cry out that they prohibit us from teaching the skills kids need, but we’re also not willing to accept that many classrooms wouldn’t be that different without them.

We, as educators, simply need to give ourselves a reality check on the messages that we send our kids that stunt their curiosity. I can’t tell you how many times I hear this comment and want to cringe:

Anything that we ever need to know in this day and age can be found on the Internet via Google or some other search engine.

Is that really the message we want to be sending kids? Do we want them to walk away from our classrooms believing that every, single question ever asked has been investigated by someone else and answered? What are they to do when they have questions that Google can’t answer? How, in those classrooms, do we teach kids to ask the really, good questions and solve the really complex problems that they will experience in their future? How is that statement any different from having kids select “A-E” without even getting a chance to contemplate “F” as the correct answer?

Throughout this post, it may seem as though I’ve ignored the very question that Scott has asked me to answer. Rest assured that’s exactly what I’ve done. The answer to the question is simple: start constructing lessons and classroom instruction around developing curious kids who inquire about the world around them. Ignore the tests. Until we live in a world where classrooms would look entirely different without the tests, we really have nothing to complain about while they’re here.

Aaron Eyler is a high school history teacher in central New Jersey. He has an M.A. in Educational Leadership from Rutgers University and is the writer of “Synthesizing Education” and (more recently) “The Democratic Classroom.” For his daily musings and rants, please follow him on twitter via @aaron_eyler.

In August I put out the call for guest bloggers on the topic of Reconciling standards- and data-driven accountability with the ‘21st century skills’ movement. I had a number of people volunteer to take on the issue (enough for two per day!). Next week we’ll see what they have to say…

• Monday, September 20 - Shawn Cornally & Aaron Eyler
• Tuesday, September 21 - Jason Klein & Karen Szymusiak
• Wednesday, September 22 - Kyle Pace & Tony VonBank
• Thursday, September 23 - Carl Anderson & Dave Cormier
• Friday, September 24 - Joe Bower & Dan McGuire
• Saturday, September 25 - Matt Landahl & Tyler Rice
• Sunday, September 26 - Richard Kassissieh & Andrew Smith

I know these will spark some great conversations. Happy reading (in advance)!

The Economic Policy Institute’s new report, Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers, cautions against heavy reliance on the use of test scores in teacher evaluation.

Authors of the report include four former presidents of the American Educational Research Association; two former presidents of the National Council on Measurement in Education; the current and two former chairs of the Board of Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences; the president-elect of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management; the former director of the Educational Testing Service’s Policy Information Center and a former associate director of the National Assessment of Educational Progress; a former assistant U.S. Secretary of Education; a former and current member of the National Assessment Governing Board; and the current vice-president, a former president, and three other members of the National Academy of Education.

[UPDATE: I had enough interest for two people per day for the week of September 20. All the slots are full now. Thanks. I'm looking forward to the week!]

I’m looking for 5 to 7 volunteers to guest blog on the topic of Reconciling standards- and data-driven accountability with the ‘21st century skills’ movement.

Posts could pertain to curriculum, instruction, assessment, leadership, policy, professional development, or any other relevant issue. If you’re interested in writing a thoughtful, reflective piece of approximately 5 to 8 paragraphs on this topic, would you drop me a note?

This would be for the week of September 20 to 26. You will be able to cross-post on your own blog(s) and also can put a blurb at the bottom about yourself and your social media sites, so this should give you some good visibility.

Thanks in advance!

[This is a guest post from Doug Green. If you’re interested in being a guest blogger, drop me a note. Happy reading!]

Update: see also Don Watkins’ response to this post.

With the coming of computers to schools, district leaders felt the need to hire district level administrators to oversee instructional and administrative computer systems. After about 30 years, some districts are finding that they can do without their own technology gurus. Has the school district technology director gone from life on the cutting edge of technology in education to obsolescence? The purpose of this article is to explore reasons why this may be the case.

Things Have Changed

At one point is was possible for at least a few educators to have a good grasp of what computer technology could do and understand what it took to maintain stand alone systems. With the advent of school and district-wide networks, however, there was a need to add network specialists to maintain the district infrastructure. As the number of workstations in classrooms and offices expanded, there was also a need for staff that were trained and dedicated to maintain them. This meant that the technology director was leading a growing staff of non educators at the same time computers and other technologies were expanding into every niche of the instructional program.

To some districts it makes no sense to have an administrator who was most likely a former teacher responsible for computer networks. Such networks now resemble other utilities such as electricity, natural gas, and telephone service. They can be purchased from a private vendor or from a local school district service bureau such as the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) system in New York State. As for administrative computer services, the software and support are purchased from somewhere. Rather than going through the technology director, the people responsible for the services like the director of attendance for student information, the principals for scheduling and mark reporting, and the business office for functions like payroll can just deal directly with the agency selling and supporting the service.

On the instructional side, the mere existence of a technology director can allow other leaders to think that they are not responsible for the integration of instructional technology. They see it as something separate rather than a part of the big instructional picture. When principals and teachers see instructional technology as someone else’s job, they are less likely to adopt in an effective manner anything that the “technology person” pushes into the classrooms.

The Great Enabler?

As the job of the technology director has been taken over by organizations like BOCES and other district administrators I have seen people in these position look for ways to be useful which can often enable bad habits among their fellow administrators. In one district I found the person helping the assistant superintendent for instruction count the number of days school had been in session to make sure that the end of year plan would comply with state regulations. His massive spreadsheet made the task seem complicated when all one needed to do what take a calendar and count up to 180.

Studies summarized by Rogers (2003) show that top down decisions are less likely to enjoy successful adoption in education than in other organizations. This is due to the fact that teachers with masters degrees think they know what they are doing and enjoy a sense of freedom that gives them a good deal of control over how they deliver the curriculum. In order to get teachers to implement a new technology effectively, it helps if they feel some ownership for the decision to adopt. The technology director may also be seen as a person who can do things with technology that are beyond most teachers. Teachers are more likely to follow a peer who they feel has technical expertise similar to their own.

In effective schools, decisions about instructional technology initiatives are more likely to come from district or building shared decision-making teams. This gives the decisions a bottom up aspect that increases the likelihood that they will work.

The Data Piece

Another function that can land in the technology director’s portfolio is that of chief information officer (CIO). This is a title that the New York State Education Department has asked districts to use so that they have an entry point for dealing with instructional data including scores on state tests. A look around the central New York region shows that this title can land just about anywhere. While some districts give it to an assistant superintendent, others bestow it on the technology director, and still others give it to a programmer, a teacher, or even a secretary.

In essence, this job has two main functions. One is to lead the district and the individual schools as they analyze test results and other instructional data in order to make informed instructional decisions. As Burdet, City, and Murname (2005) show, this is a job that should clearly run through the superintendent’s office and the offices of the principals and should involve committees of teachers. Giving it to some technology person may produce fancy charts and graphs, but it is not likely to make the kind of instructional impact that in intended.

The other part of the job is caring for the data itself and making sure it is correctly reported to the state in a timely manner. I did this for my former district during the year after I retired so I know what it involves and I have seen how many other districts deal with it. Whoever does it will need rudimentary data processing skills and a modest understanding of relational databases. It certainly should not fall to a high paid administrator. It could even be given to a capable clerk or sent to a regional support service.

All Administrators Should be Tech Savvy

As part of the work I do teaching leadership for teachers seeking administrative certification, I read the job postings each week in the New York Times. I look for common themes and trends so I can let my students know what districts are looking for in the way of knowledge, experience, and expertise in their new hires. Many ads contain a bulleted list of items that include communication skills, collaborative leadership styles, and a vision of how all students can succeed. For the last several years, however, they also usually include something like the following found in a recent posting:

Has expertise in the use of instructional technology and the utilization of achievement data to advance student learning

When microcomputers first entered the classroom in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, many of the members of the administrative class had attended college in a era where they could submit hand written work or pay someone else to do the typing. Even today I still know of administrators who don’t do email simply because they can’t use a keyboard. One even told me that he only wanted “one button to push.” You can imagine how happy he was when I set him up with a computer that had a one-button mouse.

Now the classes I teach feature some students who are almost digital natives as they don’t remember a time when their schools didn’t have computers. As more future leaders show up with computer skills, districts are in a position to expect that their new leaders can manage instructional technology without having to ask a district technology person what to do.

And a Child Shall Lead Them

In 1976 when my district got its first computer, I was the science department chair. I had no time to figure out how it worked so I let some of my students who had an interest “play” with it. I soon became the “adult” expert even though I knew less than the students and within two years became the district computer director. Two years later I was hired by a larger district as their first Director of Computer Services with a big raise and an office next to the superintendent.

As part of my doctoral research I noticed that teachers who learned from their students were often the ones who did the most with instructional technology. With the coming of the Internet, the students had easy access to the world of information which made finding facts like shooting sitting ducks (McKenzie, 1998). As one superintendent told me, “we don’t own the information any more” (Green, 2001).

I recently worked with a doctoral student who was reviewing her work from the early 1990s. This prompted me to make a list of the technological innovations that have arrived since 1991 that I felt were likely to have some impact on instruction.

New Technologies with Possible Impact on Education Since 1991

• 1991 QuickTime Introduced
• 1991 First Smartboard becomes commercially available
• 1994 Netscape 1.0 browser available for Internet surfing
• 1995 The first Internet Wiki
• 1996 Cell phones become common in United States
• 1996 First Mobile cell phone with built-in PDA
• 1996 Hotmail – Free web-based email for anyone
• 1996 Java and Javascript programming languages add applications to the Web
• 1998 The First web log also known as a blog
• 1999 QuickTime 4.0 supports streaming video
• 1999 Macromedia Flash 4.0 handles inputs and MP3 audio files
• 1999 iMovie is free with iMac purchase
• 2000 Google – The world’s search engine
• 2000 Instant Messaging starts to take off
• 2000 PayPal makes it easy and safe to pay for Internet purchases
• 2001 Douglas Green uses speech recognition to transcribe dissertation interviews
• 2001 iPods and iTunes become available
• 2001 Text messaging starts to take off
• 2002 USB flash drive memory cards become available
• 2002 The term is Blogoshpere adopted to represent the world of blogs on the Internet
• 2004 Facebook & Myspace make social networking more available
• 2004 Podcasting allows new form for media distribution
• 2004 Duke University gives an iPod to each freshman
• 2004 GarageBand allows for easier music editing
• 2005 Eye tracking systems become available for disabled
• 2005 RSS (real simple syndication) adds a new type of spam
• 2005 Guitar Hero joins the gaming culture
• 2005 YouTube allows anyone to publish and access videos
• 2006 PornoTube adds to the worries of parents and teachers
• 2006 Student Response Systems (clickers) become affordable for educational use
• 2006 Flickr available to customers in United States for storing and organizing media
• 2006 Skype becomes available for free calls and video conferencing
• 2006 Sherburne/Earlville, NY Schools place a SmartBoard in every classroom
• 2006 Wii adds a physical aspect to gaming
• 2006 Twitter adds yet another type of spam for Internet and cell phone users
• 2007 Wikipedia becomes the largest encyclopedia ever with more than 2 million articles
• 2007 iPhones are introduced bringing countless capabilities to cell phone users
• 2009 A USB flash drive costs about $20 for one gigabyte 

A look at this list should lead one to think that many students are more comfortable with some of this technology than their teachers. I have had many of my administrative students tell me that they would be lost were it not for the computer help they get from their own teenage children.

When a technology innovation comes to the classroom by way of the technology director it is likely to focus on the technology. When it arrives as the result of initiatives owned by the teachers, it is more likely to focus on the content. An example from the art department that I have seen in many schools makes this point. If computers in the art rooms have a technology focus the likely result will be courses that teach how to use software such as Photoshop and Illustrator. If the computers are introduced by the art teachers they are more likely to use these tools to focus on artistic concepts and to promote artistic craft.

This month, for example, the magazine Edutopia (Bernard, 2009) has a cover story about an article where students offer lesson plan ideas that feature items from my list. My point here is that any school district looking for ideas about instructional technology is unlikely to get all they need from a single source technology director.

Goodbye Wizard of Oz.

Once a district decides to eliminate the technology director position the next questions is what happens to the person in that position. If the person is seen as bright, hard working, and knowledgeable they can be moved to other positions of leadership. Depending on their talents they might make successful principals or assistant superintendents, which are much better positions from which to promote the use of instructional technology. They might also return to the classroom where they can become a model for innovation technology use. They may be able to retire as I have seen in several local districts or they might be able to secure employment with one of the district’s technology vendors or the local school-support agency.

In 1993 when I held this position I was able to un-invent myself by convincing the superintendent that the administrative and network supervision aspects of my job could be sent to our local BOCES and that the responsibility for the instructional piece should be placed in the hands of the building principals who could look to a district level staff developer for support when they needed to help their staff learn how to use new technology. At the time, the district saved $35,000 as a result of this move.

I should also point out that a reason for making my job disappear was so that I could become a principal in a building were the decision making team had a strong interest in moving ahead with instructional technology initiatives. My goal in writing this article, therefore, is not to put my fellow directors out of work by making them look like modern versions of the Wizard of Oz. My goal is to help schools make more effective use of their technology dollars as they empower all administrators, teachers, and even students in finding ways to allow instructional technology to facilitate and motive all learners. A job that has become impossible for one person can become possible once it is viewed as everyone’s job.
 
References

• Bernard, S. (2009). Kids Talk Tech. Edutopia. June/July 2009, 22-27.
• Boudett, K. P., City, E. A., & Murname, R. J. Eds. (2004). Data Wise: A Step by Step Guild to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning. Harvard Education Press: Cambridge, MA.
• Green, D. W. (2001). The Impact of Internet Access of Elementary Classroom Teaching: A Constructivist Perspective. (Doctoral Dissertation, Binghamton University, Dissertation Abstracts International, 63 no. 01A(2001): p 151.
• McKenzie, J. (1998). Grazing the Net: Raising a Generation of Free-Range Students, Phi Delta Kappan, 80(1), 26-31.
• Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed. Free Press: New York, NY.

Douglas W. Green, Ed.D., was an administrator for 30 years and has 300+ publications in technology, education, and leadership. He retired to care for his wife who had Lou Gehrig’s disease and started blogging after her recent death. His blog at DrDougGreen.com features book summaries and news items that makes it easy for busy educators to keep up to date.

The Education Trust has come out with a nifty little report, Gauging the Gaps: A Deeper Look at Student Achievement, that examines different ways of thinking about achievement gaps. Although EdTrust uses NAEP data to illustrate its points, this could be done with any achievement data.

EdTrust outlines four different perspectives when considering achievement gaps. Each has its own merits, but together they have more power than simply using one or two of them in isolation. At the end of the report, EdTrust includes several NAEP data tables that show the progress of each state along each of these perspectives.

Perspective 1: Simple gap narrowing

“Have absolute gaps in mean performance between groups decreased over time? Nationwide, low-income students and students of color perform, on average, below their peers. So it is imperative to evaluate whether we’re helping these young people catch up.” (p. 2)

Perspective 2: Progress for all

“Have all groups of students gained over time? Our country needs to improve achievement for all students and accelerate gains for those who lag behind. Reading performance for low-income fourth grade students nationwide inched up by four points from 2003 to 2007. This represents movement in the right direction but at far too slow a pace. Some states, however, improved much more rapidly than the nation as a whole.” (p. 3)

Perspective 3: Gap size

“What is the current size of the gap between groups? In addition to examining how far a state has come in closing the gaps and looking at whether all students are gaining, it’s important to know the extent of the gaps that remain. The current-year size of a state’s gap suggests how far we have to go until race and income no longer play a significant role in student achievement. Nationally and in every state, low-income students trail their higher income peers in reading performance. Yet a closer scrutiny of state data shows that some are closer to achieving equitable results than others.” (p. 4)

Perspective 4: Group comparisons across jurisdictions

“How does each group of students currently perform compared with their counterparts in other jurisdictions? Although many assume that certain groups of children perform about the same no matter where they attend school, comparisons of group performance across jurisdictions can reveal striking differences. In fact, dramatic variations in the achievement of similar groups of children occur across states or from one district to the next.” (p. 4)

What do you think?

How does your school organization think about achievement gaps? Does it predominantly use only one or two of these perspectives? What could be done to increase your organization’s capacity to use more or all of these perspectives? Is all of this even worthwhile?

I have done a lot of work over the years on various data-driven decision-making projects. I've taught courses, given workshops, delivered multi-day institutes for state departments of education and corporate partners, and written book chapters and white papers.

I collected some of the highlights of that work on my new DDDM page here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Resources include some of the products from my work with Microsoft, the American Psychological Association, the Chicago Public Schools, the Minnesota Department of Education, and others. 

I hope these are useful to you. Happy reading!