Sunday, July 8, 2007

Visual Literacy! (Students from Missouri, the SHOW ME State)























The Eye Generation Prefers Not to Read All About It


Students in Film Class a Microcosm of a Visually Oriented Culture

By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 6, 2007; C02


The breaking point for Perry Schwartz comes on Day 5 of the American Film Institute's three-week Summer Movie Production Workshop. Schwartz, a professor of theater and film at Montgomery College in Takoma Park and director of the AFI film course, is helping students envision the movie they are making together.

They sit in folding chairs in the college's Black Box Theatre and speak in strictly visual terms, citing specific actors and moments in cinema.

"He's more like Jack Black."

"That happens in 'Space Jam'!"

Of the 10 students, one is 40 years old; the rest are college age or younger.

Schwartz is describing how the two main characters in the student film will sit on a couch, simultaneously reach for popcorn and inadvertently touch hands, when Kit Reiner of Silver Spring and Max Simon of Potomac -- both 18 -- cry out, "Just like in 'Lady and the Tramp'!"

And Schwartz could take it no more. "Stop!" he yells.

"Try to think less about which movie scene you are reminded of and more about the way people really act in real life. Everything isn't related to a movie!"

Really?

To most of the workshop students, life has become totally visual. They are members of not so much the Me Generation as the Eye Generation.

"I really don't like reading a story. I like seeing it," says workshop student Craig Patterson, 17, of Grove City, Ohio. "I almost always prefer the movie version of a book. Movies can capture the beauty of an image more than books can."

Cecile Guillemin, a 17-year-old workshop participant who is in her last year at Lycee Rochambeau, the French International School, says, "I don't have time to read books. I am inspired by books to do movies."

* * *

Scene 1: Cut to Perry Schwartz, a bearded professorial type in his mid-60s, telling the students of his own background. He stands on a dark stage under bright lights. He has taught at Montgomery College since 1978. His focus has been live theater. He has made several short films, he says, including one based on "Our Little Trip," a play by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

When Schwartz mentions the beat poet, the camera closes in on students' faces. They are blank. Not one has heard of Ferlinghetti. Schwartz sighs.

* * *

It's no surprise that television, movies and video games have changed the way many absorb information. Now teachers are trying to harness that energy of the eye. This visually oriented generation "acquires much more of their knowledge -- some studies estimate that acquisition as 50 percent -- from visual texts" than from written sources, says Kathy Krauth, who is working on the Visualizing Cultures project at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

Therefore, she says, the Eye Generation "feels more comfortable expressing themselves in visual form."

Examples are endless. Vacation snapshots, collegians-gone-wild party pix and everything else go straight to a handycam or cellphone camera to the Internet. Today's job seekers post video résumés at Vault.com. In a Democratic debate this month and a September Republican debate, voters will be able to upload YouTube videos of themselves asking the candidates questions.

Through YouTubing, Facebooking, MySpacing and myriad other ways, people take in vast amounts of visual information. But do they always comprehend the meaning of what they see?

That's the problem, says Krauth, who lives in Tokyo and teaches at the American School in Japan. Students are taught how to read and how to react critically to literature, but not about visual images.

Because visual literacy is not required in schools, she says, "this generation's ability to assign meaning to the visual texts of others is passive and still needs a great deal more work. They are easily manipulated as students, consumers and citizens."

In other words, students today need to be taught, through images, how to think critically.

* * *

Scene 2: The students, sitting in a semicircle, are asked to name their favorite movies. They rattle off "Apocalypse Now" and "Psycho" and "Raging Bull."

"The Incredibles," says Kit Reiner.

"Pirates of the Caribbean," says Craig Patterson. "One."

* * *

In an e-mail, Krauth says the problem of visual illiteracy will be solved only "when being visually literate becomes central to current discussions and definitions of the literate individual in modern society."

Teachers must understand that students in the 21st century are receiving the bulk of their information through images, she says, and they must teach students how to be decisive and discerning about the images they see. "We should lean into the reality of this generation," she says, "and construct meaningful lessons using visuals."

And that's what Schwartz is trying to do: give meaningful literary lessons to his students using visuals. Over the nine or so years that he has been involved with the course, the students get younger and they come with more experience. This is the youngest class he has seen. Several have taken film classes at other schools.

In Schwartz's class, everyone comes up with an idea for a movie. Then they vote on the best one. This time, the only suggestion with a clear beginning, middle and end comes from the 40-year-old, David Hevey, who teaches middle school in Singapore. He suggests a story about a man with halitosis. After the plot is established, each student writes and directs one scene of the collaborative movie. They take turns performing other sundry tasks -- assisting with the camera, monitoring the sound, holding the boom microphone, making sure everybody is fed and watered.

For the major jobs, Schwartz brings in a couple of pros. Aerial Longmire, who handles the camera, is a star graduate of Schwartz's film courses. She works at Retirement Living Television Network in Columbia. Abba Shapiro, who helps the students with scripts and editing, trains people to use Apple's digital editing software.

Working sometimes 10 hours a day, students -- who paid $2,000 for the course -- write the movie, cast it, shoot it, edit it and gather to watch it at the end of the class; the film will be shown, free to the public, on Monday at 5 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring.

* * *

Scene 3: Schwartz hunches over a box of photographs -- publicity pictures of actors being considered by the class for the four main characters in its movie, "Scent of Love." This is the way the casting process begins. Schwartz faces the students and flashes about 200 pictures of professional actors. He waves each picture in front of the class, pausing only a few seconds. Amazingly, the students seem to remember every face that blurs past.

"We've already seen him," somebody says, after whizzing through scores and scores of portraits.

"We said no to her," says someone else.

* * *

Loanne Snavely, a librarian at Penn State, was on a panel at this summer's gathering of the American Library Association in Washington titled: "Eye to I: Visual Literacy Meets Information Literacy." She and other librarians discussed "the connections between visual and information literacies." They exhorted colleagues to get "beyond traditional literacy; you know, reading and writing."

Like Kathy Krauth, Snavely believes that visual education should be expanded and enhanced. Textual information, Snavely says, has been the primary focus of libraries in the past, but with "so much graphical communication integrated into the huge wave of social networking our culture is experiencing, we need to broaden our focus to include images of all kinds." * * *

Scene 4: Schwartz leaves the moviemaking students alone in the classroom for a while. They talk about "Lord of the Flies" as they wait for the teacher's return.

"Piggy died," says Max Simon.

"Spoiler alert," Kit says.

Now they don't have to read the book, someone says.

"It was a book?" asks someone else. Fade to black.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

NGA STEM Center Grant RFP

NGA STEM Center Grant RFP

http://www.nga.org/Files/pdf/0702INNOVATIONSTEMRFP.PDF

NGA Awards $500,000 Grants to Six States to Improve STEM Education

Because the livelihood of today's workforce, as well as state economies across the country, rests on the ability to compete in today's global economy, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) today awarded Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia $500,000 grants to establish science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education centers in their states.

A new workforce of problem-solvers, innovators, and inventors who are self-reliant and able to think logically is one of the critical foundations that drive a state economy's innovation capacity. The grants will allow states to create new STEM centers, support the development of a network of STEM centers or repurpose existing STEM Centers. The centers will serve as the foundation for an improved workforce through:

  • Aligning K-12 STEM education requirements with postsecondary and workplace expectations;
  • Improving the quantity and quality of STEM teachers;
  • Benchmarking state K-12 STEM standards, assessments and curricula to top performing nations in STEM education achievement and attainment;
  • Garnering public will for change to implement a better aligned system; and
  • Identifying best practices in STEM education and bringing them to scale.

"Governors recognize the links between a rigorous STEM education program and our leadership in the global economy," said Raymond C. Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association. "These grants will strengthen the economic competitiveness of the United States by improving our capacity for innovation."

STEM centers will help state K-12 education systems ensure all students graduate from high school with essential competencies in science, technology, engineering and math. These competencies are integral to improving overall high school graduation and college readiness rates and supporting a state economy's innovation capacity related to the businesses that operate within their leading economic clusters.

The STEM center grants are being awarded as part of NGA Chair Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano's Innovation America initiative. An independent national selection committee comprised of leading innovation and education experts selected the six states from submitted proposals. All states and U.S. territories were invited to apply for the grant and 24 applications were received.

The grants are made possible with the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Intel Foundation.

Monday, June 4, 2007

AIM Program "Primer on Pedagogy"

The Knowledge Building Paradigm: A Model of Learning for Net Generation Students
http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=368

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

21st CENTURY ASSESSMENT: FRAMES our MISSION!


Published Online: May 18, 2007
Published in Print: May 23, 2007

Commentary

Assessment in the Age of Innovation

Within the past 50 years, we’ve seen our country move from an industrial economy to an information-based economy. Now, early in the 21st century, it appears we are shifting to an innovation-based economy, one that requires what the psychologist Robert J. Sternberg calls “successful intelligence,” a three-point foundation of analytical, practical, and creative skills. In other words, the measure of success in today’s economy is not just what you know, but how you use that to imagine new ways to get work done, solve problems, or create new knowledge. This innovation-based environment calls for substantially new forms of assessment, and therein lies a major hurdle for schools, especially American schools, trying to prepare students for this new century.

American students today are largely evaluated based on their factual knowledge. A recent study by Robert C. Pianta and his colleagues at the University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning found that the average 5th grader received five times as much instruction in basic skills as instruction focused on problem-solving or reasoning. Our existing assessment system tends to reinforce rote instructional practices emphasizing the drilling of facts likely to be on a test, rather than problem-solving and reasoning strategies difficult to capture in multiple-choice test items.

If we look at the effectiveness of such practices, and benchmark our success against international competitors, the results are not promising. Test scores from the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which surveys 15-year-old schoolchildren in industrialized countries worldwide, show that, on average, U.S. students lag behind those in Europe and Asia in problem-solving skills in mathematics and science. Schools in Europe and Asia generally teach students how to apply knowledge to novel situations more successfully than do schools in the United States.

If we are to help students succeed in a 21st-century economy and society, we must find ways to measure their ability to apply knowledge to complex and challenging tasks, and to behave in other ways that predict successful engagement in the world as it is now. Because the most salient features of today’s world seem to be change, and the accelerating rate of that change, a major part of a person’s skill set must be the ability to adapt to new conditions and imagine new solutions.

Twenty-first century learning is about the process of integrating and using knowledge, not just the acquisition of facts and procedures.

With the reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act under way, the time is right to engage the nation’s policymakers in thinking about what 21st-century assessment should be. Assessing student performance in an innovation-based economy will require a transformation—from a sole focus on traditional subject-matter mastery to a new definition of educational excellence that encompasses the skills and understandings required by the new economy. The challenge we face as a nation in building a world-class education system is not only to educate toward rigorous standards benchmarked against the best systems in the world, but also to design an education system that puts a premium on the full complement of content and skills that will enable students to succeed in this ever-changing environment.


What are the essential elements of such learning? The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a leading advocacy organization in this area, identifies them as core academic content that is infused with subject-matter themes such as global awareness; financial, economic, business, and entrepreneurial literacy; and civic and health literacy, as well as learning skills that stress creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving, and communication and collaboration, along with information, media, and technology skills, and life and career skills. To prepare students to succeed as citizens, thinkers, and workers in the new century, and to enable teachers and school administrators to educate students for a future in which such skills are the markers of success, we must embrace a more comprehensive view of what constitutes learning.

Many of our high-achieving competitors are pushing for exactly this sort of innovation in education. A recent report by Singapore’s Ministry of Education, for example, opens with this statement: “Education is about preparing our people for the future. To thrive in the world in 2015, Singaporeans need strong analytical, communication, and interpersonal skills. They have to be more risk-taking, entrepreneurial, and able to tolerate greater ambiguity. Most importantly, they need to continuously learn, unlearn, and relearn to remain relevant in a dynamic environment.”

Assessments designed to gauge how well students master these more complex objectives of 21st-century learning will have to use a range of strategies, constructed-response items, essays, and other real-world and virtual performance measures that can help us evaluate how effectively students apply knowledge to problem-solving situations. Twenty-first century learning is about the process of integrating and using knowledge, not just the acquisition of facts and procedures. Hence, educators need to build assessments for learning, rather than solely of learning.

The new assessments will have to do the following:

Be largely performance-based. We need to know how students apply content knowledge to critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical tasks throughout their education, so that we can help them hone this ability and come to understand that successful learning is as much about the process as it is about facts and figures.

Make students’ thinking visible. The assessments should reveal the kinds of conceptual strategies a student uses to solve a problem.

Generate data that can be acted upon. Teachers need to be able to understand what the assessment reveals about students’ thinking. And school administrators, policymakers, and teachers need to be able to use this assessment information to determine how to create better opportunities for students.

Build capacity in both teachers and students. Assessments should provide frequent opportunity for feedback and revision, so that both teachers and students learn from the process.

Be part of a comprehensive and well-aligned continuum. Assessment should be an ongoing process that is well-aligned to the target concepts, or core ideas, reflected in the standards.


Building new assessments is a complex and costly undertaking, and there is good reason to believe that innovation in this area will require novel funding strategies from both the public and private sectors.

In the United Kingdom, for example, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a government body that maintains and develops the British national curriculum and its associated assessments, has invested the equivalent of $50 million in developing a new assessment system. In that system, test activities take place within a virtual city, and are designed to assess students’ information, communication, and technology, or ICT, skills, as well as their ability to use such skills to solve a set of complex problems involving research, communication, information management, and presentation.

The British assessment’s ambitious design reflects the country’s intention not only to set a new direction for the assessment of ICT skills, but also to generate an approach to computer-administered assessment that will ultimately be employed in other content areas. Interestingly, as early as 1992, the now-defunct U.S. Office of Technology Assessment published a report, “Testing in American Schools: Asking the Right Questions,” which noted that cutting-edge technologies could help push testing beyond conventional paper-and-pencil formats by structuring and presenting complex tasks, tracking students’ cognitive processes, and providing rapid feedback.

Another example of assessment innovation resides closer to home, in the National Science Foundation’s consortium of teachers, university-based researchers, and software developers designing formative mathematics assessments that run on hand-held computers. These assessments help teachers implement a form of research-based “clinical interview.” Based on the work of Jean Piaget, this assessment approach provides teachers with a window into children’s thinking. It helps them understand not only the mathematical knowledge of primary students, but also the strategies they use to solve math problems. The technology helps teachers keep track of students’ answers and reasoning strategies, and generates a performance profile at the end of an interview session. The kind of diagnostic data generated through such assessments gives teachers information they can act on instructionally.

Funding for developing such innovative assessments is admittedly a strategy for the longer term. What is important for the short term is that states realize they are in a position to exert tremendous influence over the kinds of assessments being developed for today’s students. Using the criteria cited here as a starting point, state departments of education can craft requests for proposals that specify exactly what they are looking for in a 21st-century assessment system.

Such requests are clearly going to have to break with existing conventions, however, and recognize that compelling, effective approaches to assessment are more likely to come from individuals and partnerships that are themselves focused on innovation, and not necessarily from traditional providers.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Lansing town hall aims to create 'innovation economy'


Nearly 100 people gathered Friday at the Lansing Center for a town hall meeting of the Mid-Michigan Innovation Team.

The MMIT is a $15 million, three-year initiative funded by the United State Department of Labor's Workforce Innovations in Regional Economic Development initiative.

The WIRED initiative focuses on regions, within and across states -- communities willing to join forces for a critical mass of assets and institutions to make economic transformation possible.

In the MMIT's case, that means a 13-county region that includes the metropolitan areas of Lansing, Flint, Bay City, Midland, Saginaw and Michigan's Thumb region.

Organizers say the region is big enough to have major assets, such as international airports and universities, and diverse enough to include manufacturing, technology, agriculture and tourism economies.

But it's linked in many cases by an intensely local, small-town focus -- small towns that under the grant will be encouraged to align resources and commitments for regional benefit.

Your humble narrator played a role in the festivities, speaking about some of the innovative companies he visited during the recent Great Lakes IT Report Spring Tech Tour, and offering a few unsolicited opinions on the state of innovation in mid-Michigan.

But the real meat of the program came from Randall Kempner, vice presidnt for regional innovation at the Council on Competitiveness in Washington, D.C.

Kempner presented the results of a Mid-Michigan Regional Innovation Assessment, a survey of the region's current capacity for economic innovation.

The survey showed entrepreneurial strengths in transportation infrastructure -- good highways, low commute times, three good airports.

Also, regional leaders said the region's universities and community colleges were really good at working with employers.

And the cost of doing business isn't out of line -- it's 97 percent of the national average in Flint and Lansing, 99 percent in Saginaw and 101 percent in Bay City.

Also, Michigan public school students beat the national averages in ACT and SAT testing, and all but three of teh 13 counties involved have high school graduation rates above the national average.

The challenges -- and we've heard 'em before! -- are workforce educational development, a lack of an entrepreneurial culture and a lack of risk capital.

In short, it's a big company mentality. It's been common across the country in many places, Kempner said -- from Rochester, N.Y. where everyone used to work for Kodak, and Wilmington, Del., where everyone used to work for DuPont.

"Without intervention, it will take at least a generation to change this (big company) mentality," Kempner said. "So your challenge is -- intervene! You have to keep telling kids their future is in IT, not a lifetime job in an auto plant. And the auto plant jobs that will remain are not dark, dirty and dumb -- they are it jobs too."

Kempner said he did see hopeful signs, like angel investor groups springing up, entrepreneurship training programs emerging and a new culture in K-12 education.


And he said there also needs to be more regional cooperation. The little three-county regions of which the MMIT is comprised -- the three counties around Lansing, the three counties around Midland, Bay City and Saginaw, the three counties of the Thumb -- "are not big enough to win in the global economy. You don’t have enough assets on your own," Kempner said.

The town hall concluded with breakout sessions on the four economic areas identified in the MMIT implementation plan -- advanced manufacturing, the bio-economy, health care and entrepreneurship -- and a presentation on automotive information from David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.

More at http://www.midmiinnovationteam.org/.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

NSF ITEST Grant (Leverage Opportunity)

photo

(January photo by MANDI WRIGHT/Detroit Free Press)

Gov. Jennifer Granholm says the National Governors Association conference in July will give the state a chance to showcase itself. But it won't be as lavish as when Michigan hosted the annual event 20 years ago

Detroit Free Press

State scales back governors conference

Nation's governors to gather near Traverse City in a low-key affair

The nation's governors plan to meet near Traverse City this summer, but their July 20-23 conference will bear little resemblance to the razzle-dazzle that greeted the chief executives 20 years ago.

In 1987, the state's economy had emerged from the recession of the early 1980s. It was Michigan's 150th birthday and then-Gov. Jim Blanchard was determined to show the nation's governors a good time.

Back then, the state paid $500,000 to put on the National Governors Association conference. There were parades, concerts at Interlochen, fireworks, a tall ships regatta and a Motown revue.

A little-known Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, who was chairman of the group, showed his musical chops, joining the Four Tops with a riff on his tenor saxophone.

Twenty years later, Michigan's economy is skidding and there's no state money to promote gala events. There will be parties and plenty of chances to show off Michigan's splendor, but the money will come from private donations raised by the state's NGA host committee, said Liz Boyd, spokeswoman for Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Last year, Charleston, S.C., raised $1.2 million in private money to host the annual meeting.

Even with Michigan's economic travails, Granholm will be propelled into the national spotlight as the host of the event.

"Hosting this year's NGA annual meeting in Traverse City is a terrific chance for us to use a national spotlight to showcase Michigan and all we have to offer -- from our new economy, high-tech businesses to our spectacular natural environment," Granholm said. "The state is feeling some challenges, but it's the perfect time to highlight the work we are doing to implement our economic plan."

While Blanchard whisked his Democratic colleagues and Democratic candidates for president to the governor's sweet summer digs on Mackinac Island for a meeting after the official event, Granholm has no such plans."We're going to promote Michigan, but it's a different time and we're approaching it as a business meeting," Boyd said. "It's not a time for lavish parties."

The NGA host committee is lining up corporate sponsors to pay for the parties and the security needed to keep the 35-40 governors expected to attend the conference safe. That's appropriate, given the economic times, Blanchard said.

"We were trying to show people a Michigan they had never seen, so we used it to promote tourism and manufacturing in Michigan," he said of the 1987 conference. "It's a great way to show off the state's assets."

The tentative schedules of both the NGA and the state host committee will be released later this week, but there are plans for social events for the 1,200 people expected to attend the conference on Friday and Saturday. And the Chateau Chantal winery on the picturesque Old Mission Peninsula is planning a corporate-sponsored party and dinner for the governors on Sunday evening, featuring a strolling dinner and wines of the region.

"I know what they're hoping to do is give people a flavor of what Up North Michigan is really like. People have a very industrialized image of Michigan," said Liz Berger, operations manager for the winery. "But we're rather idyllic and pastoral."

The event is to take place about sunset and the governors will then be bused to the tip of the peninsula for a bonfire "and maybe some marshmallows," Berger said.

Governors, their staff, and representatives from the federal and state governments, White House, think tanks and the news media covering the event will encounter a newly renovated Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, with $12 million in upgrades done in the last four years."The renovations would have been done regardless of the convention," said J. Michael DeAgostino, spokesman for the resort, which is owned by the Grand Traverse band of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. "But we'll turn over the entire facility to the NGA."

Traverse City also is a different place than it was 20 years ago, when the NGA conference was one of the biggest events hosted in the city to date.

Now the hotels are filled most of the summer and big events are commonplace. Running the same time as the NGA is the three-week Horse Show by the Bay, a national equestrian event that is expected to attract 750 horses and 1,500 spectators.

"It's July in Traverse City and I'm right on the beach. We would be full without the NGA conference," said Chris Gorence, general manager of the Sugar Beach and Grand Beach Resort hotels. "The positive effect it will have on us is that it will drive people to come here on other weekends in the summer."

The four-day event, however, isn't all fun. The governors will get down to the business of electing new leadership. Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican of Minnesota, will take over as chairman from Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat of Arizona. And they will focus on the theme "Innovation America."

"It's a good fit for Michigan," said Jodi Omear, spokeswoman for the NGA. "It's all about revitalizing the economy with things like alternative energy."

The star power among governors isn't high, unless you're talking about former movie star and current California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his attendance isn't a sure bet.

While the NGA likes to keep the conference nonpartisan and won't host any presidential forums, wherever a group of elected officials gather, politics is sure to follow. When the meeting was held in Charleston last year, there were four sitting governors considering a run for the White House -- Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, George Pataki of New York, Tom Vilsack of Iowa and Bill Richardson of New Mexico. Political events were as plentiful as policy discussions.

Richardson is the only sitting governor still in the race, though Romney, also still in the race, could attend as a former governor.

"We discourage them from doing anything during the meeting," Omear said. "But I'm sure there will be things before and after the conference."

Contact KATHLEEN GRAY at 313-223-4407 or gray@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Reassurance!

Published Online: April 27, 2007
Published in Print: May 2, 2007

Math-Science Bills Advance in Congress

Separate measures aimed at boosting competitiveness.

Improving K-12 instruction and student achievement in mathematics and science is at the heart of separate bills intended to bolster America’s economic standing that won overwhelming approval in both houses of Congress last week.

The omnibus bills include efforts to increase the content knowledge of prospective math and science teachers, provide professional development for teachers in those subjects, and define what students should know to do well in college and the workplace in all subjects.

“We can only succeed in the international global economy if we are competitive and if we innovate,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said during the House’s debate on the three bills that made up its competitiveness package. “We cannot innovate without the investment in education, the investment in science and technology.”

As part of that package, the House on April 24 approved the 10,000 Teachers, 10 Million Minds Science and Math Scholarship Act by a vote of 389-22. The House also approved a science and technology bill that day, and a bill to provide loans to small technology businesses the next day. Both those bills passed by large margins.

The Senate passed its bill, 88-8, on April 25.

“The American Competes Act is the best way to keep more of the jobs of the 21st century right here in America and the best way to ensure that our children have the skills to keep America at the forefront of innovations and discovery,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate minority leader.

A White House statement expressed concern about the number of new programs proposed in the Senate bill, but it did not threaten a veto. The two chambers’ bills would have to be reconciled before Congress could send a measure to President Bush.

Supporters of the bill said that the Senate took a comprehensive approach to solving the problem because the stakes are high.

“We are at risk of losing our brainpower advantage,” Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a co-author of the bill, said. “If we lose our brainpower advantage, we lose … our standard of living.”

“Federal investment in the basic sciences and research has long been a critical component of America’s competitive dominance globally,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Last week’s action followed more than two years of bipartisan work in both houses that responded to a 2005 report from a panel of business leaders convened by the National Academies. In “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future,” the panel warned that the United States’ economy would suffer if it failed to improve the scientific and technological skills of its workforce. ("Panel Urges U.S. Push to Raise Math, Science Achievement," Oct. 19, 2005.)

In the K-12 section of that report, the business leaders set goals of recruiting 10,000 of the nation’s best college students to teach mathematics and science; improving the math and science skills of the 250,000 teachers already teaching those subjects; and doubling the number of students taking Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses.

Congress’ attempt to address the K-12 goals, as well as the broader scientific and technological issues addressed in the report, faltered last year. While the bills passed last week by the House and the Senate share many goals, they take different approaches to meeting them.

The Senate bill would establish several new programs in various federal agencies, while the House legislation focuses more on expanding existing programs, mostly within the National Science Foundation.

Both the House and the Senate bills would do more to attract new teachers to the profession and provide more in-service training to veteran educators who need to improve their expertise in various science subjects, said Gerald F. Wheeler, the executive director of the 56,000-member National Science Teachers Association.

10,000 New Teachers

The House bill sets a goal of luring 10,000 new math and science teachers annually. One mechanism for doing so is an expansion of the existing Robert Noyce Scholarship Program, administered by the NSF, which provides $10,000 annual scholarships to college students who agree to become math and science teachers.

The bill would increase the number of years of scholarship funding students could receive from two to three years. Students would be expected to teach for up to six years to receive that maximum funding, but could reduce the commitment by agreeing to work in “high need” schools. Scholarships would be converted to loans for awardees who did not fulfill teaching commitments. The Noyce program awards funding to colleges and universities, which then select students for scholarships, according to an description from the NSF.

The increased monetary incentives would at least offer a carrot for students considering other, better-paying math- and science-related jobs, Mr. Wheeler said.

“We have a hard time competing with corporate America, but this will help get the attention of [prospective] teachers,” he said.

Mr. Wheeler also supports a provision in the House bill that would provide competitive financial awards to establish stronger links between universities’ academic departments in math and science and their teacher-training programs. Many math and science experts say too few students majoring in those subjects consider becoming teachers; too few aspiring teachers, meanwhile, take advantage of strong academic courses offered by math and science departments.

“Nowhere do those two conversations come together,” Mr. Wheeler said.

Some postsecondary institutions, however, such as the UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin, have drawn praise from federal officials for bridging the faculty divide and producing math and science teachers with strong content knowledge. Mr. Wheeler believes the House legislation would allow more universities to make similar efforts.

Both chambers’ bills would establish new programs to encourage math and science teachers to pursue master’s degrees in those subjects, with the idea that advanced training would provide them with greater subject-matter expertise.

The Senate bill would create competitive grants for states to ensure their standards are linked to higher education and workforce skills.

In an April 23 statement, White House officials voiced numerous concerns about the Senate competitiveness proposal—particularly its creation of new programs at the U.S. departments of Commerce and Energy and at the NSF.

Administration officials estimate that the Senate bill would cost $61 billion over four years, which they say is $9 billion more than the four-year price tag for President Bush’s proposed American Competitiveness Initiative, also aimed at improving math and science education.

Scot Montrey, a spokesman for Sen. Alexander, put the legislation’s cost at $60 billion, but said the measure included only $16 billion in spending on new programs.

The Senate bill “expands many existing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs that have not been proven effective and creates new STEM education programs that overlap with existing federal programs,” the White House said in the statement.

A soon-to-be-released, congressionally mandated report, part of a review being led by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, will show that many federal math and science programs in teacher training and other areas have failed to produce results, the White House said.

‘Hard Part’ Ahead

The bills passed last week would create the new programs. The next big step, assuming a final version of the legislation is signed into law, would be for Congress to pass appropriations bills to pay for them.

With the budget for domestic spending austere, Congress will struggle to find the money to support the programs that eventually emerge in the competitiveness bill, Sen. McConnell said.

“The hard part, obviously, is going to be providing the funds to carry out the programs in this bill to meet these authorization targets we have set,” he said.

Still, advocates for the advancement of science and technology lauded Congress’ action as a good first step in addressing the needs in their fields.

“These bills are the best possible start to addressing the competitiveness challenge,” said James Brown, a co-chairman of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Coalition, a Washington-based advocacy group. “It’s an excellent deal, when you consider all the constraints out there.”

Saturday, April 28, 2007

NEW MATH!


Detroit Free Press

Granholm's call for school aid cut raises the stakes

Districts express alarm; GOP says governor is overreacting

LANSING -- An irate Gov. Jennifer Granholm put the heat on Republican lawmakers Thursday, announcing she would cut money to public schools by $125 per pupil unless the GOP agrees to a tax increase to make up for falling tax revenues.

School officials said the cut would force them to tap emergency reserves or borrow money to balance their budgets -- difficult options with just six weeks left in most districts' school year. If money isn't restored in the new budget year, they said, layoffs and program cuts loom.

"I'm assuming most districts are going to be able to at least keep open their classrooms," said Mike Flanagan, state superintendent of public instruction. But he said some may cut transportation or lay off administrators for the rest of the school year.

Granholm said Michigan's continued weak economy, which translated to lower-than-expected tax revenues, forced her decision. New data, she said, show that the state fell $136 million short of March sales tax projections. She plans to officially notify school districts Monday of the aid cut. The Legislature will have one month to find cash to avoid the reduction.

Granholm's announcement fueled partisan discord over a state budget crisis whose solution has eluded Granholm and lawmakers since she announced in January that reduced tax collections had put the state $900 million in the hole.

Republicans accused Granholm of using alarmist tactics to force a tax increase and insisted the immediate budget problems could be solved through spending cuts.

Granholm also said she would notify physicians and hospitals of reduced state payments for treating Medicaid patients because of a general fund deficit she said has grown to $500 million.

Granholm implored several hundred school officials at a Lansing conference to urge their state senators to raise taxes and avert the cutbacks. She said she has cut state spending so much that further cuts will harm education, public safety and health care.

Senate Republicans have opposed tax hikes for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, although they hinted they would consider new or higher taxes for 2007-08 along with more cost-cutting. Many House Democrats also have shunned a tax increase unless significant numbers of Republicans agree to one.

Granholm, visibly angry, told reporters that Republicans are stonewalling budget negotiations with extremist views against taxes.

"We need revenues to be able to save our schools," she said. "I'm angry at Senate Republicans for having purely an extremist ideology of never, no way ever, regardless of how it impacts Michigan, will they ever consider revenues. That philosophy is damaging to Michigan."

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, dismissed Granholm's label as unproductive name-calling. Bishop, in a statement, said the House and Senate have cooperated to erase part of the budget deficit.

"The governor seems intent on derailing the bipartisan progress via her obsession with a massive tax increase on Michigan families," Bishop said. "Republicans and Democrats have both demonstrated in legislation that the current-year deficit can be balanced with cuts."

Warren Consolidated Schools Superintendent James Clor said a $125-per-pupil cut would cost his district of more than 15,000 students about $1.9 million. He said the district's $13-million reserve would last three months.

"This is a shock, that it has to happen instantly," Clor said. "I hope it's a move that Granholm has to do to have these senators and legislators wake up."

He added, "What happens to districts that have no savings? Do they just close on that date? What do you do if you have no money?"

Avondale Schools Superintendent George Heitsch said a $125-per-pupil cut would cost his Auburn Hills district more than $400,000, which he said would be lumped onto next year's deficit.

Asked whether it would force an early end to the school year, he said, "We would not want that to happen."

This week, the Senate sent to Granholm a House bill that lops $300 million from the School Aid Fund deficit, mostly through accounting maneuvers. The bill still left a $62-million school budget hole. Granholm said she plans to sign it.

Combined with the March revenue shortfall, the School Aid Fund will remain $198 million in the hole when state economists meet in May to officially announce new revenue projections.

Earlier this month, Granholm and the Legislature cut $344 million from the current year's budget.

Sen. Nancy Cassis, R-Novi, chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees tax issues, said Granholm hasn't done enough to trim such growing costs as health insurance and pensions for Michigan school employees. She said the governor's criticism of Republicans makes it more difficult to reach a budget compromise.

Cassis said a tax increase might be considered as a last resort for the 2007-08 fiscal year, adding that school funding may have to be scaled back, though not as much as Granholm's $125-per-pupil cut.

Contact CHRIS CHRISTOFF at 517-372-8660 or christoff@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.

OLD MATH!

Detroit News Online


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April 27, 2007

Daniel Howes

Daniel Howes: Jig is up on fat school funding

You'd be irritated, too, if you'd been re-elected governor in a landslide last November

And your party, in control of the state House for the first time in a decade, dissed your plan for a 2-percent tax on services in about as much time it took you to propose it.

And your speaker, a private equity shark-turned-Democrat, didn't buy it either. Then he and the guys heading the tax policy committee recast a replacement to the Single Business Tax that Republicans, automakers, key chambers of commerce and other business leaders greeted with the kind of respect and qualified consideration that made you look, well, like an outsider.

And your tactic of whipsawing more revenue from the Senate GOP so you can plow it back into the entitlement maw that is Michigan's public schools didn't work. So the answer, just months after magically coming up with $220 more in (pre-election) per-pupil funding, is to take more than half of it back, call the Republicans "extremists" who "won't consider revenues" and bank that the public buys the charade.

But here's the bipartisan problem facing Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester: The cash burn consuming Michigan public-school funding won't stop unless something changes fundamentally.

Almost every penny of the cash Granholm found last fall, minus the $125 per head she's promising to pull back, wasn't headed to "the kids" anyway. It was destined for negotiated health care benefits and retirement fund payments whose rates are dictated by state bureaucrats.

Here's an example that should be familiar to Bishop. In the current year, according to estimates prepared for the Rochester school board, the 14,800-student system has an estimated payroll of $57.95 million for 847 teachers. The district pays pay an additional 17.74 percent, or another $10.3 million, into the state teacher retirement system.

By the 2008-09 fiscal year, estimates show, Rochester schools expect to be paying 21 percent of payroll (up from 14.87 percent in '04-05) into the system. That's $13.2 million on top of an estimated $62.9 million in payroll for a total of $80.9 million (including payroll taxes), or easily more than $100,000 per teacher.

The point here is not an emotional one, although it will surely be made that, or that teachers are "the problem." It's that the system, absent either massive revenue expansions through growth (unlikely near-term) or annual tax grabs (more likely), is financially unsustainable -- even in comparatively wealthy Rochester.

Rochester's payments into the state retirement system are expected to be 28.1 percent higher by the 2008-09 year than today, while salaries are expected to increase 8.5 percent over the same period.

Compare that to your 401(k) at work, where employers typically contribute 4 percent or 6 percent of salary as a "match" to employee contributions. As salaries grow through raises and promotions, the contributions grow even if the percentage doesn't because to increase wages and, at the same time, increase the percentage match would outrun the ability of almost any business to keep up.

But that's exactly what's going on in many school districts across the state. It's not the only challenge among countless others facing Granholm and the Legislature, but it's a major one pressuring state and local budgets every year -- and it needs to change.

Daniel Howes can be reached at (313) 222-2106, dchowes@detnews.com or http://info.detnews.com/danielhowesblog. Catch him Fridays with Paul W. Smith on NewsTalk 760-WJR.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

The Yin and Yang of the 21st Century!


Am I An Anachronism?

21st Century Leaders

Not too long ago I was participating in a national meeting of K-12 CIOs, listening to a panel discussion on the latest developments in district IT shops. Although the three panelists were justifiably proud of their accomplishments, I was struck by the absence of a common component from almost all of the presentations and ensuing discussions. Yet I could not quite put my finger on what was missing.

The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I began to feel. I started to wonder if perhaps the unnerving feeling was due to a lack of familiarity with key concepts, a fear not uncommon to professionals who reach my age. I not only began to feel old, but wondered for the first time in my 39 years in education (34 in educational technology) if educational technology was passing me by.

My head was spinning. Was I becoming irrelevant? Were changes occurring at such a rate that I did not even know they were taking place? Put simply: Was I becoming an anachronism without even knowing it?

As an urban district technology leader for the past 22 years, I have tried to stay ahead of the curve and took pride in being able to marry ideas and concepts to reality. In recent years, for example, I directed the implementation of a GigE WAN throughout my district, along with a VoIP phone system, and instructional video streaming. Similarly, the district is changing its central information architecture and is in the middle of implementing an ERP. No, I don't think my feeling of discomfort is due to falling behind the technology curve.

Well, it's now 3:30 AM (one of my most productive times for problem solving), and I think I've figured it out: While differing in details, the CIOs who spoke at the conference all focused almost exclusively on the application of project management techniques. Indeed, each panelist showed off visual representations of relatively complex models using a large number of circles, squares, and other geometric forms in different colors.

As I considered the similarities of the project management-oriented presentations, I realized they were also very much alike in what they left out. In all three presentations, not one presenter (whom I respect for their accomplishments) mentioned words such as instruction, school, student, principal, or learning. I wondered if any of them had been to a school during the first week of classes or actually talked to a principal about one of the major information systems his or her staff had developed.

Unfortunately, there are CIOs, who, while designing systems to improve student achievement, have never visited a school, rarely talked to a principal, nor met with a curriculum coordinator. To remain aloof, distant, and even uncaring about the instructional side of the house cannot help a modern CIO, and, in the long term, will impair his or her IT program. It is difficult to get support from those you ignore.

Much of this attitude, I believe, stems from many IT directors coming into districts with little, if any, experience in education. Up until the last 7 to 10 years, IT leadership generally came from those who had years of K-12 experience. However, due to the increasing complexity of technology, the retirements of earlier generations of district-bred leaders, and the emphasis on accountability mandates, districts are increasingly hiring IT specialists from the private sector. This movement has transformed the meaning of IT from "instructional technology" to "information technology."

But while they may be experts in technology, these leaders too often have limited knowledge of the industry in which they function-education.

With a little effort, I believe the barriers between central IT and the schools can be significantly reduced. I suggest some of these for a start:

Set up a CIO/Principals' Advisory Committee to meet every month or two to discuss issues of importance. I did this at my district because it keeps me close to what's important at the ground level, and it lets me know how well my technology team is doing (The principals sometimes tell a different story than my managers.) Also, it lets me test out and gain support for new ideas.

Distribute a quarterly newsletter to key groups in schools. In my setting, for example, I wanted to increase rapport with school technology specialists. Although my leadership team and I frequently attend their monthly meetings, we felt an informational newsletter focusing on their particular needs would help. To see a sample newsletter, visit www.ccsd.net/tls/Newsletter/oct06/newsletter-full.htm (Note: Some of the links will not work outside the district intranet.)

Speak at technology events at schools or those sponsored by different district groups. Virtually all districts have some type of technology-related events going on, whether it is third graders showing off their PowerPoint presentations, a high school robotics competition, or the computer club meeting. While you certainly don't need to attend all of them, occasionally participating in one will help break down the barriers between the schools and your IT organization.

Visit a school. One of the things I enjoy doing, and don't do nearly enough, is to visit a school to see how technology is being used by staff and students. Usually I call up the principal the day before or the day of my trip, and ask if it is okay for me to visit the school for one hour. I assure principals that I'm not there to check on them and that I just need to visit some schools for my own mental health. Almost always they're delighted to host me and have the technology specialist take me around. It's a great opportunity to show off something they are quite proud of and/or hit me up for something special. Either way, I have won.

Support innovative instructional technology projects that are usually associated with schools or instructional applications. For example, recently our purchasing department did not want to buy 80+ tablet laptops for a middle school. They believed that tablets were too expensive. I intervened and not only got the purchasing staff to relent but worked with the vendor to get special pricing. Another time, I took the lead on implementing a Web-based library management system throughout the district. The key point in each of these examples is that I left the "IT Center" and was directly involved in instructional technology.

As for me and my quandary, I feel better now that I've figured out what was bothering me about the presentations. There's nothing anachronistic about a CIO focusing on where the rubber meets the road: students and learning.

Philip J. Brody, Ph.D. is chief technology officer/assistant superintendent of Clark County School District in Las Vegas.



21st Century Skills: Will Our Students Be Prepared?

Editor's Pick

Learning for the 21st Century, a report from the public-private coalition known as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, articulates a vision of how schools can best prepare students to succeed in the first decades of the 21st century. Central to the report's recommendations is a call for schools to focus on six key elements of 21st century learning:

1. Core Subjects: The authors reaffirm the importance of the core subjects identified by No Child Left Behind but challenge schools and policymakers to expand their focus beyond "basic competency" to understanding the core academic content at much higher levels.

2. Learning Skills: "To cope with the demands of the 21st century," the report states, "students need to know more than core subjects. They need to know how to use their knowledge and skills-by thinking critically, applying knowledge to new situations, analyzing information, comprehending new ideas, communicating, collaborating, solving problems, and making decisions."

3. 21st Century Tools: Recognizing that "technology is, and will continue to be, a driving force in workplaces, communities, and personal lives in the 21st century," Learning for the 21st Century emphasizes the importance of incorporating information and communication technologies into education from the elementary grades up.

4. 21st Century Context: Experiences that are relevant to students' lives, connected with the world beyond the classroom, and based on authentic projects are central to the sort of education the Partnership for 21st Century Skills defines as the appropriate context for learning in the information age.

5. 21st Century Content: The report's authors believe that certain content essential for preparing students to live and work in a 21st century world is missing from many state and local standards.
6. New Assessments that Measure 21st Century Skills: "As pervasive as assessment seems to be today," the report says, "it remains an emerging and challenging field that demands further study and innovation." Recommendations include moving beyond standardized testing as the sole measure of student learning; balancing traditional tests with classroom assessments to measure the full range of students' skills; and using technology-based assessments to deliver immediate feedback.

Just as the CEO Forum on Education and Technology included a StaR (School Technology and Readiness) Chart in its 2001 report to aid schools in identifying their level of technology readiness and preparation, Learning for the 21st Century features a fold-out MILE (Milestones for Improving Learning and Education) Guide to help measure progress at preparing students to meet the challenges of the new millennium.

What's New Here?

Many of the themes explored in Learning for the 21st Century will be familiar to educators who have read the 1991 SCANS Report (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) or subsequent reports issued by the CEO Forum. Both groups outlined a variety of skills-including higher-order thinking, personal abilities, and technology literacy-essential for preparing students for a knowledge-based economy.

So what is new about the recommendations being made by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills? "To some degree, the recommendations are not all that new," says Chris Dede, professor of learning technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an education advisor to the partnership, "and that, in itself, is newsworthy. The fact that educators and business leaders keep returning to many of the same findings means we have a lot of confidence in them-that they're not part of a temporary fad."

Another partnership advisor, Paul Resta, director of the Learning Technology Center at the University of Texas at Austin, agrees that the consensus arrived at by the partnership is noteworthy-especially because of the large number of stakeholders from business, K-12 schools, higher education, and government who participated in its creation. In addition, he points out that it delves deeper into the how of delivering 21st century skills than its predecessors.

John Wilson, vice chair for the 21st Century Skills partnership and executive director of the National Education Association adds that, "While previous works have focused on technology, this goes beyond that to what we need to do to prepare students for a world that is vastly transformed by technology, making it necessary to constantly learn and adapt."

NCLB and 21st Century Skills: Contradictory or Complementary?

For some who attended the Learning for the 21st Century press conference, there was something incongruous about listening to John Bailey, director of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology, endorse the report-including its suggestion that "standardized tests can measure only a few of the critical skills that we hope our students will learn." After all, for many educators today the government's No Child Left Behind program is synonymous with high-stakes testing and a narrowing vision of what constitutes achievement.

For example, social studies teacher and media coach Marco Torres laments the fact that his students, who create outstanding multimedia projects that demonstrate both knowledge and creativity, are forced to attend four-hour Saturday "drill-and-kill" sessions if they fail to pass a weekly test. "Many of my colleagues feel too overwhelmed to focus on teaching or learning. Louder, slower, and more repetitive seems to be the pedagogy of choice of low-income schools like mine," he says.

ISTE president Jan Van Dam concurs with the feeling that, "Many districts are so overwhelmed and concerned about the NCLB requirements and potential financial repercussions of not complying, that for lots of them the safest route is the 'back-to-basics' approach-focusing entirely on 20th century skills at the expense of 21st century ones."

But both Van Dam and Bailey believe that it does not have to be this way. "It's not an either/or choice," says Bailey. "We can teach higher-order thinking skills and have students using 21st century tools at the same time that they master core content areas." He points out that NCLB does not mandate that measures of average yearly performance be based solely on tests of lower-order thinking skills and that many of the 21st century skills outlined in the partnership's report are already part of state standards.

"I wholeheartedly agree that there is no need for an either/or approach," adds Van Dam. "There needs to be less fear and more creativity applied to the methods used to meet the needs of NCLB."

Basic Skills Revisited

One of the key points of Learning for the 21st Century, according to John Wilson, is that we are defining essential skills too narrowly. "As our nation focuses on the basics, it is noteworthy that government, educators, and private industry are unified in underlining that 21st century skills must be part of today's basics," he says.

The report states, "Literacy in the 21st century means more than basic reading, writing, and computing skills. As writer Alvin Toffler points out, 'The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.'"

Learning for the 21st Century reminds readers that NCLB defines core subjects to include the arts, civics, and a number of other subjects often overlooked in back-to-basics curricula and that many states and districts already incorporate a wide range of learning skills into their standards. Now, the report says, it is time to "emphasize them strategically and comprehensively" - and to add some more key skills to the list.

Technology's Role Today

Although the authors are careful to point out that there are plenty of learning skills that have nothing to do with technology, they describe 21st century tools - including computers, telecommunications, and audio- or video-based media - as critical enablers of learning in a number of realms. And the fact that the information age that has resulted from the widespread adoption of such tools places us "in a world of almost unlimited streams of trivial and profound information, of enormous opportunity and difficult choices," necessitates an emphasis on information and communication technology literacy skills that will allow students to make sense of it all.

While many education, business, and government leaders concur with the importance of technology as a tool for 21st century teaching and learning, this realization contrasts sharply with what is happening in a number of states and districts as they scramble to respond to budget cuts and accountability pressures. "Unfortunately," says Margaret Honey, vice president and director of EDC's Center for Children and Technology, "in the schools that have the most pressure on them to improve test scores, technology often takes a back seat, along with the arts or anything that is seen as peripheral."

"I think everyone recognizes the importance of technology," agrees Ginger Jewell, coordinator of educational technology for the Clarke County School District in Georgia, "but it sometimes comes down to Solomon-like decisions. We've lost the technology money that was generated by the lottery and that is a tremendous blow. We also had to scale back the regular budget to accommodate unfunded NCLB mandates." Nevertheless, she says, her district continues to support its technology program with help from a local sales tax. "I actually think we're experiencing better use as teachers see the technology as a tool to accomplish academic goals rather than an add-on to an already busy day."

Having Faith in 21st Century Teaching

The authors of Learning for the 21st Century are clear that an emphasis on learning skills, 21st century tools, global awareness, and other elements of 21st century curriculum can - and should - coexist with core content. "Both [basic and 21st century skills] are essential," they write, "and, when taught concurrently, one reinforces the other."

According to Chris Dede, "In their focus on achievement lots of people are going back to behaviorist ideas from the first half of the 20th century, which said that basics must come first, and only when you know all the basic concepts and skills can you move on to learn about more complex interrelationships. Unfortunately, many kids get bored or burned out long before they get there. The drill kills their natural curiosity and they stop even trying."

"There is plenty of evidence," he continues, "that it is possible to learn the simple things in the process of addressing a complicated problem. Given interesting but complex challenges and projects, students are often motivated to learn the basic computation skills or simple facts that they need to master the problem."

The value of rich, multidisciplinary, technology-infused learning seems so obvious to educators who have seen its impact on young people that it is often frustrating to be asked to prove it using tests. Eeva Reeder, educational consultant and project-based learning specialist, speaks for many of her colleagues when she says, "A massive amount of research has made it clear how people learn and don't learn. The fact that it is still being debated is baffling. We need to use our common sense and pay attention. All human beings learn by doing, analyzing, talking, processing, and problem-solving. Talking at kids never has been and never will be an effective way to help them learn."

At the same time, there is good news for those who are resigned to the idea that test scores will continue to take center stage, at least for the near future. According to a number of researchers, rich 21st century learning experiences commonly do translate into higher test scores. Paul Resta describes two projects he worked on with secondary schools in Texas. Both focused on cooperative learning and knowledge construction in the context of English and social science instruction. "The teachers and administrators were very nervous about the nontraditional nature of the activities and how they would affect test scores. In the end, the students involved in these two projects all scored as well as their peers on some of the tests and significantly better on others."

It is interesting to note that these sorts of gains are true in spite of the fact that allowing students to solve real-world problems, collaborate with others, and create presentations to demonstrate their learning takes more time - time that might otherwise be used to speed through additional content material. Both Dede and fellow advisor Margaret Honey point to the importance of deep learning. "A broad overview is important," says Honey, "but stopping frequently to involve students in projects that allow them to go deep is equally important. We need a balanced approach."

Ironically, educators' worries about test scores might eventually be what it takes to make them broaden their teaching methods. "Let's be honest," says Michael Simkins, creative director for the California-based Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership, "we can get some initial gains on tests by teaching to the test and practicing test taking skills. Ultimately, though, we're going to hit an achievement wall. The irony here is that teachers are most likely to drill basic skills even harder in their effort to keep getting new achievement gains when, in fact, it may only be through engaging kids in higher-order thinking activities that they have any chance of breaking through those subsequent achievement barriers."

New Assessments and Measures of Progress

Regardless of the impact of 21st century learning on test scores, there is clearly a need for assessment tools that measure those essential skills that will never be captured by traditional tests. Even before Learning for the 21st Century challenged states and districts to add new skills to their lists of essentials, many of the standards on the list were being played down or ignored simply because they weren't easy to measure. Or, as the report reminds us, "What gets measured gets taught... We must measure what we value - or it won't be taught."

While the urgency is evident, the mandate for what must follow is a little fuzzier. Twenty-first century project and portfolio assessments are great classroom-level tools for monitoring the progress of individual students but, as the report mentions, "These assessments typically are not valid or reliable for broad comparisons across classrooms or schools." Other new approaches, such as computer-delivered tests, are helping with scoring and rapid feedback to schools - an essential element if we are to use the results to help students - but do not dramatically broaden the sorts of things that are being tested.

Whether second-generation assessment tools can bridge the gap - allowing the entire nation to focus on what's important, not just what can be tested easily - is a big question. John Wilson, for one, is optimistic that "technology will help us find ways to more effectively utilize assessment both for identifying overall achievement patterns as well as for helping individual students learn. Devising these much-needed quality assessments must be a priority of our policymakers."

In the meantime, the report places surprisingly little emphasis on other measures of progress that so many educators point to as compelling evidence that their 21st century teaching is paying off. While NCLB legislation permits states to use a variety of measures for measuring annual yearly progress, factors such as student attendance, college acceptances, or student and parent satisfaction, are receiving far less publicity than test scores.

And yet those are the factors that administrators at New York's widely respected Urban Academy tout when they talk about the measures of success that matter to them and their school community. "Why is Urban Academy so successful?" they ask at their Web site - and then go on to explain that 97 percent of their graduates enter four-year universities, they have virtually no violence, theft, or teacher turnover, and their attendance and dropout rates are far better than those seen in most other New York City schools.

And those are the factors Marco Torres takes pride in as he surveys his classroom. "My students just had a film festival last week that over 500 community folks attended. Within three days, the Web site had 22,000 hits," he says. "Here, in one of the poorest areas of Los Angeles County, I have kids who have self-esteem, who are going to college, who are being recruited to help make companies and institutions more effective, who are being treated like queens and kings by our elected officials and being recognized in front of L.A. City Council for their commitment to giving our community a voice. Come to my class when the bell rings and see how many kids get up to go home. They want to be there, they want to finish their projects, they want to learn more." If that's not achievement, what is?

By Judy Salpeter.

This article first appeared in Technology & Learning.

Confirming Discussion

MIKE FLANAGAN: RETHINK EDUCATION FOR FUTURE

While the policymakers in Lansing wrangle about how much education Michigan can afford, State School Superintendent Mike Flanagan wants to make one thing clear: our state cannot afford to settle for the level of education we have provided in the past.

Flanagan says that does not necessarily mean spending a lot more money. To a large degree, it comes down to raising the bar and expecting more from kids, teachers and parents.

"It's not corny to say that if you expect more, you will get more," Flanagan said.

It's also time to re-think the way teachers are trained, Flanagan said. Techniques that might work with college-bound kids, for example, might not be adequate to give others the math they now need to get jobs in fields like home building. He said educators also need to find ways to weave technology into their teaching methods.

Podcast: WWJ Newsradio 950's Greg Bowman talked with Mike Flanagan as part of WWJ's Our Michigan, Our Future project. To listen, click here.

Education & Reform

The New York Times
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April 25, 2007

Billionaires Start $60 Million Schools Effort

Eli Broad and Bill Gates, two of the most important philanthropists in American public education, have pumped more than $2 billion into improving schools. But now, dissatisfied with the pace of change, they are joining forces for a $60 million foray into politics in an effort to vault education high onto the agenda of the 2008 presidential race.

Experts on campaign spending said the project would rank as one of the most expensive single-issue initiatives ever in a presidential race, dwarfing, for example, the $22.4 million that the Swift Vets and P.O.W.s for Truth group spent against Senator John Kerry in 2004, and the $7.8 million spent on advocacy that year by AARP, the lobby for older Americans.

Under the slogan “Ed in ’08,” the project, called Strong American Schools, will include television and radio advertising in battleground states, an Internet-driven appeal for volunteers and a national network of operatives in both parties.

“I have reached the conclusion as has the Gates foundation, which has done good things also, that all we’re doing is incremental,” said Mr. Broad, the billionaire who founded SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home and who has long been a prodigious donor to Democrats. “If we really want to get the job done, we have got to wake up the American people that we have got a real problem and we need real reform.”

Mr. Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, responding to questions by e-mail, wrote, “The lack of political and public will is a significant barrier to making dramatic improvements in school and student performance.”

The project will not endorse candidates — indeed, it is illegal to do so as a charitable group — but will instead focus on three main areas: a call for stronger, more consistent curriculum standards nationwide; lengthening the school day and year; and improving teacher quality through merit pay and other measures.

While the effort is shying away from some of the most polarizing topics in education, like vouchers, charter schools and racial integration, there is still room for it to spark vigorous debate. Advocating merit pay to reward high-quality teaching could force Democratic candidates to take a stand typically opposed by the teachers unions who are their strong supporters.

Pushing for stronger, more uniform standards, on the other hand, could force Republican candidates to discuss the potential merits of a national curriculum, a concept advocates for states’ rights deeply oppose and one that President Bush has not embraced.

The initiative will be announced today in South Carolina, a day before the first Democratic debate. Similar publicity is scheduled for the first Republican debate early next month in Simi Valley, Calif.

Mr. Bush made education a major theme in 2000, paving the way for the No Child Left Behind law and its emphasis on testing. In 1992, President Bill Clinton proposed an array of education initiatives. But this year the issue is overshadowed by the war in Iraq, terrorism and health care.

“Right now it’s too low on the list of priorities for all the candidates,” Mr. Broad said, “and our job is to get it up on the list.”

The project’s first print advertisement addresses the national focus head on, showing a student misspelling “A histery of Irak” on a blackboard. “Debating Iraq is tough,” the advertisement says. “Spelling it shouldn’t be. America’s schools are falling behind. It’s a crisis that takes leadership to solve. So to all presidential candidates we say, ‘What’s your plan to fix our schools?’ ”

The effort will be directed by Roy Romer, the former Democratic governor of Colorado and the recent superintendent of schools in Los Angeles, and by Marc Lampkin, a Republican lobbyist and former deputy campaign manager for Mr. Bush. It will be financed by the billionaires’ respective foundations, which they established with their wives, Melinda Gates and Edythe L. Broad. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is far larger, having disbursed $1.8 billion in education grants compared with $250 million by the Broad Foundation.

Mr. Broad has long been a major political donor, primarily to Democrats, and has been particularly well known as a friend and supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He has contributed personally to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign as well as to other Democratic candidates.

Mr. Gates also gives handsomely, though to campaigns in both parties. The two men emphasized that their education advocacy was nonpartisan.

Supporters of the project also include Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska; Ken Mehlman, the former Republican Party chairman; and Louis V. Gerstner, the former chief executive of I.B.M. Several of the presidential candidates yesterday applauded the billionaires’ effort, but some bristled at the notion that they were not paying sufficient attention to education.

“I think 70 days into a campaign that has yet to choose any nominees for either party, to make a sweeping kind of analysis that they are not talking about education is probably a little premature,” said Kevin Madden, a spokesman for former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a Republican. “If anybody goes onto the campaign trail with Governor Romney, they’ll recognize that education is an important issue to him and to voters.”

A campaign spokesman for Hillary Clinton said Mrs. Clinton was pleased that the issue would get “much-needed attention.”

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Democratic presidential candidate who has proposed legislation calling for tougher and more uniform education standards, issued a statement praising the Strong American Schools effort. “I look forward to including elements of the Gates-Broad initiative in the current dialogue on how to improve our nation’s schools,” Mr. Dodd said.

Bill Hogan, a senior fellow at the Center for Public Integrity and director of the Buying of the President 2008 project, which is scrutinizing the influence of money in the campaign, said the new effort could prove remarkable in its spending level.

“If we are talking about efforts in presidential campaigns to promote discussion or debate of an issue, there has been nothing like this,” Mr. Hogan said. “This would be off the charts.”