Call For Action: No Homework

I don't think I've ever agreed with Washington Post columnist Jay Matthews on anything, but we can find common ground in his latest column:

Throw away the expensive take-home textbooks, the boring worksheets and the fiendish make-a-log-cabin-out-of-Tootsie-Rolls projects. One of the clearest (and most ignored) findings of educational research is that elementary students who do lots of homework don't learn more than students who do none. Eliminating traditional homework for this age group will save paper, reduce textbook losses and sweeten home life. Students should be asked instead to read something, maybe with their parents -- at least 10 minutes a night for first-graders, 20 minutes for second-graders and so on. Teachers can ask a few kids each day what they learned from their reading to discourage shirkers.

Matthews might not have a good idea how to structure home reading so that it actually produces learning ("maybe" you could do it this way, for no other reason than to "discourage shirkers"), but his premise that students who do lots of homework learn no more than students who do none is correct. And important.

In a cathartic moment (I will channel Alex Rodriguez here), I can say this is the area that I didn't do very well as a teacher. I did a lot in my classroom, including homework. As a language arts teacher, some of that is forgivable--the bulk of the homework was a steady reading schedule to keep a good pace, and it was emphasized to students that they were expected to come to class, ready to discuss what they have read.

But becoming a parent changes that. When my eight year-old started the school year having a couple hours of homework per night, I was in shock. I didn't see my daughter anymore. And in talking with parents from other schools in the Metro area, there is consensus much of that is due to either A) packaged curriculum, such as a math series, or B) busywork projects. This opens your eyes quickly.

It makes one challenge some of the built-in customs that have never been challenged before. What is the authentic educational value of a posterboard display? Here's stuff I copied from the internet on topic X and made pretty with markers.

What is the educational value of crossword puzzles? Or even worse, search-a-word puzzles? With no research supporting constant drill with worksheets, why do we do it?

The answers are not pretty. We do it because it is easy to give. It is easy to grade. It keeps the kids busy. It is what schools have done for years. It is what is expected if you are a "quality" school. None of which are the answers we should care about, which is to help student learn.

My call for action is a bit overstated; we can't have "no homework" in schools. I still feel (perhaps my bias as an English teacher) that reading is important, and it is well documented that reading needs to be structured for students to learn. We also aren't going to police it; if students are engaged in a project to the point they take their work home and joyfully work on it, we'd be stunting their learning to say no.

The point is we need to reconceptualize "learning" as something other than "completing work". It needs to be authentic. It needs to be collaborative. It needs to be aligned with the Core. It needs to be constructive in nature. Everything we assign has to be weighed against these criteria. We cannot settle for the past reasons. If the work does not meet the criteria, it should not be assigned as homework.

Jay Matthews gets it.

Call for Action: Get Rid of Grades

Of all the calls I make, this will be the one with the most inertia. The easiest logistical one to do and the hardest to get done. There will be too much dragging of feet on this one.

We should eliminate grades in our schools. Not assessment, but grades. They are more than outmoded... they are harmful for our kids.

Now, before I'm pigeon-holed as Alfie Kohn, I should say... well, you are right. My thoughts do mirror his very closely. But I've reached my conclusion through my own experiences. I have yet to see grades help kids.

THE HARM OF GRADING
Here is what I have seen. I have seen many, many conversations about the grade and not the learning. Many of those have been with the students. Many more of those have been with parents, on behalf of their students, of which many times involves some shady half-truths being said by the students to the parents, causing a tense conflict based on misconceptions. And why would students give shady half-truths (it's not my fault... the teacher didn't accept my work)? Grades are often further incentivized by money for A's and grounding for F's. You would do some shady half-truths too.

Many of those conversations have come between me and myself. I've agonized over the correct number of points to have a quiz so that it fit within the grand grading scheme for the course. I've had to balance objectives against objectives on the value of their points. I've had to scrutinize grades down to the half-point. I've spent much of the time I should have been helping students getting better on grading.

And, that's the biggest problem. Grades do not help students get better. Students accept what is given. The grades promote mediocrity. Think about the message... here is an objective, and you scored about 80% on it, which fits you in about halfway in our class. There's no impetus to improve on the 20% you've missed out in, because as many teachers have in their grading schemes, the chance to make up the missed points takes away the consequences for missing the original deadline. So, we can't have that, can we?

One maxim I live by in education, if something is worth knowing, it is worth knowing 100%. And, students should keep working on it until they get 100%. And, all else should be eliminated or enrichment.

Which brings up to what I saw as a principal. Teachers would hand out grades and assume that their work is done as well, and they would move on to the next item. After all, students were in control of their grades. There's this unwritten rule that grades absolve a teacher from having to re-teach material.

One of the best ways to judge the quality of a teacher is to set up a hypothetical: If three-fourths of your students got F's on the latest quiz, what is running through your mind? The not-so-good teachers will blame the students... they aren't studying. Or, perhaps the parents... they aren't making sure the students study. The good teachers will blame, or at least, point responsibility to themselves. What can I do to help students so that they learn this material, they will think. That is after all, the point of school, that students learn the material--not to be the judge of who is learning and who isn't.

And, that leads me to the 3rd thing I saw. They only rank and sort kids. They are a big way of saying "How do you compare to everyone else?" We never get a chance to have students compare themselves to... themselves. Never to look at how much they have grown, or what they have left to do. Never to let them have individual goals and plans. No, they are judged against everyone else, and then reminded over and over about how they do. Think of the message that printing honor rolls and having awards assemblies based on grades does for students. Is there any reflection on these things about what we have learned? No. Just who received what grade.

And, it isn't like grading is a science. How about this quote from Paul Dressell of Michigan State University:

A grade (is)... an inadequate report of an imprecise judment of a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of materials.

If we are going to base all of our worth and value of educational achievement in something, it should be something a little more descriptive than a "C+", whatever that can mean.

THE BENEFITS OF GRADING?
The first that proponents will mention is that grades motivate students. Nonsense. Well, not to learn, at least (perhaps it motivates them to jump through hoops to gain the grade they would like). When students focus on the grade, the learning, and the benefits of the learning in of itself, become secondary.

Is that the type of motivation you want? Imagine having an employee who says to you "How much do I have to do to get a raise?"

When learning becomes secondary, grades determine the curriculum. Teachers begin to choose assignments that are easily quantifiable. They come up with absurd distributions (this test on verb conjugation will be as many points as that essay we wrote last week, despite only 10 minutes being spent on it). And, all conversations with students... and parents revolve around it. I felt like I partook in a ritual dance each parent-teacher conference. Instead of discussing what the student knew and didn't know (and how that set them for their future), we talked about what they needed to do to get a B.

Bottom line: if you can't get your students to do an activity without the threat of a grade being given to them, you need to start questioning the relevance of your material and your ability to engage learners. And, hopefully you are meeting your rule of 88.

A second, far-distant objection is that colleges depend on grades. That, without honor rolls and valedictorians and all the other methods of ranking and sorting, colleges won't know who to select. Given that half of students drop out from college, I'm not putting too much stock in colleges' selection criteria. If colleges want to improve the selection process, we can partner with them, but their relying on us to do something harmful to kids is not partnership... we are being taken advantage of, at our kids expense.

WHAT, THEN, IN ITS PLACE?
The answer is a standards-referenced report card. List out your standards. Show models of how students in the past have met those standards. Then, allow students some flexibility in 1) prioritizing the standards and the meaning they have on their future plans, and 2) how they achieve those standards. Let students create a portfolio. Develop better formative and summative assessments, whose data show students where they sit. Let students adjust their learning on the basis of that data.

Let students demonstrate their learning by demonstrating their work to their parents. Have the portfolio or presentations replace report cards. Put the emphasis on what the student has learned, not the hoop.

And let me not forget this: Let students collaborate and learn in coexistence. They don't have to be cut-throat to go for the best grade or feel the need to cheat to achieve. They don't need to make base lies to cover up for a poor grade. Getting rid of grading puts all people--the student, their fellow classmates, the teacher, and the parents--on the same side.

Call for Action: Ditching Textbooks

We can't go 1:1, computers are expensive.

So are textbooks; you prioritize.

Where is your focus on learning? Is it in a canonized content or is it outside of that, in collaboration and engagement of ideas? Is learning timeless or does it change often? Is curriculum driven by the materials, or the other way around?

I don't want to set up a false dichotomy; it isn't computers or textbooks. But in an era where finances are slim, we need to second-guess the afore-perceived "must" of having textbooks.

Nope, I'm wrong. We need to second-guess it, even when finances aren't slim.

BAD PEDAGOGY
Our over-reliance on textbooks and bought curriculum sequences is not pedagogically sound. For starters, textbooks are needlessly thick, a grab-all of every initiative and topic out there. Second, they are linear, meaning you have a start and an end and checkpoints on the way. Learning in the 21st century is not linear... it is hyperlinked. It is multi-tasking. It is working on many objectives at once, not one at a time.

Third, poor teachers (and some not-so-poor ones) take the textbook as the lesson plan master, unable to work around it, differentiate within it, adjust instruction for learning moments that pop up. What comes after unit 2? Unit 3, of course! And I must be done with the last unit at the end of the course! The textbook becomes a crutch for a teacher, who should be using their training and talents to synthesize together a system of resources.

Fourth, they are static. They do not change, (until you purchase the next ones). Say what you want about Wikipedia, but it stays up to date. And fifth, textbooks are not authentic; outside of school people do not use textbooks, with maybe the exception of the "For Dummies" series (and I haven't seen too many districts use that as their curriculum). They are to find their own resources, which might include newspapers or online files or print books, and from those, synthesize answers to problems. Their learning is not laid out for them.

Don't get me wrong, if textbooks were used just as a resource (as the internet is), they would have excellent value, as many of the best written-ones have excellent rich content. When they are used as curriculum, though, there are a host of problems as you can see.

SELFISH?
Some anti-textbook people will raise the rhetoric to say teachers are centering on themselves instead of students when using textbooks. For example, the standard answer from many teachers is that the textbook makes their job easier (actually, the word they'd use is "manageable"). Admittedly, I've never used a textbook in my teaching, although I should say as an English teacher, I had some advantages. Perhaps it would have been easier to use it. But, I had a selfish reason for not using it... it made me feel like I was more valuable as a teacher when I was synthesizing the material. I felt like, if I was hit by a meteor and wasn't able to finish out the term, that the class would actually miss me instructionally. Yes, selfish, but then again, we want to think of ourselves as professionals.

DANIELS AND ZEMELMAN
Would you like more? Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman have many more reasons:
• Textbooks often do not match up with the curriculum (or in our case, the Iowa Core)
• They are hard to read (they are reference, not fiction or non-fiction)
• They are badly designed
• They are authoritarian, giving the illusion that there is only one correct way of looking at things
• They are not written for students; they are written for curriculum directors

Throw in the costs and the amount of paper wasted, and plunking curriculum dollars into technology, a tool to a vast source of free content begins to make a lot of sense.

WHERE TO START?
Here is a look at movements to make more free content, which although improving, still has a long way to go. And this is an excellent place to start to find out how to teach in a textbook-free environment.

Call For Action: Technology Leadership Academy

There is no disputing the role of leadership on student achievement. Strong leadership always improves it while poor leadership (or no leadership) lowers it. Those in charge of the Iowa Core are starting with district leadership teams first, recognizing that the leadership teams will effect change the most. Thus, the first Iowa Core meetings are solely focused on leadership development.

This is where we are missing the boat, though. To implement the digital curriculum, a district will have to have strong leadership. Leadership is needed to:

• Craft a vision
• Streamline and make viable a curriculum
• Put in place hardware, software and infrastructure
• Train teachers
• Provide support
• Assure accountability
• Communicate and partner with the greater community

And in a large portion of our districts, leadership is not strong in the field of technology integration. It becomes a hot potato... the onus of responsibility falls in between the IT staff and the administrators. Project CASTLE is focusing on building administrative leadership with the digital curriculum. We need to do the same with technology coordinators.

WHAT TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP IS NOT
The first thing to make clear is that, by and large, technology coordinators are doing a good job. From first-hand experience, I can vouch for the never-stop responsibilities of maintaining a district's technology. A colleague of mine said "You can throw many changes at teachers on a continual basis, but if you truly want to bring the system to its knees, take down the email server." Or as another one mentioned, "When hard drives crash, I truly get to see people at their worst."

There also are teachers doing a great job in the classroom, many taking it upon themselves to research the technology and experiment with ways to better use it to enhance learning. Some take it upon themselves to write grants for their classroom to add technology.

Neither of these are leadership. And, this is where most districts get stuck. This is isolated pockets of excellence, but without a central vision and leader to ensure the whole group is moving forward, these pockets won't go anywhere.

A TYPICAL COORDINATOR'S RESUME
There are often two different technology coordinators that you will see in districts. When technology first emerged, there was one teacher who worked a little bit more with technology than others. As the district grew, the technology demands required time spent outside of the classroom to manage it, and the district often grabbed the one who dabbled the most with it. In many of our smaller and more rural districts, the technology coordinator is in this mode, a former teacher who has morphed into the manager of hardware and software. In addition, some larger districts have had the resources to fund a different type of position, an integration specialist. Once again, the premier technology-integrating teachers gravitated into those positions.

But larger districts reached a threshold when networking and database management became significant. It required specialization. And much like other companies, districts have been hiring network specialists to manage this sophistication.

Neither of these two groups, despite their talents, have been trained in leadership. And when there are some rare cases where technology management is naturally talented in leadership (Pella or Jefferson-Scranton, for example), those districts become leaders in the state.

Another way to look at it: when I went through my administrative graduate program through Viterbo, I was the only technology coordinator in the state doing so. My instructors were, for good reason, quite surprised to see someone like me, as were districts looking to hire an administrator.

CONTROL VS. INFLUENCE
A dynamic that is present in education is the one of control vs. influence. Take away for a second the negative connotations of the word "control". As people move out of the classroom into the realm of administration, they notice the control they had of managing every item that took place in their classroom was now sacrificed. Principals don't have a corresponding level of control in every corner of their building. They do, on the other hand, have influence. It becomes even more pronounced as one moves to superintendent. Good administrators understand this dynamic. They understand they have to sacrifice the control they once enjoyed to greater influence the learning community.

Both network specialists and integration specialists have great influence. Unfortunately, most see their job as one of great control. They don't have the skills to build consensus and human capacity the way an influential leader does.

SO WHERE ARE WE IN IOWA?
The Iowa Core recommends that technology staff are part of the leadership teams planning the district's deployment of the core. I can say, both as someone who is working with Core leadership and technology staff, this isn't happening. With the Iowa Core, we have the capacity to bring about an avenue for digital curriculum adoption. But, imagine the roadblock when the leadership team determines it would like to go there without the technology coordinator at the table.

If a district is going to get to the digital curriculum, it would be truly beneficial to require administrative certification of its technology coordinator. This means we need a leadership academy to get them there. Even if it doesn't mean administrative certification, a CASTLE-type program for technology coordinators, possibly building off of the programs at UNI and Iowa State, but more geared for the district-level rather than the PhD.

Call For Action: Digital Curriculum

I had mentioned that providing a 1:1 for every 3-12 grade student in Iowa was the easy part. There's heavy irony given the current economic conditions and past funding levels of technology in schools.

Compared to this, though, the purchasing is easy. That's because what I call for now will really bring about dragging of heels and gnashing of teeth.

We need to completely change the structure of the learning environment in every grade and subject. The curriculum must be a constant interchange with the technology tools of today.

Let me give you a vision of what I am talking about. Jane arrives at school early and immediately goes to one of the learning pod areas, where she hops on her educational ning online. Here, she collaborates with a student in Texas, Kentucky, Nevada, Alberta, Sydney, and Nottingham. The group is extremely interested in crickets, and together they are discovering all they can about the insects. They share resources they have found on the internet with each other and pose different thoughts that they have. Bill, the student from Nevada, recently posed the challenge to the group to discover what conditions are ideal for the growth of crickets, and since the research the group conflicts, each person is experimenting with their variables at the local level.

After catching up on an update from those overseas, she goes to her first hour class, social studies. In class, the teacher is introducing a new concept (the Articles of Confederation), but wants to see what students already know. Every student has their laptop ready and they hop on Survey Monkey to take a quick pre-survey of the material. The teacher then displays the results, which show a couple students are quite knowledgeable on the concept. He turns the class over to them, and they discuss what they remember. While they say this, the teacher pulls up the class wiki and enters, as close to verbatim as he can type, what the students say as the initial entry on the wiki for the Articles of Confederation. After the students finish what they recall, the teacher has the students look online to verify the information and add to the wiki, or to branch off and make new entries based on topics that have arrived. Jane split her time between adding more on to the Continental Army, which the Articles gave some direction to, and putting together a new entry for federalists.

Second hour has her in family/consumer science today. The class puts their laptops on the work area next to the kitchenette. Today, Jane's group is to create a chicken entree given the ingredients that are found in their refrigerator and cabinet. They do a meta-search, given the ingredients, and find a recipe for a casserole. As they create the activity, they are to take a digital photo at each stage and upload that to their Flickr account. They also will take a temperature probe when the entree is finished and that data will be loaded in their classroom database record. Finally, they will portion up the entree, and each student in class will travel around and sample them. They will log in on their own computers and score the entree on a four-point scale of how it tastes. The teacher will use the digital images, hard data, and student feedback together to give summative assessment on student proficiency.

Third hour is physical education. Jane has already downloaded her playlist into her mp3 player for the day... she has picked her upbeat music since she is doing aerobics. Like always, Jane gets her Polar Fitness monitor, which will monitor her breathing rate and pulse to assess the exertion. Once again, Jane is doing well to stay in her zone. Like the rest of the class, she is given the last 5 minutes of class to download the data and write a 2-sentence blog on how she is progressing to her physical fitness goal (to reduce her "fitness" age and beat her previous best in the mile by 45 seconds).

Fourth hour is English. Students hop on their blog immediately to give their reflections to the question that was recently posted by a student in class. Each day, a student posts a question to trigger free-writing in a connection to what they are reading. Once students are finished with their blog, they shift into free reading of the book, until the teacher has had a chance to peruse the answers. The teacher then gathers a couple of quotes to share with the class for some further discussion. Then, the students are given an essay topic to write about, and they log into their Google Docs account to start the process of composition. With 10 minutes left in the class, Jane "invites" her editing partner Sarah to her essay, and vice versa. Jane looks over Sarah's writing, knowing she has to give 3 suggestions, be it thoughts to develop the essay, sentences to help the structure, or words to build meaning and style.

Okay, you get the idea. This is what I refer to as the Digital Curriculum. I'm not the first to use this phrase, but I needed to put forth a common term and definition.

You can see some of the features of the digital curriculum:
• Schoolwork makes seamless integration of the laptop in all that they do
• Learning takes place on an individual level, a classroom level, a small group level, and an outside-school level.
• But it always is student-centered. The student is pushing forward the exploration, the connection, the progress on goals, and the assessment of growth.
• The laptop serves as an extension, in and out of the classroom activity. It doesn't take 20 minutes to grab laptops and log in just to do a survey or a physical education journal entry because the device is there when you need it.
• The curriculum finds tools that fit their objectives, not vice versa.
• There is a constant data collection taking place; assessment is real, authentic, and ongoing, and the student plays the critical role.
• This pace may seem fast, but today's learners can handle this with aplomb. It mimics the pace of highly-skilled professional occupations, and is helping students prepare for the future.

There are many other conclusions you can draw from the example. That's the other piece... if we are going to require the state to provide a laptop for every 3-12 grade student, then we must have every teacher use digital information and collaboration as a central piece to the curriculum. And, this is equal parts daunting, scary, and necessary.

The leap that has to be made is gigantic. It will require new curricular development and mapping of 21st century skills. It will demand leadership and vision. Let me be the first to begin. Any school that would like to collaborate with me about how they can move to a digital curriculum, please contact me; if you are willing to make the leap, I'm more than willing to help.

Call For Action: 1:1

This is part one of a two-fer (part two is about the accompanying digital curriculum). But, realistically, they cannot be separated.

I'll call for the easy thing first. We need a statewide 1-to-1 initiative, at the least for students in grades 3-12. Every student grade 3-12 needs a mobile computing device, be it a laptop, mini laptop, or some sort of handheld PDA device. Something that connects wirelessly to the internet and allows them to interact through the digital web 2.0 tools of today. And even if students PK-2 don't have their own device, they need access to one.

But that isn't all. Every school district needs the supporting network to allow that to happen. This means broadband access that allows for digital video streaming both down- and upstream. We had the vision in the state beforehand to put in high amounts of fiber (we're one of the leaders in the country here) for connection. We need to make sure every school district and building has that type of networking speed.

And, we need each district to allow access to the tools of the read/write web. When it comes to philosophies of technology in education, there is a spectrum, where on one end is security and the other end is access. Like other businesses, education has landed on the end of security, and with recent court decisions about archiving email and preventing cyberbullying, it has gotten tighter. But education is not like other businesses. We must provide a laboratory for opportunity and creativity with all the tools available.

Now before I move on to the second part, the biggest questions that come up are What's the Cost? and Will it work? Cost is, of course, a relative factor. So first, let's start with a premise, that as Dr. Leigh Zeitz pointed out at ITEC, "Ownership is more important than Loanership". The key is to get a device in every student's hands that is theirs. If that requires simpler machines to save on costs, so be it. The only things we cannot sacrifice is portability, wireless access to high-speed, ability to connect to the network and internet, and the ability to input information. Those are the non-negotiables.

The flip side of this is, higher-end machines do not build in more learning potential the way that "each student having one" does. "Anytime learning" cannot happen when the computer cart has a signout sheet. Students should not have to put their learning on hold for an evening if they cannot check out a computer.

That said, let's look at some figures.

• There are roughly 500,000 students in the state of Iowa. With our initiative, we'd be looking to go one-to-one with 3/4 of that population (just grades 3-12), or 375,000.

• The cost of the device can range tremendously. Apple and Dell laptop prices for schools historically have been around $1200, unless you are looking for add-ons (such as burners and more hard drive space). We are not... we want devices solely for the purpose of connecting students to the tools of the internet. New mini-laptops are even more affordable, and although they might sacrifice screen size and storage space, they don't give up much if anything in terms of our non-negotiables. Mini-laptops range in costs from $800 all the way down to $300 (the much publicized One Laptop Per Child Project has made the $100 mini laptop). Handheld devices could be even cheaper, from $150-$500. For those who are skeptical of this as a learning tool, try out an iPhone for its flexibility.

• We should take advantage of open software. Open Office or Google Docs, NVU, Skype, Audacity, and the host of web 2.0 tools out there. And, we should consider Linux, which will save on operating system costs as well as virus protection costs over Windows. (But we have to keep in mind our non-negotiable of having the machines networked... we have few technology coordinators well-versed in the usage of Linux networking).

• We should aim for the devices being replaced twice during the student's career. So, that would be 3 devices every 10 years. Number-wise, that will work out to 112,500 devices a year.

• To participate in this, the district would then provide the networking infrastructure (a minimum of 100 Mbps with a long-range plan to move to Gigabit) and the wireless access (a minimum of every classroom and learning space covered with 802.11g access, and again, a plan to improve once the shift to "n" is deemed ready). They would also assure an overall broadband access commensurate with the number of students. Wesley Fryer recommends 5 Mbps up and down as a starting point. In addition, the district would need to have policies that promote access to these tools.

But, will it work? The answer... a conditional yes.

Yes it will work if there is another piece, the aforementioned local accountability and a digital curriculum. Connectivity is easy to gather data on with line-speed tests. But accountability on the access requires a thorough technology plan, much more thorough than the ones required during the Branstad money. One that promotes what I refer to as a digital curriculum (the topic of a future post). One that will be the subject of not only site reviews from the department, but also must maintain coordination with area educational agencies, local businesses, and the community to make sure they meet the 21st century skills of the Iowa Core.

This has been seen throughout the research. The best example is perhaps Maine, who uses a 1:1 initiative in their middle schools and has seen statistically significant improvement in their writing especially, among other areas.

If we have the resources and the planning and the curriculum and the accountability, it will work. Not just in test scores, but college admissions and employability skills. Which will result in a more knowledgeable work force, better jobs and higher wages. Which will result in more tax revenue, making the "total cost" a hard thing to determine. When one considers the cost of un-education, where graduates with a bachelor's degree make twice as much as high school graduates, and more than three times as much as those without high school diplomas, one can see this is a sound investment. When one considers that the top 10 most-needed jobs in 2010 didn't exist in 2004, and all require the high use of technology, it is more than a sound investment, it is a social obligation to meet the needs of our students.

Call For Action: Rebirth of the Professional Teaching Organizations

Michael Krumm, former superintendent at Ballard (Huxley) school district, wrote this about education:

In the struggle for the future vision of education, three prominent voices have emerged. Those who idolize the status quo, those who model reform in standardized data and accountability, and those who want education to be open to parental choice. The fourth voice, once the most prominent, is now a distant murmur. It is the voice of teaching professional organizations, who have seen their numbers diminish precipitously. This is truly the most dramatic shift--it is not the rise of the other groups.

The National Science Teacher's Association, National Council for Social Studies, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and National Council of Teachers of English all report decreased membership. Statewide and national meetings are shells of their former selves, some even being canceled. Whereas membership to the professional organization used to be something to receive top billing on a resume, now it is overlooked for being part of building leadership teams or other local groups.

There are many theories as to why this is the case. Gas prices have played a toll. Pella Community School District, for years as progressive a school district in Iowa as you will see, has put a moratorium on all travel outside the district. They aren't alone. Districts can't afford to send teachers to conferences anymore.

Technology has changed things to some extent. With the internet, the free-flow of information and ideas doesn't require conventions like it used to.

Perhaps most important, the profession as a whole has become to be perceived as... well, less professional. And, while a lot of this negativity is unfairly gathered by smear-like techniques of public schools, it does raise some questions. Belonging to an organization used to be a badge of honor for teachers. Many of my mother's age would pay their own way for dues and convention fees if their district could not afford to send them. That doesn't seem to be the mentality now.

And maybe, the professional organizations do not have enough to offer teachers. If this is the case, it is definitely a bad situation.

When you define what a "professional" is, you have to get beyond pay and educational level. Professional connotes a collegiality, a person who engages in a forum of the sharing of thoughts. It suggests that the knowledge and skills of the trade are beyond simple training. They have to be continuously developed and nurtured over time. And, they imply a thirst to improve for the sake of the profession.

I've had the fortune to work with many teachers in different districts, and I will stand by the fact that out of the ones I've met, 90% are doing their best to become excellent teachers. The ones running off the worksheet masters and ducking out at 3:15 every day are the exception. I will also admit that there is a smaller percentage who are unbelievably gifted, so much so that
the local levels of professional development are not enough to help the teachers soar. They are called to be leaders on a bigger stage, part of a professional organization, where they can learn and share with the best.

Krumm, pointing to examples in Japanese history after WWII, says this:

In reality, once professional capital is lost, it is lost forever. In worldwide history, once a professional organization has been weakened, it cannot be rebuilt as easily.

In this case, we are in dire straits. We need to lubricate our mechanisms so that we can grow professional networks again. Teachers have to be able to interchange ideas. And as George Siemens would point out, those have to come from weak connections... in other words, interchange not from the teacher in the next room, but rather one in the next district. That is where growth occurs.

How do we do this? Perhaps technology has the answer. Professional communities can be built online (the popular term is a "Ning", stemming from the website http://www.ning.com). Here, people can build a profile, much as they do in Facebook or Myspace, but unlike the cosmetic applications, Nings can be built around professional missions and goals that the members have in common. A ning could be built for teachers of physical education to share ideas, stories, frustrations, and support. Cutting edge technology could be shared, as well as assessment strategies. And, leaders from the collegiate level and the professional level could join as well. Imagine if trainers, nutritionists, and physical therapists were able to share their thoughts and reflections in this group, how much richer PE teachers would be.

The problem with this is that Nings are very fragile. The typical lifecycle of a ning is not very long, and looks somewhat like this: It is started, word spreads, people join enthusiastically (it's something new), they start to post, they have trouble connecting to a colleague that they couldn't go a day without, they start going a day without them, less posting occurs, other would-be participants looking for activity pass it over, and it finally dies out. I enthusiastically joined 3 nings this fall looking to broaden my expertise in a new area of education (distance learning). All 3 nings have many members but little "must-see" activity on them, and I don't visit them anymore.

It will take dedicated leadership to make nings successful, much like it takes an expert's touch to keep students engaged in the discussion in the classroom. I've seen teachers do the latter many times, so I'm hopeful they can do the former. The free-flow of information and ideas, along with the personal sense of pride that follows identification as a professional are crucial to the well-being of our classrooms.

My question for you: Do you agree with Krumm, that the deterioration of professional organizations is more dramatic than the rise in those seeking school choice, preservation of the status quo, or standardized data accountability? And, what are the prospects for the professional organization voice in the future guidance of education in America?

Call For Action: Narrowing the Curriculum

I believe the buzz phrase is "a mile wide and an inch deep."

Having coordinated curriculum, I've been guilty of parroting that phrase as well. Much like every other curriculum director Robert Marzano groupie, I have lamented how much time we spend covering so much in such little depth. Marzano listed the narrowing of the curriculum as the top factor a school can do to improve achievement, with the key being the world "viable", as in making sure you actually have enough time to teach effectively what you say you will. And of course, every time the TIMSS comes out, we have the pleasure of hearing about our wide, shallow curriculum as well.

So, when the Iowa Core Curriculum quotes that phrase, we shouldn't get too nonplussed. Much like the statement "rigor" and "higher standards", the phrase is not revolutionary. Rather, how to achieve it is.

The basics of the argument are that, as educators, we have felt the need to cover every possible topic in a curriculum, not leaving things out. In so doing, we cover things way too quickly, and therefore ruin retention.

As no surprise, I fully agree with the Iowa Core's calling to narrow (and thereby deepen) the curriculum. But, I'd like to add some caveats of how this is to be done.

1. Identify the most important skills - This is what the Iowa Core is attempting to do, and as far as I can tell, are doing successfully. Even the research shows that teaching less math topics doesn't necessarily improve scores... Singapore teaches more than the U.S. They just happen to emphasize equations, which has the biggest impact.

2. Multi-Task - Maybe the biggest problem is that we follow Madeline Hunter too closely; introduce one skill at a time, then instruct, guided practice, individual practice, etc. Authentically, that's not the way we work. When we think, we use multiple skills together. Introducing and working on multiple skills/concepts at a time suddenly eliminates a lot of repetition.

3. Be OK with skipping concepts - There is a fear amongst teachers (at least there was for me) that "if I don't teach them this, they'll never get it in life". Hogwash. The fact is, people glean the information they need outside of school all the time (in fact, many have to relearn the concepts they supposedly learned in K-12). Perhaps more important is helping students be resourceful enough to develop the concepts on their own when asked to.

4. Compact - If you are a teacher and don't know this term, that is telling. Research shows American teachers woefully underuse compacting. The end result is a lot of time wasted re-teaching concepts the students already know. We need to arm teachers with diagnostic tools to help them find what they can eliminate.

5. Eliminate the thick textbooks - Textbooks have adopted throwing everything into it to meet every state's standards. That's not a problem. Teachers who can't teach without the textbook...? There's the problem. If I hear one more "Gosh, I'm so far behind, I've only got my classes on chapter 8" one more time...

The Iowa Core will require districts to do a thorough alignment of their curriculum, which should help define their scopes and sequences. But I think pushing some specific caveats such as the five above will go further to make a difference.

Call For Action: Authentic Standardized Assessment

We need better standardized assessments. Which is truly an indictment on two things. As many would quickly assume, this is an indictment on the ITBS and ITEDs. But it is equally an indictment on the areas those tests don't cover, which are then covered by inadequate locally-made exams (if at all). Neither are appropriate.

In Iowa, we (mainly) measure our proficiency with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Iowa Test of Educational Development, or ITBS and ITEDs. Published by Riverside at the University of Iowa, they have long been used as a norm-referenced test to measure student achievement in the classroom. With the advent of No Child Left Behind, the ITEDs/ITBS were suddenly used as the official achievement tests for accountability purposes. If students did not perform well on the tests, schools now faced consequences.

While there are tests in social studies, reading materials, and language, more and more schools are not taking those tests, as only math, reading, and science are required. Many outspoken critics of NCLB have mentioned that testing becomes a shell game, as schools teach to the test (or more linguistically correct, teach the test), and marginalize other curriculum for the sake of proficiency. More importantly in my estimation, they marginalize other students. Iowa requires being at the 41st percentile to be considered proficient, and a school needs a large proportion of its students to be proficient (79.3% in 11th grade, for example). From a statistical point of view, the students who are most likely to make a difference for a school are those students who are between the 20th-50th percentile. Many districts are implementing programs like Second Chance Reading, or Remedial Math to help those students, while not addressing the needs of the solidly proficient, let alone those who are in the top 10 or bottom 10 percentile. This is the equivalent to Obama and McCain putting all their money and resources into Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Virginia, because the other states don't matter.

In James Popham's The Truth About Testing, he points out several problems with using tests like the ITBS/ITEDs as measures for accountability. They are a snapshot in time and could easily be thrown off by external factors (like whether the student eat breakfast that day). By being a normed-reference test, they require testing elements that separate students for validity, or in other words, questions need to have students miss. While NCLB wants all students to get the question right, Riverside would consider the questions awful if everyone got them right. (The test has not been re-normed since being used for accountability, by the way.) Moreover, tests have large amounts of bias for intelligence and social-economic status that cannot be distilled. While Popham says standardized data are useful, they just are not reliable for accountability.

In brief, I not only agree with Popham, I could also add several other reasons why they are not valuable. But that's not the subject of my post. I strongly feel schools should be accountable, and that schools should use standardized tests. They just need to be authentic ones.

There isn't a more un-authentic test than a multiple choice test. When was the last time you took one? Seriously? High school? What job requires proficiency via multiple choice tests?

We show our proficiency in the world through our performance. Can you compose an essay that illustrates the reasons why I should be for a particular argument? Can you create a pamphlet that gives the reader instructions on how to complete the task? Can you draw a conclusion through a set of laboratory experiments? Can you grow strawberries in your agriculture class? Multiple choice, at best, is a tool for formative assessment, and is primarily overused by teachers because it is wildly convenient.

And, that's why we use multiple choice tests for accountability... because they are convenient. A scantron can score them. To those who would say convenience has to be considered from a financial standpoint, I could not object more. Flat out, that convenience hurts kids.

So I propose a call for action. Let's establish quality authentic assessments for all our schools. To do this, we must have standards that we deem are essential for the world. The Iowa Core Curriculum, I feel, will do that for us. But unless we then have quality authentic assessments, how will we know how students are performing?

Let's look at an example. When I say a student "must be able to use technology to solve a variety of problems" as my educational standard, how do I know students are successful at this? The two options that are currently out there are inadequate. An ITED-esque standardized test won't tell us. But moreover, a locally-made criterion-test (aka "a teacher test") won't tell us either. We have no way knowing how well a school's instruction compares to other schools with locally made tests.

Right now, technology literacy, as defined by the federal government, must be measured in 8th grade. And it is a joke. I've seen quite a few school districts who use a random assignment or a class grade as the proficiency exam. These districts have no way of being able to tell me "Yes, Johnny has met the standards for technology and is ready for the world". We need a performance-based set of examinations that address the technology standards. Every technology teacher in the state will be aware of them, and therefore will help their students prepare for those. It creates the most apples-for-apples comparison out there. And, technology is not the only field. Writing, financial literacy, civics, scientific thinking, physical education, and the fine arts all need this as well. Until then, we continue to mis-prepare our students for the world.

Call For Action: Going Green in the Classroom

When I was a teacher, I had a digital classroom-style curriculum. Every student had a computer. We took as much time discussing online as we did discussing in class. And most content was gathered through student discovery and sharing through the web as opposed to teacher instruction. I modeled this based on what my experience told me was the way students preferred to learn, through a discovery model enriched with the collaborative, productive technology.

There was one powerful thing with this digital classrom that I wouldn't have thought possibly in my wildest dreams. The class came up with an original social awareness project and created a high amount of class unity. We did this by going paperless.

Let me start by saying this was not easy and wasn't 100% successful. Especially for me, the photocopy-addicted louse that I was. Suffice it to say, I love materials. Lots of handouts that give graphic organizers or differentiated assignments. Handouts to help students manage time or work for visual learners. Handouts to make obscure concepts like theme and style become more concrete. And while students in general like the bevy of resources at their disposal, they did kid me about killing too many trees.

It was in one class that a student suggested that we go paperless. And after the appropriate amount of "Betcha can't do it Mr. Abbey!", we as a class decided to go paperless. No printouts. All assignments would be made as word documents or pdf's and put online. Students would not be allowed to print off drafts for their essays... they all had to be done, edited, and submitted electronically. Resources for our research projects would be kept on the computer. Tests would be done online. You get the drift.

For the most part, we were successful. I did note some students who printed things out outside of class at first, and there were times where I printed out an email to read it (one of my telltale signs I'm a digital immigrant). But, there was a sense of pride among the students in the class that we were doing something truly green. We coupled it with a look at the Daniel Quinn book Ishmael and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and experimented with keeping the classroom lights off. The fun part of the assignment was the challenge for the students, and therefore the sense of actual accomplishment when they were finished. This was the mythical "Quadrant D" activity that the rigor/relevance framework calls for.

My challenge is for schools to take the initiative and go paperless. At least, in some segments of the school. Do a cost analysis of what ink and paper cost you, and then try investing that in computers. It not only saves money and environmental resources, but also is cutting edge and addresses digital natives. It requires teachers to be creative, to not depend on the photocopy master. It requires us to focus on current event resources... what is happening in the news today that supports the curriculum. It moves us from static learning (filling in a worksheet with pre-determined "correct" answers) to dynamic learning (collaborating and creating meaning with others digitally).

What are your thoughts?

Call For Action: An Iowan Virtual Academy

It is time for me to add a different purpose to my blog starting with this post. Yes, I want to raise awareness about different tools to use in the classroom. Yes, I want to continue to give updates about what is happening with education in Iowa. And yes, I want to continue discussion with news events as they happen. But my ultimate goal is to put forward 12-15 broad themes, musts for the state of Iowa, and continue to develop those. I'm labeling them "Calls for Action", as they require second order change for both educators and state officials.

The first is most closely tied to my position. We are severely shorting our students by not having a virtual academy. We need to act, to push the legislature, to find best practices and quality curricula, to build the proper technologies, and to secure the infrastructure to make this happen. And yes, we will need the funding. But, I can think of no initiatives in education that will pay for themselves the way a virtual academy would.

Of all the required data elements from NCLB, only one unequivocally predicts future success: dropout rate. Students who drop out from high school earn only 75% of what students who graduate do, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. That goes to 44% of what students who earn a B.A. make. And it gets progressively worse as a person gets older, where those who do not graduate do not get raises that meet the increases in the cost of living. If we are truly aiming for "No Child Left Behind", our aim should be directly on 100% graduation rather than test scores.

Here is the item that makes this difficult: students who drop out do not have bad test scores. As a principal, I was unable to draw any correlation between the ITED scores and the dropout rate... in fact, there were several gifted students who were falling through the cracks. It's not content knowledge, it's engagement with the learning process where we are failing.

In the past, we clung to a belief that students would come around to our model of education. They would follow by our rules and be engaged by what we found engaging. If they didn't, then they would suffer the consequences, which meant dropping out. It was their choice. Of course, that view of education might have been somewhat successful (at least not glaringly out of date) before the world flattened and our societies shifted. When the educational program we offered didn't change, our old world view was exposed as being the model of inflexibility it is.

Bottom line: we need as much a variety of learning environments as we can so that we can meet the needs and interests of the full diversity of learners. We need ultimate flexibility. And, by stubbornly suggesting that learning only takes place best in a traditional classroom with a traditional time schedule period and a traditional method of instruction with traditional grading for assessment, we are losing our learners. Worse, we are being un-democratic. And there is no bigger shame for the American school system than that.

A virtual school offers us an unbelievable array of flexibility. I've shared the story before of the student in our school within a school program who stayed up until 2:00 in the morning studying, only to sleep in until noon the next day and miss his classes. Why can't we take the learning to him when he is ready... during the evening hours? Or, there are those students who feel the need to work to earn money, and feel a stigma about coming back for a 5th year of high school to get their diploma. Why can't they take the credits they are missing online, away from the stigma?

I base my decisions on the democratic model instead of the market model. If we need to do something for a student's education to be just, then we need to do it, regardless of cost. The absurdity is, the virtual model makes sense from a market standpoint as well. When a student, just by earning a diploma, makes $7000 additional a year, that is money that can be taxed and brought back into the fold. It reduces crime rates and brings better health care options. It saves us money. It is one of the best investments we can have.

At-risk students drive the urgency for a virtual academy, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. When I taught talented and gifted students, there were many occasions where students were beyond what the classroom teacher or I could offer them. With a virtual academy, I've just expanded my challenging options, be it biochemistry for 7th graders or algebra for 5th graders. English Language Learners coming into a new school system have little in terms of quality education as they learn the language, especially in small rural districts which can't afford full-time ELL staff and find native speakers. An online class can act as an academic bridge until a student's language development catches up. And with the inequity between our rural and urban offerings, a virtual school levels the playing field. I told you about the gurus that I have worked with, and undoubtedly there are many more out there in the state. Wouldn't it be great if our students could benefit from all the gurus, regardless of geography?

We need the virtual academy now. This needs to be a state-run entity, or else we will slip into territorialism and competing policies between districts. It needs to have our best and brightest minds tackling this. And, it needs the blessing of the Department of Education as a necessary corollary to the Iowa Core. If the state doesn't act, (if we don't put enough pressure on our legislators), this will be lost and the times will leave us further behind. Districts will be forced to act on their own, and the haves will further outpace the have-nots. It is truly a shame when Florida is well outpacing us in innovation.