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Secretary Duncan said, U.S. educational reform policy is motivated by a belief that the U.S. educational system is particularly failing disadvantaged children. Yet an analysis of international test score levels and trends shows that in important ways disadvantaged U.S. children perform better, relative to children in comparable nations, than do middle-class and advantaged children. More careful analysis of these levels and trends may lead policymakers to reconsider their assumption that almost all improvement efforts should be directed to the education of disadvantaged children and few such efforts to the education of middle-class and advantaged children

A re-estimated U.S. average PISA score that adjusted for a student population in the United States that is more disadvantaged than populations in otherwise similar post-industrial countries, and for the over-sampling of students from the most-disadvantaged schools in a recent U.S. international assessment sample, finds that the U.S. average score in both reading and mathematics would be higher than official reports indicate (in the case of mathematics, substantially higher).

Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.

Kids who feel confident, engaged, and motivated to learn do not act out.

Yet using classroom management methods to get students to attend to boring lessons is shoveling against the tide.

The goal of classroom management is not quiet classrooms, it's productive students.

The Google Apps Ninja Program that I started back in September and blogged about here has completely taken me by surprise. There are now over 150 educators who have access to the Google Docs. Seeing that there might be something here that I can support long term I decided to move all the files to their own Google Apps domain. So the Google Apps Ninja Program is now officially found at www.ninjaprogram.com the website isn't finished but after reading this blog post if you are interested in using the files and helping to keep them updated, fill out this form and I'll get you in. I'm excited to focus on this next year as one of my projects.

nd here is the issue that I pose in Now You See It, the one that keeps me up at night:   how do you prepare kids for an increasingly indefinite, rapidly changing job world, in an era of high-speed technological change and global competitiveness, where what is required for success is (I’m quoting the first set of problems the bubble test is not intended to address) is:  “intellectual dexterity, higher order thinking, associational thinking, problem solving, collaborative thinking, complex analysis, the ability to apply learning to other problems, complexity and causality that do not have one right answer”

  What would be amazing is if we could solve the problems of variability and efficiency with a peer-driven system that actually motivates and rewards real learning.  What would be equally amazing is if we could find a system that solves variability and efficiency and, at the same time, supports learning communities (for informal learning), teachers (in the classroom), and workforce trainers (in the workplace) who strive for complex, ongoing, lifelong, connected collaborative learning.  

The bubble test solves the problem of variability and efficiency.   The profound problem of education that remains, once the issue of variability and efficiency is solved.  If we find a better solution to variability and efficiency than the bubble test, we can then concentrate on the real learning objective of school:  how best to prepare our kids to thrive in the life that they will lead once they are no longer in school. 

The new way of thinking is that the point of school is to facilitate the transition from childhood to adulthood. That means designing schools based on research from the field of human development, not on research on how to raise test scores.

Academic content is important—it’s really important!—and it’s best learned by kids who are pursuing material that interests them, who are surrounded by adults they trust, who are intrinsically motivated to learn, who are mature and responsible, and who have a sense of autonomy over their education.

the first focus of school should be on creating an environment grounded in sound principles of human development. Academic learning then becomes a powerful by-product of that environment.

Project-based learning: Games are interactive, "lean-forward," and participatory. They enable players to step into different roles (e.g. scientist, explorer, inventor, political leader), confront a problem, make meaningful choices and explore the consequences of these choices. Games can help make learning more engaging, relevant and give students real agency in ways that static textbooks simply cannot.

Personalized learning: Games are designed to enable players to advance at their own pace, fail in a safe and supportive environment, acquire critical knowledge just-in-time (vs. just-in-case), iterate based on feedback and use this knowledge to develop mastery. Games can help teachers manage large classes with widely divergent student capabilities and learning styles through embedded assessment and individualized, adaptive feedback.

24/7 learning: Games offer a delicate mix of challenges, rewards and goals that drive motivation, time-on-task and a level of engagement that can seamlessly cross from formal to informal learning environments. Given that kids spend more time engaged with digital media than any other activity (other than sleep), games can enable an increasing portion of this out-of-school digital media time to effectively reinforce in-school learning (and vice-versa).

We were pretty shocked to discover the dominant effect of negative events on inner work life – people’s mostly-hidden emotions, perceptions, and motivations at work. Setbacks have a negative effect on inner work life that’s 2-3 times stronger than the positive effect of progress. When we checked into whether other researchers had found something similar, we learned that it’s a general psychological effect; “bad is stronger than good.” The reason could be evolutionary. Maybe we pay more attention to negatives, and are more affected by them, out of self-preservation. So – because positive inner work life is so important for top performance, leaders should do whatever they can to root out negative forces.

Religiously protect at least 20 minutes – and, ideally, much more – every day, to tackle something in the work that matters most to you. Hide in an empty conference room, if you have to, or sneak out in disguise to a nearby coffee shop. Then make note of any progress you made (even if it was a small win), and decide where to pick up again the next day. The progress, and the mini-celebration of simply noting it, can lift your inner work life.

Bosses can religiously protect at least 5 minutes, every day, to think about the progress and setbacks of their team, and what enabled or inhibited that progress. The daily review should end with a plan to do one thing, the following day, that’s most likely to facilitate progress – even if that progress is only a small win. I think this practice, if used widely, could make a real difference in organizational performance and employee inner work life. And good inner work life isn’t only a matter of employee retention or the bottom line. It’s a matter of human dignity.