Group items tagged

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.

t doesn’t take a great quarterback rating to win games; it takes a team effort. Have the elected officials in Austin m

Our data show that great teams: Communicate frequently. In a typical project team a dozen or so communication exchanges per working hour may turn out to be optimum; but more or less than that and team performance can decline.Talk and listen in equal measure, equally among members. Lower performing teams have dominant members, teams within teams, and members who talk or listen but don't do both. Engage in frequent informal communication. The best teams spend about half their time communicating outside of formal meetings or as "asides" during team meetings, and increasing opportunities for informal communication tends to increase team performance.Explore for ideas and information outside the group. The best teams periodically connect with many different outside sources and bring what they learn back to the team.

Historically, when the nation has a cold, schools sneeze. Examples are legion. When the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act (1958) aimed at getting better math and science teachers National problems of drug and alcohol abuse and tobacco smoking has led to states mandating courses to teach children and youth about the dangers of all of these substances. The Civil Rights movement in the 1950′s and 1960s’s spilled over the schools across the nation. Christian groups have pressured school boards to have prayer in schools, teach creationism, and vouchers (Educational Policy-2004-Lugg-169-87). The U.S. has competed economically with European and Asian countries for markets in the 1890s and since the 1980s. Each time that has occurred, business leaders turned to the schools to produce skilled graduates then for industrial jobs and now for an information-based economy.

This vulnerability to political stakeholders is very clear now with business and civic leaders pushing schools to be more efficient and effective in competing with China, Japan, and Germany.

In big cities where the problem of bad schooling is worst, results-driven reformers want mayors to take over schools and appoint their own superintendents, individuals who will accept no excuses from teachers and principals, will fight union rules, raise test scores, and create more charter schools.

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.  

What does it take to get politicians and the general public to abandon misleading ideas, such as, “Anyone who tries can pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” or that “Teachers are the most important factor in determining the achievement of our youth”? Many ordinary citizens and politicians believe these statements to be true, even though life and research informs us that such statements are usually not true.

till further discouraging news for those who advocate testing as a way to reform schools comes from the PISA assessments (The Program for International Student Assessment). Nations with high-stakes testing have generally gone down in scores from 2000 to 2003, and then again by 2006. Finland, on the other hand, which has no high-stakes testing, and an accountability system that relies on teacher judgment and school level professionalism much more than tests, has shown growth over these three PISA administrations (Sahlberg, 2011).

Now, in the USA, our parents are a greater determiner of our income in life than either our weight or our height.

Do you remember those days?  Well, they are gone. Over the last 30 years, the dominant American firms have gone global.  Thirty years ago, they weighed in on American education policy because they were scared to death that they would be unable to compete because they would not be able to hire a competitive work force.  Now, they care as much as ever about getting a competitive work force, but they have learned that they can find the people they need at whatever skill level they require all over the globe, and often in greater quantity and at less cost than they can get them in the United States.  If they can't get what they need for their research and development labs or their distribution centers or their factories here in the United States, they can get them in Singapore or India or China or Hungary.

They tend to be deep believers in "disruptive change."  They typically distrust government and the "system," and adopt a rather libertarian outlook.  Rather than work within the education system, they tend to support people and entities that work outside the system or work hard to challenge it.  They distrust education professionals and prefer instead to trust young, bright, well-educated people who are willing to take the system on.  In short, they identify with and give their support to people like themselves.  They are big backers of individual charter management organizations and of policies that would strengthen charter schools, which they see as taking on the system.  It is very doubtful whether the charter school movement would have gotten away from the starting gate without these deep pocketed, very committed supporters.

I very much hope that, as the new generation of business leaders that has provided so much support to charters and other entrepreneurial efforts in education take pride in their successes, they also recognize the limitations of those efforts, and turn their talents and their influence to another, much more difficult challenge:  How to greatly improve the system that educates all the children in this country.

he racial and economic segregation that sets the stage for redlining is now firmly in place.

this poverty is concentrated in increasingly resegregated communities and schools.

The schools identified as low-performing not only serve a growing underclass of impoverished families;

But here are the solutions that this challenge brings to mind. Eliminate paper from the budget and remove all copiers and computer printers from schools and the central office (with exceptions of essential need). “On this date, everything goes digital.” Create a professional development plan where all faculty and staff learn to teach themselves within a networked, digital, and info-abundant environment — it’s about Learning-Literacy. Although workshops would not completely disappear, the goal would be a culture where casual, daily, and self-directed professional development is engaged, shared, and celebrated — everyday! Then extend the learning-literacy workshops to the greater adult community. Establish a group, representing teachers, staff, administration, students, and community. Invite a “guru” or two to speak to the group about the “Why” of transforming education.  Video or broadcast the speeches to the larger community via local access, etc. The group will then write a document that describes the skills, knowledge, appreciations and attitudes of the person who graduates from their schools — a description of their goal graduate. The ongoing work of writing this document will be available to the larger community for comment and suggestion. The resulting piece will remain fluidly adaptable. Teachers, school administrators, and support staff will work in appropriately assembled into overlapping teams to retool their curricula toward assuring the skills, knowledge, appreciations and attitudes of the district’s goal graduate. Classroom curricula will evolve based on changing conditions and resources. To help keep abreast of conditions, teachers and support staff will shadow someone in the community for one day at least once a year and debrief with their teams identifying the skills and knowledge they saw contributing to success, and adapt their curricula appropriately.

The district budget will be re-written to exclude all items that do not directly contribute to the goal graduate or to supporting the institution(s) that contribute to the goal graduate. Part of that budget will be the assurance that all faculty, staff, and students have convenient access to networked, digital, and abundant information and that access will be at least 1 to 1. A learning environment or platform will be selected such as Moodle, though I use that example only as a means of description. The platform will have elements of course management system, social network and distributive portfolio. The goal of the platform will be to empower learning, facilitate assessment, and exhibit earned knowledge and skills to the community via student (and teacher) published information products that are imaginative, participatory and reflect today’s prevailing information landscape. Expand the district’s and the community’s notions of assessment to include data mining, but also formal and informal teacher, peer, and community evaluation of student produced digital products. Encourage (or require) teachers to produce imaginative information products that share their learning either related or unrelated to what they teach.  Also establish learning events where teachers and staff perform TED, or TELL (Teachers Expressing Leadership in Learning) presentations about their passions in learning to community audiences. Recognize that change doesn’t end and facilitate continued adapting of all plans and documents. No more five-year plans. Everything is timelined to the goal graduate.

to make all of the politically unpopular choices that had been put off for decades

year after year, our schools have been run for the benefit of the adults in the system, not for the benefit of the kids.

first time someone dared to question an entrenched practice that had only served the interests of adults.

A steady diet of pundit Thomas Friedman, publisher Rupert Murdoch, and press releases from the Business Roundtable would convince most readers that CEO decisions in managing their businesses, technological choices, swings in financial markets, and global boom-and-bust cycles had little to do with the U.S. economy. While putting onto public schools the solution for economic downturns, rather than business executives, is a loony non-sequitur, it is a victory in shifting blame from corporate leaders’ flawed decisions to the shoulders of educators

It is also a myth that all U.S. schools are broken. Surely,most urban schools are low-performing and in many cases have earned the label of “dropout factories.” Washington, D.C, for example, would be a poster child for such districts. Moreover, although islands of excellence in urban districts do exist (including D.C.), they are seldom stable over time. Where the myth-making enters is when urban schools are conflated with all U.S. schools. Not only I but many others have pointed out that the U.S. has a three-tiered system of schooling where the top two tiers have mostly “successful” schools by current standards. The bottom tier contains failing urban schools. Thus, all U.S. schools are not failures by any standard.

That future is here, and with it a demand for new essential skills.

The school planned its approach and curriculum carefully before it opened, in a way that reflected its core values of inquiry, collaboration, and reflection

he students are learning essential skills in communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. They have also learned that social media is not only about socializing, but also about learning from and with their peers—and that their peer group is far broader than they could have imagined.

Yes, I did learn that problems of low achievement were intricately connected to what families and students brought with them to schools, what teachers did in their classrooms, how principals worked in their schools, and how boards and superintendents finessed (or fouled up) the intersecting political, social, and economic interests of various stakeholders.

Most of all, my years as superintendent made me allergic to those who offered me fairy tale solutions—kissing a frog to get a prince–to the problem of low-performing schools.