By Valerie Strauss
This is the text of an open letter written to President Obama by Mary Broderick, president of the Arlington, Va.,-based National Schools Boards Association, a not-for-profit organization representing state associations of school boards and their member districts. The letter, sent earlier this month to the president, asks for a national dialogue about the direction of public education reform.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/mr-president-public-education-in-the-us-is-on-the-wrong-track/2012/04/23/gIQA6LEAdT_blog.html

Here's the text of the letter:

April 17, 2012

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama:

The night of your election, in Grant Park, you said, "I will listen to you especially when we disagree." We are all committed to the best educational future for the children of America. Yet, as the nation prepares for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), school board members and top educational thinkers overwhelming urge abandoning the current "command-and-control" federal educational oversight. America's treasure lies in unleashing the creativity of our youth. Though well-intentioned, the current federal direction is ignoring and working against much of what we know about student motivation and achievement. Instead, the federal government should support local efforts to ignite curiosity, creative potential, and a drive for excellence among students and staff.

Throughout my presidency of the National School Boards Association, I have travelled to many states and written for our national journal and asked for input to this letter. School board members and educators across the country have contributed their thinking here. We share your sense of urgency: We must give every child, no matter their circumstances, the opportunity to excel. We must ensure high quality experiences so each child develops fully. Our major disagreement comes from how we go about this task.

We want for each American child the same things that you and Michelle want for Sasha and Malia - inspiration, aspiration, creativity. I know you don't want an overemphasis on testing. I have heard you say it. Experience in schools and communities, supported by research, tells us that relentlessly focusing on standardized tests erodes our national competitiveness and deadens curiosity and drive. Clearly, we need some testing to gauge student learning, and we have no problem with appropriate accountability. But we have swung to a far extreme that is significantly hurting children. "Students are numbing over testing for testing's sake…. We can't test this country into excellence." (Sonny Savoie, LA)

Other countries that traditionally focus on testing recognize the shortcomings of their systems and come to our shores to learn how we inspire a spirit of innovation. And decades of work by motivation theorists, such as Daniel Pink, help us understand why a focus on testing and standards may not cultivate the learners we want. Others have found that such narrow focus restricts our views of what is possible, and even causes unethical behavior, such as the rash of testing scandals here and abroad.

By contrast, Finnish schools are now "exemplars of many of the success indicators we … want to see in American schools. Achievement is consistently high. Students are self-motivated and engaged in their learning. Schools have wide latitude to decide on their own programs, and there are no intrusive sanctions." (Jill Wynns, CA)

The focus on strict quantitative accountability has never worked for any organization, and it has not worked with No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Teachers are trying to meet the mandates of those programs and consequently "our children suffer and are not getting educated to their individual potential." (Carolyne Brooks, IL) Teachers' focus on tests is undermining their potential and initiative, making it more difficult to share a love of learning with their students.

Our students will never be first in the world on standardized tests. We never have come close. Nor is that something toward which we should aspire! We simply are not a compliant people willing to absorb facts without challenge. But we have had the most innovative workforce in the world (and now vie with Finland for that top position). Though intended to encourage equity, our current policy is, in fact, driving us toward mediocrity. Our students may be becoming better regurgitators, but what we need is excellent thinkers.

We have significant challenges in many of our communities, especially those that are underserved, yet we continue to boast some of the best schools in the world. We have models of excellence from which we should all be learning. Our vision should be to empower excellence - to draw out the best in each and every individual in our schools. We should recognize that our children's brains are our most important resource. We should aspire to having children take responsibility for their own learning. We can have a common curriculum as a guide, but leave it to our local "civic labs," as Thomas Jefferson envisioned them, to find optimal ways to inspire learning.

That said, we won't achieve any vision without significant teamwork. Finland's process may offer a model: They spent years developing national consensus about the essentials for successful education and, hence, the nation. Collaboration can promote independent thinking and action.

As a nation, rather than inspiring people toward a vision of excellence, we have been blaming some for blocking student achievement. It is time to inspire all toward a pursuit of excellence for each of our children.

The work world our children inherit will be significantly different from the one we have known. Jobs in the 20th century were mostly algorithmic or routine. According to McKinsey & Co., most such jobs have already evaporated because of automation and outsourcing. Future work will be more complex, so we had better prepare students differently than through standardized tests.

As the nature of work changes, so too must motivators. Carrots and sticks, which worked with routine jobs, actually impede efforts when the work is more complex, Daniel Pink says. Instead, the rewards of learning and challenges of the work itself must now be the primary motivators. Adults learn best, experts say, if they feel competent, autonomous, and a sense of belonging.

Much in our current school systems works against these, and our new national focus on teacher evaluation will continue that trend. As a result of ignoring innate needs, our schools too often are not innovative hubs. Yet to meet the challenges of our future, we must cultivate a spirit of innovation and inspiration. We will only succeed in preparing for our future if we empower all in our schools to think through complex problems and processes and generate solutions. Rather than laboring over bureaucratic compliance problems, let's engage students and teachers (even board members!) in solving problems of teaching and learning.

Our schools will never become great through threat or intimidation. Schools must be safe places to take risks, where staff members and students feel valued for their ideas and talents and empowered to fail so that they can grow. Students will learn what they see, experience, and enjoy.

We have the knowledge and experience to do this at the national, state, and local levels. However, the present narrow focus on accountability and trend of demonizing those in public education, arrogantly focusing on "failing schools," is diametrically opposed to fostering excellence.

Again, we can learn from Finland: It holds teachers in high regard (appealing to competence). Teacher training includes a strong feedback loop; professional development is embedded in the work, through coaching and ongoing support (appealing to belonging). People are willing to try new approaches and ideas (appealing to autonomy).

Innovation requires investment. Retired school superintendent Jack Reynolds noted that under the original ESEA we had a national system for identifying, supporting, and sharing excellent, vetted educational ideas. We should return to such a system of research, development, and diffusion, using technology to share teaching and learning approaches. Further, Ohio school board member Charlie Wilson suggested we encourage and fund our universities to conduct empirical research on the considerable experimentation that does occur in our schools.

Some board members suggested that we benefit from broad, guiding curriculum principles. Wyoming's David Fall encouraged you to continue your work with the National Governors' Association to refine core standards. However, our children would be best served if the standards were guides, but decision-making remained local.

Across the nation, I have heard growing support for an emphasis on the early years. To close achievement gaps, we need to provide rich early learning environments for children born with the least. We need to teach their parents how to encourage their learning. Please continue to support states' early childhood efforts.

Mr. President, public education in the U.S. is on the wrong track. As we have moved decision-making farther from teachers and children, we have jeopardized our competitive edge and keys to our national success: our ingenuity, our openness to innovation, and our creativity.

I urge you to convene a national dialogue, not made up of politicians, but including the breadth of educational opinion, to reconsider our educational direction. I would love to help you do this. Let's ensure that each child has the tools to be successful. Let's marshal the nation's brain power and tap into the research, proven practice, and demonstrated evidence of excellence.

Please bring your parent hat to determining our new direction for public education. Your daughters, like all of our children and all of our teachers, don't need more tests designed to identify weaknesses. They need excited, motivated, passionate teachers who feel challenged, supported, and encouraged to try new approaches, who share with their students a learning environment that is limitless. If we work collaboratively on a shared vision of excellence, if we foster team development, encourage innovation, and care for the growth of our teachers, our children will lead us into the future with confidence. And public education will remain the cornerstone of our vibrant democracy.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Sincerely,

Mary Broderick

NSBA President

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/04/18/should-teachers-and-students-be-facebook-friends/
Should teachers and students be Facebook friends?
Several years after Facebook expanded from a college social network to a global phenomenon, schools are still grappling with this issue
From staff and wire reports
Read more by staff and wire services reports

Teachers say social media-including the popular site Facebook-can be a vital educational resource if used appropriately.

Should students and teachers ever be friends on Facebook? School districts across the country, including the nation's largest, are weighing that question as they seek to balance the risks of inappropriate contact with the academic benefits of social networking.

Dozens of school districts nationwide have approved social media policies. Schools in New York City and elsewhere have disciplined teachers for Facebook activity, and Missouri legislators recently acquiesced to teachers' objections to a strict statewide policy.

In the New York cases, one teacher friended several female students and wrote comments including "this is sexy" under their photos, investigators said. A substitute teacher sent a message to a student saying that her boyfriend did not "deserve a beautiful girl like you."

Such behavior clearly oversteps boundaries, but some teachers say social media-including the popular site Facebook-can be a vital educational resource if used appropriately, especially because it's a primary means of communication for today's youngsters.

"eMail is becoming a dinosaur," said David Roush, who teaches media communications and television production at a Bronx high school. "Letters home are becoming a dinosaur. The old methods of engaging our students and our parents are starting to die."

New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott plans to release social media guidelines this month, saying recently that teachers "don't want to be put in a situation that could either compromise them or be misinterpreted." SNIP

THIS IS ON FACEBOOK.. for the download.

Facebook for School Counselors
by Facebook in Education on Monday, April 16, 2012 at 9:01am ·
Today, iKeepSafe and the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) launched Facebook for School Counselors. The guide, developed in partnership with Facebook, gives school counselors specific resources to better understand and engage with their students.


School counselors have a vital role in teaching students how to stay safe online and become "digital citizens." In that spirit Facebook worked with iKeepSafe and the American School Counselor Association to create Facebook for Schools Counselors. This resource examines four key areas that affect school counselors in the technology world:
Developing their school's Internet policy
Responding to online incidents that impact learning conditions
Detecting at-risk behavior
Teaching their students "digital citizenship"
Facebook for School Counselors also explains essential Facebook features that are particularly helpful to school counselors and educators. By understanding how the service works, school counselors can more effectively address and confidently resolve issues that may arise.

This guide is part of a larger effort by Facebook and its safety partners to create effective resources for the education community. In March 2011, Facebook worked with education experts Linda Fogg Philips, Derek Baird and Dr. BJ Fogg to create Facebook for Educators. That guide is available at www.facebook.com/safety.

Download Facebook for School Counselors here

from the Facebook page.

http://educationontheplate.com/2012/04/17/what-would-gandhi-do/

In its infinite wisdom, the New York State Education Department has increased the length of the state ELA and math tests by 50% this year. Now three days each instead of two.

They say that the increase is due to a need to field test questions for future exams based on the Common Core standards.

In other words, they are using our students, our children, as guinea pigs.

Any other field of science requires informed consent before experimenting on human subjects. I've never been asked if I consent to the state experimenting on my son. The state is either arrogantly flouting standard scientific procedure or they're saying my son, and all the other students attending public schools in the state are not human.

Either way, they're wrong.

I suspect that if asked, they'll say that sending our children to public schools implies consent.

That's nonsense.

It is the same as saying that by taking our children to doctors we're implying consent for them to be used in chemotherapy studies.

I've spent part of the past week, and part of a week in February, working in the library of the Ethical Culture School in Manhattan as part of the state-required internship for the MLS degree I am almost done with.

The students at the Ethical Culture School don't take state tests. Their parents spend $38,000 a year to buy out of them. Yes, somehow, their children get educated and everyone connected with their education knows precisely what each child is learning.

Not many of us can afford to spend $38,000 a year per child for an education that exempts them from state testing that has nothing to do with improving student learning and that also conducts experiments on those students. We have to find a different way to get our sons and daughters out of the grip of the edu-business of standardized exams.

I propose education civil disobedience. We should just keep our children home on testing days. Or if we must send them to school so we can work, teach them to refuse to take the exams.

Yes, it can have a disastrous effect on a school's AYP if not enough students take the exam. If it happens in one school no one will notice.

If it happens in all the schools in a district people will begin to notice.

And if it happens in a lot of districts our educational leaders will have a decision to make.

They can try to enforce the laws and punish parents, students and schools for the boycott.

Or they can take their ball of data and go away.

At least for a while.

Making Progress: Rethinking State and School District Policies Concerning Mobile Technologies and Social Media
pdf http://www.cosn.org/Default.aspx?TabId=12543


BACKGROUND

It is commonly recognized that our nation's progress depends on improving learning, thereby creating healthier communities and a stronger workforce. In today's world, that requires us to take advantage of new learning tools to ensure that our children's learning is practical and prepares them for the challenges of the 21st century. The advantages of digital media now greatly outweigh the disadvantages and require that schools update their thinking and policies to provide guidance on the use of these tools to improve student learning and achievement.

In 2000, when the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was first enacted, the major concern on the part of legislators and education policymakers was to protect children from viewing pornography on the Internet. A decade later, the nature and scope of digital media differs sharply from what existed in 2000. Mobile devices, social media, and other Web 2.0 applications have become mainstream in many sectors of society, and an increasing number of educators are demonstrating the power of these applications to enrich the learning environments in their classrooms.

There is a growing recognition on the part of teachers, education support professionals, school administrators, and prominent educational experts that emerging digital technologies are here to stay and, when used properly, can offer substantial educational benefits. These benefits, however, are not without some risks. Recent abuses of social media have prompted a number of state legislatures and boards of education to consider enacting legislation or policies to respond to concerns about the use of digital media to harass, bully, or make inappropriate sexual contact with children. Before steps are taken to impose limits on the use of social media and mobile technologies in schools, policymakers and educators need to consider the consequences for learning that such restrictions would produce. In this document, we argue that such action should carefully consider the advantages of social media for learning and that these guidelines for responsible use bring media into mentored environments where they can be safely explored and shared.

Many of the problems raised by these new technologies - from bullying to engaging in risky behavior - are not new to the public discourse, but are merely being delivered in different media. The challenge to responsible educators remains the same: to provide stimulating and safe learning environments that support the acquisition of practical skills necessary for full participation as a 21st-century citizen. Achieving this without mentored use of new technologies seems both impractical and counterproductive. One of the most powerful reasons to permit the use of social media and mobile devices in the classroom is to provide an opportunity for students to learn about their use in a supervised environment that emphasizes the development of attitudes and skills that will help keep them safe outside of school. A popular analogy is to driver's education, where behind-the-wheel training is as important as the more theoretical study of the "rules of the road." To advance thinking about the issues involved, we offer a summary of the emerging themes in educational uses of social media and conclude with recommendations for responsible use policies.



PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT
In December 2011, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and the FrameWorks Institute invited senior-level representatives from state and national organizations to a meeting in Washington, D.C., that was supported by a grant from the MacArthur-UCHRI Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California, Irvine. The goal of the workshop was to develop a resource to assist educational leaders and policymakers in developing sound and practical policies for our increasingly connected learning environment. This document, which resulted from the workshop, is not intended as a prescriptive policy statement; rather, its purpose is to help inform policymakers and educators as they develop or reconsider policies addressing new digital media in the context of improved learning.


SOCIAL MEDIA AND MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES DEFINED
Social media is defined as the set of applications for digital devices that enable the creation and exchange of user-generated content. The most widely used social media applications today are Facebook and Twitter, but there are hundreds of other specialized versions. For example, Biomed Experts is used by scientists and Sermo by physicians to collaborate and exchange information. A large number of social media applications exist especially for younger users - including preteen consumer networks such as Kidswirl, Togetherville, and Imbee. The education-oriented Edmodo, Gaggle, and many others are designed especially for K-12 schools.

Mobile technologies are devices with Internet connectivity that can be held easily in one's hand. Examples include iOS and Android smart phones, tablets such as the iPad or Samsung Galaxy, and e-readers such as Kindle Fire or Nook.



CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS
Workshop participants believed that the following observations are particularly relevant to state and local decision-makers as they consider policy pertaining to social media and mobile technologies in K-12 schools.

1. The use of mobile Internet devices and social media by young people is widely prevalent. The use of student-owned mobile devices for classroom instruction is growing, and more schools are moving from policies that ban their use to integrating them in the classroom.

According to recent surveys by the Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project, 95 percent of all teens (ages 12-17) use the Internet on a regular basis, 80 percent of them use social networking sites, and 75 percent have cell phones. With these numbers growing steadily, Internet and cell phone access by young people in their lives outside of school is rapidly approaching the point at which it might be viewed as nearly universal.

What about school use? According to research done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the majority of students report that they are able to bring their cell phones to school but must keep them off when they are in class. This policy environment appears to be changing. Although exact figures are lacking, it is clear that the number of school districts that permit students to use their own mobile devices in the classroom is rising steadily. The growing popularity of "bring your own technology" (BYOT) programs is fueled, in part, by the idea that allowing student-owned devices to supplement school-purchased technology can help cut costs in these financially tight times and, in part, by the realization that learning can benefit from technology when students are mentored in appropriate applications. By taking advantage of student interest in technology, schools stand to benefit from more teachable moments in and out the classroom and to support and create personalized learning that is guided by teachers and peers.


2. Students and schools experience substantial educational benefits through the use of mobile devices and social media.

As technology improves and expanded availability make the use of mobile devices and social media in the classroom increasingly viable, many K-12 educators are embracing the new teaching and learning opportunities that result. Among other things, these technologies allow students to:

Bridge the gap between formal (in-school) and informal (out-of-school) learning, improving their preparation for real world experience;

Construct their own learning environments to help them achieve academically and acquire the skills necessary for the 21st century; Connect instantly with peers, experts, and information resources beyond the school walls;
Provide real-time feedback, exchange information, and receive assessments during classroom instruction through a text message or Twitter "back channel";

Document their work through images taken on and off campus;

Receive and submit homework assignments digitally; Learn how to utilize mobile devices and social networking as tools for lifelong learning.
Examples: Institute of Play, Project Based-Learning, The Hive Learning Network NYC, SMALlab Learning, Conservation Connection, Digital Youth Network.

3. Current federal, state, and local policies and procedures need modification or clarification in order to respond to current realities.

If schools are to realize the advantages that social media bring to the field of learning and to update their curricula appropriately, more practical guidelines must be developed. The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is never far from the minds of K-12 leaders as they attempt to revise policies and make decisions regarding the educational use of social media and mobile devices

. Until recently, CIPA was viewed as severely limiting the use of these technologies by schools that are supported in any way through E-rate funding. Requests from a number of parties led to a recent revision by the FCC, which administers the E-rate. In August 2011, the FCC issued a Report and Orderthat included the following language: Although it is possible that certain individual Facebook or MySpace pages could potentially contain material harmful to minors, we do not find that these websites are per se "harmful to minors" or fall into one of the categories that schools and libraries must block. The FCC revision did not address the request from the U.S. Department of Education, as part of its National Education Technology Plan, that E-rate provisions and CIPA requirements should be clarified and barriers to student-owned devices in schools removed, but did promise to return to that topic at a future time.

The FCC order also strengthened earlier language and requirements for schools receiving E-rate funding to show that they have in place an Internet safety program that educates minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms, as well as cyberbullying awareness and response. This education program must be in place by July 2012. Thus, schools have a legal responsibility and ethical opportunity to implement processes and programs to instill good habits of technology use in students.

4. There are legitimate concerns about the use of social media that need to be addressed.

Even ardent supporters of social networking and mobile devices in school would agree that it is important to have an awareness of - and plans to prevent and/or deal with -negative behaviors that can be facilitated by such technologies.

These include:

Sexting: Sexting involves sending sexually explicit messages or photographs, primarily between mobile phones. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's Teens and Digital Citizenship survey, 16 percent of teens 12-17 have received sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude photos or videos of someone else they know. While a relatively small number of young people are involved, sexting can be a serious problem for those sending and receiving such messages.

Cyberbullying and harassment: Some of the highest-profile problems with social media in recent years have involved the use of the technology by students to bully or harass their peers. As with sexting, the overall numbers are not huge, but 20 percent of all teens and 33 percent of younger teenage girls told Pew researchers that peers are mostly "unkind" to one another at social networking sites. These statistics are disturbing, as is the fact that 19 percent of teens report that they have been bullied in the last 12 months - in person, by phone, via text messaging, or online. It is worth noting, however, that the number one form of bullying does not involve technology; 12 percent of the teen respondents said they had been bullied in person, while 9 percent endured bullying via text messaging, 8 percent online (through email, social networking, and so on), and 7 percent over the phone.

Inappropriate behavior, compounded by a lack of guidance from the school system, is likely to have negative consequences, regardless of the venue in which it occurs. Technology is no exception. The rules we make to structure appropriate interactions need to recognize the shared responsibility that all adults in a young person's life must assume. Accountability for addressing such behaviors should include but not be limited to social media.

Poor judgment by youth about how much to share online: Young people can find themselves making unwise decisions about what to share given their inexperience and naivety. Without an awareness of privacy issues, young people risk providing photos or information about themselves that could harm them, their reputations, or future opportunities. It is important to recognize the risk of providing an opening for predators looking to make contact for harmful purposes. Responsible use of social media requires young people to recognize and protect themselves from such dangers. This problem largely lies outside of school, rather than in it, but educators and policymakers need to identify strategies to help students and parents minimize risk and recognize the limits they must place on themselves when acting in these public forums.

5. Equity is a vital issue to consider when establishing policy around social media and mobile technologies.
As we move forward with the latest technologies, we must keep sight of the crucial issue of digital equity. It is important to consider the availability of loaner equipment and school-owned devices that are accessible to lower-income students in a stigma-free manner. BYOT implementations have the potential to increase the digital divide that earlier one-to-one initiatives were designed to narrow. Furthermore, digital equity issues are not limited to the devices students have access to, but also touch on ways of making Internet access and adequate bandwidth available to all students - at school and at home. Failure to address this will create a critical fault line in the differential learning opportunities available to students and, potentially, leave some groups of students ill prepared to join our country's 21st-century workforce.




SUGGESTIONS
Compliance with CIPA and E-rate guidelines is essential to schools, of course, but it is also clear that much of the responsibility for defining acceptable use, and setting policy that is both appropriate for today's technology-enhanced learning environment and sufficiently flexible to respond to tomorrow's developments, remains with states and individual districts. Some suggestions to policymakers as they navigate these waters:


Banning is not the answer:

Until recently, many districts have banned the use of social networking sites such as Facebook. As schools across the country have begun reconsidering their policies and opening the doors to social media, a few high-profile cases with negative consequences have prompted states to consider imposing statewide bans. So far, such efforts have been met with resistance and have led to efforts to find a more balanced approach. In Missouri, for example, certain provisions of a newly enacted law that barred teachers from having contact with students through social media sites were blocked by the courts and then repealed through the governor's initiative. Rhode Island's "Safe School Act," which was originally opposed by educators and community members who had been told it would impose a ban on social networking in schools, eventually passed with no such provision. Instead, according to eSchool News, the bill's author said that the Safe School Act, which focused primarily on the issue of cyberbullying, was intended to encourage [social media use] for educational purposes. Policymakers in both states, much like the FCC through its guideline changes described earlier, shifted focus from an attempt to establish centralized rules to a requirement that individual districts set their own policies regarding social networking and other technology use.

Rethink and revise the district AUP (Acceptable Use Policy): Many school districts are moving in the direction suggested by the shift described above: dropping the bans and, instead, focusing on policy goals that go beyond the narrow set of website access issues that were the primary focus of many earlier AUPs. One example is the Guidelines for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct and Abuse in Virginia Public Schools, shared by presenters at the Washington, D.C., workshop. CoSN's Jim Bosco and Keith Krueger proposed in a recent Education Week commentary that school systems should move beyond the traditional AUP approach - which has students and family members sign a form "accepting" certain rules, with little action required after that - to a "responsible-use policy" (RUP) that emphasizes education and treats the student as a person responsible for ethical and healthy use of the Internet and mobile devices. Staff, too, should be signatories of such responsible-use policies.

Take the opportunity to educate students: The new FCC E-rate requirements outlined in the August 2011 Report and Order reinforce what many educators already believe is the key to online safety and security: adequate student education. In fact, some would argue that one of the most powerful reasons to permit the use of social media and mobile devices in the classroom is to provide an opportunity for students to learn about their use in a supervised environment that emphasizes the development of attitudes and skills that will help keep them safe outside of school. A number of schools across the nation, as well as some organizations, have developed programs on digital literacy and safe Internet use to help students learn how to use social media and other Internet content in a safe, effective, and appropriate way.

Emphasize professional development: Professional development for all stakeholder groups is key to the effective support of social media and mobile technologies in the classroom. Today's technology-related professional development must emphasize not only technology integration and continuous improvement, but also the ethical, legal, and practical issues related to social networking and mobile devices in the classroom. Professional development must explore effective activities and approaches for conveying this information to students.

MAKING PROGRESS
Mobile Internet technologies and social media present new challenges and powerful learning opportunities for K-12 students and educators. No era in history has come close to the quality and volume of learning resources that are at our fingertips. Informed leadership from all key stakeholders is required to seize the learning opportunities while minimizing the risks. This document is offered as a resource for doing so.
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REAL- WORLD SNAPSHOTS

Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT)
Fairfax County Public Schools
Falls Church, Virginia
Fairfax County
Number of Students: 176,138
Percentage of free/reduced lunch: 26.18%
http://www.fcps.edu/


This district is bringing transformation to new levels for their students and staff. Schools are pioneering several innovative programs, including eTextbooks and a comprehensive system of delivering digital curricular resources. Staff's extensive use of social and digital media speaks to the open culture that district policies and practices have built.
In Fairfax County Public Schools, the use of student-owned computing devices is an institutional imperative endorsed by the Superintendent and School Board. Implementation of BYOT across the school district began with various pilot projects. From these experiences a solution was designed, which led to the following changes:
Network enhancements were implemented, in particular to the wireless infrastructure;
Policies such as the Student Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) were updated;
Technical bulletins were created to define procedures for using privately owned computing devices;
Best practices were distributed; procedures and accompanying contract vehicles were established for purchasing devices for those in need;
An Ideal Use Matrix was created to help school leaders make informed decisions on how to integrate student-owned devices into each school's instructional priorities.

FCPS encourages the use of social media for instructional purposes and provides Web 2.0 tools within a secure environment for K-12 students and for all teachers and administrative staff. Through FCPS 24-7 Learning, the Blackboard learning management system, Wikis, podcasts, and blogs are available to incorporate into instruction. An additional capability is the ability to search FCPS-created Web 2.0 content. Through FCPS Google Apps for Education, students, faculty, and staff have the ability to communicate, store files, and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in real time from school, work, or home, all within a secure "closed campus" online environment.



Trust and Participation
New Canaan Public Schools
New Canaan, Connecticut
Fairfield County
Number of Students: 4,076

One of the reasons for moving many curriculum activities online and "onto the cloud" in Connecticut's New Canaan Schools was a logistical one: it helped create an "anytime, anywhere, anyhow" environment.
As a result, teachers can post assignments and students can work on them at night - alone or as a group. Teachers can monitor student progress on projects or edit student writing from home. "The use of social networking and other Web 2.0 tools has enabled a collaborative culture for teachers and administrators," says Rob Miller, director of technology. Using tools such as Diigo, Google Earth, and Google Docs, students collaborate on projects across the curriculum. For example, before reading the book Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, students worked in groups to research and create a Google Earth "stop" for each location in the story so that classmates had easy access to important information as they read. Students are often grouped with peers in classes other than their own. "They find it challenging to work with online partners and peers they hardly know," says Cathy Swan, technology integration specialist, "but they're adjusting and developing important skills. Teachers, too, are collaborating online. It's truly a 21st-century workplace model."

According to the New Canaan administrators, online safety issues are not about blocking, they're about safety education - which begins in second grade with help from i-SAFE curriculum materials, modified for local use. By high school, safety and acceptable use discussions are incorporated into every single online project.

"Every time they get ready to post something online," Swan says, "we talk about what they're sharing and what permissions they're going to include. We remind the students that what they put on the Internet doesn't stay there."

"Parents support our decision to open our network to social networking and Web 2.0 applications," adds Miller, who frequently attends meetings to educate parents and keep them informed. "They are delighted and relieved that we are taking their kids to these sites and teaching them the responsible, ethical, safe, and legal way to use them."


Digital Citizenship
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara County
Number of students: 14,939
Percentage of free/reduced lunch: 43.72%

Kathie Kanavel, the Coordinator of Education Technology and Library Programs, has been working with Common Sense for two years and using our resources to educate students, parents, and faculty about digital citizenship.

Common Sense provided professional development sessions for teachers at the elementary, middle and high school levels, and now all the middle and high schools are Common Sense curriculum.

To learn more about the K-12 Digital Literacy and Citizenship curriculum click here.
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CoSN Events
Categories:


4/17/2012 1:00 PM Webinar: Making the Connections in Mobile Learning
4/23/2012 1:00 PM Special Webinar -Opening Doors with ICT
5/15/2012 1:00 PM Webinar: Horizon Report: 2012 K-12 Edition
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Making Progress
Index
Background
Purpose of this document
Social media and mobile technologies defined
Critical observations
Suggestions
Making progress
Real-world snapshots
Resource directory
References
MAKING PROGRESS:
Rethinking State and School Districts
Policies Concerning Mobile Technologies
and Social Media

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Consortium for School Networking (CoSN)
1025 Vermont Avenue NW, Suite 1010
Washington, DC 20005-3599
Toll Free 866.267.8747
Telephone 202.861.2676
Fax 202.393.2011

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/04/13/education-groups-weigh-in-on-digital-media-use-policies/2/?


A new report from a number of prominent education groups aims to guide school leaders as they revise their mobile technology and social media policies to better reflect how today's students want to learn.

The report, "Making Progress: Rethinking State and School District Policies Concerning Mobile Technologies and Social Media," was produced by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and the FrameWorks Institute.


It defines social media as "the set of applications for digital devices that enable the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Mobile technologies are "devices with internet connectivity that can be held easily in one's hand."

"Policy makers and educators are struggling to balance the educational opportunities that mobile technologies and social media can provide at school with legitimate concerns around providing a safe environment focused on learning. This document from leading education and state policy nonprofits aims to inform better decision making in state capitals and school boards and among educational leaders," said CoSN CEO Keith Krueger.

"Mobile technologies and social media, if leveraged appropriately, have the potential to maximize student learning and engagement, and transform the concept of the classroom from four walls to an interactive space where student-centered learning takes place," said Frameworks Institute President Susan Bales. "While there are a variety of challenges, there are enormous opportunities, and if we - educators, technology leaders, and school decision makers - find ways to harness the power of these tools, the benefits to our young people and our education system are countless. There are also legitimate concerns that must be addressed, but they must be weighed against the potential benefits."

The report includes the following key observations:

The use of mobile internet devices and social media by young people is widely prevalent. The use of student-owned mobile devices for classroom instruction is growing, and more schools are moving from policies that ban their use to integrating them into the classroom.
Students and schools experience substantial educational benefits through the use of mobile technologies and social media.
There are legitimate concerns about the use of social media that need to be addressed.
Current federal, state and local policies and procedures need modification or clarification in order to respond to current realities of expanded social media and mobile devices in schools.
Equity is a vital issue to consider when establishing policy around social media and mobile technologies.
(snip)

Report Dissects the Data on Underrepresented Students in STEM

The Level Playing Field Institute published a new report last week on the current state of STEM education as it relates to underrepresented students in California. The report, Dissecting the Data 2012: Examining STEM Opportunities and Outcomes for Underrepresented Students in California, examines the progress in STEM of African-American and Latino students, two subgroups who are underrepresented in STEM fields relative to the overall population, and makes recommendations for improving student access and preparation in these fields. As an update to the original 2010 report, the new report examines the most recent data on STEM preparation from K-12 through higher education in California and also highlights national and international comparisons in STEM education and outcomes.

The report highlights several key findings:

In the early elementary grades, African-American and Latino students demonstrate much lower STEM proficiency rates than their White and Asian peers, and these trends persist.
For example, in 5th grade science, just 43% of African-American and 45% of Latino students reached proficiency, compared to nearly 80% of Asian and White. By 6th grade forty-six percentage points separate African-American (35%) and Asian students (81%) in mathematics proficiency.
In the middle and high school years, proficiency rates decline and African-American and Latino students are less likely to access and achieve success in rigorous college-preparatory coursework than their White and Asian peers.
For example, 8th grade Algebra I is viewed as a critical gatekeeper course, yet the majority of African-American and Latino students don't enroll until 9th grade. Of those who did enroll in 8th grade Algebra I, just 29% of African-American and 37% of Latino students reached proficiency.
Also, African-American and Latino students are considerably underrepresented in AP coursework in math and science. Latino students represent 18% of AP science and 19% of AP math test-takers, although they represent 48% of the high-school aged population in California. African-American students represent only 2% of the AP math and science test takers in California, roughly a third of their percentage within the high-school aged population.
African-American and Latino students are severely underrepresented in STEM enrollment in higher education in California, and demonstrate shockingly low retention and graduation rates within STEM fields.
There are only 4,405 African-American students enrolled in STEM disciplines across both the University of California and the California State University entire systems (3% of the population). Latinos account for only 18% of the STEM majors across both University systems. Additionally, only 72 African-American students are enrolled in computer science across the UC system.
The report concludes that profound inequities are present in both access and outcomes throughout the STEM education pipeline and makes several recommendations for improving the preparation of underrepresented students of color for success in STEM education and careers. To learn about the rest of the findings and the recommendations, read the full report.

http://lpfi.org/sites/default/files/dissecting_the_data_2012_final.pdf

ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2012) - American students need a dramatically new approach to improve how they learn science, says a noted group of scientists and educators led by Michigan State University professor William Schmidt.

After six years of work, the group has proposed a solution. The 8+1 Science concept calls for a radical overhaul in K-12 schools that moves away from memorizing scientific facts and focuses on helping students understand eight fundamental science concepts. The "plus one" is the importance of inquiry, the practice of asking why things happen around us -- and a fundamental part of science.

"Now is the time to rethink how we teach science," said Schmidt, University Distinguished Professor of statistics and education. "What we are proposing through 8+1 Science is a new way of thinking about and teaching science, not a new set of science standards. It supports basic concepts included in most sets of state standards currently in use and complements standards-based education reform efforts."

The group of scientists has met with Schmidt in an effort to rethink how science should be taught since 2006, when it was originally part of the PROM/SE research project (Promoting Rigorous Outcomes in Mathematics and Science Education) funded by the National Science Foundation.

The 8+1 concepts were derived from two basic questions: What are things made of and how do systems interact and change? The eight concepts are: atoms, cells, radiation, systems change, forces, energy, conservation of mass and energy, and variation.

Traditionally, science in the United States has been taught in isolated disciplines such as chemistry, biology and physics without clear connections being made between the subjects. The 8+1 effort encourages K-12 teachers to use the eight science concepts to build understanding within and between their courses as students advance through the grades.

"The natural world seems to operate through these laws and concepts, but when it comes to schooling we don't teach children these laws and then show how these apply in different situations," Schmidt said.
Simon Billinge, an 8+1 committee member and professor of applied physics and mathematics at Columbia University, said the aim is for students to see, for example, the physics within biology and the chemistry within physics, so they can gain an understanding of science that transcends disciplinary lines
.
Today's frontiers in science often occur at these disciplinary edges. Aided by the explosion in technology and scientific discoveries, new fields are arising that were hardly imagined a generation ago such as synthetic biology, digital organisms and genomics.

Most states are participating in a process to develop new K-12 science standards that are more relevant, coherent and based on international benchmarks.
Stephen Pruitt, vice president of Achieve, a nonprofit organization managing the state-led effort, said 8+1 Science can work hand-in-hand with his organization's effort -- called Next Generation Science Standards -- "to change the way we think about science education."
"The emphasis is about helping students learn key concepts in science, rather than just facts," Pruitt said.
Results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress show only 34 percent of fourth-graders and 21 percent of 12th-graders were proficient in their science knowledge. Internationally, U.S. students ranked a mediocre 23rd in their science knowledge among countries studied by the Program for International Student Assessment.
Further information on 8+1. http://8plus1science.org/

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Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning
http://spotlight.macfound.org/featured-stories/entry/welcoming-mobile-rewriting-acceptable-use-smartphones-and-social-media/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+macfound%2FiQaL+Spotlight+on+Digital+Media+and+Learning#When:13:20:00Z

Welcoming Mobile: More Districts Are Rewriting Acceptable Use Policies

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 06:20 AM PDT

No longer afraid of giving kids access to the internet and using mobile technologies for learning, a growing number of school districts across the country are developing digital media policies that emphasize responsibility over fear.

By Heather Chaplin

No longer afraid of giving kids access to the internet and using mobile technologies for learning, a growing number of school districts across the country are developing digital media policies that emphasize responsibility over fear.

Since early 2001, every school accepting federal funding for discounted internet access through the government's E-rate program had to do two things - block "harmful" sites and create an Acceptable Use Policy.

The mantra of schools back then was pretty simple: Keep it out. The standard approach to this government mandate, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), was to build the equivalent of walls, fences, and moats to keep kids from the web.

Guide to Mobile Learning:

This is part two of a multi-part series exploring mobile learning co-produced by MindShift and Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning. Other posts in this series include:Amidst a Mobile Revolution in Schools, Will Old Teaching Tactics Work?

"It's a historical hiccup in the history of learning," said Rich Halverson, a learning scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the lead researcher on KidGrid, a mobile app that helps teachers study and analyze student data. "Here we had the most sophisticated advances in the history of learning banned from schools out of fear."

Fear was definitely the word you heard when talking to school administrators - no doubt partly because in the age of the internet, 2001 was a long time ago, and the web was still unknown territory for plenty of people back then. And also, all it takes is one student downloading pornography and sending it around the school, or one case of sexting that makes it in the news, for a school to find itself in serious hot water.

But recently - in the last two or three years - something has changed. Schools seem to be getting over their fears and are viewing the web and social media and all the attendant digital tools as something they want to bring into the classroom. You can see this change reflected in a slew of new Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) across the country that emphasize responsibility over mere acceptance and the implementation of school-wide blogs and even the distribution of smartphones for classroom use.

"This isn't happening in the majority of schools," said Jim Bosco, principal investigator at the Consortium of School Networking's Participatory Learning in Schools initiative. "But it's not the rarity anymore, either."

Bosco said that while he had no empirical data to track these changes in schools, he estimated that between 40 and 50 percent of school districts were developing more forward-thinking policies. The Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) is working with school leaders from 13 districts around the country to collaborate on creating models for district-level digital media use policies in K-12 education.

COSN released a paper this month called "Making Progress: Rethinking State and School District Policies Concerning Mobile Technologies and Social Media."

"The advantages of digital media now greatly outweigh the disadvantages and require that schools update their thinking and policies to provide guidance on the use of these tools to improve student learning and achievement," the paper says.

It simply makes no sense, the paper argues, to try and keep students out of a world - a digital world - that is going to be paramount to how they live and work as adults. In fact, says Bosco, it's not even possible to keep them out.

"You can build as big a moat as you want," he said. "But it's not going to work if for no other reason than they go home at night. A lot of people say, well, what they do when they get home is not my problem. But I think that seems borderline unethical."

According to Bosco, administrators at schools ought to be providing safe environments for students to learn how to be responsible digital citizens - not just protecting themselves from lawsuits by keeping the internet out of the classroom and leaving kids to flail about when they go home.

[O]ur kids' filters are in their heads. You do this by giving them a safe environment to educate themselves instead of sticking your head in the sand and pretending these technologies don't exist.

- Jim Klein, Saugus Union School District

"One of the most powerful reasons to permit the use of social media and mobile devices in the classroom is to provide an opportunity for students to learn about their use in a supervised environment that emphasizes the development of attitudes and skills that will help keep them safe outside of school," the CoSN paper reads.

The Children's Internet Protection Act requires internet filters, but the changing thinking over the last two or three years is that maybe those "filters" aren't best enforced by draconian AUPs.

"When I talk to colleagues in Finland, they say, how do you filter?" said Jim Klein, director of Information Services and Technology at the Saugus Union School District in Southern California. "They say, our kids' filters are in their heads. You do this by giving them a safe environment to educate themselves instead of sticking your head in the sand and pretending these technologies don't exist."

This doesn't mean that students in Klein's district have unfettered access to anything online. But Klein has a different approach to blocking. Instead of buying a commercial filter that blocks urls, Klein, who uses only open source software, has created filters based on content. This means YouTube, for example, is available as a site, but a particular page - pornographic or hate-based - won't be.

Klein also said that when he's building filters, he doesn't work with the mindset of keeping out every kid who desperately wants to get around them - those kids are going to get access anyway, he said, whether by breaking through the filter or waiting until they go home. Rather, he sets out to prevent students from accidently stumbling on something harmful or upsetting.

"You have to understand the purpose of filters," he said, "and change your assumptions about what you're doing."

When Klein was loosening the filter system, he spent a lot of time talking to teachers about what he was doing and why. Teachers have to be responsible for what happens in their classroom, Klein said. And the expectation has to be that students are responsible for their own behavior. His message of responsibility is echoed by the new CoSN paper and by other forward-thinking tech administrators at districts around the country.

The Katy Independent School District in Texas recently changed its AUP to focus on "responsible use," said Darlene Rankin, director of instructional technology. "Digital responsibility is big." Rankin said. "We're teaching students how to operate in this new world. We wanted to change the wording in our guidelines because we don't want students to accept them; we want students to be responsible for them."

Do things ever go wrong? Of course. In the Katy ISD, one fifth grader did a search for and found videos of lap dancers. The parents, Rankin said, were irate.

"Things are going to happen," Rankin said. "We talked to the parents - ultimately it was a great teaching moment."

Halverson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said one of the problems schools are now facing over responsible internet use is a legacy of the last 20-plus years of what he called an "accountability squeeze" in the school system. There's been so much focus on "holding schools accountable" that school administrators have been living in a culture of fear - fear of innovating, fear of trying something that might be messy.


Screen shot by Inner Grove Heights Community Schools.

"Research-driven intervention like changing the curriculum or bringing in new text books leaves no room for error," he said, "which is never going to be the case with digital technology. Of course there's uncertainty and variation in what they've been doing - just look at the state of algebra in inner-city schools. But you can certify a textbook. Everyone wants a magic bullet that will solve all problems, but it doesn't exist. We need to lay off schools and let them innovate."

Katy ISD has been innovating by distributing Android phones to students. Three years ago, the district gave 150 phones to fifth graders at one elementary school. The next year, it gave out 1,500 phones at 11 schools; and this year, 3,200 students at 18 schools now have Androids.

In the classroom, students log in and receive assignments, take quizzes and do research on their phones. The school has made certain apps available, including an online catalog for the library and reference books. Teachers also plan specific lessons taking advantage of the phones; for example, when students are studying 3-D objects, they watch a video and then take pictures with their phones. Afterwards, they open a drawing program, where they do work based on the image, and then send the work to their teacher.

Katy ISD, like many other districts that embrace mobile technologies and other digital media, uses the social networking platform Edmodo to facilitate online work. Parents can log on to the site to view student grades.

The Inner Grove Heights Community Schools in Minnesota use Edmodo. Two years ago, the district didn't even have wireless Internet access. But six months later, administrators made the decision to add wireless to all schools, elementary as well as high school.

"Teachers were using digital tools, and we were getting more and more requests to open online sites and make it possible for teachers to, for example, use video from the web in the classroom," said Lynn Tenney, director of technology for the district.

Now, Inner Grove offers hybrid classes. Students meet three times a week in the classroom, and twice a week they work independently online. One year after implementing the program in standardized 12th grade English, the failure rate dropped from 63 percent to 13 percent, said Deirdre Wells, superintendent of the school district.

The depth of thought and level of discourse gets much deeper when you add an online environment.

- Deirdre Wells, Inner Grove Heights Community Schools

Factors other than technology, including a different set of students, could have contributed to the decline. Wells couldn't put her finger on one specific reason for the extraordinary drop, but she pointed to factors like increased flexibility and freedom, which students loved. Also, she said, struggling students could stay in class those two days a week and get more one-on-one help from the teacher, while the more confident students were off doing their online projects.

"The depth of thought and level of discourse gets much deeper when you add an online environment," Wells said. The teacher can present information in class, and then the students are free to explore it online - they can look at other students' work, or check out videos on YouTube. Time constraints are no longer a factor, the process becomes more individualized, and school becomes more relevant, Wells said.

The social aspect is certainly a big factor in these new learning environments. A fourth grader in the Saugus Union School District in Southern California, for example, posted a plea for help on a Saturday, saying he was struggling with his math homework. His math teacher saw the post and, using his own Macbook web cam, made a video of himself explaining the subject in more depth. He put the video online, and by the end of the weekend his post was filled with comments from students chiming in about the work.

For Jim Bosco of CoSN, these advances are absolutely key to providing real educations, not only to the "haves" but to the "have-nots" as well. Bosco grew up in Pittsburg, the child of Italian immigrants. His father had a fourth-grade education, and the Catholic school Bosco attended was less than ideal, he said. But Bosco happened to live within walking distance of a Carnegie public library branch, where he spent much of his free time. He still remembers being struck by the fact that his cousins, who lived 60 miles away in Newcastle, didn't have access to all that he did by the simple accident of where they lived.

"By being walking distance to that library, I had access to all kinds of information and really to all that human culture had produced," Bosco said.

The library of his childhood is like the internet today - a repository of "human culture and knowledge."

"What you have access to has traditionally been determined by money and location," Bosco said. "But the internet has the potential to change that."

********************************
From Education Week [American Education's Newspaper of Record], Tuesday, March 27, 2012. See http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/
--------------------------------------------------------
Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch have found themselves at odds on policy over the years, but they share a passion for improving schools. Bridging Differences will offer their insights on what matters most in education. Below is a letter from Diane Ravitch to Deborah Meier.
********************************
The Pattern on the Rug
By Diane Ravitch

Dear Deborah,

There comes a time when you look at the rug on the floor, the one you've seen many times, and you see a pattern that you had never noticed before. You may have seen this squiggle or that flower, but you did not see the pattern into which the squiggles and flowers and trails of ivy combined.

In American education, we can now discern the pattern on the rug.

Consider the budget cuts to schools in the past four years. From the budget cuts come layoffs, rising class sizes, less time for the arts and physical education, less time for history, civics, foreign languages, and other non-tested subjects. Add on the mandates of No Child Left Behind, which demands 100 percent proficiency in math and reading and stigmatizes more than half the public schools in the nation as "failing" for not reaching an unattainable goal.

Along comes the Obama administration with the Race to the Top, and the pattern on the rug gets clearer. It tells cash-strapped states that they can compete for federal funding, but only if they open more privately managed schools (where few teachers have any job protections), only if they adopt national standards that have never been field-tested, only if they agree to evaluate teachers by student test scores, and only if they are ready to close down low-performing schools, fire the principal and staff, and call it a turnaround.

Race to the Top seems to have catalyzed a national narrative, at least among the mainstream media. The good guys open charter schools and fire bad teachers. The bad guys are lazy teachers who get lifetime tenure just for breathing and showing up. Most evil of all are the unions, who protect the bad teachers and fend off any effort to evaluate them. Anyone who questions the headlong rush to privatization and the blind faith in standardized testing will be smeared as "a defender of the status quo" who has "no solutions." Even if all the "reformers'" solutions are destructive and stale, even though they consistently have failed to produce better education, the reformers never think twice about their palette of "solutions."

Just by happenstance, a major documentary appears in September 2010 ("Waiting for 'Superman'") to recapitulate this narrative to millions. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation puts up the money to ensure that this morality tale of good reformers and bad teachers is shown to state legislatures, to civic groups, to people living in housing projects. The movie itself is financed in part by an evangelical billionaire (Philip Anschutz) who contributes heavily to libertarian and ultra-conservative causes.

At the same time, a small group of high-profile figures, led by Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein, proclaim that low test scores are caused by bad teachers, and if they had their way, they would abolish tenure, seniority, and any other job protections for those greedy, lazy teachers. Freed of those encumbrances, teachers would hold on to their jobs only if their students' test scores went up. Economist Eric Hanushek adds another twist to the emerging scenario: fire 5 to 10 percent of the teachers whose students get the lowest scores, and amazing things are sure to happen: Bad teachers will be replaced by average teachers, test scores will rise to the top of the world, and the nation's gross domestic product will rise by trillions of dollars.

Governors and state legislatures heed these messages. How could they not? In state after state, men with vast personal fortunes invest in campaigns to end teachers' tenure, end seniority (now called Last In, First Out, or LIFO), and clear the way for private takeovers of public schools, where teachers work with no job rights at all. Understandably, the message is embraced by right-wing governors like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, and Rick Scott of Florida, but also by Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo of New York and Daniel Malloy of Connecticut, as well as independent Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, the richest foundation in the United States, the Gates Foundation, pours hundreds of millions of dollars into a project to find the perfect teacher evaluation system, thus reinforcing the "reform" narrative that the best way to fix what ails public education is to create a foolproof way to find and fire those malingering bad teachers. Where the Gates Foundation leads, many other foundations follow, sure that this philanthropic behemoth is wisest because it has the most money and presumably the best thinking.

Just recently, the fabulously rich foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, released an accounting of its grants in the education sector. This foundation is known for its love of all things private, and its antipathy for unions, government regulation, and public education. This year, Walton handed out $159 million to its favorites. Tidy sums were paid to the KIPP schools (mostly non-union) and to Teach For America, which claims that neither training nor experience is necessary to succeed in the classroom. And along with grants to "right to work" organizations, libertarian think tanks, and promoters of voucher and charters, there were grants for allegedly liberal or nonpartisan organizations like Education Trust, the Brookings Institution, Education Week (the weekly newspaper for K-12 news, which hosts our blog), Bellwether Education Partners (home to Time magazine columnist Andrew Rotherham), the United Negro College Fund (which helps explain, along with over $1 billion from the Gates Foundation, why the president of UNCF recently urged wavering legislators in Georgia to vote for charter legislation), and Stand for Children (whose founder Jonah Edelman, son of civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman, gets hefty donations from equity investors, promotes charter schools, and led the successful battle to curtail teachers' job protections in Illinois). Walton granted $2.2 million to IFF, an organization that recently drafted a report to redesign the District of Columbia's public schools by increased privatization, and awarded $500,000 to Mind Trust of Indianapolis, whose plan proposes to eliminate the central school district and privatize public schools in that city. Walton gave $1 million to Michelle Rhee's Students First campaign, which works with Republican governors to oppose teachers' unions and job protections for teachers and to advocate for vouchers and charters.

The bitter fruit of the past few years of reform: The latest survey of the attitudes of American teachers shows a deeply demoralized profession. Job satisfaction of our nation's teachers has plummeted since 2009, the period in which attacks on teachers soared while budgets shrunk. Nearly one-third of teachers-1 million teachers-are considering quitting. That's a 70 percent increase since 2009. Who will replace them? The latest survey published by Gates and Scholastic found that: "Only 26 percent of teachers say that the results of standardized tests are an accurate reflection of student achievement most teachers."

Our policymakers claim that they are infusing business values into education, but what smart corporation purposefully demoralizes its employees and measures their worth with a metric the employees don't believe to be valid or accurate?

And while the new value-added assessments are supposed to identify the best and worst teachers-those likeliest to get a bonus or a pink slip-the public release of teacher data reports in New York City demonstrated how inaccurate and unreliable these ratings are. While policymakers eagerly await the evidence they need to begin firing the lowest-rated teachers, a new study by the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, or CALDER, finds that teacher turnover demoralizes the entire staff and lowers achievement, not just for students whose teachers were removed, but for all the students in the school.

Last week, I met a principal from Tennessee at the annual meeting of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. She said her school is one of the highest-performing in the state and has been for many years. Every year, it gets an A for achievement and an F for value-added. She spends most of her time evaluating teachers to meet the demands of Tennessee's Race to the Top award. She reminded me that Tennessee has been doing value-added for 20 years, that it started this process under the auspices of William Sanders. She reminded me that he was trained as an agricultural statistician. She said, he thinks that children are like wheat, and their test scores should be equally predictable. She's retiring in a few months.

The pattern on the rug grows clear. Teaching will become a job, not a profession. Young people will typically spend a year or two as teachers, then move on to other, more rewarding careers. Federal and state policy will promote online learning, and computers will replace teachers. Online class sizes will reach 1:100, even 1:200; the job of monitoring the screens will be outsourced, creating large economies for state budgets. For-profit companies will make large profits. The Common Core standards will create a national marketplace for vendors, as Secretary Arne Duncan's chief of staff, Joanne Weiss, predicted. Entrepreneurs will reap the rewards of the new American style of education. As profits grow, the cost of education will be contained. Public education will increasingly be handed over to businesses designed to maximize economic efficiency and produce dependable profits for investors.

The report last week from the Klein-Rice commission of the Council on Foreign Relations reveals how this manner of thinking about education has become the conventional wisdom. Public schools as we know them, the commission suggests, are a threat to national security. What's needed to protect us from foreign enemies is more competition and choice, more privatization of our public schools, more No Child Left Behind, more Race to the Top. Big commissions tend to reflect the status quo. This one does, for sure.

See the pattern on the rug? It grows clearer every day. It is not about improving education. It is not about helping our society become more literate and better educated. Follow the money. We are indeed a nation at risk.

Diane

By Jeff Gelles
Inquirer Staff Writer

More than one in five Americans now say they have read a book electronically in the last year.
Here's what's happening on the plugged-in side of the digital divide: an extraordinarily swift change in how people are reading books and other media, driven by the rapid acceptance of tablets and e-readers.

More than one in five Americans say they have read a book in electronic form during the last 12 months, according to study to be published Thursday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Nearly 3 in 10 adult Americans now own at least one device designed for electronic reading - either an e-reader such as the Amazon Kindle or a tablet such as Apple's iPad.

Those figures may not surprise anyone who has ridden a train or been on a plane recently, visited a campus, or hung out in a public space. But Pew, whose focus on e-reading is part of a broader look at how technology is tearing away at and reweaving so much of the modern social and intellectual fabric, is documenting trends that may herald profound change - and large challenges - for society, according to Lee Rainie, director of the Internet project.

"The book has been the fundamental unit of transmitting knowledge for half a millennium," Rainie said.

Some of Pew's more remarkable statistics:

â ¢ The fraction of people who owned an e-reader, and the fraction who owned a tablet, both nearly doubled over the recent holiday season, from 10 percent in December to 19 percent in January.

â ¢?E-book readers say they are reading more - an average of 24 books during the last 12 months, compared with 15 books for non-electronic readers.
Specialized devices aren't the only place people read e-books or other long-form writing, such as magazine articles. Using its broadest definition of electronic content, Pew says about 43 percent of Americans read digital content during the last year on an e-reader, tablet, cell phone, or computer.

One clear factor is increasing affordability, common with electronic technologies. Amazon now sells a basic Kindle for well under $80.

"These devices are more accessible to more people just because the price is lower," said Sean Goggins, assistant professor at Drexel University's College of Information Science and Technology.

Goggins said a key trend to watch would be libraries' success, with publishers' cooperation, in lending e-books, which he called crucial to fulfilling their historical role in disseminating information as widely as possible.

That's also a concern of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which financed the Pew study as part of a three-year look into e-reading, libraries, and the Internet.

"We believe that information access is critical to education and economic development," said Karen Archer Perry, senior program officer at the Gates Foundation. Perry said the foundation had spent more than $600 million on libraries since its founding - and, in fact, made libraries its first investment.

"When we first started to invest in libraries 15 years ago, one of the first questions that people asked was whether computers belonged in libraries," Perry said.

That, at least, is a settled question.

Contact Jeff Gelles at 215-854-2776 or jgelles@phillynews.com.




Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20120405_Pew_study__E-readers__have_caught_on_quickly.html?cmpid=138890509#ixzz1rAcGOV5F

Why Tablets in the Classroom Could Save Schools $3 Billion a Year
Submitted: March 29, 2012 - 4:08pm
Originally published: March 29, 2012
Last updated: March 29, 2012 - 5:58pm
Source: Wall Street Journal
Author: Peter Kafka
Location:
Washington, DC, United States
A group of publishers and tech companies gathered in Washington tday to talk about getting digital textbooks into U.S. classrooms. The gathering, convened by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Education, included everyone from Apple to Intel to McGraw-Hill, and it was premised on the idea that digitizing classrooms is a good thing. And for argument's sake, let's say it is. But not because doing so will save schools much money. At least not anytime soon.

The model assumes that the tablets the students use cost $250 a piece today, and will drop in price to $150 in the "future." Presumably this assumes that device-makers end up working some kind of bulk purchase price with school districts.
But even as hardware costs drop, other costs won't. Which means that while a school that equips its kids with a tablet and a mobile data plan will theoretically save $34 a student per year today, those savings creep up to only $60 a student in the "future," even though tablet costs will have dropped by $100.
There are more than 49 million students in public elementary and secondary schools in the U.S., so $60 a student per year is still real money - nearly $3 billion. But that's still less than 2 percent of the outlay per student per year. Which means there had better be lots of other reasons to make the switch.
Links to Sources

Why Tablets in the Classroom Could Save Schools $3 Billion a Year

Jeremy Roschelle, John Brecht, Jennifer Knudsen, Teresa Lara-Meloy, Charles Patton, Ken Rafanan,Patti Schank, Anna Werner

This project is developing and conducting initial tests of a highly innovative interactive digital textbook to enhance middle grades mathematics teachers' understanding of core concepts in proportionality and their understanding of ways that technology can be used to enhance instruction.

As part of their preservice program, teachers will experience a flexible, responsive digital textbook that supports their reflective, thoughtful engagement with central middle school mathematics content. The textbook will feature research-based digital enhancements that deepen mathematics learning, including the use of embedded dynamic representations to develop conceptual understanding. Preservice instructors will delight in using the digital textbook to foster teachers' development of pedagogical content knowledge as well as their understanding of exemplary uses of technology in mathematics teaching. The digital textbook will rapidly become preservice instructors' preferred resource for fostering teachers' repertoire of techniques for working constructively with diverse students, including those who do not readily learn difficult mathematics or have special needs.

The research basis for our digital textbook development will build upon principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the concept of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK). The principles of UDL provide a potentially transformative approach to unifying best practices across special needs and general populations of students who struggle with challenging content (Rose & Meyer, 2006). Our design research is expanding the application of UDL from reading to mathematics and addressing the important problem of improving the preparation of preservice teachers to teaching mathematics in diverse classrooms.

The construct of TPCK expands what it means to be a "well- prepared teacher of mathematics" to embrace technological knowledge, as well as content and pedagogical knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Action research at SFSU and SDSU will explore how using the digital textbook with preservice teachers can enhance their knowledge of synergies among content, pedagogy and technology in teaching middle school mathematics for conceptual understanding as well as procedural skill.

9/2009 - 8/2012 (current)

Funders & Clients

National Science Foundation

Partners

Boo Murray
Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)
Janet Bowers
San Diego State University
Susan Courey
San Francisco State University
Research Areas

Learning Environments
Teacher Learning

Keywords

mathematics
Pre-service
teacher preparation
technology
Universal Design for Learning

McGraw-Hill Education just launched the STEM Innovative Educator Awards to recognize and reward teachers who are finding innovative ways to reach today's students. The awards, known as the STEMIEs, will acknowledge teachers who are pioneering effective techniques to engage their students in science, technology, engineering, or math - fields of study critical to our nation's economic growth.

Teachers can enter by submitting a 2-minute video, a short essay, and lesson plan that demonstrate an innovative lesson or other project from their classroom. First place will receive $15,000, second place gets $5,000 and third place wins $2,500, plus McGraw-Hill will grant an additional $2,500 in other awards.

In addition to the judging panel, members of the general public will have the opportunity to vote online for their favorite video. Applications will be accepted through May 31, 2012. For more information about the STEMIEs, please visit www.mheonline.com/stemie.



Kathleen Frank
Assistant Director
e-Mission Programs
Challenger Learning Center
316 Washington Avenue
Wheeling, WV 26003
304-243-2495 desk
304-780-6614 cell
http://www.e-missions.net

03/28/2012 12:39 PM EDT

Vinod Menon Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine have shown for the first time, how brain function differs in people who have math anxiety from those who don't. A series of scans conducted while second- and third-grade students did addition and subtraction revealed that those who feel panicky about doing math had increased activity in brain regions associated with fear, which caused decreased activity in parts of the brain involved in problem solving.
Full story at http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/march/math.html

Source
Stanford University Medical Center


This is an NSF News From the Field item.

Guest Post: The United Nation's Take on Digital Citizenship

Christine Kane on the Internet Governance Forum!


This week the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF) met in Kenya. No one is sure what will be accomplished by the three day conference, but it's an opportunity for "multi-stakeholders" from around the world to talk about important Internet-related issues such as child protection, cybercrime, privacy, censorship, managing critical Internet resources and making sure that the Internet is accessible in developing countries.
One chief issue at IGF is child protection. In addition to workshops on protecting youths against exploitation and introduction to pornography, there will be some on "digital citizenship," to discover how children's rights can be protected online while boosting responsible behavior and allowing children to have a meaningful online presence. The issue has come to ahead lately with increased attention to cyberbullying and sexting. In addition to adults compelling children to obey the rules, IGF will be concentrating on ways to strengthen the role of children and youths as active contributors, which is what "citizenship" (digital or otherwise) is supposed to be about.
There will also be discussions about child pornography. Many countries have laws that forbid trafficking in sexually explicit images of children, but those laws are far from world-wide or consistent. Because of the Internet, pictures made in one country can effortlessly find their way to others, irrespective of local laws.
The Internet Governance Forum doesn't have any stated power, but it does have influence. It brings together individuals from around the world who help set the agenda for further deliberations and, possibly, regulations. IGF's origins date back to the 2005 meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society. Unlike most U.N. groups, IGF consists not just of government representatives, but individuals from industry and nonprofit organizations.
The fact that IGF has no official power is actually a positive thing because it serves as a substitute to international regulations that, if some groups had their way, could be tyrannical. There are governments, including China, Iran and Brazil, which have called for severe laws regarding what is suitable on the Internet. Here in the United States, we've had a history of vigorous debate about regulations, including several laws to "protect children" against pornography that have dismissed by courts because they would have also restricted adults' rights to access legal content.
If we can't all agree on what's suitable in the United States, there is virtually no way we can reach global accord. China, for example, famously limits access to Facebook and other social networking sites and many countries prohibit supposed adult pornography that is legal in the United States and many western countries.
Even matters like hacking don't automatically lend themselves to international regulations. Most governments would agree that people who break into websites and servers should be prosecuted, but there is no global agreement on what makes up cybercrime. It gets even fuzzier with issues such as copyright enforcement, which produces strong debate even within the borders of many countries.
However, there is a role for increased international cooperation because, unlike physical objects, data can travel amongst countries in the blink of an eye- and typically without detection. That's usually a positive thing, but not when it comes to child porn, malicious software, or schemes to steal money or intellectual property.
Some at IGF will want to work toward a method of world governance system for the Internet, but many at the conference, including representatives from the U.S. delegation, will want to encourage its role as an international debate where individuals can talk about issues without the burden or supposition of having to create laws to actually control what happens between borders.

________________________________________________________________

This Guest post is by Christine Kane from internet providers, she is a graduate of Communication and Journalism. She enjoys writing about a wide-variety of subjects for different blogs. She can be reached via email at: Christi.Kane00 @ gmail.com.

In a previous post, I outlined how we could harness social media for learning in order to:

assess
account for professional development
advocate

in order to promote our schools.

I recently saw my district's "GUIDELINES FOR EMPLOYEE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS" and was quite disheartened because it did virtually nothing to encourage social media for learning! I am concerned about the UNintended consequences of the "tone" of these guidelines which are so defensive! I am aware of the sensitive position in which school districts find themselves these days, but there must be a way to achieve a more "balanced' tone which would ENCOURAGE the use of social networks to promote innovation and to generate positive stories! For example, innovative teachers share best practices by building Personal Learning Networks based on social media services such as Twitter. Without an active social media ecosystem, social media efforts such as school Facebook Pages will likely be doomed to failure as an empty public relations gesture withOUT robust content to encourage engagement with parents, legislators, and other constituents. Any doubts about the need to ENCOURAGE teachers to use social media for learning are quickly dispelled by posts such as this one.

The power of social media leverages USER-generated content! WithOUT the active participation of teachers, I fear schools will have relatively little meaningful content to convey the sense of excitement about learning which ought to be the outcome of their social media efforts! Instead, I urge that we recognize teachers as:

Advocates
Assets
Artisans

In my previous post, I already made the point of how we ought to use social media to encourage constituents to advocate for our schools. Of course, teachers are among those constituents and are in the best position to advocate on behalf of our schools because they know what is going on!

Teachers have gotten a bad rap so our best teachers are disheartened because they feel their hands are tied because they are discouraged to innovate. They aren't seen as assets whose creative efforts could be harnessed to motivate the creation of CONTENT to fuel our efforts to advocate. Rather than merely evaluating teachers based on students' test scores, let's create a culture where teachers are more like artisans or craftsmen! We needn't fear their social media activities because the ones who would participate are thoughtful and caring people!

I'm going to share this post with MY school board…how about YOU?

Best part of 'schools-threaten-national-security' report: The dissents
By Valerie Strauss

Best part of 'schools-threaten-national-security' report

The most interesting part of the new Condoleezza Rice-Joel Klein report, which bemoans how American national security is threatened by the poor state of public education, is not in the body of the document itself. The real story is in the dissents at the end of the report.

You can read the report here, and then find out all of the many problems with it in the dissenting views attached at the end of the report, which was written by several members of the Council of Foreign Relations task force.

Some of the dissenters - including Linda Darling-Hammond and Randi Weingarten - express such broad disagreement with the actual thesis that national security is threatened by our public schools, as well as with some of the recommended solutions, that one could wonder why they agreed to stay on the commission and put their names to the document. Here's why: To ensure that their viewpoint was at least included somewhere in the document.

The report, after attacking public schools for failing to educate students to become involved in the diplomatic corps, military and intelligence services of the country, makes three major recommendations. They are expanding the Common Core State Standard initiative to include subjects beyond math and English Language Arts; expanding charter schools, vouchers and the choice movement; and an annual "national security readiness audit" that would look at how schools are addressing the country's needs through increased foreign language programs, technology curriculum and more.

Here are some excerpts from the dissents, which you can read in their entirety at the report's end. The people I have included are: Carole Artigiani, Global Kids, Inc; Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University professor; Randi Weingarten, president of the American of the Federation of Teachers; and Stephen M. Walt, Harvard University professor.

From the dissent by Carole Artigiani, joined by Linda Darling-Hammond, Stephen M. Walt, and Randi Weingarten

"...National security requires a healthy economy, energy independence, investments in research and development, strong defense, a thriving civil society, a respected and involved diplomatic corps, and, most of all, a healthy and high-functioning political system. (The current political environment is a clear demonstration of what happens when we have a public-and public officials-who are uninformed and/or ill-informed about our nation's history, our political system, and the values upon which it was built.)

"Certainly schools must play a critical role in assuring that these needs of national security can be met. Yet, while some of the data are disturbing, nothing in this report convinces me that that our public schools "constitute a very grave national security threat facing this country."

"Indeed, claims of alarm can only set the stage for dramatic actions unsupported by evidence: in this case, market-based approaches to school reform, that, overall, have not demonstrated their effectiveness. Indeed, charter schools and vouchers are diverting funds and energy away from neighborhood schools, and the more successful ones rely on additional support from private sources ("voluntary taxation"), a situation that is neither sustainable nor scalable. Moreover, the drive toward "competition" can diminish individual commitment to the common good, thus undermining the very nature and purpose of public education: preparing young people of all backgrounds to become informed and active citizens who understand their rights and responsibilities to contribute to society and participate in the shaping of policies that affect their communities and the larger world.

"I applaud the Task Force report's call for more attention to U.S. and world history and cultures, civics, science, and foreign languages. However, the well-intentioned emphasis on testing basic math and reading has diverted funding and attention from other areas of equal value. The proposed national audit will only increase the pressure to focus on standardized tests when funds to pay for this initiative could be better used if made available to the neediest school districts for classroom instruction...."

--

From the dissent written by Linda Darling-Hammond, joined by Carole Artigiani, Stephen M. Walt, and Randi Weingarten

"There is much to applaud in this report of the Task Force. I am pleased that the Task Force identifies the importance of setting high goals for student learning in fields ranging from English language arts and mathematics to science, technology, engineering, and foreign languages-areas that were profoundly neglected during the No Child Left Behind era. The report wisely calls for a richer and more internationally comparable curriculum for all children, beginning in elementary school, along with strategic investments that address the dramatic inequalities in funding that currently exist. This is critically important for our success as a nation, for the talent needed must be cultivated from all communities, among all our young people.....

"...It is with respect to the features of strong systems that I raise specific concerns with the recommendations of the report. Although the report suggests, appropriately, that we must now compete with high-achieving nations around the world, its recommendations do not acknowledge the lessons these nations have to offer or the lessons we should learn from reforms in the United States.

"One shortcoming is that this report accepts, uncritically and despite significant evidence to the contrary, that competition and privatization are essential - indeed perhaps the most important - strategies for improving public educational systems. It ignores the fact that the nations that have steeply improved achievement and equity and now rank at the top on the PISA tests (i.e., Finland, Singapore, and South Korea) have invested in strong public education systems that serve virtually all students, while nations that have aggressively pursued privatization, such as Chile, have a huge and growing divide between rich and poor that has led to dangerous levels of social unrest.

"It also ignores research that raises serious cautions about the outcomes of unbridled privatization in education. Although I agree that many charters have done excellent work in serving diverse student populations, and I have personally worked closely with some of these schools, it is also true that the nation's largest multistate study on charter schools found that charters have been, overall, more likely to underperform than to outperform district-run public schools serving similar students.

"In addition, studies have found that, as a sector, charters serve significantly fewer special education students and English learners, and too many have found ways to keep out and push out students who struggle to learn. While touting the privatization of schools in New Orleans, the report fails to note that many high-need students have been rejected from charters there, that school exclusion rates are extraordinarily high, and that the Southern Poverty Law Center had to sue on behalf of special education students who were unable to gain admission to public schools.

"Meanwhile, New Orleans remains the lowest-ranked district in the low-performing state of Louisiana. Similarly, the report neglects to mention the many studies that have failed to find positive outcomes of voucher systems when similar students are compared.

"Finally, the report ignores the fact that our highest-achieving states have all built high-quality systems without charters, vouchers, educational management companies, or other forms of privatization....

"....The report should also take a more evidence-based approach to the critical matter of developing a strong teacher workforce. While appropriately underscoring the need to invest in teaching, the report ignores many successful models of teacher preparation and development that have been shown to boost teacher effectiveness and retention. It holds up Teach for America (TFA) as the solitary model for entering teaching - despite the fact that recruits have only a few weeks of training when they enter and most leave their positions after two years, provoking churn and high replacement costs in the vulnerable schools they leave. While the commitment of TFA recruits is commendable, we need solutions like those developed at Columbia, Stanford, and many other top universities that recruit high-ability entrants and prepare them exceedingly well for long-term careers and leadership in education...."

--

From the dissent by Stephen M. Walt, joined by Carole Artigiani, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Randi Weingarten

"...The report exaggerates the national security rationale for reforming U.S. K-12 education. It says a troubled public education system is a "very grave national security threat facing the country," but it offers only anecdotal evidence to support this unconvincing claim. The United States spends more on national security than the next twenty nations combined, has an array of powerful allies around the world, and remains the world leader in science and technology. It also ranks in the top 10 percent of the world's 193 countries in educational performance, and none of the states whose children outperform U.S. students is a potential rival. Barring major foreign policy blunders unrelated to K-12 education, no country is likely to match U.S. military power or overall technological supremacy for decades. There are good reasons to improve K-12 education, but an imminent threat to our national security is not high among them.

"Second, there is a mismatch between the report's alarmist tone andits core recommendations. In particular, if the current state of K-12 education were really a "very grave threat to national security," the Task Force should emphatically support allocating greater resources to meet the challenge. Yet even though key recommendations, such as raising teacher quality, cannot be realized without additional public investment, the report offers only a bland statement that "increased spending may well be justifiable." It then declares that "money alone is not the answer," creating the unfortunate impression that the Task Force is trying to solve an alleged national security threat on the cheap.

"Third, the call for a "national security readiness audit" of educational performance repackages the current focus on standards under a misleading label. The proposed audit would not measure "national security readiness," and it is not clear who will pay for these new reporting requirements or what the consequences of poor performance would be."

"Fourth, there is no consensus among professional educators, academic scholars, or engaged citizens about the net impact of charter schools, vouchers, or other forms of privatization, because empirical evidence is mixed. The report leans heavily toward one side in this contested set of issues, however, thereby encouraging a policy course that could do more harm than good."

--

From the dissent by Randi Weingarten, joined by Carole Artigiani, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Stephen M. Walt

"...The report rightly acknowledges that, 'Public education is an essential institution in America's quest to provide equality of opportunity and to ensure that social and economic mobility are available to all children, regardless of circumstances. It is not hyperbole to say that a robust system of public schools is essential to U.S. democracy.'

"Regrettably, some elements of this report actually undermine this vital institution. The report casts public schools in the worst possible light while ignoring facts to the contrary. It correctly states that parents should have great academic choices for their children, but certain recommendations may actually limit those choices. It advances recommendations that lack evidence of effectiveness while ignoring the lessons of high-achieving, fully public education systems in the United States and elsewhere. The report advocates privatization, competition, and market-based approaches that, while sounding compelling, have not worked in a scalable and sustainable way either here or abroad. Therefore, I must respectfully offer this partial dissent.

"The report rightly emphasizes the need for all students to have access to great schools and the opportunity to develop higher-order knowledge and skills. Yet by promoting policies like the current top-down, standardized test-driven accountability that has narrowed the curriculum and reinforced the teaching of lower-level skills, which President Obama correctly criticized in his recent State of the Union address, it does the opposite.

"The report goes to great lengths to blame a current generation of educators for their assumed institutional resistance to innovation when, in fact, the problem is less about an opposition to change than it is about too much churn and change. This adds to disrespect and the sharp demoralization of our current teaching force - something that is never seen in the countries that outcompete us. We ask teachers to do a lot, and while we have the responsibility to remove those who do not belong in the profession, we have just as great a responsibility to provide the tools, conditions, and support to the vast majority of teachers who do. Public schools have been buffeted by so many "silver bullet," top-down solutions and unprecedented austerity measures that sound reforms with the potential to drive system-wide student success have not been consistently and equitably implemented.

"Vouchers and charters have not proven themselves to be sustainable or systemic ways to improve our schools. They will, instead, deplete badly needed resources from the public schools that educate nearly 90 percent of our students. We are concerned, therefore, that their favorable mention in this report-without accompanying comments about the problems inherent in each-could have the effect of "walking away" from the public responsibility and sufficient funding for public schooling. Decades of independent research show that vouchers do not improve outcomes for children who receive them or drive improvements in nearby neighborhood schools. Recent polling on communities of color and public school reform (conducted for the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and others) showed that parents favor improving, not closing, struggling schools. Moreover, the countries that have enacted voucher systems, such as Chile, have not seen the improvements in achievement predicted by advocates. Chile, in fact, is the most socioeconomically segregated country regarding education opportunities, according to the OECD.

"We applaud the support expressed for the Common Core State Standards, and we strongly agree that we must have high expectations for all children. It is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that our students and schools are provided the resources they need to meet those high expectations....

"...The report rightly decries the gaps in achievement between disadvantaged children and their more-advantaged peers, but it does not make a strong recommendation to address closing the corresponding gap in education funding and resources. It rehashes the too familiar canard that education resources outpace results, but makes no note of schools' growing costs associated with educating all children (including students with special needs or living in poverty) and rampant teacher turnover.....

"...In this country, no other public service essential to the nation's well-being-not law enforcement, firefighting, or the armed forces-has forsaken being a public entity. Public education has been a cornerstone of democracy and a means of acculturation for generations of Americans, as well as a crucial vehicle by which those generations have not simply dreamed their dreams but achieved them. A move away from that public system could do greater harm to our national security and common bonds than doing nothing at all."

-0-

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By Valerie Strauss | 04:00 AM ET, 03/21/2012

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