Archive for September, 2009

What Marketing Taught Me About Education Improvement

September 28th, 2009

I spend a lot of time looking to the field of marketing and branding as a source of ideas, insight, direction, and inspiration. Marketers and education have more in common than you would think. What follows is a list of reasons why I think marketers could improve education.

Why Marketers could improve education

Marketers are concerned with creating ideas that are memorable.

Marketers are forced to be creative and innovative.

Marketers are expert users of data and statistics

Marketers want to reach people and impact their thinking

Marketers are expert at using current and emerging technology

Marketers try to reach people and communicate their ideas in creative and innovative ways

Marketers are very much results driven.

Marketers are passionate.

Marketers seek to inspire.

Marketers are expert at anticipating and understanding global trends.

Marketers seek to create the future, not just react to it.

Marketers understand their biggest asset is their employees’.

Seth Godin said, “Your marketing changes the way people act.” Don’t we try to do that in education? So the key question is: Who is having more success, marketing or education?

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Posted in Education, Ideas, Marketing, Rob Jacobs

Making the Shift, Part 4: From "Target Future" to Teaching

September 22nd, 2009

In this series of posts, I’ve tried to raise awareness of executive function processes, examine their role in successful learning and thinking, and begin exploring how they can receive greater emphasis in education. In this final post, I want to investigate these ideas within the framework of a commonly taught topic. I’m choosing my verbs carefully, and I’m using investigate because I hope the results spark input from others. I’m still incubating all this material, very much in the learning stage of understanding and the novice stage of application. The thoughts that follow merely represent one way of engaging student learning that also engages and develops executive function processes.

Working with the story from the previous post, one “target future”1 pictures a current student capable of recognizing what needs to be accomplished and what is needed to accomplish it, of formulating a plan and prioritizing and executing its steps, of evaluating the results and of shifting focus as needed, and of presenting the information and conclusions with confidence.

With that target future in mind, a teacher may turn to the required content for the American History class she teaches and note colonial America’s movement toward revolution as a topic. She has a focus.

The teacher reviews the focus with a critical question in mind: What form will engage students in interacting with and acting on this content? Keeping in mind the “target future,” the teacher decides to require students to demonstrate their learning as collections of evidence for a pending trial. Who’s on trial? The Sons of Liberty—visionary revolutionaries or radical extremists? Students will build cases for both conclusions, collecting facts, first-person accounts, expert insights, and anything else that may support either extreme. Thus, the form takes shape; students will develop convincing but opposing arguments.

While this challenge directs attention to several critical concepts, it may not address all the required content. Since this is a high school class, she decides to list the few other elements that must be addressed and take suggestions from the class about how to integrate them into the given form.

The teacher also decides to work with the students to develop a rubric for the form. She has some ideas, but to engage student thinking and motivation, she decides to involve them in defining what a complete project will look like, what elements will be assessed, and what will define achievement for each element.

With a focus and form established, the teacher consider the frame. What timeframe will enable the students to produce excellent results and be appropriate for the content’s importance in the year’s study? She teacher selects ten class sessions as the frame.

Focus: The Sons of Liberty within colonial/pre-Revolution America Form: Presentation of arguments for Sons of Liberty to be considered visionary revolutionaries and, in opposition, as radical extremists. Frame: 10 class sessions.

A rough outline begins to form:

Session 1: Presentation of focus and discussion of form. Discussion of what completing the arguments will require. Initial discussion of steps for planning. Homework, complete list of steps needed to complete the challenge.

Session 2: Discussion of planning steps. Discussion and formation of rubric. Homework: Students complete plans, assigning timeframes to each step. Teacher puts rubric into a distributable form.

Session 3: Review of plans. Mini-presentation by librarian and ed-tech specialist on potential resources. Initial research begins.

Session 4-7: Review of findings, continued monitoring of plans and execution of identified steps, mini-presentations by teacher on key concepts or research tools. Throughout, the teacher monitors student progress and provides instructive feedback, referencing the rubric to help students improve their work and attain the highest possible level of achievement.

Session 8: Discussion of findings and potential tools for presentation. Final steps of plan executed.

Session 9: Rubric review and presentation refinement.

Session 10: Presentations.

The presentations may be electronic “portfolios,” in-person presentations, “hard copy” portfolios, dramatic role-plays (the prosecution vs. the defense?) or whatever form the teacher and students agree as being effective. Also, the teacher and students may determine together whether the form will be completed as individuals, groups, or some combination. The more the teacher can engage the students in active planning and executing of the work required for learning, the more experience the students gain in successfully applying executive function processes. And the more successfully they learn to apply executive function processes, the closer the teacher moves them toward the “target future.”

Answering Some Objections

I know, it sounds idealistic and our classrooms are firmly grounded in the realistic. Can a teacher “give up” that much control and maintain an instructional environment? I’d say that depends on your definition of instructional environment. If you think students taking notes from one designated expert constitutes learning, then no, you can’t even consider such an approach. But if you recognize that authentic understanding is constructed by the brain, and that executive function processes play critical roles in working memory’s constructing of understanding, then you may see this ideal as representing a potentially real instructional, or better yet, an effective learning environment. Students are still accountable for their work and learning, but they get a say in how that work and learning will develop. They become participants in the learning, not merely recipients.

Some may think this sounds great for upper high school classrooms but not for lower levels of education. I agree that not everything can be taught in this way, but I disagree with the age-limit argument, and so do researchers. A 2004 study of students as young as third grade found that children could grasp the concept of experimental design, design experiments, differentiate cause and effect, and even make models and symbols.2 With the proper scaffolding and active formative assessment and instructive feedback, even young students can learn to engage executive function processes while learning.

Wait, you may be thinking, what about my master’s degree in history, or science, or literature, or…? You still will have opportunities to share your knowledge, but the delivery will be different. You may present mini-sessions on some key elements, share your knowledge with individuals or small groups, and use it to guide students to discover some of the same concepts. Your content expertise will need to be accompanied with expertise in guiding student LEARNING. Think “coach,” not “talking head.” A coach still has expertise, but the players master the skills, and actually play the game. The coach is not diminished by the players but serves as the guide who empowers their success. Likewise, the teacher empowers students to learn.

In conclusion, I recognize that not everything can be taught this way. But I challenge readers to consider how much of this approach could be effectively used within what they teach. If you teaching something that is heavily skill-focused, could an occasional focus, form, and frame that engages students in applying several of those skills help them connect what you are teaching with the executive function processes they’ll use to determine when and where to use the learned skills? Could similar approaches with far narrower foci and greater teacher scaffolding be effective in early childhood education? All I’m asking is this: consider the possibilities before dismissing the idea.

You may discover that a “target future,” a focus, a form, and a frame are all you need to supercharge student learning.

1. Hurson, T., Think Better, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 127-141.
2. McGinnis, J. R., & Roberts-Harris, D., “A New Vision for Teaching Science,” Scientific American Mind, 20 (5), 62-67.

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Posted in executive function, instructional design, Kevin Washburn, Sons of Liberty, Tim Hurson

Dualities, Schmualities

September 14th, 2009


By Jason Flom, Ecology of Education

Our public forums teem with dueling dualities:

  • Luke vs. Vader
  • Booker vs. du Bois
  • Optimus vs. Megatron
  • Homework vs. None
  • Fraiser vs. Ali
  • Whole language vs. Phonics
  • Nixon vs. Truth
  • Skills vs. Content
  • Cylons vs. Humans

However, the latest iteration hits a bit too close to home to be anything besides unnerving for educators:

Judging teachers using only students’ scores on high stakes test vs. Not

While I’m not a huge fan of standardized tests as primary markers for achievement, I understand (and even appreciate) their utility and functionality. For assessing benchmarks and basic skills, they serve a purpose. However, we must temper our enthusiasm for relying on basic skills attainment as the sole measure for determining if teachers are teaching.

If this dichotomy is really the best we can do, then we really do need to retool our education system. Badly. Quickly. Immediately.

Clearly the basic skills approach isn’t leading to critical thinking in basic deliberation/mitigation/compromise skills. Additionally, such “dualities only” debates illuminate a graphic lack of creativity, imagination, and, ultimately, innovation.

Basic civics lessons teach us that “either/or” ultimatums often lead to “neither/none” outcomes.

Aren’t there other options?!

Of course there are. But they cost money and take time. Two things of critical shortage in our school system. And are more difficult to standardize and analyze than, well, standardized scores.

The problem with a sole reliance on standardized test is well stated in Campbell’s Law:

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

David T. Campbell, in 1976, goes on to write:

Achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Similar biases of course surround the use of objective tests in courses or as entrance examinations.)

Perhaps it is time for us to take a page out of Carol Ann Tomlinson’s differentiation schtick. Perhaps it is time for us to begin with the idea that all students and teachers are different — and therefore perform differently in different situations, and have different needs in terms of growth and development.

I am personally a big fan of working on a local level to improve the quality of life and quality of instruction provided in our institutions. I also believe that once a year evaluations by principals are too few and too thin to provide any sort of reliable and effective professional development for teachers. Additionally, in terms of cultivating a professional atmosphere for teachers and principals necessitates that both take a larger role in steering areas of growth.

Enter rubrics. Kid tested, teacher approved.

I am a big fan of the teacher and principal rubrics developed by Kim Marshall:

Moving beyond this or that, one or the other, mine or yours, them or us, and with us or against us mentality should be a chief objective for cultivating civil school systems. To that end, lets empower districts and principals to weigh in on who deserves pay incentive. A new teacher working hard to improve in identified areas of needed growth should be rewarded for doing so, even if it can’t be measured on a multiple choice test.

In this way, we may just find teachers more willing to look their shortcomings in the eye and work to overcome them.

As the old adage goes, if all you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails. Let’s fill the assessment tool box, or at least put another option in it.

Image: How Stuff Works, but obviously a Lucas Films Image

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Posted in Accountability, Basic Skills, Campbell's Law, Carol Ann Tomlinson, Darth Vader, High Stakes Assessments, Jason Flom, Kim Marshall, Principal Evaluation, Teacher Accountability, Teacher Evaluation

Teaching Geometry to English Language Learners

September 12th, 2009
I am going into my third year of teaching Geometry at a school in which at least 40% of the students are designated ELL and the majority are learning academic English. I have come to a place as an educator where I am able implement strategies into my instruction that might not be considered immediately content based. A large part of my planning this year is based around making the Geometry content comprehensible rather than merely the teaching of content. I suppose that I should have seen this earlier, but I have come to the realization that this is the way to teach the content – if I don’t make the content available to students, I will not be successful as an educator.
Though these ideas are new to me, they are far from new ideas. I am focusing on research-based practice for making content comprehensible: the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol as developed by Jane Echevarria of CSU Long Beach and Deborah Short of the Center for Applied Linguistics. As I enter my fourth week of school and begin the necessary real-time reflection in order to make my lessons increasingly effective, I will be focusing on this protocol in its three broadest swaths, rather than in its standard eight sub-groupings. These swaths are: Preparation, Instruction, and Review/Evaluation. While the SIOP was originally designed as an observation and evaluation tool for teacher practice, its has since evolved into a “tool for lesson planning and reflection”. It is in this capacity that I will be using the SIOP.
SIOP as a Planning Tool
I am no veteran educator, but in my fifth year of teaching in urban schools, I feel comfortable and confident in my preparation of content lessons for mathematics classes. In particular, I feel that I have strength in preparing lessons for students who are deficient in their basic mathematic understanding. Still, I feel that my lessons could be more efficient, that is, I can definitely get more out of the time that I spend in the classroom. Toward this goal, I intend to use the SIOP as a preparation tool for structuring my classroom time toward maximum use of instructional minutes. Some considerations here might be: How can table talk/student discussion time be used efficiently? How can student presentation time be used efficiently? How can I make sure that all students are practicing when the class is engaged in practice time? How can pacing be considered so as to maximize student engagement? How can student grouping be used to differentiate instruction?
A New Attitude Toward Language Objectives
While the majority of SIOP practices are simply what many educators will call “good teaching”, the SIOP is perhaps most distinguished from traditional practice in its implementation of an explicit language objective. Where a content objective will focus on the specific standards-based, subject area content students are expected to learn on a given day, a language objective will focus on a specific language skill – that may have little direct application to the content- that students will be learning or exercising on a given day. A language objective may be as simple as explicit discussion of vocabulary or as complicated as a debate or development of a content thesis.
In the past, when considering the implementation of language objective, I often considered the achievement of language objectives as counter to the achievement of content objectives. This year, I have come to an understanding that language objective may be the key to students actually learning the content. Put another way, mere coverage of content may not be nearly enough to ensure student mastery of content. Having an explicit language objective means that attention will be paid to the way in which students will engage with content. By putting time into thinking about the way that students will read, write or discuss content, I will be devoting time to finding the best way for student to engage with content.

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Posted in echevarria, ELL, English Language Learners, Josh Cook, Joshua Cook, SIOP

Making the Shift, Part 3: A Focus, a Form, and a Frame

September 7th, 2009

Let’s begin with a story.

Once upon a time, twenty years in the future, Jaime works in the office of an influential nonprofit. The organization is regularly consulted by local and state officials on matters related to the nonprofit’s focus. One day the organization’s leader explains that the governor just called to request an analysis of legislation being considered by the state legislature. Not aware of the issues and implications, the leader promises the governor a return call in three days and gives Jaime the task of identifying and presenting the organization’s analysis of the legislation’s pros and cons.

Confidently, Jaime tackles the task, first recognizing what needs to be accomplished and what is needed to accomplish it. Jaime formulates a plan, prioritizes and executes its steps, evaluates the results and shifts focus as needed, and progresses toward a presentation. Three days later, Jaime informs the governor and impresses the nonprofit’s leader with a confident and thorough command of the legislation, its issues, and the implications of both passage and rejection of it. In fact, Jaime is well-informed enough to even offer suggested improvements to the legislation that would overcome the negatives associated with its passage.

What will the issue be? We have no way of knowing. What organization or business will Jaime work for (or start)? We can’t know yet. Will Jaime be able to accomplish the task? That depends, in part, on you. Why? Because Jaime is currently a student in your class.

Even with these unknowns, the story provides a “target future,” an “imagined future” so “powerful and compelling” that it generates motivation to achieve it.1 But what, exactly, should we be developing in students to make this “target future” a reality, or at least a possibility? Jaime’s success was not powered by typical school subjects but by executive function processes.

Executive function processes that researchers describe as “core” include:

  • planning and goal setting
  • organizing
  • prioritizing
  • self-monitoring/assessing
  • shifting flexibly2

All of these are evident in Jaime’s success, but few, if any, appear in school curriculum guides. How can the target future represented in our story become reality if we overlook the very capacities students need for success? And how can we develop those capacities if we need to teach what is in the curriculum guides? The answer: instructional design. How we teach may be more important than what we teach, or, stated better, how we engage students in learning may be more important than the material they learn in the process. For possible guidance, let’s examine Jaime’s journey from not knowing to confident command of material.

Jaime was given three essential pieces of information: a focus (the pending legislation), a form for communicating knowledge (the presentation), and a frame of time between assignment and presentation.

A focus: Jaime was given something to learn. This is what we typically find in curriculum guides—the what, the facts, the specifics. However, it’s worth noting that Jaime was not given a textbook and a schedule of lectures to attend. These frequent and unfortunate shortcuts between not knowing and recalling long enough to pass a multiple choice test too often compose our instructional methodology.

A form: Jaime had to act to move from not knowing to confident command of the material. As I mentioned in Part 2, simply knowing, that is merely recalling material, does not require the level of executive function activation that doing does. Again, note what Jaime had to do: plan in accordance with the goal; identify, organize, and prioritize action steps; self-assess the success of each completed action; shift flexibly to improve incomplete or ineffective actions and move forward to next actions; and organize an effective presentation, the evidence of a confident command of the material. All this activity engaged executive function processes. It’s worth noting that Jaime was given no resources except whatever was available to the organization. Jaime could use technology, printed material, interviews with experts—anything that would provide the necessary information. If a textbook existed, it could have been used as one among many resources. If a teacher with expertise were available, she could have been one among many human resources. Any portal to information was open for Jaime’s use, but Jaime had to select and exploit those resources in accordance with the focus, form, and frame that had been given. Likewise, in developing the presentation, Jaime could use any resources that were available and make decisions based on what would communicate what had been learned most effectively.

A frame: As is often the case in the real world, things have to be done on a schedule. Jaime’s task had to be completed by a set time or the organization risked losing influence and damaging its reputation for reliability.

Could we design learning similarly? Could we provide students with a focus, a form, and a frame and provide whatever coaching they needed to engage their executive function processes sufficiently to accomplish the learning? What would such instructional design involve? What would it look like? How would it be assessed?

In the final post of this series, we’ll apply these ideas to an actual discipline and topic and deal with these remaining questions.

As always, comments and insights are welcome!

1. Hurson, T., Think Better, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 127-141.
2. Meltzer, L. & Krishnan, K. “Executive Functions Difficulties and Learning Disabilities,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 81.

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Posted in executive function, focus, form, frame, instructional design, Kevin Washburn, Lynn Meltzer, target future, Tim Hurson

Two teachers on using test scores to evaluate teachers

September 4th, 2009

One of the more controversial aspects of the Obama Education Department’s approach has been its insistence upon using student test scores as a means of evaluating teachers for merit pay. This is in fact something Sec. Duncan has posed as a non-negotiable requirement for a state to be eligible for $4.5 billion in grants that are part of ARRA (stimulus). These funds, a part of the badly named Race to the Top (RtTP – as if the purpose of education is a race) have led Gov. Schwarzeneggar to try to change current law which that keeps test scores from being used to evaluate teachers.

I want to share an op ed in the Sacramento Bee by 2 teachers who are part of the Accomplished California Teachers Network. David Cohen, who teaches in upscale Palo Alto, is like me a National Board Certified Teacher and a member of the Teacher Leaders Network. Alex Kajitani is California’s current Teacher of the Year, and teaches at an inner city middle school in San Diego. And they clearly make the case in their title: Test scores poor tool for teacher evaluation.

Cohen and Kajitani note that while on the surface such linkage might seem obvious, such appearances are misleading. Addressing their remarks to Gov. Schwarzeneggar, whom they urge to go back to school on the subject, they write

experts in education, testing and even economics have argued that state tests are not designed for teacher evaluation and will not yield reliable results. You are taking in us in a direction that will harm our schools and our students.

They note that funding is temporary, but would lead to a permanent and destructive change to

California’s thoughtful, research-based and consensus-driven state education policy

in the process of pursuing the funds.

Let me digress briefly to reinforce one point already made – that experts in education and testing disagree with such an approach. There are three principal professional organizations that deal with psychological measurement in schools, the American Educational Research Association, the National Council for Measurement in Education, and the American Psychological Association. In 1999 they jointly reissued The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. That document makes clear that tests developed to allow valid inferences for student performance usually cannot be used to draw valid inferences about either teachers or schools. And anyone who understands testing recognizes that most state tests at best measure what a student can give back at the time of testing, in no way controlling for any knowledge or skill developed prior to the current school year.

Returning to the op ed: let me share one very blunt paragraph:

The overemphasis on testing does not enhance educational quality, but instead will promote schooling that leaves too many of our children underprepared for higher education, unskilled at critical thinking and less engaged in their communities. Parents and business leaders consistently say they want us to develop in students the types of skills least valued in a test-driven educational atmosphere.

Neither teacher is afraid of evaluation. However, they believe that the only information the tests provide is how students perform on those tests. They are blunt in asserting that they do not believe the tests either fairly evaluate their students – from two very different environments – or provide an accurate indication of their teaching.

Let me quote the heart of the piece. This will be an extensive selection, but it is necessary to demonstrate what they are trying to communicate:

Like English teachers across California, Cohen works with a set of standards requiring instruction in a range of language arts skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Two of these four standards areas are entirely ignored by state tests that offer no listening or speaking components. The tests mostly measure writing skills by checking some basic proofreading skills, but usually, no actual writing.

The all-important reading assessments are similarly narrow and are further suspect because test-savvy students work backward from the questions and don’t have to read the passages, and then rely on a variety of outside knowledge to eliminate obvious wrong answers; meanwhile, test-averse students often post scores masking their true abilities. How then can the practice of an English teacher be accurately measured with tests that hardly overlap with the teaching expected of us?

Kajitani, a math teacher, knows that before each test period it is time to pause the teaching of true problem-solving and conceptual reasoning to be sure that students have memorized the operations on which they will be tested and to refresh their test-taking skills. Effective teachers may know how to squeeze in both “teaching to the test” and teaching real, in-depth critical thinking, but this begs the question of where the teacher’s time is best spent, for the true benefit of the children they are educating. We sacrifice better learning for better test scores.

All good teachers want to be able to properly assess how their students are doing, in order that we can adjust our instruction to meet their needs. And yet:

Respect for our students and respect for our teaching both demand evaluation based on a broad range of information and multiple measures of performance. Test-driven policies notoriously push in the opposite direction.

As members of the aforementioned Accomplished Teachers Network, Cohen and Kajitani

support efforts to create more effective evaluations, with greater focus on actual teaching practices, including robust and varied evidence such as student and teacher portfolios.

Here, since like David Cohen I am an NBCT, I note that the National Board process is focused on actual teaching practices, and requires the candidate for certification to reflect upon various aspects of her/his teaching practice in terms of how it assists the students. That is something far more valuable than merely prepping students for tests that do not even fairly assess either the knowledge and skill in the domain or ascertain how much the student has learned.

The authors conclude that

evaluating individual teachers based on test scores, in a reactionary effort to compete for Race to the Top grant money, is not the answer. It would be a travesty of education reform for the teachers and students of our state.

And yet as states and schools are desperate for money, education will be distorted in its pursuit, to the detriment of meaningful learning by our students.

This is as perverse as schools, in need of money, selling naming rights to stadiums, or allowing soft drink and junk food machines in the building – in the latter case the desire for money outweighs the medical and dental health implications of encouraging students to consume such products.

The pursuit of money from Race to the Top funds is similar – it is the consumption of non-nutritious educational practices. It is selling the soul of meaningful education. It is as damaging to the minds of our students as the junk food and soda are to their bodies and teeth.

Just my thoughts at the end of the second week with my students.

Peace.

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Posted in Kenneth Bernstein, Uncategorized

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