Archive for the ‘Innovation’ category

Quick—Hire the Wrong Superintendent!

April 20th, 2011

Inspired by actual events…and a great article by Richard Lee Colvin over at The Quick and the Ed.

The position of school district superintendent is complex, situational and nuanced.

Hiring a superintendent is often simplistic, universal, and one-dimensional.

That delta may be one reason the average time on the job for superintendents is so short. Maybe district leaders look for the wrong things when they hire a CEO.

If you were to compare school district superintendents to the general population, I strongly suspect you would find that they are more likely to be tall, attractive, white, male, poised, extroverted, and articulate. Here are photos of the first eight superintendents I could find who serve in El Paso County, Colorado—the greater Colorado Springs area. Certainly, our community contributes to the more homogenous nature of this pool, but many more diverse locales are led by a group of similar constitution.

Sups

I’m not trying to reinforce a superintendent stereotype, but these folks have a lot in common. They are generally photogenic, confident, good in front of a group, extroverted, etc. I have no quarrel with anyone pictured above, though I know some of them personally and work indirectly for one of them. Their names don’t matter. Their characteristics do. Superintendent folks are almost always “alpha’s” both in the sense of being a leader of the wolfpack and in the sense of coming from the highest caste, à laHuxley’s Brave New World.

Among the group above are politicians, athletic stars, award-winners, journalists and authors. They tend to be verbal and insightful—especially with limited preparation. They shine in the kinds of interviews and open houses that are common in most superintendent hiring processes.

But are they the best fit? Some say no.

Superintendents are educational CEO’s. As such, they are subject to the myth of the charismatic, heroic CEO. As Collins and Porras point out in Built to Last, their brilliant study of industry-leading firms, the best companies in each industry were six times more likely to promote insiders than their high-performing competition. (Emphasis in the original)

Community members, teaches, and especially board members have a long-standing preference for hiring people that fit the image. Although these leaders are more than teeth and hair, I’d be willing to bet that they are not the presumptive best candidates on paper. In fact, in my limited experience around two dozen superintendent hires, the best candidates by resume almost never got the nod. The best candidate in the interview—the most likable or inspirational—that’s who wins.

In fact, if you want to hire a traditional superintendent, I’ll save you a lot of money. Simply have candidates submit a two-minute video in which they explain their vision for the district. Post the videos online, have people vote, and there’s your sup. Do diligence with references and a background check, but you’ll probably end up hiring the same person you would have hired after a traditional process anyway. Why is that? (For one answer, refer to “Thin-Slicing” as explained by Gladwell in Blink.

For another perspective, think about how we arrive at the board vote.

The start is almost always selection of a search firm. Search firms cast a wide net, filter aggressively, and then present a short slate of candidates. Boards interview, present to the community, solicit feedback and select finalists. They choose, negotiate and hire. By the time the process narrows to a few candidates, the system has usually weeded out those slow to speak, “unimpressive,” reserved candidates who don’t sparkle in large-group settings. The betas are gone and the alphas survive. Usually, if a person is more reserved and not charismatic they don’t have a chance—unless that person is an internal candidate who has proven his or her worth over time. Only rarely do districts employ a strategic succession strategy to cultivate leadership from within.

Depending on the life cycle of the school, and the particular challenges of the district, a solid, administrative-minded candidate might be just right. I’ve written and presented for years on the importance of recognizing and adapting leadership to life cycle dynamics. For example, your strategic planning and strategic hiring should vary greatlydepending on whether your school is in a growth cycle or a stagnation phase. Based on that insight, it is highly unusual to find a circumstance where the celebrity superintendent is the best choice. Although their focus is on business, Collins and Porras found that only 4% of the CEO’s at great companies came from outside the organization.

If you are involved in the decision about hiring a new superintendent, first examine the process. If you follow the traditional model I can predict with high certainty that you will hire a traditional candidate—one who looks right for the role. Please go deeper. Even if you don’t get it right, you can reset and look again.

 

This post originally appeared at Charter Insights.

 

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Posted in Education Reform, Innovation

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The “K” Playbook: Professional Learning for a Lifetime*

April 5th, 2011

dancing-house-prague(google image)

A mentor once said to me that he had never seen a kindergartner arrive at school with the idea that he or she was not a learner. During my professional years spent as an elementary principal, I cherished the opportunity to “kid-watch” kindergartners on a daily basis.  The block area served as a favorite space of the kindergartners- and me. Here the fantastical imaginations and risky behaviors of five-year olds led them to design and construct post-modern expressionist structures reminiscent of Frank Gehry’s most interesting work.

I learned kindergartners aren’t afraid to explore the intersection of disparate materials that leads them to create whimsical, sometimes even absurd architectural spaces – towers, homes, castles, even whole cities- combining Legos, wooden blocks, aluminum foil, cardboard- whatever they could find in the kindergarten co-laboratory.  Turned loose, kindergartners epitomize the dispositions of lifelong learning. They are adaptable, flexible thinkers who will play in the sandbox for hours, despite their short attention span in circle time. They love math and science and writing and painting and music and mythical stories and non-fiction information and chasing each other and dancing- all in the name of learning.

Tower Building

Taking a page from the kindergarten playbook, I wrestle with how we can grow the passion for learning inherent in kindergartners in our own work as educators. What it means to educate and be educated takes on new meaning in today’s technology-driven world. The task of educating young people who will graduate from our high schools with the capability to add value to our communities and workforce presents a challenge unique to these times. Our country’s very economic survival depends upon our educational community doing its best work ever in the history of public education.

We educators have watched Shift Happens (Mcleod and Fisch) on YouTube, read Tom Friedman’s the World is Flat, and listened to Tony Wagner push us to not just focus upon the national achievement gap but also the global one. Yet, the momentum necessary to make necessary changes never quite gets us off the ground.  In fact, as Larry Cuban noted in 1992 in the article, “Computers Meet Classroom. Classroom Wins”, reforms do not change schools, but rather schools change reforms and, in such a way that little change ever occurs in schools.

A lifelong quest as an educator has been to figure out why we educators are less likely to change, indeed to incorporate new learning into our work, than almost any other field. I have come to believe that the potential for“deep change” in which knowledge, practices and processes shift is a function of the availability of substantial time for our own adult learning- something that is in little supply in America’s Pk-12 schools.

We educators have little time to play in the sandbox; to explore the intersections of disparate ideas, disciplines, and cultures that would lead us to create, design, and invent the curricula, assessments and instruction necessary to provide learning sustenance to contemporary learners. Instead, teachers work long hours during a 200 day school year, using what daily planning time is available to accomplish clerical and administrative tasks related to operational details of the job. Little to no time exists for a typical Pk-12 educator to read, think, reflect, collaborate, write, study, listen, converse, create, problem-solve; indeed, simply learn. This situation is inconsistent with other professions in this country and with the professional life of educators who work in high performing educational communities around the world.

I have come to the distinctly simplistic perspective that our educators need more unencumbered professional time dedicated to learning and that if they had access to such time, education would be transformative for learners and learning. However, expecting educators to acquire and use skills and then assimilate rapidly shifting technologies into their work with students, means coming to terms with the fact that integration of new technologies, new pedagogies, and new content demands far more time than our teaching educators are obligated to work in traditional contracts and on traditional calendars which do not serve us well in the twenty-first century.

Time to work together

On the other hand, some aspects of educating young people well in today’s world aren’t a lot different than 10,000 years ago. I suspect the best tribal teachers knew the value of team learning, hands-on approaches, practice, coaching and high levels of Bloom’s. For early Homo sapiens, teaching well surely meant the difference between the life and death of a tribe’s young people. Our earliest teachers knew that neither they nor their pupils could afford to rest as learners, but rather that they all had to constantly adapt and flex as they acquired new knowledge and skills essential to survival. Tony Wagner describes the skills that teenagers need in this century’s colleges, workforce, and communities as survival skills, too. These skills include Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence, Agility and Adaptability, Initiative and Entrepreneurship, Effective Oral and Written Communication, Accessing and Analyzing Information, and Curiosity and Imagination.

Opportunities to develop and use Wagner’s skills don’t typically emerge as a result of traditional curricula, instruction or assessments used in most of America’s public schools. If Tyack and Cuban are correct, not much will change as a result of any of our ghosts of reform – past, present or future. So what will it take to drive home the deep change needed so that our digital learners get the learning spaces they need today? And, if educators have little opportunity to engage in and assimilate new professional learning, why would they not remain closed and resistant to change?

Lifelong learning is essential to practitioners in the field of education. We must provide time for our teachers to continue learning if we expect them to embrace meaningful and necessary changes to transform schools of our past into schools for the future. This means providing significant time to try out new strategies and tools, to build relationships with each other as learners, and find the value inherent in participating in both virtual and face-to-face learning communities.

Time should not be either a luxury or an excuse for educators to do the hard work and play essential to their own learning. Just as in kindergarten, creative and inventive ideas in the block area or sandbox come with the time to think, to collaborate, to try out different construction materials and strategies, to analyze, and decide what to do next. Expert kindergarten teachers purposefully schedule the time needed for young children to do the messy work of learning. School calendars and contracts that reflect the time needed for educators to engage in their own learning work are a must. The biggest challenge is finding the funding, and, even more important and scarce, the will to make the necessary changes in structures leftover from the agrarian and industrial ages of public education.  Perhaps, if our communities and educators believed our survival depended upon it, change would happen tomorrow.

*I first composed this piece 12/09 and never posted it until #edchat reminded of it tonight.

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Posted in assessment, Authentic learning, Big Idea, Bloom's Taxonomy, Coaching, Collaboration, Creativity, critical thinking, cross-disciplinary thinking, Curriculum, disruption, educational reform, Harvard Graduate School of Education, imagination, Innovation, interdisciplinary thinking, Pam Moran, Pedagogy, Relevance, School Community, teaching, Tony Wagner, Uncategorized

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Student Cheating and Plagiarism or Creativity and Innovation?

October 19th, 2010

During a recent conversation with my #ecosys Twitter friends, the topic turned to a recent BBC article about how Danish students were being allowed to use the Internet during exams. Danish pupils use web in exams

What followed was a thoughtful conversation about the advantages and disadvantages of allowing students access to the Internet during exams and if this amounted to cheating or plagiarism.

Phil Hart (@philhart) wrote an excellent and thoughtful piece on his blog (A techie’s view) titled “Is Using the Internet Cheating?

Phil notes that, “People now have access to levels of knowledge that was inconceivable 20 years ago. Rather than having to carry thousands of facts around in one’s head, what is needed today is an understanding of the context in which the question is being asked and being able to place the answers within that context.”

In terms of cheating during an exam Phil clearly points out that, “So when we see somebody ‘cheating’ in an exam, what are they doing? They are taking information from another source, in this case a fellow assessee. Is it legitimate to do so? Probably not, but … accessing the Internet with the correct question and being able to use the resulting answers when responding to an exam question requires an understanding of the context. In other words: “How well is the assessee able to remember the context (and everything that goes into making a context) rather than being able to merely regurgitate facts?”

I agree with Phil’s points and conclusions.

But beyond having access to the internet to answer test questions is the the larger question of taking existing ideas, research, work and “pirating” it into other “improved” or “reinvented” works.

Is if this is an actual skill that should be developed and encouraged in our students?

Is it piracy and plagiarism, or is it creativity and innovation?

Which do you suppose we should be teaching our students to do?

We live in an age where anybody can produce, mix, or re-purpose information and ideas.

When we pirate information and ideas, we may just be innovating new ideas and creating new ways of doing things.

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and musicians viewed it as piracy. He was pirating their music, recording it, and selling it. They feared the end of live performances, instead an entire industry was born, the music industry.

MP3 players existed prior to the iPod, but the iPod pirated that technology and created it’s own phenomena. Music lovers, wanting to share music with each other without paying, created digital music sites like Napster. They were pirating their way around and outside of what the music industry existed to do. Steve Jobs figured out that to beat the pirates he had to compete with them and built iTunes. The pirates ideas had become mainstream and put old music sellers out of business. It is piracy or innovation? Is it plagiarism or creativity?

The iPod itself is just a combination of pre-existing ideas; the battery, operating system, hard drive, screen, MP3 technology, etc.

Reggae, Disco, and Hip-hop music demonstrate that we can repurpose music into something new. The pirate old songs and create new and innovative versions. These versions become so popular that they create entirely new music genres. It is piracy or creativity?

Moviemakers, not wanting to pay high fees in New York pirates their way around the system by setting up studios in California. Today we call it Hollywood.

India reverse engineers drugs for the poor pirating what they themselves could not afford to do. Drug companies, sensing the good public relations they can benefit from, begin selling their drugs at huge discounts an in some cases giving them away. They respond to the pirates by creating an entirely new approach of serving the poor of the world. Piracy or creativity?

Teachers pirate great lesson plans and instructional ideas from other teacher all the time. It helps them to be more effective and learn new ways of instructing their students.

So, is piracy and plagiarism just another way of being creative and innovative? Are they a source of new ideas, methods, and models? Are there links to each other or are they mutually exclusive?

A senior business executive needing the most current research on a company or economic trend asks his junior executive to find the best and most current information. The junior executive doesn’t start his or her own research project, rather he or she Googles the information looking for the most current research on the topic that has already been done by the most respected and knowledgeable experts. He or she copies it, rips it, digitizes it, scans it, re-purposes it, integrates it, synthesizes it, and puts into a usable document to give the senior executive. This is what we call good research.

In the classroom we call plagiarism.  So, it is plagiarism or creativity?

Most of the examples I shared, which come from Matt Mason, would be examples of plagiarism and cheating if they happened inside a classroom.

Doesn’t there seem to be a disconnect from what we do in the classroom and what the real world expects of them? I know most of you are saying it’s about the process. But if that is true, then why do we spend so much time evaluating and grading the result?

If it really is about process then Pat Dixon has an idea;

  • Give the students a question they know nothing about.
  • Give them 30 minutes to put together a 3000 word report on that question.
  • Grade for Correctness in the answer
  • Authoritativeness of sources used
  • Uniqueness of of the pieced together report.

Catalytic Questions:

In what ways could you re-purpose your research report assignments to develop real world skills that focus on the process, the correctness, the authoritativeness, and uniqueness of synthesis?

What might that look like in your classroom or school?

How does your current understanding of technology, business, and innovation impact your thoughts?

How might your students be better served with the assignments they work on?

In what ways have you been successful in the past in adjusting assignments to meet the changing needs of the students and the world they live in? How might you draw upon that experience?

In what ways does the discussion of plagiarism and pirating vs. creativity and innovation force you to think in new ways?

What are the underlying principles at work in this discussion and how does it/they impact your approach to education?

What if you were to reverse the process and have students examine existing reports and determine how well they meet the criteria for a good research report?

Which assignments could you substitute with these new ideas?

Recommended Reading:

Plagiarism and Pirates

Plagiarism Is A Good Thing?

Where’s the Respect? A 21st Century Learning Question

The Dangers and Benefits of Piracy and The Pirate’s Dilemma

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Posted in 21st century skills, assessment, Authentic learning, Creativity, Grading, Innovation, Rob Jacobs

Economic Crisis: Education’s Challenge, or Opportunity?

December 23rd, 2009

Collaboratively authored by Chad Ratliff and Pam Moran; originally posted on Customized Leadership.

Schools of our past are over. The biggest survival challenge facing educators right now is not Economic Storm ’09. It’s designing contemporary learning spaces for today’s learners. We understand our young people will be members of a national workforce competing in a global economy. They also need the skill-sets to be leaders and members of a global community. The needs of contemporary learners demand more from the education sector than ever before.

We educators know well that the human drive to learn and participate in a community runs deep. Over time, in villages and towns across the globe, this drive morphed into the place we know today as school. Tinkering around with schedules, room arrangements, new strategies, and different learning resources has become second nature for educators. Few of us have imagined schools being downsized, privatized, outsourced, or virtualized as has occurred within many companies in Corporate America. But, fellow Americans who worked in the steel mills of Pittsburgh or provided tech support in Silicon Valley once believed in the security of their workplaces, too.

John Maeda writes, “Boundaries that separate disciplines appear to be solid lines but up close are really dashed, and ready to cross.” Whether across our classrooms or across sectors –we can no longer afford to see only solid lines. To do so puts our profession, our children, and our society at risk. Contemporary learners will need to solve increasingly complicated global problems crossing geopolitical boundaries: poverty, water shortages, conflicts, and global climate change—to only name a few. Inside our borders, the rapid shift from manufacturing toward a project-driven service economy is clear. Contemporary learners will need to work collaboratively and be able to think quickly, critically, and creatively. And, whether young people leave or choose to stay and take non-fungible jobs in our local communities, they depend on us to equip them for successful entry into the workforce or college, or both. We can’t wait for the federal and state governments to make this happen. This is our job. Right here. Right now.

We must do everything we can to accelerate learning. This means eliminating the distance between learners and learning –a distance traditionally defined by the ratio of 1 teacher to 25 students or so. Today, the distance between learners and learning can be dramatically reduced. Great technological tools in the hands of youth can shift the learning distance from 1 to 25 to 1 to 1—no learning downtime, no arbitrary time limits. Young people should not have to power down when they come to school or stop learning when they leave. Neither should we.

Technology coupled with great learning practices accelerates achievement. So, how can we embrace technology to accelerate our work with young people in contemporary learning spaces? We can take down filters and facilitate social learning networks to create global learning communities. We can put handhelds, netbooks, livescribe pens, smart phones and other technologies in the hands of students and educators. We can learn how to best use these tools together, inside and outside of the place we call school. Indulging any resistance to using technology as tools for learning and administrative work can no longer be an option. If we attempt to maintain the schools of our past in a contemporary learning world, we will likely consign our schools to a Darwinian future in which all who can abandon them will do so for a continuum of customized options that we educators appear loathe to offer. Schools as we know them could become as obsolete as steel mills.

So, how do we turn the Economic Storm ’09 into an opportunity rather than a challenge of epic proportion? We must use the resources we have available to support innovation zone work—teachers and students aligned in research and development; figuring out learning for our future. This means redirecting limited resources to fund innovation projects: setting up model learning spaces, creating design labs to tinker with new approaches to curricula, and encouraging educational entrepreneurs in both public and private sectors. We cannot be afraid to fail, we cannot be afraid to learn, and we cannot be afraid to change.

If we transform our schools so that the distance between learners and learning truly becomes 1 to 1, we’ll create a learning grid that powers a future for our young people which exceeds our wildest dreams. After all, isn’t that why we’re here? It’s important to consider that doing nothing is a choice. Maintaining the status quo is a choice. What choices will we make? What choice will you make?

Dr. Pamela Moran (@pammoran) is the Superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools and Chad Ratliff (@chadratliff) is the Assistant Director of Instruction and Innovation Projects.

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Posted in Chad Ratliff, Innovation, Pam Moran

Be More Than A School Administrator…Be An Innovation Coach

November 20th, 2009

I have an idea…

“It will never work.”
“We don’t have the budget to do it.”
“It will take to much time and we just don’t have any to waste.”
“The district won’t like it.”
“Teachers won’t want to do that.”
“That isn’t the way we do things at this school.”
“What does that have to do with test scores?”

These are just a sample of the typical answers we in education hear when we have an idea. Don’t scoff to easily, think about it a second. After a few perfunctory, “That’s great” or “Sounds interesting” we generally work our way to some of those responses.

What we need is some principals, directors, managers, and superintendents who encourage and support innovation. If change or improvement is what we seek, then changing what we do or how we do it should be encouraged not discouraged.

Mitch Ditkoff writes at The Heart Innovation, the weblog of Idea Champions, that we need managers who are Innovation Coaches. We need managers and leaders who can encourage and develop ideas.

“Most managers, unfortunately, perceive new ideas as problems — especially if the ideas are not their own. Bottom line, they don’t pay enough attention to the ideas of the people around them. They say they want to innovate. They say they want “their people” to do something different. But they do precious little to support their subordinates in their efforts to do so. They foist their ideas on others and can’t figure out why things aren’t happening faster.

“That’s not how change happens. If people are only acting out somebody else’s ideas, it’s only a matter of time before they feel discounted, disempowered and… well…just plain dissed. People are more than hired hands; they are hired minds and hearts, as well.”

Coaches empower others to reach within themselves and pull out their best, their best ideas and innovations. We need managers who will coach their people to pull out their best ideas and support them in the endeavor of finding, creating, and developing these ideas into innovative practices that impact their schools and their students. We need school administrators who can become Innovation Coaches.

“If you want to empower people, honor their ideas. Give them room to challenge the status quo. Give them room to move — and, by extension, move mountains. Why? Because people identify most with their ideas. “I think therefore, I am” is their motto. People feel good when they’re encouraged to originate and develop ideas. It gives their work meaning, makes it their own, and intrinsically motivates.

“Who has the power in an organization? The people who are allowed to think for themselves and then act on their ideas! Who doesn’t have power? The people who have to continually check-in with others.

“Think about it. The arrival of a new idea is typically accompanied by a wonderful feeling of upliftment and excitement — even intoxication. It’s inspiring to have a new idea, to intuit a new way of getting the job done. Not only does this new idea have the potential to bring value to the company, it temporarily frees the idea originator from their normal habits of thinking. A sixth sense takes over, releasing the individual from the gravity of status quo thinking.”

Nothing is more powerful and unstoppable than empowered and excited teachers. Those are the teachers who can change the world. So we need to be open to and encourage our teachers to bring ideas to us.

“You, as a manager, want to increase the number of new ideas being pitched to you. It’s that simple. You want to create an environment where new ideas are popping all the time. If you do, old problems and ineffective ways of doing things will begin dissolving. This is the hallmark of an empowered organization — a place where everyone is encouraged and empowered to think creatively. Within this kind of environment managers become coaches, not gatekeepers.”

Innovation and change doesn’t happen because you have some catchy vision statement printed on a poster and posted in all the classrooms. That is leadership through lamination. What is needed is leadership through co-creation and co-innovation.

“Creativity cannot be legislated. It cannot be sustained by mission statements and pep talks. What needs to happen is you, as a manager, need to change the way you relate to people. Each encounter you have with another in the workplace needs to quicken the likelihood that their unexpressed ideas will get a fair hearing — enabling a far greater percentage of them to eventually take root.”

So the next time one of your people comes to you with an idea, be a Innovation Coach and help them develop the idea into something truly innovative.

Mitch suggests…

* “That sounds interesting. Can you tell me more?”
* “What excites you the most about this idea?”
* “What is the essence of your idea – the core principle?”
* “How do you imagine your idea will benefit others?”
* “In what ways does your idea fit with our strategic vision?”
* “What information do you still need?”
* “Who are your likely collaborators?”
* “Is there anything similar to your idea on the market?
* “What support do you need from me?”
* “What is your next step?”

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Posted in Collaboration, Innovation, Leadership, Rob Jacobs

Shift Happens. Even in Schools.

October 30th, 2009

On a recent field trip, neither my students nor I was at threat of being eaten alive by a t-rex.

Why, despite ruling Earth for nearly 80 million years (even longer than Wall Street barons), are Cretaceous period animals not regularly chowing on our gizzards? Things change.

Scientists have suspected this for some time. In fact, a growing body of geologic evidence seems to support the theory that things today are not the same as they were 200 million years ago. (Many even suspect tomorrow will be different than today.)

Surprisingly, this idea of “change as constant” is not yet an accepted norm. (Though it comes as no surprise to anyone who has visited any number of schools in the past few years.)

In a recent post, titled “Constant Transformation is the New Norm”, on his “Innovation Insights” page on Harvard Business Publishing, Scott Anthony writes:

There are still some executives who are waiting for things to return to “normal.” It’s not going to happen. Constant change is the new normal.

Um. . .correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t “constant change” been the norm for quite some time? Sure, there were (and will be) periods of relative stability, but these are often preceded and followed by periods of growth and transformation. Nothing stays the same forever. This hold true in both geologic and bi-pedal time.

So, why is this news? How can such a scientifically accepted norm make it onto a Harvard blog geared toward innovation? Why is this an emerging trend worth writing about by someone with such an impressive resume in innovation? Surely business executives were aware that things change. What’s so different now?

Pace.

Despite vain attempts by the learned and powerful to keep things as they were, the digital domain is disrupting the old standard, rapidly. Such meteoric growth is transforming how businesses do business, and should affect how schools administer schooling.

While the key to success is to adapt to the new landscape, the strategies for doing so are not so clear cut.

Toward this end, Mr. Anthony offers 3 points of advice:

1. True transformation starts with a deep understanding of the severity of the problem.
2. Transformation requires being outside-in, not inside-out.
3. Space is the only way to avoid the “sucking sound of the core.”

While specifically geared toward businesses, reform minded education trailblazers would do well to take notes on these points, because they offer insights for being on the leading edge of transformative change in our nations schools.

  1. True transformation starts with a deep understanding of the severity of the problem. In education’s case, it must include a deep understanding of the severity and variety of the problems. Too often measures are put in place based on a single problem, as in addressing an important issue, such as the achievement gap, while neglecting or exacerbating others. Leaders would do well to think system-wide before instituting scaled-up standards that solve one problem at the cost of creating others.
  2. Transformation requires being outside-in, not inside-out. Innovation is born out of a novel combination of knowns. Facilitating the innovation process necessitates drawing in elements/people/knowledge from outside the organization. Education’s deeply rutted top down hierarchy maintains the inside-out approach by limiting inputs. As a result, much of the “reform” appears much the same as before, just more of it. More standards, more tests, and more hoops to jump through. Yet, beyond the school walls there is a shift in how people are interacting with knowledge and each other, and an even larger shift in the behavior of the global economy. Looking for meaningful and lasting transformation requires that education leaders broaden their inputs from outside the economic interests of the lobby-sphere to include ideas and influences that develop life long learners.
  3. Space is the only way to avoid the “sucking sound of the core.” In an interview with Blogging Innovation, Mr. Anthony describes the “sucking sound” this way:

Most companies excel at managing innovations that extend their core business. They struggle with innovations that run counter to their existing way of operating. Then, the greatest enemy lies within. We call it “the sucking sound of the core.” A company’s core systems and structures “want” an innovation to conform to what a company has done before, not what is necessary for success. The sucking sound makes innovation slow and complicated. To break the sucking sound of the core, companies need to make sure they have a “safe space” for innovation, and that senior leaders actively step in to break standard operating procedures when required.

In many ways, charter schools represent the laboratory of the education institution, the Skunk Works of sorts. However, as testing and accountability systems become increasingly standardized, the sucking sound at the core threatens to pull any innovation in the public school system toward the previous norm. Continuing to develop and support the relative autonomy of charter schools will help to ensure that our education system has room to explore new and compelling ideas.

Change is not the new norm, but we would do well to act as if it is.

It is the one thing we can count on. In fact, it is the only thing we are sure our students will face as adults. Preparing them for adapting to change must be our top priority. If we are truly bent on normalizing our nation’s schools, we must find a way to standardize diversification and differentiation.

Image: National Geographic

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Posted in change, Charter Schools, Harvard, Innovation, Jason Flom, Scott Anthony, transformation

Reform on Learning’s Terms

July 26th, 2009

At a press conference announcing the “Race to the Top” initiative, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pledged nearly $10 billion in federal grant money to public school divisions that can deliver on four assurances:

  1. Worthy divisions will develop more rigorous standards and assessments.
  2. Worthy divisions will monitor growth in student learning and use that data to identify effective teaching practices.
  3. Worthy divisions will identify effective teachers and principals, find ways to reward them, and find ways to improve or replace ineffective educators.
  4. Worthy divisions will reorganize or close failing schools.

Looking at the assurances, I have to ask: is continuous quality improvement the same thing as innovation, or even change? Does it really cost $10 billion to assure the status quo?

First, the federal government wants to provide states with the money to develop new assessments based on common, internationally-benchmarked standards. These assessments and standards need to go beyond content or we tread water in curriculum and instruction. So long as we use a single measure like external test data to compare students, schools, systems, and states, divisions will allocate resources to teach to the test. If we’re going to stay locked in that mindset, then we’d best dramatically overhaul assessment in American education to drive changes in curricula and instructional practice.

What about paying for common performance standards and a common performance assessment to overlay state content standards? What about funding multiple assessment measures of different types?

What about funding a pilot that excuses participating divisions from yearly testing so they can teach to assessments more aligned with 21st Century Skills, like the NAEP math assessment or College and Work Readiness Assessment?

What about a pilot that excuses participating divisions from yearly testing and evaluates them instead on high school and 4-year college rates and the consequent changes they make to curriculum, assessment, instruction, scheduling, and community engagement in-house?

What about funding persistent online testing outside of set windows so students can test ahead or test until they demonstrate mastery?

How would you innovate assessment to close the gap?

Second, the “Race to the Top” grants ask divisions to close the data gap, measure student growth, and identify the teaching practices that cause growth. So how about paying for portfolio, project, and performance-based assessment pilots? Look at the College Success Portfolio from Envision Schools, or these projects from an Expeditionary Learning school as examples. Summative assessments like these and the formative measures leading up to them would both be information-rich for teachers making instructional decisions. They would also cause real change as divisions revamped professional development to support teachers in using practices like authentic engagement, entrepreneurship, and service learning. If schools permeated instruction with these practices, there would be a paradigm shift in education. Instead of being siloed in special programs or isolated in rock star teacher classrooms, these practices could be the national agenda, not an add-on to it or a field trip from it.

We already know that to ensure real learning, learning must be relevant to the student. Countless teachers take it upon themselves to design relevant instruction, but the way to make sure all teachers are supported in doing so is to make states assess for learning in ways relevant to students, their education, and careers.

The kind of information-era innovations called for by the Obama administration will not come from enabling all kids able to pass easily-scored tests or by testing kids on school work. The innovation the administration wants will come from adults who were habituated to academic risk-taking and open-ended problem-solving as children in schools where failure was seen as part of the engine of success, not as its opposite. To innovate products and services in the global marketplace, we’re going to need to support brave teachers modeling inquiry for our brilliant students and to administer messy “tests” with canny scorers. We should invest accordingly.

Secretary Duncan says he feels hope for transformational change in American education, but the four assurances of “Race to the Top” only assure that some schools and programs will improve at what they already do: preparing students to pass tests that in the near future will continue to vary in rigor and content from state to state.

This raises questions about merit pay, part of Assurance Three: “reward effective educators.” We have yet to adopt national standards, let alone national assessments; therefore, we are not ready to evaluate teachers fairly, nor should we begin differentiating their pay based on the results of different state tests with inconsistent levels of validity.

I completely support differentiating teacher pay when all teachers can earn increases by meeting benchmarks in their careers that are proven to correspond to teacher quality and student achievement, such as National Board Certification, and when school divisions provide financial support for teachers pursuing such certifications. Teachers should be able to earn pay increases based on a portfolio of professional accomplishments empirically indicative of their learned skills. This is akin to the knowledge- and skills-based pay approach. We should no more assess teachers on a single measure than we should students. There are too many inequities and dangers to catalog, in the notion of paying teachers more just for better student test results.

President Obama did recognize that it’s meaningful to move a student ahead in achievement even if the student doesn’t pass a test, but providing merit pay for student growth is a slippery slope. Imagine two students, both entering 3rd grade 2 years behind their peers in achievement. The first student has 2 ineffective teachers in a row, and then a fantastic 5th grade teacher who helps the student be on-grade-level by the end of 5th grade, still just a bit behind peers ready for 6th grade. Under the four assurances, perhaps this teacher would get merit pay for causing so much growth.

The second student, though, makes a little bit of progress with three skilled teachers in a row to finish on-grade-level at the end of fifth grade. However, he or she never grows a full grade level with any one teacher. Would those teachers each get a share of merit pay for catching the student up over three years, or none at all for failing to move the student ahead a full grade level in any single year? Are these teachers considered ineffective?

Money would be better spent in rewarding teachers for attaining a menu of meaningful professional accomplishments, rather than in paying an hourly rate increase on the basis of how many grade levels of growth equals an “advanced pass” on a state test. It would also be a real change to how the nation understands merit pay and would provide career paths for teacher-leaders that keep those teachers in the classroom.

The fourth assurance calls on superintendents to re-organize or shut down failing schools. This assurance echoes NCLB sanctions for schools that serially lag behind AYP. I am all for meaningful accountability, but I’m against using a single measure like state testing data to determine a school’s fate. I have more questions here than counter-points. If AYP goes by the wayside, what will be the measure of a school’s success? Will superintendents shake up staffing and appoint successful teachers to failing schools? What if those teachers fail, too? What’s the incentive for risk-taking? What are the incentives for letting a school fail? How much time will be granted for innovative programs to get past start-up jitters? If AYP doesn’t go by the wayside, what happens to schools that only have a 99% pass rate beyond 2014? Is the federal government awarding grants to divisions based on their willingness to shut down failing schools? What if a division wanted to charter a failing school to innovate? Can a division dodge the failing-school assurance by chartering failing schools for charter money? Will a division get grant funding for shutting down a failing school this year that wouldn’t be shut down by post-AYP/NCLB criteria?

We need more than these four assurances to reform American education. Innovation doesn’t come from assurance. In fact, assurance is anathema to innovation. If what Secretary Duncan decreed were innovative, we wouldn’t already be assured of how the money is going to be spent. If success for all were already assured, we wouldn’t need to innovate. We do need innovation and we need it from classroom teachers.

United States Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, our nation’s first CTO, recently implored our schools’ innovators to help him find them. That’s an assurance more inviting than any of Secretary Duncan’s. Help him, classroom teachers; share your ideas. Share them with your colleagues at work and online, with your principals, coordinators, directors, and superintendents. Spread your vision of learning and ask for what you need to make it happen. As your divisions compete in the “Race to the Top,” remember to start a dialogue with CTO Chopra and his office, as well. Get yourself the support you need in your classroom to change your own professional practice and ensure learning through genuinely reformative and relevant practices like authentic engagement, entrepreneurship, and service learning. Students can master any content through the skills needed for these endeavors, but no set of standards spread across separate disciplines will help them master those skills. Students need your help to facilitate the real, joyful work of learning.

Teachers: there’s energy in our country for real change, not just improvement. You are uniquely positioned at an intersection of students and learning, and networked by the technology and PLC-driven practices necessary to help each other with do-it-yourself instructional innovation. You can be the hub of students’ and teachers’ rediscovery of learning. We know what works; it’s difficult to do; we can help one another change our teaching. Advocate for your students, for yourselves, and for each other. Reform our schools on learning’s terms.

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Posted in 21st century skills, Arne Duncan, Chad Sansing, Innovation, Race to the Top, Testing

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