I spotted this television advertisement for GM the other evening. It occurred to me that watching the demise of the American Auto Industry, is tragically analogous to what is happening in public education.
The blog post Daily Finance’s writer Peter Cohan cites five reasons why GM failed. Read and draw analogies to public schools in the United States.
1. Bad financial policies. You might be surprised to learn that GM has been bankrupt since 2006 and has avoided a filing for years thanks to the graces of the banks and bondholders. But for years it has used cars as razors to sell consumers a monthly package of razor blades — in the form of highly profitable car loans.
And the two Harvard MBAs who drove GM to bankruptcy — Rick Wagoner and Fritz Henderson — both rose up from GM’s finance division, rather than its vehicle design operation. (Read more about GM’s bad financial policies here.)
2. Uncompetitive vehicles. Compared to its toughest competitors — like Toyota Motor Co. (TM) — GM’s cars were poorly designed and built, took too long to manufacture at costs that were too high, and as a result, fewer people bought them, leaving GM with excess production capacity. (Read more about GM’s uncompetitive vehicles here.)
3. Ignoring competition. GM has been ignoring competition — with a brief interruption (Saturn in the 1980s) — for about 50 years. At its peak, in 1954, GM controlled 54 percent of the North American vehicle market. Last year, that figure had tumbled to 19 percent. Toyota and its peers took over that market share. (Read more about GM ignoring the competition here.)
4. Failure to innovate. Since GM was focused on profiting from finance, it did not really care that much about building better vehicles. GM’s management failed to adapt GM to changes in customer needs, upstart competitors, and new technologies. (Read more about GM’s failure to innovate here.)
5. Managing in the bubble. GM managers got promoted by toeing the CEO’s line and ignoring external changes. What looked stupid from the perspective of customer and competitors was smart for those bucking for promotions. (Read more about GM’s managing in the bubble here.)
GM has now produced this mea culpa, promising a new organization with new products and a new attitude. The answer is to reinvent itself.
It is not hard to draw analogies to public schools. Poor financing and financial management. Management (administrative bubbles), inflated salaries for administrators, ignoring the competition…..the list goes on. The list does not mention the tortuous negotiations and battles with organized labor – but that analogy fits as well.
Interesting that the public sector (federal government) has to be in the unbelievable position of having to bail out this failing industry. The act has people from the private sector incredulous. Even the President himself seems uncomfortable with the fact that the government has had to take this unprecedented action.
Public Schools in too many urban districts are a failing industry. Too many administrators, public officials and even some private philanthropists ignore the competition (i.e. charter schools, successful faith-based schools and even advances made in independent schools). These entities are seen not as competition, but as the enemy. In an effort to preserve themselves and guarantee job security, those in the bunker form the bubble.
Too many are afraid of adapting to new technologies that are likely to guarantee, smarter, leaner administrative budgets and more likely than not to improve students learning outcomes. Good administrators will report up to the “management” that revises standards and tests to juke the stats and have the public believe their inferior product is actually working.
Far too many individual school “districts” makes no sense anymore. I live in a county of 280,000 but there are 14 individual school districts each with high-paid administrators including superintendents, principals, curriculum directors. The cost to the public every year exceeds $4 million dollars. Much of that work can be done online through more effective use of management technologies.
Too many public dollars are wasted paying for textbooks. Innovations in online texts are occurring every day, yet too many school administrators are slow to adapt them. Many philanthropists have funded organizations that provide solutions to this unnecessary expense. cK-12 is a private non-profit foundation that is just one example. Another is Currwiki. Schools and school districts – not to mention the multimillion dollar textbook industry has an interest in keeping these innovations out of schools. Too many foundation officers and school administrators – fearful of change, block innovation with the appeal to waiting for results from “evidence-based practice” before they do anything. Where are the “practices” taking place and who is collecting the “evidence?” I know than many foundations have a lot of evidence of what is working, especially in charter, faith-based and indepdendent schools, but this evidence is ignored unless it has imprimatur from “the academy.”
It just seems to me that the time is ripe for foundations across the country to sponsor one or a series of local symposia that will bring together leaders from the field of educational technology, business, K-12 systems, and higher edcuation to re-imagine doing schools. These symposia should be public – coordinated with local newspapers, and newsmedia. Public television stations typically have local afficilates that could foster regularly scheduled converesations about re-inventing school and invite public policy officials to be part of the conversation. Together, these entities can help to reinvent public schools just as the auto industries are about to embark on reinventing themselves.
I was a member of the education task force for the Ohio Grantmakers Forum which produced a set of recommendations for changing education in the State of Ohio for the Governor and legislature. Beyond Tinkering was the report and I have written about the effort in previous posts. The full document can be found at. www.ohiograntmakers.org
One of the most satisfying results of the effort was gathering information from colleagues from other foundations to push the idea of innovation districts. We used legislation out of Colorado as the inspiration. The call for creating innovation districts in Ohio is the first recommendation in the report. When the report was published, I did not think the Governor or the legislature would seriously consider the idea of innovation districts. It had certainly hoped it would and my colleagues can attest to the fact that I pushed for it every meeting we had. It appears however that both the Ohio House and Senate are intrigued by the idea and have written it into the education budget. It has to go to conference and perhaps will actually become a reality. Should that happen, the state has opened up an exciting opportunity for transforming education and establishing national models.
Among the many excellent recommendations in the report, several have particular relevance to legislators who are genuinely interested in transforming education in the state. The idea of creating innovation districts has all the potential to develop budget-neutral programs that could serve as models for all districts in the state. In a time of budgetary constraint, it is my guess that if they are developed carefully, and with strong leadership from the top offices in the state, innovation districts could result in cost-savings over time.
I underscore the call to create innovation districts rather than schools. There are many school-based programs spearheaded by exceptionally creative teachers. Unfortunately, these programs are restricted too often to one classroom. In some cases, we see school buildings implementing innovative use of technology to support learning, but it is once again, more often-than-not these innovations lack any alignment with the other buildings in the same district. In my travels I have heard disturbing news that successful schools are often scorned by peers in their districts. I had the great pleasure to explore the Macomb Academy in Michigan. The leadership there has implemented a highly successful approach to learning with emphasis on Sciences based on the approaches advocated by the Natural Learning Institute. Despite the demonsrable success, Macomb teachers and leaders are resented by peers in their district because they have developed their own method of teaching and assessment that diverges from the norm.
I bring up this case because a. it is not the first time I have heard cases of professional jealousy of this type crippling innovation in schools and b. because I think it illustrates a reason why we need to stop creating innovation schools as isolated entities within districts that may or may not be on board. The emphasis must be on the district as a whole. An innovation district would focus efforts on an entire community, and put benchmarks in place that could measure success. Foundations could be called upon to help support these districts and direct funding to the support positive outcomes to the benchmarks put into place.
An innovation district would focus efforts on an entire community, and put benchmarks in place that could measure success. Foundations could be called upon to help support these districts and direct funding to the support positive outcomes to the benchmarks put into place.
The language in the OGF Byond Tinkering report is very clear. It calls for, “A bold plan for accelerating the pace of innovation – for restructuring the traditional industrial model of teaching and learning and for addressing the lowest-performing schools in our state.” That includes a recommendation to create innovation districts.I purposely put emphasis on districts and not innovation schools. Further in the report, is the call to “Develop a statewide P-16 education technology plan.” “Which includes improving teacher capacity in using technology.” What better way to set this off than a district whose mission and focus would be to develop a plan that will train teachers on appropriate use of technology to meet the student learning objectives.
These recommendations are the primary ingredients for developing districts which – if properly carried out – could serve as a model for public schools across the country.The leadership would have to have the political will to take on the political battles which will be waged by interest groups. It would prove the political leadership is finally willing to move Beyond Tinkering and transform learning opportunities. Set the bar high and challenge these districts to carry out the plans in a budget-neutral environment and it is my guess most administrators and teachers would meet that challenge. Ideally there would be five or more districts set up and given a five to ten-year exoneration from current collective bargaining and technological rules that could thwart the overall effort.For example, teachers in the district would not be able to “opt out” of professional development programs that would be essential to creating the districts. If teachers do not want to participate fully in the learning opportunity they can be ushered to other districts or find employment elsewhere. That is where extreme leadership is required from multiple stakeholders in the state including union leadership, superintendents the ODE, the Oho Federation of Teachers and the Ohio School Board. Getting them to agree means providing a coherent vision and establishing certain benchmarks to measure quality improvement.
The objective would be to create districts focused on excellence in learning. We are speaking of a new understanding of learning from pre-conceived ideas. That means educating the stakeholders to the remarkable opportunities that new technology provides. I had the privilege of attending a presentation by Helen Parke, Director of the Cisco Learning Institute. During the Sunday evening keynote, Ms. Park presented a vision of education technology to a group of K-6 math teachers from across the state of Ohio. This was a vision of Web 3.0 solutions to problems. The conference continued for two days with the task of finding solutions to the challenge of improving the quality of math teaching in schools across the country. Teachers were treated to presentation from education “experts” from universities across the country. As the weekeind went on however, teachers were challenged with coming up with solutions to the problem – To improve Math scores in schools across the state. Unfortunately, the so-called solutions called for more funding to provide “math coaches” in buildings across the districts. It was as if the presentaion from Ciso never happened. Teachers were unable to make the connection between 3.0 software and its potential to solve their problems. In short, we had 1.0 solutions to problems in a world where 3.0 can provide easy answers. The experience convinced me that a better job needs to be done to invite teachers to experience and understand the technology. Short of that, they will never understand the potential these technologies hold. Professional development needs a complete 360 evaluation and (I would guess) a complete overhaul.
In such these innovation districts, a district adults would learn as well as the students.. Teachers would be respected as the professionals they are, and encouraged to work with administrators and technologists to find ways in which technology can be used to find solutions to issues like student-centered learining, new ways of assessment and rethinking the way we establish standards. Teachers would be encouraged th think of new ways to help children understand the content.
In these districts, goal would be to use technology to support student engagement and understanding of the content. Technology cannot and should not be expected to replace learning that takes place between and among human beings. It is not to create innovation for the sake of innovation, but to establish a culture of learning that will likely change the current model of one-teacher in a room in front of twenty students each of whom is expected to pass a testing pattern based on a pre-established set of standards. Technology presents students and teachers with new ways to gather, assemble and demonstrate knowledge that exposes the shortcomings in the current system of assessment. A challenge for the district would be to allow teachers in shared learning communities, to develop meaningful systems of assessment that make use of the tools available. The result could be an incarnation of the “student-centered” learning module that has gotten a lot of lip service with few demonstrable models.
A major challenge to the district leadership would be to demonstrate reasonable cost savings as a resulting from use of social software.(For example why would five districts each need a “curriculum director” when one could possibly suffice.Could each of these districts demonstrate effective use of open-source tools to reduce the cost to the district (approximately $800 per student for textbooks used only one-year).
A district-wide initiative across the state would require an entities that supports the multi-district application. I suggest that a good model can be found in a November 2008 article in the Harvard Business Review by authors James Cash, Jr., Michael J. Earl, and Robert Morrison. Teaming Up to Crack Innovation Enterprise Integration is written for the business growth with focus on CEO’s, Chief Information Officers (CIO’s) and IT organizations. The model easily adapts to a State education bureaucracy and includes two elements that would be critical to the success of the Innovation districts. Their thesis is relatively straightforward. Here is how they summarize the concept:
IT has long been a catalyst of business innovation and essential to cross-functional integration efforts, but few large companies have systematically leveraged technology for these purposes.
Close study of 24 U.S. and European businesses reveals a model for systematically doing that that through the formation of two IT-intensive groups for coordinating these two processes that are critical to organic growth
A distributive innovation group (DIG) combines a company’s own innovative efforts with the best of external technology to create new business variations. The enterprise innovation group (EIG) folds yesterday’s new variations into the operating model of the enterprise.
The two groups help better identity, coordinate, and prioritize the most-promising projects and spread technology tools, and best practices.
An effective DIG and EIG could be set up within an office within the Ohio Department of Education but that is likely to be too insular and protective. My suggestion is that an outside agency such as the Cisco Learning Initiative or the OneCommunity in Cleveland could be a better locus for the activity. I say that only because a good innovation district would want to gather ideas from both public and non-public schools. Foundations could provide a service by funding the costs of the DIG and EIG officers for the course of the five-year period. Paying salary and benefits for a year is well within ambit of funding levels tolerated by foundations, even in this challenging economic environment. Additionally, outside funding could guarantee that the data gathered is open to all who may want to benefit from it. So, if we imaging these two offices set up to serve the five-districts their scope of work could be defined pretty much by what is presented by the HBS authors. This is what they would recommend including my insertions between parentheses:
A distributed innovation group (DIG) … doesn’t “do” innovation but rather fosters and challenges it. Innovation is an inherently distributed activity, encompassing innovators across and outside the corporation ( ‘districts’). The DIG serves as the center of expertise for innovation techniques, scouts for new developments outside the company ( ‘district’) and provides experst for internal innovation initiatives. And it deploys technologies and methods that facilitated collaboration and innovation.
An enterprise integration group (EIG) is dedicated to the horizontal integration of the corporation (‘districts)’ and among the buildings w/in the district). It picks from among competing integration projects and provides resources that enable them to succeed. It develops the architecture and management practices that make business (educational) integration easier over time.. It may also manage of portfolio of integration activities and initiatives; serve as the corporation’s ( ‘district‘) center of expertise in process improvement, large project management, and program and portfolio (curricular) management; and provide staff and possibly leaders for mager business (school) integration initiatives.
The money for this undertaking could be secured from private sources but in the longer term, funds are likely to be found with more efficient use of funds that currently feed the Educational Service Centers across the state. Another foundation or group of foundations can and/or should coordinate with the ODE and hire a group like the RAND Education corporation to conduct a complete evaluation of the efficacy of professional development in the state and the role of the Education Service Centers in light of this new initiative. I would imagine their is opportunity for a vast overhaul of the administrative function of the ESC'(s) across the state.
Technology should not be focused only on the curricular components of the project. Innovative approaches to addressing the social service supports need to be integrated into the process. Social services as well as primary health and mental health programs must be brought to the schools in new ways. Achieving this goals will require new ways of working the the multiple state and nonprofit agencies that provide support to families in some of the more impoverished districts. Why can’t mental health and primary health screening programs be place right in school buildings. School buildings can be a logical catchment for families who will bring their children to schools. It is essential that innovation districts consider new ways in which social support services can be ushered into the schools.It is common knowledge that too many teachers are expected to teach children who do not have access to essential primary health care or mental health services.A local physician our foundation has supported conducted a study in a Lorain City elementary school and found that more than 25% of the children suffered from chronic asthma which accounted for about 40% of the absences from school.Children that suffer from undiagnosed chronic illness cannot be expected to learn.If a child is not feeling well, no increase in mentoring, after-school programs or mandatory extended days will enhance learning.Currently State programs for help these youngsters are funneled through a variety of public entities and/or nonprofit organizations but few of these entities (if any) have a presence in the school buildings.State regulations and sometimes collective bargaining rules keep these services from being performed in the building.
I would propose that a Ohio Innovation district(s) would lift all restrictions that keep essential social services out of schools thereby creating a place where schools can be a center for families rather than just students.The Harlem Childrens Zone serves as an interesting model.Getting there would be a process – probably six-months to a year, where health officials (public and private providers), school board members, teacher and administrators would form a task force to articulate a plan of how these services would be made available for each school.The plans would be posted on an open site and other districts could have input.The plans would be compared and funneled to the DIG.A goal for each plan would be to demonstrate where the plan could result in cost savings to the entire community served by this new Innovation district.
A third and final goal would be to create a place where leaders from higher education meet regularly with leaders and teachers from K-12 to ensure that the two areas are seamless.Almost every educator I speak with agrees that in the United States, there is virtually no formal communication between K-12 and “higher-Ed.”The technology available to citizens of this country is making that disjuncture a serious threat to the goal we have to create and educational system that will set the stage for young people to succeed in college and beyond.
Take a look at two Youtube video’s by Dr. Richard Miller from Rutgers University.He provides a vision for what university/college teaching will look like in the not too distant future. Although geared to an audience in higher education, his vision casts shadows on the K-12 environment. He talks about transforming pedagogy and even learning spaces.If this vision is even remotely true, the question facing K-12 teachers across Ohio are preparing children for this future?
It is time for some state or group of state to introduce the idea of innovation districts to create a space where innovation can combine with tried and true best practices and create new approaches to learning that can be brought to scale and save money.
P-16 structural realities that concern me about its likelihood of success in an Ohio community
In recent months there has been great fanfare in my area with the launch of a P-16 compact that promises to revitalize education in this fair county of 280,000 people and 14 separate school districts!
The reaction from this funders perspective is a mixture of skepticism and excitement. The skepticism is grounded in a seeming lack of true innovation proposed in anything the P-16 projects propose. The excitement lies in the opportunity that could be for a truly innovative P-16 that links the focus and energy of a region-wide push to create innovation in the business and government with education. The opportunity is great and presents funders with exciting investment potential. Those investments should be made with the same scrutiny and vetting that any new business innovation would undergo with a venture capitalist. In this time of scare economic resources, it is morally imperative for foundations to hold the education sector to the highest demands for quality programming.
For those interested in the P-16 programs, I recommend a publication by Dennis McGrath, PhD for the KnowledgeWorks Foundation called Convergence as a Strategy and as Model, linking P-16 Education Reform to Economic Development, published in 2008. The article is an excellent overview of the various P-16 programs launched in Ohio. It provides a comprehensive overview of elements that are exciting but also raise concern for the alert reader.
The author describes P-16 as a
…little understood but vital trend developing in and throughout Ohio.” The article promises that P-16 will serve the communities by, “promoting entrepreneurship and strengthening the education skills of residents (which are) vital to the economic security and well-being of their communities….and must be coordinated with workforce development and the creation of career pathways.
Coordination gives me pause because we have seen too often in education, that coordination translates in to tighter control and increased standardization of learning assessment.
On further reading, it becomes evident that the P-16 is really a variation on the “workforce development” initiatives launched through the public education network about ten years ago. What is unclear to me is whether P-16 and officials who drive its implementation, envision a workforce that in the 19th century was prepared to take orders in a factory, or will have the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit to collaborate on work-teams and communicate new ideas with colleagues and superiors.
I worry that institutionalized education will respond to the latter rather than the former because those driving the bus are used to one way of doing things. My skepticism is rooted in my experience with Ohio Stakeholders, especially those representing the established educational infrastructure (ODE), (OFT) and to a certain extent the Ohio Board of Regents who despite the larger community’s demand for innovation and reform in education – focus their attention on “tinkering” with a system that is clearly overly standardized and not meeting the “customers” need for diversity in learning, in assessment and even type of knowledge acquisition. In this case the customer is parents, students and colleges and universities.
Two unique aspects of the culture of education are also worth noting as constraints on the flow of entrepreneurial talent into the field – one that affects “outsiders” and one that affects “insiders.” Outsiders face the fact that public education’s hiring patterns favor people who have worked there way up the system in the conventional fashion – namely, by becoming a teacher and then an assistant principal and/or principal, and so on. According to a RAND study, for example, 99 percent of school principals had been teachers means that individuals seeking to break into the education industry from other sectors are working against convention. P.52.
The P-16 claims to be successful because of its ability to produce “convergence” i.e. community conversations that include the business sector, foundations, churches other social service organizations. My fear is that unless the convergence happens on the terms of those invested in the public system, change will not occur. In our county, this Foundation invested more than $4 million in a Center for Leadership in Education which, when established in 1994, had goals similar to those expressed by P-16. The CLE was part of a then, national move, pushed by the Annenberg Challenge of the Annenberg Foundation, to create such centers where private money would be used to establish centers for help reform public schooling. More than 15 years later, the majority of these private institutions struggled due to a lack of full buy-in from the public school systems, and later by competing goals by State established Educational Service Center.
As foundations are approached to fund P-16, they would do well to read all the evaluation reports of the Annenberg and similar foundations that chronicle the difficulty of transforming public schools. Are we simply re-inventing the wheel with P-16? The only change is that the public system is in charge and controlling the agenda.
I am not overly optimistic about P-16 producing an breakthrough in innovative thinking on education and learning. I remember taking part in a community-wide discussion with teachers, superintendents and community leaders. The question on the table was “what does it take to create an adequate school system. I was rather vocal in expressing my concern that the question was not “what does it take to create an excellent school system.” I was told we had to work with what we had.
I will never forget that community session. In the business world or in the medical world what company leader or head of a hospital would tolerate a discussion about creating an “adequate” company or health care institution, yet we allow that to take place in education.
The hope for P-16 in a economically struggling community
I have expressed my concerns, but I need to shift to what I think are exciting possibilities for a P-16.
To start, the P-16 program has been spearheaded by Dr. Roy Church who is a remarkably successful leader in that he has created one of the most robust community colleges in the country. The Lorain County Community College has an impressive variety of educational options for young and adult learners and has a broad menu of career path and training options for residents of this county. LCCC has been the site of the successful early-college program which, in collaboration with the Gates Initiative and the KnowledgeWorks Foundation. (The Governor of Ohio has threatened to cut funding for this successful program in favor of supporting traditional P-12 programs.)
The LCCC has emerged as one of the engines of economic development in this former “rust-belt” community by creating two centers to promote and stimulate business entrepreneurship. The Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE) and the Entrepreneurship Innovation Institute (EII) are arguable two of the most impressive incubators for business development in the region. Note the two words Innovation applies to creating new businesses to respond to economic crisis. I have not seen the word Innovation used as the community responds to the educational crisis.
In my mind, a successful P-16 compact would move beyond the palaver about convergence and community sounding sessions. Given its structure for administration and community input, the effort has all the potential of being nothing more than a solipsistic exercise. I would see a P-16 that not only focuses on public schooling as we know it, but embraces serious examination of the many new innovations in education that combine different use of technology and teacher time. Programs that encourage student focused learning. Also, the current public system cannot abide honest and frank discussion with charter schools. Furthermore, there appears to be little tolerance for discussion about how to integrate the elements of successful private and/or faith based schools such as Cristo Rey Schools, the Nativity Schools as well as schools such as the E-prep Academy in Cleveland. Finally Lorain County has one of the best independent schools in the region – Lakeridge Academy. This school is one of several independent schools in NE Ohio that are known for academic excellence and producing students of high caliber and integrity. For the Press, and community leaders, conversation takes place as if these institutions did not exist. I have even heard some people suggest the country would be better if these institutions shut down.
This foundation has provided support to many of the schools mentioned above. Careful scrutiny of their programs, site visits to the schools and solid outcome data demonstrate to us, these schools are successful, especially in urban areas, transforming lives of entire families by providing quality education. Why can a community not ask why these schools are able to remediate children from failing public schools in less than a year. Why do these same schools boast 90% college acceptance and more importantly – college completion rates!
Why can’t these schools as well as emerging online programs be invited into the process of innovation in public education. Instead of condemning charter schools why not look at them in the same way a leader in business will look at innovation to improve the company’s product or develop an entirely new line. I would argue that the nature of the public school system does not allow teachers to engage in meaningful discussions with principals and superintendents to even ask the right questions about where education is going. Instead the focus is on grades and reports and data. Teachers no longer feel challenges to practice and art of teaching but instead to conform to some rigid standard to produce pro-scribed results.
Northeast Ohio has been lauded by the likes of The Wall Street Journal for the truly collaborative accomplishments of philanthropy with the business sector. The Fund for Our Economic Future is a three-year project that resulted in philanthropy coming together to work with companies to form and support early-stage capital investment in new and exciting businesses in energy, biotechnology and manufacturing. The Fund has proven success in spawing several non-profits such as Jumpstart, Bioenterprise and Nortech which, in turn have fostered development of several promising businesses. Lorain county has pushed this region-wide effort through Team Lorain County whose leverage of State and Federal economic revitalization dollars have resulted in the IIE and GLIDE.
Suppose the P-16 Compact in this region were to harness the that same innovative spirit and apply it to education. The economic reality has shown this region that the old way of doing business has changed forever and will not return. In response the community has adapted brilliantly. The education reality in the county, especially the urban areas also has proven that the old way of doing education is not working and needs to be rethought and injected with a spirit of innovation.
A really exciting P-16 would take inventory of what the market is doing anyway, and demand that tax dollars, earmarked for public education be redirected to products and programs that are known to work in other settings. A sincere P-16, linked to two centers for innovation would set up offices to implement programs – proved effective in a non-public school structure, and look to see how this “product” can improve and/or replace the old. Authors, Joseph Keeney and Daniel Pianko pose a question that any credible P-16 in an area truly looking for innovation needs to ask:
…are there concrete models from outside education that could be employed by government or philanthropies to attract and leverage private investment in K-12. Specifically – in order of formality – an a prize (or pay for performance) model that is increasingly being used in philanthropy, and angel capital model like the Department of Defense’s Venture Catalyst Initiative (“DeVenCI”); and a traditional venture-capital co-investment model like the Central Intelligence Agency’s In-Q-Tel.
Suppose a Community College and a Innovation Zone were to demand that the Governor create an Innovation District allowing the schools leverage to implement exciting technologies that are proving effective in learning. (See the work of Constance Steinkulher at U. Wisconsin on the positive impact gaming has on education outcomes for urban youth). That zone (perhaps established at the LCCC) would lift all barriers to school innovation including contracting, labor contracts and technological restrictions to create an open environment for educational programming in Lorain Schools.
The P-16 needs to look at the market and what is catalyzing capital investment in education. Imagine an Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center that housed regional affiliates of programs such as:
Teach for America,KIPP Schools, Achievement First , YesPrep High Tech High and The New Teacher Project and allowed these programs to set up programs within Lorain County schools. The teachers union and school board would become apoplectic at first, but if P-16 were to establish benchmarks for success and offered to compare them to typical public school outcomes would in effect set a competition for success and raise the bar.
Since much of the success in schools depends on the often overlooked area of professional development and teacher training, suppose a center for innovation included programs such as Building Excellent Schools or, New Leaders for New Schools and house these organizations in the same edifice with the Educational Services Center. Put them in the same edifice as one would see at the Entrepreneurship Institute or Jumpstart and see how the culture of professional development changes. State funding for professional development to the ESC is in the area of $900,000 a year. Imagine a situation where, with the buy-in and support from the P-16 those dollars were distributed to organizations like those named above based on performance outcome and innovation. That would be a very different scenario from the one envisioned by the Knowledgeworks publication. It is also one that would meet with incredible resistance from the entrenched powers of the educational bureaucracy that by its nature serves as the primary barrier to innovation in education.
P-16 is a great idea conceptually. To be truly innovative, those that believe in creating schools that will work can only do so by opening the doors to creativity and innovation and borrow from success in the business sector. I fear it cannot be done as long as P-16 is driven by the public education sector. The public education sector – with its drive to standardize a profession which really should be an art has created a system that does not validate the creativity of individual teachers but dumbs them down into cogs that do their job to push out statistics which happen to be yours a my children. More on that in the next blog post.
As far as convening the community to focus on developing so-called 21st century skills once again, I fear the focus on workforce development and standards does not address the larger challenges youngsters will face in the next decades. Not asking the right questions will have terrible results. If you have the time view this amazing lecture by Physician Dr. Patrick Dixon to an audience at the National Association of Independent Schools. After viewing it, ask yourself if you think we are asking the right questions.
I suggest that any foundation – be it community foundation, private foundation or corporate asked to support a P-16 collaborative hold public officials responsible for demanding innovation that goes beyond tinkering we have seen with far too many public school efforts. True innovation will require breaking down barriers that exist which prevent truly innovative thinkers and practitioners from sharing public tax dollars that shore up far too many ineffective school districts and professional development programs. Philanthropy has a responsibility to raise the bar and require the public in general to hold educational leaders responsible for creating an environment that will respond to the needs of divergent learning and quality education for all.
I welcome comments from those in the system and those who are simply interested.
Last year, the trustees of foundation I work for provided a grant of $10,000 to support Ohio Grantmakers Forum (OGF) initiative on education for the state of Ohio. The grant provided funding that convened education leaders from across the State to develop policy recommendations for Governor Ted Strickland. The recommendations were to inform his vision for creating a school system that was ready to teach 21st Century skills.
The process of sharing ideas and knowledge from a variety of perspectives was an intellectual gift. Some of my previous posts address parts of that experience. The result of the year-long process were released last week by the OGF. The day after its release, Governor Ted Strickland announced his long-awaited plan to improve education in the State of the State address on January 29, 2009.
Mr. Strickland’s address has been followed with a budget that is confusing to media pundits who admit they do not understand how many of his proposals will be paid for given the State’s enormous budget deficit. What is clear however is that, two-years into his first tenure, Mr. Strickland ‘s plan is his launch of his campaign for a second term. Curiously, the day after the budget was released, a city councilman from another part of the state announced he would be a candidate to run against Mr. Strickland in 2010.
So the philanthropic collaboration to focus on making profound change in education in Ohio has been tempered by the frustrating realities of politics and negotiation. Our document maps out a series of recommendations with two time horizons. The first is a very short horizon that would address ways to change immediate obstacles to managing a complex organizational structure. The issues in the short term – changes to teacher tenure rules, teacher residency requirements, a change in the tests to determine assessment, and lengthening the school year by 20 days, enable the Governor to garner political attention around an issue which registers high on the interest levels among residents in the state. These changes do absolutely nothing to focus on the longer-range need to disrupt the old way of doing education in the state. Although the governor talks about the need and urgency to change the way education takes place in Ohio if we are to prepare students for the next century, his list of priorities focus on short -term changes that will tinker with the current system as we know it. The longer-term need to introduce technology to innovate and improve student learning is pushed off to what I suspect could be an agenda for a second political term. In the meantime the State will offer no clear and decisive map to guide the disruption that is urgently needed if we are to really transform teaching and learning in Ohio.
The hope that the report engendered related to truly bold programs and initiatives and investigate new approaches to learning and technology were eclipsed by political ballet that will reshuffle state dollars for the funding formula, palaver about firing teachers for just cause and finally changing the Ohio Graduation Test to an ACT test.
In my disappointment I actually saw this image running through my mind as I heard the Governor speak:
I am frustrated that the governor failed to convey the sense of urgency that is needed introduce innovation into education. In my opinion, pushing our recommendations to explore innovation to a back burner, demonstrates a failure of leadership. If I had a chance to have coffee with him, I would suggest that as a leader he can and should focus on finding ways to engage the entire citizenry to understand the role of technology and how it is transforming networks of learning for students and the people who teach them. That means harnessing the media, universities, businesses and teachers in an effort to seek out disruptive technologies that will provide solutions to the complex task of creating new learning environments.
My participation in the drafting the OGF document gave me a new appreciation for the daunting complexity of this thing we call public education. All would admit there is a profoundly urgent need to articulate a clear plan to create a technology infrastructure that will support the promise that things like cloud computing can and will have on curriculum development. I am disappointed with the governor’s adoption of our recommendations because the speech reveals a tacit admission of not having a clue about innovation in learning that is already underway and ready to bring to scale. Any hope of innovation (which typically occurs with a free exchange of ideas) has been relegated to a department within the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). It would be a miracle if anything truly innovative came out of that department unless they were willing to take the bold step of opening collaboration to people outside the ODE who not only know but practice innovation. One can only hope that the directors of that department embrace some of the philosophy of collaboration described by authors Phil Evans and Bob Wolf in the July – August 2005 edition of Harvard Business Review in an article entitled Collaboration Rules.
Extraordinary group efforts don’t have to be miraculous or accidental. An environment designed to produce cheap, plentiful transactions unleashes collaborations that break through organizational barriers.
The authors point to the open-source tool Linux to serve as the example of how to structure collaborative rules.
Corporate (and political) leaders seeking growth, learning and innovation may find the answer in a surprising place: the open-source software community. Unknowingly, perhaps, the folks who brought you Linux are virtuoso practitioners of new work principals that produce energized teams and lower costs. Nor are they alone.”
I find it curious that the Governor’s speech occurred on the same day in which, fifty-years earlier Pope John XXIII announced to the world his intention to convene a Vatican Council. He used the term aggiornamiento which was a call to open the windows and bring the church up to date. As a lapsed catholic with a nostalgic streak, I had placed some expectation that the governors speech might be an exciting call for an educational aggiornamiento or opening of the windows in which the ODE’s tradition as a closed, conservative, controlling and hierarchical structure serving the state might take place. The ODE is not a place to expect miracles!
Restructure the traditional model of teaching and learning.
Refine the state’s academic standards.
Create an assessment system that allows students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in different ways.
Ensure that we have the best teachers and principals working in all of our schools.
Ohio Grantmakers Forum and its partners are saying that we can no longer defend or tolerate an industrial-age school model that is out of step with the demands of the 21st century in which jobs, careers and workplaces are learning-intensive and where people often have many jobs over their lifetimes.
The recommendations reflect these realities …
164 Ohio young people drop out of school every day.
Just 24% of Ohio high school students take a rigorous course of study, which is the best predicator of success in college.
Ohio colleges and universities report that more than 40% of first year students need remedial courses in mathematics and/or English.
And Ohio’s higher education attainment rates are among the lowest in the nation.-We’re 38th out of 50 states.
The findings are not intended meant to suggest that Ohio has ignored its education challenges. But it underscores the reality that incremental changes are not getting the job done. It challenges the Governor and policy makers to take Bolder steps and to accelerate the pace of improvement are required.
Here are some of the bold steps OGF and its partners have urged Ohio’s leaders to take:
Accelerate the pace of innovation by restructuring the traditional, industrial model of teaching and learning.
Create Ohio Innovation Zones and fund promising school and instructional models.
Develop a statewide plan for transforming the state’s lowest performing schools.
Develop a statewide strategy for making better use of technology and its applications.
Ensure that the state’s expectations for what all students should know and be able to do are aligned with college- and career-ready expectations.
Benchmark them against international standards and make sure they include 21st century skills.
Create a balanced assessment system that allows students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in different ways, informs teaching strategies and improves learning, and provides a complete picture of how schools are doing against a consistent set of expectations.
Refine Ohio’s academic standards and restructure the state’s assessment system
Ensure that Ohio has the best teachers and principals working in all of its classrooms and schools.
Strengthen standards and evaluation for teachers and principals, and create model hiring and evaluation protocols based on the standards.
Provide financial incentives for schools and districts to improve teaching and learning environments.
Strengthen the awarding of tenure.
Develop new compensation models that improve the connections among teaching excellence, student achievement and compensation.
These are tough times … and they call for tough choices.
The extreme fiscal challenges facing the state of Ohio today provide a great opportunity, if not a mandate, to look at how Ohio invests its current education resources.
Many of these recommended actions do not require new funding. Yet, some may necessitate a re-allocation of existing resources, while still others may demand new investments. Re-allocating existing resources is a political hot-potato but one that is desperately needed. (More on that in a future blog-post).
As a member of the community I sought reaction from teachers on the Governor’s speech. The more than one of the teachers I spoke with had two immediate reactions: 1. “Well, if they extend the school year by 20 days, he’d better pay me.” and 2. Thank god they are using the ACT rather than the OGT. That is hardly the vision I would have wanted were I in a position of taking bold moves to change education across the state.
As far a non-teachers, their concern is that they do not understand the changes in the school funding formula. Clearly this is an important topic since the issues has been a plague on the Ohio educational system since the famous DeRolf decision declared it unconstitutional. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
Strickland’s primary pledge was that the state would eliminate a phenomenon dubbed “phantom revenue”– a ghost in the state’s funding machine that assumes school districts receive local education dollars they never actually see…Strickland said his plan would eventually result in the state picking up 59 percent of the tab for education — a level he said would make Ohio’s school-funding system meet the “thorough and efficient” constitutional standard that the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled four times the state has not achieved.
At the end of the day few people really think this formula will change much of anything in terms of quality of teaching and learning in schools. Today’s Plain Dealer reports,
Of the 97 districts in Northeast Ohio, 48 would see no change in the amount they get from the state next year, and 49 would see an increase (no more than 15 percent.)
The second year, 52 would see a decrease (no more than 2 percent) and 45 would see some increase.
The second major issue addresses how to deal with the union stranglehold on employment in the State. The governor did adopt the OGF policy which would allow principals and superintendents to fire under-performing teachers for “just cause.” The governor did assume enormous political risk by standing up to union leadership saying,
Right now, it’s harder to dismiss a teacher than any other public employee. Under my plan, we will give administrators the power to dismiss teachers for good cause, the same standard applied to other public employees,” Strickland said to applause from Republican lawmakers as Democrats held back.
This is an important issue for any Governor to take on. Earlier in January, the Cleveland Plain Dealer did a lengthy report on the fact that looming budget cuts surely meant that some of the most innovative and successful schools in Cleveland would have to lay-off teachers. Most at risk were the promising charter-like academies and magnet schools because firings would go on the old union patronage system of last hired first, fired. Here is how the story reported it,
High School, one of Cleveland's 10 new niche schools. Classes are at the Great Lakes Science Center until a permanent home at GE's Nela Park campus in East Cleveland is renovated.
Just as Cleveland’s new niche schools show signs of leading the district to reform, layoffs may sweep some of their handpicked teachers out the door.
Schools chief Eugene Sanders says the district will have to lay off hundreds of workers if the financially strapped state slashes deeply into aid that accounts for 60 percent of the Cleveland schools’ budget. Big buzz centers on how that would affect 10 single-gender and other specialty schools that have turned in good test scores and won over parents during the last three years.
With union consent, the so-called “schools of choice” select their own teachers, reaching outside the system in some cases. But cuts would follow the contract: Last hired, first fired.
Sanders said he will ask the teachers union to help limit layoffs at the niche schools. But union President David Quolke does not expect to scrap the seniority policy. “All that would do for a union is pit member against member,” Quolke said. “To agree to something that says one member is more important than another member is not something I’d be willing to do.
I suppose this effort by philanthropy to partner with stakeholders to inform a governor can be considered a success. I only wish he had not cherry-picked the policies with the short time horizon to do his plan. Given the mess of dealing with teachers unions, budgetary shortfalls and an assessment system that is strangling students and discouraging teachers to be creative, I suppose he did what he needed to do in the short-term. Despite my personal disappointment, the success can me marked by the fact that it was the first time the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Federation of Teachers sat at the same table at length – ever! They worked out issues jointly and even agreed on several recommendations. I believe that only philanthropy could have made that happen and kept them coming to the table.
It is by now quite evident that I harbor frustration at the seeming inability of the state government to do what is necessary to stimulate and sustain true innovation in learning by encouraging innovation in schools. My assessment is the governor may have stepped only a small length “beyond tinkering,” but I am learning that a politician can only go so far with bold moves, especially in education. If I had my way, I would have wanted the Governor introduce the first recommendation in the report – the creation of innovation districts throughout the state. These schools would be center for innovation in teaching and learning, freed from constraints of labor negotiations and the constraints imposed by the “tech guys” who block more access to the internet in the name of “protecting” children. These would be places where social media experts, educational researchers, higher ed teachers , creators of Multi-user virtual environments and the likes of the New Media Consortium would collaborate with students and teachers to test new media with curriculum. This is a distinct where each student would have an electronic portfolio that would serve as a platform for him or her to demonstrate their learning and understanding of the standards. This district would foster a cadre of teachers who would be able to develop means of assessing that learning into meaningful feedback.
On the first day of class, I would call an assembly and invite Scott Anthony, co-author of “The Innovator’s Guide to Growth” be the convocation speaker and introduce the concept of “disruptive innovation” to establish the framework for the collaborative teams effort to move forward.
I am not a politician and I am not an education bureaucrat. I admit that I do not always appreciate the difficult balancing act these people need to do to survive. I respect and admire their ability to navigate the turbulent waters of managing many people. To accomplish the longer-range goals of transforming education to better serve the needs of individual students – no matter how old they are, philanthropy will need to make investments to support institutional psycho-therapy to help the educational infrastructure overcome its get over Fear 2.0 which is crippling it from really serving students. The soothing words of Dr. Clayton Christensen might be a good start – light a candle, pour a glass of wine and listen carefully.
Listen carefully to the podcast with Clayton Christensen on his book, Disrupting Class….
Hopefully one day we will get there and I think foundations will continue to play a key role in holding out that vision to policymakers who, at the end of the day probably want to see it happen too. Maybe someone will make a video of it so someone 60 years from now might embed it in his or her own blog!
The publicity about the Obama’s choice of the Sidwell Friends School shed light on the apparent contradiction of those who support public schools but elect to send their children to private schools. I am sure this fact makes the Obama’s and others like them feel a bit defensive when attending parties. In Oberlin, Ohio where I live, people who send their children to the independent school are literally shunned by those who keep their children in the public system.
One of the great challenges facing Independent schools, and the foundations that support them is how to make the excellent quality of education available to those outside the walls of these relatively small institutions. The winter 2006 edition of Independent School, published by the National Association of Independent Schools gave voice to a growing number of members who struggle with perception that independent schools are institutions only for the elite. In an environment where the gap between wealthy families and poorer families grows, fewer middle class families are able to afford private school education. The quality of Independent School education, such as the institution I send my children (Lake Ridge Academy) can not be disputed. In fact trustees of foundations tpically send their children to independent schools places like: Noble and Greenough School, Heathwood Hall, Buckinham, Browne and Nicols and others of pedigree based on a history of quality education. Read the mission statments of any of them and compare that aspiration to those of public schools. This reality presents an unease because these same trustees approve grants that try to improve the quality of public school education. We all know that undertaking can have pockets of success but due to the enormity of the task of reform rewards are elusive.
Faith-based schools such as Epiphany School, Nativity Prep, Arrupe Prep as well as non-denominational charter KIPP schools. supported by the foundation I serve, offer the quality education that rivals the atmosphere, academic dicipline and values of higher priced independent schools. However these schools are expensive to maintain and require constant funding from private sources. The State simply will not fund these entities. In the case of KIPP and Charter Schools, the national discussion is typically met with a vitrol accompanied by public policies that keep State funding to a minimum. Tacitly, the policy carries a hope that charters will fail and, like apostates, will someday realize the waywardness of their action and return to the public school system as we know it. That system of course is failing millions of children in the U.S. daily, but there remains no strategy to address that reality.
How can one make the quality of Independent School education available to families of the middle class and even children of low-income families has remained elusive. D. Scott Looney, Head of Hawken School in Cleveland suggested, “The benefits of having the broadest possible exposure to students with other backgrounds, races, ideas, and experience must be part of that education, and must include children from families in the bottom 50 percent of the socioeconomic tier.”
How can an independent schools do that when the availability of scholarship monies is limited? Technology provides answers.
Independent Schools can make better use of web-based technology to break down the walls of their institutions and make their curriculum available to a larger number of students.
The Harvard Crimson reported an innovative adaptation of SecondLife™ at Harvard University in 2006 whereby students at the Harvard Law School will co-learn with students at the Harvard Extension School – linking a divergent student body in a cooperative learning process. Independent Schools can and should do the same thing with outreach to public schools. Foundations can support these activites.
SecondLife offers very tremendously exciting opportunities to explore how the quality of independent school education may be open to others who cannot afford a typical four-year education. What can that look like? Check out the site that explains how Secondlife works for educators.
Independent schools can and should explore the possiblity of creating their schools in Secondlife and inviting their professors and other educators to work with selected students in a virtual envorinment. This is particularly true of the children in the lower 50% of the economic tier Mr. Lowney mentions.
Phillips Exeter Academy is known for the Harkness Table. This seminar-styled approach to high school education was developed in 1931 and invites young people to share thought together in a collaborative learning experience. Why not re-create a Harnkess Table in Secondlife whereby children from schools across the country could benefit from this educational style and interact with students who typically will not have access to these inistitutions of privilidge.
The Burton D. Morgan Foundation in Hudson, Ohio funded one of the first business/entrepreneurship programs at the high school level to Lakeridge Academy. The teachers developed a very fine curriculum which serves the 20 or so students in that program. I can imagine a very interesting project where, for example students from the business/entrepreneurship at Lakeridge Academy participated in SecondLife with students from the E-City program and the related Entrpreneurship Academy or E-Prep in Cleveland. (E-Prep received a start-up grant from The Nord Family Foundation and continues to receive yearly operating support s0 I disclose my interest and passion for this great school). A project of this type would expand the number of people who share in the curriculum and widen the perspectives on what entrepreneurship means in the suburbs and what it means on “corners” in Cleveland.
Foundation should consider funding these types of projects as a means of opening quality education they can (and often do) provide their own children and to talented and able children attending failing public schools.
I have had the priviledge to get to know some of the people at The Center for Institutional Technology and Academic Computing (ITAC) . This institution is currently supporing several innovative uses of Secondlife in the educational settings including pioneering work in the high school curriculum.
Although SecondLife has been tremendously successful in higher education, the potential for its use in high school settings has been thwarted because SecondLife restricts its users to a minimum age of 18. Students under that age are pointed The Teen Grid. It is the hope of many educators that someday soon, SecondLife and its creators at Linden Lab will allow for less restrictive use by high school teachers.
Another very interesting organization to watch for application for Independent schools is the work of the remarkable Aaron Walsh at MediaGrid at Boston College. This organizations provides high quality virtual environments that rival those of expensive interactive games.
Foundations that restrict themselves only to supporting projects in public education are selling themselves short by not opening themselves to exploring these new ways to blend independent school and public school education. It is my experience that most independent school faculty would welcome this innovation to expand their educational mission to those outside their walls.
It is time the philanthropic sector open itself to this important discussion with colleagues from Independent and Public Schools. For those unsure about all this, may I suggest reading a report published by the MacArthur Foundation’s and the Digial Youth Resesarch at U.Cal. Berkeley. Great reading!
It is becoming common for foundations to serve an important function in the communities they operate. That function is convening “stakeholders” or “community leaders” to discuss issues and in particular – thorny issues. They can do this for several reasons. As funders of nonprofits, they have an interest in collaborating with colleagues who may need an audience to advocate with government officials and other stakeholders for the populations they serve. The nonprofits typically are recipents of government funds and, as such, are players in a larger network of fiscal exchange that include private and “public” dollars. (I define public dollars as those raised through taxes). City and/or state agencies distribute these tax dollars to nonprofit collaborators tying them to the cohort involved.
The “thorniness” arise when discussion opens to critique the way in which the various iterations of public dollars flow and exchange among the entities. Too often critique is mistaken for criticism and agency directors can revert to defensive postures. This is particularly true when entrenched entities and the ways they doing business are suddenly open to public scrutiny.
Business leaders have an interest in the communities served by nonprofits by dint of living in the same community but also having a direct or indirect financial investment in that community. The private sector may sneer at the way government entities function. We suggest that it is healthier for the community to bring that critique to a common ground rather than lob salvos at an agency that might raise and individuals ire.
Foundations play a unique role in this civic environment. If they call the meeting most people will come. There is the power of money and the high probability that good food will be part of the deal inevitably an incentive for people to attend the meetings. If the meetings are choreographed carefully ahead of time it is very likely that the intellectual discussion will provide enough nourishment to sustain the conversations.
I propose that family foundation’s might have the advantage over community foundations and corporate foundations in this arena since they are inurred from “interests.” Community Foundations must raise money from the community and therefore must be careful not appear endorsing a position that could alienate a (funding) constituency. Similarly corporations must be somewhat risk averse to issues that could result in a public relations (PR) controversy. Of course there are exceptions to my broad comments. Community foundations can and have taken a lead role in conferences that are meant to be conciliatory. Case in point – the Cincinnati Community Foundation’s initiative to address racial tensions in that city a few years ago was a national model and the Pittsburg Foundation‘s efforts (in collaboration with the Heniz Endowment) to address thorny issues in the public schools. The Columbus Medical Association and Foundation is a national model for convening stakeholders around the crisis of health care in that city. The Cincinnati Health Foundation is another standard for how to engage a community around this critical issue. With far fewer resources than our colleagues in Columbus or Cincinnati, we explored their methods as we embarked on our own response.
At the February 2008 Board meeting The Nord Family Foundation made a grant of $100,000 to the Community Foundation of Lorain County to initiate a community engagement and planning process to improve access to health care for the uninsured and under insured.(A great snapshot of the Lorain County Health statistics are found at the Public Service Institute) The initiative was a response to several critical factors. The two charity hospitals Community Health Partners of Lorain and the Elyria Memorial Hospital are reporting approximately $20 million and $12 million in uncompensated care each year. In addition to the two charity hospitals, the Lorain County Health and Dentistry is a beacon of hope for the scores of medically uninsured and under insured in Lorain County. LCHD had applied several times to receive funds from the Federal government to receive support as a Federally Qualified Health Care Center (FQHC). Unfortunately it is considered a FQHC look alike because it has all of the services but does not get the Federal Funds. The requests were turned down several times because demand exceeds supply of federal funds. Equally disturbing was the increased pressure from the charitable group Lorain Free Clinic (headed by a remarkably talented and passionate executive director Paul Baumgartner) to meet the increased demands of serving the rising number of medically indigent people in a county with staggering job loss and poverty.
Adding to the complexity is the aggressive move of the Cleveland Clinic Family Health satellite offices in Lorain and Elyria which is perceived as skimming the full-pay insured patients from the other two hospitals and FQHC.
So, when LCHD received a turn down of a $700,000 federal grant we sensed the community needed help. A convening was in order!
We knew the task was enormous, but the urgency of the situation demanded a response. Funds were used to support the work of the Altarum Institute of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in partnership with the local Public Services Institute of Lorain County Community College. The overall project is currently referred to as Health Care Lorain County.
Upon approval of the grant, a Steering Committee was formed to provide community leadership for what became known as Health Care Lorain County.This ten-member committee has been chaired by the Executive Director of the Lorain County United Way and includes high-level representatives from the two main hospital systems, a local health departments, the Lorain County Medical Society, a local business leader, two nonprofit healthcare providers, a Lorain County Commissioner, and the President & CEO of the Community Foundation of Lorain County.This committee came together for a strategic planning retreat facilitated by staff of the Altarum Institute.
In preparation for the retreat, the Public Services Institute (PSI) conducted a basic environmental scan using existing data sources, to help define the prevalence and nature of the problem and to identify unanswered questions to inform future data needs. PSI and later United Way of Lorain County and Community Foundation staff also conducted one-on-one interviews with all members of the Working Group (key stakeholders, including members of the Steering Committee) to garner their expertise on the issue and input into the planning process.This compiled information was then presented at the retreat, to assist the Steering Committee in determining a shared understanding of the problem to be addressed, and to begin identifying project objectives and benchmarks for success.The Steering Committee developed into a highly dedicated group of community leaders with expertise and interest in the topic at hand and a commitment to serve the health care needs of the community.Meetings continued throughout the year, and included large stake-holder meetings to continue data analysis, fine-tune the project direction, and determine the best steps for action.
After more than a year of meetings, the following conclusions were made:
There is a need to continue exploring this very complex issue of providing quality health-care to medically uninsured and under insured people in the county.
There must be a new technology infrastructure put in place to facilitate data sharing.
There is a desire to provide every citizen a sense of a medical home. People desire a relationship with a personal health care provider rather than an impersonal institution.
The community needs to explore open-source charts so every patient can have an online chart that will follow him or her to their port to the health care system. The Cleveland Clinic’s remarkable on-line health record called My Chart is a great example of what an electronic health portfolio for medically under insured and uninsured could look like.
There is a need to examine how health dollars currently flow into the county. There are tremendous inefficiencies and possible duplication of effort among three distinct health departments (Elyria, Lorain City and Lorain County Health) which draw most of their funding from federal and state programs. These departments which were established initially to address infectious disease in the earlier decades of the 20th Century, are not equipped to handle comprehensive chronic care that the majority of the population needs. Competition from for-profit clinics such as Walgreens raise questions about the place of these health departments in a 21st century health care model.
The economic pressure necessiate collaboration between the two charitable hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic.
I am pleased to report that the undertaking has the active engagement of Senator Sherrod Brown and House Representatives, the Honorable Marcie Kaptur and Honorable Betty Sutton. The project has taken on a life of its own and stakeholders who would have otherwise had no incentive to come to the table have and continue to do so. Their is consensus among the stakeholders that the large number of medically uninsured and under insured is a case of tragedy of the commons. The response requires a willingness of leaders to listen, learn and possibly give up power in the years ahead. That is a threatening prospect, but and genuine possibility. It is a conversation that would not have taken place were it not for the foundation’s willingness and financial commitment to step in and assume a leadership role.
We do not know at this point where the effort will end up. We do know that others have agreed to chip in to pay the costs to continue the facilitation. It is our sincere belief that this effort will have positive impact on the access to health care that every family in this country deserves. If nothing else in a age of disease resistant microbes, increased mental illness and poverty access quality health care and drugs is a public health issue that should concern all citizens.
So the challenge for any foundation deciding to take on a major effort in convening, you must determine{
what role you want to take
have flexibility built into the expectations you have for the outcome
know the level of risk you will tolerate (the outcome could result in stakeholders walking away from the table) and
be honest about much staff time and money you are willing to put into the effort
look for innovation outside the conversations so to better inform the conversations
be willing to stick with it – conversations of this magnitude can take year
We are making good progress with our effort. I admit to frustration about the ponderous pace the effort can take. It is my sincere hope that our stakeholders will embrace innovation in thought to explore interactive maps such as those developed by the Cincinnati Health Foundation, as well as virtual environments like those featured below that become places to test their theories.
Doing so will encourage even wider and broader horizions of possiblities.
Should the project work well, there can be nothing more rewarding than knowing you have created a space where citizens can leave their official interests at the door and collaborate as colleagues challenged with solving an enormous social problem.
The National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI) held an annual conference in mid-November. There was a gathering of some of the most innovative thinkers in figuring out ways to make use of technology to enhance education and nonprofits, but more importantly to introduce ways in which these technologies can make curriculum and everyday computer use accessible to people who are blind, deaf or even cognatively challenged. It was tremendously exciting to be with people who are not only passiontate but practical in making the lives of the “dis-abled” easier.
What one sees in attending the conference and its Tech-Expo is the spectacular proliferation of new social media and its potential to enhance learning. It is clear that these technologies have had unimaginable impact on companies in their ability to achieve efficiency and increased market share.Despite amazing advances in social media or “web-2.0” technologies, the global society is only beginning to see the implications of increased computer capacity and interconnectivity. In an impressive presentation by Gregg Downey eSchool News, we were introduced to the shift from the phase of Parallel Computing in which one computer server handles the information input of an organization or company, to the more exciting phase of Cloud Computing in which multiple servers share and sort information with unimaginable speed.
Despite this tremendous innovation pubic schools and the nonprofit sector lag behind pathetically.Philanthropy and program officers have a responsibility to be aware of these tools to seek out opportunities where investments in the application of these tools can, create greater efficiencies in nonprofits.
One of the main obstacles to philanthropy taking the lead here is too many programs officers do not realize the potential because they do not use them and/or have no idea of what is out there.Too many of us use the computer as that thing on which you get e-mail, go to websites, maybe read the paper and occasionally chuckle at funny YouTube videos – not much else when it comes to the tools. Shared learning is the primary attractions of social software to philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Unfortunately, the sector has not thusfar done a good job of doing that but hopefully things will change soon.
Blogs, wiki’s twitters, and to some extent photo sharing such as Flickr are forms of shared knowledge with transforms into learning. Tagging is a means of coding that enables others to reference your area.If a program officer keeps a written blog on site visits and brings up issues of concern to the community such as “foreclosure” that blog can be tagged and others who have interest in foreclosure will be directed to that blog post and able to comment or share relevant information. Similarly, if a nonprofit director keeps a blog about challenges to the organization, tagging is a way others can find you and, in an ideal situation, offer advice, help or assistance). In many cases responses can come from around the world. The power of these tools however is that, put in the hands of creative people, uses I cannot imagine can emerge. (For an extraordinary discussion on this topic, I recommend David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous).
Truth is however, this is a sector that does not know how to share information well. Some foundations fund and produce research that is published in remarkably slick folders. Large foundations such as Ewing Marion Kaufmann, to name one, do a stunning job producing documents on education and innovation. Unfortunately, few high school teachers or even university professors can access this information easily. I chose Kaufmann only because I had the pleasure to hear Dennis Cheek, Education Program Director, give a remarkably exciting presentation on use of Games in Education at a conference by Philanthropy Roundtable in November. There is simply too much great research by foundations that is not getting out there. The Cleveland Foundation and the Gund Foundation in Cleveland jointly published an important document on schools in Cleveland called, Cleveland Schools That are Making a Difference. The document covers schools, private and public that are transforming the lives of students. In my opinoin the document has not had follow-up primarily because what it takes to produce a great school cannot be easily accomplished within traditional public schools. The tenents of making these schools work, despite having little or no State support is that they have administrative structures that threaten the way school has always been done. A region-wide or even national conversation is simply too threatening to public entities especially those that have to deal with the political powers that hamper real progress in public schools. A web-based discussion would be great way to start. But we have seen in that a public blog on public schools can be too threatening to public school officials and school board members. One experience was the Oberlin Community Diaries which opened a public blog for the town to discuss a tax levy for laptops. The site had over 500 contributions in the first month but when conversation became threatening, most school board members shut out the conversation, the superintendent stopped participating. School officials stated publicly that they would respond only to conversation in a school board meeting (Tuesday nights at 6 pm when many parents are unable to attend). Later the school created its own blog. It was readily transparent that conversation there could be controlled much easier and was therefore less threatening. Control of information is an issue that policy makers and even foundations will have to address in years to come. Information is power. Few of us like to loose control of power, especially those who hold the purse strings. That is another topic for another post, but if you want to jump ahead, Everything is Miscellaneous, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicolas, and Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky are great examples of how the new flow of knowledge is changing many presuppositions about the locus of knowledge control).
The NCTI offered a few great sessions on the Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE). Herein lies another area program officers need to understand .These are immersive learning environments that have remarkable application to the health, education and business sectors.Despite the boom in the multi-billion dollar gameing industry, few people in positions of funding responsibility understand the impact these and other technology tools have on transforming education, health care and the social environments in which we live.New organizations like Serious Games Director Ben Sawyer is a brillant and earnest advocate who merits serious consideration and note. There is also Games for Change sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundations Journalism Program are informing nonprofits and schools on games such as Peacemaker, Free Rice, Budget Hero (to name only a few) because these environments provide important educational and collaborative tools for learning. Games for Change Director, Alex Quinn informed the audience that when former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor realized that more people knew the American Idol judges than the judges on the Supreme Court, she became a participant in the development of a prgram with Georgetown University called Our Courts. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer program is developing exciting uses of games to promote health not only with young people but for retired individuals. RWJ’s Pioneer program does have a blog that invites the world to submit their innovative ideas on improving health care and health care delivery.
A challenge facing the gaming groups is how to help teachers assess these learning tools to be included as part of a students overall learning portfolio. Chris Dede from the Harvard Graduate School of Education introduced the audience to the Harvard River City Project. This multi-user enviornment includes features that will enable the participant to write, blog and chat. These are features which put in the hands of creative teachers will be easily and readly assess-able to determine how the user understands the content. The powers that be simply have to allow teachers to experiment with the tools and trust that with their intelligence and creativity the means to develop assessment tools will emerge. Unfortunatly, the likihood of this happening in the nation’s public schools is not high at the moment.
In my work with the OGF Education Work group I recommended Clayton Christensen’s book Disrupting Class. I suggest everyone in this sector should take the time to read it. particular interest is Dr. Christensen’s discussion of the role disruptive technologies are having in the way people learn in ways that were unimaginable before innovations in social networking.
The Pew Internet& American Life Project is producing important research on applications these games have in the lives of young people and their teachers. All teachers, superintendents and administrators should read these reports carefully. One day maybe public television and radio will dedicate a show or even a program on this topic which is of such profound importance to American education.
Philanthropy can have an important role in working to usher responsible and effective use of these important tools to a sector that if given the opportunity will make highly creative application of them to serve the larger society.
The foundation has considered the importance of strategic grantmaking and the idea of having high impact. What does it mean to have impact when the average grant in education is around $25,000 to $50,000.
What do we know?
Private/faith-based schools have remarkable success with inner city kids. Remediation takes place within the first year; reading seems to be easier to remediate than math and science. In most cases adherence to one particular faith is not mandatory. Most schools welcome families of all faiths. Students thrive in an atmosphere that is safe, and has rules. This seems to be the case across geographic funding areas.
Public Schools pose a more formidable challenge when looking for impact, but the foundation has made significant inroads in shifting the direction of some of these large ships. The work of CAST in schools in Lorain County has generated enthusiasm, contributed to a change in discussion about delivery of curriculum to divergent learners. It has added to conversation in schools about brain function and development and its impact on curriculum. It is exciting to see small pockets emerging where teachers are eager to shift the focus from assessment of learning to a concept of assessment for learning.
There are promising programs in isolated public schools that will address assessment of student performance such as the assessment for learning programs as well as programs that develop co-teaching. We see in these programs an attempt to bring to large public schools methods that have worked well in smaller, private school environments.
Structure of the school day
For inner city schools, a traditional public school day of 8-2:30 is not in place. In the Denver Street School, students are taught in blocks of 90-100 minutes as opposed to the typical 45 min schedule. This, teachers say, allows more time for challenged students to talk and reflect on the matter at hand rather than the typical – here’s the lesson, take it in, and report back to me on a standardized test and we will see how we do.
An environment that incorporates individual attention
In the National Association of Street Schools (NASS), each student has a faculty advocate who watches out for that youngster throughout the year. At Nativity Prep, Epiphany, Arrupe Prep and even the Urban Community School of Cleveland , the school days provide structured environments for students from early morning until the evening. All schools agreed that the after-school hours are when youngsters are most vulnerable.
Each of the schools incorporate into their behavior the reality that educational needs are not divorced from the social needs. For most of these schools the average teacher student ratio is 10/1. In the Cristo Rey model schools, young people who are teachers in training also serve the students by being available for them after the school day is over, for mentoring, coaching. The students live modestly and have little cost impact on the administration.
Respect for individual learning styles and adaptation
We have learned that whether it be in a small nurturing environment that a small private/faith-based school creates, or in larger public school classrooms, teachers know they teach better and students actually learn when the curriculum is adapted to the individual learning styles CAST has been phenomenal in helping teachers understand the link between brain research, and translating that into excited learning.
What we see on the horizon.
Using web-technologies students will develop electronic portfolios for their work which is open to each other (peers) for critique and discussion as well as with teachers. These educational portfolios contain the work that a learner has collected, reflected, selected and presented to show growth and change over time, representing an individual or organization’s human capital. The portfolios are not so much an instructional strategy to be researched, but more of a means to an end: to support reflection that can help students understand their own learning and to provide a richer picture of student work that documents growth over time.”
The Governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland has called for something like this in his very impressive set of Conversations on Education which include an appeal to “personalized learning.” People have yet to figure out what that means. As of 2008, there were no plans in place for the State of Ohio to implement electroinc-portfolios that could follow students throughout their careers (and also be used as a solid record should students transfer to another district or out of the State).
Islands of excellence
In a conversation with Mr. Geoff Andrews, Superintendent of the Oberlin City Schools, I talked about the wealth of learning the foundation has gained by funding a diversified portfolio of schools. After listening he said, “Wouldn’t it be great if the foundation could figure out a way to bring all this learning and leverage it in one district somewhere and create an “island of excellence” that could serve as a model. I said, yes it would be great.
Two months later, my esteemed colleague Helen Williams, Education Program Director of The Cleveland Foundation informed me of legislation in the State of Colorado that would create just that. The Innovation Schools Act of 2008
The Innovation Schools Act is intended to improve student outcomes by supporting greater school autonomy and flexibility in academic and operational decision-making. The Act provides a means for schools and districts to gain waivers from state laws and collective bargaining agreements.
The suggestion could not have come at a better time. It is my hope that philanthropy can suggest the Ohio legislature examine this act and seek advice from experts to do the same in Ohio.
When I first began at the Nord Family Foundation, I agreed to serve as program officer for education. I had experience teaching high school for a few semesters and teaching at the college level. Realizing my limitations, decided it was essential for me to learn more about what teachers go through every day. The best way to do this, I thought, was to form a book club which I did with the help of colleauges at Center for Leadership in Education which the foundation funded. Seven school professionals participated and consisted of middle, high school and elemetary teachers as well as a first-year school principal from a rural school district. Our book was Victory in Our Schools – We CAN Give Our Children Excellent Public Education by Major General John Stanford. Gen. Stanford was elected Superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools in 1995 and initiated a quality reform effort with lasting postive results. Gen. Stanford died of lukemia in 1998 and was mourned deeply by the Seattle community.
Our book club met faithfully and teachers found it a safe environment to share their experiences of being in classrooms. They loved the intellectual challenge and everyone kept their assignments faithfully. What I found was an alarmingly bright gathering of people who felt as though the “system” treated them as children. The felt as though their creativity as professionals was not really respected by supervisors and they yearned for more communication with supervisors. I will remember one passage toward the end of the book that resulted in lengthy discussion for two sessions.
General Stanford writes, “As the CEO of this ailing business, I had high aspirations. I wanted to be in the Fortune 500 of educational institutions. …We’d have to act as if every one of our customers had a choice about whether or not to use us, and we’d have to do everything we could to become every customers first choice.”
This was another philosophical shift in public education. The schools were accustomed to operating as if they were part of a command economy like the one in the former Soviety Union. Money and students were alloted by the central administration; the survival of individual schools was guaranteed regardless of customer satisfaction and customers had to accept the prudcut whether they liked it or not.”
This section of the book on page 186 resonated with the teachers. This was shortly after the reforms of t he No Child Left Behind Act resulted in a frenzy of high-stakes testing in the schools. The teachers I spoke with lamented the fact that their school principals and superintendents focused now on producing schools that would make the Officials at the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) happy. Superintendents began competing for report card scores in the same way they compete for football or baseball standings. The tests were the game and the goal was to win no matter what. Teachers felt as if a punative system was in place in which the Centeral Offices were now positioned to threaten teaching that did not align with their rapidly developed assessment tools.
Ten years after General Stanford’s death, schools have made efforts to change the philosphy toward better customer service. That is, I find, a slow process. In Oberlin where I live I have heard several teachers say that parents are a nuisance and should leave the teachers to do what the do best. There is little sense of customer service. In my time visiting schools and talking with teachers throughout Ohio, Colorado and South Carolina few would disagree with General Stanford’s original comment. Public Schools in this country continue to function as the last bastion of the Soviet style command economy. Until recently, charter schools and alternative schools were seen as diabolical. Even today, education reporters from The Cleveland Plain dealer write as if charter schools “take” money from the public system. Few take the time to help the reader understand that Charter Schools ARE Public Schools – they simply have a little more freedom to do what needs to be done to run a school like a business that is locally owned.
The parallels between the old Soviet system are helpful when one tries to understand why it is so difficult to encourage innovation within the system. At the Centeral Offices, the focus is on a standardized system that fits all. The assesment tools are created in ways that make it easy for a teacher to gather data quickly so that the people at Data Central can churnc that data out. The assessments are summative – i.e. a snapshot that serve to determine a minimal level of competency for a student. I found this summative assessment to be embedded in the teachers vocabulary. I attended a local meeting of teachers and superintendents from Lorain County at the local community college. The topic of conversations was, “How we can achieve ADEQUATE schools for the children of the county.” I was depressed and lost patience with the group and challenged them as to why they would not be talking about how to achieve EXCELLENT schools in the county?
The challenge for most states is to determine how schools can have the freedom to develop formative assessment tools that work. To do this, one needs to change the way we allow students to learn. Proper use of techonology can facilitate this process. There are teachers who are using technology in very innovative ways and finding remarkable results. Too often, this innovation happens outside the system and often without the approval of the principal or superintendent.
For really interesting discussion on this topic listen to archived recordings from the website EdTechTalk – Teacher on Teaching.
I have just finished reading Clayton Christensen’s book called Disrupting Class This book is a must read for every educator and/or education policymaker in this country. Not only does Dr. Christensen explain how and why innovation can and cannot take place within public schools, but he challenges us to view public education as an old bureucratic system that is being challenged by innovation and activities that are happening with success outside its reach. In many ways, Mr. Christensen is a Yeltsin to our public school leaders. Depending on which part of the country you reside, we have local and state leaders who are devout “party” members who are like Gorbechev’s trying desperatly to reform the system from within. In philanthropy, I think we have a growing number of people who see the writing on the wall and realize we must look for pockets of innovation in education and help bring it to scale.
I have had the enormous privilege to interact with highly talented and profound thinkers.That spectrum of people includes classroom teachers, after-school program directors, college professors and yes, even program officers at foundations.One of my most delightful professional affiliations has been with the Ohio Grantmakers Forum (OGF) which is a regional association of Grantmakers from across the State of Ohio.Over the past year, my colleagues have taken on the challenge of improving the quality of public schools in the State of Ohio.Governor Ted Strickland began his tenure with a pledge to develop a new vision and program to improve education in the State and has appointed several civic committees to gather, provide their insights and filter that information to his offices.Presumably that information will be used to roll out a final plan that will transform Ohio schools to prepare all students with “21st Century Skills.”OGF assembled its membership to gather their collective knowledge and provide insight.Taking on a task that will gather information from across the state is an enormous task and OGF is doing a heroic job.Two years into the effort, a document was produced that captured the first phase of the undertaking and included voices from across the State.The Cleveland Plain Dealer review of the document claimed it contained nothing new. Undeterred by tepid reviews, OGF has agreed to take on a second round.I agreed to serve on two of three committees focused on Standards and Assessment and Evaluation of Grantmaking.
It has always been my conviction that philanthropy has an important role to play in public policy.It has a great power in convening people from public (government), private and nonprofit sectors to explore areas of common interest.Foundations not only have the power that comes with money, but they have a vast knowledge resource from evaluations of nonprofit organizations they have funded.Done properly, the foundation will have a relationship with the nonprofit and gather evidence of success and impact by way of site visits and evaluation reports.Unfortunately, too many evaluation reports go unread.I am finding that program officers with power and knowledge, can sometimes go with their personal agendas and be timorous about seeking out innovative things that might happening “outside the box” in the social sector.This is most eviden, i think, When it comes to public education. it is my observation that too many program officers find change to the public system threatening. In watching the coreography, their anxiety reverts people to entrench in what they believe to and resist the absolute need to think critically. I have heard the phenomenon referred to as those who sit in pews of the religion of public schooling. I am not convinced that my colleagues are indoctrinated, buta notion of belief in the ideal of American public schools is a strong because the model worked well for many years. Unfortunately, as too many inner city schools now attest, the model has flaws.
An important task for philanthropy is to find programs that are slightly outside the box.There are ample texts from business schools that describe how innovation in business takes place. One of the best is Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma which describes how so-called disruptive technologies can be both a threat and a potenial for businesses. More ofen than not, it occurs on the fringes or outside the companies which gives managers some trepidation, especially if it poses new challenges. Think of IBM and managements resistance to accepting personalized computers as something people would need. The challenge for new manaters is to create envionments that stimulate new thought and out of the box thinking but one that can easily meet new demands from the public.
The same can be said for philanthropy.One important task is to find social innovation that with private money can be tested and, if successful, brought to scale.This is no truer than in education.I just finished reading, Relentless Pursuit – A Year in the Trenches Teach of America.This successful program began with determined, organized and focused Wendy Kopp.Her program was the result of her thesis at the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School entitled, “A Plan and Arguement for the Creation of a National Teacher Corps.” With the assistance of a development officer at Princeton Ms. Kopp got her start with a $26,000 seed grant from Mobile and donated office space from Morgan Stanley. Later, Doris and Donald Fisher founders of GAP provided the financial support to truely launch this sophisticated non-profit. Two companies and a family foundation took a risk but the result has become a national program that, in the words of Pursuit’s author Donna Foote, “…an operation to accomplish what no government program has yet managed – to overcome one of the most basic and vexing of social inequities, a problem we can no longer afford to ignore.”
Teach for America has been slammed by the “establishment” most notably by Stanford University School of Education professor, Linda Darling Hammond at Stanford School of Education.Dr. Hammond’s who skoffed that TFA is argument against teach for America is that it smacked of “missionary program,” calling it a quick fix, “that was harmful to students most in need of qualified teachers.” Dr. Darling Hammond called TFA a revolving door trip into and out of teaching where it was an elitist “pit-stop” on the road to students “real” jobs in law, medicine and business. Dr. Darling Hammond’s suggested the answer to the problem was improving the quality of teacher training, whereas, Mr. Kopp blieives the answer is to be foind in improving the quality of the teacher. In my experience, I have found that Ohio Department of Education dollars used for teacher training is an appalling mess and accounts for unspeakable waste of public dollars.
Similarly, the highly successful KIPP schools were launched with private funding, once again with significant input from the Fishers. The Nord Family Foundation provides support to the KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy in Denver which sits literally between a pubic elementary and public high school. KIPP schools reports on student success shame the performances of the two public schools. So what is the secret to their success?
These institutions which are having positive impact on schools could not have easily happened within the government bureaucracy of the public school system. As I mentioned in an earlier post, any public school teacher I have met introduces an innovative idea despite the system, not because of it. The high-stakes testing standards are just too high for a principle of superintendent to tolerate risk.
Now, when we gathered foundations from across Ohio, it is clear that within philanthropy, there is a divide about the role philanthropy can and should take when assuming the role of advising a Governor as to how to improve the quality of education.On one side is the eternal belief that the public schools can be fixed and other side believes that the system should be scrapped and begun anew using schools like KIPP, teach of America and another highly successful faith-based model known as the Cristo Rey network.
When it comes to addressing standard and assessment, there is equal division.Our task with OGF is to advise the Governor on what role the standards should take on in the future.We have assembled a group of people who have read material provided to us much of which is published by the American Federation of Teachers Union.The theme is how the standards help focus the teachers.Most disconcerting to me is the utter lack of understanding of how technology and sophisticated computing is likely to render the way students learn and teachers teach utterly useless.I highly recommend a book by, David Weinberger, fellow at the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society.His book, Everything is Miscellaneous – the Power of the New Digital Disorder provides a glimpse into how computer technology has revolutionized the way we do categorization and assemble knowledge.The book is so popular, he has his own blog inviting comments on this thoughts.
Weinberger draws comparisons to the way we used to assemble photos in albums and coded them by weddings, vacations or other special events and put them in boxes to be retrieved at dates.Compare that to the online photo album Flickr and its ability not only to upload photos, but through tagging, assemble them into various cross-referenced platforms and repackaged and/or referenced in ways unimaginable with a box. Similarly, how Itunes revolutionized the way we pick our music, a far cry from the days of albums and even CD’s.The music industry has spent millions to try and get a hold on this randomness. Play lists are now assembled by millions of users and tagged and shared with themes like, “Loneliness,”“NASCAR,” “breast-cancer” and of course “Love” Weinstein points out that these play lists are a means of self expression. They use explicit (a song) and add to it to make evoke and disclose that which is “implicit.” And there is a power in their being shared with others.
One of the most powerful examples of the impact that recent computer technology has had on knowledge is the emergence of Wikipedia.This tool has challenged the Encyclopedia Britannica for its place in determining and categorizing bits of information which is turned into knowledge.How many schools today prohibit youngsters from using Wikipedia based on the fact that it is somehow unreliable?
Britannica enables us to be passive knowers: You merely have to look a topic up to find out about it.But Wikipedia provides the metadata surrounding the article – edits, discussions, warnings, links to other edits by the contributors- because it expects the reader to be actively involved, alert to the signs.This burden comes straight from the miscellaneous itself.”
Weinberger makes only passing reference to schools and their utter lack of understanding of how these tools can improve learning.Wallowing in ignorance, schools and even their supporters try in vain to tinker with ways to improve the way Standards are set and children assessed.His argument for standards and standardized tests is that they capture that which is “explicit” and perhaps merely a snapshot in a child’s knowledge.They cannot by their nature capture the “implicit” which is really the process of learning the child undergoes as they progress.To make the point, Weinberg says,
“Social knowing changes who does the knowing and how, more than it changes the what of knowledge.
Now poke your head into a classroom toward the end of the school year.…you are likely to see students with their heads bowed, using No. 2 pencils to fill in examinations mandated by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.Fulfilling the mandate of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the MCAS measures how well schools are teaching the standardized curricula the state has formulated and whether students are qualified for high school degrees. …The implicit lesion is unmistakable: Knowing is something done by individuals.It is something that happens inside your brain.The mark of knowing is to be able to fill in a paper with the right answers.Knowledge could not get any less social.In face, in those circumstances when knowledge it social we call it cheating.
Nor could the disconnect get much wider between the official state view of education and how our children are learning.In most American households, the computer on which students do their homework is likely to be connected to the Net.Even if their teachers let them use only approved sources of the Web, the chances are good that any particular student, including your son or daughter, has four of five instant-messaging sessions open as he or she does homework.The have their friends with them as they learn.In between chitchat about the latest alliances and factions among their social set, they are comparing answer, asking for help on tough questions and complaining.Our children are doing their homework socially, even though they’re being graded and tested as if they’re doing their work in isolation booths.But in the digital order, their approach is appropriate.Memorizing facts is often now a skill more relevant to quiz shows than life.”
The point is reinforced by the field research of Dr. Sugata Mitra presented at the TED Conferences.Click on the site to see his findings on how computers help children form communities of learning.“What”, he asks, “is the role of the teacher.”
Mr. Strickland has called for a system that will personalilze learning in public schools. He is on the right track. Teachers I have spoken with at places like KIPP and Cristo Rey would happily bring these new technologies into their schools which would likely further personalize their already successful programs. Unfortunately, these schools get minimal to no government assistance and must continue to rely on foundation support to just keep the doors open. Despite their obvious remarkable success, they cannot secure the funding they need to educate children. There are many public school officials and advocates that would like nothing more than to see these alternative schools go under.
The challenge for philanthropy is to find pockets of innovation where that idea of personalized education is actually taking place in either a public or priavte school. If the technology does not yet exist in a charter setting such as KIPP funds could be directed to test it there. Similarly we would do well to target one or two successful public schoolls and work with teachers to test the technology and bring it to scale.
The goal should be to exempt these schools from the current Standards and Assessment models and allow teachers, student and designated mentors use the technology to explore how these tools can best support learning. One concrete example is the use of electronic portfolios or (e-portfolios). One of the more promising applications of e-portfolios is found at Florida State University which is the world leader in electronic portfolio development for demonstrating student achievement.
I believe the only authority by which philanthropy can speak is from its relations with the incredible people who are demonstrating programs and methods that are making a difference in a child’s learning experience.Of course standards are needed but the technology challenges us to thing through how these standards which currently operate as a one-size-fits-all program, can be transformed to refocus on what a child learns not what a child can memorize. New starndardization and assessment tools make it possible to bring to light the implicit learning that takes place with a child and helps to make it more visible, i.e. explicit to teachers who more often than not, recognize the bright child who, “just doesn’t test well.” These innovations can and will occur. Robert Stephenson from the Global Education & Learning Community has focused reasearch on in this area, focusing on the need to have bottom-up solutions rather than top-down solutions to personalize education. Philanthropy can provide funding to allow teachers to figure this out. We need to moved beyond the hubris that straddles Encylopidia Britannica that assembles the keepers of knowledge. We can and should be looking at a wikipedia type model that will invite teachers from public schools and private schools, from universities and from businesses – people from inside and outside the box – to become communities of learners who, together will make best use of these tools to make students into life-long learners.
