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8/23/16 8/23/16

One Good Question with Aylon Samouha: Is There a Silver Bullet for the Future of "School"?

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question (outlined in About) and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Thankfully, there is a lot of investment in education, both public and philanthropic dollars. The sheer quantity of investment is a clear signal – we believe that our generation plays a critical role in the future world and deserves deep investment. That siad, where does it go? There are lots of human capital investments that funders are making in all sorts of ways to attract, evaluate, and train educators. These investments are animated by a critical need in creating great learning environments ; namely, kids need caring adults around them who are effective at teaching, coaching, motivating, etc.On the other hand, human capital funding by itself may unintentionally reinforce the idea that the only or best way for kids to learn is through teacher-centric models where students have little agency over their own learning. With School in the Cloud, Sugata Mitra challenges the role of educators in the learning process. Basically, he was a web developer who said « What would happen if I just put a computer in the wall here? In a low-income neighborhood in India. Kids started using it and they had never touched a computer before. They looked up stuff and started learning things. Then he said, let me do it somewhere where there aren’t a bunch of techies around. And this time he gave the users a question to figure out. When he asked for their feedback, they said We have to learn English in order to use it. And they actually did learn English to figure out how to keep accessing the tool!

This is an extreme but very instructive example that, with the right tools and motivations, students will self-direct their own learning. So we have to ask ourselves, is it enough to invest in human capital when the underlying traditional model, by its design, under-leverages the innate motivation of students to self-direct their learning ? And what might that say about how we conceive of their place in the world ?Another important and laudable category of investments go towards scaling good schools. This comes from a very good place and should continue – if we’re seeing a good learning environment in one place we should try to replicate that in more communities especially where educational opportunities are poor. That said, an unintended consequences of scale investments is that half-baked things grow before they’re really proven and successful operators sometimes grow faster than the quality can keep up.

Scaling education models is an efficiency play and lots of students and families have had significantly better education choices and experiences as a result of these investments. Counting and expanding quality seats is critical work. That said, what unintended narratives might animate these investments? To what extent are we saying that we need quality seats so that our students can be competitive in the global marketplace? Instead, how might we expand quality seats while reinforcing a narrative that an American student from New Orleans should be working with her brothers and sisters in China to make the world a better place and not merely trying to outcompete them? And when we scale into new communities quickly, to what extent are we going fast alone vs. going further together? This is all a tricky balancing act and I’m heartened to see so many in this work asking these questions more often and more publicly.

“Education leaders around the world are asking themselves « What’s next ? » Our industrial model of education is no longer preparing youth for today’s careers or knowledge economy. Is there a single answer, silver bullet that will emerge in the next iteration of school?”

I definitely don’t think there is a silver bullet in terms of one type of school or kind of pedagogy. But there are some very provocative ideas and shifts that I think will help us massively improve learning across the world. Right now, I’m enthralled by Todd Rose’s work and The End of Average. I won’t do his work justice but a core premise is that « any system that is trying to fit the individual is actually doomed to fail. Waking up from what he calls the « myth of average » seems critical to redesigning the traditional model which essentially holds the average student as a foundational principle. And just like there is no average student there are likewise no average communities. Taken together, we need to build models that respect and leverage the uniqueness of each student ; and, we need to scale those models and ideas in ways that communities can adopt and adapt into to fit their unique values, assets, etc. Generic, cookie-cutter replication may work for enterprises where people have very basic expectations and where the stakes are low (i.e., Starbucks, Target). We don’t want schools or learning experiences to be like that. Communities creating and adapting school models for their context – school models that provide students to adapt and create learning for themselves…maybe that’s a silver bullet?

Relatedly, I’m getting more and more excited about the potential of truly leveraging learning science to advance the way that we construct learning experiences. Research on learning and motivation point to new insights every year -- and we need to systematically use these insights in real daily learning environments! To do this right now, educators – who are already stretched in terms of capacity – would need to wade through endless research papers, discern the usable knowledge and then figure out how to apply that knowledge with students. What would it mean for us to systematically create the bridge between research and application? What if people designing learning experiences could benefit from and contribute to an ever-growing learning agenda for the field ? What if more learning engineers were building and iterating school model components based in the science that educators could readily adapt into their communities? Ok, maybe that’s another silver bullet after-all!

Aylon’s One Good Question: How can we ensure that schools are wildly motivating for all students?

Aylon Samouha is Co-Founder of Transcend Education, a national non-profit committed to building the future’s schools today. Transcend works with school operators across the district, charter, and independent school sectors. They provide and develop world-class R&D capacity that supports visionary education leaders to build and replicate breakthrough learning environments. The co-founders and founding board members published Dissatisfied, Yet Optimistic to put forward their theory of change.Prior to co-founding Transcend, Aylon was an independent designer providing strategy and design services to education organizations, schools, and foundations. Most recently, Aylon has been leading the “Greenfield” school model design for the Achievement First Network, which is being piloted in the 2015-16 school year. He also led the field research for Charter School Growth Fund and the Clay Christensen Institute for the 2014 publication, "Schools and Software: What's Now, What's Next". In 2013, Aylon pioneered the Chicago Breakthrough Schools Fellowship in conjunction with New Schools for Chicago, NGLC, and the Broad Foundation.

7/29/16 7/29/16

America Already has Integrated Schools — Here's How We Can Have More.

In his Will America ever have integrated schools ? blog post yesterday, Neerav Kingsland asked for ways to better understand the story for school integration advocacy. Here at One Good Question, I’m usually talking to other people about their perspectives, but since I spend a lot of time wondering about his question myself, I have a few thoughts to share.Dear Neerav,I love that you’re thinking about this from personal, policy, and practical perspectives ! I am a firm believer that no culture is monolithic, so to be fair, there are parents all over the country, who go to great lengths to live in integrated neighborhoods and/or enroll their children in integrated schools, like this recent study of DCPS demonstrates. We could provide personal testimony from thousands of Black, White, and Latinx parents who advocate for integrated schools and related civil rights/social justice equity in their communities. For the sake of this conversation, let’s assume that you don’t mean them. Let's also assume that we're only talking about high-quality education — no one is advocating that we send children to low-performing schools for diversity's sake.

Top-down policy does not create lasting change when the people living through the change are oppositional.

We definitely see that, as court-mandated integration programs end, most communities revert back to segregated schooling. We have bright spots in places like Wake County, North Carolina where the community – White and Black students & families – advocated to maintain their integrated school options after the court mandates ended. In St. Louis majority-white school district leaders maintained their commitment to their desegregation program for 10 years after the court mandate ended. Those decisions take personal conviction and local advocacy/political support. You could also look to communities like Tucson Unified (no pun intended) that achieved unitary status after 30 years of court oversight (it is a long, hard battle), and still needs an ongoing comprehensive plan to remove the traces of the forced segregation in their past. A scalable solution has to include ways to build public will and shift personal attitudes about diversity.

Location, location, location.

To your point that “White parents won’t send their children to poor neighborhoods” Frankenberg and Debray (2011) also argue that we should focus integrated school efforts on deconcentrating low-income housing and starting the work in more affluent communities. White families wouldn’t have to “send their children to poor neighborhoods,” Black/Brown kids wouldn’t have to be bused all over town, districts/coalitions wouldn’t incur the exorbitant cost of said busing, and the community would avoid the White Flight tipping point that happens in more racially tense/fragile mixed communities. I don’t know that any place is actually trying this, but it’s an interesting position.New schools – district or charter – that are intentional about their diverse population are just as intentional about location. I’m most encouraged by the strategy at Rhode Island Mayoral Academies where they locate schools on the borders of the stratified communities that they intend to serve. No one has to leave their greater neighborhood for a quality, diverse education. That's a scalable practice that districts/regions could implement when they create neighborhood school assignment zones.

Rural bright spots.

For the long-term integration argument, I would actually be more focused on census projections. Not in the antagonistic – White people you’re going to be the minority by 2044 ! way, but in the spirit that, if we don’t figure out scalable solutions to integration, our society will implode. I would look to our rural communities, like Beardstown, IL and Carthage, MO, as bellwethers over urban examples. Rural communities are becoming majority-minority at a faster rate than the nation, have relatively few financial resources to respond to the shift, and are using school integration to address the community’s needs.

We’re in a catch-22 here.

What makes resistant families more apt to support school integration ? Positive experience with school integration. To go back to the DCPS study, when everything is equal, families are more likely to choose integrated and high-performing schools. Get the public school quality right, get the location right, launch local campaign on the academic and social benefits of New XXXXX School model and many diverse parents will come.Creating diverse schools as the new normal will take generations, but it is incumbent upon us to promote such integration now. Sustainability of diverse schools and diverse communities requires that the people who live in them have a shared value. What's the best place to teach those shared values on a large scale? Our public schools.Looking forward,Rhonda

1/12/16 1/12/16

One Good Question with Tony Monfiletto: Are the Right People in the Education Redesign Process?

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Our investment in accountability structure and high-stakes standardized testing reveals the fact that adults think of kids as problems to be solved, rather than assets to be nurtured. In Jal Mehta’s, The Allure of Order, he outlines how the investment in accountability at the back end of the system is an effort to make up for the fact that we haven’t invested as aggressively in the front end. We don’t put enough time, energy or strategy into good school design, preparation of teachers, or capital development. Because we don’t put enough resources into those areas, we try to make up for it in accountability structures.

“From substitute teacher to education policy, you’ve worked in practically every level of education impact and have deep understanding of how all of these roles influence opportunities for all students. What is standing in the way of deeper, effective collaboration for public education in this country?”

We were working off of an old industrial model of education and when that industrial model stopped getting results, we had different expectations for what schools could do, but we never changed the design of the schools to catch up to the new expectations. When we didn’t change the design of the schools or invest in the people who could populate the new generation of schools, we started accountability structures instead. If we’re going to deal with the lack of effective design, it’s going to mean dealing with both the accountability structures to make sure that it’s rethought around clear design principles. We have to do both at the same time. You can’t have accountability structures built around industrial factory schools when that model isn’t solving the problem. You have to get both right and right, but now we’re not doing either. People are trying to deal with the metrics questions but aren’t willing to give up on the design. Even those who are thinking about innovative school design, they’re still doing it within the confines of the existing model i.e. replacing teachers with blended learning. These are add-ons, not really answering questions for what’s happening in the instruction.

“Do you think we have the right people in the conversation about school design?”

I don’t. What’s happened is that we’ve let two camps develop: traditional education interest groups/educators vs. high-stakes standards educators. The traditional camp is dominated by teacher unions, school administrators, Diane Ravitch, etc. and the high-stakes camp is dominated by those who believe in econometrics. They think that if you get the econometrics right, then align the systems and create the right incentives, everything will come out in the end. The discourse on school design is dominated by those two camps and they’re not the right people to be in the conversation. The trappings of the existing system make it difficult for both camps to imagine anything else. We need youth development advocates, neuroscientists, community leaders who are not from education sector, social service providers who understand cognitive and non-cognitive human development—those are the people who ought to be in the conversations. If we had them in the discussion and designed backwards, we’d have a much differently designed school than our current models. At Leadership High School Network in Albuquerque, we operate and founded a network of schools built around 3 pillars: learning by doing, community engagement, and 360 support for kids and families. All pillars are equally important and they all hold up the institution. What we found is, when any two of the three pillars converge, the impact for kids is exponential. It’s the convergence that creates the impact, but they have to be seen as equal partners in their work in the schools.

Tony’s One Good Question: Can we give the community a new mental model for what school can look like? And then, can we create a new assessment system that allows for people to have confidence in that new model?

Tony Monfiletto is Executive Director of New Mexico Center for School Leadership. He is a father, husband, educator, visionary, thought leader, and ambitious builder of ideas and schools. He is charming, focused, intense, productive, and deeply committed to both his work, his family, and our community. Tony grew up in Albuquerque with both parents as teachers in the South Valley, family roots in northern New Mexico as well as Chicano activism and Catholic social justice as part of his life.

12/31/15 12/31/15

The Year in Review: 10 Good Questions.

Asking the right questions is more important than having the right answers. One of my favorite parts of the fall interviews was to hear these amazingly accomplished, visionary thinkers and doers ask questions that they couldn't answer on their own. Looking forward to hearing more questions in the new year.

1. Zaki’s One Good Question : Bangladesh has made lots of progress to educate more people in our society, but we see that the system is not yet producing a respectful society. Education is about creating global peace. Are we matching what we really want to accomplish through education ? Are we missing the way that education should be defined ? (BL)

2. Saku’s One Good Question : My question is an extremely boring one: What is the point of school ? Once we answer that, then we can move on to the question of how to educate all youth. (FI)

3. Michael’s One Good Question : How much input should local, state, and federal governments have on the programmatic strategies of schools, given their variation in education goals and knowledge of effective programs ? (US)

4. Noëlle’s One Good Question : How well does our education system engage students? Ideally, I would specify "boys" rather than just "students" because boys are falling behind in Malaysia. Girls outperform boys in Maths and Science unlike international norms. And in public universities, girls account for 70% of the intake. Our education blueprint has highlighted the risk of "lost boys". It appears our education system isn't really working out for boys. Given the patriarchal expectations within conservative communities, I wonder what impact this achievement gap will have on the next generation. (MY)

5. Allan's One Good Question: Given the importance that we place on education and that we know what it takes to provide high quality education for all children, why haven’t we solved it for all children ? That’s what this country has to wrestle with. (US)

6. Alex's One Good Question: I asked this question earlier on Twitter. I’ve been thinking a lot about how our philosophy of education as parents is different/similar to our approach as educators. The places where those two perspectives are in tension are the most interesting areas for me to explore. As a parent, I value personalization, socio-emotional development and self-directed learning a lot more than I did as an educator. What do those seemingly disparate perspectives mean about high quality education for all children ? (US)

7. Marcelo's One Good Question: This is hard. My question. Of course I have children, is it possible for them to have a better future ? I am seeing here in Brazil we face immediate threats to global warming. Strong period of economic depresssion. Huge problem in education. Do they have a good future ? Thinking more globally, will they even have any place to go ? (BR)

8. Karen’s One Good Question : How can a student’s experience build on his/her fount of knowledge, both linguistic and cultural ? (US)

9. Ellen’s One Good Question: If the most critical student competencies for the future are about addressing complex problems with diverse populations, how can we better prepare teachers to do the same? (US)and the one that got us all started...

10. Rhonda's One Good Question: In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation's role in the world?

What good questions will you ask in 2016 about our world's education needs?

12/22/15 12/22/15

One Good Question with Zaki Hasan: Move Bangladesh from Fashion Economy to Thought Economy.

Zaki Hasan, (photo credit: Mr. Saikat Majumder)

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

If you talk about the philosophy of education, in Bangladesh, we’re still like 17th century Europe – an industrial country focused on economic equities : jobs, food, survival. We’re not talking about which common social values the world should have. After I earn the money in my skilled job, do I understand the value of human life in this world ? Unfortunately, what happens when there is not enough employment or job security, people turn to unethical means to survive. There must be some global values system that we start talking about in education. Will that not be the number one problem when we’re trying to kill each other not from lack of money but due to lack of accepting diversity ? Who will solve this ? The medical system will not. The political system will not. Only education can do this.Bangladesh is a young country. Since the independence, I broadly categorize the generations into three: the first generation questioned the injustice and owned the country’s independence, the second generation questioned autocracy and has started the journey of democracy 24 years back , and now the third generation is questioning our journey without a vision and we are heading to a bright and shiny future. This journey would only be successful when our children are equally ready through education to make the journey. This generation and generations after this need to understand the values that the previous generations had started building this country on i.e. justice and democracy, which must continue to improve in creating a society based on equity.We need a different education investment framework and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals give us a reasonable starting point. There are some missing focuses though. For example, in the next 15 years, when we talk about basic literacy, it has to take into account how differently we have started communicating by using technology than what it had been so far in the form of in person communication and written scripts. The long discussed issue of digital divide is becoming a much more complex issue in the coming days. For example, a person with post-graduation education from Bangladesh today might have less exposure to new technologies than a typical elementary school child in the US. There has to be more investment in education, especially in the methods of communication, to decrease such the global achievement gap. The developed countries still have a lot to improve, but they are still focused on their immediate crisis of economic survival than equally having social value creation and even equally important aspect of transforming our children into thought leaders. Least developed countries need a radical restructuring of education. We’ll stay stuck in factories and providing good clothes to wear, but developing countries will continue to rise in thought economy. We have to change the education system to allow people to think freely and creatively.

“In Bangladesh, you've been instrumental in growing global education programming. How effective are western innovations/models in improving education gains in Bangladesh? Are there other US education initiatives that would advance education access?”

My visits to public, community schools in US were bittersweet. Children there have an assurance that they can go to school in their area. Common Core State Standards had just been rolled out and it was wonderful to see that federal and state system have agreed to core common standards and still had the freedom to apply them in their own way. The most beautiful moments I had were observing student-teacher interactions. I visited Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy and, at first, I couldn’t understand the role of the teacher and the student. Sometimes the student was leading the class and the teacher was in the back of the room. The roles seemed interchangeable and that made me happy.Here, going to school is like winning a lottery ticket. Even if you get access to a school, you cannot assure that the quality is maintained. In the classroom, many teachers are not trying to make learning interesting, they are trying to ‘teach’ children instead of making children interested to ‘learn’. Education can be important to empower students to take control of the class. The classroom environment that I saw in the US is something that would be beautiful. No one wants to feel inferieor, not even your 3 year old child. I don’t know how it happened in the US and how it could happen in Bangladesh. If the US reached consensus on CCSS in 2012, maybe we can do it here by 2022. If we can shift to more inclusive pedagogy, especially children-focused learning, the next generation will believe that more is possible in all schools.

Zaki’s One Good Question : Bangladesh has made lots of progress to educate more people in our society, but we see that the system is not yet producing a respectful society. Education is about creating global peace. Are we matching what we really want to accomplish through education ? Are we missing the way that education should be defined?

Zaki Hasan is currently serving as the Executive Director (ED) of Underprivileged Children’s Educational Programs Bangladesh (UCEP).He has worked in various sub-sectors of education including Technical Education, Early Childhood Development, Primary Education, Secondary Education, Adult Education, Girls Education and ICT-aided Education. He has been member in various boards and committees on issues/organizations involved in education. He has numerous publications including editor of more than 20 children books. He was also the founding Country Director of Room to Read Bangladesh. He has worked for several other non-profit international organizations such as Save The Children, ActionAid, and Helen Keller Intl. Zaki Hasan is an Eisenhower Fellow.

12/15/15 12/15/15

One Good Question with Saku Tuominen: Next 100 Years of Finnish Education.

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

What education expenditures tell us about Finland : we invest significantly in education because everyone in Finland feels it’s important. However, the discussion we refuse to have is why ? What is the essence of education, the purpose of schools?In Finland, we love solid hard work, but we tend to be risk-averse in our work, reacting to crisis well, but not developing longer vision when systems function well. I feel that even our Prime Minister should take the opportunity of our new curriculum to be visionary, and ask four essential questions to inform how we redesign education in our country :

What are the skills kids should learn at school ?
How should they learn those skills ?
Who should be the people facilitating the learning process ? Is it teachers and teachers only ? What is the role of young people ? Old people ? Companies ? Parents ?
Where should the learning take place ? Should it be only in schools ? In the city ? In the parks ? In society ? Via internet platforms ?

Based on the answers to these questions, then we should ask what governments, companies, and cities are responsible for doing to recreate our education ecosystem.

“In your Scool project, you've identified the biggest need as helping schools change and providing platforms for change at the student, teacher, school, and system level. Why do you think it can be difficult for schools to adopt change? What are the early learnings about where change is most impactful — at the student, teacher, classroom, school, or system level?”

In order for human beings to change, they must first believe that change is possible. In this case, we must believe that we can change the way we educate and how our schools are structured. Then we have to have the courage, the mental toughness and resources to do the work of change.We ask ourselves how we can be certain that the new things we try in schools will work. Well, the honest answer is that we don’t yet know, but how can we be certain that the things we do in schools today are relevant from the perspective of 2030 ? We don´t know that either. The best way to encourage change is to redefine failure. We are trying new things and none of the outcomes are failure if we’re learning from the results. In 2016, Finland will launch a new curriculum that includes freedom for teachers and schools to define teaching, but there has been no discussion about the evaluation system. This ambiguity fosters a disincentive to actually try anything new. If schools or teachers take the freedom to teach curiosity and creativity, but then students are only measured on maths and physics, there’s an inherent tension.With the Scool project, our mission is to help schools change. Culturally, not enough Finns are risk-takers and entreprenuers. Although the new curriculum encourages more teacher freedom, not all teachers are likely to exercise it. We need to do a massive empowerment campaign for teachers, showing them that it’s great to take risks, to make « mistakes. » The HundrED project of Scool is designed to support teachers risk-taking by giving them the best platforms to share new ideas and best practices in classrooms just like theirs.During our site visits across Finland, we’ve been to schools that are doing amazing things with average budgets. In one school, a teacher refuses to give any grades to any students, students themselves are giving the grades. The biggest problem is that the best kids hesitate to give themselves the best grades that they deserve. In another school, the teachers no longer purchase educational materials, and instead, they are creating their own with students. Teachers help guide the content and the context for book-making about the topic of study. In some instances, they may even sell the books to others as resources. In a third school, students took responsibility for a bullying problem. The school decided to take teachers completely out of the equation and gave the responsibility of solving this problem to the oldest students in the primary school. As a result of the student-led interventions, all of the difficulties disappeared. This is the area that is getting me most excited. Because if you can tell these stories of success within the same regular conditions, it gives more credit for other schools to try something new. These three examples illustrate the essence of the future of schools : putting students at the center of problem-solving for their own learning.What’s the key commonality in these schools ? It’s like what happens in any great company—you have to have a great principal in place. One teacher can make changes in one class, but over time it becomes more complicated. It’s all about principal leadership, because they inspire teachers to try innovations, and then they celebrate and share the gains that teachers have made with the greater community.

Saku’s One Good Question : My question is an extremely boring one: What is the point of school ? Once we answer that, then we can move on to the question of how to educate all youth.

Saku Tuominen is co-founder and creative director of Idealist Group : Entrepreneur, innovator, creative director, executive producer, author, keynote speaker, curator, olive oil producer, right wing (in ice hockey). I dream and do. Idealist Group is a production company of ideas, a platform for everything I do. The mission of the company is to improve the world with bold ideas that are executed well. At the moment Idealist Group concentrates on three main areas: the future of education, office work and video.

12/8/15 12/8/15

One Good Question with Dr. Michael Goetz: How school Spending Impacts Change.

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

The biggest myth is that education can cure all social ills. Given the diversity of the population, it’s not possible to equalize outcomes when the inputs are so different. That said, I think it’s the greatest goal of the education system and should in fact be promoted with new effort. Therefore, schools districts and states and the federal government should continue to close gaps based on socio-economic class, as well as the conscious and unconscious racism and sexism inherent in our culture.

“Happily, those programmatic strategies that help all children learn, have the greatest effect on those struggling to learn, including the disenfranchised youth, that is : a focus on intensive, embedded teacher professional development, tutoring and other extra help strategies for struggling students, and early interventions, such as quality preK programs should top the lists in most schools. These programs have shown the most impact on academic growth.”

For decades, the US education funding system has been designed to ameliorate the academic and social inequalities produced by our economic and cultural disparities. Our federal, state, and local funding system all contribute to priority in different ways. Federal funding, such as Headstart and Title I, and state/local funding formulas are designed to subsidize needs of low-income and/or marginalized groups. Despite their design, these funds don’t necessarily perform in the ways that the public assumes. For example, the formula built for Title I funds includes a geographical sparsity index, which means that more funds per student may go to Wyoming than to inner city LA. There is a similar disparity with state financing that links to property wealth. State formula funds are allocated to counteract the property wealth of local municipalities. In the 80s, states began spending more money on education than local governments. Since states were « purchasing » education at a higher rate, they felt more entitled to have a say about what happens in schools. Essentially, these funding inequities compelled states to introduce standards based movements. Standards and accountability based movements at the federal level show disparities between and within states as well as between and within districts and schools.

“Often, we use our preconceived notions about education outcomes to inform our decisions. What are the biggest myths about how education works in the US, that we continue to fund? What could be possible for education outcomes if we shifted our funding away from X and did Y instead?”

The other big myth is that the sheer existence of additional funds can help cure education shortcomings. School finance experts debate all the time whether more money matters. But all of us agree that how money is used matters. For example, in every economics research study, I ask a group of teacher leaders what they need to bring struggling students up to par. The answer is always an additional program and it's always 20% more funding than they currently receive. We have returned to the same community after a decade of the program implementation and they ask for another 20% budget increase ! What happens is that they take the new funds and use them to reinforce existing programs and services instead of restructuring their expenditures.

They supplement vs. supplant? Yes, you’re on the right track. What they’re doing is taking the money and applying it to things that they already do. When a school or district’s programs are not producing results, more of the same does not lead to improvement : redistribution of current resources and infusing of new, evidence-based programming is the smarter decision.
So what should schools ask for ? Most educators and education lobbyists approach funding requests from a loss mindset : we have endured budget cuts and we want you to restore our full funding. When educators understand what achievement students will make as a direct result of the new program, they can make needs-based asks. If awarded an extra $4,000, I will be able to graduate one more student, because that’s the proven result of ABC program.Statistically, we know many programs, when implemented well, impact student achievement for all students, such as intensive embedded teacher professional development, which requires full-time instructional coaching, and introduction of certified teachers as tutors. Those are two of the most effective strategies and the hardest ones to implement with fidelity. What education economists will tell you is that if you don’t mandate implementation, you likely will not see positive academic outcomes because resources will be used for the existing programming. We suggest that states start with no mandates and then look at the schools that are not performing. If they haven’t implemented these strategies yet, then start slowly mandating the interventions—start with instructional coaches in year 1, then maybe certified tutors.
What should districts and schools stop funding ? This is highly controversial, but what continues to elude me is how many facets of life the schooling system attempts to take part. Schooling should be good at educating students to standards. This is their priority. Rhetorically, « why are schools in the business of transportation, food service, security, medical care, and athletics ? » I’m not saying that these are not useful periphery services to academics, but I do suggest schools should be focusing on what they do best : educate students. These perifery services may take place on campus, but I question whether the education system should be directly responsible. I do not expect superintendents to lay concrete at the new school, but I do expect the superintendent to contract out this service to a reputable company that actually has experience laying concrete. This is what people would be calling community involvement in education. Struggling schools should cut out all athletics from their school and move to community-based sports teams. This will increase community involvement for athletics and be aligned with international practices. Economically, it may create a surplus to fund necessary academic interventions or it may not. However, it would allow schools to get on with educating students.

Michael’s One Good Question: How much input should local, state, and federal governments have on the programmatic strategies of schools, given their variation in education goals and knowledge of effective programs?

Dr. Michael Goetz is the Executive Director of Research on Social and Educational Change (RSEC). Clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Picus Odden and Associates, Council for Better Education, Foundation for Child Development, National Academies, National Center for Innovation in Education, and several legislative and gubernatorial committees.Dr. Goetz received a B.A. in Educational Studies from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at University of Wisconsin—Madison. He received a Wisconsin-Spencer Doctoral Research Program Fellowship, a dissertation grant from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the American Education Finance Association (AEFA) New Scholar Award.

12/1/15 12/1/15

One Good Question with Noelle Lim: What STEAM Could Mean for Malaysia.

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

In Malaysia, education takes the lion share in the government budget, so it's clear the government is fairly serious about it. One reason is cultural, our society prizes good education, and another is that Malaysia relies on foreign investments, so it's an open economy that needs to have a globally competent workforce.Parents are serious about education too. For example, in Malaysia and developed countries of Asia, it's a norm for parents with the means to pay for their child to attend supplementary classes conducted by private tutors. However, I think parents pay for these classes, not in hope their child will become the next Nobel Prize winners, but to pass the national exams with straight As. It's assumed that if you do this, you can perhaps win a scholarship or get a place in a good university, and you'll be set for life.

“During your Eisenhower Fellowship, you came to the States to learn more about education entrepreneurship. How will your school design reflect learning and innovation from both countries?”

The PISA rankings show that Malaysia's education system is in the bottom one third (yet neighbor Singapore is number one), and TIMSS show that Malaysia is below average international standards (it was above average in the 1990s). It appears to be an uphill task for Malaysia to catch up. I don't think we need to aspire to be number one, but aim to be in the top quartile. And I think we're capable of doing that because our society values education.Malaysian schools needs to upgrade the content of what they are teaching. For instance, an online, centralized database of teaching notes with suggested pedagogy and updates could help the schools.Secondly, the current method of teaching in Malaysia, and indeed still in many countries, is done in silo. We don't help students connect dots, and there's a push for STEM in Malaysia. I believe the focus has to shift to STEAM instead and subjects to be taught in an interdisciplinary way. Finding solutions to complex problems in the world requires a more comprehensive way of thinking, and a combination of science and arts/humanities. Innovations too, for example the iPad is a marriage of tech prowess and design.In the States, I visited two schools that are shifting from STEM to STEAM and incorporating more holistic offerings such as entrepreneurship and liberal arts : North Carolina Math & Science and Illinois Mathematics & Science Academy. I chose those schools because the Ministry of Education from Singapore and Chinese frequently visit them. These public schools have strong academic performance, particularly in STEM, and selective admissions. At the North Carolina campus, the chancellor Todd Roberts, has a degree in English and believes in a well-rounded education. Illinois Math & Science is developing an entrepreneurship thread. They are mobilizing their alumni base and drawing them in to mentor students and provide internships in start-ups in Chicago. These are gradual processes, to move towards STEAM instructional expectations.Two questions that I asked almost all schools I visited were « What is the purpose of a school? What is the purpose of education? » Apart from ensuring children are literate and know their sums, I believe it's about helping the student discover a range of possible interests and to help the child choose which path to pursue and to arm him with the relevant information. This means schools have to give the child opportunities to work on projects of personal interests like capstone projects. Once the child finds his interest, there is no looking back. Many successful people I've interviewed, say that what they do is their passion and luck of course helps. Either they found their passion by accident or were drawn to it by a mentor. I think schools can play a bigger role in helping children find their passion.I also believe schools should produce people who will develop the agency, aptitude and desire to want to solve complex problems. It's not just to pass exams, but to create the next generation of scientists, artists, makers, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

Noëlle’s One Good Question : How well does our education system engage students? Ideally, I would specify "boys" rather than just "students" because boys are falling behind in Malaysia. Girls outperform boys in Maths and Science unlike international norms. And in public universities, girls account for 70% of the intake. Our education blueprint has highlighted the risk of "lost boys". It appears our education system isn't really working out for boys. Given the patriarchal expectations within conservative communities, I wonder what impact this achievement gap will have on the next generation.

Noelle Lim is a presenter and producer with BFM 89.9, Malaysia’s only business radio station, and heads its education division, BFM Business School. She is interested in the intersection of media, education, and technology. During her Eisenhower Fellowship, she investigated innovations in high school curriculum and pedagogy to inform her plan to start a school and to launch a project that prepares and connects low-income students in Malaysia and Southeast Asia to the best schools in the US, UK and Australia.

11/19/15 11/19/15

Tensions in Formal vs. Informal Education Solutions.

During the break-out sessions at the GNF Women’s Forum, I participated in “Leaders as entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs as leaders” and “Innovations & challenges in education” and was pleasantly surprised to hear how the conversations blended so seamlessly. Entrepreneurs from around the globe raised questions about the role of formal education in preparing youth to lead. “How can we teach our students differently? How can they learn to harness the opportunities in their environment? How can they learn to be entrepreneurs? In Africa, we can’t create jobs for all of our people. I wish that there was a way for the schools to give them the skills to create jobs for themselves. How can we give skills to students to make them more self-sufficient?”One of our facilitators, Irina Anghel-Enescu (EF, Romania), is on the jury for Global Teacher Prize and asked us directly if we thought the entrepreneurial ecosystem would be improved if educators taught these skills explicitly. All of the finalists for last year’s prize shared an entrepreneurial spirit—they created new models, founded schools, and expanded education access. While they are all highly impactful teachers in their parts of the world, what set them apart was their entrepreneurial mindset and how they took the initiative to change outcomes for all of their students.

There is a growing debate about the role of formal education vs. informal education to prepare this generation for the future. When our conversation took an overly critical turn of formal education, Pilvi Torsti (EF, Finland) of Helsinki International Schools reminded us that these are not competitions. Me & My City is a Finnish example of how formal and informal education partner in the best interest of learning. We have to invest in both levels for deep national or systemic change. She shared that Finland’s decision to invest in education was made when it was a poor agrarian country. Pilvi encouraged us to invest in our human capital now. All sectors need to make conscious decisions to value formal education and integrate role models from other sectors into the sphere.Our panel during the “Innovation in education” session continued to explore this tension. Bernardine Vester (EF, New Zealand) gave an overview of how the marketization and commodification of education has impacted New Zealand and asked what the growing privatization of education means for equity and inclusion. Amr AlMadani (EF, Saudi Arabia) shared his start-up success for how deep, intentional partnership of informal education (robotics and STEM competitions) and formal education is reinvigorating student interest and parent support in his country. Maria Guajardo (Kellogg Fellow, Japan) brought in cross-cultural perspectives on leadership and women’s empowerment. Common threads across their diverse experiences: formal education alone does not change social practices, expectations, or real-world outcomes.

“What’s missing is not the tools. Everybody is watching, but nothing is changing. Passion and love of the game is missing.” – Amr AlMadani

In Saudi Arabia, education has a high cultural value and high government investment (25% of budget towards formal education), yet those two high-level alignments have not inspired passion-filled teaching and learning. Instead of blaming teachers, parents, or cultural practices, Amr decided to offer a solution to the passion question and inspire learning and positive parent participation.Maria inspired our group conversation with her One Good Question : As we become more globalized, how do we lead across differences? How does leadership look the same or different? For her, the question of intersection—where leadership development intersects with culture and tradition— is essential. Education has to be the vanguard for leadership change.Like in every group of education thought leaders, our participants challenged each other to consider different lenses:

On questions of feminization and devaluation of formal education: It’s the economy, stupid. How can we look at the curve of where education attainment and economics meet (personal earnings and GDP)?
On questions of the role of women in formal leadership spaces: The perception of being a leader is different in various cultural contexts. You can be a leader outside of the home and inside of the home.
On equality/inclusion: Can we explore this more? Urbanization and growth of the middle class are all supporting the privatization of education. Does it have to be a negative view or is it an opportunity for more people to come to education? Making the whole system public doesn’t seem realistic at this moment at all.
On informal education: Are there growing demands within our countries where privates are stepping in to fill the gaps? Particularly where the state has failed minority/marginalized populations? Are we seeing this growth and is it a long-term positive trend?
In NZ we moved from social democratic state to one more focused on markets. I have not given up on public education, which is why I’m working with a nonprofit group to insure that t the best teachers end up in the schools with the highest poverty needs. The rising social inequalities arise out of the growing tendency to commodify education and marketize it. It’s no use trying to hold back the tide. How do you use the process to ensure that those who have the least get the most potential? Their potential is our future. Most of the students in Auckland are no longer white and middle class. They’re brown. WE have to do something about it.

11/10/15 11/10/15

One Good Question with Marcelo Knobel: General Studies Reform for Brazil's Universities.

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

Sometimes there is an investment but the priorities are completely wrong. In Brazil we have significant investments--- the government pays for K-12 and university education for all students -- , but the priorities are not leading us to strong education outcomes. Our system and needs are really complex, but there are two existing investments that could be better leveraged for change : value of the teacher as professional and scalability of non-governmental education organizations. Our teachers are underpaid and not well-prepared for the work, and society provides no incentive to be a professor, or positive value of the profession. To change that, for the next generation, it’s necessary to have a really smart and fast plan to change this situation. This is where scalability of non-governmental organizations matters. There are philanthropic and social investment efforts here, but they aren’t as well developed as in the US. It’s difficult to keep an ONG runnning. There are a few ONGs run by the civil society or wealthy families, but their impact is very small in comparison to the need. Fundaçao Lemann is making some interesting programs, but the number of people that these programs can impact is small. Brazil should have 1,000 organizations like this, but we maybe have only 10. Scaling the impact of our ONGs would reach a much broader population than we can do currently.

“In your upcoming book, you posit that Brazilian higher education would benefit from offering general Liberal Arts Colleges among existing post-secondary institutions. What void will Liberal Arts Colleges fill and how will they transform access and success for the greater population?”

My main concern is to advocate for the cause of General Education in university. In Brazil 43% of the population completes high school, but only 12% has a post-secondary degree[1], so we’re already dealing with an elite population. The benefits for these elite is very clear—better salaries, better jobs. In our university system, we currently have no general education or liberal arts course requirements. When a student tests to enter university, they are only applying to a specific career strand : medicine, education, chemistry, accounting, etc. It may seem like a minor detail but it’s not. Some careers are extremely difficult to access. At UNICAMP for example, less than 1% of applicants are accepted into the medical program. If you are accepted and after one month you don’t like this course of study, you have to drop-out of university and start all over for the next year. A general studies or liberal arts base would allow students to experiment and learn more about specific industries before making a commitment to one of them.In the real world when companies hire engineers, they provide a 6 months training period for the specific content in that position. The ideal candidates are excellent learners and problem-solvers first, then content experts. Ususally companies prefer to hire people who can think outside of the box and have certain soft skills that we don’t learn here in Brazil at all. General education has been in place in the US for years. In the global market, companies and countries like China, Singapore, and Hong Kong are in search of more well-rounded professionals who can deal with problems and learn how to solve them across multiple disciplines. If you’re learning only content in university, within 10 years your content may be outdated.ProFIS created at UNICAMP is a hybrid of my general education vision. This is a pilot that I would like to see the entire university adopt. We recruit the best students from the local public high school, who wouldn’t normally attend university. On average 80% of students are living in poverty and 90% are first generation in the university. We’re automatically increasing social inclusion by making a space for these students in university.Even when these students are the best in their schools, they still have strong gaps in their basic education. ProFIS anticipates and supports academic and socio-economic gaps with an army of staff and resources: the best professors in university volunteer to teach in ProFIS, Teaching Assistants provide extra tutoring, Social Workers help with problems at home—if students don’t show up for one week, we call the home to get them back, and we pay students a minimum wage to prevent them from dropping out because they need to earn money for their family. Fifty percent of our students continue on to traditional university studies.The problem is that ProFIS is only a tiny drop in the bucket. We can only admit 120 students per class (about 10% of applicants) but we have thousands who have this need. If this program could be replicated in 100 universities, it could start making a difference. We need advocacy with the university system, the legislature, and large employers. If employers are clamoring for this particular employee profile with a well-rounded education, then our country will make changes. Politicians need to advocate the change. Universities need to replicate. We also need to educate the general population to know that this can exist so that they can demand it. My upcoming book will show how this is possible and trending all over the world. Brazil is out of alignment with this trend and we should make a difference to catch up.Read more here about the ProFIS model and impact.

Marcelo's One Good Question: This is hard. My question. Of course I have children, is it possible for them to have a better future ? I am seeing here in Brazil we face immediate threats to global warming. Strong period of economic depression. Huge problem in education. Do they have a good future ? Thinking more globally, will they even have any place to go ?[1] from BRAZIL – Country Note – Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators

Marcelo Knobel is Director of the Brazilian National Nanotechnology Laboratory (LNNano), of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (University of Campinas, UNICAMP). From 2002 to 2006 he coordinated de Núcleo de Desenvolvimento da Criatividade (Creativity Development Center, NUDECRI), of UNICAMP and from 2006 to 2008 he was the Executive Director of the Science Museum, also at UNICAMP. He was the Vice-President for Undergraduate Programs from 2009 to 2013. He was a 2007 Eisenhower Fellow to the US taking a deeper look at scientific culture and the popularization of science via science museums.

10/27/15 10/27/15

One Good Question with Ellen Moir: What's Trust Got to Do With It?

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

"In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

First, let us acknowledge the world that we thought our kids would inherit. We are finally getting out of the past, in which we designed our schools to train kids to grow up and work in factories. We are finally investing in preparing kids for the future (or, at least as far as we can envision it)—a future society and economy that requires meaningful connection, trusting relationships, and creativity to solve the increasingly complex problems we’ll face.In some ways, we’re trying to hold tight to the reins of defining what the next generation’s role will be. We’re trying to define it by applying our current frameworks, e.g., what our current jobs, economy, relationships, and geopolitical context look like. In reality, though, we can’t really define it for this generation. They’ll define it themselves. They’re already starting to do that by pushing our (adults’) thinking on how people learn, how people form meaningful connections with each other, and what innovation and social change looks like. Teachers are shifting their practice to meet the needs of this generation. What if we shifted what schools looked like to better meet those needs, too?We’re preparing kids to grapple with complex problems by investing in teachers who can build their critical thinking and empathy skills. Investing in those teachers mean personalized, 1:1, on-the-job support, etc. Essentially, we're teaching teachers now how to engage in trusting relationships and creative problem solving in their practice, so that they can authentically bring those experiences to life in the classroom.

“In your recent talk at the US Education Learning Forum, you spoke passionately about trust at the center of effective teacher feedback and that the complexity in improving teaching is not the "what" but more of the "why" and "how." How do you link trust with the “why” and “how” for more effective teaching?”

Trust is an essential component of the how. Building trusting relationships between new teachers and their mentors (or helping new principals build trusting relationships with their teachers) is critical in order for any of our other work to happen.We build trust by starting from a place of respect, assuming positive presuppositions, and remembering that we all share a common goal: to ensure that our students receive the best education possible. When we mentor new teachers, one of the first things we work with them on is creating a safe and positive learning environment. For teachers, building trust with their students is critical in creating a learning environment in which students respect one another and are willing to take risks in order to learn and grow.Ultimately, our work is not about telling new teachers what to teach. It’s about coaching each new teacher to find their best way to reach all students. And, teacher development needs to be contextualized and tied to student learning outcomes. In a trusting community of practice we can provide rich feedback that supports helping each teacher move up the learning line.

Ellen’s One Good Question: If the most critical student competencies for the future are about addressing complex problems with diverse populations, how can we better prepare teachers to do the same?

Ellen Moir is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the New Teacher Center (NTC), a national organization dedicated to improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers and school leaders. She is recognized as a passionate advocate for our nation’s newest teachers and for the students they teach.

9/24/15 9/24/15

Throwback Thursday: Teaching Kids Across Language Barriers.

From time to time, I feature an individual who has made a remarkable difference in the lives of our children. These education change agents care about one thing above everything else: the education of our children."When I had my vision for a school, I realized that as a parent, I am powerful. As a teacher, I am an expert. Armed with that realization, I knew I could start my own school." So says Rhonda Broussard, founder and president of the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools in St. Louis. Founded in 2009, Rhonda's unique school offers elementary school students a total language immersion experience starting in kindergarten. When her students enter their classroom, they are greeted by a teacher and classroom assistant, both fluent in the language for that school. From day one, these kids become engulfed on not just the spoken language, but the culture of the language -- which is exactly the experience Rhonda was hoping to provide.The seeds for Rhonda's school were sown from her own Louisiana creole roots. Rhonda's grandmother spoke French and always talked to Rhonda about the need to understand the culture of the French language. As a young girl, Rhonda resisted her grandmother's urgings and at 14, just as Rhonda was beginning to embrace them, her grandmother suddenly died. Rhonda still longingly speaks about how she always wanted the experience of the living community with her mother in the French world.Always drawn to education, Rhonda studied at the Washington University at St. Louis and earned a graduate degree in French Studies at New York University. Thereafter she reached her goal of becoming a teacher specializing in language immersion. She taught in New York, Connecticut, Los Angeles, Louisiana and Missouri. It was in New York where she became more and more connected with the idea of language immersion for her students. By then, Rhonda had a child of her own and longed to give her the cultural language learning experience that she never had with her own grandmother. When a friend from graduate school exposed Rhonda to a language immersion program in New York, Rhonda began to research those schools. Soon, Rhonda relocated to St. Louis and after many inquiries, was surprised to learn that there were no language immersion programs in St. Louis. When it became clear that she could not follow her passion inside the traditional school system, Rhonda explored using the state's charter school law to create her innovative school.At present, Rhonda offers Spanish, French and Chinese to her young students. She expects to grow those language offerings to include Japanese, German, Russian, Arabic and Farsi. While her school currently is K-4, she will add a new grade each year until she reaches her goal of K-12. Rhonda's school is incredibly diverse, in every sense of the word. Fifty-six percent of the students are on free or reduced lunch and the racial demographic is 54 percent African American, 29 percent white and 9 percent Hispanic. Walking through the halls of Rhonda's school is an amazing experience. In one classroom, I was greeted by a blonde-haired 5 year-old kindergarten student who described for me in French what the class was doing for the day. Since I had no idea what she was saying, she repeated her words in English. Thereafter, a young African American girl spoke to me in Spanish about an experiment her class was working on as I walked into the classroom. When shefinished, she noticed the dumbfounded look on my face. Whereupon, her teacher gently reminded the girl, "Now, please say it again in English for our guest." We then walked into the Chinese language classroom. Well, you get the idea.Throughout the tour, the love between students and teachers was palpable. When I mentioned this to Rhonda after I noticed the way she calmly made a couple of rambunctious boys walk quietly to their class, she said"We shower our children with care and love. Unfortunately, too many children come from homes filled with tension. Even some well-intentioned parents discipline their children by using threats. We don't threaten our students. We use love as the lever for teaching, learning, discipline, for everything."Well said, Rhonda. And thanks for running a great school for kids.This article was written by Kevin Chavous and originally published in his blog on Huffington Post.

9/2/15 9/2/15

One Good Question

"I want to ask one good question."That's all? I can ask one good question now. That's what I thought when I heard my colleague share her intellectual goal for the new school year. I had no idea how difficult it would be to ask my students one good question, a question that wasn't leading, that didn't tip my hand or reveal my beliefs, that didn't force students to defend a single position, nor one that allowed them to respond solely with anecdote and opinion.In the fall of 2003 I was working with new peers in the second year of Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Queens, NY. This was the year that would challenge my teaching forever. Over ten years later, I'm still challenging myself to ask one good question. My work in international education has changed, but the need for good questions remains. In this blog I will be exploring international education and access for all students through multiple lenses, but all with the same question: In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation's role in the world?Spoiler alert: I am completely biased. My education career is built on ways that we are increasing access and opportunity for all students to connect with the world outside of their local neighborhood: multilingualism, cross-cultural and intercultural competencies, international perspectives, peace-building, youth action and agency, socio-economic diversity. I look forward to having my assumptions challenged and learning innovative ways that different countries, communities, and schools are answering this question.