One Good Question

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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.

12/8/15 12/8/15

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

“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.

11/24/15 11/24/15

One Good Question with Allan Golston: Investing in Instruction Matters Most.

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

I believe that our investments reveal that the next generation is obviously the future. Our future depends on how well we prepare our students, regardless of their background. Demographic population in this country is shifting in dramatic ways – the next generation will need to be socially mobile and solve the world problems of the future and do it with fundamental skill sets—think critically, solve problems, and apply knowledge in complex ways. One way that we believe this is possible, is through high quality education. High quality education only happens if it’s supported by great teachers. Fundamentally, this is why we invest in education : access to a high quality education that prepares young people for their future- career or post-secondary studies and then career--- we think that is mission critical.The Gates Foundation’s education strategies are prioritized and focus heavily on the investment in professional development. We would frame that in our work as feedback on teacher effectiveness. What’s clear from our experiences and the research is that, what happens between a teacher and student in the classroom is one of the most important investments that you can make that drives student outcomes. Once you say that, then that means that you have to focus on instruction. If you focus on instruction, how do you dramatically improve and sustain high quality instruction so that it benefits all kids ? That means : feedback for teachers, and personalized PD for teachers that helps them improve their practice. If you look at the foundations’ investments, that is one of the critical paths and one of our top three education priorities.

“During your opening at the US Education Learning Forum, you spoke eloquently about the education caste system that you experienced in your Denver high school. Do you think that it's possible to eliminate that in the US and if so, what change does that require?”

I do think it’s possible. Several reasons that I know it’s possible, is that we see it working in certain places and that gives us a lot of confidence that we can do this. If you think about education as an equalizer, but then access to high quality education isn’t accesible to all, then education itself becomes a cause of inequity. Education for too many of our young people depends on zip codes and parent income levels. It’s a huge problem and yet we know what it takes to solve it. If you look at where it’s working across the country, students are thriving and achieving. The four things that we believe makes it possible :

high expectations for all students, coupled with
great teaching that is sustainable for all teachers and all kids,
more personalized education for all students, and
where students and educators are at the core, driving the learning.

After a recent learning trip in eastern rural Kentucky, a resource-limited area further devastated by the decline of the coal industry, these principles were borne out in clear ways. What I was struck by most was seeing the fourth principle in action. Educators in this community were at the core of the work and they were unwavering in their responsibilities to students. I contrasted this with many visits to urban resource-limited areas, where often times you hear educators say that they don’t believe all kids can learn. They list a litany of realities (poverty, hunger, parent absenteeism), that almost fall in the conversation as excuses. Yet in eastern Kentucky, down to the individual stakeholder, everyone refused to accept those same conditions as excuses and demonstrated the « whatever it takes » attitude : data-driven, iterating with students, deeply involved in student growth and incremental growth and support. These are things that I think are extraordinary—they know the students’ social struggles and still ensure that that family has access to food and can get basic needs met/get back on their feet, all without lowering expectations for student achievement.I think that in rural areas, there is a sense of community that you don’t see in urban settings. It’s [more] natural based on the small size of their communities—everyone knows each other. The geographic dimensions create community urgency and agency that can be very difficult to duplicate in an urban setting. I also think that when you are in a resource-constrained environment, often you have to figure out how to get things done when you know that there are no additional resources coming. In rural areas, there is no hope of resources dramatically increasing -- there won’t be a better contract or more taxes – so, in those areas, educators have to think differently. Their mindset for how to get things done more quickly takes on a different dimension.We tend to think of urban as a monolith as opposed to sum of the parts. I’ve seen in some urban areas that, when they break down their geographic footprint into smaller footprints, they can duplicate the culture of community that exists more organically in rural settings—knowing all the students and ways to come close to rural community in urban settings. I believe it’s possible.

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.

Allan C. Golston, president of the United States Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, leads the foundation’s efforts to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education that leads to success in college and their career. He oversees the U.S. Program’s major areas of investment—Education, Pacific Northwest, Special Initiatives, and Advocacy.

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.

11/17/15 11/17/15

One Good Question with Alex Hernandez: Personalized Learning and Design Thinking Matter for All Kids.

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?”

I see two big trends that guide how I think about investing philanthropy.First, we are in generational change towards school choice. No matter your politics, every family wants a say in where their children go to school. Even those who fight against other families’ right to choose schools, they consistently exercise ‘choice’ for their own children. The good news is Americans are making choices in more and more aspects of their lives and the pressure to give families a say in what happens to their children will keep growing. If we truly believe in a free public education, children should not be automatically assigned to schools based on how much rent or mortgage their parents can afford. That’s not free or equitable. That’s a price tag.Second, our society is in a relentless march towards more personalization and this will eventually impact how we organize our schools. I often think of one of our five-year-old neighbors who was an expert in trains but ‘struggled’ in school. He loved trains. He read everything he could he could get his hands on about them and had incredible content knowledge. Instead of listing all the ways he didn’t ‘fit into’ school, how could we create a school that ‘fit around’ him. Our families just need permission to hope for something better for their children. Silicon Valley’s biggest innovations are not technology solutions, they are the new business models facilitated by technology. So what will new school models look like going forward?The shift towards choice and personalization will happen over a generation but there is no turning back at this point.

“In your ThinkSchools blog, you highlight the benefits of personalized learning and design thinking as solutions to one-size-fits-all public education models. What's the relationship between the two and how can classrooms, schools, or systems take a first step to embrace that paradigm?”

My interest in personalized learning kind of happened all at once. At work, I have the privilege of visiting a number of high-performing charter, district and private schools. These schools are doing incredible work, yet, after great gains, their students seemed to be hitting these stubborn ‘ceilings’ around reading comprehension, writing, college persistence, etc.At the same time, my twins boys began kindergarten at their local neighborhood school. I observed a four-to-five year grade level spread in academic ability among the five-year-olds in their classes. Our boys attended a ‘good’ school and the teachers did many of the things I’d want to see as an educator and a parent. But it became painfully obvious that many children were not getting what they needed academically which also impacted them emotionally. One kindergartner wrote a letter to the teacher begging her to teach her some new math content while another five-year-old arrived at the conclusion that she was no good at math because everything seemed over her head.I began to wonder if squeezing the proverbial lemon harder would get us the results we wanted or if we needed some radical new approaches.I believe in personalized learning because I think we can do better than organizing school into boxes with thirty children and a teacher for thirty hours a week. I see school as more blank canvas than foregone conclusion.Design thinking is simply an approach for educators to re-think school based on deep understanding of what students and families want/need. I’m on the board of 4pt0 Schools which uses design thinking to help education entrepreneurs launch Tiny Schools. With Tiny Schools, we are rapidly testing new school concepts with students and families participating at the beginning of the design process.Now using student input may sound obvious, but, if you’ve ever created a high school schedule, you know that the deep human needs of students are at the end of a very long list of other priorities.Or take textbook adoption as an example. Committees of adults spend hours poring over textbooks even though there is little to no research showing that textbooks are effective learning tools. Plus, textbooks are insanely expensive. If the text selection process were based on how how kids actually interacted and learned from textbooks, I suspect we’d see some very different decisions being made.It’s counterintuitive, but, once you decide what your innovation is, have actual kids inform the design of your innovation. I was just at Summit Schools with Diane Tavenner, who explained that their personalized learning platform relies heavily on student input. At every turn, Summit solicits feedback from students as the ultimate end user. They built the student-facing dashboard first and then they built the teacher interface. When in doubt, you don’t seek expert judgement, you ask the kid.

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?

Alex Hernandez is a Partner at the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit that supports the growth of the nation’s best public charter schools. In that role, he leads CSGF’s Next-Generation Schools practice focused on personalized learning and school model innovation. He is a former Area Superintendent at Aspire Public Schools and joined CSGF in 2010. He taught high school math in South Los Angeles and later served as a Broad Fellow at Portland Public Schools. Before that, Alex worked for several years with JP Morgan and Disney’s venture capital arm, Steamboat Ventures. He is a graduate of Claremont McKenna and has an MBA and Masters of Education from Stanford University. He is also a columnist for EdSurge.

11/16/15 11/16/15

Developing Student Agency Improves Equity and Access.

In the summer of 2006, I moved my family from Brooklyn, New York, to St. Louis, Missouri, and began searching for the right learning community for my children and myself. On the heels of teaching in Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP), I found that most urban schools were expecting minority students from low socio-economic communities to consume knowledge and not inform it. I started my own inquiry into school design. What if we offered the most engaging, academically rigorous education to an intentionally diverse community and made it free for all students? What if all children had access to the same education as children of world leaders? If they all learned to be bilingual and see the world through different eyes? If they saw themselves as change agents in their communities now instead of waiting for others or older versions of themselves to take action?When I founded St. Louis Language Immersion Schools (SLLIS), our vision was to create a total immersion, IB continuum school network of public schools. Our first three elementary schools, The Chinese School, The French School, and The Spanish School are authorized for the Primary Years Programme (PYP), and the secondary campus, The International School has begun their candidacy for MYP. All schools represent an intentional commitment to diversity: Title I, ethnic diversity that mirrors or exceeds that of our region, language and country of origin diversity, and family composition diversity.

We expect our school community to be one where students ask, “Why are we studying this? What does it have to do with my life? I’m seven, what can I do about it?”

And our teachers respond with relevant text-life connections and extend opportunities for age-appropriate action. Our grade two students are given their first action challenge as part of their unit on rights and privileges. Teachers ask what rights the students want to advocate for. Students identify rights, who they would need to lobby (siblings? classmates? teacher? parents? administrators?), and then embark on a campaign for change. When our second and third grade cohorts make sophisticated arguments for changing the uniform policy, adding multi-stream recycling, or using lockers, our adult community encourages them and engages in real-time conversations for change.

Look where SLLIS’s staff come from!

One of our first fifth grade exhibitions opened with a student from The Spanish School asking about fear. She began with a pie chart that revealed the most common fears: clowns, barking dogs, abandoned houses, and scary movies. Number one fear? Abandoned houses. Then she adeptly shifted to a map of GIS data depicting the number of abandoned houses in our city and shared her first conclusion: this means that people are afraid to visit my neighborhood, and residents, may be afraid to come home. She then linked the census track with the highest concentration of blighted property and correlated it to personal crime that revealed higher rates of crime in these neighborhoods as well. She continued with examples of the same phenomenon in other urban areas across the country. What can we do about it? Invest in neighborhoods with services—fill the vacant properties with schools, community centers, art projects, give people something to come home to, all in the name of reducing their fears about urban communities.

Yes! This was exactly the type of reflection and attention that will prepare our urban student population for greater access and attainment of post-secondary studies and career paths.

When we talk about the success of IB World Schools in improving excellence and equity for a diverse population, let’s remember that this goes beyond performance metrics. What are the ways in our schools and classrooms where low-income and/or minority students are expected to lead purposefully? Where they are confidently challenging the text, their peers, their teachers, themselves? Where they are marrying analysis and action? Let’s share the stories of students who are changing their world because of inquiry-based learning. The agency and advocacy that students develop in PYP schools is an essential step in bridging the equity gap.

11/10/15 11/10/15

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

“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.

11/3/15 11/3/15

One Good Question with Karen Beeman: How Biliteracy Supports Social Justice for All.

“Voy a una party con mi broder."

When Karen Beeman gave this example of a typical statement from a bilingual student, the room of language immersion educators nodded and smiled in agreement. We had all heard our students mix languages before. But Beeman’s point was not about the typical interlanguage that occurs during language acquisition. Her example was of children whose first language is bilingual. Kids who inherit this natural mix from their bilingual homes and communities and learn later, usually in school, to separate the two languages.In her practice at the Center for Teaching for Biliteracy, Beeman contends that we need to acknowledge that while bilingualism is a starting point for many of our students, it is not the anticipated outcome. She prides herself in making education research accessible for K-12 teachers and this workshop exemplified that belief.

Just a few minutes into her talk, Karen had the audience building linguistic bridges between Portugese and English to understand how the practice would support student constructed learning. To the untrained eye, bridges look like translations and Beeman knew that, once teachers created their own bridges, they would see the value in leading their students through this construction.Karen has dedicated her career to elevating and protecting the status of minority language in a majority language education system, specifically Spanish in the US. When I sat down with her to talk about her One Good Question, I assumed that her focus would be on investing in language minority education. What I learned, however, was far more about her vision for all youth in our country. Karen grew up the child of Americans in Mexico and when she moved to the States for university, she had the unique perspective of appearing American and having strong linguistic and cultural identity in Mexico and Mexican Spanish. Karen quickly became an education advocate for bilingualism and champion for elevating the status of Spanish in urban communities with significant Hispanic populations.Karen’s inquiry starts from that place of language specific, culture-specific instructional practice and quickly progresses to questions of social justice and equity: How are we preparing minority students to see themselves in the culture of power ? For the 71% of ELL youth who speak Spanish[1], access to bilingual academic communities that support literacy in both languages, means that they get to comfortably exist in majority culture.

"When students feel visible and what is going on in school matches who they are, we reach their potential." - Karen Beeman

For bilingual and heritage students, this visibility begins with equal access to and respect for their home languages. Karen is agnostic about the type of academic model schools choose. Traditional bilingual, dual language, and two-way immersion programs are all built around English language expectations. What makes the biggest difference? Looking beyond the monolingual perspective and the English dominant perspective. "We cannot use English as our paradigm for what we do in the other language," Karen insists.With respect to the pedagogy and materials in current Spanish-language programs, Beeman contends that we’re creating our own problem. Most texts in bilingual classrooms (fiction, non-fiction, and academic) are translations into the non-English language. This means that they are translating English grammar and syntax progressions into a language with completely different rules. Bilingual students may miss out on natural, age-appropriate expressions in Spanish and often misunderstand the cultural context of a translated story. Beeman traveled to Mexico for years and brought back authentic children’s literature in Spanish that also didn’t work for her bilingual American students. In written texts the academic grammar and syntax is at a higher register than oral language. Bilingual students whose Spanish-dominant parents may not be literate in Spanish, then have little understanding of the « authentic » text.What Beeman experienced was that neither monolingual contexts work for bilingual students. If we are to capture bilingual students’ full potential, we need a third way. Enter language bridges : a constructivist approach that showcases the background knowledge and expertise of the students, and allows them to access the curriculum and complex ideas in the majority language. Beeman then takes this perspective outside of the classroom : we need to stop imposing monolingual perspectives on education policy, pedagogy and educator training. When we recognize that

We have a language of power (academic register of English) and a culture of power (middle-class, European-influenced discourse) that influence all of our instruction ; and
Our country is becoming increasingly diverse linguistically, ethnically, and socially ;

We quickly understand that the need for all types of language and culture bridges in our instructional practice encompasses the majority of the country. Whether we’re addressing socio-economic status, home language, or student identity, most of our students walk into their classrooms as the « other » in the curriculum. Looking at the trends for increasingly diverse population in the US, we have to ask ourselves what happens when our education system doesn’t embed respect for minority cultures.

Karen’s One Good Question : « How can a student’s experience build on his/her fount of knowledge, both linguistic and cultural ? »[1] Ruiz Soto, Ariel G., Sarah Hooker; and Jeanne Bataloca. 2015 Top Languages Spoken by English Language Learners Nationally and by State. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institue.

Karen Beeman provides national professional development for teachers and administrators in bilaterally and bilingual education. Karen is co-author, along with Cheryl Urow, of Teaching for Biliteracy: Strengthening Bridges Between Languages."

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.

9/17/15 9/17/15

Educação Básica.

During this trip to São Paulo, we stayed in Vila Madalena because of its street arts profile and the famous Beco do Batman. Vila Madelena feels like Williamsburg, cutely packaged local artisan boutiques, architects and graphic designers, amazing restaurants and bars at every turn. One morning we ventured out to the Liberdade neighborhood, home to Brazil's 120-year old Japanese population. Our print tourist map outlines Liberdade like it is the eastern coast of SP, like there is nowhere else to go on the other side of Liberdade. Our time in Liberdade was overcast, but the neighborhood was more gritty than VM. Interspersed with street market vendors were homeless and and tired people, knock-off merchandise on tarps for easy transport. Our Paulistano friend explained that cost of living in the center of town was too expensive and that people moved farther and farther to the outskirts. There were not many tourist attractions past Liberdade, which explained why our map abruptly ended there.This mural rose above us as we crossed a highway overpass and it was perfectly timed and placed. We stood on this overpass to take pictures of the mural, talk about education access and notice that the city continued far east of the Liberdade neighborhood. Of the many murals that we saw that week, this was the most overtly political (not counting the anti-Dilma graffitis).

Basic quality education for all will put an end to hunger and poverty.

Brazil h\as one of the largest education achievement and access gaps in the world, based on their PISA results. Fundação Lemann has launched an Excelência com Equidade program to address the disparities in education for lower socio-economic communities. I'm looking forward to learning more about their work and what it will really take to achieve basic quality education in Brazil.