Data Gathering at the Dawn of the Regional Education Labs

Although our ability to access data about education has grown exponentially over the last decade, the central question of what to do with all the numbers and figures—and of what they really measure in the first place—has been vexing educators since the first batch of test results came in from the field. In the November 1966 issue of Educational Leadership, David Turney, assistant dean at Kent State University, takes on the issue of data quality by exploring where data come from, who gathers them, and how they are put to use.

Read the article: Why Not Use the Data We Already Have? (PDF)

Education and Class

Education professor Jane Van Galen, co-author of Late to Class: Social Class and Schooling in the New Economy, brings the timely and under-discussed issue of education and class to the blogosphere in her blog Education and Class.

Van Galen brings not only an academic background and passion for the issue, but also a willingness to share personal stories to illustrate points. One post discusses the issue of how middle- and working–class parents view educational change:

I think of my own parents who, from the moment of my birth, had aspirations that I would be "better" than them. I think of how they knew, at some level, that I was headed for situations in which being tough and tenacious would serve me infinitely better than would coming to understand myself as a gently unfolding flower.

She pivots from this story to implore educators to better understand working-class parents and how their views on child-rearing are influenced by institutions such as schools.

Riding Home in an Advertisement with Wheels

The tough economy is causing people to do things they normally wouldn't. Just ask the governor of Illinois, who tried to sell a Senate seat for economic gain, or the Big Three auto companies, which are begging for money just to make it to New Year's. Even school districts and educators are thinking about unusual ways to make cash.

Since January, three bills have been presented in New Jersey asking that advertising be allowed on school buses to help raise funds for struggling school districts. Although the ads may help the schools financially, some are concerned that they may be a distraction to drivers, raising safety issues.

In California, high school teacher Tom Farber began selling ad space on his exams to cover the costs of printing them after the school's budget was cut. Farber says the ads will not become permanent, but he is allowing them for now to deal with the economic realities affecting his school.

Do you think advertising in buses and on exams is an appropriate way to deal with the economic situations in many schools?

Can Student-Collected Data Help Teachers?

In the article "Student-Driven Research" in this month's Educational Leadership, authors Makeba Jones and Susan Yonezawa discuss a program in San Diego where students are part of co-research teams that collect data from interviews and surveys of their peers and teachers to offer insight on how to improve curriculum and education practices.

"Students have unique expertise regarding schools," the authors say."[The students] can provide important information about school and classroom practices and policies."

What keeps more schools from drawing on students' experiences as a way to improve public education?

Five Dollar Shoes

Prices may change, but some things stay the same. Cincinnati principal Elizabeth Guilfoile wrote of the importance of human relationships to school climate in "Human Values Take Priority," which appeared in the March 1948 issue of Educational Leadership. Among those values? A teacher helping a young student with an overstretched family purchase new shoes at lunchtime.

Read the article: "Human Values Take Priority" (PDF)

Express Calls for Submissions: Literacy 2.0

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600–1,000-word essays on the theme of "Literacy 2.0." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by January 5, 2009.

Students are more plugged in to technology than ever before—through smartphones, iPods, laptops, social networks, and electronic games. This issue will explore the role of literacy in our ever-evolving digital environment. How can we help students learn and transfer traditional literacy skills? What new literacy skills are called for, and how can students guide teachers in acquiring these key skills? How can we teach students to judge the reliability, accuracy, and quality of information? Articles will look at how wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, and portals of streaming media have affected how students read, write, speak, think, and work.

Bookmark This!: Fireside Chats to YouTube

Jay Mathews's recent column in the Washington Post, "Most Textbooks Should Just Stay on the Shelf," elicits opinions from educators and publishers on the continued relevance of the traditional textbook. He ultimately concludes that "like the newspapers that have been my life, textbooks are creeping slowly toward obsolescence," with a variety of new media such as podcasts and electronic books gaining prominence.

The good news for educators looking to introduce engaging documents and media into instruction is the flood of free and fascinating material being made available online. Google has begun adding cover-to-cover magazine archives to their Book Search; this effort now includes such titles as Popular Science, New York Magazine, and Ebony.

Another excellent resource I recently discovered is an extensive (though not complete) archive of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "fireside chats" to the nation, from between 1933 and 1945. The chats can be streamed and downloaded from the Internet Archive. These are especially intriguing in light of President-elect Obama's now giving weekly addresses to the nation via YouTube, as he faces international and financial challenges that invite comparison to those during FDR's tenure.

Which online documents have engaged your students?

Achilles Heel

Most of the media attention these days is focused on Illinois Governor Blagojevich and his David Mamet-esque recordings about "selling" President-elect Obama's Senate seat. The narrow focus on this story has pushed another important world event to the back burner.

Since the police shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos earlier this month, Greece has been tormented by rioting and protests that have threatened the government and the stability of the nation. Riot police have clashed with protesters armed with Molotov cocktails, thousands of striking workers have marched in anger over economic policies, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage has been done to property in a matter of days. Many have blamed a poor economy, where 1/5 of the population lives below the poverty line, and the less-than-stellar education system for the turmoil.

Education Secretary Announced

After more than a month of speculation and debate, President-elect Barack Obama finally announced that Arne Duncan will be secretary of education in his administration. 

Duncan, CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) since 2001, has never been a teacher but has been deeply involved with education for many years, beginning when he was playing professional basketball in Australia and working with children who were wards of the state. Once returning from Australia, the Harvard graduate became director of the Ariel Education Initiative before joining CPS in 1998.

Duncan has earned a reputation as a reformer who backed charter schools and paying students for grades, and he supported a failed proposal for a gay-and lesbian-centered high school. Despite angering some people with his reforms, Duncan has managed to get nothing but praise from teachers' unions for working with them instead of engaging in constant battles.

Obama faced a tough choice in appeasing the more traditional unions and the reform-minded generation of educators, and Duncan seems to be a good fit to placate both sides. He's a progressive who pushes for reform, but he also works closely with the unions and their allies.

Do you think Arne Duncan is a good choice for education secretary? 

Poverty Changes Children's Brains

A new study out of the University of California-Berkeley claims that the difference between the brains of 9- and 10-year-old children living in poverty and those of their wealthy peers is almost equivalent to comparing brains that have suffered strokes to healthy brains.

This study adds to a growing body of research that finds key functions of the prefrontal cortex, like language development and the ability to plan, remember details, and pay attention, to be severely compromised in the brains of children living in poverty. These effects were found to be reversible through intensive interventions that focused on these deficient skills.

Experts say this study draws important attention to studying the effects of experience, in particular socioeconomic status, on a child's ability to perform academically.

Content Delivery Out, Going Finnish In

What Direction Will U.S. Education Take? Anyone? Anyone?

Stanford professor and U.S. education secretary contender Linda Darling-Hammond told an appreciative audience of 3,000 educators that no less than the survival of American society and democracy depend on what direction U.S. education takes in the next four years. Her keynote address at the National Staff Development Council annual conference Monday may offer a hint of what direction she might take things:

What's "Out:" Content delivery a la Ferris Bueller’s history teacher. What’s "In:" Going Finnish, or Korean, or Singaporean.

Education Reform from the Roots Up?

Amid speculation about who will be the next secretary of education, recent efforts by the Obama transition team to solicit public feedback on health care reform suggest future opportunities for educators to voice their policy concerns.

In addition to the transition team's use of online videos and blog posts to invite public comments on health care issues, former Senator Tom Daschle, who yesterday was officially nominated by President-elect Obama to be the next secretary of health and human services, has pledged to coordinate "thousands of health care discussions in homes across the country...where ordinary Americans can share their ideas about what's broken and how to fix it." Anyone interested in leading a discussion can sign up to receive a moderator's kit at Change.gov.

A recent Washington Post article suggests the health care outreach by Daschle and the transition team may be the beginning of a wider effort to gather public feedback on a range of issues in traditional forums, such as town hall meetings, as well as in cyberspace. If this is a preview of what's to come, will you be ready to speak for education?

What will you say if the next secretary of education asks you what's broken and how to fix it so that all students can succeed in school? What would be your top priority or concern?

Professor-Blogger Sherman Dorn

With an eye toward the history and politics of education, Sherman Dorn provides intelligent commentary on current events, policy, and other topics that pique interest. Dorn, an author and professor at the University of South Florida, tackles a wide range of subject matter in an easy-to-read and down-to-earth style.

Recent posts include an evenhanded take on the Obama–Ayers controversy, an analysis of how the media covers educational research, and a discussion about the reauthorization of NCLB/ESEA.

Here's Your Pink Slip . . . Now, Go Become a Teacher

Can the worsening economy actually cause an increase in educators? Budget cuts are forcing major belt-tightening in most states, but in Kansas where there is a teacher shortage, the unemployed might be dusting off unused teaching licenses.

There are 25,000 people in Kansas who have teaching licenses but are not currently working in schools. Many have taken different career paths or are stay-at-home parents. But as jobs are eliminated at a rapid rate and home budgets become tighter, the seeming job security and benefits of being a teacher start looking quite attractive.

"When we have an economic downturn, that's when more people choose to go into education," said Kansas Education Commissioner Alexa Posny. "It's such a stable field."

 

In the long term, will the ripple effects of this recession mean more people, not just in Kansas but around the world, turning to teaching as their career choice?

"Silo Thinking?"

In "The Assessment Double Play" in this month's Educational Leadership, Roberta Buhle and Camille L. Z. Blachowicz lament the fact that teachers often store their thinking about testing in a different "silo" from their thinking on instruction. Buhle and Blachowicz define silo communication as "the tendency not to connect one known body of information with another. We see teachers thinking in this fashion when they appear to disregard assessment results when they make instructional decisions."

Have you seen teachers practice silo thinking? How can we avoid it? 

Reading First or Worst?

In the December Education Update, "Reading First: Sustaining Success in Difficult Times" examines the debate over the impact of the $6 billion Reading First program on primary grades literacy.

Some experts say Reading First is the best federal effort to date to shore up early literacy skills, while a recent Department of Education research report says it improved reading instruction and decoding skills but made no difference in reading comprehension scores of elementary school kids.

Teachers, specialists, and administrators with firsthand knowledge of how Reading First has impacted your students and school literacy efforts, has this federal program delivered on its promise to improve student literacy?

Teacher's Top 10 Tips for Getting Organized

In last week's most-clicked SmartBrief story*, a teacher shares her top 10 strategies for staying organized in the classroom.

Suggestions include establishing routines for turning in work and collecting missed assignments and range from low-tech (seating charts, writing what students need for class on a board outside of your room) to higher-tech (using e-mail to communicate with parents, using an online grading system).

The popularity of this article leads us to believe there are many of you out there hungry for new ways to bring order to your classroom. Feel free to share your tips in the comments section.

*Full-text article available free with registration.

Brain-Based Ed. Debate Rages in '84

Translating scientific research into practice is controversial business. Proponents of brain-based education are at the intersection of biology and educational practice, and they have frequently navigated this tricky terrain with a strong focus on extrapolating reliable teaching methods from sometimes esoteric scientific findings.

A fascinating exchange between education specialist Richard McQueen and biophysics professor Herman Epstein over brain growth in the February 1984 issue of Educational Leadership reveals the devil in the details. 

Read the articles:

Spurts and Plateaus in Brain Growth: A Critique of the Claims of Herman Epstein (PDF)

Brain Growth and Cognitive Development: A Response to Richard McQueen (PDF)

Is Technology the Answer to Rising College Costs?

In the past 25 years, according to a recent report, college tuition and fees increased 439 percent, while median household incomes only increased 147 percent. At an Education Sector forum Tuesday in D.C., panelists discussed some of the major problems driving the high cost of college education and whether instructional technology offers some relief.

According to panelists, new technologies can cut the cost of higher ed., at least in terms of creating more cost-effective general education or 101 courses. In particular, a program called SMARTTHINKING, which uses tutors and online learning platforms to support students and instructors, is being adapted by colleges and universities across the country. Programs like SMARTTHINKING and Virginia Tech's Math Emporium allow institutions to serve a large number of students while reducing labor costs.

Academia is inherently labor-intensive, but panelists said that the current paradigm of stacking very high-paying administrative positions and then ballooning the number of adjunct professors teaching general education courses is feeding problems of skyrocketing cost and variable quality of education delivered.

Express Calls for Submissions: Whole Child

ASCD Express is looking for short, 600–1,000-word essays on the theme of "An Education for the Whole Child." The theme description is below, and guidelines for submissions are here. Send us your submissions by December 19.

In 2007, ASCD called on educators, policymakers, and the wider community to broaden their understanding of what schools and society need to do to support the development of well-rounded students ready to thrive in the modern world. Educating the whole child includes not only fostering academic achievement, but also promoting physical and emotional health, offering a personalized education by qualified adults, strengthening students' engagement with school and the wider community, and preparing them for success in postsecondary study and work. This issue will explore aspects of educating the whole child through classroom, school, district, or community initiatives and curricula.