School-of-Thought

Last week the Milken Institure sponsored its 2008 global conference on a host of important topics, including education.   Below is a great two minute news clip covering a panel discussion about how the US is doing in the global “education race.”  It’d really a good clip — if you have two minutes, it’s worthwhile.

I enjoyed the commentary by Howard Gardner in the April 23rd edition of Education week. He writes about the relationship between the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 and the signing of the No Child Left Behind Education Act in 2002.

A Nation at Risk stands as an important tipping point in the history of US education. It was our country’s first significant recognition that we’re falling behind compared to other countries, and the ‘02 NCLB Act was, debatably, the consequences by Congress, 19 years later!

The majority of Gardner’s commentary looks to the future of US education policy. His basic premise is that US education is not well served by a single policy such as NCLB, but is better-served by multiple policies with varying objectives.

He proposes three different systems: the first is designed for the needs of our inner cities schools, such as high drop-out rates, poverty, and so on. The second system is designated for the needs of heartland and working-class suburbs. And the third system is designated for the needs of what he calls the”elites living in suburbs, having ambitious career goals and options.”

According to Gardner, US education is improved as a whole if the educational policies of the three systems can be aligned with the specific needs of the students they serve. For example, he writes: “The key to quality education in the inner city may lie in bringing students to an excellent level of performance; in the heartland, in catalyzing a greater degree of engagement in learning; and in our affluent urban and suburban areas, in strengthening the ethical musculature of young people.”

Interesting concepts . . . and for me, enjoyable to think about . . . . even though I don’t agree with all his reasoning, nor believe his suggestions would be practical to get through Congress or to implement.

That being said, in a perfect world, in celebration of the 25^th anniversary of A Nation at Risk, I wonder how implementation of Mr. Gardner’s concepts might change US educational performance in the “next” 25 years . . . say, in the year 2033?

Under a Gardner scheme, how would America’s youth fair on the international stage compared to other countries like Japan, Singapore, Hong-Kong, Finland and China by 2033? Would our inner cities kids see higher graduation rates? Would the heartland kids be further engaged (whatever the heck that means) . . . and would that translate to improved opportunities and competitiveness on the world stage?

Returning to reality, last year, in a study by the American Institute for Research (AIR), test data in science and math from all 50 states were compared to test data from dozens of countries around the world. Looking at just a few states, Pennsylvania’s math performance score of 38 fell behind countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands. Indiana’s math performance scores of 35 fell behind Hungary and Estonia. North Carolina’s score of 22 puts them behind Slovenia and Russia. And finally, while South Dakota’s score of 39 gratefully puts the state in the top ten percent of US performance, it still ranks behind countries like Japan and Korea.

A Gardner scheme simply makes me think, “What will it take to make American education more competitive?” As a South Dakota school board member, I deal with the nitty-gritty of reality at the level of the school district. The results of the AIR study should wake America up. As a country, do we have the political will to make the changes necessary to move forward?

Not too many weeks ago I had a conversation about how frustrating it is in this age of technology and Google Maps that some high school instructors apparently teach geography by having their students use crayons to color maps. Now comes this article about Young Americans geographically challenged.

Here’s an exerp:

Despite wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map–and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.

Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 fared even worse with foreign locations: six in 10 couldn’t find Iraq on a map of the Middle East, according to a Roper poll conducted for National Geographic.

Click on the above link for the full article.

Here is a thoughtful two minute trailer from a documentary about globalization and the US educational system.  The message is compelling. 

 From the makers:

 Regardless of nationality, as soon as a student completes the 8th grade, the clock starts ticking. From that very moment the child has approximately -

…Two Million Minutes until high school graduation…Two Million Minutes to build their intellectual foundation…Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately career…Two Million Minutes to go from a teenager to an adult.

 How a student spends their Two Million Minutes – in class, at home studying, playing sports, working, sleeping, socializing or just goofing off — will affect their economic prospects for the rest of their lives.

 This important documentary examines how students in India and China are being better prepared than American students to compete in a flattening world.

Dear Secretary Spellings:

Thank you for your renewed focus on drop-out prevention. The newly released study, “Cities in Crisis” is sobering, and paints a graphic picture why , now more than ever, strong but flexible national education policy is required.  I am  hopeful the administration and Congress can come together as soon a possible to reauthorize and re-energize a re-worked No Child Left Behind. 

Humbly, it seems to me, developing a national standard that counts disaggregated drop-out rates the same everywhere in the US is an important first step to recognizing the extent of the problem, but the more meaningful and urgent question is, ”what can a new NCLB do to realistically address the atrocity of our failing schools?”  Surely, anyone that cares about children or the future of our country must see the wisdom of our national leaders putting aside partisan differences to answer this question.  Graduation rates of 25 or 35 or 50 percent are simply unacceptable. 

Thank you for your efforts.  

Sincerely,

Fred Deutsch

We all have those hmmm  . . . moments, when we read or hear something that is particularly poignant or meaningful. 

For me, reading Stephanie Sandifer’s post from her Change Agnecy blog was one of those moments.

Stephanie writes, “One of the recurring issues that came up throughout the day yesterday (at Conovocation 2008) was the issue of FEAR. Fear of loss of control, fear of the tools, fear of change, fear of the “unknown”…

And she writes. . .

“I thought the following two comments that came through on the online chat were extremely powerful counter-arguments to the common expressions of those kinds of fear listed above:

09:16 dlaufenberg : the real fear should be educating a generation of students that are not prepared to move the nation forward

09:16 dlaufenberg : the real fear should be that the ‘culture of one right answer’ will not be able to creatively solve the complicated problems that face ‘our’ future

Stephanie goes on to say, “Our current education system is not preparing kids for their futures and that is what should really make us afraid. We should be afraid that we are failing an entire generation of people who will need new skills and knowledge (skills and knowledge that we are not yet teaching them in our schools) if we hope to move our nation forward and to solve the many problems that we will continue to face in the 21st Century.”

Stephanie’s fear of not preparing our young people — and I might add our country —  to compete in the world of tomorrow is one that should be shouted from the roof tops of every school house and state house in this country. Continue reading “As the World Becomes Flat, How will We Educate our Children?”

This is really GREAT STUFF from Ian Jukes’ site.  I’m quoting the first few paragraphs of ”21st Century Fluency Skills.” 

The primary task of the educational system must be to give learners the right tools and provide them with a critical mind, so that they can ask the right questions and make the right connections.  The problem is that the world is not the stable, static place it once was.  The world has changed and continues to change.  Today as Thomas Friedman notes in The World is Flat we are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t been in vented, to solve problems we haven’t begun to think about.  As a result, the definition of what it means to be educated in the light of the modern world has changed and continues to change.

In his book The Third Wave futurist Alvin Toffler noted that, “the illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

In the information age, citizens will need to work with information in all forms to fashion content products that have value, that entertain and teach.

But if all learners do is learn the traditional literacies — to read, write, speak. and calculate — they may be literate by 20th Century standards but certainly not by 21st Century standards.

Thanks Ian, for the great message. 

Ian Jukes’ blog reports a great interview with one of my favorite authors, Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat). He’s interviewed by Danial Pink (author of A whole New Mind).  The interview appeared in the February 2008 edition of The School Administrator. 

To quote a portion of Ian’s summary:

Liberal arts are more important than ever. It’s not that math and science aren’t important. They still are. But more than ever our secret sauce comes from our ability to integrate art, science, music and literature with the hard sciences.

Left-brain thinking — rule-based, linear, SAT-style thinking — used to be enough. Now right-brain thinking artistry, empathy, narrative, synthesis — is the big differentiator.

If kids don’t know how to navigate — to know if something is really true and not just to grab the latest thing off Wikipedia — they’re going to have a problem in life.  They need symphony, which is the ability to fit the pieces together.

Integration is the new speciality. Right now we frog-march kids from math to science to English — and too rarely make the connections among the disciplines.

CQ + PQ > IQ. Curiosity Quotient plus Passion Quotient is more important than Intelligence Quotient. Show me a curious, intrinsically motivated kid — and I’ll show you someone who’ll leave the kid who merely complies with the rules and studies for the SAT in the dust.

You can review Ian’s discussion of the article here and access the eight page interview here.  If you haven’t read Friedman’s book, check out this article.  Then go get his book — it’s THAT important.

The world of education is changing.  From Watertown High School’s technology plan, to our state and school district’s progressively increasing focus on ”21st Century Literacy Skills,” it’s amazing to see how rapidly things are moving.  New 21st century competencies such as information and technology skills, critical thinking skills, global awareness, collaboration skills, and civic and economic literacy will more and more become a standard part of our children’s educational foundation.When I think about how swiftly the winds of change are impacting the world of education, I’m reminded of the tornado from the movie, “The Wizard of Oz” that swept little Dorothy and Toto away to the other side of the rainbow, as well as her famous line, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”