Well NOW!

The ABCs Of Fast Growth

Area Tech Firms Plug Into Education

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 30, 2007; D01

Fairfax County school officials this fall are carrying BlackBerrys that connect to a database of student information, including parent contacts and medical warnings. Dartmouth students are using wikis, blogs, podcasts and other interactive media tools for their courses. A graduate school at Carnegie Mellon has bought new, Web-based software to administer financial aid.

The initiatives are all the work of Washington-area businesses -- part of a wave of education technology companies that have emerged in the region in recent years. Defywire, based in Herndon, makes the mobile database software that is being used by Fairfax schools. Learning Objects, in the District, sold Dartmouth the Web products, and Regent Education of Frederick created the financial aid software.

All told, more than 20 education technology companies have set up shop in greater Washington. Some cater to universities, others to local school systems. Some help educators manage big budgets and intricate bureaucracies; others provide tools for use in the classroom -- or, in some cases, seek to replace the classroom altogether.

What many of the companies share, executives say, is fast growth and a belief that schools will increasingly come to rely on technology, trends that they hope could be attractive to high-powered investors.

"The volume of opportunity in education technology is far greater than it was five years ago," said Frank Bonsal III, a Baltimore venture capitalist. He is trying to raise money to start a fund to invest in education companies.

One test of the sector's strength could come soon as a Herndon company called K12, a provider of online curricula, attempts to go public. Company executives declined to comment on their plans as federal regulators review their registration, filed late last month, to hold a $172.5 million initial public offering. The application said that sales at the company increased from $71.4 million in 2004 to $116.9 million in 2006.

Several company executives cited Blackboard, an education software behemoth based in the District, as a catalyst for new ventures. The company, they say, is evidence that an education software company can prosper. Venture capitalists have long been wary of putting money into these companies because school budgets are notoriously unpredictable and changing political priorities can affect the decisions of administrators.

Blackboard was founded in 1997 by a few 20-somethings who quit comfortable jobs to start the company. The dot-com boom swept up Blackboard, and it weathered the subsequent bust before going public. Last year, it had sales of $180 million.

"There's this whole new emerging category of academic technology that's just started to be invested in by universities," said Michael Chasen, Blackboard's chief executive. "That's helping to spawn new types of companies."

Those companies include firms started or populated by former Blackboard executives.

An original member of the team that founded Blackboard, Greg Davies, left to start Presidium Learning in 2003. He was looking to provide technical support to universities, which, he figured, would need help as they increased their investments in information technology.

At the beginning, Presidium had a few hundred thousand dollars in contracts, much of it acquired through Blackboard. "They've provided us with strong partnerships and access to their sales team," Davies said. Last year, Presidium did more than $10 million in sales.

Derek Hamner and Hal Herzog, founders of Learning Objects, are two other Blackboard alumni who have left the company but continue to capitalize on its software.

Learning Objects builds extensions to Blackboard's best-known product, a system that allows schools to manage their courses online. Specialized Web sites allow teachers to post reading lists, homework and other materials, and students can submit their work.

Learning Objects' software allows professors to use wikis, blogs, podcasts and other new media tools. "Students go out into the real world, and instead of coming back to class, they'll keep a journal or a reflective blog related to their experience that they can share" with their class, Hamner said.

Jill Stelfox, a former wireless executive and self-described "crazed mother," created Defywire in 2003 to allow teachers, coaches and other school officials to use their BlackBerrys and handheld devices to access information on students from a school's central database.

Venture capitalists have been impressed by the idea, in use in 40 school districts. Intersouth Partners of Durham, N.C., Amplifier Venture Partners of McLean and Anthem Capital of Baltimore have poured $17 million into the company.

Novak Biddle and Updata Partners of Reston have invested in Spectrum K-12, which makes special education software. The software is used to keep tabs on 6 million of the 44 million special education students in the country and is used in Montgomery and Loudoun counties.

The local market does not come without challenges. Bonsal, the Baltimore venture capitalist, said fellow investors are skeptical about putting money into education start-ups, although they are willing to back more-developed companies.

Ed Meehan, an Oakton venture capitalist who follows the education market closely, said the incentives for innovation in education technology are not the same as in other markets.

"The people who are making the purchasing often gain no personal benefit by picking a cool new technology," he said.

Even the big guys can feel the pressure. Blackboard may one day find itself squaring off against competitors offering similar course-management solutions at far reduced costs. One such technology, called Moodle, is free. Some companies have created businesses around hosting and supporting Moodle operations -- at, say, $1 a student. Martin Knott, chief executive of such a service, called MoodleRooms, said his two-year-old company grew at a rate of 1,500 percent last year, to 350 clients, and is expected to quintuple in size this year. UCLA recently switched to Moodle as its course-management software.

As Ed McMahon said: YOU Have to AIM to Send it In!

2007 Innovative Teachers Forum Winners

22 Learning Teams Selected from around the U.S. Learning teams from the following schools have been chosen by our selection committee to participate in the 2007 Microsoft U.S. Innovative Teachers Forum: Abington High School, Abington, PA Aspen Valley High School, Colorado Springs, CO Austin Jewish Academy, Austin, TX Byng Junior High School, Ada, OK Central Middle School, Portage, MI Cleveland High School, Seattle, WA Columbus East High School, Columbus, IN Fayetteville High School, Sylacauga, AL Ft. Sumner High School, Fort Sumner, NM Highland Park High School, Highland Park, IL Highlands Elementary School, Saugus, CA J.Clyde Hopkins Elementary School, Sherwood, OR Keith Valley Middle School, Horsham, PA Libby Center Tessera Program, Spokane, WA Mary Institute Country Day School, St. Louis, MO New River Middle School, Ft. Lauderdale, FL Park View High School, Sterling, VA South Columbia Elementary School, Martinez, GA St. John's Episcopal School, Dallas, TX Sun Prairie High School, Sun Prairie, WI Washington Elementary School, Washington, UT William C. McGinnis Middle School, Perth Amboy, NJ The winning teams described a wide range of collaboration strategies and projects which incorporate 21st century learning. For example, junior high students used math, science, and technology to develop an award-winning plan to increase school safety in their community, and elementary students learned about the real-life skills necessary to qualify for and run in the Iditarod race. In the next couple of months, we'll bring you news and information from the Forum about the teaching and learning of these outstanding teams of educators.

Geoffrey Canada' AIM Program

Harlem Program Finds Ways to Help Kids, Revive a Community

By DAVID HO
Cox News Service
Sunday, August 26, 2007

NEW YORK — In a worn building in the heart of Harlem, up two flights of well-used stairs and down halls dotted with proud plaques and bright murals, 14-year-old Alec Strong sits before a shiny white computer learning Web site design and pondering a future full of possibilities.

One floor up, beside a small gym favored by baby-faced basketball players, 6-year-old Bria Jordon yells and knocks down two men more than twice her size. She bows to her martial arts sensei, who smiles as another lesson in discipline and fitness is completed.

A few blocks away is the public school where Aisha Tomlinson attended "Baby College" classes and learned there was a lot she didn't know about being a parent.

At nearby Promise Academy elementary, 8-year-old Noah Brown begins each school day reciting a pledge that ends with the words: "We will go to college. We will succeed. This is the promise. This is our creed."

All these faces belong to the Harlem Children's Zone, an ambitious project spanning nearly 100 blocks in one of New York's poorest neighborhoods.

As many cities struggle with pockets of crime and poverty, the zone has become a rare national beacon, widely admired and studied by local governments and charities because of its success in bringing education, social services, medical help and a sense of community to thousands of children and families.

The program has lately become part of presidential politics, touted by Democratic candidate Barack Obama as the basis for his poverty strategy. He called the zone "an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children in a neighborhood where they were never supposed to have a chance."

Obama said in July that, if elected, he would spend billions of dollars to apply the zone's approach in 20 U.S. cities, spurring debate on whether the government can effectively replicate the program.

Many dedicated and generous people work to make the zone a reality, but it exists largely because of the vision and sweat of Geoffrey Canada, who overcame a poor and violent childhood in the South Bronx and dedicated himself to giving back.

"In communities like Central Harlem it's not just one thing that's really going badly for children, it's everything," said Canada, the zone's president and CEO. He said individual programs that address issues such as early childhood education or teen pregnancy are not enough to ensure that kids succeed.

The response, he said, is not to fight one battle, but to fight them all.

"That's how you reach the tipping point, really creating a conveyor belt that starts from birth with programs like Baby College and Harlem Gems for 4-year-olds," he said. "It supports young people straight through college."

Getting kids all the way through college is key, Canada said, noting that a high school diploma is not enough to ensure success in today's world. Helping new graduates stay connected to their community creates a positive cycle, he said.

"That's how you really begin to grow a young adult population which is prepared to take responsibility, by making sure young people feel that they have a place that they are responsible for and they have the tools to make a difference," Canada said.

The children's zone is part of a broader economic revival in Harlem that includes new construction and an influx of business after years of decline.

The zone grew out of a program called the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families and began providing services to a 24-block area of Harlem in 2001. That area included about 3,000 children, most of them black and nearly two-thirds living in poverty.

It now encompasses 97 blocks and serves more than 9,000 kids and their families.

Children in zone schools have longer days, shorter summer vacations and many after-school options. Teachers are held to very high performance standards.

The zone's approximately 20 programs range from a family crisis storefront facility to Harlem Peacemakers, which trains young people to keep neighborhoods safe and puts them in classrooms to work with elementary school kids.

The scope of the effort is clear at the program's recently built $42 million headquarters on 125th Street, which houses a community center, sports and medical facilities, a cafeteria serving healthy meals and upper grades of the Promise Academy.

A conference area here resembles a war room, with a map of the zone's blocks dotted with program sites. Another map shows the high levels of obesity in Harlem compared to the rest of New York. Still another pinpoints the schools where hundreds of children from the zone have made it to college.

Leaders from cities from San Francisco to Miami have come here to learn what makes the zone tick.

The zone's annual budget is $50 million, with one-third coming from federal, state and city funds and the rest from private donations. Much of the private money stems from hedge fund wealth and Wall Street donors among the program's trustees.

The zone's results can be found woven through the lives of people like Harlem mom Flo Brown and her three sons.

Noah, who soon starts Promise Academy's 3rd grade, passed 3rd grade state reading and math tests a year early. Jeremiah, soon to be 4, will begin at the Harlem Gems pre-kindergarten in the fall, and 1-year-old Caleb also has the zone in his future.

The two older boys already talk about going to college, Brown said.

"I'm fully aware of the epidemic of our black men going to jail, dropping out of high school, or on drugs or being killed," she said. "Having three black men that I'm raising is very frightening for me."

"Trying to raise a family in Harlem in this day and age — we really couldn't afford a private school," Brown said. "I don't know that I could have done this in this environment without the Harlem Children's Zone. It's also created a village of sorts for me."

That village provided help beyond schooling. Brown said a zone asthma program, needed in a neighborhood with some of the worst asthma rates in the nation, helped Noah get through a time of frequent emergency room visits.

Brown also attended the Baby College, which teaches moms and dads about parenting. One often eye-opening class concerns discipline and how to punish children without hitting.

"All that stuff is embedded in you, so you think because this is the way you were raised this is the way we are supposed to raise your children," Brown said. "My husband and I are talking to our son, we're explaining things to our son."

Aisha Tomlinson, 42, said Baby College classes about seven years ago also taught her the importance of reading to her kids.

"The things that you didn't have, you definitely want your children to have," she said.

Older kids in the zone have programs like TRUCE, The Renaissance University for Community Education. The program provides after-school and summer activities for kids 12-19, focusing on academics, arts, technology and nutrition and fitness. Students here produce a cable TV show, a newspaper and have a Web site in the works.

Alec Strong has been part of TRUCE since he was 10. He said he wants to be a video game designer and the program provides an early step.

"Some students really have nothing and this program gives students something to look forward to," he said. "I'm looking forward to going to college."

On the Web:

Harlem Children's Zone: www.hcz.org

Importance: URGENT!

The Preschool Question: Who Gets to Go?

Va. Expansion Efforts Highlight Debate

By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; A01

The children in Carrie Hamilton's preschool class yesterday drew wobbly hearts with wobbly letters underneath. They tapped the buttons on a toy cash register and raced cars over roads built of wooden tracks. Hidden in the games and giggles were lessons on the building blocks of reading and math.

These Fairfax County 4- and 5-year-olds are part of a national push to devote more public resources to the youngest learners. They are also at the center of a debate, underscored last week in a Virginia policy shift, over whether the government should offer preschool to all children or concentrate on those from poor families.

Nationwide, about 950,000 children are enrolled in state-funded preschool, a 36 percent increase from five years ago, said experts who track the programs. As advocates promote quality pre-kindergarten as a way to prepare children for school, strengthen the workforce and reduce crime, states have increased funding since 2005 for such programs by 75 percent, to $4.2 billion, according to the District-based organization Pre-K Now. Some in Congress have also proposed more federal money to help build state preschool initiatives.

The questions about which children will benefit most from government-funded preschool and how great the investment should be are at the core of Virginia's effort to expand pre-kindergarten but have also arisen in Maryland. Next week, in its first foray into all-day preschool, Montgomery County plans to introduce full-day, federally funded Head Start classes for 260 students at 10 elementary schools that serve low-income neighborhoods. This week, Prince George's County expanded its full-day state-funded preschool program by half, to 261 classes, also targeting students from poor families.

After campaigning in 2005 to offer free preschool to every 4-year-old in Virginia regardless of family income, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) scaled back his plan last week and said he would focus resources on the neediest children.

In an interview yesterday, Kaine said his pledge to launch universal preschool was prompted by research showing that a tremendous amount of learning takes place before the first day of kindergarten. But education experts persuaded Kaine to build on the work of existing public and private preschools.

"Instead of just creating a system from scratch, why not take the existing network and focus on the goals of increasing access and increasing quality?" Kaine said. "We can change the financial criteria to help kids who can't afford it and have an impact on the quality of all parts of the system."

Virginia 4-year-olds who qualify for free school lunches -- those in households with incomes of less than $27,000 for a family of four -- are eligible for free preschool, and about 12,500 children take part at an annual state cost of about $50 million. Kaine's plan would extend benefits to children in families with incomes up to $38,000. The new proposal, which envisions enrolling about 17,000 more underprivileged children by 2012, would cost an additional $75 million a year.

Kaine also is calling for a state-led rating system to help parents gauge how providers measure up. Preschools, much like restaurants or hotels, would be rated on a five-star scale based on such factors as the educational level and training of teachers, class sizes and an expert's classroom observation.

Kaine's plan to offer universal preschool for all 100,000 4-year-olds in the state would have cost about $300 million annually.

Bruce Fuller, an education and public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley who is a leading proponent of income-targeted funding, said research has shown that children from poor families get the biggest boost from high-quality preschool. He said universal preschool provides unneeded benefits to wealthy families and said the emphasis should be on helping children in lower-income homes, who tend to start school knowing fewer letters and numbers than their peers.

"We need to focus scarce dollars where the benefit is the greatest, and that's to children from low-income and blue-collar households," Fuller said. "If dollars are sprinkled across all families rich and poor, it's illogical to think early learning gaps will be narrowed."

But other education experts said the country should shift to preschool for all children. They say every dollar spent on public preschool will improve school performance, lessen the need for remedial education and have other long-term benefits.

A recent study of New Mexico's preschoolers showed that students in the state program learned many more words and scored higher on a test of early math skills than peers who didn't attend.

"Even though it costs more, the public is better off if they make sure it gets to all kids," said W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. "Even middle-income kids, the middle 60 percent, have a 1 in 10 chance of failing a grade, a 1 in 10 chance of dropping out of high school. A lot of that can be traced to how far behind they were when they started kindergarten."

Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, which backs universal access, applauded Kaine's proposal. "Given the political realities of the state, he's starting where he should," Doggett said, alluding to Virginia's budget constraints.

The federal Head Start program provides preschool for about 900,000 children from low-income homes across the country, and many states fund classes targeted largely to disadvantaged children. Georgia and Oklahoma offer universal preschool that reaches large percentages of children. Other states, including West Virginia and New York, are working toward such programs.

In Florida, voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2002 that mandates pre-kindergarten for all children, but critics contend the quality of the program has suffered because of a lack of funding. Last year, California voters rejected a ballot measure that would have taxed the wealthy to pay for universal preschool.

In the District, more than 5,000 children are enrolled in full-day preschool programs in public schools.

The nonprofit preschool of Annandale Christian Community for Action, where Hamilton's students played yesterday, is one of several private centers in a pilot program started by Kaine to help Virginia reach more children from disadvantaged homes. This summer, the center has new state funding for 26 additional children.

Camilla Torejo, 4, showed off her artwork as classmates flipped through books, played computer games and zoomed around with toy cars. "I made this heart and this heart and this heart," Camilla said. Next to them, she wrote her name.

Staff writer Daniel de Vise contributed to this report.

BATTER UP!

Published Online: August 14, 2007

Commentary


Why Education Reform Is Like Baseball


Thoughts for the Days of Summer

By Jeanne Century

If you are looking for an entertaining summer read, what could be more promising than a David-and-Goliath baseball story? That’s what I expected as I opened Michael Lewis’ 2003 best-seller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. But before I had finished the first chapter, I realized this was more than a sports story, and that my hopes of being distracted from the work of improving education were not going to be realized.

Moneyball tells many stories, one of which is how General Manager Billy Beane of the Oakland A’s used an otherwise disregarded statistic—on-base percentage—as a strategy for selecting players. His scouts were accustomed to the more traditional approach to finding baseball stars: traveling across the country and recruiting those who looked “right.” Beane’s analytic approach was decidedly unpopular, and the story of its implementation before the 2002 season is yet another illustration of the fact that, whether in baseball or education, systems are stubborn.

Moneyball tells about a system that did not want to change; of practices held steadfast in tradition; and of how a leader, with the right motivation and insight, innovated for success. So, as this season winds down and you sit watching nine innings, consider these nine lessons for educators drawn from an unlikely place: America’s simple favorite pastime—baseball.

1. Don’t go for the home runs … just get on base and the rest will come. Beane didn’t win baseball games by hoping for home runs. Home runs are rare, and hope doesn’t win games. He understood that individual players don’t win games; teams do—when they work together in a process of creating runs. In education, we identify isolated strategies that we hope will be our home runs. But experience tells us that a better approach is to get solidly and clearly “on base.” Then, the system can work, each piece supporting the other, stepping up when necessary and stepping back to “sacrifice” if that is what will win the game. The only way the system can work is if everyone buys in and does his or her part.

In a quickly changing world, practices that once worked can become ineffective artifacts, and those most familiar to us may be the very ones that are in fact standing in the way of improvement.

2. Money is important, but it is not the answer. Beane had to spend his team’s meager $40 million wisely; other clubs had several times that amount. So he set out to identify ways he could use his money more efficiently. As Lewis writes, “[I]n professional baseball it still matters less how much money you have than how well you spend it.” Instead of investing in one big star, Beane sought out those players who were regularly and consistently getting on base (see lesson one). We in education need to find ways to get on base. Small steps are enough if they are consistent and well informed. The smartest strategies don’t necessarily cost the most money. Indeed, some of them don’t cost anything at all.

3. Be willing to change the things that are the most familiar. When it came time to make changes, Beane identified a part of his organization that looked most like the others—his scouting department—and that is where he made changes that were key for his success. Educators can take a lesson from this. In a quickly changing world, practices that once worked can become ineffective artifacts, and those most familiar to us may be the very ones that are in fact standing in the way of improvement.

4. Decisions should be made with personal investment, but not overpersonalized. In baseball, the people who make the decisions generally have played the game at one time or another and, as Lewis puts it, they “generalize wildly from their own experience.” This sounds familiar? We all have personal experience with education, and it is easy to think that what worked for us will work for others. We need to make good decisions grounded in personal experience and beliefs. But we need to recognize that beliefs built on the experience of one person, or even a few people, may not hold the answers for the country as a whole.

5. Make decisions based on experience and evidence, not on impressions. Lewis tells us that baseball scouts had a dislike of short, right-handed pitchers and a “distaste” for fat catchers. But Beane looked past appearances and turned to performance. While scouts chose players without looking very far below the surface, Beane looked at past performance and made informed decisions based on what was most likely to happen next. In other words, he paid attention to history to inform his shaping of the future. In education, we need to hold our goals clearly in our sights while remembering to look below the surface and consider all that we know. Informed by our history, we can look optimistically forward.

6. The changing environment makes old rules obsolete. Lewis notes that some practices of baseball are vestiges of a time long gone when players wore no gloves and fields were rough expanses of dirt. Likewise, the education system was invented at a time when the world looked quite different, and yet, the instruction and function of our schools often looks very much the same. Even as ball fields have built lights and digital scoreboards, the object of the game has stayed the same. Likewise, the object of our “game” stays the same, but the setting is very different. We need to discard the obsolete practices and find those that will keep us apace in our growing world.

7. There is resistance to new knowledge and ideas. The book explains that as baseball statistics became more sophisticated and available, those inside the sport relegated them to a “cult” of users. Lewis notes that “there was a profusion of new knowledge and it was ignored. … [Y]ou didn’t have to look at big-league baseball very closely to see its fierce unwillingness to rethink anything.” This sounds painfully familiar. In education, we say we want to innovate and improve. But saying it and acting on it are two different things. Few are willing to let go of the familiar to take the risk of embracing the promising, but still unknown.

8. People do things even when there is evidence that they don’t work. Oddly, in baseball and education alike, people do things even though it’s clear that they don’t work. In baseball, for example, players might steal bases even when it seems to be statistically pointless or even self-defeating. In education, we know that an incremental, evidence-based approach will get us where we want to go. And yet, we continue to implement popular (albeit unproven) strategies on unrealistic timelines because that is what the constituents want, even if, in the end, it won’t help win the game.

9. A system is a system is a system. Lewis quotes the innovative baseball statistician Voros McCracken, who once wrote: “The problem with major-league baseball … is that it’s a self-populating institution. … [T]hey aren’t equipped to evaluate their own systems. They don’t have the mechanisms to let in the good and get rid of the bad. They either keep everything or get rid of everything, and they rarely do the latter.”

As I sat in the warm summer sun, I had to check the cover of the book, just to make sure I hadn’t accidentally picked up a book about education.

Jeanne Century is the director of science education and research and evaluation at the University of Chicago’s Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education.

Thank You for PARTICIPATING in this Virtual Community!

August 15, 2007

Building Virtual Communities

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

from Technology & Learning

Online communities of practice are central to 21^st century professional development. In this excerpt from techlearning.com, an expert shares her views—and we invite yours.

Author, consultant, and social learning theorist Etienne Wenger describes virtual learning communities as electronic communities of practice where you find groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion for a topic. These communities deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. According to Wikipedia, traditional communities of practice are "based around situated learning in a colocated setting." In the blogosphere however, we see community developed not by common location, but through pockets of common interest.

Capacity Building

I spend a lot of time participating in communities online. I have had the opportunity to see some of the best and some of the worst in action. I am thankful for the new electronic models of professional growth that inspire me daily to think and collaborate differently. The diversity of ideas and thoughts represented in my community 21^st Century Collaborative push the boundaries of my thinking as I share knowledge and do my part to advocate for educational reform.

The way I see it, social networking tools have the potential to bring enormous leverage to teachers at relatively little cost. The burning question: How can we accelerate the adoption and full integration of 21^st century teaching and learning strategies in schools today?

What Makes a Community Successful?

A burgeoning body of opinion suggests virtual learning communities are becoming the venue through which agents for change operate. The potential is enormous, as knowledge capital is collected and the community becomes a sort of online brain trust, representing a highly varied accumulation of expertise. However, successful virtual learning communities are hard to come by, and many seem to fade away almost as soon as they get started. This past June at the EduBloggerCon at NECC several online community leaders tried to think about components and attributes of successful learning communities. The following are tips and tricks garnered from my lessons learned as I have created and led virtual learning communities for various purposes over the last seven years.

The Community Organizer

Typically, community organizers foster member interaction, provide stimulating material for conversations, keep the space organized, and help hold members accountable to the stated community guidelines, rules, or norms. They also build a shared culture by passing on community history and rituals. Perhaps most important, community organizers are keenly aware of how to empower participants to do these things for themselves. Organizers use their group facilitation skills to help all members of the community to become active participants in the process. They work hard behind the scenes to support socializing and relationship-and trust-building.

Points to Consider

Besides finding the right organizer, other key attributes of successful online communities include:

• a shared vision of what constitutes the mission or niche of the community


• a core group willing to chime in on a variety of topics, self-monitor, and keep the conversation rolling


• opportunities for content creation such as book reviews, book chats, lesson sharing, and other professional development input


• regular posting of relevant, provocative issues.

Here are some questions you need to ask when designing your learning community:

• Will communications be asynchronous, synchronous, or both?


• Will we need file-storage and file-sharing capabilities?


• How will we share and store links to Web-based resources?


• How will we support collaboration on projects?


• Will we need archiving capability for Webcasts, chats, and threaded discussions?


• Will we need polling or surveying tools as part of our work?


• Is voice capability important for our synchronous events?


• Is a member profiling tool an important feature?


• What recruitment and rollout strategy will we have?


• Is the community open or closed?

Measuring Impact

Evaluation needs to be built in to this work from the beginning. In addition to any evaluation done in connection with scholarly research, it is critically important for organizers to use "just-in-time" assessments that allow for continuous improvement of the virtual community experience. Since this is a relatively new field, many research questions remain to be answered.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is a regular speaker on teacher leadership and virtual community building. Her Web portal is 21st Century Collaborative.

21st Century Digital Learning Environments would like to hear your comments on and experiences with virtual learning communities:

• What role does Web 2.0 play in the development of teacher leadership and implementation of school reform through the communities in which we learn and play?


• What are the components of successful, thriving virtual communities?


• Do intentional roles and norms lead to building the trust that is necessary for a community to grow?


• Does part of the answer to meaningful change and implementation of 21^st century skills and dispositions in schools lie in the collaboration that occurs in virtual learning environments?

To participate in the conversation, visit http://www.digitallearningenvironments.blogspot.com

The TIP(S) of the ICEBERG!

November 1, 2006

Tips for Building an Online Community

Susan Taylor

Attention school administrators: using technology to support virtual collaboration and establish an online community can serve as a useful tool to “keep the fire burning” among a planning group and help bring positive resolution to the task at hand.

The value of bringing the school community and various stakeholders together to address problems, find solutions and generally contribute to improving situations on the campus cannot be overstated. The most common way to bring people together is to host a face-to-face meeting. However, most issues are not resolved during a one-time meeting and follow up is usually required. In today’s world of competing priorities, it is difficult to find the space and time amenable to everyone’s schedule to allow for follow-up and ongoing conversations. To the rescue comes Virtual collaboration, and it can make a real difference.

Virtual Collaboration Tools

Virtual collaboration may be either Synchronous or Asynchronous. The difference: if it occurs during real-time activities like video teleconferencing or audio conference, where people are in different places participating at the same time, it is Synchronous; but if it enables participants to join in from different places at different times, then it is Asynchronous.

Some strategies to support virtual collaboration include the following:

• Establish regular times for team interaction

• Send agendas to participants beforehand

• Designate a team librarian

• Build and maintain a team archive

• Use visual forms of communication where possible

• Set formal rules for communication and/or technology use

Establishing an Online Community

To accommodate an online community, it is useful to think about the media being utilized and its effect on group dynamics. Kimball (1997, p. 3) provides some useful questions to help you with this process:

Media

Questions for Facilitator/Manager

Electronic Mail

• What norms need to be established for things like: response time, whether or not Email can be forwarded to others?

• What norms are important about who gets copied on Email messages and whether or not these are blind copies?

• How does the style of Email messages influence how people feel about the team?

Decision Making Support Systems

• How does the ability to contribute anonymous input affect the group?

• How can you continue to test whether “consensus” as defined by computer processing of input is valid?

• How can you help participants have a sense of who is “present?”

• How can you sense when people have something to say so you can make sure that everyone has a chance to be heard?

Media

Questions for Facilitator/Manager

Video conferencing

• How can you best manage the attention span of participants?

• Where can video add something you can’t get with audio only?

Asynchronous Web-Conferencing

• How do you deal with conflict when everyone is participating at different times?

• What’s the virtual equivalent of eye contact?

• What metaphors will help you help participants create the mental map they need to build a culture, which will support the team process?

Document Sharing

• How can you balance the need to access and process large amounts of information with the goal of developing relationships and affective qualities like trust?

Building trust and establishing relationships is cited as a challenge for online communities, so begin with a face-to-face meeting and then pursue the online community. During your face-to-face meeting, let people know that you want to continue the conversations and ask people to join your online community by submitting their Email addresses to you.

To reach as many people as possible, keep things simple in the beginning. Initiate your online community with listserv messages. Begin by sending a message to your group thanking them for attending your recent meeting. One way to begin interaction is to post a question and ask people to respond.

Consider if you want responses to go out to everyone on the listserv or if you want all responses to come to you and you will compile the responses and send back to everyone. Compilation of responses may help ensure anonymity for your members and encourage participation in the beginning when the trust level may not be where it needs to be.

As your online community grows, it will be useful to host an audio conference or another face-to-face meeting to continue the work on building trust.

Remember to offer content and information focused on participants’ interests. Provide resources to help participants make informed decisions. Although information sharing does not encourage community interaction, it may serve to reinforce continue use of the online community.

Use opportunities to share success stories and reward or recognize members.

As your group becomes comfortable with the online community, you may want to consider providing more sophisticated methods to support and maintain your community. Of course, this will be determined by your members’ level of expertise and ability to meet the technology requirements.

Email: Susan Taylor

REFERENCES

Kimball, L. (1997). Intranet Decisions: Creating your organization’s internal network, Miles River Press.

21st Century Digital Learning Environments

AIM for Technologically EVOLVED Learning!

A Classroom Evolved

Students Advance Because of Technology and Real-World Application

By Missy Raterman

Diablo Valley College is one of three publicly supported two-year community colleges in the Contra Costa Community College District in California. DVC serves more than 22,000 students of all ages through more than 2,600 courses offered in 57 occupational specialties.

Many students at the college come from underrepresented socioeconomic groups. Thanks to a grant package that provided wireless technology, cash, and professional development, new learning experiences ignited student interest in the subject matter and helped them get a better focus for their studies.

Calculated Improvement

When Diablo Valley College Calculus II professor Despina Prapavessi was asked whether students entered her course with a strong background in the type of mathematics that they would be expected to engage in during the semester, she replied, "This particular class happened to have a rather weak background in many of the fundamentals they would need to build on for the purpose of the course, but once technology was incorporated in the classroom, participation and learning improved close to 20 percent."

As a recipient of a 2005 Hewlett-Packard Technology for Teaching Higher Learning grant award package, Prapavessi was able to redesign her curriculum with a focus on technology. This gave way to immediate results. Once technology was incorporated into the classroom, 17 percent of Prapavessi's students improved their scores by one to two letter grades during the 18-week semester. This course also reported a 98 percent attendance rate and Prapavessi saw a level of camaraderie between the students that she had never before experienced in her 16 years of teaching at DVC. Along with improving their ability to collaborate on projects in the classroom, students also strengthened their independent, critical thinking skills. These positive additions to the classroom environment resulted in a spike in the number of students with an overall score of 83 percent or higher.

During her course redesign, Prapavessi had a two-fold philosophy of teaching that guided her course development. She felt it was important that the curriculum supported:

• Inquiry-based learning: A method that encourages students to question why they want to learn the subject at hand and creates the need for the learning to be relevant beyond the objective of classroom testing.

• Cooperative-based learning: A method that stresses the importance of the social experience of classroom learning and supports the building of strong relationships between teacher and student, student and student, and student and curriculum.

To achieve this type of environment, Prapavessi felt that it was important to create memorable and active learning experiences, "It's important that students own their learning," she said.

Make it Fun

The award package Prapavessi received included, along with other amenities, 20 tablet PCs which were shared with two other classrooms in a rotation cycle. Personal familiarity with tablet PCs allowed Prapavessi to maximize the impact of having the technology in her classroom. Prapavessi experienced several positive results, which included:

Flexibility: Students could walk around the room taking notes and collecting data or work as a group in areas outside the classroom.

Ability to give feedback in real-time: The tablets, along with the software programs used in the course of the semester, allowed for instant submission and feedback of work during in-class problem solving exercises. Prapavessi was also able to garner anonymous submissions from students by way of the tablet PCs and then cast the submissions on the projector screen, using a software program to work through the students' misconceptions as a group.

Confidence: The new method of communication seemed to lighten the mood in the classroom so that students felt more comfortable making mistakes, which in turn made them more open to learning. The anonymity that the tablet PC submission process was able to provide in terms of feedback cycles also led to instances of many students "tagging" their submissions and including jokes to share on the projector, providing students with a way to laugh together while learning.

Keep it Relevant

Along with the inclusion of new technology in the classroom, Prapavessi's redesigned curriculum incorporated fieldtrips that allowed students to see how calculus is relevant in the real world. These trips included a visit to the Pacific Southwest Forest Service Station where students saw how mathematics can be used to study hawk migration and elk movements. A trip to Roche Pharmaceuticals prompted positive reactions from students. One student said, "The field trip was like the word problems we learned in class but more complex. So now we know that the math formulas we are learning are actually used in real life." The technology alone did not enhance the learning that occurred in the classroom. Rather, it was a combination of real-world applications and relevant teach-friendly technology that worked together to make learning accessible and pertinent to the students.

In the words of Jim Vanides, program manager of the Worldwide Higher Education Grants in the HP Corporate Philanthropy department, "If you take technology and throw it into a classroom where a professor is really focused on teaching the way they've always taught with no plan to really change the learning environment, you risk having the wrong things happen. It's the combination of exemplary teaching plus the power of the technology where the magic happens."

More Than Just the Hardware

HP's educational philanthropic philosophy initiatives focus on three major areas:

Transforming the learning experience: Integrating technology into classrooms to revolutionize teaching and learning processes.

Leading students to high-tech careers: Increasing the number of students on paths toward high-tech careers, emphasizing groups that are underrepresented in the technology sector.

Student success in math, science and engineering: Enhancing skills in math, science and engineering through national and district-wide school reform and teacher professional development.

When the U.S. HP Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative was launched in 2004, the grant supported projects in more than 400 schools. The original vision had been to commit $25 million over the course of what was intended to be a three-year program. However, HP will be funding its fourth year of grant recipients and has provided more than $36 million since 2004, impacting 589 K-12 public schools and 155 two- and four-year colleges and universities engaged in transforming teaching and learning through the integration of technology in the classroom and beyond. "The philosophy really is: plant a bunch of seeds, see which ones grow and then help those projects who are having the most success really blossom," says Vanides. During the past 20 years, HP has contributed more than $1 billion in cash and equipment to schools, universities, community organizations and other nonprofit organizations worldwide. However, HP strives to provide more than just the hardware for the educators and communities it supports, as Vanides notes, "If you just give away hardware, you might as well forget it."

Forging On

The learning for educators doesn't stop once the funding runs dry. Vanides is involved in several continuation projects that focus on the development of grant recipients and non-recipients. He is also committed to connecting educators with educators. "This is not about 'Here's some technology, have fun and good luck,'" Vanides says. "It's really, first and foremost about helping students learn better and giving professors a chance to redesign their course, and the technology is supposed to support all that. The projects are more about teaching than they are about technology, and what's interesting is that the technology allows teachers to do some things that they were never able to do before ... it creates a whole new social environment," says Vanides. Prapavessi remarked on this in her classroom, too: "It's refreshing to be able to have the freedom to explore new methods of teaching. For me, it makes the learning feel less fragmented."

The continuity and connectedness of the grant initiative is evident from the funding to the classroom and beyond. The process starts with visionaries like Vanides who strive to connect educators with global learning tools; the process is supported by the grant initiative which requires measurable outcomes; the process is enacted by leaders like Prapavessi who support students through innovative redesign and willingness to learn alongside them; and the process is further fueled by classroom software tools. With the right perspective, there are really no limits to what technology can inspire.

CHANGE Comes From Outside but Must Resonate Inside!

Education Week

Published Online: August 14, 2007
Published in Print: August 15, 2007

Scholars Reaching Outside Education for School Fixes

By Debra Viadero


The story of how New York City’s beleaguered police department turned itself around between 1994 and 1996 has become a classic case study in graduate business schools.

Management students routinely read how William Bratton, the brash former police commissioner from Boston, took the helm of the Big Apple’s force and transformed it by introducing a computerized data-management system and changing the culture of police work.

Now, some education scholars, in newly published papers and a book out this month, say educators looking to turn around failing schools ought to heed lessons from leaders in other fields, such as Mr. Bratton, who have pulled off similar feats.

“There’s something to be learned from what other organizations have done in the corporate world, in churches, hospitals, and police departments, and, surely, there are things that are applicable to our business,” said Joseph F. Murphy, a professor of educational leadership at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and the co-author of Turning Around Failing Schools: Lessons From the Organizational Sciences, published by Corwin Press, of Thousand Oaks, Calif.

In practice, though, most school leaders and education researchers don’t refer to that wider body of research, according to Mr. Murphy and doctoral student and co-author Coby V. Meyers. “Indeed,” they write in the new volume, “there is an insularity and parochialism in the turnaround literature that is as arrogant as it is ill-advised.”

Mr. Murphy and Mr. Meyers are among a handful of education scholars who in recent years have begun to cast a wider net for advice on how to engineer successful school turnarounds. The need for turnaround strategies that work is more timely than ever.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the list of schools identified to be in need of help grows longer by the year, making educators increasingly desperate for some solid research-based advice.

A recent count by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center found that by the end of the 2005-06 school year, 1,200 U.S. schools had failed to meet the student-achievement targets set under the law for five years in a row. Another 800 schools fell short of their improvement goals for four straight years, according to the U.S. Department of Education. ("Turnarounds Central Issue Under NCLB", June 20, 2007.)

Changes at the Top

Yet the research base on successful turnaround strategies in education is too new and too thin to be of much help to those schools, scholars say. Existing studies in education, they say, tend to focus on making incremental, rather than dramatic, improvements and ignore decades of time-tested studies documenting what worked for managers in other fields.

If education scholars had looked at the deeper body of research beyond their backyard, Mr. Murphy contends, they would have found that some of their own intervention prescriptions conflict with the advice emerging from the turnaround studies outside their field.

For his own review, which took three years, Mr. Murphy analyzed hundreds of case studies and empirical reports dating back to 1970. Most of those studies, he said, conclude that changing the leadership at the top of the organization is a critical ingredient for a successful turnaround.

Turnaround Tactics

With an eye toward turning around failing schools, education scholars are looking to research from various sectors of society for ideas on how organizations can reverse downward trajectories. Some common themes have emerged.

In a cross-sector research review, Public Impact found that leaders of successful turnarounds sought continuous improvement.


■ The U.S. Army operationalized that idea, the study found, by requiring soldiers to complete “after-action reviews” to get them used to thinking about how they could improve their work.

Dramatic change comes in an organization when leaders are free to act quickly, regardless of whether they get permission to act upfront or whether they apologize for it afterward, according to Public Impact.


■ Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston recovered from a disastrous 1996 merger, according to the report, after the turnaround leader persuaded the governing board to steer clear of day-to-day management decisions.

After reading hundreds of studies over three years, scholars Joseph F. Murphy and Coby V. Meyers concluded that most successful turnaround leaders forge a clear vision of the future.


■ The vision behind IBM Corp.’s dramatic transformation in the 1990s, they said, was the idea that the Armonk, N.Y.-based company could move from manufacturing computer hardware to providing computer services, solutions, and networks.

—Debra Viadero

“The thinking is that, if an organization has failed, whether the individual leaders are responsible for it or not, they were there, and they’re unlikely to turn it around or they would have done it already,” he said.

Yet turnaround studies in education tend to underemphasize that aspect of the change process, in Mr. Murphy’s view.

On that point, though, the Vanderbilt professor is likely to draw some argument from his colleagues. There’s more than one way to think about changing leadership in failing schools, said Daniel L. Duke, the research director for a 3-year-old, state-sponsored initiative at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville aimed at training cadres of “turnaround specialists” to work with struggling schools. ("In Struggling Schools, ‘Turnaround’ Leaders Off to Promising Start," Dec. 7, 2005.)

Students in his program, which is jointly run by the university’s business and education schools, also read cases about successful organizational overhauls outside of education.

But, Mr. Duke added, “I’m talking about changing people within the organization and not just switching people.” He said program graduates have had as much success by retraining principals of low-performing schools as they have with replacing them.

By the same token, though, Mr. Murphy and other scholars warn against a complete change of staffing in schools, noting that such sweeping changes can exacerbate morale problems and rob the schools of individuals with institutional memory and practical knowledge of the system.

‘Begin With the Budget’

Mr. Murphy said his reading of the wider literature also suggests that school administrators need to spend more time upfront identifying where the problems and inefficiencies are in their organizations, rather than rushing out to find a school improvement model to adopt.

“Almost all other organizations begin with the budget and start identifying inefficiencies,” he said. “While you can argue that may not be applicable to schools, our argument is that you probably should start with the budget and figure out where current money can be reinvested to serve in the turnaround.”

Another common theme of turnaround studies, both inside and outside of education, is that it’s important to accomplish a few highly visible achievements in the first year, said Bryan C. Hassel, the co-director of Public Impact, an educational consulting firm based in Chapel Hill, N.C.

For a study led by his wife, Emily Ayscue Hassel, Mr. Hassel helped review 59 reports written since 2000 on successful turnarounds of schools, districts, hospitals, the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Army, city governments, and agencies serving disabled children, among other organizations.

A case study of the New York Police Department’s two-year turnaround, for instance, showed that Mr. Bratton used an “early win” strategy by pushing to get bulletproof vests and more powerful weapons for officers and ordering darker, more authoritative-looking uniforms in his first week on the job as police commissioner.

In subsequent months, he reduced processing time for arrests from an average of 16 hours to one hour and marshaled officers to clamp down on “quality of life” misdemeanors—most famously by cracking down on the then-ubiquitous “squeegee pests” who washed the windshields of cars stopped in traffic and then demanded payment for their efforts.

“You need early, tangible wins to build confidence,” Mr. Hassel said. “Otherwise, the demoralization continues.”

Plan Around Data

In their reviews, the Hassels and Mr. Murphy also found that successful organizational overhauls tended, in some fashion, to redirect workers to focus on or identify with their “customers.”

“One of the reasons that organizations fail consistently is that there’s a disconnect from customers,” Mr. Murphy said. “That’s one of the things you see less of in education.”

Across the spectrum, though, successful leaders in schools, police agencies, hospitals, and other organizations also brought about dramatic change by measuring and reporting progress and crafting an action plan based on the data they collect, according to experts.

One example from the broader body of work: Commissioner Bratton, a student himself of the literature on organizational management, brought in a sophisticated data-management system called Compstat that displayed maps and charts showing where crimes occurred and police-response patterns.

Using the system, the agency’s 76 precinct commanders presented data on their precincts’ progress at semiweekly meetings with top department officials.

Mr. Bratton’s story is famous in part because his changes appeared to produce dramatic, and widely reported, improvements. Between 1993 and 1995, a time when other major U.S. cities saw crime rates rise, incidences of crime in New York dropped by nearly 26 percent.

Stacey M. Childress, a lecturer in general management at the Harvard Business School, said she uses the NYPD case study with students in the Public Education Leadership Project, a 4-year-old program jointly run by Harvard’s business school and its graduate school of education.

Once they identify a successful strategy in the general literature, though, her students also examine the ways in which schools and districts have successfully adopted and adapted the same idea. After reading about the Compstat system, for instance, her students looked at case studies describing how schools in Montgomery County, Md., and Memphis, Tenn., used student-achievement data to improve schooling.

“Having a distillation of things that seem to work across multiple sectors is a great addition to the field,” she said. “But you need to take one more step and take the ideas you’ve distilled and test those on the ground in public education to see whether or not they do adapt to different contexts.”

“My guess,” she added, “is that many would.”

Coverage of education research is supported in part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation.

When Change is the end-game make sure you are asking the right question

Education Week

Published Online: August 14, 2007
Published in Print: August 15, 2007

Leading for Change

—Steven Braden

Five ‘Habits of Mind’ That Count

By Tony Wagner

There are many things we do right as educators—most notably, working hard to make a difference in the lives of children, despite ever-escalating challenges. I’m beginning to see, however, that we educators are handicapped when it comes to leading efforts to improve teaching and learning. People in a host of other professions—business, law, medicine, engineering, architecture—have been trained to analyze and solve problems as a matter of everyday practice. We have not.

In all the professions listed above, and in many others as well, individuals or, more frequently, teams are given real-life problems in their field to study in graduate schools or continuing education programs, most often through a pedagogy called the case method. They are asked to analyze the issues and then make recommendations for strategies that might solve the problem or produce change. While the case-method pedagogy can sometimes be a game of “guess what’s on the teacher’s mind,” with practice and coaching from professors, graduate students learn what kinds of data are most important to attend to in their analyses, as well as the questions to ask that might yield a deeper understanding of the problem. Once out on the job, these professionals are called upon to use their analytic skills on a daily basis and are rewarded as they become more skillful problem-solvers.

Too often in education, we start with answers before we have understood the problem we’re trying to solve.

None of this is routine in the education profession. In our graduate schools, we still teach aspiring principals and superintendents much more about management than about how to make change. The case study method or other similar approaches are very rare in most graduate programs. As a result, most graduates of even better schools of education lack both exposure to and practice in the analytic skills that are the foundation for effective problem-solving.

Nor are most educators asked to use these skills on the job. At the Change Leadership Group, which I co-direct at Harvard University, we have identified three culturally embedded traits that thwart educators’ opportunities to regularly practice problem-solving skills:

Reaction. We educators are expected to be responsive to a cacophony of urgent needs and demands every day. We can’t say no, and everything is a priority. Most of us haven’t developed the discipline of reflection as a way to remain focused on the truly important vs. the merely urgent, and we’re inclined to think that because we’re busy we must be making progress toward our goals.

Compliance. The education culture has tended to reward compliance to authority at all levels over active questioning or genuine discussion of issues. Compliance is usually how so-called “change” is implemented in our profession. The board or superintendent or principal hears about some new program and adopts it. Rarely is there any problem analysis or discussion of how and why this particular strategy may be better than another, or how its success will be evaluated. The result is that the “reform du jour” is half-heartedly implemented until some new leader or “better” reform comes along.

Isolation. Educators work alone more than any other professionals in modern America. Most professions have come to recognize the value of teamwork as a better way to understand and solve “problems of practice.” Groups are far more likely to come to a deeper understanding, and to better solutions, than are individuals working alone, no matter how talented.

Fortunately, there appears to be new interest in forms of collaboration among educators. “Critical-friends groups” and “professional learning communities” are increasingly popular. And my group, for one, sees great potential in what we call “leadership practice communities” as a way to develop education leaders’ problem-solving skills. ("The Challenge of Change Leadership," Oct. 27, 2004.) For these forms of collaboration to be effective as tools for change, however, individuals and groups need to cultivate new habits of mind that will help them overcome their lack of preparation and practice in this work.

Deborah Meier and her faculty at New York City’s Central Park East Secondary School developed what they called the “Five Habits of Mind” as a structure for “teaching students to use their minds well.” (See Ms. Meier’s 1995 book, The Power of Their Ideas.) To them, and others in the Coalition of Essential Schools who adopted those habits of mind, the goal was to get students in the habit of routinely asking essential questions in their discussions and written work, questions such as these: What is the evidence for this, and how credible is it? Whose point of view is being represented here, and what are other points of view on this topic or issue? There are many others.

Lacking a comparable adult discipline of question-asking, many problem-solving discussions among educators rarely reveal anything new in terms of a deeper understanding or alternative solutions. Most of the questions educators ask each other in such settings are “safe” ones. Many fall into the category of “clarifying” questions or “warm” feedback.

_____

So what are some questions change leaders might learn to wrestle with? What might be the equivalent “Five Habits of Mind for Change Leadership” we could work on together?

In our work, my colleagues and I have identified a sequence of questions that, if pursued rigorously, and courageously, can lead to a deeper understanding of the challenges we face as well as more effective strategies for dealing with them:

• What is the problem we are trying to solve, or the obstacle we are trying to overcome, and what does it have to do with improving teaching and learning?

• What are our strategies for solving this problem, and how and why do we think implementation of these strategies will cause the change that’s needed—what’s our “theory of action”?

• Who (teachers, parents, students, community) needs to understand what, in order to “own the problem” and support the strategies we’re implementing?

• Who is accountable for what for implementation of this strategy to be successful, and what do they need to be effective?

• What evidence (observable changes in short-term outcomes or behaviors) will we track that will tell us whether our strategies are working?

_____

Einstein once said that “the formulation of the problem is often more important than the solution.” Too often in education, we start with answers before we have understood the problem we’re trying to solve.

Working with the Small Schools Project in Seattle, I recently advised a talented group of district teams that had been funded by the Gates Foundation to move their systems toward the goal of “all students college-ready.” Most had been hard at work on this goal for a year and a half when we suggested that they make time to revisit their change strategies. We asked them to discuss in their teams what they saw as the most significant obstacles to getting more students ready for college, and then to see how their list of initiatives stacked up to the problems they identified. Many were surprised to find that they did not agree on what “college-prepared”—a key element of college-ready—really meant. Nor had they considered what might be the most significant obstacles to this goal. As they discussed these issues, and then looked at all of their activities, they began to see that many of the latter did not address the barriers they’d belatedly identified.

For a number of people on the teams, the half-day deliberations were as challenging as any they’d experienced in our work together, and this was just a start. Having had these discussions, the teams were now better positioned to consider the final three questions from the list above.

In our graduate schools, we still teach aspiring principals and superintendents much more about management than about how to make change.

Broad “ownership” of the problem a school or district needs to solve is rare in compliance-driven change efforts, where concern for positive PR trumps true public engagement and unfavorable data are downplayed. Also, accountability for the implementation of change strategies often is ill-defined or nonexistent. Where it does exists, it is perceived as part of a top-down “command and control” system. To be effective, however, accountability has to be two-way and horizontal as well as vertical. The question is not merely, “What am I holding you accountable for?” It is also, “What do we need to do to help ensure your success? What is our reciprocal and relational accountability to one another? How do we each own parts of this problem?”

Finally, there is much talk about the importance of assessing results, but often the assumption is that test-score improvements are the only way of gauging the success of a reform strategy. While they are important, test scores are not the only measure, and the results typically come too late to be useful in evaluating the effectiveness of strategies. We need to identify shorter-term qualitative and quantitative measures that can serve as proxies for the improvements we seek. “Evidence-based professional development” is one example. If we spend time as a school or district on developing teachers’ questioning techniques in classes or their strategies for improving students’ writing, we can collect evidence fairly quickly to determine whether there are changes in what the teachers do in classrooms, or whether student writing shows improvement.

These five habits of mind for change leadership are not a recipe for change. Rather, they suggest the kinds of questions we need to routinely ask ourselves and each other. As we get better and more consistent at discussing such questions, two things are likely to happen: The problem-solving skills we educators need to transform teaching and learning will be developed in powerful ways, and, more importantly, students will see that habits of mind are not just for them; they are for all of us who want to learn how to problem-solve and think in more rigorous and disciplined ways.

With both adults and young people working hard, both separately and together, to develop effective habits of mind, students are far more likely to be truly college-prepared. They will have developed the skills that matter most for higher education—and the world beyond the classroom.

Tony Wagner is a co-director of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard University’s graduate school of education (www.gse.harvard.edu/clg) and is currently working on his fourth book, Why Johnny Can’t Think: The Other Achievement Gap, to be published by Basic Books next year. He can be reached at tony_wagner@harvard.edu.

Our AIM Endeavor: Explore, Discover and Share!

(Associated Press)

Shuttle astronauts Tracy Caldwell, left, Barbara Morgan and Commander Scott Kelly talk with news media from weightless space Tuesday.

Endeavour becomes classroom

Shuttle repairs are still being debated

August 15, 2007

BY MARCIA DUNN

ASSOCIATED PRESS

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan transformed the space shuttle and space station into a classroom Tuesday for her first education session from orbit, fulfilling the legacy of Christa McAuliffe.

"I've thought about Christa and the Challenger crew just about every day since 20-plus years ago," Morgan said. "I hope that they know that they are here with us in our hearts."

Morgan, 55, who was McAuliffe's backup for the tragic 1986 flight, got her first opportunity to talk with schoolchildren Tuesday, almost halfway through her two-week trip.

The youngsters were assembled at the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise, less than 100 miles from the elementary school where Morgan taught.

Morgan was asked how being a teacher compared to being an astronaut.

"Astronauts and teachers actually do the same thing," she said. "We explore, we discover and we share. And the great thing about being a teacher is you get to do that with students, and the great thing about being an astronaut is you get to do it in space, and those are absolutely wonderful jobs."

The session was a welcome diversion for NASA, which found itself still trying to explain why foam insulation still was falling off shuttle fuel tanks more than four years after the Columbia disaster.

The gouge in shuttle Endeavour's belly wasn't considered a threat to the crew, but NASA was debating whether to send astronauts out to fix it in order to avoid time-consuming post-flight repairs.

The testing and analyses are expected to be completed today.

The repair would be relatively simple, but astronauts would wear 300-pound spacesuits and carry 150 pounds of tools, which could hit the shuttle and cause more damage.

The Michigan Citizen speaks Volumes!

Got school money?

Financial Transparency can no longer be taboo with DPS

By Michael D. Wynn, CFE

"The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government." George Washington

Today, public school accountability still depends largely on financial transparency and compliance. In a Michigan Citizen, February 2007 article, I made a call to promote financial transparency.

Financial transparency still means a financial system that is transparent�although we are now finding out that $46 million in school funds may not be so transparent.

Public education funds exist to educate our children. The funds are mandated by law. However, it seems as if some people think public education funds are their own private company and they can do what they want with the dollars.

Apparently the DPS system of internal controls, or the lack there of, was tested. We see how weak they really are.

I am a former Detroit Public School Internal Auditor who was among the first to be terminated by former CEO Dr. Kenneth Burnley and his �process of elimination�. Burnley shut down the Office of Internal Audit during an era in which financial scandals involving Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, Tyco and others were on the rise.

At the same time, many schools were hit with the shocking news of lost or misappropriated funds by school administrations that had no regards for the education of children.

Like the Roslyn Union Free School District, just outside New York, where in October 2002, the Board of Education (Board) of the District was first informed that Pamela Gluckin, Assistant Superintendent for Business, stole $223,000 from the District. The Board allowed Gluckin to reimburse the District $250,000 ($223,000 plus accounting and legal fees), surrender her administrator�s license and retire, without the District pursuing criminal charges against her.

However, in early 2004, further allegations surfaced alleging that there was a substantial misappropriation of District funds over a period of several years. Gluckin was arrested and charged with stealing more than $1 million from the District.

Soon thereafter, Superintendent Frank Tassone and Account Clerk Deborah Rigano (Gluckin's niece) resigned and were ultimately arrested and charged with first and second-degree grand larceny, respectively. In response to numerous requests and concerns in the community, the State Comptroller initiated an audit of the District on June 1, 2004.

The audit that was completed in 2006 would later find that about 30 plus people were involved with the embezzlement and fraud of stolen or apparently misappropriated funds in the amount of $11,251,365 from the district, which included:

Personal credit cards
$5,902,544

Private Mortgages and Loans
1,137,939

Home Depot
609,000

Food
594,121

Salaries and Benefits
582,786

Gluckin-owned companies
255,537

Computers and Electronic Equip.
249,883

Private automobiles
206,798

Insurance premiums
160,171

Travel Expenses
133,619

Other Personal Expenses
112,983


Apparent Misuse of District Funds:

Related Party Consultants
1,074,547

Postage and Shipping
166,945

Other Questionable Expenditures
64,492

Total
$11,251,365

By the way, this school district did have some internal controls in place, however the problem was independence and paid outside vendors who were assigned to monitor the controls.

For example, two employees who could have identified the misappropriation, the Internal Claims Auditor (a vendor) and the Treasurer, were not doing their jobs to ensure that only appropriate and authorized payments were being made. The external auditor and contractor, a CPA firm that audited the District once a year, also had conflicts of interest and performed an audit below professional standards. The firm failed to identify the millions that were apparently misappropriated.

And other employees in the District, who may have been aware of the apparent misappropriation, benefited in different ways. Also there was loved ones such as Stephen Signorelli, who was sentenced in 2007 to serve one to three years in prison. Mr. Signorelli, 60, of Manhattan, was the domestic partner of Dr. Frank A. Tassone, Roslyn schools superintendent. Dr. Tassone has admitted to stealing more than $2 million during his tenure between 1994 and 2002.

The case papers on record and the prosecutors indicated that Dr. Tassone had been the schools chief for about five years, and had already begun embezzling funds, when he arranged to have Mr. Signorelli receive a no-bid contract to prepare and print computer teaching handbooks for the school district. Mr. Signorelli, a computer consultant, had no previous business with the school system.

This case may seem unusual, but as an Auditor, I know this sort of thing can easily go on in many school districts where there are weak or no internal controls. (To see the entire Roslyn Union Free School District Audit report and other school fraud cases go to: www.gotschoolmoney.com).

As far as DPS, I know that the parents and community will still call for a school system that efficiently spends tax dollars on a quality education for our children, and that this system will honestly and properly review the fiscal management operations of the district.

I did commend Mr. William Coleman III for his plan to hire an Inspector General and restore DPS Office of Internal Audit�which hasn�t happened to date. Mr. Coleman himself, now faces charges of bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery through a program receiving federal funds, and conspiracy to commit money laundering from a businessman whose company was awarded $39 million in technology contracts in 2002 and 2003, according to a federal indictment.

Yet, I feel refreshed, renewed and hopeful. I am glad to see the actions and efforts taken by the current DPS Superintendent Dr. Connie Calloway, in her attempts to get the district closer to financially fitness and ready to accept a system of financial transparency.

The school district should also considers the use of guidelines such as the American Competitiveness and Corporate Accountability Acts in which Congress made requirements for the governance and management of a company regulated by federal securities laws.

This corporate accountability act which is referred to as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, applies only to such publicly traded companies but can provide certain provisions to nonprofit corporations and public bodies including public school districts.

I believe the effect of Sarbanes- Oxley Act has really been to redefine corporate responsibility.

So why not school officials? They also need to understand the climate of financial transparency and accountability when exercising their own financial oversight obligations.

Financial transparency is a must, even when it�s not legally required. A different approach to accountability and transparency can be envisioned, and planned to improve our school system. Yes, there is potential for DPS to succeed. Help is on the way!

Michael D. Wynn can be reach by email winwynn@coachwin.com.

From Time to Time a SUMMARY is Necessary. THAT TIME IS NOW!