TEAMED KNOWLEDGE WORKER FUTURE THINK! (SKATE to WHERE the PUCK will BE)

The future of knowledge workers, Part 1
By Dan Holtshouse - Posted Aug 28, 2009

In times of economic turmoil, taking a look into the future toward 2020 might seem like an academic exercise at best. On the other hand, understanding what organizational strategies executives and professionals believe are needed to ensure a viable future is critical to identifying opportunities on the horizon as well as challenges before they become insurmountable. The purpose of this research was to peer into those longer-term trends to determine how organizations will likely try to provide a compelling work environment that attracts, retains and leverages the best of the knowledge workers of the future.

This study on the future of the knowledge worker was sponsored by The George Washington University (GWU) and the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at GWU. Some KMWorld readers were part of the sample population and accessed the survey through a posting on the KMWorld Web site. Some of the main trends identified in the survey are included in the following:

Critical thinking for the future. The majority of professionals and executives who took the survey indicated that their organizations will prepare proactively for the future by building scenarios and responses to emerging trends that could impact them. A significant number of organizations, however, are heading into the future much less prepared because they have no standard or consistent approach to detect and evaluate future impacts, or, worse, will likely wait until the trend becomes a distinct disruption and requires focused recovery action.

Retirements and the loss of knowledge. The well documented, coming baby boomer retirement wave is one such important future impact facing many organizations. The overwhelming challenge organizations expect to confront is the loss of organizational knowledge through those retirements. Interestingly, the loss of critical knowledge far outweighed concern about potential operational impact, possible cultural/social disruptions or the task of mounting an aggressive recruiting program to attract replacements.

Filling knowledge worker gaps. Although knowledge loss is predicted to be a huge challenge, programs to retain retirees or delay their retirement did not score high on the action list. Instead, the professionals and executives surveyed indicated that they would likely fill future critical talent gaps by relying on an aggressive recruiting program for new employees. A significant number of organizations, however, are likely not to hire new employees at all, but will instead outsource the work, use fewer workers overall or fill the organizational needs through the use of specialized "for hire services.

Recruiting/attracting strategies. To fill those future critical talent gaps, executives and professionals indicated that they are likely to advertise and promote a range of organizational advantages (in addition to competitive compensation and benefits) to attract and recruit the necessary professional and managerial talent needed for their future work force. The survey also asked if their strategies would be different for recruiting two different age groups, those just coming into the workplace (25 years old or younger) and a more experienced worker group (26 to 40 year olds).

The top recruiting strategy picked for both age groups was an emphasis on flex telework/telecommute programs that reflect the era of the mobile work force. However, that’s where the similarity ended. For the younger workers, cultural diversity/empathy was the second- most important organizational recruiting advantage, indicating a response to the next-generation worker’s awareness of the benefits provided by a multicultural workplace. Additional recruiting advantages will include emphasis on opportunities for personal growth through mentor/coaching programs, advanced degree support and integrated life/work programs.

For the 26- to 40-year-old group of recruits, the second-most important recruiting advantage was job security, which recognizes the likely important role of home and family life for their stage in life. Other advantages to be promoted included integrated life/work programs, personal services, cultural diversity/empathy, ethical culture, mentor/coaching programs, community service programs and eco/green initiatives.

Knowledge retention strategies. Knowledge loss is anticipated to be a significant retirement issue, but it is also expected to be a continuing challenge for other employees who leave as well. The top knowledge retention strategy for younger workers (25 years or younger) who leave the organization is likely to be the education and training of replacement employment (which suggests that many organizations feel that there will not be a lot of critical knowledge to be retained). On the other hand, many other organizations felt that there will be valuable know-how worth capturing, and would use resources like communities of practice and professional networks, documentation processes and work process knowledge capture through advanced software. There were few or no plans for engineering out the work or changing processes as a replacement for retention strategies.

For the 26- to 40-year-old worker, the top strategies for retaining workers’ knowledge when they leave their job will be through communities of practice and professional networks, followed by documentation processes, the education and training of replacement employment, and the capture of work process knowledge through advanced software. There was little or no interest in engineering out the work or changing processes in place of retention strategies.

The future of knowledge workers, Part 2
Posted Sep 30, 2009

This is the second half of a two-part article that explores the findings of a recent study on the future of the knowledge worker. For Part I, click through to KMWorld Magazine.

The purpose of the research was to look at longer-term trends in how organizations will likely try to provide a compelling work environment that attracts, retains and leverages the best of the knowledge workers of the future.

The study was sponsored by The George Washington University (GWU) and the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at GWU. Some KMWorld readers were part of the sampling population and accessed the survey through a posting on the KMWorld Web site. Several of the main trends identified in the survey are described in this article.

Top type of future knowledge work

Given the unstructured nature of knowledge work, the concept of "one size fits all" does not really apply here. Borrowing from a four-part work segmentation theme by Tom Davenport (Thinking for a Living, 2005), the survey asked what types of knowledge work are likely to become the most highly valued in the organization over the next 10 to 12 years. Collaborative work (project design team, global consultancy, etc.) received the highest ranking by the survey respondents. That was consistent with the high interest expressed throughout the survey in increasing collaborative support capabilities. Expert judgment work (research scientist, legal specialist, etc.) ranked a distant second, followed by process-oriented work (financial reporting, quality assurance, etc.) and transaction work (tech support center, billing inquiry, etc.).

Most valuable future skills

Over the next 10 to 12 years, team/collaborative skills will be the capabilities that organizations value the most for knowledge workers who are 25 years old or younger. Collaboration capabilities are essential for workers with little experience so they can learn and contribute through others in team/community participation.

The survey takers were asked to select from a list of 10 different skills and expertise possibilities. The top valued expertise of team/collaboration skills was followed closely by specialized technical expertise, which organizations indicated is a primary way that the younger worker can add immediate value to team and community initiatives. The remaining valued capabilities, in order of importance, were: analytics/ modeling, entrepreneurial skills, systems thinking and analysis, project management, strategic thinking, knowledge management, international experience and general management. PDF of charts may be viewed here.

For the 26- to 40-year-old workers who, in many cases, will form the core of the next-generation leadership, the organization would value highest the capabilities that enable major responsibility for the organization’s operations, strategy and overall performance. Those capabilities for that age group include project management as the highest skill and expertise, followed by strategy and strategic thinking, and specialized expertise. The remaining responses, in order, were for team/ collaboration, systems thinking and analysis, general management skills, knowledge management, entrepreneurial, international experience and analytics/modeling.

Top future technology investments

The top priority for future technology investment to support performance improvement for the 25-year-old worker or younger will be collaboration tools. That is consistent with organizational views that collaborative work will be the most valuable type of future work and that collaborative skills will be the most highly valued skill set of the younger worker. Technology investments will also be directed toward enabling improved communication, information access and mobile work through enhanced e-mail, search and portals infrastructure, virtual workspace tools and information processing tools for visualization, expertise location and business intelligence.

For the 26- to 40-year-old workers, the top technology investment priorities will also go toward collaboration and e-mail, search and portals infrastructure. The second tier of technology investments for the older workers, however, would be to enable better decision-making and leadership support through content analysis and sense-making tools and business intelligence capabilities. For both age groups, intelligent agent software and machine learning tools received little interest as technology investments by the survey organizations, even though ongoing update/enhancement of worker skills was projected to be a continuing challenge over the next 10 to 12 years.

Eco/green impact on knowledge work

As the eco/green movement continues to gain momentum and visibility in society, organizations are presenting a mixed view of what the major impact will likely be on the workplace over the next 10 to 12 years. The top two survey responses were a tie between two different potential impacts. Organizations believe one implication will be a significant expansion and support of virtual work, which reinforces the era of mobile work and the adoption of technology that enables work anywhere. On the other hand, an equal number of organizations foresee and expect little or no change from the current situation in the workplace, which reflects the realities of resistance to change and the requirement by some organizations of a physical presence in the workplace.

In a somewhat surprising rating, the professionals and executives who took the survey anticipated little or no increase in car-pooling and public transportation as a result of the eco/green movement.

Who took the survey?

One hundred and twenty-five professionals and executives participated in the survey, which was conducted in mid-2008. Three-quarters of the respondents were from North America and one-quarter from Europe and South America. The survey group was highly senior with almost half consisting of executives and directors/managers. A wide range of organizational sizes were represented with more than one-third reporting 25,000 or more employees. Approximately two-thirds were from business and one-third from government organizations. The 35-part questionnaire was developed through interviews with KM thought leaders, KM publishers, academic leaders, business/government professionals and survey design experts.

It's About TIME! (To DO the RIGHT THING)

WHY it's NOT About the MONEY!

Race to the Top (Update)

September 28, 2009
Editorial
Mr. Duncan and That $4.3 Billion

With sound ideas and a commitment to rigorously monitor the states’ progress, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has revitalized the school-reform effort that had lost most of its momentum by the closing days of the Bush administration.

His power to press for reforms was dramatically enhanced earlier this year when Congress gave him control of $4.3 billion in grant money — the Race to the Top fund — that is to be disbursed to the states on a competitive basis. Mr. Duncan will need to resist political pressure and special pleadings and reward only the states that are committed to effective and clearly measurable reform.

Mr. Duncan’s exhortations, and the promise of so much cash, have already persuaded eight states to adopt measures favorable to charter schools, which Mr. Duncan rightly sees as crucial in the fight to turn around failing schools.

To be eligible for the money, every state must also show how student performance will be factored into their systems for evaluating teachers. And Mr. Duncan has asked the states to come up with plausible plans to turn around failing schools — so-called dropout factories — and to better serve minority students.

He has also made clear in preliminary guidelines released earlier this year that his system for evaluating the states’ reform efforts will be rigorous — and that financing can be revoked if states renege on their promises. Even the National Education Association, the aggressively hidebound teachers’ union, seems to understand that the time for defending the status quo has passed.

For all that, the difficult part is yet to come. Mr. Duncan must be prepared to reject grant applications that do not meet the eligibility requirements, but he also must be willing to encourage states to innovate.

As he decides which applications to accept and which to reject, Mr. Duncan can expect a lot of outside pressure from politicians demanding that he finance all of their states’ programs and from community purists demanding that he reject projects that don’t comply with their views.

He will need to resist those pressures and choose substantive, innovative proposals that stand the best chance of improving the schools. For that, he will need courage, stamina and cover from the White House.

Warren Consolidated Schools / Macomb, Math, Science & Technology Center (MMSTC-Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony 9-23-2009)

A Race WORTH Running (AND ONE WE MUST NOT LOSE!)

For Release:
1:00 pm

September 24, 2008Contact:
Gary G. Naeyaert
517-281-2690

2,500 ADVOCATES HOLD EDUCATION REFORM RALLY AT STATE CAPITOL

Change agents urge legislature to pass bills to close the achievement gap and secure “Race to the Top” funds

Lansing, MI – More than 2,500 students, parents, teachers and education activists held a rally on the lawn of State Capitol Building this morning.

Education reform priorities pushed during the rally included the need to fix failing schools, provide alternative routes to teacher certification, and expand quality public school options, especially in underperforming areas.

“It is a moral imperative that we close the academic achievement gap in Michigan,” said Michael Tenbusch, Vice President for Education Preparedness at the United Way of Southeastern Michigan.

“These reforms are not only the right approach for our students – they could bring millions in federal education funds to the state,” he continued.

Most observers believe passing these types of bills are necessary before Michigan will be competitive in $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” federal incentive program.

“Each and every American citizen is entitled to have equal access to a high quality education,” said Kevin Chavous, one of the nation’s leading education reform activists, during his stirring keynote address at the rally.

Students released over 1,000 “Kids Need Great Schools” balloons after Chavous’ remarks, and each balloon represented hundreds of minority and at-risk students behind grade level and stuck in failing schools.

“Every child can learn, and all kids deserve great schools. The status quo isn’t getting it done, so we need to work together and find new ways to help kids achieve,” said Rachele Downs, Vice President, CB Richard Ellis Detroit and member of the Leadership Detroit Education Support Committee.

“We agree with President Obama that students must take responsibility for their own education, and empowering parents as true partners in public education should be a much higher priority,” said Sharlonda Buckman, Executive Director of the Detroit Parent Network.

EARLY Childhood Learning (Dollars-But WHAT does it Look Like?)

September 20, 2009
Initiative Focuses on Early Learning Programs
By SAM DILLON

Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5.

The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a bill to sign in December.

Experts describe the current array of programs serving young children and their families nationwide as a hodgepodge of efforts with little coordination or coherence. Financing comes from a shifting mix of private, local, state and federal money. Programs are run out of storefronts and churches, homes and Head Start centers, public schools and other facilities. Quality is uneven, with some offering stimulating activities, play and instruction but others providing little more than a room and a television.

Oversight varies by state, but most lack any early childhood structure analogous to the state and local boards of education that govern public schools. A result is that poor children, even many who have access to government-financed early care or learning programs, tend to enter kindergarten less prepared for school than those with wealthier parents.

To qualify for grants, states would have to demonstrate that they have established or improved what the bill calls a “governance structure” for their networks of child care centers and prekindergarten programs.

The structure would include quality standards; a curriculum of sorts, appropriate for young children; a mechanism for reviewing programs and assigning quality ratings; minimum training requirements for providers; a plan for reaching out to parents; and a system for collecting data on children and families. The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services would jointly administer the Challenge Fund.

Sharon Lynn Kagan, a professor at Teachers College who has traced the history of American child care programs back to the early 19th century, wrote a paper last year advocating federal aid to states in building a more coherent and robust early-childhood infrastructure.

“No one bill can solve everything,” Professor Kagan said, “but this will move us more than any other piece of legislation toward higher quality in early education, not just more spaces for children.”

Since the campaign, Mr. Obama has raised expectations among early learning advocates with his endorsements of public investments in the careful nurturing of young children, especially the disadvantaged. In the economic stimulus bill, Congress last spring appropriated more than $4 billion in new financing for child care and education efforts, including Head Start, the federal program that serves about 900,000 preschoolers.

Still, not all early learning advocates are satisfied that the administration is doing all it could to integrate early learning efforts into the nation’s broader public education system.

The Department of Education is already administering a separate $4.3 billion competition among states to reward and encourage improvements to elementary and secondary schools. In August, scores of early learning groups and advocates wrote letters to the department criticizing proposed rules for that competition, known as Race to the Top, as largely ignoring early childhood education.

“We don’t see how our country can race to the top when all kids are not at the same starting line” when they reach kindergarten, said Marcy Young, project director for the Pre-K Now program at the Pew Center on the States, one group that criticized the rules.

One reason the administration focused on elementary and secondary schools in the Race to the Top competition and early childhood in the Challenge Fund is that the two are at contrasting levels of development, administration officials said, with the public schools needing initiatives to improve teacher effectiveness, for instance, and early childhood needing basic structures of governance.

Sara Mead, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, said, “I haven’t talked with anybody who isn’t excited about the prospects for this Early Learning Challenge Fund.”

“But there is disappointment in some parts of the early childhood community that it’s not more focused on adding slots,” Ms. Mead said.

One reason advocates are especially concerned about slots for children is that after a decade in which states had taken the lead in expanding access nationwide, several with deep budget troubles have recently eliminated or reduced services for tens of thousands of children.

Illinois, for instance, cut the budget for its Pre-K for All program to $305 million this fiscal year from $338 million last year, eliminating slots for about 9,500 children, according to statistics provided by Albert Wat, a project manager at Pre-K Now.

In Ohio, lawmakers did away with a program known as the Early Learning Initiative, the budget for which last year was $125 million, Mr. Wat said. The action eliminated access for 12,000 children, he said.

“In some states, we’re seeing a disaster,” said Steve Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

But despite the tightest budgets in decades, nearly 30 states have chosen to protect or increase financing for early learning programs.

MacArthur Foundation

Follow the Mindset and Model the Practice!

Detroit Chamber presents DEPSA & Foreign Language Immersion School as models for 21st Century Learning

Many People, Business's & Organizations have asked "What do You Guys DO?" We now have an appropriate answer "WHAT HE SAID!"

President Obama Weighs-In!

The following is the prepared text of Mr. Obama's speech to students to be delivered in Arlington, Va., on Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2009, which was posted in advance on the White House Web site.


The President: Hello everyone - how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still Summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday - at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.

I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that - if you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home - that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer - hundreds of extra hours - to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you - you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down - don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

This Just In!

Posted: Tuesday, 08 September 2009 7:37AM

Students Head Back To School

Detroit (WWJ) -- Detroit Public Schools students and thousands of others across Metro Detroit and Michigan return to class and there are big changes in some districts.

Over 1,000 teachers have been laid off and 29 schools closed in the Detroit Public Schools, as the district tries to stop plummeting enrollment. Last fall, enrollment dropped below 100,000 and is expected to dip under 90,000 this fall.

Emergency financial manager Robert Bobb will be at several schools this morning welcoming students back.

"We want to make sure parents and students have everything they need to have a successful first day of school," Bobb said. "We know that issues will arise so we will have SWAT teams out in the schools all day. And I will be in the field at schools throughout the day, as well, to address concerns and answer questions."

Early Tuesday morning, Bobb said he was upset that there wasn't enough workers to answer a hotline number set up to answer any questions that arise.

Parents who have questions are being asked to call (313) 240-4DPS for questions not answered by their child's school. District staff will be on hand to answer phones until 5:30 p.m. Extra staff will be on hand throughout the week to address concerns.

Teachers in three suburban districts are without contracts, but they plan to be in the classroom when school starts.

According to the Michigan Education Association, all three districts -- Woodhaven-Brownstown, Southfield and Redford Union Schools -- are on the union's critical list, meaning the union does not see progress in the negotiations. Talks in the districts are stalled over salaries and health insurance.

In Pontiac, the school district opens with a new uniform policy in place and only one high school. Pontiac High School opens in what had been known as Pontiac Northern High School. Under a consolidation plan, high school students from Northern and Central High will be attending class at the new Pontiac High.

The weather for the first couple days of school includes rain. Click here for the forecast.

RING! Consequences of the PERFECT STORM!

September 8, 2009
Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts
By SAM DILLON

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Children are returning to classrooms across the nation during one of the most tumultuous periods in American education, in which many thousands of teachers and other school workers — no one yet knows how many — were laid off in dozens of states because of plummeting state and local revenue. Many were hired back, thanks in part to $100 billion in federal stimulus money.

How much the federal money has succeeded in stabilizing schools depends on the state. In those where budget deficits have been manageable, stimulus money largely replaced plunging taxpayer revenues for schools. But in Arizona, California, Georgia and a dozen other states with overwhelming deficits, the federal money has failed to prevent the most extensive school layoffs in several decades, experts said.

When Lori Smallwood welcomed her third-grade students back to school here, it was a new beginning after a searing summer in which she lost her job, agonized over bills, got rehired and, along with all school employees here, saw her salary cut.

“I’m just glad to be teaching,” Ms. Smallwood said. “After the misery of losing your job, a pay cut is a piece of cake.”

In the hard-hit states, the shuffling of teachers out of their previous classrooms and into new ones, often in new districts or at unfamiliar grade levels — or onto unemployment — continues to disrupt instruction at thousands of schools. Experts said that seniority and dysfunctional teacher evaluation systems were forcing many districts to trim strong teachers rather than the least effective.

And in some places, teacher layoffs have pushed up class sizes. In Arizona, which is suffering one of the nation’s worst fiscal crises, some classrooms were jammed with nearly 50 students when schools reopened last month, and the norm for Los Angeles high schools this fall is 42.5 students per teacher.

“I’ve been in public education north of three decades, and these are the most sweeping cutbacks I’ve seen,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. “But it would have been worse without the stimulus.”

Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest district, sent layoff notices to 8,850 teachers, counselors and administrators last spring. Bolstered by stimulus money, it recently rehired some 6,700 of them, leaving about 2,150 demoted to substitute teaching or out of work. Hundreds of districts across California laid off a total of more than 20,000 teachers, according to the California Teachers Association.

In Michigan, the Detroit schools’ emergency financial manager closed 29 schools and laid off 1,700 employees, including 1,000 teachers. Arizona school districts laid off 7,000 teachers in the spring, but stimulus money helped them rehire several thousand. Tucson Unified, for instance, laid off 560 teachers, but rehired 400.

Florida’s second-largest system, Broward County Schools, laid off 400 teachers, but aided by stimulus money, rehired more than 100. In Washington State, many districts let employees go; Seattle laid off about 50 teachers.

Lauren Stokes, who taught high school English last year in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, was laid off with about 650 of her colleagues. She sought other jobs, but stimulus money sent to the state helped her district hire her and many others back. One disappointment: her classroom this year is a portable trailer.

“But I’m rehired, thank goodness,” said Ms. Stokes, who is 23. “I’m looking forward to trying new things out on this year’s batch of students.”

Catherine Vidal, a language teacher laid off in May from a high school in Moorpark, Calif., is still out of work. Fifty-nine years old, Ms. Vidal has given up her apartment and is living, for now, on a friend’s boat. Teaching has become too iffy, and she will change professions, she said.

Not only school staff members are feeling the pain, of course.

“I struggled this year getting my three boys everything they needed,” said Mary Lou Johnson, an unemployed office worker who went back-to-school shopping last month at a Wal-Mart in Chamblee, Ga. “Buying their backpacks, sneakers, all the stuff for their classes — it nearly cleaned me out.”

In Ohio, students in the South-Western City district south of Columbus returned to schools with no sports, cheerleading or band, all cut after residents voted down a property tax increase. Stimulus money allowed the district to expand services for disabled students, but it could not save extracurricular programs, said Hugh Garside, the district’s treasurer.

Driving the layoffs was a precipitous decline in tax revenues that left states with a cumulative budget shortfall of $165 billion for this fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research institute. About half of the 160 school superintendents from 37 states surveyed by the American Association of School Administrators said that despite receiving stimulus money, they were forced to cut teachers in core subjects. Eight out of 10 said they had cut librarians, nurses, cooks and bus drivers.

Districts unable to avoid layoffs should seek to do minimum damage by retaining outstanding teachers and culling ineffective ones, said Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group. But most districts are simply dismissing teachers hired most recently, because union contracts or state laws protect tenured teachers in most states and because few districts have systems to accurately evaluate teacher performance, he said.

“Districts tend to make their problems worse by laying off good teachers and keeping bad ones,” Mr. Daly said.

The Hall County district northeast of Atlanta, which has 35 schools, dismissed 100 of its 2,000 teachers, said William Schofield, the superintendent. John Stape, who taught high school Spanish, and his wife, Janie, who taught third grade, were among them.

Ms. Stape, 50, is still out of work. Mr. Stape, who is 65 and has a Ph.D., found a job teaching this school year, for less pay, in a rural high school southeast of Atlanta. He said that no administrator had ever observed his teaching before the day he was laid off.

“They didn’t know whether I was a good teacher or not,” Mr. Stape said. Mr. Schofield said the district used student achievement data and professional judgment to identify mediocre teachers for dismissal, but he acknowledged that Hall County had to cut so many teachers that strong ones were let go, too.

“We downsized about 50 pretty good folks,” Mr. Schofield said. The district also trimmed salaries of all district employees by 2.4 percent. Mr. Schofield said he cut his own by 3.4 percent, bringing it to $183,000 this year, and relinquished $23,000 in bonuses.

The Hall County schools received more than $18 million in stimulus money, and without it, “those 100 layoffs could easily have gone to 150,” he said.

Among the Hall County educators helped by the stimulus was Ms. Smallwood, who is 25. After she lost her job teaching kindergarten, she went to her mother’s home to cry, then regained her composure and circulated her résumé. A principal eventually hired her to teach third grade.

“I feel like I’m starting over again,” she said.

Grants in Innovation i3 Fund

Grants from Innovation Pot Would Require Track Record

By Michele McNeil

Washington

Federal education officials last week pledged that the economic-stimulus program’s $650 million innovation fund will reserve the largest grants for schools, districts, and nonprofit organizations that want to finance programs with proven track records and are ready to grow.

In the U.S. Department of Education’s first substantial preview of the “Investing in Innovation” grant program—newly dubbed the “i3 Fund”—Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sketched out three broad grant categories that, in essence, will make the biggest awards where there’s the most evidence of success.

The grants start going out early next year, and the largest—of up to $50 million each—will be reserved for “proven” programs that are ready to grow, Mr. Duncan told a gathering of school district superintendents here. The second category will be grants of up to $30 million for programs that already exist in pilot form, where research shows they work. The smallest grants will be for up to $5 million in seed money for “pure innovation”—ideas that aren’t proved but show promise.

“Educational innovation should not be confused with just generating more great ideas or unique inventions,” said Mr. Duncan at a symposium hosted by ACT Inc., the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit organization, and America’s Choice, a school reform group in Washington. “Instead, we need new solutions.”

A formal framework for how the grant process will work, what criteria will be used to judge proposals, and an exact timetable, including application deadlines, will be released in the coming weeks.

Still, Mr. Duncan provided the first insight into how the department will structure those grants and what it will be looking for. Education officials said there would likely be two rounds to the competition, although they would consider consolidating the rounds into one if districts and nonprofit groups need more time to apply.

Discretionary Pot

The i3 innovation grants are part of a larger $5 billion pot of discretionary money available to Mr. Duncan as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed by Congress in February. The i3 program is set aside for school districts, nonprofit organizations, and consortia of schools to encourage innovation.

Separately, Education Department officials are asking the philanthropic community to pledge money beyond the $650 million in the stimulus package toward the department’s goal of scaling up innovation at the district level.

In addition, a larger $4.35 billion is earmarked for the Race to the Top Fund—a competitive grant program for states to pay for large-scale education improvement efforts that focus on bolstering academic standards, teacher quality, data systems, and low-performing schools. President Barack Obama officially kicked off the Race to the Top Fund competition last month in a speech at the Education Department, when the proposed criteria for judging states were released for public comment. ("States Scramble for Coveted Dollars," July 24, 2009.)

Details of a separate $350 million competition within the Race to the Top Fund to help states implement common assessments will be announced later. ("Duncan Unveils Details on Race to the Top Aid," June 15, 2009.)

Evidence-Based Criteria

James H. Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary who leads the department’s office of innovation and improvement, said at the Aug. 20 event that data and validation are important components of any successful innovation-grant proposal.

Mr. Shelton said that when “rock-solid evidence” isn’t available, then the rationale behind a proposal must be grounded in strong theories and research. “We have many anecdotes,” he said. “But we have to get beyond the anecdotes.”

He acknowledged the administrative challenges ahead for the department, as thousands of applications are expected. Judging the smaller “pure innovation” grants could be particularly vexing, Mr. Shelton added, as the task will likely involve comparing “apples and oranges.”

For the majority of school districts that have tight budgets, the i3 grants are particularly attractive, said Sheryl R. Abshire, the chief technology officer of the 32,400-student Calcasieu Parish district in Lake Charles, La.

“School districts don’t have the luxury of sitting around and waiting for money anymore,” said Ms. Abshire, who attended the briefing. Her school district is already starting to plot strategy on how to win one of the grants. She said the focus will be, at least in part, on improving technology in the classrooms and the professional development teachers need to use it.

In making the awards, Mr. Duncan said the Education Department will want to see programs driven by student outcomes that can be successfully scaled up and are sustainable once federal grant money runs out.

The secretary specifically cited his interest in increasing graduation rates and college preparedness, expanding the school day and academic year, and improving the quality and reach of prekindergarten programs.

Models Cited

In his speech, Mr. Duncan singled out several models as examples of innovation, including the Teaching Fellows programs that have been established in a number of cities. He also cited Mastery Charter Schools, in Philadelphia, the Los Angles-based Green Dot Public Schools, and the Academy for Urban School Leadership—a Chicago-based not-for-profit—as examples in the area of turning around failing schools.

And Mr. Duncan devoted a sizable portion of his speech to praising Wendy Kopp, who started Teach For America while a Princeton University undergraduate. TFA recruits recent liberal arts graduates into the teaching profession.

The department also is working to establish an interactive i3 Web platform that will allow for online discussion and reviews—by anyone—of promising innovative practices that can help districts and others prepare proposals. For example, it could be a way for a school district to find a partner for an innovative program it wants to try, or a way to solicit ideas to improve a program.

That is one way, said Mr. Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary, that the department itself is trying to be innovative.

DEPSA Organization (Green, STEM & Organic)

MPSC RFP 8-21-2009

DEPSA Going Green! (AND A WHOLE LOT MORE)

YAPO CLC Future Entrepreneurs @ TIMBUKTU INTERNET CAFE

REGIONAL Capacity Building @ Pontiac Schools (Continues)

ECOTEK "LIVE"

Alignment to OUR Purpose

Michigan Drop-Out Summit 2009
http://www.midropoutsummit.org/

Michigan Conference Proceedings
http://www.midropoutsummit.org/SummitProceedings.aspx

Michigan Conference (Videos)
http://mistreamnet.com/vidflv.php?who=mdedrop1n01

ONE-D Drop-Out Conference (Update Brochure)
http://www.uwsem.org/_collateral/pdf/oned/TurnaroundUpdate0508.pdf

Isn't it about time the State of Michigan entered the 21st Century?

The AIM Program (A Blue Ribbon Initiative)

DPS says it’s time to flaunt the good

"District launches PR effort to keep, attract students"

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER

Getting people to pay atten­tion to — or even believe — the “great things” going on in De­troit Public Schools is a huge undertaking, DPS officials said Thursday.

This year has been especial­ly tough: the U.S. Secretary of Education called DPS a nation­al disgrace, and seven students were shot after school — one fatally.

That’s why the district launched a $500,000 public re­lations effort Thursday to re­tain and recruit students.

“We’ve got to tell our story,” said school board member Ty­rone Winfrey, about the bene­fits of a DPS education.

The new DPS “I’m In” ad­vertising campaign will be symbolized by bright blue doors that are to be placed ev­erywhere from Belle Isle to the district’s 172 school buildings over the next seven weeks, emergency financial manager Robert Bobb said.

The doors, painted “uplift­ing” blue, represent the oppor­tunities for students when they enter DPS, Bobb said. Also, blue doorknob signs will publi­cize what officials called “great things,” such as the Foreign Language Immersion and Cul­tural Studies School, where students learn in French, Spanish, Japanese and Chi­nese.

The campaign also will in­clude famous alumni such as former NBA star Derrick Cole­man; 25,000 blue lawn signs; blue bus ads; a 40-page booklet highlighting events and praise­worthy news in DPS; an Aug. 24 build doors event at Hart Plaza, and a parade Aug. 27.

“We’re going to paint the town blue,” Bobb said.

About 83,777 students are expected to attend DPS by fall, down from 95,000 last fall, Bobb said.

If an extra 66 stu­dents enroll, the campaign’s costs will be covered. More students will help reduce the $259-million budget deficit. DPS lost about 45% of its en­rollment in the past decade and closed about 100 schools.

CONTACT CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY: 313-223-4537 OR CPRATT@FREEPRESS.COM

STOP (VIDEO)

Next STOP!

"Empty-Box" becomes "Real-Clunker"

DETROIT School board rejects plan to collaborate

The Detroit Board of Education voted Thurs­day night to reject a sev­en- point plan for collab­orating with Robert Bobb, the state-appointed emergency financial man­ager.

“It was rejected be­cause he insists on mak­ing the academic deci­sions,” said board presi­dent Carla Scott, who cut the meeting short be­cause of tensions be­tween board members and Bobb and his staff.

“The board is sup­posed to set academic policy,” Scott said. “If the governor had wanted to take over the district, that’s what she would’ve done,” Scott said.

ONE-D Response from Mr. Tenbusch

Letters Turnaround teamwork can work for schools

The July 28 article regard­ing a school turnaround was disappointing in both its tone and content (“Redesign firms for Detroit schools get mixed grades”). It condemned the four companies selected to redesign low-performing high schools and described one of them as offering “no panacea.” Let’s set the record straight. There has never been, and never will be, a panacea in education.

Turnaround partners, such as the Institute for Student Achievement, have a clear track record in dramatically improving graduation rates and modestly improving achievement scores:

■ Overall, ISA schools maintain a lower than 2% dropout rate.
■ ISA schools demonstrate strong average attendance rates of 91%-93%.
■ Over 70% of students pass their math, English, social studies and science classes.
■ ISA partner schools average a graduation and college going rate higher than 85%.

The article referred to a report I authored (“Meeting the Turnaround Challenge”) that demonstrates the need for turnaround partners to work hand-in-hand with union and school leaders to dramatically alter the status quo in our re­gion’s failing high schools.

This is the focus of our work at the United Way for South­eastern Michigan — in part­nership with others, including union leadership and civic organizations such as the Skill­man Foundation and New Detroit.

We expect Detroit high schools Cody and Osborn, along with three suburban schools United Way is also funding, will ultimately achieve graduation rates higher than 80%.

I salute financial manager Robert Bobb’s commitment to applying best practices that other cities have done across the nation to their advantage.

I regret that the Detroit Free Press failed to provide bal­anced coverage on an issue so critical to our region’s future. Michael Tenbusch Vice president for educational preparedness, United Way for Southeastern Michigan

Many shameful years

I loved comments by Detroit Board of Education President Carla Scott about the school board drawing a line on provid­ing a substandard education to the children. What does she think has been happening in Detroit Public Schools for the past 30 years? The board should all resign in shame.

George Neack Brighton

UPDATE: One-D (Intermediaries)

Redesign firms for Detroit schools get mixed grades

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER

The four companies charged with redesigning 17 low-performing high schools in Detroit have spotty records turning around student achievement at other struggling schools they have been selected to help in the region and across the nation, studies show.

Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, maintains that the compa­nies have a “proven track record of raising student achievement.”

However, experts and a review of achievement data show modest gains in some cases and losses in others.

Heading off more criticism from parents and some school board mem­bers, DPS officials clarified the school redesign effort, saying the companies will not manage the schools, but rath­er assist the staff and provide train­ing, curriculum and security plan­ning.

“This is not a takeover,” said Bar­bara Byrd-Bennett, chief academic and accountability auditor for DPS.

If you go
The Detroit Board of Educa­tion is to meet Thursday to discuss plans to bar the emer­gency financial manager, Rob­ert Bobb, from hiring the four companies. The meeting is to begin at 5 p.m. and be followed by a 6 p.m. committee of the whole meeting that Bobb is expected to attend. The meetings are to be at the Detroit Public Schools Welcome Center, 3031 W. Grand Blvd.

Would these firms improve DPS?

By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER

The most well-known and criticized of the four companies selected this month to redesign 17 Detroit high schools is Edi­son Learning Inc., formerly the Edison Project founded in 1992 to manage charter schools. Edison managed Inkster Public Schools from 2000 to 2005. In 2005, MEAP scores at Inkster High fell in all but one category with the highest score at 40% of students passing the reading exam.

Those statistics highlight concerns about whether Edi­son Learning and three other consulting firms will be helpful in turning around performance at struggling schools.

The district also is vetting additional consultants to help redesign other low-performing schools, said spokesman Steve Wasko. Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said hiring the four firms is a bad move. “They don’t have a track rec­ord of success behind them,” Johnson said.

Edison Learning, a New York-based for-profit company, is to consult at six of the schools; Ed Works, an Ohio-based non­profit, is to consult at five schools; the Institute for Stu­dent Achievement, a for-profit based in Lake Success, N.Y., is to consult at three schools and Model Secondary Schools Pro­ject, a small for-profit company in Bellevue, Wash., will work at three schools.

All but Edison specialize in creating small learning commu­nities in large high schools.

Hiring the consultants shows guts and inspires hope, but it is no guarantee, said Sha­rif Shakrani, codirector of the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University. “In some places, they have had success. In other places, they have not had very tangible success,” Shakrani said of the companies.

“The important question is, ‘What lessons have they learned…and how will they be able to apply that?’ ”

EDISONLEARNING INC.: The most well-known and contro­versial of the firms, the Edison Project, has been in the Phila­delphia School District where it manages 15 schools — down from 20 in 2002 because of low performance. Joseph Wise, chief education officer for Edison Learning, said its consulting work in eight Ha­waii high schools mirrors its plans for Detroit. After one year, the Edison students showed a 6.4% increase in math achievement while other stu­dents increased just 2%, said Mike Serpe, spokesman for Edi­son Learning. “We’re using Hawaii and Philadelphia as a framework for what to do and not do,” Wise said.

EDWORKS: Ed Works primarily creates small high schools through the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative as well as the Ohio Early College High School Network that al­lows students to graduate with associate’s degrees. Test scores at Ed Works schools vary, but graduation rates tend to rise. At DPS, the company is to help staff create personalized learning plans for each student, revamp curriculum and review expectations, a relationship that usually lasts about five years, said Executive Director Harold Brown. Dal Lawrence, past presi­dent of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, said Ed Works’ schools have resulted in good partnerships, but no panacea. “The jury’s still out,” he said.

INSTITUTE FOR STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: ISA has been planning this fall’s launch of four small high schools within DPS’s Cody High and five in Os­born High with funding from the Greater Detroit Education Venture Fund. ISA has developed 80 small schools nationwide, often on a5­year contract, touting the small schools approach as more en­gaging with higher graduation and college-acceptance rates. ISA’s spokeswoman did not re­spond to requests for comment.

Michael Tenbusch, vice president of educational pre­paredness for United Way for Southeastern Michigan, au­thored the study “Meeting the Turnaround Challenge” last year, which reported that ISA will not work with a school un­less allowed to help select the principal. “ISA has a very effective model,” he said.

MODEL SECONDARY SCHOOLS PROJECT: MSSP developed the Detroit High School for Tech­nology, a small school located within Pershing High, with funds from the Gates Founda­tion. The graduation rate exceeds 96% each year, but standard­ized test scores lagged after the grant expired in 2005. This year, the 178-student school saw 4% of its students pass the Michigan Merit Exam in math and 24% in reading. Now MSSP expects a 3-year contract, but the kinds of pro­grams to be developed — tech­nology or health-related, for ex­ample — will be up to staff and parents, codirector Linda Kel­ler Mac Donald said. “It’s De­troit’s high school and it’s a De­troit decision how this gets or­ganized.” Shakrani of MSU said within a year DPS should know wheth­er the companies are worth­while based on factors such as ninth-grade retention and fail­ure rates and disciplinary sus­pensions.

REACH! (Detroit Childrens Museum Re-Imagined)

CAUSE AND EFFECT

DPS-TIMBUKTU Informal Regional Educational Initiative

21st Century Digital Learning Environments (UPDATE)

Elliot Soloway: Ed-Tech Classroom Climate from Education Week on Vimeo.

A Final Word

The magic behind the dramatic and enduring impact of creative elegance, while it remains rare and radical, is not new. Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu understood the power of the missing piece when he wrote this verse over 2500 years ago:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub,
It is the centre hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel,
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room,
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there,
Usefulness from what is not there.

Digital Learning Virtual Education 3.0

The Crucial Role of Design

Commentary

Why We're Still 'At Risk'

The Legacy of Five Faulty Assumptions

By Ronald A. Wolk

Our new president has looked into the abyss of our current economic, energy, environmental, and health-care policies and promises to challenge the fundamental assumptions on which they are based. He admonishes us to join him in thinking and acting boldly.

We can only hope he feels the same way about education policy.

After nearly 25 years of intensive effort, we have failed to fix our ailing public schools and stem the “rising tide of mediocrity” chronicled in 1983 in A Nation at Risk. This is mainly because the report misdiagnosed the problem, and because the major assumptions on which current education policy—and most reform efforts—have been based are either wrong or unrealistic.

Most of the people running our public education systems and leading the reform movement are knowledgeable, dedicated, and experienced. But they are so committed to a strategy of standards-based accountability that different ideas are marginalized or stifled completely.

One could write a book about each of the five major assumptions on which education policy rests, but in this limited space, a few brief paragraphs will have to suffice.

Assumption One: The best way to improve student performance and close achievement gaps is to establish rigorous content standards and a core curriculum for all schools—preferably on a national basis.

Standards-based accountability has been the national school reform strategy for nearly two decades. It is essentially a “get tough” strategy made tougher by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. By all measures, it has not lived up to its promise, and the reason is that it is based on the premise that if we demand high performance and educational excellence, schools, teachers, and students will somehow “just do it.” It is a strategy that basically expects schools to be highly structured institutions with uniform practices and policies, where a common version of education is delivered to all students.

Standardization and uniformity may work with cars and computers, but it doesn’t work with humans. Today’s student body is the most diverse in history. An education system that treats all students alike denies that reality.

The issue is not whether standards are necessary. Schools without standards are unacceptable. Society should indeed hold high expectations for all students, but those expectations should reflect the values of the family and society—doing one’s best, obeying the rules, and mutual respect—and not simply the archaic academic demands of college-admissions offices. We should be preparing young people for life, not just for college.

Standards don’t prepare students for anything; they are a framework of expectations and educational objectives. Without the organization and processes to achieve them, they are worthless. States have devoted nearly 20 years to formulating standards to be accomplished by a conventional school model that is incapable of meeting them. We will make real progress only when we realize that our problem in education is not one of performance but one of design.

Assumption Two: Standardized-test scores are an accurate measure of student learning and should be used to determine promotion and graduation.

The standards-based-accountability strategy, not surprisingly, has led to the alarming overuse of standardized tests, even in the opinion of some test-makers and psychometricians.

Some measures of accountability are necessary in any endeavor that spends public money and is responsible for an important societal mission. But is testing all students virtually every year really necessary to determine whether the system is working effectively and the money spent well? If test scores are the accepted indicator, schools have not been meeting the needs of students for the past couple of decades. So why spend more money and time on constant testing to tell us what we already know—especially when standardized tests do a poor job of measuring real learning, don’t assess most of the characteristics valued by parents and the larger society, and contribute almost nothing to the process of teaching and learning.

If the purpose of standardized testing is to measure student achievement so teachers can help individual students learn better, it fails miserably. Standardized-test scores tend, instead, to say more about a student’s socioeconomic status than about his or her abilities. If testing is to have a positive effect on student achievement, it should be formative testing that is an integral part of classroom teaching and learning.

The most disturbing aspect of today’s standardized testing grows out of the "get tough" strategy’s emphasis on high-risk tests. Using standardized-test scores to determine promotion and graduation is unconscionable. A recent Texas study confirms the negative impact of high-risk testing on students. The report notes that 135,000 high school students drop out each year, and that “the state’s high-stakes accountability system has a direct impact on the severity of the dropout problem.” Teachers complain that they are compelled to devote valuable instructional time to preparing students for the test. They argue that the demand of ubiquitous accountability testing tends to narrow the curriculum. And they say that by teaching to the test, as they are expected to do, they are forced to turn education into a game of Trivial Pursuit.

Except in school, people are judged by their work and their behavior. Few of the business and political leaders who advocate widespread use of standardized testing have taken a standardized test since leaving college. It is probably a safe bet that the majority of them, even after 16 years of formal education, could not pass the tests they require students to pass.

"But I took those courses years ago," they say. "I can’t remember all that stuff." Exactly.

A common justification for standardized testing is that it’s the best proxy for student achievement we have until something better comes along. The performance-based assessment used in many charter schools (and now statewide in Rhode Island and New Hampshire) is better.

Assumption Three: We need to put highly qualified teachers in every classroom to assure educational excellence.

A great idea! If we could do that, we’d be a long way to solving our education problem.

But it won’t happen for decades, if ever.

As a host of studies over the past 25 years have revealed, the teacher pipeline is broken at several points. We don’t attract enough of the brightest young people into teaching; we don’t prepare them well for the job; many find their working conditions and compensation unacceptable; and teachers are not treated as professionals.

Highly effective teachers are more crucial to the success of standards-based accountability than anything else. Without enough of them, the strategy can’t work. As any reasonable person would have anticipated, we missed the NCLB goal of having a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by 2006. Improving teaching is as difficult as improving student achievement.

More accountability is again seen as a major part of the solution: more-rigorous certification, tougher teacher evaluation, and higher teacher pay. But certification guarantees a high-quality teacher about as much as a driver’s license guarantees a good driver. Tougher evaluation would help get rid of ineffective teachers, but it’s hard to see how it would produce more good teachers. Higher pay is fine, but it is no more likely to improve teaching any time soon than raising pilots’ pay would make flying safer.

If we want effective teaching, we should change the ways schools are organized and operated, and shift the teacher’s primary role from an academic instructor to an adviser, someone who helps students manage their own education.

A rational system would redesign itself and make organizational and procedural changes that optimize the positive influence of good teachers and minimize the negatives. Creating opportunities for teachers to work together, to teach in teams, to share in professional development, and to be more involved in educational decisionmaking are ways to bring out the best in teachers.

Again, there are examples on the ground that such an approach works.

Assumption Four: The United States should require all students to take algebra in the 8th grade and higher-order math in high school in order to increase the number of scientists and engineers in this country and thus make us more competitive in the global economy.

This assumption has become almost an obsession in policymaking arenas today. Requiring every student to study higher-order math is a waste of resources and cruel and unusual punishment for legions of students. It diverts attention away from the real problem: our failure to help kids become proficient readers and master basic arithmetic.

The United States must indeed produce more scientists and engineers to compete in a global economy. But it is fallacious to assume that we can accomplish that by requiring every student to take algebra in the 8th grade and higher-order math through high school. It is like believing that by requiring high school students to take a few courses in painting, we will make them all artists.

Most young people who go into science and engineering are well on their way by the time they start high school, because they become hooked on science or math in the early grades and do well in mathematics in elementary and middle school. Some will go on to become scientists and engineers; others will not. To expect otherwise is unreasonable.

If the nation wants more scientists and engineers, then educators need to find ways to awaken and nourish a passion for those subjects well before high school, and then offer students every opportunity to pursue their interest as far as they wish.

Assumption Five: The student-dropout rate can be reduced by ending social promotion, funding dropout-prevention programs, and raising the mandatory attendance age.

Arguably, the dropout rate is the most telling evidence of public school failure. Nearly a third of entering high school freshmen drop out. The percentage is higher for blacks, Hispanics, and English-language learners. And in many urban districts, the dropout rate borders on the horrendous.

Most students drop out of school for legitimate reasons, and trying to talk them out of it with “just stay in” programs, or forcing them to attend for an additional year or two, makes no sense. The “get tough” strategy of high standards, rigorous curricula, and more testing has not lowered the dropout rate and, as the Texas study cited shows, probably increases it.

Dropping out of school is not an impulsive decision. The process begins long before high school, often by the 4th or 5th grade, when courses begin to be content-heavy and students can no longer get by with the ability to “decode” English, but must be able to understand what they read. If scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are reliable measures, only about a quarter of 4th graders can read proficiently, and the percentage declines in the 8th and 12th grades.

Students who fail early and often come to accept failure as inevitable and are on the path to dropping out as soon as they can. Probably a third of students who plan to drop out have made up their minds by the 8th grade and mark time until they can legally leave school.

To reduce the dropout rate, we must first understand and accept why students choose to leave school. The reasons most often given are boredom, personal or family problems, and inability to understand and do the work required. A smaller percentage of students drop out because they find school to be a waste of time; these often are young people with the ability to succeed in school but who find that what is offered in the classroom doesn’t interest or challenge them. (Some years ago, a survey of students asked what word they would use to define school. “Boring” won hands down.)

The key to graduating is learning; the key to learning is motivation. There are innovative public schools that graduate most of their students because they personalize education, encourage students to pursue their interests and build on that enthusiasm, and offer multiple opportunities to learn instead of a one-size-fits-all education.

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President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should open a second front in this war on mediocrity and failure.

We need to continue making every effort to improve the existing public schools. They will enroll most of our young people for many years to come.

Simultaneously, we should pursue a parallel strategy of creating new, innovative schools and giving them the autonomy and resources to explore new ideas. These new schools can be a much-needed research-and-development sector for the conventional system.

Secretary Duncan should support a national effort patterned after Renaissance 2010, the program he launched in Chicago to replace failing schools with new, diverse models different from conventional schools and from each other.

It is neither wise nor necessary to bet the future on a single reform strategy, especially when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of schools are demonstrating every day that there are other and more successful ways to help children learn and succeed.

But we can pursue two strategies only if we act to assure that the dominant strategy does not smother the fledgling movement in its crib.

Ronald A. Wolk is the founder and former editor of Education Week. He is retired and chairs Big Picture Learning, a nonprofit organization in Providence, R.I., that creates innovative new schools. He is also the chair emeritus of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week. The views expressed here are his own.

Special coverage marking the 25th anniversary of the landmark report A Nation at Risk is supported in part by a grant from the Broad Foundation.

Yin and Yang turns Outside In

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Commentary

Traditional public schools fail urban students

Alternative approaches are working

Peter Plastrik and Margaret Trimer-Hartley

Two big factors driving the Detroit school district's financial crisis won't be solved by cleaning up the books.

First, the district's schools don't work. They produce stunningly bad results -- far more dropouts than graduates, and graduates who aren't academically ready for college or careers. This failure generates the black flight from the city and into charter schools and nearby suburban districts.

Second, governance of the district is unaccountable for results. The faces may change -- new board members, new superintendents -- but the culture doesn't. It's a culture of low expectations and denial of the brutal facts of performance. There is no capacity within the district's leadership to redesign the school system to radically improve student achievement.

Big city school systems across the country -- Washington, D.C., New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles -- are mired in persistently poor performance.

Large-scale innovations in school design and school governance point the way to better education in those communities.

Even in Detroit -- where the education and political establishment clings to the old, failing model it controls -- these innovations are taking root.

The first innovation is in the redesign of schools for low-income African-American and Latino students so they will beat the odds by staying in school, graduating and going to college.

This kind of restructuring isn't about engaging in curriculum battles, buying new textbooks or toughening high school graduation requirements. Such actions alone won't make a significant difference in urban school graduation rates or student learning.

What does work and what is already being done here and elsewhere is a radical makeover of schools to engage low-income, at-risk students in learning and give them the nurturing and support often missing at home.

This redesign creates a new kind of school that uses teachers, curriculum, performance data, community resources, time and technology in new ways to engage students and make schools accountable for learning.

The general admissions schools we work with -- University Preparatory Academy (UPA), a K-12 system with 1,600 students, and University Prep Science & Math, a 6-12 charter system that opened this year with 162 sixth- and seventh-graders -- are just two examples of the model working in Detroit.

They are small schools of 125-500 students with small class sizes of 16-18 students. They offer every child powerful and enduring relationships with teachers and provide mentors from the world of work and other parts of the community. They customize student learning, tailoring lessons and projects to each kid's skill level, learning style, maturity and interests, rather than using one-size-fits-all curricula and textbooks.

At UPA and the science and math academy, every teacher is expected to know his or her students as well as they would know their own children. A big part of their job is to dig deeply, ask questions and figure out who their students are, what makes them tick and what makes them trip.

"We have ongoing -- daily -- discussions about whether we are doing enough to meet the needs of all of our students -- the low and high achievers and the unengaged," says Shawn Hill, principal of the science and math middle school. "The day that we pass the buck, give up on a child or stop asking what else we can do is the day we should close the school."

The most successful urban schools are designed to not only meet the needs of children who come to school hungry, tired, abused, angry or otherwise unprepared to learn, but to overcome them. Rather than write kids off because they are not motivated by traditional schooling, these schools use nurturing, sustained relationships to figure out what will excite them.

They know that the problems students and families have in high poverty communities are not excuses, but they are reasons why traditional school strategies don't work.

In addition to individualization, high-performing urban schools also hold high expectations for all students and usually offer college preparation as the expected path for all. There is no general education track. The schools rely heavily on partnerships with businesses and other institutions in the community to provide students with internships and experiences in diverse real-world settings.

These schools come in many varieties from college prep to science or arts-focused. They have different grade configurations, instructional approaches and student discipline codes. But no matter what their twist, a growing number of schools -- mostly charters -- that embrace the new model are performing much better than urban districts, and some are even reaching suburban-school level results.

New forms of governance

The second innovation in urban education is in school governance. Effective school governance systems allow schools to focus on student achievement and support site-based decision-making rather than central control.

Education reformers in Detroit and elsewhere have broken the iron grip of locally elected school boards and freed themselves from meddlesome and meaningless politics and personal agendas.

When Adrian Fenty became mayor of Washington, D.C., in 2007, he immediately got the City Council to abolish the city's elected school board.

"There are a lot of things you can do to improve urban education," Fenty says, "but getting rid of the school board is at the top of the list. When you have nine people who are going to vote on every little thing, let alone the controversial things, nothing's going to get done."

Responsibility for the new schools rests in many hands, including mayors in New York (1.1 million students) and Chicago (400,000 students), as well as authorizers of charter schools outside of traditional districts -- universities and community colleges, county governments, Indian tribes, state legislatures, state boards of education and nonprofit organizations.

• In Michigan, the second largest school system, with 30,000 students, is not a traditional district, but the 58 charter schools authorized by Central Michigan University.

• In Los Angeles, the nation's second largest school district, the mayor and school board created a nonprofit that controls 10 schools (18,000 students) that were in the school district until their teachers voted to join the new partnership.

• In New Orleans, a post-Hurricane Katrina shakeup by state government left the traditional school district with only a small fraction of the students it used to have and put the rest into the care of charter schools authorized by the state, or "recovery district" schools run directly by the state. Now charter schools serve a majority of the city's students.

• In Houston, two charter school networks, Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and YES Prep, plan to launch 55 more schools by 2017 and capture total enrollment of 30,000 students, 15 percent of the city's market.

• In Dallas, Richland College created an accelerated learning charter high school for students to earn an associate's degree and high school diploma at the same time.

Detroit charters' role rising

In Detroit, 40,000 students attend charter schools -- meaning about 25 percent of schooling for city children is governed by charter boards and the dozen universities and other entities that authorize them. This market share will grow as state barriers to more chartering in Detroit erode and/or the city's mayor receives some authority over schools.

Governance innovations are not a panacea, but they have two important virtues. First, they can establish oversight that is strategically focused with clear, measurable goals, rather than the often conflicting and confused edicts that come from political boards.

Second, the new operators can be more directly held accountable for the results of the schools. Mayors who run school systems face judgment at the polls every four years. Charter school boards must renew their contracts every few years. A scheduled day of reckoning is not a guarantee that these schools will perform well -- but it's a start toward accountability.

It seems likely that the Detroit district's new no-nonsense financial czar, Robert Bobb, and new funds in the federal stimulus legislation will set the system back on its feet, at least temporarily. But it will take innovation -- big changes in school design and governance accountability that produce dramatic improvement in results -- to get the system running permanently in the right direction.