In his best-selling book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell described how social change can occur dramatically and rapidly as it spreads contagiously from person to person – or, as we might say more than a decade after the book’s initial publication, as it “goes viral.”  As Gladwell reminds us, there’s no guarantee that the type of social change caused by such a tipping point will always be beneficial; both positive and negative behavior change can occur in this way.

As a teacher who is currently in my 14^th year, by far the single biggest change I’ve witnessed in my career has been in the area of technology.  When I began teaching in 1998, my classroom technology consisted of an overhead projector and a computer lab to which students were supposed be brought once a week.  My elementary students primarily worked on keyboarding skills, did some very basic word processing, and played games that were meant to reinforce some basic math or literacy concepts (on CDs, of course, not on the actual internet).  A technology paraprofessional worked full-time in the computer lab to assist the many students and teachers who came to the computer lab lacking even the most basic technology skills.

Fast forward to today, and the changes are obvious and dramatic: my district is currently beginning a three-year process where all of our upper elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms will become 1:1 environments.  Even before that transition is complete, technology is everywhere: in addition to a computer lab, in my elementary building we’re using iPads, student response systems, carts of laptops, document cameras, teacher laptops, interactive whiteboards, and more.

As a result of this ubiquitous access to technology, much of our content has shifted online: textbooks are being replaced by e-textbooks, math assignments are being replaced or supplemented by websites like Khan Academy and ixl.com, student writing is being composed in Google Docs and then published to students’ individual blogs, Google Earth has replaced most maps and globes, and so on.  Even our high-stakes state assessments will be taken online beginning in 2015.

This technology transformation, while taking various forms and moving at various paces in different school districts, is in no way isolated to my own personal experience.  To the contrary, increased access to technology has actually become a national priority, both in terms of school and home access.  The U.S. Department of Commerce, in November 2011, published a report entitled, “Exploring the Digital Nation,” in which they stated and then repeatedly provided data confirming the following:

“A strong correlation exists between broadband [internet access] (both    deployment and adoption) and indices of economic growth, such as increases in Gross Domestic Product, employment, and property values.”

With this data helping to form public policy, let’s be honest: there’s no going back.  1:1 technology has passed its tipping point; whether it’s a district-issued laptop, a personal cell phone, or even their glasses, every child will soon be coming to our classroom with an Internet-connected device.

So what does this mean to us as educators?  It means that it’s time for us to move away from debating whether or not we believe that 1:1 education should be the future of education and toward shaping the future of 1:1 education to be as beneficial as possible to our students.  As Gladwell noted, fast-paced social change can lead to both positive and negative outcomes.  As teachers, let’s invest our time and energy in leading the conversation surrounding best practice utilization of 1:1 technology in the classroom before that opportunity is lost.  If we don’t, we can be sure that politicians and CEOs of education-centered businesses will be sure to direct the conversation toward a model profitable to their interests instead.

Image: Technology Inventory

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Q: What is the purpose of public education?

Public education guarantees every child good basic education and equal opportunities to further learning. Public education also equalizes the differences that income inequalities and other socioeconomic characteristics create to different learners. In brief, public education is basic human right and basic service to all children and their families. One of the key factors behind Finland’s good and equitable educational performance in international studies is the strong role of public education. Public schools have an important role in building democratic nation up here in the north.

Q: How does your country measure school success and hold schools accountable for educating students effectively?

Finland is not very inspired of measuring education but we take educational assessment very seriously. This is perhaps because our definition of school success is very different compared to how success is understood in the United States or in much of the world. Successful school in Finland is one that is able to help all children to learn and fulfill their aspirations, both academic and non-academic. Many educators in Finland think that measuring of what matters in school is difficult, if not impossible. That’s why assessment of and in Finnish schools is first and foremost a responsibility of teachers and principal in school. They are reporting to parents and authorities how successful their school is in achieving commonly set goals. By this definition, school success is a subjective thing that varies from one school to another.

We don’t use term ‘accountability’ when we talk about what schools are expected to do in Finland. Instead, we expect that teachers and principals are responsible collectively for making all children successful in school. There is a big difference between social responsibility for all children’s learning in school and holding each teacher accountable for their own pupils’ achievement through data from standardized tests. External reviewers of Finnish education have repeatedly recognized this difference between Finnish schools and American schools, for example. Shared responsibility has created strong mutual trust within Finnish education system that is one frequently mentioned success factor of Finnish education. As a result, we don’t need external standardized tests, teacher evaluation or inspection to assure high quality.

Q: How do the schools in your country address the impact of poverty on education?

Finland is a Nordic welfare state where all families are guaranteed public health and other social services for free or subsidized by state. It is worth of note that in the 1970s poverty was still wide-spread in Finland. Therefore it was essential that childcare began already before birth. It still does because we realized how important alleviating poverty is for learning and good education. Mothers receive pre-natal support and infant care is available free of charge for all families. Every child goes through systematic health care and frequent development checks before school starts at age 7. Most of what needs to be done to address the impact of poverty is done before school starts.

Schools in Finland provide all pupils with healthy school lunch and afternoon snack, comprehensive health care, dental care and psychological help free of charge. All pupils also receive access to high-quality special education services in their own schools throughout basic education. Special education in Finland is based on early intervention and immediate individualized support that are provided by trained experts. About one-third of Finnish basic school students are in special education of some kind. Child poverty rate in Finland is about 4%, and therefore there are very few children in Finnish schools who suffer from the impacts of poverty in school compared to many other countries, including the United States.

Q: How do we educate children to become citizens of a global community instead of merely competitors in a global economy?

School education should focus much more than it does today on social and moral development of children. Unfortunately the dominance of standardized testing and race-to-the-top mentality is doing just the opposite. Becoming a member of any community means that an individual needs to have adequate interpersonal skills, understanding of different cultures, and good understanding of moral responsibilities in life. It is character and mind that matter in competitive labor market today, not being among winners in knowledge tests.

In Finland we think that children need to have a safe and balanced learning environment that is equally guided by academic and non-academic curricula, team learning and individual work, and formal and informal learning. We also believe that it is very important to learn about the world and its different languages and cultures from very early on. That’s why we give foreign language learning and international education high priorities. There is a Finnish saying: “Real winners don’t compete”. We believe that what children learn to do together today, they can do alone tomorrow.

This piece was originally published on Pasi Sahlberg’s blog, Finnish Education Reform. 

Image: Screen Shot from Pasi Sahlberg’s book, Finnish Lessons

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One of the unexamined dimensions of the history of the School Reform Movement is the role that Civil Rights law played in shaping its guiding assumptions and strategies. I was reminded of this the other day when reading an unpublished manuscript by an Oklahoma City based teacher named John Thompson, who pointed out that civil rights lawyers typically demonstrated the existence of discrimination by documenting statistical disparities between underrepresented and privileged groups, which is precisely the approach School Reformers used in devising remedies for the achievement, or test score gap, between black and white students. Reformers looked at statistical disparities between schools in Black and White neighborhoods and inferred that the lower test scores and graduation rates in the former could best be remedied by removing teachers and administrators in the underperforming institutions and replacing them with more skilled people and/or by closing such schools and replacing them with new schools that had greater flexibility in hiring.

As I read these passages, they struck a chord on multiple levels. First, I thought of my own research on the evolution of affirmative action and how civil rights leaders and federal officials developed a rationale for it. Affirmative action began when policy makers required employers to do statistical analyses of the percentage of underrepresented groups they hired or enrolled, and based remedial action on those statistics, rather than demonstrated discriminatory intent. The main agency responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination law in employment, The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, pioneered this approach. When companies complained that under representation of minorities was not the result of intentional discrimination, they complaints were rejected, by both the EEOC and the federal courts, who invoked a doctrine called “disparate impact” (enshrined in a Supreme Court decision Griggs v Duke Power) which stipulated that practices which reinforced historic patterns of discrimination, even when they were neutral in intent, and even in application, were considered discriminatory under federal law, and could be subject to remedies that increased the number of employees from the group in question even if the institutions normal standards for hiring were set aside.

Now let’s move ahead 40 years later. Civil rights lawyers began looking at disparities in achievement between Black and White students through a similar lens, treating such disparities as if they were the product of discrimination. But rather than viewing those disparities as the result of discrimination in criminal justice policy, the housing and employment markets, and access to family wealth, they chose to isolate the school from the depressed neighborhood they were located in and put continuous pressure on underperforming schools to do a much better job educating Black and Latino students.

One incidental outcome of the application of disparate impact theory to education was the identification of “bad teachers” and the unions which protected them, as the primary cause of discriminatory outcomes for Black and Latino students. These were factors which policy makers felt they could directly influence, unlike intergenerational poverty and discrimination in housing, employment and criminal justice, and once the schools became isolated from their neighborhood setting as discriminatory institutions, teachers quickly became the main targets of remedial action.

But demonizing teachers was not the only consequence of this style of thinking. Once policy makers began developing statistical models to reliably compare and rate schools, and gauge teacher and administrator performance, they realized that they needed a much more reliable data base upon which to do this and that meant increasing the number of standardized tests, applying them across the board to constituencies which had previously been exempted, such as ELL and special needs students, and spending huge amounts of money on software to process the RSI formation and consultants to analyze that information.

Both results, the demonization of teachers and the proliferation of testing, took place in New York City under the direction of a well known civil rights attorney, James Leibman from the faculty of Columbia Law School, who was hired by Chancellor Joel Klein, another lawyer who loved to employ civil rights rhetoric, as the Department of Education’s first Accountability Officer. Under Leibman’ s direction, the DOE created complex statistical models first to grade schools, and later to evaluate teacher performance, both using criteria that based ratings on complex measures involving variations in student test scores from year to year. On the basis of the models, which were statistically flawed and often defied common sense, schools were closed and teachers were removed and placed in a much stigmatized reserved pool. The consequence was an increase in the number of tests and huge ratcheting up of stress levels associated with them. In New York City, for example, every third grader must sit through 6 straight days of testing for 90 minutes a day. Those who defend this practice still use the language of equity in explaining why they are doing. But quite frankly, the negatives associated with this level of quantification are far exceeding the benefits.

We now face a situation where school reform policies once described as necessary to achieve educational equity and reduce the racial achievement gap have resulted in uncontrolled testing, profit taking on a grand scale by test companies, and attacks on teacher integrity and collective bargaining rights that have produced the lowest level of teacher morale on record.

Such is the consequence of the misapplication of a once honorable civil rights doctrine to a setting where the most publicized causes of discrimination -teacher apathy and incompetence- are far less significant than environmental factors excluded from the analytical and statistical model, particularly poverty and societal racism.

The notion that “School Reform is the Civil Rights Cause of the 21st Century” has become a cruel joke to teachers and students who find themselves deluged with unnecessary tests and placed under intolerable stress in the name of educational equity.

This post was originally published on Mark Naison’s blog, “With a Brooklyn Accent.”

Image: 1LawyerSource.com

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In this thoughtful Harvard Business Review article, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson asks us to see beyond Jobs’s legendary roughness with people and appreciate the leadership qualities that made him one of the most successful innovators of our time. “The essence of Jobs, I think, is that his personality was integral to his way of doing business,” says Isaacson. “He acted as if the normal rules didn’t apply to him, and the passion, intensity, and extreme emotionalism he brought to everyday life were things he also poured into the products he made. His petulance and impatience were part and parcel of his perfectionism.” Here are Jobs’s deeper leadership qualities. How many of them apply to K-12 education?

• Focus. When Jobs returned to embattled Apple in 1997, the company was working on a random array of computers and peripherals, including a dozen different versions of the Macintosh. “Stop!” shouted Jobs at the end of a series of product-review meetings. “This is crazy.” He grabbed a Magic Marker, drew a grid on a whiteboard, and reset the company’s direction:

The company focused on making four computers, and all other projects were cancelled. This saved the company. From then on, Jobs hosted an annual brainstorming session with his “top 100” people. After much discussion, they would agree on the ten things Apple should be doing next – and then Jobs would cross off the bottom seven. “We can only do three,” he’d say.

• Simplify. Jobs zeroed in on the essence of each product and eliminated unnecessary components. He learned this playing Atari’s Star Trek game as a college dropout; the only instructions were: (1) Insert quarter, and (2) Avoid Klingons. “It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple,” he said, “to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.”

• Take responsibility end to end. Jobs insisted on integrating proprietary Apple products with each other for a smoother, simpler experience. He believed the more-open Microsoft and Google approach was a recipe for inferior products. “Sometimes it’s nice to be in the hands of a control freak,” says Isaacson.

• When you’re behind, leapfrog. At one point, PC users were ahead of Apple, downloading and swapping music and burning their own CDs. So Jobs created iTunes, the iTunes Store, and the iPod, blowing the competition out of the water. Then he cannibalized the iPod by integrating it into the iPhone.

• Put products before profits. Jobs’s instructions to the team designing the first Macintosh were to make it “insanely great.” “Don’t compromise,” he said. “Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities.” At first, the Mac was too expensive, but ultimately, he believed, it “put a dent in the universe.” When a businessman (John Sculley) ran Apple from 1983 to 1993, the company declined. Jobs believes this was because sales and profits became the priority. When Jobs returned, he shifted the focus back to innovative products, and profits followed. [Could the analogy in education be focusing on test scores rather than on teaching and learning?]

• Don’t be a slave to focus groups. Jobs liked to quote Henry Ford: “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’” “Instead of relying on market research,” says Isaacson, “[Jobs] honed his version of empathy – an intimate intuition about the desires of his customers.”

• Bend reality. The joke at Apple was that Jobs created a Reality Distortion Field, frequently pushing people to do the impossible. “It was a self-fulfilling distortion,” says Debi Coleman, a Mac team member who regularly stood up to Jobs. “You did the impossible because you didn’t realize it was impossible.”

• Impute. Jobs believed the packaging of Apple products was really important – opening up the box in which an iMac or iPhone arrived set the tone for the product itself. People really do judge a book by its cover, he believed.

• Push for perfection. With Pixar’s Toy Story and with several products, Jobs stopped the design process at the last moment and made major changes. Toy Story became less edgy, the case of the iPhone less masculine, and the iPad had its bottom edge rounded to make it easier to scoop up. Jobs even insisted that the innards of computers (inaccessible to customers) be aesthetically designed. He learned this lesson as a boy when he and his father were building a fence around their house. His father took just as much care on the part behind the house as on the part facing the street. “Nobody will ever know,” said Jobs. “But you will know,” replied his father.

• Tolerate only ‘A’ players. Jobs was tough on people around him because he wanted to prevent “the bozo explosion” – his term for what happens when managers are so polite that mediocre people feel comfortable sticking around. “I don’t run roughshod over people,” he said, “but if something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest.” “Was all his stormy and abusive behavior necessary?” asks Isaacson. “Probably not. There were other ways he could have motivated his team.” But Jobs was who he was, and the rough edges came with passion and inspiration. Looking back, his colleagues at Apple believe the products would have been much less impressive if he had been nicer about mediocre performance, and very few of them left the company of their own accord. “I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them,” said Jobs. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.”

• Engage face-to-face. Jobs hated formal presentations (“People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint,” he said) but loved freewheeling in-person weekly meetings, usually without an agenda. “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions,” he said. “You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.” He insisted that the layout of the Pixar office building require people to encounter each other frequently in a central atrium.

• Know both the big picture and the details. Jobs grasped the overall strategy (the idea of the “cloud”, for example) as well as the minutest details of the iMac’s color and design.

• Combine the humanities with the sciences. Jobs saw himself standing at the intersection of these two fields. Other individuals were better technologists or better artists than he was. “But no one else in our era could better firewire together poetry and processors in a way that jolted innovation,” says Isaacson.

• Stay hungry, stay foolish. Jobs combined his hippie roots with the technocratic world of Silicon Valley, and as he became fabulously successful, he kept a foot in the world of his adolescence. “While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius,” he said. “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

“The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson in Harvard Business Review, April 2012 (Vol. 90, #4, p. 92-102), e-link; there’s another article on leadership lessons from Jobs in Marshall Memo 401.

This Marshall Memo summary of original article was originally published in Marshall Memo 429 by Kim Marshall. 

Image: Mac.AppStorm.net

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According to the dramatic arc, the Second Act is commonly referred to as the “Rising Action.” At this stage of the theatrical production, tension is generated both on the stage between characters and off the stage between the story and the audience. At this point, crucial information is given to the audience in dialogue, monologue, and asides. Tension is created by seemingly up-ending the perception of the audience with just enough information in order to create a sense of comfortable unease within the minds of the viewers. Under the tutelage of a skilled playwright and effective actors, a theater production, whether a comedy or tragedy will have the audience edging with anticipation and even some anxiety. These new revelations and understandings challenge the perceived norm which the audience began with in comfort.
Similarly, once the classroom teacher has artfully maneuvered through the warm up and has the interest and curiosity of the students, their audience, piqued, then it is time to create a little cognitive dissonance in order for critical and creative thinking to arise. This is achieved through introducing new knowledge and skills to the students through what is typically known as “direct teach.” Traditionally this has taken the form of a lecture. In fact this is what the majority of classroom teachers understand the method to encompass. Others may include activities such as guided reading along with other passive methods which only engage, if luck prevails, the students at a basic knowledge or comprehension level of thinking.

True, these tested and tried methods do expose the students to new information and can inoculate them with certain, basic educational skills. However, this does not ignite the interest, nor entice the synapses within a student’s mind. Teaching methods that can accomplish these seemingly protean feats are many times shelved due to the misunderstood requirement of additional time and effort on the part of the teacher. Also, some classroom teachers may not be able to comprehend this approach to teaching, which is actually more traditional than the lecture, because of their own educational experience being limited.

Basically, this portion of the lesson cycle is based in the foundation of drama, dialogue. Except, instead of the dialogue taking place between character on the stage, it is between the classroom teacher and the students. Yet, unlike a stage actor, the teacher must play numerous and varied roles, but they are all grounded in the same perception. The teacher must narrative, enquire, and even sometimes mislead the students while guiding them through the educational experience. In essence, the teacher lays the role of narrator, antagonist, chorus, playwright, and director at the same time. Changing the roles must come fluidly, and will with experience.

At this stage of the lesson cycle, the teacher engages the students in a manner which ignites their thinking in a manner which causes some form of discomfort in order to elicit a critical response from the students. This manner of relaxed anxiety excites actually fires the neurons and grows dendrites in a positive manner. The goal at this point is to set the students on edge, creating a palpable tension. This seemingly simple act goes far to engage the students, capturing and maintaining their attention.

While the classroom teacher continues to deftly balance these seemingly disparate roles, another must be added. It is actually somewhat familiar and recurring role for the majority of classroom teachers. The role is that of an, if not the, antagonist. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of educators may take offense to this. Some of them serious offense, rightly so. However, if the quick and easy definition of antagonist which is summed up in the synonym enemy is set aside for the intents and purposes of this analysis, then and opportunity for an expanded perspective occurs, and perhaps something momentous to follow.

Moving past the popular, and well-known, enemy definition, a new and unique understanding for the classroom arises. Let the educational point of view broaden to encompass new synonyms such as challenger, opponent, and even rival in some cases. An Old Testament metaphor concerning this is found in the story of Jacob and the angel. Both entities struggled against one another. The angel finally surrendered to defeat, however not without leaving Jacob with a permanent limp.

In the classroom setting the teacher and the students play both role fluidly, but also in opposition to each other. While the roles switch imperceptibly at times, neither the students nor the teacher are engaged in the same role simultaneously. This is virtually impossible. In this scenario, both the students and the classroom teacher are struggling to understand, while grappling with one another and their own limitations as well. In the end, the teacher and the students surrender their knowledge to the party in opposition and each leaves the contest limping.

While this may seem to be a violent metaphor to understand teaching with, it is no different than the dissonance Hamlet struggled with in the eponymous play. Both the interior and exterior manifestations of this struggle to comprehend, to understand this seemingly new world which Hamlet have been thrust into are apropos. Neither for the students and teacher need to end as violently as Hamlet’ did. However, the act of sharing, transferring, and incorporating new knowledge and skills is always a challenge. However, the guidance and example shared by the teacher goes far in assisting the students.

In fact, the literary metaphor can be extended further to include other eminent genres such as poetry and novels. Building upon the foundation of Hamlet’s conflict, the quest for understanding is similar to the Poet’s journey recorded in Dante’s immortal trilogy “The Divine Comedy.” As classroom teachers, the challenge is to inhabit the multiple roles of Virgil the poet who accompanies and guides the Poet through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise along with the numerous inhabitants the Poet encounters along his journey and the wisdom and warnings they all dispense. In this metaphor, the character of Beatrice is the embodiment of Wisdom. Luckily, the teacher is required to be neither as dire nor divine as what the Poet encountered.

Perhaps the best literary metaphor is truly saved for last. It is that of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel Don Quixote. However, the similarity may be surprising for some teaches. While many times classroom teachers may feel or believe that like the eponymous protagonist, the more apt comparison is his boon companion and sidekick, Sancho Panza. Like Quixote’s companion, the teacher is called to function as the grounding voice of reason while continuing to afford the students ample opportunity to follow their own seeming flights of fancy and fantasy. The entire time the classroom teacher, like Sancho Panza, pokes and prods with questions in an attempt to spur novel thinking in the students through critical reflection and creative response. And along the way, as boon companions in their own right, the teachers are there to re-direct and encourage their students when the results are different than anticipated.

In the end, this understanding of the lesson cycle and overall instructional design can be readily founded upon the seemingly simple act of questioning. Whether it is hermeneutically based or entirely out of context and content, questioning is essential and requires constant cultivation at this stage of instructional delivery. The level of seeming discomfort and even dissonance is an adequate preparatory experience for the next stage, or Act III in the lesson cycle. During this current, second stage, or Act II, the ascent towards the summit becomes more arduous. It does almost become religious or spiritual for both the students and the classroom teacher. It is at this point which the teacher’s experience comes to the forefront. Like a veteran athlete or combatant, muscle memory becomes the greatest ally in the face of adversity and indecision. This is also an opportunity for classroom teachers to exhibit their own unique skills as adept learners. This gives the students a visceral example of self-directed and self-aware lifelong learning if executed properly. It is also a chance for the students to witness the humanity of the classroom teacher through their use of self-depreciating humor. Humor is essential at all times in the classroom and will be mentioned further in the next installment.

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If you fly, thank Myron Tribus for helping make your flight safer. He played a major role in the development of the equipment that keeps airliner wings free of ice.

Myron was a captain in the Army Air Force during World War II. Later, he was a gas turbine design engineer for General Electric, dean of Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering, senior vice president for research & engineering for Xerox, an author of scientific papers and books, director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and co-founder of Exergy, Inc.

What brought Myron from California to my house in Florida for three days many years ago was our shared concern about what kids were and weren’t being taught. We both believed that the traditional curriculum hadn’t adapted to the 20^th Century — much less the 21^{st —}and that the reforms being promoted by business interests and politicians weren’t just making the situation worse but blocking real reform.

Myron agreed with me that deciding what knowledge is most important, and using systems theory to simplify the organization of that knowledge, were logical  first steps in real education reform, and that’s what we talked about.

I’ve stopped thinking I’ll live to see those ideas being taken seriously. Today’s reformers take it for granted that what was taught in the past is fine for the future, and their ideas about the organization of knowledge begin and end with the simplistic, knowledge-fragmenting “Common Core State Standards.”  The latest evidence is the just-released report from a committee chaired by Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein titled, “U.S. Education Reform and National Security.”

That said, I can’t bring myself to simply walk away from the educational catastrophe that’s been unfolding since the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and other rightwing groups took control of education policy in the 1980s and pulled the rest of the political spectrum with them. Concern for the educations of my nine great-grandchildren, for their children, and for their children’s children, won’t let me desert the field.

I’ve got a modest proposal. No Child Left Behind, and now Race to the Top, have made standardized tests the sole measure of educational quality. What makes those kinds of tests acceptable is the ridiculous notion that machines can measure brains, but the campaign to discredit teacher judgment of student performance has been so successful there’s no going back. Standardized tests are here to stay. Attacks on them are dismissed as lame efforts by teachers to avoid being held accountable.

Manufactured tests, then, must be accepted, but must be made to do good rather than harm. The practice of testing what’s taught is out the window. Now, what gets tested is what gets taught, so the simplest, most direct way to improve what’s taught is to improve the tests.

Arne Duncan, U.S. secretary of education, says kids need to be taught “higher order” thinking skills. If teachers teach to tests, and standardized test items require the use of higher order thinking skills, those skills will be taught.

I propose that all standardized tests test higher order thinking skills.

What, exactly, are “thinking skills?” Asked, most professional educators will make lists something like the one below. They’ll also generally agree that every skill on the list except the first one—recalling—is a higher order thought process.

Recalling

Classifying

Applying

Inferring

Hypothesizing

Generalizing

Relating

Synthesizing

Valuing

 Science test question: “You’ve studied some of the ways that plants and animals have evolved to protect themselves from harm. Which of the following five ways is NOT a self-protection strategy?”

To answer, the test taker just has to remember something read or heard. That’s recalling, and it’s not a higher order thinking skill.

Science test question: “You’ve studied some of the ways that plants and animals have evolved to protect themselves from harm. Choose one of those self-protection strategies and explain how it could be adapted to protect convenience store clerks from harm.”

To answer, the test taker has to put an idea that’s been learned to practical use. That’s applying, and it’s a higher order thinking skill.

History test question: We’ve been studying big ideas called ‘shared assumptions’ that help hold human societies together. In the spaces provided, list four of those assumptions.”

To answer, the test taker just has to remember something read or heard. That’s recalling, and it’s not a higher order thinking skill.

History test question: “We’ve been studying big ideas called ‘shared assumptions’ that help hold human societies together. Below is a copy of a page from the 1777 New England Primer that uses two-line verses based on the Bible to teach the letters of the alphabet. Based on the verses, what assumption about basic human nature seems to have been shared by 18^th Century Puritans?”

To answer, the test taker has to draw inferences from the verses.Inferring is a higher order thinking skill.

If higher order thinking skills are tested, teachers will teach them. Those who don’t know how will quickly learn.

Of course, Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Educational Testing Service, and other test manufacturers aren’t going to volunteer to test student-initiated higher order thinking skills. Neither are the politicians they help elect and re-elect going to make them even try to do so unless they think voters give them no alternative.

So voters should give them no alternative. Unless politicians and test manufacturers can make a convincing case for not teaching the young to think, they should be told what they’ve been telling teachers who say standardized tests are a waste of time and money: “No excuses!”

It’s likely that nothing short of binding agreements between states and test manufacturers will yield the new tests. To that end, in appropriate legal language, contracts should make clear that (a) every test question in every subject will evaluate a particular, named thinking skill, (b) every test will evaluate a balanced mix of all known thinking skills, and (c) a panel of experts not connected to test manufacturers or politicians will preview all test items to assure contract compliance. No excuses.

Fairtest, Parents Across America, United Opt Out National, and other state and local organizations have strategies in place to try to persuade. Petitions and referendums invite signers. Parents, grandparents — indeed, all who care about kids and country — should get on board.

No more multimillion dollar checks for tests that no one but manufacturers are allowed to see. No more tests the pass-fail cut scores of which can be raised and lowered to make political points. No more kids labeled and discarded, every one with a brain wired to do all sorts of amazing things. If storing trivia in short-term memory doesn’t happen to be one of those things, that shouldn’t put them out of school and on the street.

Postscript: Myron hasn’t been well for a long time, so we haven’t talked in years. I last saw him at his 80^th birthday party. A documentary film crew from Russia was there. When I asked why, they said that in Russian scientific circles, Myron was a hero.

He’s also one of my heroes—a genuine genius who understood the absolutely critical role that school curricula play in promoting and maintaining societal well-being, and dedicated his pre-illness retirement years to trying to improve it.

Image: Dan Wasserman

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Imagine a seed planted in the ground. To merely survive as a plant its needs are fairly basic. Dirt. Moisture. Light. However, in order to truly thrive, its needs become a bit more complex. Rich, aerated soil. Consistent, clean water. Full spectrum light. Climate, weather, competition, air quality, and locality all play a role as well.

Our work in education is of a similar vein. For students to merely survive the basics may suffice — Classroom. Teacher. Content.

However, in order to truly thrive, a student’s needs are a bit more complex. Engaging and enriching learning environments;  passionate and professional educators; relevant and meaningful lessons that balance content with experiences. Influencing these elements are numerous other factors: community, peers, leadership, access to technology, basic needs, health, safety, and a student’s own learning profile, among many others.

The intricacies of the dynamics at play necessitate that we as educators and education leaders view teaching and learning through the dual lenses of specificity and complexity. We must simultaneously consider the big picture of the whole child and the individuality of each student in every class. The effort of walking that tightrope is compounded when the surrounding environment puts stresses on the students’ growth and development.

In attending ASCD’s Annual Conference this weekend in Philadelphia, I found that there are growing developments that stand to transform education. The cool part about them to me–they build the capacity of educators, attend to the larger questions about providing for students, and empower teachers. In essence, they aren’t about The Test.

Three major trends caught my eye:

1. The increasing accessibility of applicable research.

2. The growth of the whole child movement.

3. A grassroots leadership of educators filling a demand for transformation.

Research

An increasing amount of brain research, coupled with a more comprehensive look at what works in schools, helps to provide a better sketch of where we need to focus our efforts in order to affect positive growth in students to our greatest potential as a school. (Hint: It isn’t more testing!)

In order to achieve the academic and intellectual growth we envision for our students, their basic needs must be taken care of. As Pedro Noguera said during his session with Wade Boykin, “Unmet social needs become unmet academic needs.” This is supported by the brain research presented by Carol Ann Tomlinson.

Every educator, from administrators to classroom aides and everyone in-between, must believe that ALL students can learn. Then, educators need the knowledge, skills and pedagogical practices to capitalize on and leverage that belief.

Noguera and Boykin (more on their session on Mike Ritzius’s blog) advocated for building supportive relationships with students, protecting and advocating for their health, engaging them in meaningful and relevant activities, providing an emotionally and physically safe environment, and ensuring students have real opportunities to be academically challenged.

The short of it: a whole child education.

The emerging neural developmental research backs this up:

1. Before the brain can attend to cognitive learning, students must feel physically safe and emotionally secure. Emotion is a strong force, and when learners experience strong negative emotions, the limbic system kicks in and both shuts down cognitive processing and enhances our memory of the negative event in order to support survival. In other words, “reflex” trumps “reflection” when negative emotions occur.
2. A positive learning environment increases endorphins in the bloodstream which generates a positive feeling and stimulates the brain’s frontal lobe to support memory of the learning objective and of the positive situation.
3. A negative learning environment leads to increased cortisol in the bloodstream which raises the learner’s anxiety level, shuts down processing of what it perceives to be low-priority information (the lesson content), and focuses the brain on what it perceives to be high-priority information (the situation causing the stress) so that the stressful situation is remembered rather than the lesson content. (Sousa, D., & Tomlinson, C. A, 2010)

(More on Tomlinson’s presentation on Mary Beth Hertz’s Philly Teacher blog)

Whole Child Education

The emerging awareness of the Whole Child movement stands to make a considerable impact in schools and on students. Fortunately, the research supports this development and the tools to help educators leverage students strengths is being developed and deployed. For example, try out this Learner Sketch Tool that can help students understand their own learning profile.

As educators learn more about the brain, students, and the intersection between content delivery and student growth, they find that whole school and whole district cultures dedicated to the whole child are not only possible, but also successful.

Take a look at Matt McClure, one of this year’s recipient of the Outstanding Young Educator Award.  As a superintendent of Cross Country Schools in Arkansas he instituted a district-wide whole child approach. In doing so he successfully turned around schools, added innovative and community building projects, and was recognized by Arkansas Department of Education as a Coordinated  School Health district.

When the well-being of students are the focal point, the debate on what we need to do to transform schools and cultivate cultures of learning is effectively reframed. As Heidi Hayes Jacobs told a roundtable of education bloggers during a luncheon, “In all of our conversations about education we need to pull an empty chair to the table and envision one of our students in the chair. Then, in all of our deliberations, we must continually ask, ‘How is this good for [insert the imaginary student's name here]?’”

Educator Empowerment

It is precisely this desire and demand to make a difference in the lives of students that has inspired the Edcamp movement. Based on the idea of an “unconference” in which the professional development content that is delivered reflects the needs and wants of the participants, Edcamp events capitalize on and build on the knowledge and skills of teachers and leaders in an organic and personalized way.

As educators take control of their own learning, they build their capacity to affect change where it matters most — in the lives of the students they teach. What’s more, this localization and personalization of professional growth empowers the participants  as learning leaders within their schools and districts. This is precisely the kind of culture — a culture of learning from top down and left to right — which constitutes the type of soil, climate, and light necessary for all students to thrive and grow.

(You can read more about Edcamp here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

These three trends — research in practice, whole child focus, and empowered educators — coupled with the arising tools of technology, leadership expertise, and cultural responsiveness, allows the pollyanna in me to see beyond the commercialization of our schools to a future of holistic growth. Not just for student test scores, but for teacher leadership, communities of learning, and, most importantly, for students’ well being–of mind, body, and spirit.

Thanks for the great conference, ASCD. I’m already looking forward to Chicago.

Image: Home Harvest Seeds

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Hall Davidson, Director of Discovery Education Network, had a session at ASCD’s 2012 Annual Conference this morning on “Making Mobile Meaningful.” You can connect with his slides here.

Here are a few of the resources he shared for utilizing mobile devices students in and out of the classrooms:

Poll Everywhere: Students can text in answers to survey questions and graphs the results. (Eliminates the need for clickers.)

Word Lens: A mobile device’s camera is used to translate a text into another language.

iSeismograph: Turn your iPhone into seismograph.

Leafsnap: A great use of “the cloud” to create a plant identification guide. Limited for now, but great potential for future growth.

Google Translate: Use your phone to translate from one spoken language to another.

QR Code Generator: Generate QR codes that can engage students in new and creative ways.

QR Voice: Type in a sentence and then decide which language you want it translated to. The generated QR code will link to the translated sentence being spoken.

More resources: Tom Barrett’s collaborative google doc is a good starting point.

Image: Mary Beth Hertz from ISTEmarcom Flickr

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Bringing about transformative change in our education system necessitates that we take a semi serious and semi ridiculous look at the numerous dynamics influencing schools, schooling, education and learning. If we do our jobs well, at the center of this effort should be the whole child. And when we do, we’ll find that the results add up to more than the sum of their parts.

Below is the slideshow I put together for an Ignite session at ASCD12. It is designed to be seen in 5 minutes with slides changing every 15 seconds. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the sound, but perhaps the pictures tell their own story. Either way, enjoy.

And then get out there and make a difference.

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