Category — Equal Opportunity

Today we present readers an in-depth interview with Ira David Socol, author of “The Drool Room” and the web site “SpeEdChange.” Our interest in talking with Ira centered upon three critical factors.

First, there is little doubt that Ira is passionate about education and the process of learning. More importantly, that passion is relentlessly focused on creating a learning process that is responsive to the needs of learners.

Second, to be frank, Ira shares some of our views on how best to reform education. He notes that there are a multitude of ways to create positive learning opportunities for students but our current school structures prevent the flexibility necessary to provide alternate paths. Like OpenEducation.net, he is also a strong proponent of the use of technology yet does not buy into the “digital natives” nonsense.

Third and perhaps most importantly, Ira is extremely courageous. He is unwavering in his support for students and is willing to step out on a limb if it means questioning the system. He is one of the rare individuals we have seen who has been willing to speak out about what he sees as fundamental flaws in programs like Teach for America and the KIPP school concept (Knowledge is Power Program).

Ultimately, we believe it is important that everyone involved in education is familiar with his work.

Can you give our readers a brief introduction to the key elements of your personal bio?

I come to the field of education from an interesting direction. I know that most in the field, be they teachers, administrators, teacher education faculty, are there because they liked school, and so they wanted to stay. School worked for them – at least on some significant level – and school made sense to them.

The key part of my bio for this interview is that none of that was true for me. From the beginning I hated school, and struggled with it. I have never seen school as a place for education, but rather as a place of compliance with nonsensical rules which have stopped me from learning.

But luckily I was shown alternatives. Early in my school life I discovered what were then “books on LP” – audio books – and I always preferred listening to reading. I had the good fortune to attend a Neil Postman designed alternative high school led by the best educator I know in America, a teacher named Alan Shapiro, and in that “school without walls” (or grades, time schedules, or requirements) I found the freedom to actually learn. I also saw, at Pratt Institute, that every subject (even concrete engineering) could benefit from flexibility, and project-based learning.

Mostly, I’ve had the chance to do many things. I’ve designed houses and been a police officer. I’ve worked on newspapers and pulled thousands of miles of network cables. I’ve programmed computers and worked for a homeless support agency. I’ve coached soccer and taught art classes. I’ve seen this very wide variety of humans learn and communicate in a very wide variety of ways. And in seeing this world, I have learned that the rules, the strategies, the technologies, and the methods typically taught in school do not match what actual humans need.

So, to educators, I’m a bundle of contradictions: the book author who seems to argue against books, for example. But outside of school, as we drive down the road listening to our audiobooks, or download our reading to our phones, people do understand what I’m talking about.

Can you talk a little bit about your book, The Drool Room? The visual with the reversed Rs in the title certainly creates a lasting impression. I am also not clear as to what is meant by a “novel in stories?”

I really worried about the reversed Rs. I fought the design at first. “Generic dyslexic humor,” as The Simpsons put it. But it does generate impact, and it tells a story in a very effective shorthand. As someone who does reverse and otherwise twist letters at times, I know the image well. “I have a kid brother, he’s six, he writes just like you.”

The Drool Room is fiction, but, yes, many parts are “autobiographically informed.” I’m not going to say which. It is not a memoir. It has experiences of mine and experiences of others assembled, tracking a – shall we say – “challenging student” through school and through life. There’s a thread – “seeing differently” is a lifespan kind of thing.

It is told as a series of short stories and microfictions which alternate through a non-linear story line. That’s a literary style: Joyce, Dos Passos, Seamus Deane, that I think really works. The straight-line novel, you know, see climax on page 312, doesn’t hold a great deal of interest for me.

Your blog SpeEdChange offers the sub-header, “The future of education for all the different students in democratic societies.” Can you provide greater insight as to what you mean by that sub-heading as well as what tends to be your focus on the site?

Let me take you back to the origins. When I began my graduate degree program many advised me to join a list-serve called “SpEdPro,” for special education academics, and I did. A month later I posted a response to some question, and in my response I suppose I betrayed my postmodern thought patterns. That is, I doubted the idea that quantitative research of groups could “prove” the best solutions for individual students. And I was immediately hammered – just flat out attacked – as if I was threatening the entire structure of society. The battle ranged across almost 100 posts, but I had, essentially, no defenders.

So, I quit that, and created SpeEdChange, a place where I might doubt, and find others who doubt. And where we might “Speed Change in Education,” especially for those labeled as “different” in our societies. It remains significantly a “special needs education” site in some ways – now, I don’t actually believe in special education, because I firmly believe that every student, every human, has “special needs” in some ways and is “gifted” in some ways – but I do believe in protecting our most vulnerable first.

The spirit of the blog lies in a couple of ideas. “Democracy” – not “majority rule” faux democracy, but actual “protection from majority tyranny” democracy, is essential for society and education. If we do not have that, we will never grant our students the right to control their own learning, and thus, we will never allow them to become effective lifespan learners. “Universal Design,” the idea that solutions in the classroom (or workplace) not be “prescribed” as if as cures for pathologies, but be offered freely to all, so that we learn to make effective choices. And “Liberation Technology,” the idea that using tools effectively is how humans free themselves from their individual and group limitations.

From your writings readers can clearly discern your strong opposition to the tenets of the Teach for America program. Can you highlight for our readers your thoughts on TFA?

Teach for America is a “colonial project.” It is a “missionary project.” It begins with the basic premise that the solution for the underclass in America is to make them ‘as much like’ rich white folks as possible. When you listen to the TFA leadership, they don’t really talk about “education,” probably because they don’t really believe in education. They talk about “leadership” instead. If they believed in education they would see education as important on the path to effective teaching, an idea they specifically reject, replacing it with the thought that since TFA corps members represent the elites (or, religiously, the “elect”), all they have to do is “lead” the downtrodden out of poverty.

This is essentially the British Colonial conversion concept. “We’ll fix Nigeria/Ireland/South Africa/India. We’ll just teach them to speak the Queen’s English, give them a Parliament, and make them wear powdered wigs in court. Then they’ll be civilized. And like the British Empire, this strategy is adopted because TFA’s board and supporters have no desire to ever relinquish power to a rising colonial population. If it’s all about “follow the leader,” the leader never changes.

Beyond that, TFA is a “cover up.” Rather than enlist our elite universities in the fight to reallocate resources, or improve democracy, or build equality of opportunity, or even simply to improve teacher pay, support, and status, we use them to offer the fig leaf of charity to deflect any actual movement within society.

And beyond that, TFA is a “good enough for those kids” effort. I say, over and over, that if TFA wants to prove itself, replace the faculties of the schools in Scarsdale, NY or Greenwich, CT, or at Groton and St. Bernard’s, with TFA corps members. And let those teachers – holding their current salaries – go to the TFA placements. If TFA improves the education in those wealthy places, it will have proved itself. If the teachers from those top schools have better impacts than TFA teachers do in the impoverished districts, we’ll know that better teacher training, better teacher pay, and redistributing resources is the way to go.

By most accounts, the TFA program seems to be immensely popular. According to what we have read, the program is turning away large numbers of applicants. In your estimation, why is the TFA program so popular?

Of course it is popular. It is marketed as a great way to build your resume while assuaging liberal guilt at the same time. It offers the perfect entitlement, a job without the need for real commitment or the effort which goes into real training. As banking jobs shrink, this seems the perfect two or three year placeholder.

You also have frequently shared your opposition to the Knowledge is Power Program (the network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools, called KIPP). Can you share with readers your position and why you have taken such a stance regarding this program?

Let me put it this way. Let’s go to those “best schools in America” in the wealthiest suburbs of New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles. Why aren’t they run like KIPP Academies? Always ask this when rich people offer “solutions” for poor people which those rich people would never accept for themselves.

Oh yeah, the rich parents want creativity and flexibility and diverse curricula. They want individualized discipline (if they want discipline at all). They’d have very little patience for chanting in classes and being told what to do with their children at home. But, you know, “those people,” they’re not “like us.”

Again, we’re back at the brutally low expectations, and the inherent racism and classism of colonialism. So, sure, convert Scarsdale High into a KIPP Academy, show me how it works there, and then offer it to those “less fortunate.”

Today, everyone is interested in improving education, there just seems to be real disagreement as how to best do so in our country. If you were to advise the incoming Secretary of Education on a couple of must areas to consider, what would be the two aspects of education you would most want to see reformed moving forward?

I’ll start with two words: Technology and Flexibility. We need to rethink the technology of our schools, from the shape of our classrooms to the schedules of our days, weeks, and year, to our text systems. Right now we are stuck in buildings quite literally designed in the 1840s (when chalkboards, desks, chairs, and books printed on rotary presses were all “scientifically” introduced). We are stuck with quasi industrial timing, and the industrial processing notions of “grades” (not marks, but the years in school). Only when we break those bonds, and use the technologies of our time to break through our geographical and knowledge boundaries, can we begin to find the flexibility we need to create education which finally works for more than one third of the population.

That flexibility means not assessing for “expected” (based on group averages) progress. It means teachers having “instructional tolerance” for differences in student learning styles and behaviors. It means project-based, interest-based learning which responds to learner needs. It means Universal Design in both technology and practice so that students learn to access and work with information in the ways most effective for them. It means accepting – finally – that “what you learn” is far more important than doing it in any exactly prescribed way.

That is “the change we need.” If we do not begin there, it is all tinkering around the edges, and honestly, that is worthless.

In your two posts last April on teachers and technology, you clearly took a strong position on the issue of technology in education. Could you highlight for our readers your general view of where technology fits in the 21st century classroom?

I believe that, in many ways, we define our human cultures by our technologies. This is because we are, above all else, tool users. Without tools, humans as we know them could simply not exist. So we say, “The Bronze Age,” “The Iron Age,” “The Stone Age,” now, “The Information Age,” because that is who we are.

Right now our classrooms are based in “Age of Steam” technologies. From the desk, to the time schedule, to the mass-printed ink-on-paper book, to the machine made pens and pencils. It is as if we are running “heritage academies,” producing people ready for the jobs, and the higher learning, of 1890.

That is disastrous on so many levels, not just as job prep. In my PhD program the ink-on-paper book is stunningly rare. Research is on line, communication is on line. I need to know how to Skype or Google Chat with distant colleagues, to glean data from blogs and list-serves around the world. I read many newspapers, but none are on paper. I convert reading which is difficult for me from text-to-speech, and my phone converts voice mails from voice-to-text. In every place I go, if I look around, the communication devices and “learning containers” are different from those we focus on in schools.

More important, technology liberates, it breaks boundaries. You have a non-reader? They can still grab the world of literature, and do it independently. Someone who can’t hold a pen? They can still express themselves to the world, without waiting for a scribe to help. Have a child in a distant rural area? They can access every one of the world’s greatest libraries. Have two communities separated by issues of the past? Join them digitally first, and let them build connections.

More practically, students need to know how to use email, Google, mobile phones, texting, blogs, online newspapers, and how to use them appropriately and effectively simply in order to survive. Don’t buy the “digital natives” nonsense. These are skills like any other skills, and they have to be learned. We are either teaching them, or we are not giving our kids the tools they need.

Schools which fail to embrace these technologies leave their students behind. No, their rich, majority group students will be fine, those technologies (and, say, Blackberry strategies) will be there at home. But the vulnerable students will be left in the dark.

So, any insight as to what is next for education?

Education ‘as we know it’ is about social reproduction. We are trying to produce students who are “just like the teachers.” And there is a sad feedback loop in this, educators see, in the students who succeed in these reproductive schools, people just like themselves.

But we need to be better than that – not because our standardized tests “prove” that only about one third of our students “achieve proficiency” (or ever have, you can look back at the stats at least to 1867) – but because our society needs to change, because it is changing, and schools need to support that.

But it is very hard for teachers to support learning which does not look like their own learning. Very hard. It requires levels of tolerance, of empathy, which are rare. It requires flexibility and a dramatic change in the role of the teacher. And it requires information and communication technologies which can offer pathways that the teacher can not.

It also requires more respect for teachers, more freedom for teachers, and much more support, in terms of ongoing educational opportunities and much better initial teacher training.

It isn’t easy, but I think it is essential.

Flickr photo courtesy of LGagnon.

Lest we sound terribly repetitious, we note that only a little more than a month has gone by since the last compelling new brain research study was released. In addition to looking at the differences in brain response for 8- and 9-year-olds, we have previously noted the importance of executive function in similar-age children, the mounting evidence regarding brain fitness for seniors, and the distinctions related to the brains of boys and girls.

The latest developments, however, are definitely the most shocking. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have reportedly now “shown for the first time that the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids.”

Monumental Implications
In simplest terms, the study determined that “normal 9- and 10-year-olds” who differed only in socioeconomic status “have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.”

Unfortunately, those detectable differences reveal what many had feared. Robert Knight, director of the Cal Berkeley Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and a professor of psychology states:

“Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult. We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response.”

According to the researchers, what makes the study so unique is that it was the first to directly measure brain activity without examining differentiation for task complexity. The researchers found that children who grow up in resource-poor environments “have more trouble with the kinds of behavioral control that the prefrontal cortex is involved in regulating.”

Intellectual Poverty
The children studied did not suffer from any neural damage. Researchers pronounced these youngsters free of prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, and without neurological damage.

Yet the researchers found that children who grow up in poverty are not only more likely to have health problems, there is clearly an issue with brain development as well. While that lack of development could be due to poor nutrition or the inability to gain access to proper health care, the researchers suggested it more likely stems “from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums.”

Ultimately, whatever the case, the prefrontal cortex area of the brain for low-socioeconomic children simply was not functioning as efficiently as one would expect it to be.

Solutions Exist
While a startling development overall, perhaps the most important aspect is that the researchers insist “the brain differences can be eliminated by proper training.” Working with fellow Cal Berkeley neuroscientists, the professors are examining how to possibly “use games to improve the prefrontal cortex function, and thus the reasoning ability, of school-age children.”

Knight adds:

“It’s not a life sentence. We think that with proper intervention and training, you could get improvement in both behavioral and physiological indices.”

Still, as one professor offers, “The study is … a little bit frightening that environmental conditions have such a strong impact on brain development.”

The Key Debate
One of the key discussion points regarding students who struggle versus those who excel in the school setting is based upon the fundamental question of “nature versus nurture.” The study appears to reveal an extra level of importance on the nurturing element.

At the same time, there appears to be some noteworthy interventions that could offset that lack of nurturing, provided students are exposed to those interventions as early in the schooling process as is reasonably possible.

Flickr photo courtesy of peta-de-aztlan.

Over the past few months we have taken a look at some of the more popular school choice options, in particular the career academy and charter school concepts. Today we take a look at yet another worthy option, that of single-sex schools.

The concept of single-sex public education has been receiving enormous interest in recent years. As but one example, recent concerns about college student completion rates in Boston has folks in that city calling for the development of single-sex choice options for students.

While there is a general sentiment that single-sex education has been of benefit to young ladies, there tends to be an assumption that the impact is not as positive for young men. Single-sex school experts disagree, insisting that “the gender-separate format can boost grades and test scores for both girls and boys.”

Data from the UK, particularly the work of researchers at Cambridge University regarding Morley High School in Leeds and the work of Graham Able of Dulwich College, is consistent with the notion that the format can work well for both boys and girls.

The “Boy Crisis”
At the heart of the single-sex school matter is the current performance of young men in the school setting. The Boys Project, designed to help young males develop their capabilities and reach their full potential reveals some very troubling data (PDF) emerging regarding young men.

• Young men’s literacy rates are declining, rendering them more likely to get D’s and F’s and less likely to be valedictorians or on the honor roll.
• Young men’s overall lack of academic success in school means they are more likely to be suspended or expelled.
• The combination of these events means that young men are also disengaging in greater numbers making them more likely to drop out of school.
• As for those who make it through the K-12 system, the number of young men attending college has stagnated while the number of young women attending college has soared since the 1970s.

As a collective group, these facts serve as the basis for what many experts are calling the “boy crisis.” Hoping to accomplish what the Girls Project has done for young women, the Boys Project seeks to increase the academic skills of young men so as to be successful in college. As part of the message, the Boys Project site features a great deal of information related to single-sex schooling.

Single-Sex Education
Research has determined, perhaps not all that surprisingly, that there are clear gender differences in how girls and boys learn. But such a statement tends to be immediately modified into yet another assertion, “all girls learn one way and all boys learn another way.”

Advocates of single-sex education insist that nothing could be further from the truth. Proponents of single-sex education acknowledge that there is great diversity among girls and among boys. One resource site, SingleSexSchools.org notes, “Some boys would rather read a book than play football” and “that some girls would rather play football than play with Barbies.”

In fact, in simplest terms, these basic stereotypes are often pervasive in coeducational school settings and therefore form the basis for why mixed settings may not work well for all youngsters. As but one example, in most coed public high schools a boy can be either a “geek” or a “jock,” but seldom both, while even fewer descriptors seem available for a young man who does not fit one category or the other.

However, proponents of single-sex classrooms and schools acknowledge that improvement will not happen by segregating students alone. One cannot simply put girls in one room and boys in another and expect that greater academic success will automatically be forthcoming. Instead, single-sex schools demand extensive teacher preparation to ensure that the format works in a positive manner.

Teaching in a Single-Sex School
Dr. Leonard Sax has authored two well-known texts on the subject of single-sex schooling. His first, Why Gender Matters, is considered a basic primer on the topic, while his second, Boys Adrift, offers his key summary of the current status, Five Factors Driving the Decline of Boys.

The doctor insists that educators must understand some very basic facts. First, the “brains of girls and boys develop along different trajectories.” Sax notes that some differences are genetic and therefore present at birth but many other differences are shaped during the childhood years.

But the doctor insists we must forget our gender stereotypes, those that have us thinking that “boys are competitive” but “girls are collaborative.” Instead research demonstrates that the differences in brain development in each sex leads to certain tendencies. For girls, the language area of the brain develops before the areas of the brain used for spatial relations. On the other hand, for boys it tends to be just the opposite.

If school curricula are not designed so as to address these fundamental differences, then Sax insists that such classrooms will produce boys who cannot write well and girls who believe they are “dumb at math.”

Yet another major difference comes from how the brain is wired. For girls, the same area of the brain that processes language is utilized to process emotion. The result according to Sax is that it is “easy for most girls to talk about their emotions.”

For boys, different brain regions are involved; the areas of the brain used for talking are separated from the regions involved in feeling. Sax notes the toughest question for boys to answer is: “Tell me how you feel.”

Perhaps the most striking difference is the effect of stress on boys and girls. Here the stereotype tends to fit as Sax notes that “stress enhances learning in males” but it “impairs learning in females.”

Sax makes no bones about today’s current school setting and the inherent problems that have been created. He writes:

“Since the mid-1970′s, educators have made a virtue of ignoring gender differences. The assumption was that by teaching girls and boys the same subjects in the same way at the same age, gender gaps in achievement would be eradicated.

“That approach has failed. Gender gaps in some areas have widened in the past three decades. The proportion of girls studying subjects such as physics and computer science has dropped in half. Boys are less likely to study subjects such as foreign languages, history, and music than they were three decades ago. The ironic result of three decades of gender blindness has been an intensifying of gender stereotypes.”

Question of Legality
Single-sex schools and single-sex classes were in theory legalized under the provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act. Under those provisions, single-sex schools or single-sex classrooms in particular subjects can be offered as long as there are clear counterparts that include offerings for each sex as well as a coeducational choice.

However, there are some who insist that move is unconstitutional. Cornell University Law Professor Gary Simson has authored a piece asking just such a question.

And just two weeks ago, lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union challenged single-sex classes at Hankins Middle School in Theodore, Alabama. The ACLU insists that such classes violate federal laws banning gender discrimination in the public schools.

Worthy of Consideration in a Broad Context
In addition to the question of legality, there are a number of critics of the concept. Some appear to be a bit dated but there are questions being raised in many circlesThe Trouble With Single-Sex Schools – The Atlantic (April 1998), California Study: Single-Sex Schools No Cure-All, and Single-sex schools: A good idea gone wrong?.

However, we noted earlier that folks in Boston have begun discussing the notion of single-sex schools. In a Globe editorial, Give Single-Sex Schools a Try, the Boston Globe revealed for us one of the simplest of truths.

“Boston’s high dropout rate and its racial, gender, and ethnic achievement gaps are strong arguments for different education approaches that have shown promise elsewhere.”

While Massachusetts presently has laws on the books preventing such an option, the Globe goes on to state that the Legislature should repeal those laws. In doing so the Globe editorial staff recognizes the key fundamental, such schools should be available to children if those schools could help certain students learn better.

Like charter schools and career academies, single-sex schools or single-sex classes represent educational options for students. No one concept is a panacea or silver bullet for our educational ills.

But in a day and age when all data points to the fact students would do better with basic forms of school choice, single-sex options represent one more potential path for educational officials to consider.

Flickr photo courtesy of Danbri.

The Digital Youth Project has released the results of an extensive study that offers a very thorough and revealing look at what our youngsters are doing online. Featuring four principal investigators, Peter Lyman, Mizuko (Mimi) Ito, Michael Carter, and Barrie Thorne, the study not only creates some useful category descriptors that will help any adult analyze online behaviors, it takes an in-depth look at the implications these behaviors have for parents as well as those who work in education.

First dividing online behavior into two basic arenas, “peer-driven” and “interest-driven,” the researchers go on to create three sub categories that help define specific behaviors. They range from “hanging out” (socializing) to “messing around” (tinkering, perhaps to the level of becoming a local technology or media expert) to “geeking out” (experiencing internet-inspired inquisitiveness).

Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing offers a superb snapshot of the key findings. The report “conclusions are sane, compassionate, and compelling,” notes Doctorow, “in a nutshell, the ‘serious’ stuff we all hope kids will do online (researching papers and so on) are only possible within a framework of ‘hanging out, messing around and geeking out’.”

He also goes on to summarize the most important point for parents and educators when it comes to the issue of time online. “That is to say, all the ‘time-wasting’ social stuff kids do online are key to their explorations and education online.”

For teachers, the section on geeking out is a must read though we wish that the Youth Project might have selected a different phrase to describe teen online behaviors related to learning. There is absolutely no similarity to the use of the term in the Youth Project report matching the traditional definition that is used in the urban setting.

Some Great Stories
Within the report there are many stories that parents and educators will want to hear. There is the tale of Zelan, a 16-year-old youth driven by economic necessity, tinkering and fixing a neighbor’s broken PlayStation 2 so as to have better access to games. Then there is the story of Mac Man, a 17-year-old boy, who after learning that some teachers were about to throw away their old computers took them off their hands. Mac Man not only fixed them, he started a computer club with the throwaway items.

And though we might cringe if it happened to be our child, we can at least chuckle at the story of Toni, a 25-year-old who emigrated from the Dominican Republic as a teen. Even though he was entirely dependent on libraries and schools for his computer access through high school, the young man “set up a small business selling Playboy pictures that he printed from library computers to his classmates.”

While such entrepreneurial tales represent a very small segment of the youth studied, they nonetheless articulate the concrete examples of the step from simply “hanging out” online to that of “messing around.” What makes these stories all the more compelling is the fact that most transcend socioeconomic barriers.

The report notes, “These are not privileged youth who are growing up in the Silicon Valley households of start-up capitalists. Instead, they are working-class kids who embody the street smarts of how to hustle for money” and were “able to translate their interest in tinkering and messing around into financial ventures that gave them a taste of what it might be like to pursue their own self-directed careers.”

Geeking Out
As we noted earlier, educators would do well to spend some time with the section on “geeking out.” The report describes the behavior as “the ability to engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous, and interest-driven way.”

The concept is extremely important to kids that have access to the latest technology and a high-speed Internet conenction. In essence, the Internet can provide “access to an immense amount of information related to the particular interests” of a youngster. The intense commitment to or engagement with media or technology demands participation in “communities that traffic in these forms of expertise.” The report notes a “mode of learning that is peer-driven, but focused on gaining deep knowledge and expertise in specific areas of interest.”

Therefore, for our youth to geek out, they must not only have ongoing access to digital media, they must have a form of social network to help them facilitate their technology use. That network can come from family and friends but it can also come from other peers in on- and offline networking spaces. Therefore, geeking out “requires the time, space, and resources to experiment and follow interests in a self-directed way.”

In addition, the report notes that such behavior requires “access to specialized communities of expertise. Contrary to popular images of the socially isolated geek, almost all geeking out practices we observed are highly social and engaged, although not necessarily expressed as friendship-driven social practices.”

Impact on Education
It is interesting to note the specific learning properties that come as a result of interest-based communities. For the folks at Digital Youth, “Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access ‘serious’ online information and culture; it also means the ability to participate in social and recreational activities online.”

As a means to that end, public institutions can be important sites for enabling participation in these activities and enhancing their scope. Accordingly, educators should take careful note of the report suggestions.

“Social and recreational online activities are jumping-off points for experimenting with digital media creation and self-expression. Rather than seeing socializing and play as hostile to learning, educational programs could be positioned to step in and support moments when youth are motivated to move from friendship-driven to more interest-driven forms of new media use. This requires a cultural shift and a certain openness to experimentation and social exploration that is generally not characteristic of educational institutions.”

As but another aspect of the entire process, “fluent and expert use of new media requires more than simple, task-specific access to technology.” Therefore, the open-ended nature of the practice of geeking out, though extremely challenging for schools to implement, more accurately reflects the real world where it is extremely difficult to quantify and parcel up learning into distinct packages.

Another critical component is the feedback loop and how it changes from the traditional school format.

“Unlike what young people experience in school, where they are graded by a teacher in a position of authority, feedback in interest-driven groups is from peers and audiences who have a personal interest in their work and opinions. Among fellow creators and community members, the context is one of peer-based reciprocity, where participants can gain status and reputation but do not hold evaluative authority over one another.”

In these settings our youth are engaging in the use of specialized ‘elite’ vocabularies from either the gaming or social networking world. For example, in the online profile arena there is an “important literacy skill on both the friendship- and interest-driven sides” that can ultimately mobilize a genre of “popularity and coolness” as well as a certain level of geek credibility

In the gaming world where both teens and adults can establish their identity, there is the category defined by elite gamer status. In each of these arenas, “the focus of learning and engagement is not defined by institutional accountabilities but rather emerges from kids’ interests and everyday social communication.”

Adults could “still have an important role to play” but in such a setting “it is not a conventionally authoritative one. Unlike instructors in formal educational settings, however, these adults are passionate hobbyists and creators, and youth see them as experienced peers, not as people who have authority over them.”

In Summary
The report notes the similarities between community norms and what educators might call “learning goals” but it clearly denotes a new position for the adult who serves as an educator. Simply stated, schools are not known for allowing “plenty of unstructured time for kids to tinker and explore without being dominated by direct instruction.”

Instead of classroom teachers, there would be lab teachers or leaders who would have a different responsibility, one that does not focus on assessing kids’ for competence. Instead, these adults would be “co-conspirators” practicing a “pedagogy of collegiality.”

The report takes the thought one step further to produce a whole new possible vision for public education, one that is full of incredible possibilities.

“Rather than thinking of public education as a burden that schools must shoulder on their own, what would it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a more distributed network of people and institutions? And rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of education as a process of guiding kids’ participation in public life more generally, a public life that includes social, recreational, and civic engagement?”

“And finally, what would it mean to enlist help in this endeavor from an engaged and diverse set of publics that are broader than what we traditionally think of as educational and civic institutions? In addition to publics that are dominated by adult interests, these publics should include those that are relevant and accessible to kids now, where they can find role models, recognition, friends, and collaborators who are co-participants in the journey of growing up in a digital age.”

Flickr photos courtesy of Eskimoblood, jsc, and Eduardo Hulshof.

Poor college completion rates – suggested solutions even worse.

The results of a first-of-its-kind study recently graced the front pages of the Boston Globe. In Hub Grads Come Up Short in College, James Vaznis revealed an all too similar refrain regarding college completion rates.

Of the members of the graduating class from Boston high schools for the year 2000 who had gone on to higher education, nearly two-thirds of the class had not earned a college diploma seven years after they had begun collegiate studies.

The findings were particularly troublesome for a city that has touted its steadily increasing college enrollment rates over the last few years. In simplest terms, Boston does see more high school graduates enrolled in college than does the nation as a whole, but the college completion rate for those students is actually lower than the national average.

City of Prestigious Institutions
The news hit the city, often dubbed the ‘”Center of American Higher Education,” extremely hard. The Globe editorial staff penned a companion piece the same day entitled, Getting in Isn’t Enough.

Stating it was time “to take a long and deep look into the gulf between ‘getting in’ and ‘getting through college’,” the editorial revealed some incredibly dismal numbers.

Consider:

• students attending two-year community colleges had a 12 percent graduation rate.
• students attending four-year public state colleges had approximately a 33 percent graduation rate.
• students at four-year, private colleges managed the best rate at 56 percent.

Another revealing statistic, not evident in the editorial but on display in Vaznis’ article, referred to the completion status calculation more fully. It seems that not all of the 675 students who were deemed to have graduated had actually earned a bachelor’s degree. Also included in the completion rate were students who had earned either a certificate or an associate’s degree.

Thomas M. Menino, the Mayor of Boston, responded by announcing a major initiative. It set forth a goal of increasing the college graduation rate by 50 percent for this year’s high school seniors. In addition, the Mayor went on to suggest a goal of doubling the rate a second time for those students who are currently high school sophomores.

“We want to make sure all our kids in Boston get a good education and graduate from college,” Menino is quoted by the Globe. “It’s not just about getting into college but how to stay in college.”

As but another step that has been uttered time and again across America in recent years, officials indicated it was time the city school system did a better job of preparing its high school students for success after graduation. That was followed by the traditional hue and cry to raise K-12 education standards.

And last but not least, the traditional basis for pushing all students towards earning a bachelor’s degree was postured once again.

“A graduate of a four-year college will make almost $1 million more than a high school graduate over a lifetime,” Neil Sullivan, executive director of the Boston Private Industry Council, told the Globe. “We need to help students every step of the way earn the prize: a college degree.”

The Wrong Focus
The state of public education has focused on the K-12 system in recent years. During that time frame, higher education has earned a free pass. In fact, the general consensus from most folks is that America’s colleges and universities represent the best of the educational system in our country.

However, Mark Schneider, the vice president for new educational initiatives at the American Institutes for Research, offers a very contrasting viewpoint. In The Costs of Failure Factories in American Higher Education, Schneider asks, “If there is virtually universal agreement that American high schools are failing, how do our colleges and universities measure up against such a low benchmark?”

Turns out not very well.

It can be difficult comparing data but Schneider does his best to compare apples to apples. However, he does note one specific advantage for higher education: colleges generally use a six year window as the norm for completing the four years of study while high school calculations are based on a four year timeframe.

“The median high school graduation rate, for example, is 77 percent,” writes Schneider, “but the median post-secondary graduation rate is more than twenty-five points lower. While American high schools graduate about three-fourths of their students in four years, American colleges graduate only about half of their students in six.”

Schneider indicates that there are also significant differences by type of institution. But the key notion is a simple one: “The low high school graduation rates that have long been decried as a failure of America’s education system are mirrored in even lower college graduation rates.”

In addition, the long-standing differences in high school graduation rates based on race and ethnicity have led to expressions such as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” But while public education K-12 is often labeled in such a manner, it must be duly noted that colleges and universities also see large gaps in post-secondary completion rates when comparing whites to blacks and Hispanics.

College Does Not Work for Many Students
One positive is that the poor completion rates are finally catching people’s attention. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently launched a new initiative that seeks to sort through the poor completion rates of college bound students, particularly those who have chosen the community college route.

In the Globe article, there is at least some acknowledgment of the “enormous barriers facing urban high school graduates.” Vaznis points out that many of the individuals being discussed within the study are the very first members of their respective families to actually attend college.

The writer notes further that the study did not specifically address reasons for the low graduation rates. But he speculates, quite soundly, that “these students often have financial problems, some are raising children, and others are held back by a need to retake high school courses in college because they lack basic skills.”

In regards to the issue of college preparedness, a short time ago we discussed the words of Marty Nemko, a man dubbed the “The Ralph Nader of Education.” At that time we offered what Nemko calls his ‘killer statistic.’

“For those aspiring college students who finished in the bottom 40 percent of their high school classes, but went on to attempt to secure a four-year degree right out of high school, roughly two-thirds had studied for the better part of eight and a half years without obtaining a diploma.”

In simplest terms, those students who lack the ability to handle the rigor associated with college are unsuccessful when they give college a try.

Nemko adds that “only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of 2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the core subjects of English, math, reading, and science.”

Yet four-year colleges admit and accept funds “from hundreds of thousands of such students each year.” However, according to the data we have just reviewed, those same schools fail to see these students through the process of completing their degree program.

Nemko pulls no punches with his summary assessments.

“Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center.

“As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students. At many colleges, only a small percentage of the typical student’s classroom hours will have been spent with fewer than 30 students taught by a professor.”

And as for the quality of instruction, well:

“The more prestigious the institution, the more likely that faculty members are hired and promoted much more for their research than for their teaching. Professors who bring in big research dollars are almost always rewarded more highly than a fine teacher who doesn’t bring in the research bucks.”

Square Pegs, Round Holes
Ultimately we have the worst of all potential situations: students who do not have the academic ability to handle the level of rigor that college must demand combined with ill-equipped institutions of higher education that seem incapable of helping these students succeed.

That issue is then exacerbated by education officials who continue to insist that all we must do is simply raise standards further and that by doing so, somehow the square peg, round hole malady facing us will disappear.

Unfortunately, those same officials also insist that the only path to success in life is by way of a college education. It is the same nonsense that brought forth the No Child Left Behind Act and the oxymoron, proficiency for all.

The notion that college is for everyone really just pushes NCLB to the K-16 arena. It is the fundamental belief that every child regardless of innate ability must be placed on a ‘bachelor’s degree or bust’ path, followed by the assumption that every student is capable of such academic rigor.

This is a false and damaging assumption. A bachelor’s degree for every student is no more viable than setting forth a goal of a masters or a PhD for every student. Yet, would we ever in our right minds suggest that such a standard is possible?

It is time that those in charge came to their senses and acknowledged that other approaches to learning are possible. It is time to recognize that hands on vocational schooling and working apprenticeships can be just as viable for helping students learn as the traditional academic teaching tools of reading and writing.

If only our educational experts could grasp that our country needs skilled workers as well as college graduates they might embark on a different path, one that creates multiple educational opportunities for our youngsters based on a goal of helping all students succeed.

What we do not need is more high school or college drop outs. But instead of examining the real issue, a one size fits all approach to education, we opt to tinker with standards and expectations, then set goals that are beyond the reach of many students.

Unless we take a look at providing forms of education that utilize methods of instruction that do not rely on teaching through reading and writing, then Mayor Menino’s goals, however worthy, will simply result in a familiar refrain.

And another summary study with an all-too similar title, Grads Come Up Short in College.

Flickr photos courtesy of Cliff1066 and Benjamin Lyons.

In June we took a brief look at Newsweek’s annual list of the 100 top performing high schools in the nation. One of the more interesting aspects of the list was the number of charter schools named by the magazine.

The select group of schools included 10 charter schools, a number deemed statistically relevant. Whereas 10% of the Newsweek top performers were charter schools, only 3% of all public schools nationwide fall within that category. In essence, the ratio of charter high performers was triple that of traditional public high schools.

At the time we cautioned readers not to get too carried away, particularly since the Newsweek list of high schools was (and is) constructed utilizing a single calculation (the ratio of the number of college-level exams taken by students divided by the number of graduating seniors). The Newsweek top performers all had an index of at least 1.000.

In addition, our look at the first three charter schools on the list, BASIS Charter in Tucson (the number one high school in America by Newsweek), Preuss Charter in San Diego (4th overall), and MATCH Charter in Boston (25th overall), all gave us pause before jumping on the charter bandwagon.

But earlier this summer, we had a chance to visit Raleigh Charter School in Raleigh, North Carolina, the 27th school on the Newsweek list. We met with Principal Tom Humble and completed a site visit.

We came away extremely impressed with Mr. Humble who undertook the creation of a school from scratch as well as the institution itself. The school appears to be everything a community could hope for, small, intimate, innovative, and most importantly, high-performing.

Raleigh Charter
Raleigh Charter High School was created by an eclectic mix of individuals that included business professionals, experienced educators, and college professors. A critical component for the school’s creation centered upon the desire of 8th grade parents with children at The Magellan Charter School to continue the “secure, nurturing, academically enriched education” they felt their children were receiving at Magellan.

Principal Humble credited both Pamela Blizzard, a parent and business person, and Mike Jordan, the principal at Magellan at the time, for bringing about the concept. “Pamela wrote a model application,” stated Humble. “She dreamed up the idea and put it out there.

“And Mike was truly instrumental – he has been with us, on the board, since the school’s inception,” added Humble. “He was invaluable in many ways: he had the experience to be a mentor to me and he had the charter-school experience to offer wise and calming advice during this ‘exciting’ period.”

At the same time, the founders sought to expand the educational opportunity to include more Raleigh-area students than just those coming from Magellan. The key founding principles for the new high school included:

• creating a small community of learners to allow teachers to focus on teaching,
• active, involved parents that supported the teaching staff and communicated to their children the importance of education,
• and hands-on, experiential learning.

As for a mission, Raleigh Charter was designed to challenge “college-bound students in a creative and supportive atmosphere to become knowledgeable, thoughtful, contributing citizens.” In addition, the school would seek to “graduate citizens of the world by creating an interconnected learning environment that combines a demanding college-preparatory education with a curriculum that teaches and models citizenship skills.”

The school is located in Historic Pilot Mill, a site listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Located adjacent to Peace College, two of the mill buildings were renovated for the school: the 1910 building that houses the school’s administrative offices and classrooms for subjects including biology, math, English, social studies, languages, art, music and drama, and the adjacent 1894 Weaving building that features the chemistry, computer, foreign language and physics labs.

Getting the Job Done
Students at Raleigh Charter have certainly distinguished themselves academically. Numerous forms of recognition have been bestowed upon the school and the student body.

Superb student performances on the North Carolina-mandated End-of-Course tests have earned the RCHS Honor School of Excellence status in 2005. 2006 and 2007. Prior to those distinguished honors, RCHS was named a School of Distinction in 2000 and a School of Excellence for 2001 through 2004.

In addition to being selected 27th in the most recent Newsweek top 100 list, the school was ranked ninth in the 2005 by Newsweek and 18th in 2007. In 2006, the school’s Quiz Bowl team won the PACE National Championship, and in both 2005 and 2006 the school ranked number one in the world on the AP Environmental Science examinations.

However, the many student successes were not at all part of the conversation with Principal Humble. “I do not brag about our school’s successes in national and state testing.

“When students have identified themselves as college preparatory, they ought to do well on these tests and examinations,” he states. “We are not competing with other high schools; we are competing with our school.”

Beyond the student performances, RCHS is setting a very high standard for other schools, charter and traditional public alike. Among the many unique, innovative educational aspects include Flex Day scheduling and Citizenship Days. These concepts reflect the belief that students “learn more when they are active, social, and creative learners.” In addition the school offers some truly unique curricula featuring courses in Constitutional Law, Modern African Seminar, Modern Latin American Seminar, and Systems Theory.

Humble puts the innovation in simple terms.

“We are an education lab. We are willing to try new things and make good ideas grow. And we want our teachers to develop programs that will help them grow. We do not want a mundane setting.”

Because of its high success rate and innovative practices, Raleigh Charter’ was selected by DPI consultants to participate in a program focusing on high-school reinvention. RCHS was one of ten high schools in North Carolina and just seventy-five schools to be selected.

Admission Process
As is mandated by charter school legislation, RCHS is a public high school serving students from North Carolina. The sole program being offered at the school is the college and university preparatory track so students must meet a basic academic standard in mathematics (a student must be prepared for Algebra I or higher level math course as they enter ninth grade).

There is also an application process but there are no other thresholds mandated and students actually are admitted through a public lottery. That said, the academic rigor is strong and many courses at RCHS are offered only at the honors (advanced) level.

Though the lottery process provides the bulk of the student body, the school does give preference to qualified siblings of current students and qualified children of the principal, teachers, and teacher assistants for admission. Though acceptances occur by chance, a goal of “graduating citizens of the world” has the school committed to increasing the diversity of both the student body and faculty. With a lottery process, that diversity can come only by creating a diverse applicant pool, something the school works very hard to create. Of course, once a minority student is selected during the lottery, his or her siblings then have priority options, helping to create greater diversity.

What the Theorists Had in Mind
Without a doubt, Raleigh Charter is precisely the type of school entity charter school proponents have in mind when they tout the concept. With just over 500 students and a committed, innovative teaching staff, RCHS offers children an exceptional educational opportunity and does so with taxpayer dollars. The quality setting and curricula are reminiscent of an elite private school yet the student body consists of randomly selected applicants and includes students who are in need of special education services.

Most importantly, RCHS students excel academically even as their unique programming focuses on citizenship and community involvement. While the top three charter schools on this year’s Newsweek list gave us pause for one reason or another, Raleigh Charter demonstrates why the charter school movement has such strong backing.

It is a concept that can and should be replicated in all 50 states.

Editor’s Note: For more on Raleigh Charter, see our interview with principal Tom Humble.

One of the more consistent, ongoing suggestions for improving America’s educational system centers upon the creation of greater competition amongst public schools. The reason for the steady drumbeat centers upon a belief that a change to the free market system would be one of the best methods for creating better educational opportunities for children.

In direct response to the push for greater competition, forty states across America have now initiated legislation to allow the construction of new public schools called charter schools. Minnesota was the first state to pass laws regarding charter schools, doing so in 1991.

The concept is definitely catching on. Today, according to PublicCharters.org, there are 4,303 charter schools across our country educating more than 1.2 million children. The state of California, the second to enact such legislation, has more than 600 such schools educating about one-fifth of the nation’s charter school students.

While the number of schools continues to grow, large numbers of Americans, many even within the field of education, simply do not know what a charter school really consists of or how this new school concept differs from traditional public schools. Today at OpenEducation.net, we provide our readers the fundamentals of the charter school concept.

Creating a Charter School
The basic premise behind a charter school is quite simple. A group of people interested in creating a new public school petitions their local educational authority to construct another educational opportunity, in essence a new school. And by construct, we are talking about both the literal and figurative meanings of the word.

According to USCharterSchools.org, “People establish charter schools for a variety of reasons.” However, research indicates that school founders, those creating a charter school, most generally fall into three groups: grassroots organizations of parents, teachers and community members with a common vision of education; entrepreneurs who see the business potential in creating a school; or existing schools looking to reconstitute by converting to charter status. As for a more specific rational, a national study of charter schools has tabulated the top three reasons that founders create a charter school as follows: to realize a specific educational vision; to gain greater autonomy; or to serve a special population.

Once interested in forming a new school entity, the petitioning group sets up a charter with either a local school board or the state (depending on the legislation that has been enacted in that state). The group must agree to educate the students in their school to a mutually agreed upon standard though again that standard can be adjusted according to the school’s charter and mission. Of course, the petitioning group must meet the fundamental expectations of the respective charter legislation in that state in regards to the proposed mission and relevant standards selected.

Otherwise, charter schools in those states where legislation has been created are free of many other state rules and regulations. At the same time, the school must follow the regulations of the self-created charter and the founding group is responsible for setting up oversight to ensure expectations are met.

Critical to the charter school concept, the founding group must agree that charter renewal will be granted only if the school proves to its sanctioning board that the school is being successful. The length of time for which charters are granted varies, but most are granted for 3-5 years.

Once a founding group creates an approved charter to open a school, the funding mechanism for the new entity is the same as any public school, taxpayer dollars.

Competition Is Created
The broader rationale of support for charter schools comes from the belief that the creation of new public schools will actually create a healthy competition for existing students. Critics point to the current structure, in essence a basic monopoly, as one of the primary reasons that schools are in need of improvement. The feeling is that the traditional public school structure offers virtually no impetus for poor-performing schools to improve.

In addition, many educational and non-educational professionals insist that governmental regulations stifle the learning environment. By their very nature, charter schools are free to experiment with educational practices and curricula. For charter schools, creativity and innovation are not simply buzzwords: these concepts are expected to be the cornerstones of such entities.

Ultimately, when a charter school has been created, parents and even teachers have a choice, to choose the traditional public school or a charter school option. The choice could be based upon higher than average academic standards at one school or because of smaller than typical class sizes at another. The choice could be based upon the innovative approaches being implemented at one school or because the educational philosophy of another school is more in line with the philosophy of the parent or teacher.

Whatever the case, the charter movement is about creating options for students and school choice for parents. To complete the competition model, charter schools that fail to deliver a viable product should in theory suffer from a lack of students and go out of business very quickly. By the same token, strong charter schools could put similar pressures on traditional public schools to perform better or they would lose students and the funding associated with them.

Possible School Options
With the formulation of additional school options, communities can create schools that focus on the arts, either visual or performing, or music, or math and science. Critical to the charter concept, because a school is free to focus in a specific area, these new entities can offer in depth courses according to that respective focus and forgo offering courses that are less meaningful to those individual students.

Instead of a school trying to serve as the ‘be-all and end-all’ for the entire student population in a community, charter schools are free to focus on just one type of program if they so desire. Therefore, one school can offer a college preparatory focus for one group of students while a second school could offer technical offerings for another segment of the population.

All too often, trying to offer both options in a single school actually reduces class offerings for students overall. By creating two separate entities, technical offerings can be expanded at a vocational charter school while more advanced academic courses can be added at a school that focuses on a college preparatory program. In either case, students can truly focus on coursework that fits their desired career path instead of having to find other classes within the traditional high school curriculum that often serve only to fulfill credit requirements.

Lastly, charter school legislation has served to reduce the number of large urban schools. This step has been one of the biggest pluses of the movement, allowing for the formation of smaller charter schools within bigger urban districts. This has led to smaller class sizes and more individualized instruction, two critical components for students.

Editor’s Note: Next, a look at Raleigh Charter High School, a role model for the charter movement.

Flickr photo courtesy of egnowit.

Last July we featured the work of researchers funded by the Teachers College Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University. Expressing extreme criticism of the proficiency standard of the No Child Left Behind Act, Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder crafted an extremely provocative title to their study, “Proficiency for All Is an Oxymoron.”

While the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) sets forth the standard that all students must be proficient by the year 2014, the Columbia Teacher College researchers insist that proficiency is not attainable by all. The researchers contended that not even 100% of middle-class students could reach a truly rigorous standard, not by 2014, not ever.

Yet, NCLB continues to be a driving force in educational reform and the push for higher standards is now wrecking havoc with public schools all across America.

Massachusetts Students High Performers
To see the problems created by a noteworthy goal that is simply not attainable, we turn to Massachusetts where considerable debate is emerging regarding the state’s testing system and the awarding of diplomas to students.

First, there appear to be many very positive academic strides being made across the state. Current data has Massachusetts students achieving at some of the highest levels in the country.

As but one example, the results of the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in Mathematics for Massachusetts students at the eighth grade level reveal an average scale score of 298. The score was higher than the average of the entire nation’s public schools (280) and for the math exam, the Massachusetts results exceeded those of all of the other 51 jurisdictions tested.

In addition, with all NAEP results, Massachusetts is also showing steady growth, with scores increasing steadily over the past decade.

In yet another arena, college bound seniors, Massachusetts ranks number one in ACT (originally the American College Tests) results with an average score of 23.5. However, only 15% of Massachusetts students currently take the ACT tests. Many more take the SAT (originally the Scholastic Aptitude Test) Reasoning Test where Massachusetts student averages totaled 1546 for the three tests, exceeding the national average by 35 points.

Further research yields similar results – Massachusetts students represent some of the highest achieving students in America. The state achieves these results despite being home to the pitfalls associated with a large urban center such as Boston.

Applying the NCLB Criteria
Yet, when the standards and criteria specified under NCLB are used the state appears to be a dismal failure. Current state Department of Education data indicates that one out of every two public schools in Massachusetts is now in the “needs improvement” category. Futhermore, a total of 277 public schools fit the performance criteria that specifies formal “restructuring” because of ongoing failures to meet NCLB test standards.

Adding to the complexity of the problem is the fact that Massachusetts ties a high school diploma to the results of their state standardized tests, the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System). Students who complete high school and attain the necessary credits to earn a high school diploma must also pass the MCAS to receive that coveted piece of parchment.

In a recent article questioning the MCAS, Scott W. Lang, the mayor of New Bedford, notes that “since the MCAS graduation requirement has been in place, 16,841 public school students have completed all state-approved local graduation requirements but have been denied a high school diploma because they did not pass the test.” Lang also notes that the number of students who have been denied a diploma will top 20,000 when the class of 2008 graduates this spring.

While these numbers are staggering (these are students who meet all high school requirements and do not include those who drop out along the way), there is now a move in Massachusetts to raise the “proficiency” standards further. According to the Lang article, state officials want to move the proficiency level another 20 points for 2014.

Lang goes on to note that those students lacking a high school diploma are destined for a difficult road in the world of work and family life beyond high school.

Confusion Abounds
As one of the highest performing states deals with large numbers of so-called ‘failing schools,’ it is easy to understand why education is in for a difficult road over the next several years. That road will be most challenging at the public school level where teachers are asked to educate all students, including children from impoverished backgrounds and those with special needs, to levels that even middle class students have been unable to attain.

Here we turn back to the researchers employed by Columbia who noted that the goal of higher standards is a laudable one and the work being done to close the achievement gap among subgroups admirable. While those goals are worthy, those same researchers call the quest of “proficiency for all” untenable.

“Not only is it logically impossible to have ‘proficiency for all’ at a challenging level,” state the researchers, not even “the highest-performing countries come close to meeting the No Child Left Behind Act’s standard of proficiency for all.”

Those words help us understand the complex path that is currently unfolding in Massachusetts. Somewhere along the line wiser heads need to begin to see the No Child Left Behind Act for what it is, a set of unrealistic goals, even if noble in spirit.

Because as one can see with the developments in Massachusetts, a quest for “proficiency for all” is about to further increase America’s already exorbitant number of youngsters who lack a high school diploma.

Flickr photos courtesy of SherSteve and Wesley Fryer.

It seems that almost every week a new and exciting piece of “brain research” is released. The most recent, summarized at Science Daily, reveals an amazing distinction in the brain development of younger children versus those youngsters on the verge of adolescence.

Researchers, utilizing the latest in Magnetic Resonance Imaging technology, examined which parts of the brain were activated as children received feedback regarding their performance on a specific task. The differences in brain response for 8- and 9-year-olds to that of 11- and 12-year-olds was nothing short of astonishing.

Cognitive Control
To activate the cerebral cortex, the area of the brain responsible for cognitive control, researchers gave children a computer task that asked them to determine specific rules. During the process, the children were provided two types of feedback, a tick for a correct answer and a cross for a wrong answer.

When the younger group of children, ages 8 to 9, received positive feedback, MRI technology revealed a strong activation of the cerebral cortex. In contrast, when these children received negative feedback that same cognitive control aspect of the brain barely registered any activity.

However, for 11 to 12-year-olds, positive feedback did little to activate the cognitive control areas. Instead, for the second age group, it was the negative feedback that caused strong activation of the control areas.

The experiment was replicated with 18 to 25-year-olds and the results for the young adult age group were very similar to those for the 11- and 12-year-olds.

The overall findings were summarized in Science Daily thus: “Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback (‘Well done!’), whereas negative feedback (‘Got it wrong this time’) scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring.”

Ultimately, it appears that 8-year-olds are simply not able to process negative feedback very well while 12-year-olds can actually use negative feedback in a way that helps them learn from their mistakes. The young adult group was able to do the same, with the findings indicating that the older age group could learn from their mistakes more efficiently than the pre-adolescent group.

The research, the work of developmental psychologist Dr. Eveline Crone and her colleagues from the Leiden Brain and Development Lab, represents the first attempt to look at children of different ages. In the past, distinctions in brain study have generally been done by comparing children to adults.

The research also focused on a different area of the brain than the basal ganglia, a region just outside the cerebral cortex. That region also responds strongly when a subject is exposed to positive feedback. The activity in that area of the brain remains unchanged as we age; it is extremely active in all age groups, for adults as well as children, and for both 8-year-olds and 12-year-olds.

Surprising Outcome
The results came as a major surprise to Crone who acknowledged, “We had expected that the brains of 8-year-olds would function in exactly the same way as the brains of 12-year-olds, but maybe not quite so well.”

The results of course have enormous potential impact on teaching and learning. Crone notes further, “Children learn the whole time, so this new knowledge can have major consequences for people wanting to teach children: how can you best relay instructions to 8- and 12-year-olds?”

Crone went on to elaborate further, stating that, “You start to think less in terms of ‘good’ and ‘not so good’. Children of eight may well be able to learn extremely efficiently, only they do it in a different way.”

The results also reiterate some long-standing knowledge from the field of child development. Experts in that field have long postulated that young children respond much better to reward than they do to punishment.

Crone acknowledges that from a developmental standpoint that makes perfect sense. “Learning from mistakes is more complex than carrying on in the same way as before. You have to ask yourself what precisely went wrong and how it was possible.”

Why Does the Difference Exist?
While there is now conclusive evidence that there is a difference with how 8- and 12-year-olds process feedback information, there is no current research that yet can explain why there is such a difference. Immediate speculation has one thinking it could just be that time is needed for the brain to develop more fully.

However, it may also be a result of experience, i.e., the need for children to have more life lessons before such feedback provides meaningful information. In fact, Crone suggests that it “is probably a combination of the brain maturing and experience.”

In the meantime, many other questions emerge including what is the ideal age for such brain activity? For example, would it be better if children developed their ability to learn from mistakes at an earlier age? At the same time, what specific experiences would be helpful to such development and at what corresponding ages should those experiences occur?

Could Risk-Averse Critics Find Some Ammunition
Yet another thought also comes to mind based on a post we did a few months back regarding our current risk-adverse culture for children. In our post, Risk Taking, Part of Growing Up, Part of the Learning Process, we noted that the safety zone for children is becoming ever smaller. The current aversion to risk-taking in our children has many experts concerned that we are cutting our children off from a number of very valuable learning opportunities, especially in regards to learning how to interact with the world around them.

One very interesting step would be to replicate the study in future years to see if over time the age at which children learn from mistakes tends to increase. Given our propensity to reduce risk and subsequently limit the experiences of children, it is entirely possible the current age at which learning from mistakes is the norm could be pushed into the teen years.

It represented one of the most shameful of stories. Yet as is always the case with shameful stories, it soon made its way across America.

It seems an 11-year-old boy in Colorado had been suspended from school for failing to remove a t-shirt that school officials had deemed a disruption to the school’s learning environment. According to MyFOXColorado.com, on a day that students had been asked to show their patriotism by wearing red, white and blue, Dax Dalton wore a home-made shirt that read, “Obama is a terrorist’s best friend.”

The fifth grade boy was asked to either change his shirt or turn it inside out. At some point the asking became an ultimatum.

If the shirt were not turned inside out or removed, the school would have to suspend young Dax. The youngster chose suspension.

Father Insists He Will Sue
The boy’s father told the Colorado Fox affiliate that he, dad, is a “proud conservative.” He also insisted that the school was making a mistake by suspending his son. Dann Dalton also had some strong words for the school district:

“It’s the public school system. Let’s be honest, it’s full of liberal loons.”

Mr. Dalton also went on to add, “I didn’t expect (my son) to get what he got, that was ridiculously uncalled for.” He also announced his intent to sue the school district for violation of his son’s first amendment rights.

At the same time, young Dax did acknowledge that he had been “encouraged” to wear the shirt by his father. In a separate Chicago SunTimes article, it was noted that the t-shirt had been designed by dad as well. According to SunTimes.com, Mr. Dalton offered: “I’m full of all kinds of anti-Obama cliches.” He also acknowledged that he had created the message so that “he could easily capsulate it on a T-shirt.”

School District Actions
Given that the situation involved the discipline of a student, the school district was not at liberty to discuss the case in detail with the media. However, the district did acknowledge the incident and noted the suspension was for willful disobedience and defiance, not for the shirt’s political message.

The school, having the responsibility to ensure a proper learning environment for all children, took action based on the disruption of that environment because of the boy wearing the shirt. The school has a dress code that prohibits attire that will “cause or are likely to cause a material and substantial disruption to the educational process or school-related activities.”

According to reports, many children were confused and upset, and the shirt did lead to some very difficult moments at school. Of course, that is what one might expect given that the students were but fifth graders.

Adding to the unusual nature of the situation, again according to SunTimes.com, Dax’s older sister also wore an anti-Obama shirt. Seems that shirt did not disrupt her classes so school officials allowed her to wear her shirt throughout the day.

That shirt had the word Obama on it with a bar through the name and a pro McCain slogan on the back.

Day of Honor Lost Amidst the Turmoil
The students had been encouraged to wear the patriotic colors in honor of a Vietnam-era military veteran who won the Medal of Honor. Media reports noted that First Lieutenant Brian Thacker of the U.S. Army made a visit to the school on the day of the incident.

Yet, at a time set to honor a military veteran, all of the focus was on a overzealous father using his children to share his political opinions. Such behavior can only be categorized as shameful.

And that dishonorable behavior not only led to a young boy missing school, it likely left his classmates scratching their heads as well. Even as a potential teachable moment for Dax Dalton’s classmates, we are not sure that any fifth grader could fully grasp why someone calling himself a “proud conservative” would feel such a strong need to live vicariously through his own children.

Flickr photo courtesy of Nerboo.