Paul Thomas is a professor at Furman University in South Carolina. Before that, he was a public school teacher for 18 years. He is one of the most passionate and eloquent writers of our time on the subject of poverty and education.
In this blog, he mentions my transformation from conservative to whatever I am now, but more importantly he talks about how social media offers all of us a way to make our voices heard. Instead of getting our news exclusively from the talking heads on TV or the newspapers, whose ownership is increasingly concentrated among a very few powerful individuals and corporations, we can now use social media to defy the powerful. We can do under our own names, as Paul Thomas and I do–or under pseudonyms like EduShyster and Jersey Jazzman.
Whatever we call ourselves, we can use Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and other electronic formats to raise our voices, find allies, and make a difference. That represents a major change in the politics of our day. And it helps all of us organize to right injustice and even beat those with vast wealth.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gladwell would contend that you need more than just social media to get revolutions rolling though, and I tend to agree.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
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one expression is to “bring your feet” along with your voice… we ned more than the power to move across to the next school district… parents are being told they will vote with their feet with the voucher and I believe it is all a pack of lies
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Yes, parents (and everyone in this country) are being lied to by the corporate weasels. We are all being lied to by the deformers. It’s a propaganda battle for MOOLAH…capatalism at its worst.
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Diane I think it’s excellent that your blog has reached the level of popularity it deserves, and would invite you to look beyond the surface of social media into the many ways in which the Internet can strengthen local communities of teachers, students, parents and residents. Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are a great start, but there is much to discover in Project-Based Learning and Blended Learning which are made possible by the largest repository of information the world has ever known.
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Christopher,
Would you please explain what you mean by “project based learning” (and is that different from “Project-Based Learning”) and “blended learning” (and is that different from Blended Learning)?
And what is “. . . product innovation through Human-Centered Design and Design Thinking.”?
Thanks,
Duane
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Hey Duane, I’m not sure what you’re asking with respect to my capitalization and punctuation, but I would define both versions of each respective buzzword similarly.
As for the last string of buzzwords, I would define them as aspects of experience design which attempts to understand the problem from a human perspective and design solutions for the real world.
My background in experience design is what got me interested in project based learning and blended learning, as they are (from my perspective) the foundation of experience design.
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I didn’t know if you meant a proprietary name with the capitalization or a special meaning other than what the words themselves mean. I’m still not sure what Human Centered Design means nor what “design solutions for the real world” means. It seems to me that any human activity would come under “design solutions for the real world,” I struggle with the usage of “real world” as what other kind is there besides surreal, irreality or the usage of the subjunctive to describe what may or may not be. Is not any human experience “real”?
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The role of design over the last few years has been changing from an afterthought of what an object should look like to a strategic decision that occurs at the beginning of any process. Similar considerations take place at any level by looking at the value of an object or an organization to the person in the context in which they’re using it.
To keep this relevant to the topic at hand, Edutopia recently released a series of videos which showed the transformation of a math classroom into a project based learning center. The video paid special attention to the role of a designer in determining what kind of activities needed to be accommodated in the function of the room. In order to focus on the human factors, the designer brought all the experts into a room, including the children, and brainstormed a number of ideas in order to inform the design.
My experience with experience design has primarily been in the private sector and I am hoping to one day soon have this opportunity to contribute to my daughter’s classroom. If my business experience is any indicator, the public sector is undoubtedly suffering from the same assumption that they already know the needs of their constituents. However, I would argue this to be impossible as our needs are constantly changing in the real world.
Without real world inquires, all that businesses and educators have access to is their assumptions of the way things should work. This disconnect, call it surreal if you will, will inevitably cause problems for both sides of the equation as it doesn’t solve the problem so much as create additional confusion.
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Great article BUT it didn’t get specific about the way Facebook can be harnessed for greater transparency and populism with a little coordination. Twitter too.
Presently, elected officials, candidates, companies and public figures enjoy social media to distribute PR. But they are vulnerable to it’s open, public nature unlike a private website they control.
So when teachers, parents or taxpayers read about the latest policy to shortchange students and enrich corporations, they should follow up on some of these sites with helpful feedback. I’ve seen the pages of state legislators, Congress members and even governors get swarmed by civil comments that show strength in numbers.
We all know the social media boycott of Rush Limbaugh has been effective, so it just takes a little organization to really focus the voices of the many where it can do the most.
It’s essential to be polite, on topic and to cite evidence. But social media puts the people on the record like never before.
When a politician deletes civil comments, it only makes the story bigger (as shown by Rep. Nan Hayworth in NY before she lost her re-election). There are also some saying FB pages maintained on taxpayer time are technically official records.
So get to know your elected officials online and let your pals know when and where you’ve posted. It can get extremely awkward for rheeformers when they see how many people really oppose their policies and they know everyone else is seeing it too.
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Christopher:
blended learning is being marketed by corporations. They expect the decision on what to “buy” should be based on flashy marketing and 5 colored brochures (they borrow the marketing techniques from the medical industry overselling drugs.)
The starting point should be the Curriculum instead they start with the computer sales rep. The products are being sold for glamour, for “sexiness” , for bells and whistles. People criticize the textbook industry for changing the cover on the book and reissuing the “new ” edition but I think this is worse. Having the newest toys on the street is a prime motivator for a lot of administrators. Henry Levin did some of the cost-effectiveness studies along with Gene Glass explaining how to compare the technology practices as to value for the cost. I don’t see much research like this but I see a lot of sales “hype” when it comes to technology and that is what Bill Gates is pushing. One of the sites funded by Bill Gates in Massachusetts is built on the premise “I have computer space I have to sell” and I have watched them carefully since 1992 (for anyone who wants my opinion I am willing to share it). Are they harmless? I have not been able to reach that conclusion (e.g., read Plutocrats book that describes Gates). Recently we had our graduate students review the products /marketing /sales literature for different reading products…. but these are graduate students who are not in the administrator’s seat where a person has authority to commit the money. I have seen superintendents struggle when the decision came to buying microscopes for the high school OR reading texts for grade 1; we are in that kind of a financial crisis in schools and yet some administrator (or the mayor) comes up with a huge contract for a technology firm to purchase something just because s/he wants it because it is flashy or will look like they are doing something. When it comes to the math curriculum, it is not exactly the same discussion but it is too much to put here. We have had the same math wars and the reading wars for decades. I would like to go into that discussion further if anyone has the time. jeanhaverhill@aol.com
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Jean, blended learning IS being exploited by for-profit corporations, but so is book-and-pencil learning, perhaps even worse.
We are starting to see what Jeb Bush is looking to do in the South, using technology to replace teachers and automate schools, bust unions, etc. But I completed a program to get a state cert in building online courses, so I saw another side.
I was trained by a decades-long evangelist for blended/digital learning who runs the tech dept. at NYIT. He shows teachers how to do it right, how it’s every bit as rigorous as classroom teaching but adds the advantages of self-directed learning and platform independence, the potential for wider, deeper research and collaboration.
Done right, it doesn’t cannibalize teaching jobs and brings schools at last into the present where businesses (and social movements) soar thanks to technology. I think it will also help democratize schools as parents and full communities get on board and realized how connected and involved and responsive they can be in real time.
The free, open source nature of the tools strike right at the heart of for-profit third parties seeking to exploit education funding. And in a more extreme example, courses like MOOCs show that there need not be authoritarian “gatekeepers” to knowledge.
I’m going to be offering my first online course in the summer to keep learning going year round, and I think good teachers should adapt because heaven knows the kids are all completely immersed in it already for any number of time-wasting, frivolous activities. Oh, and in case you haven’t heard states are now requiring district and schools to procure computers for every child – so they can switch the standardized tests to the new online format: http://www.parcconline.org/parcc-releases-tool-prepare-schools-and-districts-rigorous-21st-century-assessments
So I do not fear technology in learning, I fear profiteering, arbitrary meaningless testing and union busting. I hope digital communications will enable stakeholders to democratize the important debates.
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“. . . I think it will also help democratize schools as parents and full communities get on board. . . ”
Especially democratizing for those who have to worry about where the next meal is coming from and who cannot afford all the “wonderful” technology, eh!!
“So I do not fear technology in learning. . . ” Nor I, however, I do fear the unintended negative consequences of those who have the financial and motivational capabilities being handed more of a “slice of the pie” of the common good than those without said capabilities.
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My concern about taking tests online is the track record of the computers in my school district. The system is often down, and even when working the computer often freezes. There are also machines which are “broken” and it can take days for the tech team to come and fix them. Also, it is impractical for every student to have access to a computer at the same time. Maybe there are two labs with 60 computers total, plus one or two in each classroom. Not enough for the entire school.
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Jean,
Spot on!
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The Administration and their followers(benefactors) need to stop telling(dictating) the experts(teachers and administrators with legitimate degrees and credentials) what works and start to become students and find out from the Educational Experts who actually have done research, have real classroom experience, and have legitimate degrees and credentials what may work in certain circumstances and what will almost never work. They need to understand that children come from various cultures, backgrounds, life experiences, socioeconomic levels, and many other factors that have an impact on how they learn and how teachers need to adjust their teaching stratigies for each child. But, they instead attack those who do because they are behaving like the spoiled child who does not get his way. They blame others such as: the Schools Of Education are all failing, public teachers belonging to unions are failing, the teachers union is protecting those failing teachers and so on. They need to do some homework, maybe for the first time. So hopefully, they will talk to one of those Educational Experts from one of those countries out-scoring us in math. However, this would cause them to see their mistakes and people like them never admit makings mistakes. I am willing to help them find such an Expert. All they have to do is read the section below.
Why do we say we need to compete globally, but we do not want to learn from those countries supposedly outperforming us? Please read the following and remember, Finland is one of the top scoring countries in math year after year. Let us read and learn.
Finland’s education expert Pasi Sahlberg
Finland’s Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and the author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?” In this piece he writes about whether the emphasis that American school reformers put on “teacher effectiveness” is really the best approach to improving student achievement.
He is director general of Finland’s Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation and has served the Finnish government in various positions and worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. He has also been an adviser for numerous governments internationally about education policies and reforms, and is an adjunct professor of education at the University of Helsinki and University of Oulu. He can be reached at pasi.sahlberg@cimo.fi.
By Pasi Sahlberg
Many governments are under political and economic pressure to turn around their school systems for higher rankings in the international league tables. Education reforms often promise quick fixes within one political term. Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland are commonly used models for the nations that hope to improve teaching and learning in their schools. In search of a silver bullet, reformers now turn their eyes on teachers, believing that if only they could attract “the best and the brightest” into the teaching profession, the quality of education would improve.
“Teacher effectiveness” is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. This concept hence applies only to those teachers who teach subjects on which students are tested. Teacher effectiveness plays a particular role in education policies of nations where alternative pathways exist to the teaching profession.
In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers. Likewise, neither Canada nor South Korea has fast-track options into teaching, such as Teach for America or Teach First in Europe. Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.
In recent years the “no excuses”’ argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children’s learning in school. Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.
For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being. Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.
Finland is not a fan of standardization in education. However, teacher education in Finland is carefully standardized. All teachers must earn a master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities. Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough; only “the best and the brightest” are accepted. As a consequence, teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering. There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals necessary to be a successful teacher.
But education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually.
In many under-performing nations, I notice, three fallacies of teacher effectiveness prevail.
The first belief is that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” This statement became known in education policies through the influential McKinsey & Company report titled “How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top”. Although the report takes a broader view on enhancing the status of teachers by better pay and careful recruitment this statement implies that the quality of an education system is defined by its teachers. By doing this, the report assumes that teachers work independently from one another. But teachers in most schools today, in the United States and elsewhere, work as teams when the end result of their work is their joint effort.
The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school. Team sports offer numerous examples of teams that have performed beyond expectations because of leadership, commitment and spirit. Take the U.S. ice hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics, when a team of college kids beat both Soviets and Finland in the final round and won the gold medal. The quality of Team USA certainly exceeded the quality of its players. So can an education system.
The second fallacy is that “the most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers.” This is the driving principle of former D.C. schools chancellor Michele Rhee and many other “reformers” today. This false belief is central to the “no excuses” school of thought. If a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.
Research on what explains students’ measured performance in school remains mixed. A commonly used conclusion is that 10% to 20% of the variance in measured student achievement belongs to the classroom, i.e., teachers and teaching, and a similar amount is attributable to schools, i.e., school climate, facilities and leadership. In other words, up to two-thirds of what explains student achievement is beyond the control of schools, i.e., family background and motivation to learn.
Over thirty years of systematic research on school effectiveness and school improvement reveals a number of characteristics that are typical of more effective schools. Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.
The third fallacy is that “If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind”. This theoretical assumption is included in influential policy recommendations, for instance in “Essential Elements of Teacher Policy in ESEA: Effectiveness, Fairness and Evaluation” by the Center for American Progress to the U.S. Congress. Teaching is measured by the growth of student test scores on standardized exams.
This assumption presents a view that education reform alone could overcome the powerful influence of family and social environment mentioned earlier. It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
Everybody agrees that the quality of teaching in contributing to learning outcomes is beyond question. It is therefore understandable that teacher quality is often cited as the most important in-school variable influencing student achievement. But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.
Lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, suggest that we must reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.
First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools. Singapore, Canada and Finland all set high standards for their teacher-preparation programs in academic universities. There is no Teach for Finland or other alternative pathways into teaching that wouldn’t include thoroughly studying theories of pedagogy and undergo clinical practice. These countries set the priority to have strict quality control before anybody will be allowed to teach – or even study teaching! This is why in these countries teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation are not such controversial topics as they are in the U.S. today.
Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair. It is inaccurate because most schools’ goals are broader than good performance in a few academic subjects. It is unfair because most of the variation of student achievement in standardized tests can be explained by out-of-school factors. Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers. In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results.
Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools. Again, experiences from those countries that do well in international rankings suggest that teachers should have autonomy in planning their work, freedom to run their lessons the way that leads to best results, and authority to influence the assessment of the outcomes of their work. Schools should also be trusted in these key areas of the teaching profession.
To finish up, let’s do one theoretical experiment. We transport highly trained Finnish teachers to work in, say, Indiana in the United States (and Indiana teachers would go to Finland). After five years–assuming that the Finnish teachers showed up fluent in English and that education policies in Indiana would continue as planned–we would check whether these teachers have been able to improve test scores in state-mandated student assessments.
I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning. Actually, I have met some experienced Finnish-trained teachers in the United States who confirm this hypothesis. Based on what I have heard from them, it is also probable that many of those transported Finnish teachers would be already doing something else than teach by the end of their fifth year – quite like their American peers.
Conversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland–assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish–stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.
We need to educate our public about the reasons behind the decisions being made. I cannot wait for Professor Ravitch’s new book to help in regard to educating people about what is happening in our educational system.
Thank you for reading this paper and let us pray for our children and grandchildren.
Concerned Grandparent
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It’s tough to argue with that. I agree with your conclusions.
Another concerned grandparent and retired teacher.
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I see one of the major problems is viewing schools as businesses and students as commodities. Students are children and need to be taught with love and respect. My philosophy was always to treat my students the way I wanted my own children to be treated. This included discipline as well as encouragement. Our new system seems to tear down a child’s confidence instead of bolstering them up. Not an effective way to achieve success.
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Agreed! Now take that message to the Facebook pages of your mayor, governor and state legislators and tell all your allies to do the same. I think social media can play a part in telling the tone deaf elite that we are wise to them.
Regarding the troubles with computers in your school, PARCC states they all have to be resolved in time for next year’s exams which will be administered online.
This is great for students and teachers that actually use computers and have had limited access and tools because so many schools are about 10-15 years behind the real world in technology use.
But this is terrible for the effort to fight the scourge of standardized testing. It will eliminate the paper trail, it will allow them to change questions and answers up to the last second and perhaps even after that. It will punish kids for making input errors and it will make an already inaccurate system vulnerable to exponentially more glitches.
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This is from issue #2 of Limn magazine. http://limn.it/the-weakness-of-crowds/ The whole issue is a good read as a general discussion of the uses and limitations of social media and other related and somewhat related topics.
Teaser: “Second, there is the individual isolation and the dearth of existing institutional organizations. These represent the flipsides of the independence and decentralization so prized by Surowiecki. Collective action does not strictly require interpersonal proximity or available organizational infrastructure, but they can certainly help, and few collective efforts succeed without them. Moreover, when we consciously or unconsciously design a crowd to be “wise,” to avoid the pitfalls of groupthink, bandwagoning, and information cascades, we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. After all, preserving independence to avoid groupthink also probably means foreclosing on the possibility of a strong consensus informed by shared deliberations, which is the backbone of an enduring collective effort. Similarly, solidarity represents the other side of the bandwagon effect, in the sense that people feel secure and supported in taking a stand when they know that others are doing the same. If we cultivate and regulate crowds to ensure that the decisions of one member have little impact on another, the potential for solidarity and consensus can disappear.”
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Parent power convinces school district to change a local school policy requiring students to kneel:
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/08/20/students-allegedly-forced-to-kneel-down-for-dismissal-at-yucaipa-school/
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