A Contest ForThe Best Feedback On The 4-Part "Reinvent Ed" Posts

To end the week, I wanted to provide my loyal readers as well as potential loyal readers an incentive to really think about my 4-part post about my framework for reinventing our education system.  So here it goes:

The individual who writes the most thought provoking, logical comment to my ideas will win a complimentary copy of Disrupting Class:  How Disruptive Innovation Will Change The Way The World Learns.  It will be signed by some or all of the authors of the book (Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson).  It is substantive, well research look into how to apply "disruptive innovation theory" to the education system.

I encourage you to participate in this contest and I look forward to reading your responses.  And don't worry - to maintain objectivity, I will be having some expertse also evaluate your comments. The contest will run through next Friday, May 1st, unless I determine that it makes sense to extend a bit.

Good luck and thanks for your continued support!  The contest will run through next Friday, May 1st, unless I determine that it makes sense to extend a bit.

Reinvent Education: Part IV

I hope all of you were able to read the first three parts of my roadmap for "reinventing" our education system.  There is certainly a great deal of tactical details I intentionally disregarded because I felt it most important to outline what I believe are the key ingredients to a successful strategy:  i)  consensus around the curriculum; ii) developing a 21st century assessment plan and leverage funding to align incentives around assessment;  and iii) investment in professional development so that teachers and administrators become comfortable in integrating technology-driven tools into the classroom environment.

So once all of these elements are incorporated, we then come to the final question:  "How do we define success?"  Let me say upfront that this question was posed to me by a colleague who I have come to respect very quickly, Dr. Mike Hall, formerly the Deputy Superintendent for Technology at the Georgia Department of Education.  We recently spent a few hours together and he posed that question to me.  What will be the benchmarks for success.  What he told me initially shocked me, but I tend to agree with him.  Success will take at least ten years to effectuate.  Why?  Because we need to go through a complete K-12 cycle with a group of students.  So I think Dr. Hall is correct in that regard.  I would also suggest the following additional success factors for this exercise:

1. Benchmark our performance versus our international peers by either using existing exams or creating a new assessment platform for this comparison.  A measure of our "global competitiveness" must be a part of any success criteria.
2. Literacy against 21st century skills.  We need to create a baseline and then compare ongoing performance against the benchmark.
3. Graduation rates:  this must still be a benchmark, and I would also include in here the dropout rates, because we must not only ensure that dropouts decreases, but we must also ensure that we everyone, regardless of income, has access to a quality education.  I would also not include transfers to vocational programs in the dropout rate calculation.
4. We will need a metric around measuring students eventual migration into the workforce.  Are we churning out high quality talent, or are the jobs going to international students?
5. Teacher satisfaction and teacher competency:  we will need to create metrics around demonstrating that teachers and educators are evolving commensurate with the rest of the ecosystem.

There are likely other "success factors," but at the end of the day, we will need an appropriate evaluation of a successful "reinvention" strategy, because what good is all of this investment and change if we don't know exactly how we will be held accountable.  If someone thinks that the government or the education system has crafted this already, then please do tell!

I hope that some of these ideas can become part of the dialogue that needs to happen, and it needs to happen NOW, before all of the education stimulus funds are put at risk.

Everyone needs to participate in this dialogue.  The future prosperity of our country depends on it.

Reinvent Education: Part III

So lets recap what I've covered so far:

1. Element 1:  get everyone to buy into a common roadmap, a "vision" for what the curriculum needs to be, and thus curriculum was the first area I outlined in the steps to reinventing our education system.
2. Element 2:  once you have the common vision, funding and assessment becomes something that everyone (or at least a majority of American families) can support.  But using funding as a way to align incentives and change behavior is critical to a successful redesign of our education system and its underlying processes.

So what is element 3?  You can't change the system without ensuring that you train the educators in how to integrate 21st century learning tools into their approach to teaching.  That also includes how to utilize technology.  One of the major areas of dysfunction in our education system was best said by my colleagues at the Innosight Institute.  They are also the co-authors of the thought provoking recent book called "Disrupting Class:  How Disruptive Innovation Will Change The Way The World Learns."  Essentially, their premise is that schools deployed technology without creating content that was customized for the experience of the digital technology being deployed.  We've seen magazine companies put their exact content onto websites, and textbook publishers create eBooks.  All it is, is the same experience on a different platform.  That strategy is a losing strategy.  The textbook publishers just don't know it yet, but history would tell otherwise.

So we need to train educators how to use this technology, and that requires part of the investemtn to go into professional development.  I see a few areas worth exploring here:

• School districts must make professional development time a requirement as part of their teacher evaluation process.  Without creating the incentive, teachers won't do it.
• States should create their own professional development programs in the area of technology literacy and its use.  They should ensure that teachers are exposed to the latest technology developments so that they are current in their approach.  Educators should also be required to be trained on best practices for integrating technology into the curriculum, and incentives must be put in place to use them.
• The NEA must accept a commitment to this process.  In my mind, this may be the biggest obstacle to the entire reinvention plan.  I equate the NEA to the MLB Players Union - it's that strong.  Teachers salaries must be raised, but with that comes accountability and no tenure.  As a tradeoff to being paid like a corporate employee, they should be held accountable like one.  Honest evaluations must be established so that every child is assured of a high quality educational experience.  While technology helps "level the playing field," so to speak, a student's learning experience is still influenced primarily by the teacher.  But with technology, teachers become mentors, and can get closer to a one-to-one relationship with their students.
• A very radical idea, but used in places such as Finland:  perhaps let teachers be trained by the students on how to use technology?  Students love to role model and demonstrate mastery of skills, and I think we all know that our children are quicker to pick up technology than us adults.  Of course there are some exceptions to that rule, but by and large, this is true.

These are just a few ideas I have about professional development.  The key to the entire reinvention of our education system is to ensure that our teachers are adequately trained, paid sufficiently, and then held accountable so that they are incented to constantly improve.  We need to make the teaching professional the revered position that it once had, not some underpaid, underappreciated role that it holds in many locations around our country today.

Next week I will talk about the final piece to the puzzle:  how will we define success?

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.  The journey continues.....

A Brief Interlude To The "Reinvent Education" Series

Before I post Part III later today, I felt compelled to be one of the many bloggers who I'm sure will be writing about something truly fascinating.

This week, we saw the true power of the Internet.  I recently spoke to the Georgia Game Developers Association Athens Chapter about how the Internet has turned the value chain on its head, and how users become "content developers."  It is now so easy to form a tribe (as Seth Godin likes to call them), or quite simply, to have your voice heard, literally.  So I'm going to be yet another blogger who will link to the incredible performance of Susan Boyle.

This woman completely floored the judges and audience on the UK's reality show version of American Idol, called Britain's Got Talent.  In less than one week, her YouTube video has been viewed nearly 16 million times!  Even more fascinating is that the song she sang, the memorable "I Dreamed A Dream" from the Broadway Show Les Miserables, is now #39 on the iTunes chart of top downloaded songs, and that was as of last night!.

I assure you:  this is worth watching if only because it's good - real good.  And it also shows how the Internet can make a star.  We'll be seeing more of Susan Boyle for sure, even after she makes the rounds with the major media outlets.

Bravo, Susan.

Reinvent Education: Part II

Yesterday I discussed the first ingredient of a successful redesign of our education system.  I believe unequivocally that we need one comprehensive curricular roadmap that every state adheres to.  The states should then be incented in what tools they utilize to enforce these concepts/skills, and in my recent exchanges with teachers in various parts of the country, it is clear that we are not reaching them satisfactorily.  You can't teach digital natives with Industrial Revolution methods!!!  Why should students be "bored" in school?  So part I is essentially this:  we need to look through one lens for our skills roadmap.

Today, I will talk about two areas that I believe go together:  assessment and funding.  Once we are in agreement on what these basic skills are, how do we assess them?  I can't stress enough how frustrating it is for me to see and hear educators say:  "If it's not required to be tested, we don't teach it."  Well, I'm here to say with as much passion as I can:  THE TESTS ARE WRONG!  What should we be testing, and how do we test it?  NCLB has resulted in us teaching to the lowest common denominator, and thus "dumbing down" our education system.  As many educators and psychologists may tell you, we need to stretch our kids.  Why does Finland, for example, have such a narrow confidence interval in its student achievement? 

The Internet has offered us with a number of methods to assess performance.  I believe our tests have to change.  They can be more qualitative, they can utilize more online learning tools such as games and other web-based products, and we should find ways to test the "soft skills" mentioned yesterday, such as problem solving, critical thinking and leadership skills.  Independent projects using real-world experiences, collaboration with others, are both good tools that can be expanded upon.  When I lectured in academia, I asked the graduate students to raise their hands if they had used group case studies in ther undergraduate or even K-12 classes.  Practically no hands went up.  That was very telling.

The states should have the flexibility to push more empowerment down to the teacher level and let them use whatever stimuli is necessary to teach the requisite skills.  I will discuss professional development in my next post, because you can't change the system without retraining the workforce and making the teaching profession something that people are "inspired" and "motivated" to enter.

Funding has always been the area that educators hide behind every time someone mentions the word "change."  Change doesn't have to mean incremental, but it can also mean a "redeployment."  I would like to outline a couple of suggestions for how to use funding to reallocate the incentives and subsequent behavior of our educators.  They are as follows:

• Federal funding should be allocated based on student population, but additional incentives should be offered to states that do the following:
  • maintain education spending as a certain % of its total annual operating budget - innovation doesn't happen in "quick bursts" like the current stimulus package.  We need sustained investment over time.
  • achieve agreed upon success metrics over 1 year, 3 year and 5 year targets
  • receive credits or additional federal $ for upgrading its technology infrastructure and learning environments to a level that is considered "acceptable" by current commercial standards
  • agree to an "education audit" on a periodic basis that is mutually agreed upon and conducted by a third party.  School districts should be audited in the same way that companies are audited.  Accountability is something that all stakeholders should share.
  • Penalties must then be established if thresholds are not maintained by the states.

• States must also re-evaluate and establish funding guidelines for their school districts
  • Consider the creation of a state-funded education innovation fund that offers entrepreneurs and businesses significant tax credits and/or rebates for bringing ed technology products to the school system.  Contrary to what the venture capitalists might say, I see no reason why the states can't get in the venturing game, so long as the process is stewarded by a combination of education experts and external venture capitalists who know how to seed new businesses.
  • In the short-term, states must look to disproportionately fund low-income areas and ensure that we take steps to "open" access to a quality education for all citizens, much like some of the countries I have previously mentioned (such as Finland).
  • states can replicate some federal practices outlined above by offering local incentives to school districts that meet certain performance threshholds, including graduation rates, achievement, teacher satisfaction, etc.
  • again, in areas where tax revenues are insufficient to meet acceptable standards, both the federal government and states should over-invest in the short term to open access and revitalize these areas.  This should also include an investment in after-school enrichment and summer programs that can provide additional learning options for students in these "high-priority" areas.
  • Again, states that fail to meet "success criteria" would incur penalties to be determined by the Department of Education.  In addition, perhaps these students would be able to go outside their public school district and charter schools or private schools could be offered tax credits or other subsidies as incentives to take these students.  They could apply for "grants," not loans, so that the schools are protected but the families are not required to repay these amounts in full.

Another idea I am intrigued about is again looking at "best practices."  We should understand why in Finland, the students are not divided by level until the age of 16.  Maybe we should be taking a hard look at how we stratify our education system.  I'm not suggesting that we should adopt Finland's system, but don't you think it's worth taking a hard look at?

Still to come are discussions around a few additional elements:  professional development, "success metrics," and other topics of interest.  My point to today's post is best summarized like this:  money can be used as a motivator and to align incentives, if architected properly.  We can create a system where assessment and funding can be aligned, and also ensure that the allocations are "fair and balanced."  Accountability should be a part of any funding provided at the state or federal level, and it is important that the funding generate tangible results.

I will discuss what results are most important in the coming days.  Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more insights.