DRIVING US to Inevitable Digital Solutions

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July 11, 2008

High Cost of Driving Ignites Online Classes Boom

By SAM DILLON

NEWTOWN, Pa. — First, Ryan Gibbons bought a Hyundai so he would not have to drive his gas-guzzling Chevy Blazer to college classes here. When fuel prices kept rising, he cut expenses again, eliminating two campus visits a week by enrolling in an online version of one of his courses.

Like Mr. Gibbons, thousands of students nationwide, including many who were previously reluctant to study online, have suddenly decided to take one or more college classes over the Internet.

“Gas prices have pushed people over the edge,” said Georglyn Davidson, director of online learning at Bucks County Community College, where Mr. Gibbons studies, and where online enrollments are up 35 percent this summer over last year.

The vast majority of the nation’s 15 million college students — at least 79 percent — live off campus, and with gas prices above $4 a gallon, many are seeking to cut commuting costs by studying online. Colleges from Massachusetts and Florida to Texas to Oregon have reported significant online enrollment increases for summer sessions, with student numbers in some cases 50 percent or 100 percent higher than last year. Although some four-year institutions with large online programs — like the University of Massachusetts and Villanova — have experienced these increases, the greatest surges have been registered at two-year community colleges, where most students are commuters, many support families and few can absorb large new expenditures for fuel.

At Bristol Community College in Fall River, Mass., for instance, online enrollments were up 114 percent this summer over last, and half the students queried cited gas costs or some other transportation obstacle as a reason for signing up to study over the Internet, said April Bellafiore, an assistant dean there.

“Online classes filled up immediately,” Ms. Bellafiore said. “It blew my mind.”

Enrollments in online classes expanded rapidly early in this decade, but growth slowed in 2006 to less than 10 percent, according to statistics compiled last year by researchers at Babson College in Massachusetts. Some recent increases reported by college officials in interviews were much larger, which they attributed to the rising cost of gasoline. Pricing policies for online courses vary by campus, but most classes cost as much as, or more than, traditional ones.

At Brevard Community College in Cocoa, Fla., online enrollment rose to 2,726 this summer from 2,190 last year, a 24.5 percent increase. “That is a dramatic increase we can only attribute to gas prices,” said Jim Drake, Brevard’s president.

Dr. Drake and officials at several other colleges expressed concern that mounting fuel costs could force some students to drop out of college altogether, especially since only a fraction of courses at most colleges are offered online. Dr. Drake has put Brevard on a four-day week to help employees and students save gas.

David Gray, chief executive of UMass Online, the distance education program at the University of Massachusetts, said that at an educators’ conference this week in San Francisco, officials from scores of universities discussed how the energy crisis could affect higher education. “There was broad agreement that gas price increases will be a source of continued growth in online enrollments,” Mr. Gray said.

Once an incidental expense, fuel for commuting to campus now costs some students half of what they pay for tuition, in some cases more. Sergey Sosnovsky, who is pursuing pre-engineering studies at Bucks County Community College, paid $240 a month for gas during the spring semester, while his full-time tuition cost about $500 a month, he said. Other students here and in half a dozen other states told similar stories.

Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Mo., which enrolls residents on both sides of the Arkansas-Missouri border, had 52 percent more students sign up for Internet-based courses this summer than last, said Witt Salley, the college’s director of online teaching and learning.

One student taking online coursework for the first time is Kameron Miller, a 30-year-old working mother who lives in Buffalo, Mo., 40 miles north of Springfield. Her commute to classes in her 1998 Chevy Venture during the spring semester cost her at least $200 a month for gas, Ms. Miller said. This summer, she is taking courses in health, humanities and world music — all online.

“I don’t feel I get as much out of an online class as a campus course,” Ms. Miller said. “But I couldn’t afford any other decision.”

Among the four-year institutions reporting increased online enrollment, UMass Online, which enrolls students at its five Massachusetts campuses and worldwide, experienced 46 percent growth this summer over last among students at the university’s Dartmouth, Mass., campus. At Villanova University in Pennsylvania, enrollment in online, graduate, engineering, nursing and business courses has increased more than 40 percent this summer, said Robert Stokes, an assistant vice president there.

Waiting lists for Web-based courses have lengthened at some institutions. At the University of Colorado, Denver, for instance, 361 students are on the waiting list for online courses for the fall term, compared to 233 last year on the same date, said Bob Tolsma, an assistant vice chancellor.

In Tennessee, the six universities, 13 two-year colleges and 26 technology centers overseen by the Tennessee Board of Regents enrolled 9,000 students for online courses this summer, compared with about 7,000 last summer, a 29 percent increase, said Robbie K. Melton, an associate vice chancellor.

“We had to train more faculty and provide more online courses because students just couldn’t afford to drive to our campuses,” Dr. Melton said.

Sandra Jobe, a 46-year-old bookkeeper who is studying for a master’s degree in education at Tennessee State University, said she reduced the number of trips she had to make each week to the university’s Nashville campus to two from four by enrolling in an online course.

“The campus experience is good; I wouldn’t diminish that,” Ms. Jobe said. “But when you’re penny-pinching, online is a good alternative.”

South Texas College, which has five campuses in Hidalgo and Starr Counties in the Rio Grande Valley, saw a 35 percent increase in online enrollments this summer over last, said William Serrata, a vice president. Other years have seen summer increases of 10 percent to 15 percent, he said. “This really speaks to students’ not wanting to travel due to the gas prices,” Mr. Serrata said.

Elvira Ozuna, who is 37 and studying for an associate’s degree in occupational therapy, was driving four times a week, 50 miles round trip from her home to South Texas College’s campus in McAllen. But this summer she enrolled in two online courses, eliminating that commute.

Ms. Ozuna said she found online work more difficult than classroom study. “But I saved on the gasoline,” she said.

Distance education is no silver bullet that can alone solve the challenges posed for higher education by rising gasoline prices, officials warned.

For one thing, many students, especially in rural areas, lack the high-speed Internet connections on which online courses depend.

“The infrastructure doesn’t exist to give all rural students clear online access,” said Stephen G. Katsinas, a professor at the University of Alabama. “Rural America is where the digital divide is most dramatic.”

Furthermore, most colleges still offer only a fraction of their courses over the Internet. Bucks County Community College, for instance, will offer 414 credit courses during the fall term. Only 103 of those will be offered online, and another 48 as hybrid courses, that is, partly online but with some campus visits required. So most students will still need to come to campus.

Mr. Gibbons, who is 20, works days and aspires to be a writer. He said his online course, “Introduction to the Novel,” had been a good experience, especially the Web-based discussions of Jane Austen’s novels. (He likes posting comments by e-mail better than speaking in class.) He said he still preferred on-campus study, “but with the price of gas jumping up, I’ll probably be taking more courses online now.”

By Design: BEGIN with the END in MIND! (Model the Practice)

Edutopia

http://www.edutopia.org/ikid-digital-learner-technology-2008

Informs our 21st Century Understanding

Nets for students 2007

1.	Creativity and Innovation
	Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Students:
	a. apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes. b. create original works as a means of personal or group expression. c. use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues. d. identify trends and forecast possibilities.
2.	Communication and Collaboration
	Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
	a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. b. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats. c. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures. d. contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.
3.	Research and Information Fluency
	Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Students:
	a. plan strategies to guide inquiry. b. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media. c. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks. d. process data and report results.
4.	Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
	Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources. Students:
	a. identify and define authentic problems and significant questions for investigation. b. plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project. c. collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions. d. use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore alternative solutions.
5.	Digital Citizenship
	Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior. Students:
	a. advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology. b. exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity. c. demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning. d. exhibit leadership for digital citizenship.
6.	Technology Operations and Concepts
	Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations. Students:
	a. understand and use technology systems. b. select and use applications effectively and productively. c. troubleshoot systems and applications. d. transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies.

© 2007 International Society for Technology in Education. ISTE® is a registered trademark of the International Society for Technology in Education.

World rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system—without prior written permission from the publisher. Contact Permissions Editor, ISTE, 180 W. 8th Avenue, Suite 300
Eugene, OR 97401-2916 USA; fax: 1.541.302.3780; e-mail: permissions@iste.org or visit www.iste.org/permissions/.

• National Educational Technology Standards for Students 2007 (pdf)
• NETS•S 2007 Student Profiles (pdf)
• NETS•S 2007 Essential Conditions (pdf)

21st Century Digital Learning Environments

By DESIGN: BEGIN with the END in MIND!

Creating the 21st-Century Classroom

Preparing today’s youth to succeed in the digital economy requires a new kind of teaching and learning. Skills such as global literacy, computer literacy, problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, and innovation have become critical in today’s increasingly interconnected workforce and society--and technology is the catalyst for bringing these changes into the classroom.

In a 21st-century learning environment, all students are able to learn. Project-based learning allows students to acquire 21st-century skills in the context of real-world scenarios, and the integration of video and other media to support instruction links students with outside resources and enables teachers to address many learning styles at once. In fact, the 21st-century learning environment doesn’t just wait for teachable moments; it literally creates them at will.

At eSchool News, we’ve seen schools transforming through the use of technology to meet the needs of a new, tech-savvy generation of learners. Now, with the generous support of AVPartners, we’ve combed our archives to assemble our best content related to the creation of 21st-century classrooms. We hope you’ll take a few minutes to peruse these resources and learn how other educators are defining 21st-century learning as you strive to implement this vision of education in your own schools.

. --The Editors

eSchool News Articles

• 
  eSN Special Report: Visual Learning
  Wed, Jan 02, 2008 Primary Topic Channel: Video technologies
  These are special times for visual learning. Spurred by dramatic advances in digital technology, the use of video as an instructional tool is finally coming into its own as a mainstream feature of American education. [ Read More ]

• 
  Voters urge teaching of 21st-century skills
  Mon, Oct 15, 2007 Primary Topic Channel: Research
  Results of a new poll commissioned by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills shows the vast majority of U.S. voters believe students are ill-equipped to compete in the global learning environment, and that schools must incorporate 21st-century skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, communication and self-direction, and computer and technology skills into the curriculum. But the upcoming presidential election, researchers say, presents a perfect opportunity to charter a new path to success for America's students. [ Read More ]

• 
  Public wants more tech in classrooms
  Wed, Aug 01, 2007 Primary Topic Channel: 21st Century skills
  Americans recognize the importance of technology in reforming the nation's schools and making them relevant for the 21st century, a new survey suggests--but they disagree on how schools should impart key 21st-century skills to their students. [ Read More ]

• 
  21st-century school represents 'the will to change'
  Tue, May 01, 2007 Primary Topic Channel: Multimedia
  At the Academy of Information Technology and Engineering in Stamford, Connecticut, educators have turned a 40-year-old school building into a modern model for teaching and learning. And if it can be done here, school leaders say, it can be done anywhere. [ Read More ]

• Creating a '21st-century school' for learning and working together
  Sun, Oct 01, 2006 Primary Topic Channel: 21st Century skills
  Like many school systems, Maryland's Charles County Public Schools had different tracks for high school students who were going on to college and those pursuing vocational training. This outdated model ultimately reduced the status of voc ed to a lower level than academic programs. James Richmond, our district superintendent, championed the idea of a 21st- century school that would bring vocational and academic students together in one facility. [ Read More ]

• 
  W.Va. focuses on 21st-century learning
  Thu, Apr 06, 2006 Primary Topic Channel: 21st Century skills
  As educators nationwide consider ways to address the need for 21st-century learning, West Virginia appears to be ahead of the curve and could serve as a model for other states to follow. [ Read More ]

• 
  'Interactive teaching' engages learners
  Wed, May 11, 2005 Primary Topic Channel: Handheld technologies
  A wireless handheld technology similar to the remote control you use to control your television set is transforming large, impersonal college lecture courses into dynamic, interactive learning labs. Although initiated mostly in colleges, this style of instruction--dubbed "interactive teaching" by its proponents--has potential far beyond the lecture hall. [ Read More ]

• 
  Audio-visual technology a bright spot on college campuses
  Tue, Dec 06, 2005 Primary Topic Channel: Research,Multimedia
  At least half of the nation's higher-education classrooms will be equipped with digital projectors, control systems, audio or video conferencing equipment, or other audio-visual (AV) technology within the next five years, a new study projects. [ Read More ]

• 
  NC Gov. announces 21st Century Center
  Fri, Apr 22, 2005 Primary Topic Channel: School Administration ,21st Century skills
  Faced with the challenge of preparing today's students for success in anincreasingly global economy, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, April 21,announced the development of a first-of-its-kind Center for 21st CenturySkills. [ Read More ]

CHANGE the SYSTEM not the INTENTION!

Change system for sake of students

BY MIKE FLANAGAN • June 29, 2008

Narrow thinkers wanting to water down the new high school graduation requirements have wrongly bleated that the new Michigan Merit Curriculum is "cookie cutter," because it expects that all kids will learn the same rigorous academic content.

Well, it is not the curriculum that is cookie cutter; it's the current educational system, which wants all kids to fit in that box we call a classroom, when some just won't. We don't need to change the new requirements. We need to change the system.

We developed this new Michigan Merit Curriculum with the expectation that schools would expand learning opportunities in new and creative ways. Students can, for example, receive

Algebra II, chemistry and economics credits through online courses, career tech programs, and project-based learning.

Some school districts, like Wyandotte, are figuring it out and developing ways to reach every student and teach them the needed standards. I applaud them for embracing the reality that all kids can learn higher levels of math, science, English and social studies. When we broaden our ways of teaching students, we can have high expectations of them, and they will respond. I am a proven example of that.

I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and was a bit on the rough edge when my family moved out to the suburbs of Long Island. Needless to say, I didn't quite fit in, and school for me was not going well.
When I was in the eighth grade, a teacher who thought I could be doing better got me into a program called the 89ers -- eighth-grade students doing ninth-grade work. Heck, I wasn't even doing seventh-grade work at the time. But the teachers and the school expected and believed we could do it. They believed in us and approached our education in a different way, and we succeeded. It turned my life around.

Just because someone thinks a certain group of students "can't" learn a certain subject doesn't mean those students don't "need" to learn those subjects. In this globally competitive world we now live in, all our students need to learn higher level concepts. Anyone who claims otherwise is setting up our students and our state for failure now and into the future.

Michigan's unemployment rate is the highest it has been since 1992. Is that because there are no jobs available? No. There are some 80,000 jobs available in Michigan today, but they are jobs that require the higher-level knowledge and skills that the Michigan Merit Curriculum will prime.

We want Michigan's high school diploma to mean that every student has received a bona fide, high-quality education upon which employers can depend. We want a Michigan high school diploma that means something, and that is globally competitive.

We must resist every effort to wilt and water down our nationally renowned graduation standards. The key to success in this drive to the top is the willingness to accept the need to change. We can't keep doing what we've always done and expect different outcomes.

In today's workforce, college-ready is the same as work-ready for what employers need. Someone recently alarmed me when he said: "My waitress doesn't need algebra." I was floored! I believe that all work is honorable, but what if that waitress, or store clerk, or landscaper wants to change careers and needs to go to college? Will they have the math and science background to go on and study to become a medical technician or architect?

How do we know which ninth-grade students will want to enter what career five or 10 years down the road? I refuse to predetermine that. All kids need to complete the Michigan Merit Curriculum.

For this rigorous curriculum to really work, however, we need to re-imagine what our current education system is. We need a system that meets the needs of all students, in a manner that meets their needs and the needs of employers. The classroom of the past 50-plus years no longer is relevant to all of today's students.

MIKE FLANAGAN is Michigan's superintendent of public instruction. Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226 or at oped@freepress.com.


Don't give up on plan for higher grades

Legislators should give new tougher standards a chance to work

June 29, 2008


There's just no point in jettisoning a life preserver before you know whether it'll float.

Yet the very policy that promises, long term, to lift up generations of Michigan high school students is in jeopardy of being picked apart before it's had a chance to pay off.

The standards are just now going into full effect.

Yet, at the same time, a House subcommittee on high school alternatives has begun re-examining its success and holding hearings on a range of possible changes, the most controversial of which could create an alternative diploma and tweak some of the state's math mandates.

While the process is just beginning, every legislator ought to lend a cautious eye so that Michigan doesn't prematurely gut the rigor out of its efforts to raise the educational bar.
State Rep. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, D-Taylor, insists the subcommittee isn't out to undo the standards.

"We're looking at how kids are getting through the graduation requirements," explained Hopgood. "It may be that there can be a fine-tuning to help prevent the bad outcome, which is kids just having a lot of frustration and a lack of success with the requirements."

It's true the state's new standards warrant monitoring, if only because increasing the numbers of high school graduates is a central piece of the state's economic strategy.

But monitoring and meddling are two different things. Michigan wasted at least 20 years ignoring the importance of toughness in high school graduation standards. The price of that choice is implicit in the legions of unemployed and undereducated citizens throughout the state.

Any knee-jerk relaxation of the standards only adds to the state's negatives in the eyes of companies looking for high skills workers.

This is not to say Michigan has put a problem-free policy on the books. What government ever meets that mark? But the change Michigan has adopted is solid and drastic enough to star in the national discussion about the direction all American high schools have to travel to compete in the 21st Century. With all eyes finally fixed on Michigan for something positive, the Legislature should be leery of relinquishing the chance to lead.

Michigan has yet to even graduate a class of students under the new standards; leaders who now want to undercut the policy don't have a clear enough picture of its weaknesses or its strengths to determine what needs fixing.

Yes, it's alarming to learn that more than 20% of freshmen in the Class of 2011 -- the first to graduate under Michigan's new standards -- failed Algebra I in the most recent school year.

Legislators are right to question what's being done to ensure that those students don't fail further. But one of the ideas being discussed is weakening the need for Algebra II, an off-point overreaction to the early results.

It's better to start with a dialogue about whether local boards of education and school districts are alerting students to options built into the policy, such as completing Algebra II over two years or via career technical courses. Under that policy, for instance, school districts are supposed to establish personal curriculum teams to evaluate options for students at risk of falling short of proficiency.

Given the length of some of the policy's fine print, it's a reasonable conclusion that many local boards and districts have only skimmed the surface of the option available to help struggling students. Maybe the tweak legislators should be examining is with the communications between the state Department of Education, school districts and boards, not the overall policy.

Focusing on that process first could keep the state from needlessly dummying-down one of the smartest steps Michigan has taken to retool its future.

AIM for TRANSFORMATION (Champion)

ROCHELLE RILEY

Where is the outrage over DPS?

BY ROCHELLE RILEY • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • June 24, 2008

This is what doesn't make sense to me.

State regulators are investigating why it took the public utilities Detroit Edison and Consumers Energy days to restore power to 700,000 to 800,000 residents after recent storms. The Michigan Public Service Commission, its director said, "has an obligation to ensure that utilities are providing customers with reasonably reliable service."

The commission is holding public hearings this week across the state.

So, if somebody in Lansing is investigating the utilities, why isn't somebody in Lansing investigating the lost power in the Detroit Public Schools? The lights went out there nearly 10 years ago, and ever since, the district has stumbled around in the dark, fighting over contracts and jobs, while the kids suffer. Are the children not as important as melted ice cream and defrosted steaks?

A whole lot of nots

Dr. Connie Calloway, the new superintendent who has spent her first year digging through dirt and incompetence and traditions that don't make sense, revealed some startling news two weeks ago during an interview:

She confirmed what critics have known for some time, that DPS is not graduating nearly two-thirds of its students.

She confirmed that 22 of the city's 27 high schools did not make required annual yearly progress -- required progress.

She confirmed that DPS has been rife with such incompetence that students did not receive textbooks at the start of the year for 19 years.

She confirmed that the FBI investigation into DPS is not over.

And she confirmed that the district's budget is about the same as it was eight years ago, even though the number of employees and students has dropped by a third. In 2000, the district spent $1.2 billion to pay 21,203 employees to serve 154,648 students. Last school year, the district spent the same amount of money to pay 15,535 employees and serve 105,000 students. What is being done with the extra money?

After those revelations, parents did not march, teachers did not rally, and Detroit legislators did not hold news conferences to say enough is enough.

But when district officials announced that there might be teacher layoffs to offset a budget deficit that is $400 million counting this year and next, folks jumped up then. The teachers aren't wrong to protest. The district has so much fat and gristle it can cut plenty before it gets to teachers, including administrators -- especially administrators.

A call to action

So my question remains: Why is the state not investigating? How can a public entity be allowed to dysfunction for so long, turning out graduates who cannot read, students who cannot last more than a semester in college, or students who do not have the skills to work? I didn't need to read a study. I know some of these students. I worked with some of these students. I cried at night about some of these students.

Since the power outage debacle, I've seen TV commercials apologizing for the letdown. The school district has not apologized to children or parents or taxpayers. But when will elected officials in Lansing who keep throwing good money after bad on a dysfunctional district, stop turning their heads away from the problem -- like a car wreck they can't bear to watch -- and do something?

It just doesn't make sense.

Please join the conversation about this column at www.freep.com/rochelleriley.


ROCHELLE RILEY

Kids are suffering in Detroit Public Schools mess

BY ROCHELLE RILEY • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • June 26, 2008

The e-mail could have been written by any suburbanites who responded to my column about the lack of outrage over the failing Detroit Public Schools.

The writer said there was no outrage because "the chips are all cashed in and there is NO hope left and people have stopped giving a rip. This is DPS -- it's over. Done. Stick a fork in it. Jesus Christ himself would have his hands full with that cesspool of failure, corruption and incompetence. Just need to find a way for the 900,000 left to speed to the exits in order to save their lives vs. being pawns to prop up a long failed institution so we can continue to pay the incompetents."

In my column, I asked why the state would investigate something as simple as a delay in getting power restored after massive storms, but would not investigate the dysfunction of the billion-dollar behemoth known as the DPS. The writer said:

"As for power outages we KNOW if we are outraged it WILL get fixed; even faster. We have hope; we know it will get better. We are way past outrage in DPS and Detroit city government in general. We are on to sickened, embarrassed and just plain tired of it all. We do not care what happens to DPS, we just hope it happens quickly rather than this slow blood loss to death; and that we rescue as many kids as possible from this burning building."

What about the children?

Here's the problem, dear readers, whether your kids study elsewhere or not, whether you think you have a stake in this or not: No one is rescuing the kids from the burning building. As a matter of fact, folks have stopped watching the building burn. It's like wildfires that take the houses in California. You know they're happening, and you're glad they're happening someplace else.

My question -- where is the outrage? -- wasn't meant to ask literally why people aren't outraged, dear readers. It was meant to spur outrage. It was meant to say: Get up! Stand up! These are children, for God's sake! How can anyone who is an advocate for children in Michigan just watch? If these children were puppies, there would be lines of cars and trucks from across the state to take them to safety.

What we would do for animals, we won't do for these children? And all because some Detroiters reject help from people who aren't black, aren't connected or aren't taking from that big ball of cheese known as the billion-dollar budget? Folks, it is time to move the cheese.

We need to act, now

DPS Superintendent Connie Calloway says her plans to reform the district have been hampered by discoveries of ineptitude, possible criminal behavior and the kind of bookkeeping and record-keeping that would require Internal Revenue Service help to figure out. Her critics say any good superintendent can multitask, cleaning up the bad while pushing the good.

While they fight, children suffer.

When these thousands of children leave a school district without graduating, without being able to read, without being able to be employed, they will take one of two roads -- hard lives one step ahead of abject poverty or the sinister methods of pursuing happiness.

Either way, our tax dollars will go to them. We better wake up!

Please join the conversation about this column at www.freep.com/rochelleriley.

NSF ITEST GRANT Advisory Board Meeting

Digital Convergence Goes LIVE!

Emerging Technology Could Drive Interest in STEM Careers! Who knew?

21st Century Learners
By Cathleen Richardson

What do we really know about today’s youth? As educators, do we truly understand how they think, learn, communicate, and socialize? As if you didn’t know by now, they don’t perform any of the aforementioned skills in any manner like the youth of years past. Our students live in a digital world, altered by ever-changing technology. The youth of today can instant message on their laptop, talk on a cell phone, play a video game wirelessly with a friend down the street and chew bubble gum - all at the same time.

These "Screenagers" are undeniably different. They are authors of blogs, designers of web sites, and developers of ring tones. They have created an entire language of their own using abbreviated terms such as LOL (laugh out loud), BRB (be right back), POS (parent over the shoulder), MIRL (meet in real life) and BTDT (been there, done that). The bottom line is that these students learn and comprehend in a way that is foreign to many of us, and, as a result, they often feel disconnected from traditional teachers and schools of yesteryear.

Digital students are goal-oriented and able to pursue multiple outcomes at the same time. This generation of 21st Century learners can absorb a great deal of information at super-charged speed whether it is transmitted via a cell phone, television, the Internet, or MP3 player.

Digital students are masters of varying types of technology. These students are always connected with their peers and the world through technology. The digital generation has unknowingly incorporated 21st Century skills into their day-to-day lives by becoming innovators, creative designers, critical thinkers, collaborators, and complex problem-solvers.

While these students are having fun, they are also learning.

At a recent conference, Terry Jones, founder and former CEO of Travelocity.com told the audience a fascinating story. His son, a digital native, co-created a now popular computer game called “Day of Defeat” with four students from the United States, five from Europe and one from Canada. Interestingly, they never met! They collaborated and created this game solely via email and chat interactions.

Digital students are determined, focused on success and creators of their own destiny. This knowledge forces us to pause, ponder and then pose a series of additional questions. According to Speak Up, an online research project, which annually surveys K-12 students, teachers, parents, and school administrators, these are some key educational questions educators should be focusing on:

• What are the benefits of emerging technologies such as mobile devices, gaming in education, online learning and open education resources?
  
• What would happen if emerging technology were used to get students interested in STEM careers?
  
• What are the barriers/challenges to using technology?
  

The reality is that many schools aren’t ready or willing to address these questions. The traditional educational view of drill and practice and test taking is a difficult concept to abandon or reconsider for many educators. This is where the disconnect begins. Alan November, a recognized leader in the field of educational technology, lists on his website comments from workshop attendees on the future of education.

One workshop participant stated, “Hope can overcome fear when barriers are torn down, by allowing students to engage in a forum they are comfortable they take ownership of their learning and the teachers will be willing to change from the role of information giver to facilitator.”

Now that we know more about the digital generation, is it possible as educators that we need to rethink who we are? We must re-evaluate the practice of teaching and learning and equip our students with the necessary tools to help them advance in this digital age. Acknowledging who these students are and meeting them on their current playing field will bridge the digital gap and connect us all to the 21st Century.

John Dewey, a well-known educational reformer, says it best, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.”

Next, we’ll delve more into the minds of this digital generation and explore what experts say about this extraordinary group of learners.

Update: 21st Century Schools Fund Legislation

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Editorial

21st Century Schools Fund could rescue failing districts

We liked Gov. Jennifer Granholm's 21st Century Schools Fund when she first proposed it in February. We like it even better now that a strong measure of accountability has been built in.

The proposal would provide $300 million to create small, responsive schools that will be required to graduate 80 percent of their students or lose their state funding.

The state Legislature should support the idea, with these conditions: The proposal must provide funding to innovative public charter school operators, an idea Granholm says she supports, and the accountability should have legal teeth. Legislators should build the 80 percent graduation requirement into state law and not leave enforcement to the discretion of the state school superintendent.

Lawmakers are being lobbied by the teachers union to strip charter schools of eligibility to participate in the program. That would be a serious mistake.

After all, the fund is largely modeled after charters. It's strikingly similar to Detroit's University Prep Academy, which promises to graduate 90 percent of its students. Such an outcomes-based approach is needed in Michigan schools.

Granholm's program would provide both the incentive and the funding for failing schools to transform. A bipartisan panel developed the program's guidelines. Eligible schools would have to be small, with no more than 450 students, and give principals full control of staffing decisions.

What's most noteworthy is its accountability mechanism. Only schools that graduate 80 percent of their students would be eligible to keep the $3 million grants, which could be used for breaking mammoth high schools into smaller ones or other education innovations. Schools that don't meet the graduation standard would have to pay back half of the money.

That sort of accountability is unheard of in state government.

Only schools with graduation rates of 65 percent or lower -- or academies located in such low-achieving neighborhoods -- would be eligible.

Last week the bill moved to the state Senate, where Appropriations Chairman Ron Jelinek, R-Three Oaks, is threatening to kill it, calling small schools no panacea. Jelinek seems to be missing the education crisis in Michigan, in which fewer than 75 percent of students graduate from high school and in urban districts fewer than one-third.

What we're doing now isn't working. The small schools model has shown success elsewhere and deserves a chance. So far, Jelinek hasn't offered a better idea for rescuing children who are being failed by the state's public schools.

The 21st Century Schools Fund is more than about size. Its principal-controlled schools would root out under-performing teachers. And the funding would give districts powerful leverage in seeking teacher union contract changes.

The 21st Century Schools Fund marks the sort of dramatic change Michigan needs to address the unacceptable failure of its public schools.

Disrupting Class! (Finally Publishes)

Interview: http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/books/mp3files/christensen.mp3

A crash course in the business of learning-from the bestselling author of The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution…

“A brilliant teacher, Christensen brings clarity to a muddled and chaotic world of education.”
-Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great

According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn't always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need “disruptive innovation.”

Now, in his long-awaited new book, Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen's now-famous theories of “disruptive” change using a wide range of real-life examples. Whether you're a school administrator, government official, business leader, parent, teacher, or entrepreneur, you'll discover surprising new ideas, outside-the-box strategies, and straight-A success stories.

You'll learn how

Customized learning will help many more students succeed in school
Student-centric classrooms will increase the demand for new technology
Computers must be disruptively deployed to every student
Disruptive innovation can circumvent roadblocks that have prevented other attempts at school reform
We can compete in the global classroom-and get ahead in the global market

Filled with fascinating case studies, scientific findings, and unprecedented insights on how innovation must be managed, Disrupting Class will open your eyes to new possibilities, unlock hidden potential, and get you to think differently. Professor Christensen and his coauthors provide a bold new lesson in innovation that will help you make the grade for years to come.

The future is now. Class is in session.


Biographical note


Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is author or coauthor of five books including the New York Times bestsellers The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution.

Michael B. Hornis a cofounder and Executive Director of Innosight Institute. He holds an AB from Yale and an MBA from Harvard.

Curtis W. Johnson is a writer and consultant who has served as a college president, head of a public policy research organization, and chief of staff to governor Arne Carlson of Minnesota. Johnson and his colleagues were among the early proponents of what has become the chartered school movement.


Back cover copy


WARNING: THIS BOOK WILL CHALLENGE
EVERYTHING YOU EVER LEARNED-ABOUT LEARNING

“After a barrage of business books that purport to 'fix' American education, at last a book that speaks thoughtfully and imaginatively about what genuinely individualized education canbe like and how to bring it about.”-Howard Gardner, author of Five Minds for the Future

“A decade ago, Clayton Christensen wrote a masterpiece, The Innovator's Dilemma, that transformed the way business looks at innovation. Now, he and two collaborators, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson, have come up with another, focusing his groundbreaking theories of disruptive innovation on education."-David Gergen, US Presidential Advisor

“Clayton Christensen's insights just might shake many of us in education out of our complacency and into a long needed disruptive discourse about really fixing our schools. This will be a welcome change after decades in which powerful calls to action have resulted in only marginal improvements for our nation's school children.”-Vicki Phillips, director of Education, Gates Foundation

“Full of strategies that are both bold and doable, this brilliant and seminal book shows how we can utilize technology to customize learning. I recommend it most enthusiastically.”-Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester (NY) Teachers Association, and vice president of the American Federation of Teachers

"Finally we have a book from the business community that gets it. Disrupting Class from Clayton Christensen and colleagues points out that motivation is central to learning and that if schools and learning are to be transformed as they must be, motivation must be at the center of the work. They also point out how technology should be used to personalize learning and what the future might look like for schools. A must read for anyone thinking and worrying about where education should be headed."-Paul Houston, Executive Director, American Association of School Administrators

“Powerful, proven strategies for moving education from stagnation to evolution.”-Christopher Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies, Harvard Graduate School of Education

“Clayton Christensen and colleagues describe how disruptive technologies will personalize and, as a result, revolutionize learning. Every education leader should read this book, set aside their next staff meeting to discuss it, and figure out how they can be part of the improvement wave to come.”-Tom Vander Ark, President, X PRIZE Foundation

“In Disrupting Class, Christensen, Horn and Johnson argue that the next round of innovation in school reform will involve learning software. While schools have resisted integrating technology for instruction, today's students are embracing technology in their everyday lives. This book offers promise to education reformers.”-Kathleen McCartney, Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education

State Superintendent: On Change, Monsters, Technology and apparent alignment to our purpsoe!

There's No Monster Under the Bed

By John Bebow - June 6, 2008

By Mike Flanagan
State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Forget that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

We have nothing to fear but fear of change.

Michigan has begun its ascent to the top of the world's job chain with the most rigorous high school graduation requirements, an aggressive worker training program, and a growing realization that we need more college graduates in the high-demand careers of the 21st Century.

Education is the key to Michigan's economic future. But it is the future's education that takes us from the system we’ve had over the past millennium and prepares our state for not only greatness, but survival.

But change is difficult for those who are entrenched in the current system. That attitude may serve them, but it certainly doesn’t serve our students or state.

Michigan's new high school graduation requirements, called the Michigan Merit Curriculum, are heralded as groundbreaking, and were strongly supported by the education associations in Michigan, the State Board of Education, and state Legislature before Governor Jennifer Granholm enacted the new law in 2006.

The new law ensures that all Michigan students receive the high quality education they need and deserve, no matter what future career path they choose. The knowledge that students gain with the Michigan Merit Curriculum is needed today whether they go on to a post-secondary program or directly into the workplace after high school.

There is a campaign being waged to weaken and water down these new graduation requirements. It is a campaign based upon a fear of change.

Those who are unwilling to change claim that all kids aren't going on to college and don't need to take higher level math and science studies. They claim that thousands more high school students will drop out. They claim that school shouldn't be taught in "cookie-cutter" fashion. These claims are alarmist and are no way based in fact, and only meant to monger and perpetuate the fear and ignorance of change.

There is no need to alter the new high school graduation requirements. There is flexibility built into the law that addresses the needs of all students. The law allows for flexible schedules and support programs for students to learn the requirements through programs outside of the traditional courses. They can earn the graduation credits in a Career and Technical program, in an Early College program that is career focused, or in numerous other programs. The law also allows for a flexible pathway for Students with Disabilities, through a Personal Curriculum plan.

We want a Michigan high school diploma to mean that every student has received a bona fide high quality education upon which employers can understand and depend. We want a Michigan high school diploma to mean something, and that is globally competitive.

That is why we must resist every effort to wilt and water down our nationally-renowned graduation standards.

The key to success in this drive to the top is the willingness to accept the need to change. We can’t keep doing what we’ve always done and expect different outcomes.

For this rigorous curriculum to work, we need to retrofit our education system. We need a system that meets the needs of ALL students, in a manner that meets their needs and the needs of employers. Governor Granholm has proposed a 21st Century Schools Fund to develop small, more personal high schools that build the relationships that accentuate the relevance of the curriculum.

Accelerated technology sweeps over our society at a dizzying pace. Why do some students have the advantages of these technologies and others don’t? Why don't we have technology steering classroom instruction in our schools? If they are going to be using advancing technology in the workplace, shouldn't they be learning with it in school? Students use hand-held technology in every part of their daily lives except in education. No wonder they are bored in school.

The classroom of the past 50-plus years no longer is relevant to today's students – even as young as pre-Kindergarten. Recent studies reveal that it is a lack of real-life relevance in our schools that is frustrating our high school students and giving them a hopeless reason to drop out. We need to re-design how we deliver education, from early childhood through post-secondary, and we need to do it quickly and collaboratively.

Is this new curriculum really the monster under the bed? Or is it a fear of change on the part of some educators who don't want to take on the challenge of teaching every student in their school? Or is it parents who struggled in school and don’t feel their kids need it. Well, all kids do need it. I am convinced that all kids can learn algebra and chemistry, just like they can learn how to write grammatically correct and understand how their government works.

To overcome this fear, we need school administrators working with teachers—working with higher education—working with business—working with parents—working with private foundations to configure an education system that is inclusive, relevant, rigorous, accountable, and flexible enough to reach every child in Michigan.

This ultimate reform will need courage to succeed. Long-standing differences need to be put aside. Staunch, long-held beliefs need to be buried. Turf battles need to selflessly collapse. The only special interest group that matters is the students.

21st Century Small High Schools and Renewable Energy Initiatives

Posted: Friday, 30 May 2008 11:11AM

Gov Asks For Small High Schools, Renewable Power Standard

Gov. Jennifer Granholm offered business a share of the savings in a plan to reduce the number of state prison inmates in her speech Friday at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference.

And she proposed a "21st Century School Fund" to create 100 small, academically challenging high schools across the state.

Granholm began by reviewing Michigan's economic challenge -- the loss of 330,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000 as part of a national flight of manufacturing jobs overseas, and Big Three market share falling from 70 percent in 1990 to 45 percent today.

But she also pointed to dozens of big investments in the state in recent years by companies in her targeted areas of alternative energy, the life sciences, advanced manufacturing and homeland security. And she touted her continuing overseas investment missions, especially alternative energy efforts in Sweden.

Granholm said she was asking the Legislature and the crowd at Mackinac to back three initiatives -- the 21sts Century School Fund, a mandate that 10 percent of the state's power must come from renewable sources by 2015, and the prison reform plan.

Granholm said the small high school plan is part of an overall effort to "attack, declare war, on the dropout problem." She said Michigan "must replace those large, impersonal high schools that fail with small, challenging high schools that work." She also backed more "middle colleges," five-year high schools that graduate their students with an associate's degree or other usable career credential. She said the 21st Century Schools Fund would require no new taxes, only a redirection of existing revenue.

More broadly, Granholm said of education, the state needs to flip education on its head to meet the needs of employers. "We don't want people to get degrees in French or political science," she said. "Those are my degrees, so I can say that. We want people to get degrees in areas we need," such as health care.

Granholm also asked -- as she did last year -- for the renewable energy standard, which has been tied up in the Legislature over complaints that it remonopolizes the state's electric market, and doesn't go far enough to mandate renewable energy.

However, Granholm said the lack of the standard means Michigan is losing out on massive investments that are occurring elsewhere in renewable energy.

Granholm also touted her record as a cost-cutter, pointing out that she's cut more out of state budgets than any Michigan governor in history, that Michigan is now 46th in state employees per capita, and that the state is leading the nation in putting state business online.

But she said one area of state government is skyrocketing in staff and costs: corrections. She said Michigan's corrections staff has grown from 5 percent of state employment to more than 20 percent, and that Michigan incarcerates its citizens at a rate far higher than its neighbors -- with no appreciable effect on crime rates.

Granholm, a former prosecutor, said that "I will not allow violent criminals to be released into society, period." But she said there are ways to trim the prison population by selectively releasing low-risk inmates. And she proposed sharing any savings on a one-third basis between law enforcement, higher education and a reduction in the Michigan Business Tax surcharge.

In opening her speech, Granholm joked about her recent surgery for bowel obstruction, saying she pleaded with the doctor not to use the word "bowel" in public comments, and that state Republicans were in no way responsible for the "obstruction." And, she said, the last thing she remembered before the anesthesia took her under was her surgeon saying, "You know, I'm a Republican..."

© MMVIII WWJ Radio, All Rights Reserved.

ONE-D "Drop-out Prevention Summit"

One D Dropout Prevention Summit and Retreat in review from United Way on Vimeo.

STEM Digtial Learning Community Begins

THE DIGITAL DANCE of CHANGE! (CHEAPER, BETTER, FASTER!)

Posted: Thursday, 15 May 2008 5:45PM

Airialink Wins Fiber Optic Deal In Eaton County

Lansing-based Arialink Thursday announced a contract to bring its fiber optic network and Internet services to the Eaton Intermediate School District. The value of the deal was not immediately disclosed.

The Eaton Intermediate School District (EISD) Wide Area Network will link county K-12 school districts and the Eaton ISD to provide unprecedented, collaborative opportunities for sharing software, curriculum, classes, data, and technology expertise.

Once constructed, the network will provide a significant increase in bandwidth and high speed Internet access to meet the growing needs of students and educators in the following school districts: Charlotte Public Schools, Eaton Rapids Public Schools, Grand Ledge Public Schools, Maple Valley Public Schools and Potterville Public Schools.

The EISD Wide Area Network will give students access to classes unavailable in their district, such as advanced math and foreign language courses. These classes could be offered with a “live” instructor, who would interact with students in another classroom, or another school, or in a college setting. The network would allow enhanced access to on-demand videos to supplement instruction. Reliable, high-speed data transmission will allow sharing of software and resources not previously available.

As a result of this investment in technology, educators, administrators and students in the EISD will see an increase in opportunities for all schools of their districts to access the technological and academic tools necessary for success in the 21st Century.

By using Arialink’s Statewide Education Peering Network, the EISD will have the opportunity to partner with other regional customers like the Ingham Intermediate School District, Allegan Area Education Services Agency, Muskegon Area ISD, Lansing Community College, and Michigan Virtual University. These partnerships can leverage shared technologies to enhance the lifelong learning goals of all users.

Additionally, by virtue of bringing Arialink’s fiber-optic network to Eaton County, there will be significant positive economic and residential impact to the community. Businesses, health care facilities and libraries will be able to take advantage of Arialink’s network, allowing these institutions to become competitive in today’s technology-driven marketplace.

The presence of Arialink’s network will help facilitate future plans of offering high speed Internet and phone services to the underserved residents of Eaton County.

More at www.arialink.com or www.eaton.k12.mi.us.

© MMVIII WWJ Radio, All Rights Reserved.

TEAM Melton Pulls Together!

Brandon Middle School Science Club GOES GREEN!

A Decade of Digital Disruption!

Education Week

Published Online: May 5, 2008
Published in Print: May 7, 2008

Online Education Cast as ‘Disruptive Innovation’

By Andrew Trotter

Technology-based forces of “disruptive innovation” are gathering around public education and will overhaul the way K-12 students learn—with potentially dramatic consequences for established public schools, according to an upcoming book that draws parallels to disruptions in other industries.

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns predicts that the growth in computer-based delivery of education will accelerate swiftly until, by 2019, half of all high school classes will be taught over the Internet.

Clayton M. Christensen, the book’s lead author and a business professor at Harvard University, is well respected in the business world for his best-sellers The Innovator’s Dilemma, published in 1997, and The Innovator’s Solution, published in 2003.

Those books analyze why leading companies in various industries—computers, electronics, retail, and others—were knocked off by upstarts that were better able to take advantage of innovations based on new technology and changing conditions.

School organizations are similarly vulnerable, Mr. Christensen contends.

“The schools as they are now structured cannot do it,” he said in an interview, referring to adapting successfully to coming computer-based innovations. “Even the best managers in the world, if they were heads of departments in schools and the administrators of schools, could not do it.”

Under Mr. Christensen’s analytical model, the tables typically turn in an industry even when the dominant companies are well aware of a disruptive innovation and try to use it to transform themselves.

But established organizations are trapped in the industry’s architecture, through webs of “interdependencies,” such as the compensation system for sales forces and the expectations of existing customers, who do not want to bear the cost of adopting innovations that initially are inferior to what they were used to getting, he said.

With the advent of new technologies, companies usually resort to “cramming down” the innovations onto their existing systems, an approach that generates only incremental improvement, he says.

Upstart organizations—though they cannot at first compete head to head with the leaders—find markets for innovative products and services among “nonconsuming” groups who are are priced out of the main market or are seen as peripheral by the leaders. The nonconsuming groups embrace the innovations, which gradually improve until they are better than the top products—and sweep to dominance, according to the book.

Cramming Down

In the new book, Mr. Christensen and his co-authors apply a similar analysis to K-12 education. Mr. Christensen wrote the book with Michael B. Horn, the executive director for education at the Innosight Institute, a think tank that promotes Mr. Christensen’s ideas, and Curtis W. Johnson, a writer and former college president and political aide.

Like the leaders in other industries, the education establishment has crammed down technology onto its existing architecture, which is dominated by the “monolithic” processes of textbook creation and adoption, teaching practices and training, and standardized assessment—which, despite some efforts at individualization, by and large treat students the same, the book says.

But new providers are stepping forward to serve students that mainline education does not serve, or serve well, the authors write. Those students, which the book describes as K-12 education’s version of “nonconsumers,” include those lacking access to Advanced Placement courses, needing alternatives to standard classroom instruction, homebound or home-schooled students, those needing to make up course credits to graduate—and even prekindergarten children.

By addressing those groups, providers such as charter schools, companies catering to home schoolers, private tutoring companies, and online-curriculum companies have developed their methods and tapped networks of students, parents, and teachers for ideas.

Those providers will gradually improve their tools to offer instruction that is more student-centered, in part by breaking courses into modules that can be recombined specifically for each student, the authors predict.

Such providers’ approaches, the authors argue, will also become more affordable, and they will start attracting more and more students from regular schools.

E-Volution

A new book predicts that the share of high school instruction that takes place over the Internet will start rising sharply in about four years, until online courses constitute more than 50 percent of all high school course enrollments by around 2019.

Mr. Christensen and his co-authors apply an S-shaped curve, accepted in the business-research literature as a mathematical model of disruptive change in industry, to data from 2000 to 2007 to predict that by 2019, online learning will account for 50 percent of high school course enrollments.

The prediction is based on current projections of the supply of qualified teachers and of the costs of traditional and computer-based learning. “As long as that ratio stays the same, we’ll see that happen,” Mr. Christensen said. “Who knows if it is 2019, 2017, or 2020, but sometime around there, it should hit 50 percent.”

The book does hold out hope that established school organizations can adapt to disruptive innovation.

In other industries, the few established companies that have done so have spun off separate units that adopt the innovations independently—and eventually take over from their parent organizations, according to the book. One example it cites is Dayton Hudson Corp., the venerable department-store chain, which survived the onset of large discount retailers by creating a separate unit, Target Stores Inc. Target has become a major force in discount retailing.

Paul D. Houston, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, based in Arlington, Va., is familiar with Mr. Christensen’s theories and research, though he has not read the book, which McGraw-Hill is due to publish next month. “I’m so pleased he is looking at the education space,” Mr. Houston said. “It’s going to be very provocative and probably a little controversial, in that it will force people to get out of the box to look at solutions.”

Mr. Houston cited the example of Target as one route school districts may follow to find the “flexibility, which we all know doesn’t exist” in public schools, to embrace student-centered innovation. “We’ve promoted, for some time, the idea of school superintendents creating their own charter schools, instead of resisting this stuff,” he said.

Some teachers’ union leaders are paying attention, too.

Favorable Reaction

The book is “brilliant,” said Adam Urbanski, the president of the Rochester, N.Y., affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and an AFT vice president. “Most people pose the question of how we can improve the current system,” he said. “[Mr. Christensen] poses the different question of how we can have a different system than what we already have.”

Mr. Christensen and his co-authors plan to talk to educators about their ideas in the coming year, including at national conferences of administrators and teachers. They also will lay out their ideas in the summer issue of the journal Education Next.

Online Opinion

A national survey of 3,200 adults found more support for advanced, college-level courses for high school students and online courses for rural students with limited coursetaking options than for courses targeting dropouts or home-schoolers.

Another vehicle is the Innosight Institute, the nonprofit think tank in Watertown, Mass., that Mr. Horn and Mr. Christensen co-founded in 2007. The institute will help grantmakers target “innovations that will have an impact on the structure and the performance of schools,” Mr. Christensen said.

He underscored that the book does not aim to frighten school leaders, but to urge them to treat the approaching changes as an opportunity rather than a threat.

“If they will set up heavyweight teams and create the new architecture for the curriculum in a new space—so they have a school within a school, or a different school underneath the umbrella of the district—at that level the school can truly transform itself,” he said.

Mr. Christensen suggested that the changes he foresees could have even broader implications.

“Whenever an industry gets disrupted, people always consume more, because it’s more affordable, it’s simpler, easier to access, to customize to what they need,” he said. “What a wonderful thing, that we would consume more education.”

DOUBLE-DOWN on our STEM ITEST Grant Work!

Fri, May 02, 2008

Summit: Save STEM or watch America fail

At current rates of investment in STEM research and education, America is losing its competitive edge, panelists warn

By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

Panelists say awareness is not enough and that the U.S. needs to take action.

Two years after a report called "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" warned that the United States is falling behind in math and science education, endangering America's competitiveness in the global economy, education leaders, lawmakers, and cabinet members met for a national summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss what progress--if any--has been made in closing the gap. Their verdict: The U.S. needs to make a greater investment in critical math, science, and research programs for these efforts to succeed.

In the two years since the National Academies issued its "Gathering Storm" report, Congress passed a bill called the America COMPETES Act, which outlined measures to improve math and science research and education. The legislation called for expanding science research by doubling the basic research budgets for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and the Department of Defense. It also created programs to hire and train more highly qualified math and science teachers and increase the number of Advanced Placement (AP) classes in underprivileged schools.

But the bill was only an authorization, not an appropriation, and lawmakers failed to fund many of these programs in the 2008 federal budget. (See "Final 2008 budget a mixed bag for schools.")

Though Congress passed many of the measures recommended by the "Gathering Storm" report, "we're [just] now in the process of passing appropriations to support those actions," acknowledged Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

"Authorizations are not enough," agreed Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. "We won't get anywhere without funding."

Private-sector funding from Exxon Mobil, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation has supported the creation of a project called the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI). In its first year, NMSI rolled out grants to launch AP Training and Incentive programs in seven states, as well as replicate a math and science teacher-training program called UTeach at 13 universities. (See "Schools aim to solve huge math problem.") But summit panelists said the federal government needs to step up its support for these kinds of initiatives, too.

Panelists cited many examples of success, such as the largest initial public offering in history and the launch of a new research university with a day-one endowment of $10 billion (equal to what it took MIT 142 years to accumulate).

Trouble is, these accomplishments are happening in China and Saudi Arabia, respectively--not in the United States. In fact, in spite of bipartisan agreement on the need to improve student achievement in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] disciplines, little has been done in the U.S.

In a recent op-ed piece published in advance of the summit, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, had this to say: "We are starting to see the consequences of our neglect in STEM. China has surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest exporter of information-technology products--and the U.S. has become a net importer of those products. We must redouble our efforts to ensure that America is the world's technological leader in the 21st century."

Even so, federal funding has not increased, according to reports from Tapping America's Potential and the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation. Basic research funding at federal agencies has not increased, and some programs have been cut. The research and development tax credit has not been made permanent and has been allowed to expire.

In addition, policy makers have not been able to agree on visa and permanent resident green-card reform for highly educated professionals.

G. Wayne Clough, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said nothing has really happened in the last two years to advance the goals of the "Gathering Storm" report. Declared Clough: "Our momentum has not only slowed--it's reversed."

Craig Barrett, chairman of the board at Intel Corp., condemned the shortsightedness of politicians and elected officials. "Unless you're a short-term program during an election [season], you won't get funding," he said. "We're not investing in the future; we're not looking forward, because we have this sense of entitlement."

"Churchill said that you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else," said Norman Augustine, CEO emeritus of Lockheed Martin. "Our nation's leaders need to follow through on their bipartisan effort in the America COMPETES Act and fund improvements to math and science education. Otherwise, our nation's greatest export is likely to be our jobs and our standard of living."

Sally Ride, chief executive officer of Sally Ride Science and the nation's first female astronaut, said it takes a long time to build a new foundation. "It reminds me of that Road Runner cartoon where the coyote keeps chasing after the road runner, and he keeps running and running until he realizes he's off the cliff and loses his footing. That's us right now," she explained.

Ride said she believes not enough people, especially parents and students, understand how important it is to take an interest in science. She cited a report from Public Agenda, titled "Important, But Not for Me: Parents and Students in Kansas and Missouri Talk About Math, Science, and Technology Education," which found that even though parents and students say they understand the importance of STEM education, they don't see how it applies to them personally.

Charles Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering and former president of MIT, believes Americans are simply too comfortable and are riding out the momentum gained by the rise of STEM education in the 1950s and 60s.

"The enemy I fear most is complacency," said Vest. "The science and engineering talent, tools, and research required to prosper and be a world leader in this century do not grow on trees. We urgently need to invest in people and knowledge and create well-paying jobs. We must again be the ‘can do' nation--building a strong, competitive economy and meeting the challenges of energy, security, healthcare, and global change."

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., said he believes the U.S. is falling behind in STEM education because Americans "value the fruits of science, but they don't know where they come from. That's why we're currently under-investing in R&D in every sector. It's a result of the 1950s, where we had a bimodal population. We basically told people: ‘If you're not going to be a scientist, then don't bother studying science.'"

Wolf attributed the lack of appropriations to the state of the country's fiscal health. Because of the nation's $54 trillion debt, and with the dollar decreasing in value every day, America simply doesn't have the funds needed to support STEM programs or provide more for the National Science Foundation and NASA, he said.

"Every science program is under discretionary spending," said Wolf. "This needs to change; but how? Should the U.S. declare bankruptcy?"

For many panelists, boosting the federal investment in STEM-related research and education begins with creating a greater sense of urgency.

"The initial [Gathering Storm] report helped to start and maintain public focus," said Vest, "but now we must establish a sense of urgency, not just awareness."

Tom Luce, CEO of the National Math and Science Initiative, said the summit's goal is to help move the report from the playing field to the goal line.

"We're here to help implement strategies, not just talk about what the report says. It's more than just a report--it's an action plan that needs to be developed," said Luce.

According to Clough, Congress and the general population need to understand the link between this report and the economy. He said Americans need to care about the COMPETES Act and many other calls to action delivered by the report, because without STEM education, America won't be able to compete globally--causing a stagnation of median income and a lower standard of living.

"People at the state level get what's going on. We're just lacking the will at the national level," he said.

Concluded Vest: "Tell your representatives and senators--as well as your favorite presidential candidate--that funding math and science education, investing in basic research and development, and welcoming the best and brightest from around the world is the only way to guarantee that their children and grandchildren will enjoy the continuously rising standard of living that Americans have come to expect.

"America can't afford to wait while the rest of the world surges forward. The Cold War is over. Globalization and modernization are racing ahead, there are billions of new competitors in the economic race with the United States--and we are falling behind."

National Academies http://www.nationalacademies.org
Department of Education http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml
National Math and Science Initiative http://www.nationalmathandscience.org
UTeach http://uteach.utexas.edu
Tapping America's Potential http://tap2015.org
Task Force on the Future of American Innovation http://www.futureofinnovation.org
Sally Ride on TechWatch http://www.eschoolnews.com/video-center/esn-techwatch/?i=53391;_hbguid=0f29fd65-c137-45d2-8967-f0ad7e1ee463

Cognitive Educational Competitiveness Differentiator

May 2, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist

The Cognitive Age

By DAVID BROOKS

If you go into a good library, you will find thousands of books on globalization. Some will laud it. Some will warn about its dangers. But they’ll agree that globalization is the chief process driving our age. Our lives are being transformed by the increasing movement of goods, people and capital across borders.

The globalization paradigm has led, in the political arena, to a certain historical narrative: There were once nation-states like the U.S. and the European powers, whose economies could be secured within borders. But now capital flows freely. Technology has leveled the playing field. Competition is global and fierce.

New dynamos like India and China threaten American dominance thanks to their cheap labor and manipulated currencies. Now, everything is made abroad. American manufacturing is in decline. The rest of the economy is threatened.

Hillary Clinton summarized the narrative this week: “They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything. They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced, and nobody said anything.”

The globalization paradigm has turned out to be very convenient for politicians. It allows them to blame foreigners for economic woes. It allows them to pretend that by rewriting trade deals, they can assuage economic anxiety. It allows them to treat economic and social change as a great mercantilist competition, with various teams competing for global supremacy, and with politicians starring as the commanding generals.

But there’s a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn’t really explain most of what is happening in the world.

Globalization is real and important. It’s just not the central force driving economic change. Some Americans have seen their jobs shipped overseas, but global competition has accounted for a small share of job creation and destruction over the past few decades. Capital does indeed flow around the world. But as Pankaj Ghemawat of the Harvard Business School has observed, 90 percent of fixed investment around the world is domestic. Companies open plants overseas, but that’s mainly so their production facilities can be close to local markets.

Nor is the globalization paradigm even accurate when applied to manufacturing. Instead of fleeing to Asia, U.S. manufacturing output is up over recent decades. As Thomas Duesterberg of Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a research firm, has pointed out, the U.S.’s share of global manufacturing output has actually increased slightly since 1980.

The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S.

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.

It’s not that globalization and the skills revolution are contradictory processes. But which paradigm you embrace determines which facts and remedies you emphasize. Politicians, especially Democratic ones, have fallen in love with the globalization paradigm. It’s time to move beyond it.

Reading First Initiative

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May 2, 2008

An Initiative on Reading Is Rated Ineffective

By SAM DILLON

President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released on Thursday.

The program, known as Reading First, drew on some of Mr. Bush’s educational experiences as Texas governor, and at his insistence Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, and Congressional Democrats and federal investigators criticizing conflict of interest among its top advisers.

“Reading First did not improve students’ reading comprehension,” concluded the report, which was mandated by Congress and carried out by the Department of Education’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. “The program did not increase the percentages of students in grades one, two or three whose reading comprehension scores were at or above grade level.”

The study, “Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report,” analyzes the performance of students in 12 states who were in grades one to three during the 2004-5 and 2005-6 school years. It is to be followed early in 2009 with a final report that will analyze additional follow-up data, the institute’s director, Grover J. Whitehurst said.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and President Bush have consistently extolled Reading First as a highly effective program. But last year, Congressional Democrats reduced financing for the program for this year by about 60 percent, to about $400 million from the $1 billion it had received in several previous years.

On Thursday, Ms. Spellings had no comment on the study. Amanda Farris, a deputy assistant secretary of education, said in a statement that Ms. Spellings planned to look at the study “to inform our efforts,” and would “look forward to reviewing the final report.”

Ms. Farris said that one of the consistent messages Ms. Spellings has heard from educators, principals and state administrators “is about the effectiveness of the Reading First program in their schools and their disappointment with Congress” for cutting its financing.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the education committee, and who has long criticized the program, said, “The Bush administration has put cronyism first and the reading skills of our children last, and this report shows the disturbing consequences.”

In 2006, John Higgins, the department’s inspector general, reported that federal officials and private contractors with ties to publishers had advised educators in several states to buy reading materials for the Reading First program from those publishers.

The Reading First director, Chris Doherty, resigned in 2006, days before the release of Mr. Higgins’s report, which disclosed a number of e-mail messages in which Mr. Doherty referred to contractors or educators who favored alternative curriculums seen as competitors to the Reading First approach as “dirtbags” who he said were “trying to crash our party.”

Research: Template http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20084016/index.asp