Archive for March, 2010

Obama’s Blueprint for Education – Richard Rothstein criticizes

March 29th, 2010

cross posted from Daily Kos

I have already weighed in on the Blueprint, in Obama’s “Blueprint” for education – why this teacher cannot support it. Today I want to call to your attention a very important critic by Richard Rothstein, whose current position is as a research associate at the Education Policy Institute, but who spent 1999-2002 as the national education columnist for The New York Times

On March 23 he posted A blueprint that needs more work at the EPI website. His is a balanced examination, but one that is nevertheless more critical than complimentary. I am going to urge that anyone interested in public education carefully read his entire critique. I am going to focus on several issues that caught my attention. I invite your continued reading.

A major focus of Rothstein’s critique is the administration’s emphasis on students being college ready upon graduation from high school. He actually begins by discussing the funding of college, something addressed in the recent reconciliation bill on health insurance reform. He compliments the administration for recognizing the need to make college more affordable/accessible, writing

It would be foolish to try to re-organize elementary and secondary education to make students “college-ready” if college itself becomes less affordable.

But let’s take a look at the goal of having students college ready. The Blueprint calls for all graduates to be college or career ready by 2020. This replaces the requirement of NCLB that all students be 100% proficient in reading and math in 2014. Let me quote how Rothstein embarks on exploring this topic:

The Blueprint’s overall theme is that by 2020 all students should graduate from high school “College and Career Ready.” Administration officials have explained that this entails the ability to gain admission to an academic college program without having to take remedial courses. (The addition of “Career” to “College Ready” is meaningless, because what the Administration intends to convey is that some students may choose to pursue a non-college career, but would still have gained the qualifications to enter an academic college program if they wished.) This is, perhaps, the most disturbing aspect of the Blueprint. It indicates that the Administration may have learned little from the NCLB experience.

He goes on to quote Duncan as describing the 100% proficiency requirement of NCLB as “utopian” and it is worth noting that those in the Congress knew it was not achievable, but did not believe you could move forward with a more achievable goal of say 75 or 80% proficient, certainly not in legislation labeled “No Child Left Behind.” Then after noting that a level of proficiency cannot be simultaneously “challenging” for students at the top and bottom of normal distribution, Rothstein offers three powerful paragraphs, which I think need to be offered in their entirety:

But aside from ridicule, NCLB’s adoption of this goal did great harm to public education. It created incentives for educators to lie to the public and claim that they could achieve something that they knew was unachievable. It created well-known incentives to “define down” proficiency, to make it possible for more students to pass themselves off as proficient. It engendered a culture of cynicism in public education, and it discredited public education in the broader community, as it became apparent that school leaders could not deliver what they were promising.

Any institution that sets an impossible goal runs the risk of such cynicism and loss of legitimacy.

The goal of all students college-ready by 2020 is just as fanciful as the goal of all students proficient by 2014. Today, perhaps 20 percent of all youth graduate high school fully prepared for academic college. It should certainly be higher. Aspiring to make it higher is a worthy ambition. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable.

Thus, the key selling point for the Blueprint, the idea that all students will be career or college ready, is as unachievable – or if you will, false – as was NCLB’s goal of 100% proficiency. We are now at 20% ready for college. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable. Which in my mind makes the entire proposal laughable.

There is so much more in this superb analysis of the Blueprint. Just on this point, while the administration tries to divert criticism by calling the goal aspirational, Rothstein cuts quickly to the chase. He notes that schools serving disadvantaged children will be most likely to fail this aspirational goal and continue to suffer sanctions just as under NCLB.

For these schools, the same cynicism, the same false promises, the same gaming, will be stimulated as occurred with NCLB.

Rothstein argues that middle class schools will be harmed by this, that the pressue to dumb down standards of readiness will parallel what happened to standards of proficiency, and then warns

Promising to make all students college-ready by 2020 is, in effect, an attack on the quality of America’s institutions of higher education.

Remember, this is on a key selling point of the administration’s education proposal. While Rothstein offers some compliments on parts of the Blueprint – funding some states to broaden their curricula and assessment, providing funds for support outside the regular school day – on the whole he is at least skeptical if not downright critical. Those who have read my post will again encounter criticisms of the administration’s shift away from formula-based programs, especially in a time of economic distress and pressu4e (and Rothstein properly credits the education funding in ARRA for having perhaps prevented the laying off of a third of a million teachers and other school employees).

There is more, much more in this 3219 word piece, which originally appeared as part of the group “blogging” effort on education at National Journal. As noted, I strongly urge people to read it.

In his penultimate paragraph, Rothstein offers this:

We can hope that the Administration thinks further about its proposals, and revises them as they proceed through Congress. It is, in any event, virtually certain that the Blueprint will not be adopted in its present design by this Congress, and perhaps not even by the next.

He may be correct. While the House (Miller) and Senate (Harkin) chairmen of the relevant authorizing committees might be inclined to give Obama what he wants on an issue he has said is important to him, they cannot control what their members think. When Duncan appeared on the Hill, most of the senior members of the House Committee were more than a little skeptical and challenging in their questions and commentary, and there were similar concerns offered by some of the senior Republicans, including ranking members Kline (House) and Enzi (Senate). Further, even if authorized, the proposal would have to be funded and House Appropriations Chair David Obey of Wisconsin made clear in his questioning of Duncan his unwillingness to go along merely because the President wants it. He is a 41 year member of the House, a close ally of Speaker Pelosi, who was trusted to preside over the House voting on the Senate Health Insurance Reform bill.

So perhaps I should end as does Rothstein. Here is his final paragraph:

This suggests an unintended benefit of the Blueprint. For the foreseeable future, Arne Duncan will continue to be responsible for administering NCLB. Having now gone on record that its provisions are seriously flawed and that compliance with them is doing American education great harm, the Secretary will have no coherent choice but to begin issuing wholesale waivers to states from compliance with the old law. If it accomplishes this much, the Blueprint will have done a great service.

In other words, like me, Rothstein really does not think much of the Blueprint.

So, what do you think?

Peace.

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Education: A Race to Equity Instead of the Race to the Top

March 28th, 2010

One of the important names in education that too many currently involved in making policy do not seem to know is Herbert Kohl. Those of us on the Progressive end of the educational spectrum know how important the insight he has offered are, and rare is the progressive thinker on education who has not read several of his books, most notably 36 Children and “I Won’t Learn from You:” and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment, the latter a reworking of a slightly earlier essay.

Beginning in Harlem in 1962, Kohl has taught every grade from Kindergarten to College, including being a visiting professor at Swarthmore College.

During a previous time of re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Kohl worked with the late Senator Paul Wellstone on building Opportunity to Learn ideas into the law (you can explore OTL at this Google search).

Recently Kohl sent out an email on A Race To Equity, the contents of which are publicly available quoted in another email on the Assessment Reform Network list archive. I want to share with you and explore the ideas Kohl presents.

I want to focus on a series of questions that Kohl suggests should be answered as part of how we evaluate if we are truly and honestly are going to address the real issues of school equity.

Let me begin as Kohl poses the issue:

When considering school failure, consideration must be given to the situation and circumstances under which children learn. Jonathan Kozolâs Savage Inequalities dramatically documents the lack of opportunity presented to many poor children. Taking off from the, we raised the issue of how to negate those inequalities. The question that droves this analysis was: Do all children have the same opportunities to learn? We were careful to avoid the question of poverty, family background, etc., because we wanted to make strictly educational arguments. We wanted to focus specifically on the conditions of schooling and make the opportunity to learn an equity issue.

Kohl suggests we need a series of measures of equity, and ofers a list some. Let me note that absent some equality of opportunity those in so-called failing schools are often disadvantaged even beyond the prior learning with which they arrive in our schools and classroom. As Kohl writes in the conclusion of the piece from which I am quoting,

My feeling is that progressives should advocate a “race to equity” – a
multibillion dollar initiative to bring some of the most impoverished schools up to the material and pedagogical conditions of the most effective public schools in the country.

I am going to list in bold each of the questions Kohl proposes and then offer some commentary of my own.

What are the facilities necessary to promote equitable learning? We should realize that the physical setting of school can make a difference in the effectiveness of instruction and learning. If nothing else, students can quickly ascertain that their learning is not important if the facilities in which they attend school are decrepit, falling apart, with leaking roofs, heating/ac that does not work, etc. Is there some minimal standard upon which we should be insisting as a precondition to our expectations for learning? We know that wealthy communities often have superb facilities, modern buildings, and the like, while poorer communities, in both urban and rural settings, often conduct classes in buildings as much as a century old, lacking adequate electrical systems for modern equipment as just one indication of how they lag.

What is an equitable ratio of students to teachers?Please note: teacher/student ration is not identical to class size, although it is closely related. It is possible to have a ratio that is too high yet keep class sizes manageable by having teachers responsible for more classes, perhaps removing a planning period and forcing all planning and collaboration and grading to take place outside of paid school hours. Of course, such an approach burns out and discourages teachers, which inevitably leads to other problems. Whether you want to think of the ratio, or of class sizes, recognize this: in our elite private schools those ratios are much smaller than is often the case in schools in economically distressed or isolated communities. In some of our wealthier communities, ratios and class sizes tilt more in the direction of what we see in elite private schools. There are some communities which have made a major commitment on these issues – I live in Arlington Virginia, where I taught in a middle school for one year in which my four sets of students ranged from 19 to 24. By contrast, I have taught most of my career in Prince George’s County MD, where in my current high school I have six sets of students with one class having 15 (it is a special program) and my other five ranging from 27 to 37. We know that there is research that supports the idea of smaller classes leading to more effective instruction, especially in elementary. Or if the elementary class has 30 students that there is a teacher aide to assist, or there are co-taught classes: in secondary one can co-teach language arts and social studies, having two teachers for perhaps 40-50 students.

What is the range and scope of a learning program that promotes equitable learning â this would include the arts, opportunity for athletics and cultural learning, advanced placement courses, science labs? Note that this is far beyond the sometimes exclusionary emphasis on reading and mathematics that was the result often seen in schools of lower socioeconomics because of the emphasis on test scores in those two domains under No Child Left Behind. I will acknowledge that Obama has spoken about broadening our understanding of what an education should include, and that the administration’s Blueprint allows schools/systems/states to measure performance in other subjects, but for the supposed bottom 5% / 5,000 schools the determination is still being made solely on reading and mathematics. If we narrow what a child experiences in school we do little than perpetuate or even aggravate the unequal status with which that child arrives in our schools. Somehow we need to remember that while literacy and numeracy are important, sometimes they are best learned in a broader context in which the student can experience a broader sense of learning and education. Similarly, we must be able to provide in every school the opportunity to challenge the gifted students that exist in every school, even those in our poorest or most isolated communities.

What are the credentials teachers are expected to have to produce excellence in learning? This question is going beyond the formal licensing today, that is, do you have a complete teaching credential? NCLB said that every teacher was supposed to be “highly qualified” but it was too easy to limit that to paperwork and coursework. We certainly need to have some standards of what we expect those to who we entrust the future of our children to bring to the classroom. What are those characteristics that we can see make a real difference? Can we establish some means of measuring them, so that we do not assume that grades and test scores of teacher candidates are the only measure? Here I note of my five student teachers the one with the highest grades and test scores was totally unable to connect with the students, whereas several with what some might consider mediocre evidence in testing and grades had already demonstrated a real interest and ability in finding ways of motivating and challenging a diverse group of students, both succeeded as student teachers and then later as teachers in our building.

What kind of wages and conditions of work contribute to educational opportunity for children? These are both important issues. Let’s address separately. First, if we want to attract and retain teachers we have to be willing to pay them a livable wage. Otherwise we will lose them to other careers, or else force them to work 2nd jobs in order to make ends meet. That is a minimum requirement. Conditions of work are equally important. That includes for many of us the ability to be flexible in meeting the needs of the students, having the support necessary to meet those needs, having the materials and equipment, being in an environment which is not overly punitive either to students or the adults serving those students, being in a setting where it is possible to work with the parents and the larger community for the success of the students. I will acknowledge that money is insufficient by itself to address the issues confronting our schools, but there is no doubt lack of money can undercut our best efforts. And please, do not simply compare the total amount spent per student as a means of undercutting that: yes, DC spends a lot per student, but much of that goes to mandated special education costs, to security, to a top-heavy administrative structure (including record keeping in excruciating detail of things easy to measure but which have not been shown to translate into better instruction), and not to improving instruction in the classroom.

What kinds of supplies and equipment must all school have access to (text books, computers, etc.)? IS it equitable that some school systems have a ratio of computers to students up to 10 times those in other schools? How does one teach laboratory science without labs, equipment, and supplies? What if a school lacks a gymnasium or safe athletic fields? Do some schools still lack chairs and desks for all students? What about a library, with books that students can take out? Remember, for some of our students there is little if any access to public libraries: in rural areas they are too far away, in some urban areas going to a public library – if the community still has one – might require crossing the territory of a hostile gang.

What kind of facilities should house an equitable learning environment for all children? The key word is EQUITABLE. That does not have to be identical. I addressed some of this in the beginning. It starts with the building itself. This is not merely the physical condition and age. It is also whether the building itself encourages or discourages learning. We have many models of building layout that can be considered as part of this.

What kind of standards and measures should be used to measure a school’s effectiveness as an equitable learning institution? Are the standards which we impose upon students and schools appropriate for where we begin? That is, is it appropriate to measure all against a uniform and often arbitrary level of performance rather than on the growth we are able to to generate in our students? How much are we willing to go beyond easy to score mass-produced tests? What measures beyond test scores are important indicators of whether that school is providing equity of opportunity for our students? Let me offer a couple of things one might consider. School lunch, attendance, opportunity of extra-curricular activities, opportunity for students to explore subjects in depth, multiple measures (which does not mean just multiple tests) of student learning – these are just a few things that come to my mind as I read this question. But also, how do we set standards? Here I think of the current effort for Common Core Standards that were being developed without the input of teachers or professional organizations of the content areas, but had lots of input from think tanks and testing organizations and certain groups arguing for what I would consider a narrow concept of “reform.” I might suggest that in order to determine what standards we should apply, we will first have to be willing to address an issue that still remains largely unanswered: what is the purpose of our providing for public schooling? What is the purpose of school? If we are willing to acquiesce in the sorting process and accept the idea that schooling is driven by a limited idea of economic competitiveness, then I suggest we will continue to be frustrated with the results, in large part because our students will be frustrated with what they experience in the classroom. Perhaps we should try talking to students, current and recently graduated, about what their experience has been, what they think they need, and why?

What role should parents and community organizations play to ensure equitable schools in their communities? Schools do not exist in isolation. In too many cases community support seems limited to honoring athletic teams. In some cases, we are fortunate that there is further support and honoring of academic “winners” – the scholarships one, robotics and Latin and Science and History competitions. Community organizations can provide so much more: guest speakers, field trips, supplemntal materials for classrooms, internship opportunities.

And parents: if we want their involvement do we provide an opportunity for them to participate? Is there even an active parent organization? What about providing opportunities for meeting with teachers and administrators on a schedule that works for parents? In many well-off communities, it is not difficult for a parent to adjust a work schedule for a parent conference. What if the parents both work two jobs, for which it represents a loss of income? What if the parents lack language skills, are we prepared to work with community associations to provide translators?

I have in this posting barely scratched the possibilities we could explore in the questions Kohl raises. And I am sure Kohl would tell us that these are only some of the questions we need to consider if we are going to make our schools more equitable.

Perhaps some do not care about school equity. There is a strand of thought among many in America which has no trouble with inequity, which is prepared to justify the increasing economic and social disparities in this nation. After all, we have seen some of that thinking in recent debates over health care reform.

I have experienced up close what the inequity in access to health care means. This weekend I again volunteered in dental triage at a Mission of Mercy seeking to bring basic dental care to people who normally go without. Health and nutrition and education are interrelated. Equity does not have to mean equal. But surely there should be some minimal levels beyond which as a society we understand we cannot allow some of our people to be trapped.

School is supposed to make a difference. Certainly we saw the explosion of the middle class in the decades after WWII in part because we opened up higher education through things like the GI Bill and various other programs, we opened up home ownership, we began to address some of the economic and racial inequity that was endemic in mid-20th century America.

I fear that we may have lost the belief that we can really provide opportunity for all. I worry that we are beginning, under the current economic pressures most of us are experiencing, to pull back from the concept that we have a responsibility for all of us. We may use language like “no child left behind” yet at the same time acquiesce as the educational opportunities for “other people’s children” to use the phrase made famous by Lisa Delpit are not really our concern.

Herbert Kohl has been one of the important voices on this, as has Jonathan Kozol, as have many who continue to labor within many schools which do not have the facilities, the larger community support, and thus struggle to provide equity of educational opportunity.

The original Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a product of Lyndon John’s Great Society. Johnson had after college and before politics served as a school teacher in a poor economic community. He had seen first hand the lack of educational equity and its impact.

A competition inevitably has winners and losers, and thus inevitably leaves some behind, our telling them that in some way their education is not important enough. That is wrong.

I do not claim to have all the answers. I note that too often we are not asking all the right questions. Herbert Kohl offers some questions I think we need to consider.

What do you think?

Peace.

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Let’s Banish Critical Thinking, Part 3: Reason & Evaluate

March 17th, 2010

No matter how close to the center their shot lands, beginning marksmen achieve success simply by hitting the target. As they learn, practice, and gain experience, the target’s center becomes their focus. They develop accuracy, intentionally steadying their state and securing the center in their sights. Thinking is similar. Engaging the target’s outer rings first supports movement toward the target’s center. Movement toward the center also increases the interaction between the rings.

Reasoning and evaluation, the target’s inner rings, are two sides of the same coin. Before we examine this coin, let’s briefly review the target’s outer circles: memorization and learning.

Some information possesses its greatest value when it’s memorized. At its best, memorizing enables efficiency in thinking and acting. However, memorizing, while valuable when engaged selectively, has its limits.

Learning often involves four core processes, or four “states” of thinking. (Thinking is more fluid than the term states suggests, but this simplification can help us understand its flow.) Through experience, the brain gains raw sensory data. During comprehension, the brain sorts, labels, and organizes the raw sensory data. Through elaboration, the brain examines the organized data for patterns, recalls relevant prior experiences, and blends the new data with your experiences to construct understanding. During application the brain practices using or expressing the new understanding. We should increase instruction in the skills of learning, not just guide student learning of core subject matter. In other words, we need to place more value and emphasis on teaching students how to self-teach (or self-learn). We need to teach them the thinking skills that enable self-directed learning.

Reasoning builds on learning because it requires knowledge of the subject about which one wants to think. That may seem obvious, but some instructional thinking programs suggest that by using their bag of tricks students will be able to think critically about anything. While certain understandings and skills do enable reasoning, there must be sufficient knowledge about the subject to avoid reasoning void of solid content or invalid due to misunderstanding.

Reasoning uses the ideas gained through learning to construct arguments, identify supportable conclusions, and structure ideas so that their relationships, value, and implications are evident. It also empowers decision-making.

Let’s watch learning and reasoning in action.

The Tour de France mesmerizes Stan. He knew that people raced on bikes, but he never saw the excitement this annual contest generates. A trip to a local bike shop intensifies Stan’s interest.

The bikes themselves, the accessory equipment, the experience of freedom riding even in the store’s parking lot draws Stan into a new world, and, thus, into learning. In conversation with the store’s knowledgeable salesperson, Stan asks questions about bike types, manufacturers, and basic equipment needs. He leaves with a copy of a book, in which he seeks new information on bike selection and maintenance. His vocabulary expands, as terms like derailleur and carbon-fiber frame contribute to his emerging understanding. Stan researches road vs. mountain vs. BMX bikes and considers what type of cycling most interests him. He charts information about various makes and models of bike and reviews expert opinions on each. He considers this data from various perspectives: What do riders say about a make/model? What are repair shops’ experience with each? What does each manufacturer reveal about the intended use for each of their models? Stan actively seeks needed information and organizes and examines it in ways that deepen his understanding of this new world.

Stan grows more excited as his learning deepens, and soon he is eager to purchase his own bike.

Enter reasoning.

Decision-making is similar to constructing a valid argument, and making a sound decision requires many of the same understandings and skills. For example, Stan’s research may have revealed that Brand A offers a longer warranty on all its bikes than all the other manufacturers he reviewed. Thus, he forms a statement that represents reality (i.e., not an opinion)—a “categorical statement”: “Brand A’s warranty is longer than the other manufacturers I am considering.” As he continues to review what his research reveals, he forms several such statements—some universal and some particular in nature.

Stan also monitors his thinking as he compares features on differing models. For example, Stan knows from his various test rides that he has a strong preference for a specific type of shifting and braking controls. When comparing controls, he stays aware that, because of his bias, he will likely favor models with his preferred controls. This is not an error in his thinking, but it does present an additional consideration.

Stan also monitors his thinking for fallacies. For example, he watches for post hoc errors, such as eliminating a make just because it is the company that supports his favorite cyclist’s main competitor—e.g., “They must make bikes for jerks because so-and-so rides one.”) He also tries to minimize emotionally potent factors—e.g., “I really like the detailing on this model. Since it’s cool, I’ll get that bike.”

Throughout this process, Stan is constructing a conditional argument with as much truth and validity his understanding of cycling allows. He is reasoning. When the time comes to discuss getting a bike with his parents, who offered to contribute to the purchase as part of Stan’s birthday present, he’s ready with a well-crafted “argument” and a decision made via his best reasoning abilities.

Note how Stan’s learning enabled his reasoning. Had he selected a bike on his first visit to the bike shop immediately following the Tour de France, he would likely have made a different, less-reasoned decision, which may or may not have proved to be a wise choice. Emotion would have been the main basis of his decision because he did not possess the understanding that his period of learning provided. Without knowledge of a subject, we tend to make affective, less-informed decisions. (Note, you can never completely eliminate emotion’s role in decision-making, but you can moderate its influence. See Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide for an extended discussion of this.)

Problem-solving follows a similar route. The first step involves learning about the problem and its context (or reviewing such information if the problem arises in a familiar area). Reasoning then both produces and evaluates potential solutions. If the first attempt does not solve the problem, analysis of the attempt in relation to the problem often leads to another potential solution. Though we often portray trial and error as an unstructured process, the truth is that better trials often result from learning and reasoning. (Think about it, do you really want a surgeon who approaches a problem through a pure, unthinking trial-and-error approach?) Selecting a potential solution is not that different from decision-making, which is a focused form of reasoning.

Now, you may be wondering, why my visual, the target, separates reasoning and evaluation when both seem to be involved in forming valid and truthful arguments. When I use the term evaluation, I mean the capacity to analyze, evaluate, and accept or reject someone else’s argument. This certainly requires the same understandings and skills of reasoning, but it requires understanding the argument and its constructs as formed by someone else.

Is this more difficult than forming valid arguments and engaging in metacognition throughout the process? I wouldn’t claim that, except that there is an additional step, and this additional step is crucial. The thinker must understand, without initial bias, the argument another makes. (We have plenty of adults in our nation’s capital and on our cable “news” networks who regularly demonstrate their lack of this crucial, additional step.) This requires overcoming challenges such as the error of discrediting the messenger rather than evaluating the message—an error that can hijack thinking before a single idea of the argument has been considered. This is a significant challenge that is largely absent from forming one’s own valid arguments.

Additionally, by learning to form truthful and valid arguments, students gain experiential knowledge that can aid valid evaluation. An analogy may help clarify this relationship. Housing inspectors undergo various levels of education and meet certain requirements depending on where their practice is located. Thorough inspectors often have construction experience. Knowing from experience where builders are tempted to take short-cuts helps the inspector know what to examine carefully. From constructing experience, the inspector gains knowledge that strengthens his evaluation capacity. Similarly, forming truthful and valid arguments aids evaluation of arguments made by others.

Reasoning and evaluation depend on skills. The table below details some of these essential abilities. (D. Q. McInerny’s Being Logical provides a great and succinct introduction to many of these concepts.)

These abilities can be viewed as a series of developmental steps that can be emphasized in the classroom. For example, a group of educators in Philadelphia took the ability to form conditional arguments and discussed, “What is the range of this skill? What do its initial steps of development look like? What would its fullest expression look like?” After we grappled with these concepts, we considered when instruction for each step might begin and where it might mature to mastery. Here’s what evolved:

Exploring thinking in this way helps a plan for instruction to emerge. Teachers gain guidance for actually teaching thinking and can better plan for its inclusion in learning.

Ideally, I believe we’d approach everything through a thinking lens. For example, instead of teaching magnetism as a science unit, we’d teach a thinking skill, such as stating premises and conclusions, using magnetism as the subject matter. Simply altering how we view and approach instruction can make the difference between students seeing us as the expert from whom they must learn and seeing themselves as capable learners who possess the skills they need to learn independently.

My intention in this series has not been to provide an exhaustive look at thinking but to suggest an alternate perspective. By seeing thinking as central to learning rather than a nice addition to classroom interaction, we can begin to explore the implications for our teaching, from what we teach to how we teach it. I have not explored creativity in this series. I plan to do so in my next post, which I’ll present as separate from this series.

Thank you for reading and for your comments. These posts are intended to be discussion starters. I certainly learn much from the interaction they spark. I hope you’ll learn, reason, and evaluate these ideas and share your own conclusions!

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If You Aren’t Alarmed, You Aren’t Paying Attention

March 8th, 2010

“Just out: Economic Report of the President. If you aren’t alarmed, you aren’t paying attention” read a tweet that cascaded down my screen.  The good dean is not known for hyperbole, so I indeed paid attention.

The Economic Report of the President is an annual report written by the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.   It’s an incredibly comprehensive document measuring the nation’s economic progress, and ultimately serves as a guide for the Administration’s domestic and economic policies.

Think there’s anything about education in there?   Better believe it.  Bits of K12′s past, present, and future are embedded.   That’s because—as much as it pains us to admit—education and business are inextricable.   There are very smart people who disagree, but I often worry that we’re not doing enough to connect the two.  Nevertheless, whether we choose to include future workforce preparation in our own educational philosophy or not, let’s take a look at how it fits into this year’s report.

The ghost of education’s past rears its head in the chart below, which shows unemployment rates for whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.   Unemployment for whites has actually been on the decline since October 2009, peaking at 9.4 percent.   In contrast, the rate for blacks and Hispanics continues to rise—last measured at 16 percent and 13 percent respectively.   Interestingly, the unemployment gap, like the the achievement gap, remains largely unchanged since 1990.   Perhaps there’s a relationship between the two.

The report also cites the sectoral shifts currently changing the nature of work—and how the “Great Recession has aggravated this already challenging trend.”  It further reads, “the United States is increasingly a knowledge-based society where workers produce services using analytical skills.  The changing economy offers tremendous opportunities for American workers in high technology, in the new clean energy economy, in health care, and in other high-skill fields.”

The less-sexy part of this phenomenon doesn’t sell as many books or warrant as many educonference presentations:  The labor market is also changing.  As stated in the report, “The prototypical American career once involved working for a single employer for many years, backed by a union that bargained for steady wage increases and for a pension that promised a stable, guaranteed income in retirement.”  Now, however,  “fewer than one in seven workers belongs to a union, and most people can count on changing employers several times over their careers.”  That trend is also expected to continue

What’s the problem?  Retirement.  Most pension plans now are “defined contribution“—meaning only employer contributions to the account are guaranteed, not the future benefits.   In other words, an individual who’s not financially savvy is screwed.

The educational attainment-to-income data is also in there, which most of us have seen before.  But, just in case you haven’t:  The more education someone has, the more money they’ll make.

What’s more striking is this chart:

For many years, there were more educated workers than demand for them.  But, as the trend stagnated, younger generations weren’t graduating at higher rates than older generations.  The trend led to income inequalities simply because a lower supply of college educated workers increased wages for high-skill jobs, subsequently dropping pay for lower-skill jobs needing less education.

A continuance of this trend will affect us more than we often consider.  The economics of education go beyond preparing children for the workforce, or even maintaining economic superiority.   Malcolm Gladwell describes the concept of the dependency ratio in this classic New Yorker piece.  What do you think the U.S. dependency ratio will look like when Baby Boomers retire?  Heathcare reform might help, but it’s not a fix.  Neither is education—at least not in it’s current state.

In the end, Dean Bruner and I were likely looking at this report through very different lenses, but his warning still rings true.   Education, like our economy, is in a period of transition.  Policy debates are raging across the country and even across my own state.  Politicization creates false dichotomies and we must maintain the ability to see the gray area.  We owe it to the next generation—in more ways than we realize.

Chad Ratliff is the Assistant Director of Instruction and Innovation Projects at Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia.

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