The Boston.com MCAS School Rankings Stink!

This post originally appeared on October 10, 2012.  However with the annual rankings going up again today, I thought I would share these thoughts again. 

Since the first time I saw the school rankings in the Boston Globe over a decade ago, I have been frustrated by the simplistic and misleading approach that this news outlet has taken in publicizing the scores from our state's high stakes test.  The approach is simply to rate the top schools from "Number One" to whatever the final number is depending on the grade level that was tested. For instance, if you were a school that had third graders in your building last spring then you had 954 other schools to compare yourself with.

As I discuss my thoughts here on these rankings, I need to make it clear that my intention is not to criticize or praise a school that I reference, but simply to clarify how this works for those who take these rankings too seriously.

Going back to third grade for a moment, the "number one" ranked school in the state in English Language Arts was the Richmond Consolidated School which had 100-percent of its students score in either Advanced or Proficient.  By the way, the Richmond Consolidated School tested only 19 students. Compare this to the school that had the largest third grade population in the state, the Woodland School in Milford, MA which tested 303 students and ranked 571.  Clearly we are comparing apples and oranges and it is unfair to the students and teachers to portray such a misleading picture. There are countless examples of these same types of comparisons that can be done at every grade level.  This is without even getting into the demographics of individual schools and communities.

Here's a another thing that irks me about the Boston.com ratings

Using the Grade 10 English Language Arts rankings as an example this time, I would like to ask this question.  Do you think that a school ranked "number one" clearly outperformed a school ranked 99th?  While the answer is an emphatic NO,  if I were a typical parent from Andover, Brookline or any of the 23 schools that were ranked 99 I would probably be wondering why my child's school is apparently so far away from "number one."

The explanation is pretty straight forward, there were 28 schools that had 100% of their students score either Advanced or Proficient and were therefore ranked "number one." The next ranking was "number 29," a ranking that was shared by 22 schools that had 99% of its students scoring in the top two levels of the ELA MCAS.  So, the good news for folks who ranked "number 99" is that 96% of their students scored either Advanced or Proficient.

Growth Scores Are A Better Measure

Thankfully our state's Department of Education has moved to a growth model in regards to testing.  What is a growth model?

Here is a quick definition from the DESE's website -

For K-12 education, the phrase "growth model" describes a method of measuring individual student progress on statewide assessments (tests) by tracking the scores of the same students from one year to the next. Traditional student assessment reports tell you about a student's achievement, whereas growth reports tell you how much change or "growth" there has been in achievement from year to year.

Shouldn't we be paying more attention to these measures? Isn't it more important to show where students were and how we track their growth and chart their progress compared to all of the students who had a similar score during the previous school year?   For example, if we had a student who was in the lowest category (warning), shouldn't we get some credit for moving them along to the next level (needs improvement)?  The obvious answer is - yes!

In addition, I am sure that there are students that walk in the door in September and could score in the advanced level on that year's MCAS test on day one of the school year.  Therefore, I think it is insignificant when these students score advanced in May of the same school year.  Again, we need to show that we are supporting student growth no matter where they are on day one of the school year.

One More Thing About Ranking Ourselves Based On Standardized Test Scores  

For those who aren't aware of the correlations between socioeconomics and standardized test, there are clear connections between standardized test results and the median household income in a community or a state.  Check out the graphic below depicting average NAEP scores across our country and the median household income in each state.

Source: http://www.edpolicythoughts.com/2012/10/why-does-massachusetts-rank-highly.html

Concluding Thoughts About Standardized Tests

In closing, I think that measuring student progress is critical. However, I think we have to keep standardized test results in the proper perspective. In Burlington, we are always of the opinion that we can do a better job for our students. There are certainly areas where we think our state tests scores could be better and we will have plans in place to accomplish this. However, we also have to be careful not to be focused solely on these tests when we talk about our progress.  Our feeling is that these tests are the floor and not the ceiling for what we hope to see our students accomplish.  As a community, we need to make sure that we are utilizing multiple measures to chart the progress of our schools and our students.  

As a parent of three children in another district (grade 1, grade 7 , and grade 9), I am less concerned about the standardized test scores of my students and more interested in whether or not they are developing the skills that they will need to be successful after their formal education is complete. I am fairly confident that their MCAS results or their scores on whatever new federal or state standardized test comes down the pike is not something that will have a major impact in their success.  If the major focus of their schools is on these results then I pretty sure I can find a computer program that can prepare them equally well.

Don't get me wrong, I think we need schools more than ever. The dilemma is that we need schools that realize the world that we are preparing our students for is one that has changed dramatically and that we cannot prepare students with business as usual.

Here are few blog posts that reference this idea:

An Interesting Question To Ponder - Are Schools KillingYour Child's Creativity?

Are Standardized Tests The Answer to Our Problems

An Interesting Question To Ponder: Are Schools Killing Your Child's Creativity?

A decade of No Child Left Behind: Lessons from a policy failure

It’s 2012: Help Me Find Some “Bold Schools”

The New Massachusetts Framework for Educator Evaluation - What are the goals?

In my last post, I asked the following questions about our states new evaluation system:  

Will all of this work being done by schools across the state to change the way we do teacher evaluation result in more engaging learning environments that prepare our students for the ever-evolving job market in the "real" world? Is that even the goal of this whole undertaking?

So here is what the state Board of Education stated as its objectives when it voted to adopt a new model for teacher evaluation:

• Promote growth and development amongst leaders and teachers,
• Place student learning at the center, using multiple measures of student learning, growth, and achievement,
• Recognize excellence in teaching and leading,
• Set a high bar for professional teaching status, and
• Shorten timelines for improvement.

A member of the Massachusetts Task Force on the Evaluation of Teachers and Administrators also stated the following:

"More than anything, evaluation systems should be recognizing, developing, and promoting the most talented and successful educators. We need an approach to evaluation that is all about celebrating excellence, and ensuring that those who excel also thrive in their workplaces, and stay in education."

While I agree with most of the bullets and the majority of the statement above, I think it is important that we take a step back and look at how we got to the point where our state and most other states have started to overhaul their teacher evaluation procedures.  We have to be sure to recognize the fact that a change of this nature is as much an adaptive (cultural) change for teachers as it is a technical change. Educational communities that embrace this fact and implement a transparent approach centered around focused conversations about teaching and learning will see success. If the focus is purely on meeting the new timelines and ensuring that every one of the 33 indicators is checked off then the results impact on teaching and learning will be limited.

Before I discuss some of the specific things that I think will help us make the transition to a new evaluation system successful, I think it is important to talk about why we are here. My next post will discuss how the poor job that schools have done evaluating teachers has gotten us to this point.

Can We Evaluate Our Way To Better Schools?

I spent three days last week at a workshop on the new Massachusetts Framework for Educator Evaluation.  The workshop facilitator did a wonderful job providing technical support and also leading us in some rich conversation about teaching and learning.

As we gear up for this undertaking in Burlington, I can't help wondering how we will look back upon this endeavor a decade from now? Will all of this work being done by schools across the state to change the way we do teacher evaluation result in more engaging learning environments that prepare our students for the ever-evolving job market in the "real" world? Is that even the goal of this whole undertaking?

Top Post #9 - The iPad In Schools: Is It A Solution Or A Problem?

This was cross posted on Edudemic

As I look to unplug a bit during the first week of summer vacation, I am continuing to repost my top posts from last year. Below is #9 from April of this year.

  

Slide via Greg Kulowiec 

 The question above comes from Greg Kulowiec's Keynote Presentation last Thursday - What is the answer with iPads? - at the iPad Summit in Atlanta, and it is a critical question for educators involved in iPad initiatives (or any 1:1 initiative) to reflect upon. Thinking as a school administrator who pushed for the deployment of over 1,000 devices in his school, I have to admit that I initially responded somewhat defensively as I went with iPad as a solution. However, as Greg allowed the question to linger and began his rationale for looking at iPad as a problem for schools, I began to cast aside my blinders and look at this question from a broader perspective. When Greg asked the following question, "Are we just taking iPads and slapping them into our existing structure?" I knew I had blown it with my initial answer: Of course, I knew that looking at iPad (or any device) as the solution infers a pretty simplistic look at the issues inherent with our current educational system. It also takes away the ownership of the issues from the people in the system, especially if we think simply adding a thing will improve teaching and learning. But what about looking at iPad (or another technological resources) as the problem? How can this help us? Well, the slide below is just one example of what is happening within educational institutions due to the development of technological resources that can change the way we learn. The slide references a situation that occurred at Ryerson University in Toronto when students formed a Facebook study group to help them prepare for exams.

   

Slide via Greg Kulowiec[/caption] 

 This is just one example of the countless issues that not only crop up when we bring new technology into static institutions, but also when those who think about how they can do things differently are stifled by those who cannot immediately escape their traditional thinking. I believe that educators need to understand that their initial discomfort is not just about the technology, it is also about the fact that the way learners access information has changed forever. Due to these changes, educational institutions will need to look long and hard at their practice in order to assure the success of the students whom they serve. Justin Reich described this scenario last week in a post on his EdTech Researcher Blog titled The iPad as a Trojan Mouse :

“...what new technologies like tablets or laptops can do is open new avenues for conversation. In schools where every child has a portable, multimedia creation device, what can we do differently? What is possible now that wasn't possible before?"

In Burlington, we built a formal mechanism for the conversations with the formation of a 1:1 Implementation Team comprised of staff, students, parents, and community members. The ideas that emanated from this group have set the stage for our professional development plans for teachers and parents, leading to summer-long edcamp opportunities, our digital publishing collaborative, technology workshops for parents, and the BHS Help Desk student support team just to name a few. There is no doubt that the conversations surrounding the arrival of iPads into our classroomss have been about much more than just how to use a piece of technology. These discussions have opened the door to deeper insights surrounding student (and adult) learning that have begun to change the way we operate.

Here’s to hoping that more school communities open their doors to these problems as well as the meaningful conversations that follow.

Related articles

• Who Cares About Devices!? (patrickmlarkin.com)
• Guest Post: Thoughts on Year One of 1:1 in Grade One (patrickmlarkin.com)
• The Smart Way to Use iPads in the Classroom (slate.com)

Top Posts #7 - Pew Survey Shows We Are Not Adequately Preparing Students

As I look to unplug a bit during the first week of summer vacation, I am continuing to repost my top posts from last year. Below is #7 from last November.

Analog Digital (Photo credit: DigitalAlan)

A very interesting study, titled How Teens Do Research In The Digital World, was released by the Pew Research Center this week.  Unfortunately, the part that seemed to get the most publicity centered around the fact that the majority of the teachers surveyed, 64% to be exact, said that "digital tools do more to distract students than to help them academically."

A Mashable post by Neha Prakash caught my eye with a headline title Technology Creating A Generation of Distracted Students.  

A More Accurate Headline in my mind would have been - 

Majority of Teachers Take No Responsibility For Lack Of Student Classroom Engagement

The feelings of teachers surveyed are contradictory. On one hand, those surveys say the following:

"Overall, teachers who participated in this study characterize the impact of today’s digital environment on their students’ research habits and skills as mostly positive..."

On the other hand those surveyed said this:

"some teachers worry about students’ overdependence on search engines; the difficulty many students have judging the quality of online information; the general level of literacy of today’s students; increasing distractions pulling at students and  poor time management skills; students’ potentially diminished critical thinking capacity; and the ease with which today’s students can borrow from the work of others."  

The findings in the excerpt above leave me with the following questions:

• Who is responsible for teaching students how to judge the quality of online information?
• Whose definition of literacy are we using here? 
• How many educators can meet NCTE's definition of literacy?
• Are students distracted because of technology or because of boring lessons/assignments?
• Can't increased access help us improve the critical thinking capacity of our students?

While many things have changed for learners and things have certainly become more complicated on many levels, one thing that has remained a constant is the fact that who we know is a critical facet in our learning journey.  We need our students to have access to people who see the possibilities and are willing to embrace some of the struggles that are inherent in a world where learners have so many options.  

Top Post #4 - Is The iPad King? It Is For Us And That's All That Matters (For Now)

(This post originally ran in January.)

BHS students on their iPads

I have seen a few posts lately on the topic of which device is the best device for a school looking to go 1:1 and put a web-enabled device in the hands of each student.  One that caught my attention yesterday was  5 Reasons The iPad Will Stay King Of The Classroom which was posted on Edudemic.

The Edudemic post, written by Adam Webster, notes that the iPad has the following advantage over a laptop:

"The iPad, its workflow and its apps, allow for real change and makes it easy. Your students will create work that not only wasn’t possible before their innovative use of the technology, but that you as their teacher had never even thought of."

From my own experience in year two of an iPad 1:1 program here in Burlington, I agree wholeheartedly that the newness of this device and the necessity of creating new work flows leads to more innovative uses than we would see from a laptop.  However, this can only happen in schools and classrooms where students are allowed flexibility that is not common in many traditional classrooms.

My point is that neither the iPad nor any other new gadget or gizmo will allow students the type of discoveries that Adam describes in his post unless it is coupled with a mindset that is still atypical in most schools. This change I am talking about is one that does not lead students in step-by-step processes to complete the most rudimentary task, instead it is a learning environment where students have clear outcomes to achieve, but are left with many ways to achieve these outcomes.

So I guess I continue to worry about schools that gobble up iPads (or any other digital device) thinking that it alone will have a transformational effect on learning.  Greg Kuloweic made the point very well in answer to the question "Why iPad?" on the EdTechTecher Site.

"Fundamentally, I believe that an iPad can neither be good or bad. All it can ever be is an iPad. I argue instead, that when used effectively and with specific goals in mind, iPads can have a positive impact on education." 

So after a long lead in to reiterating the fact that people change schools, not devices, I am at my second and larger concern.  This one revolves around our ability and the ability of our students to think outside of the platform that we have chosen.  Personally, I love Apple devices and have a an iPhone, iPad and MacBook to prove it. However, when it comes to the iPad, I do worry about creating a school full of iOS "app-dependent" students and staff. I worry that our choice of platform will limit the thinking of our students down the road and box them in.

Adrianna (Photo credit: patricklarkin1967)

While I believe that we have made the best decision for our school today, things change quickly and we need to create organizational and individual flexibility to adapt to these changes when they occur.  So for the immediate future I  believe we are on the right path, but there is no discounting the fact that there are forks in the road that we will need to anticipate.  No King rules forever...

Top Posts #2 - An Uplifting Video (Created By A 16-Year Old)

The post below originally ran on January 1, 2013 with the uplifting video which was created by 16-year old Sophia Pink, the daughter of author Daniel Pink. As I watched again last night, I thought it was a perfect blog post (and video) to share one again as we come to the last day of school in Burlington.


As my last post of 2012 mentioned, I love sharing work created by students with others.  I am amazed on a daily basis by the thoughtfulness and insights that students have to offer and I feel so fortunate to be an educator in a day and age where it is so easy to share these examples with others in our school community and beyond.

With our students off on vacation for the past week, there really hasn't been anything new to share from our students, but I did come across an uplifting video that was created by a 16-year old in Washington D.C.  Thanks to Daniel Pink for sharing the impressive work of his daughter Sophia on his blog today!   It is a perfect video to watch as we begin a new calendar year and we consider the types of people and environments that can inspire us.

As I leave you with a favorite quote of mine below, I hope that you all feel the urge to honk often in 2013!

More Chatter about Cheating

Cheat sheet in a juice box. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The conversations around cheating have taken off since yesterday's post Cheating is Cheating, but why does it happen?

My good friend George Couros nailed one of the key points from my perspective with the comment below. Those of us who have spent any significant time working in schools need to make sure that we have not lost touch with what is happening outside of schools. If we are preparing students exactly the same way as we always have then there is a problem

This morning I was excited to see a blog post from a Paul Huebl,  a teacher in Adelaide, Australia who wrote a great post titled Cheating v. Inspiration.  While I encourage you to read the entire post, the portion that stuck out for me was where Paul talked about assessments.

"What are we assessing when we give a test? Is it whether a student has good memory? Whether they can apply knowlwedge  to a new situation? Whether they can perform well on tests…? I propose that any situation where a child is able to cheat, is not a very good assessment (*most of the time)."

Finally my friend Tony Baldasaro shared a story from his first year as a teacher this morning in a post titled One of the Worst Decisions in my Career... . Tony recounts his experience having "no mercy" on a student he caught with a cheat sheet and giving an otherwise top student an insurmountable hole to dig himself out of as one of his veteran colleagues urged him to hold the line.

Again, I am thankful for a PLN with so many lifelong learners (like Tony, Paul and George) who reflect on their practice and are flexible in the interest of students. Tony's question is one that all of us who have ever given a zero to a "cheater" should consider.

"What would have happened if I taught differently, assessed more creatively, and engaged the (student) in the learning in such a way as to emphasize learning and not the grade?"

While I know there are many different directions that this conversation can take based on the unique circumstances of individual cases, I think we need to ensure that we are emphasizing learning and not punishments.

Let's Talk About Suicide - TED Weekend Starts An Uncomfortable Conversation

TED and The Huffington Post have made suicide and depression the focus of this weekend's TED Weekend.  There are articles by friends and family members who lost loved ones to suicide and a great talk (above) by JD Schramm, a suicide survivor.

As someone who lost his father at the age of 12 to suicide, I am comforted by those who seek to encourage discussions of depression and suicide. While we have made progress in this area since my dad's suicide 33 years ago , we still have quite a bit of work to do to support those individuals struggling with the stigma of depression and those families struggling with the pain, guilt, and perceived disgrace that is associated with suicide.

I have always been bothered by the fact that there is far less discussion about mental illness than so many physical illnesses. I am struck by the irony in the fact that the families of those fighting mental illness have had to historically hide their experience living on an emotional roller coaster, immersing them in a similar silent struggles to the victim themselves.  My biggest frustration is with those who see people who commit suicide as selfish, weak, or someone who"took the easy way out."

Gosh, how ignorant and insensitive can you really be!?  I think we can all agree that mentally healthy do not end their own lives.  Be thankful that you can't comprehend feeling a sense of despair that would ever have you consider this for one moment! Anyway, I agree with JD Schramm's concluding remark in the talk above which alludes to the TED Talk theme of discussing "Ideas Worth Spreading."

Raising awareness and comfort levels for those who are impacted by mental illness and suicide is certainly at the top of my list! I encourage others to help in this cause by sharing this video and the accompanying Huffington Post articles below.

What I've Learned From My Best Friend's Suicide -  by Lea Lane  

Faith-Filled Responses To Suicide  - by Reverend Mary Robin Craig

Goodbye Darkness My Old Friend - by Robin Bobbe

Related articles

• TED Weekends breaks the silence for suicide survivors (ted.com)

Thinking About More Relevant Schools and Classrooms...(Part Two)

(Disclaimer - The concerns I have are not just about the school system where I work or the one where my students attend, they are systemic issues that everyone of us who is impacted by the education of our youth should consider.  Oh yeah, we are all impacted by the education of our youth!)


The headline of an article by from Business News Daily caught my attention recently. The article, Creativity and Connectivity In The Workplace by Kevin Kuske, got me thinking about the field of education and what we can do to foster more creativity and connectivity in our students. While I am confident that there are pockets of very creative things happening, I wonder sometimes if we are lacking in our collective ability to connect these creative undertakings in ways that would allow them to have a more significant impact on our students. 

This deficiency is certainly not caused by disinterest on the part of educators, it is due to outdated structures and the lack of experience that educators have had with meaningful connectivity that we have their own learning. Let's face it, the daily experience for many/most teachers is still to plan the lesson independently, teach the lesson independently, and then to plan and administer assessments independently. 

So the fact that "Co-creation is ascending as the new dominant model of innovation, creativity and differentiation" puts a major wrinkle into the previous perception of our role whether we are an administrator, a classroom teacher, or support staff.  This next part is equally problematic for most of us in public schools:

"Creativity, innovation and a strong sense of culture all build off of connections and trust.'

  Reducing students and staff to a test score is problematic. Flickr photo via Lyn Hilt

Unfortunately, the model that our nation is following for education reform is one that seems is overly focused on linking teacher performance to a a few days of standardized testing. This model, which was not co-created by educators,  will not do much to build a culture of trust. So while I agree strongly that the "coming together in a shared space is still one of the best ways to build these ties" that will allow us to help out students create and innovate, I wonder how we can ensure the following "effective and desirable" qualities are fostered in staff and students as we also try to meet the prescriptive mandates being thrown at us by education policy makers:

• Their personality comes through.

• They have the freedom to be themselves.

• There is passion for their craft.

• A sense of community makes them part of something bigger.

• They have meaningful fun.

• They have a choice on how and where they want to work.

• They take time to connect.

I'll take a stab at it in Part Three...

Thinking About More Relevant Schools and Classrooms...(Part One)

How can we make sure that their work in school pays off for our students?

(Disclaimer - The concerns I have are not just about the school system where I work or the one where my students attend, they are systemic issues that everyone of us who is impacted by the education of our youth should consider.  Oh yeah, we are all impacted by the education of our youth!)

As I continue to read stories about what is happening in the "real world," you know the place we are supposed to be preparing our students for, my concerns about the level of preparation that our students will have as they exit our doors.  While I have a good level of confidence that our students will be able to do the basics well (i.e. reading, writing, and arithmetic), I am fairly confident that the learning environments that they inhabit within our school walls have not changed and will leave them lacking the skills they will need to prosper in a world where things are changing.

Andreas Schleicher, The Education Director for The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), describes the dilemma as follows in his article The Case for 21st Century Learning:

It is about how knowledge is generated and applied, about shifts in ways of doing business, of managing the workplace or linking producers and consumers, and becoming quite a different student from the kind that dominated the 20th century. What we learn, the way we learn it, and how we are taught is changing. This has implications for schools and higher level education, as well as for lifelong learning.

While educational policy makers scream for "accountability," our students continue to lose out on the relevant experiences that have been ignored or brushed aside as we prepare for the next round of standardized testing.  If you don't believe me just read the account of Bill Ferriter, a science teacher from North Carolina, and how his classroom will change for the worse next year because of our nation's test-driven reform policy. 

It is time for local communities to come together and focus on a vision for students that will allow teachers to veer from a test-driven agenda and ensure a relevance-driven agenda.  If you agree with Schleicher and his vision (below) of the successful student:

They are capable not only of constantly adapting, but also constantly learning and growing in a fast-changing world. In a flat world, our knowledge becomes a commodity available to everyone else. As columnist and author Thomas Friedman puts it, because technology has enabled us to act on our imaginations in ways that we could never before, the most important competition is no longer between countries or companies but between ourselves and our imagination.

As someone who has worked in public education for 20-years, I know the biggest challenge for me is due to my past experiences in school and a lack of imagination to think beyond these experiences. How can we, the adults in the school, overcome our own hurdles to set the stage for a more meaningful experience for our students?

A concluding thought from Schleicher:

Value is less and less created vertically through command and control-as in the classic “teacher instructs student” relationship-but horizontally, by whom you connect and work with, whether online or in person. 

Touching Video Shown Before Last Night's Bruins Game

Image via http://bloguin.com/ 

Words cannot really express the levels of sadness, anger and confusion that have resulted following the acts of terror that were perpetrated on Boston on Monday. However, one thing that has been clear is the amazing resilience of all who have been impacted by this unfathomable act. The actions, words, and tributes that have been shared in the few days following the bombings have been touching and extremely helpful in the healing process.

Below is the video shown before the Bruins game last night. Feel free to share links to anything that you found touching in the comment section below.

 

Checking Out Some Art Work In Our Middle School

As I have mentioned before, one of the favorite aspects of my job is getting into classrooms and seeing some of the neat work that students are doing. One thing I wanted to share today comes from Ms. Phillips' Art Students. The two pictures below are from a sixth grader who was working in photoshop with a drawing she had originally done on paper (shown immediately below).

Then on the enhancement (shown below), the student took a background from a a real image and put it as the background on her drawing.

The second neat thing I took away from Ms. Phillips' students was their use of Quick Response (QR) codes on their artwork. If you are not yet familiar with QR codes, you can see one on the leg of the football player on the right side of the picture below and another on the right-bottom corner of the image at the bottom of this post. Scanning these QR Codes brings viewers of these pieces to the blog of the artist where you can read their reflections on their work.

Another Example of How Building A Network Benefits Students

One of the exciting things about our high school (and school system) establishing a digital presence has been the doors that have been opened for staff and students to connect with others and build their own learning networks.  The video above is the most recent example, featuring Hannah Lienhard a sophomore at BHS. Hannah and (a few other BHS students) had an opportunity to beta test a new app (Hakitzu) from Kuato Studios that is due to be released in the app store in the next week and then provide feedback to the developers on the experience.  

There is another video that features a few more BHS students and some students from New Milford High School in New Jersey who also had an opportunity to try out the game which teaches students how to code by having them take on an opponent in a one-on-one battle where each player controls a robot.  The players then move the robot around an arena and deploy different weapons by writing code. 

Excitement around the release of this game has been building as evidenced by a recent feature on CNN.  These types of opportunities are available to more schools and students if they are willing to extend themselves and build a learning network for themselves. We truly believe that students that learn how to do this will have an advantage over those who do not. 

Here are a few other examples of the ways that our staff and students are connecting with others, building their learning networks, and establishing a digital identity. 

Edweek Highlights Burlington's EdTech Efforts

The video above appeared on Education Week's Digital Directions Website back at the beginning of February.  We are certainly fortunate to be gaining this type of recognition nationally for the phenomenal efforts that staff members have made to integrate technological resources into their classrooms.

What Are Standardized Tests Preparing Our Kids For?

  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the weekend, an interesting article titled A warning to college profs from a high school teacher ran in The Washington Post's Answer Sheet Column.  The article, which has generated well over 1,000 comments already, was written by award-winning high school teacher Kenneth Bernstein from Washington, D.C.  Despite the article's title, Bernstein is really sending a warning to all of us about the current reality concerning our students and the climate of testing that has overtaken our educational system.  

His concluding paragraph sums up his thoughts:

"Now you are seeing the results in the students arriving at your institutions. They may be very bright. But we have not been able to prepare them for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them. It is for this that I apologize, even as I know in my heart that there was little more I could have done. Which is one reason I am no longer in the classroom."

While Bernstein's conclusion is very general, he also cites some concrete reasons for the state of the current crop of students heading out of our public high schools being ill-prepared for what is ahead of them.

"...most of the tests being used consist primarily or solely of multiple-choice items, which are cheaper to develop, administer, and score than are tests that include constructed responses such as essays. Even when a state has tests that include writing, the level of writing required for such tests often does not demand that higher-level thinking be demonstrated, nor does it require proper grammar, usage, syntax, and structure."

According to Bernstein, these problems also carry over into Advanced Placement courses due to the nature of the AP Exams. As a teacher who spent time scoring the writing portion on the exams, he saw limitations in the scoring mechanism.

"If a student hits the points on the rubric, he or she gets the points for that rubric. There is no consideration of grammar or rhetoric, nor is credit given or a score reduced based on the format of the answer. A student who takes time to construct a clear topic sentence and a proper conclusion gets no credit for those words."

Unfortunately, with PARCC testing due to commence in 2015 for our students, we are looking ahead to even more time spent on standardized testing and not less.

The End of Standardized Testing? Hey, A Guy Can Dream...

 (Photo credit: Ken Whytock)

As many of us in education dream about a public education system that is not predicated on standardized test scores, there is actually movement in some places to put an end (or at least a pause) to the ridiculous rat race of "high-stakes testing" we have been involved in.  Sam Chaltain recently posted Has Testing Reached A Tipping Point  on his blog and it is a must read for those interested in this topic.  

In the short video below, Chaltain describes schools in other nations where a student's teachers "the ones who know a student best" design the most meaningful tests a student will take.  He advocates for school communities to answer the following questions:

What are our measures of success for our students? How do we know we are being successful?


While many are skeptical that anything dramatic will take place to change our nation's plans to test students more often than any other country in the world, Chaltain notes some blips on the radar screen that he hopes will lead to more action for this important cause.

"Consider three separate data points as evidence: Maryland, where the superintendent of the state’s largest district of schools has called for a three-year moratorium on standardized tests; Washington, where one school’s decision to boycott its state tests has spread to other schools and communities; and Texas, where a proposed Senate bill would significantly reduce the number of state standardized tests students must pass to graduate."

It would be interesting to see how a moratorium on testing would impact our students. I will continue to pray that we have an opportunity to see the day it happens!

One Example Of What A MOOC Can Do - #ETMOOC Lip Dub

  

 There has been a lot of talk about MOOCs lately and I have been doing a lot of thinking about how they could fit into our offerings for students in Burlington. But before I get too much further I want to make sure that everyone knows what the acronym MOOC stands for. A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course and Wikipedia describes it as follows: A massive open online course (MOOC) is a type of online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the web.

A number of top colleges have been offering some of their online offerings so that anyone interested can follow along and participate.  Check out the offerings from MIT, Yale, Harvard, and Stanford just to get a small sample of what is available.  It is a tremendously exciting time to be a learner in a day and age where you can take advantage of the opportunity take courses from some of our country's most prestigious institutions for free.

So as we consider ways to take advantage of the opportunity MOOCs offer our students, I think we have to keep in mind some of the commonalities of meaningful learning experiences.  These are things that I have been reminded of as I have participated in my first MOOC, the Educational Technology and Media Open Online Course (ETMOOC).

The top thing for me is that a meaningful learning experience must offer participants meaningful opportunities to receive feedback and interact with other learners. The #ETMOOC experience has done this in many ways with options for participants to interact with both facilitators and learners on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.  The other thing that I believe is needed in learning endeavors is an opportunity for fun. While I am not saying that every learning experience has to be fun, I am saying that we need to find more ways for learning and fun to go hand-in-hand.

While I know that I am simplifying a very complicated conversation, I also know that we can learn something valuable from what is happening with MOOCs.  Just the video above is pretty impressive in my mind and the fact that in just over a week a group representing people from countries all over the world were able to come together to create something that is representative of their cause.

Stay tuned for more of thoughts on my MOOC experience...

Are You Sure Your Child Isn't Using Social Media?

What Apps Is Your Child Using?

Just because your child does not have a Facebook or Twitter account does not mean they are not using social media resources.  I have been hearing rumblings from various communities (including Burlington) about elementary and middle school-aged children making poor choices with social media resources.  I am certain that in many cases that the parents of these kids are unaware that their kids are over-sharing personal information, posting and viewing inappropriate pictures, and having inappropriate conversations with friends AND STRANGERS.

The bottom line here is that parents need to check on every app at that their children are adding to their iPod, iPad, iPhone, or other web-enabled device. We have moved so quickly from the days when our biggest web-based concern regarding our children was a desktop computer in a common area of our homes. As we are well aware, many of the gadgets that they carry in their pockets can do so much more than those desktops could ever do. With new social media apps and websites coming onto the scene at a breathtaking pace, it is not surprising that parents can't keep up. 

A Little Advice For Parents

So as I navigate this landscape with my own kids, I want to let you know that just keeping your kids off of Facebook and Twitter is a far cry from keeping them off of social media.  In an effort to promote awareness, I have a few questions for parents...

1. Do you know what apps are on your child's iPad, iPod, Smartphone, etc.?
2. Do you know which apps are connected to social media resources?
3. Do you monitor the social media accounts that you have allowed your child to create?
4. Have you heard of snapchat? 

If you answered no to at least one of the above questions then you are probably in the majority of parents out there.  If you answered yes to most of the above questions then please share your knowledge with the parents you know to help them stay on top of what is happening.  The fact of the matter is that these sites typically require a user to be at least 13 years of age to register and many kids lie about their age in order to sign up which raises an additional issue.  

In regards to Snapchat, you get bonus points if you know that one.  Snapachat has become known by many as a tool for sexting as a recent Mashable post describes.  The way it works is that an individual may send another individual a picture and the sender decides how long the person receiving the picture can view it (from 1-10 seconds) and then the picture disappears "forever."  Of course since lesson number-one in the whole social media game is that anything you say online can follow you "forever," we know this is not true.

From a parent's perspective, it is tough to connect the current experience that our children are having with social media resources to our own experiences growing up.  All we really had was a telephone to connect with our friends and have social conversations. In addition, most of us had some time limits in place when it came to these conversations. In my opinion, it would make sense for us all to at least have some idea of how much time are kids are spending online and what they are up to.

Some Resources For Parents

Common Sense Media has some great resources for parents to help them set appropriate ground rules for their kids. It also provides parents with great app reviews, like the one below for Snapchat. You can search with the box in the upper right hand corner for a review of most apps and find out some useful information before deciding whether or not it is appropriate for your child.  

We will continue to provide workshops for parents to learn about these issues, but in the meantime I encourage parents to check out a few of the following:

Seven Media-Savvy Skills All Parents Need In 2013 - Common Sense Media

Tweens Secret Lives Online - The Wall Street Journal

Lesson Learned:Kids and Instagram - Alphamom.com

If you feel you are a parent who has a good handle on this issue, then please share some of the practices that you think are working well! If you are parent who feels lost and needs immediate assistance, please contact me and I would be happy to offer some advice/assistance (larkin@bpsk12.org).

Ramblings From My Reading (Edition 1)

One of my favorite things to do is read about education. My main source of information is the numerous blogs that I follow through my Google Reader account. Last year I was pretty good about sharing some of the things that I found most interesting each week and now, since we are a few weeks into 2013, I am going to try to get back to sharing some of the most interesting items that I come across each week.

The first item this week, is a clip from Sugata Mitra that comes from The 16th International Conference on Thinking in Wellington, New Zealand.  In the clip, Mitra makes a case for the long-overdue change in the focus of our schools to prepare students for success in the world that they will need to navigate when they end their formal education.

Mitra advocates for a curricular focus on the following three areas:

1. reading comprehension
2. information search and retrieval skills
3. teach them how to believe - (What’s the machine that allows students?) Some people call this "crap-detection"

The clip ends with Mitra making the following statement:

"The biggest job (we have) is to give the child an armor against doctrine just like we did in another generation by teaching them to fight with a sword and ride a horse."

 

Another thing that has me continuing to question the relevance of our focus in traditional classrooms is a post from Ryan Bretag, titled Grade Focused Students. Ryan, an educator in Illinois,   wrote an intriguing post after reading a story from The Globe and Mail titled An A+ Student Regrets His Grades.

The post began with the following quote from The Globe and Mail article:

"The system teaches us that if you get ‘As’ across the board, you’ll be successful. And if you fail a course, you’ll be labelled incompetent or hopeless. These pressures force students to regard education as a mere schooling tenure where the goal is to input a sufficient amount of work to output the highest possible grades. We sacrifice learning for schooling."

Ryan wondered if this pressure was real or imagined on the part of students. But whichever is the case, he is spot on with his final thoughts:

"schools are filled with grade focused students with grade grubbing, fixed mindsets when we should have schools filled with learning focused learners with growth mindsets. "

My own concerns centers around the same feelings and whether or not a focus on attaining high marks assures anything down the road for our students.  I left the following comment on the blog in reference to my own son's first semester in high school:

"I have been struggling with this same thought for quite sometime as an administrator, but the level of discomfort has become even greater as my own son has reached high school. Being a competitive person, he has his sights set on what it will take to get into competitive colleges and sadly, for him, that means getting A’s. He has already figured out what it will take to achieve this mark with each of his teachers. In some classes, he can pull this off with minimal effort while in a couple of others he has to spend a good deal of time. However, there is no instance where I see him being engaged in a course because of a love of the content and the authentic learning tasks that he is involved in. He is simply “playing the game of school” and I am not sure what this will accomplish in the end.