Year: 2015

The Biggest Priority for Young People Should be Climate Change? Really, Mr. President?

Eduflack Uncategorized

“First of all, it shouldn’t be young people’s biggest priority,” Obama chided. “You should be thinking about climate change, the economy, jobs, war and peace. Maybe way at the bottom you should be thinking about marijuana.”

This was a quote from President Barack Obama, as reported this week by Politico. It was in response to questions about the legalization of marijuana and how such a move was what many young people today are seeking.

When I first read the article, Eduflack though, “good for President Obama.” But that feeling quickly left when I re-read the President’s priorities. The first thing out of his mouth that young people should be concerned about is climate change? War makes the top four?

Anyone notice what is missing there? No, President Obama made no mention of the biggest priority for young people being their education. With all of our efforts on ensuring all kids are college and career ready, with all of the work to have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world, with all of the focus on college affordability, somehow education and learning and school doesn’t quite rank on the President’s priority list for today’s youth.

If we extend the logic, are we saying that EPA and the Treasury Department, and the Departments of Labor and Defense have greater impact on the lives of today’s young people than the Education Department should?

Color me disappointed. A perfect opportunity to refocus the next generation’s thinking on what is important, and the President swings and misses. It is any wonder they grow up into voters who don’t see education issues as a reason to cast a vote?

Imagine What a Father Could Do …

Eduflack Dadprovement, Parents

This week, I was in Austin talking about my Dadprovement book, fatherhood, and parental engagement at #SXSWedu. Had a tremendous time, and met a growing number of folks eager to see dads more involved in their kids’ school lives. 

I’ll reflect more on that over the weekend. But I wanted to share the following. Typically, when I give speeches, I work without text and without notes. Partly due to habit, partly due to dyslexia, it is just easier for me to think in advance about what I want to say and then just let ‘er rip once I get there. 

So I’m thankful for one of the audience members for capturing this nugget from my presentation. I was referencing a recent study ther found the girls who observed their dads washing dishes were ultimately more successful than their peers who did not. 

And special thanks to Ethan Demme from Demme Learning for capturing the photo. 

(Also posted on the Dadprovement blog.)



#SXSWedu Tools

Eduflack Media, Social media

We are now less than a week from SXSWedu. For those attending, dear ol’ Eduflack will be doing a session on parental engagement and the importance of fathers in the education process. Following that session, I’ll be over at the SXSWedu bookstore for a book signing of my Dadprovement book.

At such events, I’m always a big fan of the online app, something that lets me see the entire schedule on my phone. As expected, the SXSWedu app is top notch. For those who will be in Austin, it is definitely worth checking out here.

I’ll admit, I’m a newbie for SXSWedu. This will be my first visit. I assume it’ll be the first for many of those who will be in attendance. So I was intrigued by a “SXSWedu Survival Guide for Educators,” offered by the folks at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

In the Guide, Rossier offers lists of tips, dos, don’ts, and even an organizer to help folks plan for the time at SXSWedu. Many of these items are generally useful for the education conference circuit in general, a core tick list before one descends on conference central. But for those headed to Texas next week, particularly for the first time, check out the “Helpful Links” at the end of the post. Those Trojans have pulled together blog posts from past SXSWedus to get folks in the right frame of mind. Definitely worth the look.

Game On, Social Studies Teachers! Game On.

Eduflack Uncategorized

We’ve all heard the civic horror stories. Kids who can’t name their elected officials, either in the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House. Adults who can’t identify a single member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Man-on-the-street interviews who are unable to list the three branches of government. And forget asking folks if they can name a majority of U.S. presidents.

When Eduflack was a kid, we could rely on Schoolhouse Rock to help us with the finer points of U.S. history or civics. (Yes, I get I’m dating myself, but I actually own the Schoolhouse Rock soundtrack on CD and sing along when I get Conjunction Junction while on hold with someone from the U.S. Department of Education.) But today’s students are far more sophisticated and far too technologically advanced to have a singing scroll teach them about the legislative process.

So how do we teach the finer (and even broader) points of U.S. history and civics in an era when kids want to be playing Minecraft or engaging in social media? How do we apply the technological advances finding their way into our classrooms to teach the foundations and roots of our civic society?

Last fall, Eduflack wrote about how the Ted Kennedy Institute in Boston would be using simulations to teach today’s students the finer points of the legislative process. Brilliant, I said at the time. Just what we need to better engage today’s students through a medium that they better appreciate.

Not to be outdone by Ted Kennedy, today the Woodrow Wilson Foundation (those who know their civics realize a president can often trump a senator, even a legendary senator like Teddy Kennedy) announced its HistoryQuest Fellowship. In partnership with the Institute for Play, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation has created a new program for classroom educators to help them learn and use gaming to teach social studies and civics in their classrooms. The full announcement can be found here.

In launching this new effort, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation is clearly stating that effective instruction can be adapted to meet the needs and interests of the children in the classroom. Recent survey data has shown that 78 percent of teachers who use games have seen an increase in student mastery of curricular content and skills. So how better to take advantage of technological advances and student interests than incorporating games into teachers’ lessons and equip educators to create their own game-based learning experiences for kids.

Woodrow Wilson is currently soliciting nominations for the inaugural class of HistoryQuest Fellows, focusing on secondary school educators in New Jersey. This first cohort will begin its work this summer, with hopes that the lessons learned from HistoryQuest can be applied to improve WW’s work in teacher and education leader preparation across the nation.

Imagine playing a 21st century version of Axis and Allies to better understand World War I. Imagine learning about the western expansion through a Minecraft-like platform. Imagine learning about the American Revolution by not only dressing the part, but actually role-playing loyalist versus revolutionary. Imagine what can be imagined by the many excellent teachers who can learn from organizations like Institute for Play and Woodrow Wilson Foundation on how to make powerful lesson plans even more effective through gaming-based approaches.

Imagine.

(Full disclosure, Eduflack works with the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.)

A Failure to CCSS Communicate?

Eduflack assessment, CCSS, Parents, polls

The Eduflack family lives in a PARCC state. For months, we have heard from our school district about preparing for the upcoming PARCC assessment. This has been a particularly “interesting” time for our house, as it will be the first time one of the edu-kiddos is slated to take a state exam.

In recent weeks, the talk shifted to the edu-son and his plans to take two rounds of PARCC tests this spring. The first will begin in just a few short weeks, and will run through much of March. The second round will come a month or so after completing the first round.

When dear ol’ Eduflack inquired about why the two rounds for a third-grader, he got the most curious of answers. Yes, I am aware that the PARCC test is intended to be offered in two parts, the first being the performance-based component and the second being the end-of-year component. As I understand it, it is two parts to the same exam. Part one looks at “critical-thinking, reasoning and application skills through extended tasks such as reading an excerpt from a book and writing about it.” Part two is designed to “measure concepts and skills.”

But that wasn’t the explanation we received, and I’m guessing it isn’t what our district is telling other parents who may not know better. Instead, the line was “PARCC is both a formative and summative test, so we offer the formative in March and then the summative in late April.”

Granted, I’m no psychometrician, but I’m not quite sure that’s how formative and summative assessments are supposed to work, at least not in the primary grades. And if it is, I don’t see how any schools or classes are going to show student learning outcome gains on a summative test just a few weeks after benchmarking with the formative.

And it should be no surprise that, as we have these confusions on assessment types, that the state teachers’ union is running TV spots on how horrible testing is and how there is nothing a test can tell a parent that a teacher can’t already relay.

To borrow from Cool Hand Luke, what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported on significant parent misperceptions about Common Core State Standards, particularly with regard to the content and subjects covered by the standards. But we have also seen a major assault against the standards because of the tests, with attacks coming on amount of testing time, stress of the test, technology issues, and all points in between. And it is the assault on assessment that has really chipped away at CCSS over the past several years.

Today’s example is just another one of how misperceptions–or lack of understanding–continue to hurt what are intended to be standard instructional guidelines in English and math. It gives one more thing to blame CCSS for, and one more reason to buy into the “over tested, over stressed” argument.

Instead, we should be taking opportunities to educate parents (and teachers and policymakers and just about everyone) on the different types of tests. What are the benefits of a formative assessment versus an interim versus a summative? How are they different? How can we tell when any one of the three is of high quality (as PARCC seems to be) and how can we decide when a test is just crap? And how do we ensure teachers and parents get test data in quick turnaround so it can be used to improve the teaching and learning process?

Until we address these types of questions, it will remain open season on testing in general, and CCSS assessments in particular. And until we ensure high-quality assessments focused on student learning, real efforts to improve public schools and ensure students are college and career ready will struggle to gain the hold they need to succeed.

Building a New Principal Prep Moustrap

Eduflack higher ed, Teacher Education, teachers

Sadly, current school leader preparation programs — those that typically offer an M.Ed. to successful principal candidates — are generally poor. Admissions and graduation standards are often the lowest among programs offered by education schools, a reality detailed in my own research for the Education Schools Project. Coursework is largely unrelated to the positions prospective school leaders are preparing for, and the clinical portions of the program are often weak. These programs are thought of as the easiest route to a master’s degree, the quickest path to the salary bump they bring.

Both higher education and K-12 have known for far too long that the vast majority of school leadership preparation programs are inadequate. Yet they’ve done little about it because demand for such programs remains high.

Woodrow Wilson Foundation President Arthur Levine in Real Clear Education School Principals Should Be Trained Like MBAs

Engagin’ in Austin

Eduflack Dadprovement, Parents

We’ve talked about SXSWedu in this space before. It is part Woodstock, part prom for all of those who spend their waking hours thinking about education issues and how technology and innovation and social change can influence what is happening at our educational institutions.

Well, I’m thrilled to announce that Eduflack will be speaking at this year’s SXSWedu conference in Austin in March. On Tuesday, March 10, I’ll be leading a solo session on the importance of parental engagement. More specifically, my Forget Leaning In, We Need to Dadprove session looks at how we “need to inspire a generation of men to realize what they can and should do as dads, being active in their children’s lives and involved in their learning processes.”

The presentation will be based on my Dadprovement book, which examined the topic from about as personal a perspective as possible, me and my own family.

We’ve all heard the stories. Women are told they can’t have it all, so they need to “lean in,” and all but forget about families if they want to be successes. Men pretend they have both, but largely go through the motions on the home front (or on forums like Facebook” to appear like the ideal. And what happens when a father falls from a high-profile position? He inevitably announces he is departing for “family reasons,” until we can regroup and get back on that career ladder.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. And it shouldn’t. When we talk achievement gaps and student learning outcomes and college/career ready and our hopes and dreams for our kids, we can only help our children achieve it when we are all truly active and engaged parents. We need to be active, invested participants in the process, recognizing that parenthood is the most important job we will have, or at least the job with the greatest potential impact.

If you’re down in Austin for SXSWedu, be sure to check out my session. I’m the solo act for the 1:10 slot that Tuesday. You’ll never forgive yourself if you miss it. (and I’ll even have some free books for those who check it out)