higher ed

No Free College for You!

Eduflack equity, higher ed, reform

Millions of Americans elected Joe Biden president last November believing that free college would be a top legislative priority. But as a $3.5 trillion package gets carved down to less that $2 trillion, it seems that free community college is being sacrificed for priorities of greater interest to the progressive community.

Over on the Soul of Education on the BAM! Radio Network, we explore the topic … and why it is so easy for education to be sacrificed on the national scene.

Give it a listen here – https://www.bamradionetwork.com/track/free-community-college-for-all/

Supporting First-Gen College Students

Eduflack Achievement gap, Coker, equity, higher ed, reform

Over at Education Talk Radio, dear ol’ Eduflack recently had the opportunity to join Coker University President Natalie J. Harder to discuss first-generation college goers and how institutions are using programs such as federal TRIO to ensure student success.

Give it a listen here – https://www.blogtalkradio.com/edutalk/2021/09/09/coker-university–meeting-the-needs-of-first-generation-college-students

American Families Plan Is Lacking, Education Wise

Eduflack accountability, Achievement gap, BAM, Biden, early childhood education, equity, higher ed, reading, reform, Soul

In looking at the American Families proposal offered by President Joe Biden last week, there is much to be happy about. Even when it comes to education, one can get excited by major investments in PreK and free community college.

And yes, there is value to extending the 13-year public education continuum to 17 years, ensuring early childhood education and post secondary to all learners.

But what message are we sending when we don’t add any additional dollars to k12? Sure, we have pumped hundreds of billions in recent months for HVAC and Covid testing and other immediate, tactical needs to reopen our classrooms. We are falling short, though, in investing in improved teaching and learning in those same classrooms.

One has to ask, for instance, if PreK is truly the secret sauce when two-thirds of fourth graders are reading at below proficient levels AND we have school districts fighting in federal courts that literacy isn’t a civil or constitutional right.

We explore this issue over at the Soul of Education on the BAM! Radio Network this week. Give it a listen here – https://www.bamradionetwork.com/track/i-dont-want-to-sound-ungrateful-but-public-education-needs-more/.

A New Ed Department

Eduflack accountability, DeVos, higher ed, Online Education, Presidential campaign, reform, STEM, Students, teachers, technology

“Yes, our educational priorities and needs have shifted over the last decade. Despite these changes, though, we are still focused on important issues such as teacher development, 21st century and STEM skills, education technology, and the P-20 education continuum. How we address these issues and the outcomes we expect from them have changed dramatically, though. A new approach, with new foci, serves as a strong rhetorical tool to make clear that education, edu-investment, edu-transformation, and edu-innovation are central to the rebuilding of our nation. And such rhetoric is all the more important when current economic concerns make it difficult to fund new policy ideas straight out of the gate, a fact that is all too real today.”

From Eduflack’s latest over at Medium, exploring the need for a new structure and new foci at the US Education Department

A New, Old Approach to Teacher Prep

Eduflack higher ed, reform, Teacher Education, teachers

There is value to all educators demonstrating a broad range of writing skills, world literature knowledge, foreign language aptitude, elementary epistemology, and exposure to math, natural sciences, history and geography, and government and economics. This approach is critical to ensuring strong and nimble teachers, particularly if this background content is knitted together to provide a clear scope and sequence of the first two years of undergraduate courses for aspiring educators.

From dear ol’ Eduflack’s latest on Medium, looking at making a classically liberal education a foundation for teacher prep

For the Next Gen of Teacher Candidates, Content Should be King

Eduflack accountability, higher ed, PD, reform, Teacher Education, teachers, technology

With many public school systems now entering week 10 of their new coronavirus normal, as community school buildings remain shuttered and millions of students try to learn through digital platforms, talk of “the return” to the good ol’ days is growing louder and louder.

Sure, some continue to declare their success in mastering virtual education, but far more are trying to prepare for what traditional school will look like in a traditional environment for the 2020-21 school year. Images of students wearing facemasks and distancing contraptions have already started to fill social media, as educators come to grips with months of lost instruction due to Covid-19, a virtual learning environment offered largely to tread instructional water instead of teaching new content. In response, some are calling for summer school for all to avoid the expected slide from the current to the next school year while others suggest the need to repeat the current grade.

Last week, Chiefs for Change – a group of reform-minded public school superintendents and school administrators – offered a thoughtful report on what school leaders should consider as they look toward the return of a school-building-based instructional year this fall. In The Return: How Should School Leaders Prepare for Reentry and Beyond?, the Chiefs explore a number of important – and controversial – topics, ranging from abandoning the agrarian school calendar (one that currently gives educators and learners summers off) to more “intently focusing on the social and emotional wellbeing and skills of students.”

More interestingly, Chiefs for Change called for school systems across the country to adopt staffing models that focused on educators with deep subject matter and instructional expertise. Yes, this spring’s virtual schooling experiment has demonstrated that the pedagogy and classroom management skills largely taught in colleges of education across the nation do not necessarily translate to teachers successfully managing a virtual classroom on an online platform. For every media story one sees of an elementary school classroom taught via Zoom, with a shared screen that looks like the Brady Bunch on steroids, there are dozens of untold stories of online platforms being used simply as electronic bulletin boards, where teachers simply post assignments for students to collect and complete, providing a thumbs up when any effort is demonstrated by the learner to complete them.

In its recommendations, Chiefs for Change also pulls back a closely-held secret in teacher education. Many teachers are not expert in the content areas they teach. Those who teach U.S. history, for instance, often major in history education, not in American history. The same can be said about those who teach chemistry or biology, the majority of whom leave their teacher education programs with degrees in science education, not in the specific content area. One can even consider the typical elementary school educator, tasked with teaching reading and math and beginning science while equipped with a degree in elementary education that likely provided only some survey courses on a range of content areas, with an emphasis on needed physical classroom management skills.

For years now, reformers have preached about the need to dramatically transform pre-service teacher education. In the early days, the focus was on alternative certification programs and having teacher candidates avoid the “status quo” teachers colleges altogether. More recently, advocates have looked to alternative approaches to traditional teacher education models, with institutions like the Relay/Graduate School of Education becoming the aspirational model.

Decades of research into the most effective approaches to teacher education demonstrate the importance of both strong content knowledge and effective pedagogy. When groups like Chiefs for Change talk about content knowledge, they are essentially noting that novice teachers should be coming to the classroom with a broad and substantial liberal education, one that translates into strong content knowledge of classroom teachers, regardless of the academic subject they are licensed to teach.

A first glance, we may be looking for too much from undergraduate teacher education, expecting all aspiring educators to start as teachers of record with strong, research-based backgrounds in both the subject areas they teach and the most effective ways to teach and lead a classroom. Our new educational normal, though, has clearly demonstrated that the current emphasis on pedagogy and classroom management is woefully insufficient for the uncertain years ahead.

The coming generations of k-12 educators may be digital natives, but they are largely still being prepared in teachers colleges constructed for an analog world. Until their clinical experiences include virtual instruction, and until their preparation focuses on the importance of subject matter content and how to make it interesting, relevant, and understood by all in their classroom, our instructional struggles will continue.

We can do better. We should do better. Ed schools should be committed to preparing world-class educators. School districts should be focused on hiring teachers well prepared in both content and pedagogy, with the assessments to demonstrate their mastery of both. And we all should embrace efforts to ensure our kids’ teachers are truly the best in the world, with the preservice education, in-service supports, and high-quality instructional materials needed for learners to succeed today … and tomorrow.

 

(This piece also appears on Medium.)

When It Comes to Higher Ed, President Trump is Absolutely … Correct

Eduflack accountability, BAM, civics, higher ed, reform, TrumpED

Since the 1960s, we’ve seen college campuses as ground zero for free speech. We expect students to find their voice while at college, taking a major step forward in becoming productive members of our civil society.

So it is disturbing that too many campuses are now looking to shut down free speech, looking to control political rhetoric to keep all calm and to ensure that fringe or dissenting ideas aren’t heard in the public square. Instead of free speech, we are exercising socially acceptable speech, teaching today’s college students that silencing opposing voices is more important than debating and disproving them.

Whether standing for right wing speech or free speech, President Donald Trump is absolutely correct to call out, and use the power of the executive, to encourage debate, not squelch it.

We explore this important topic on the most recent episode of TrumpEd on the BAM! Radio Network. Give it a listen. We won’t be silenced. 😀

My Advice for Latinx Students at UVA

Eduflack higher ed, reform, Students, Workforce

As a college student, I was both honored and completely overwhelmed to attend the University of Virginia. I arrived at Mr. Jefferson’s University as a proud graduate of Jefferson County (Consolidated) High School in Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia. Less than a third of my graduating high school class went on to any form of postsecondary education. Only a handful of us left the state for college.

When I arrived at UVA, I was utterly lost. I quickly learned that there were more students in my first-year class from Sri Lanka than there was from my home state of West Virginia. I would hear countless students talk about how they were from “Nova,” and had no idea where that city was and how it sent so many kids to UVA (I later learned it was the shorthand for Northern Virginia, the wealthy, DC suburbs). And I was too introverted and too unsure to ask the sorts of questions or find the sort of guidance that would make my transition to college what it really should have been.

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit my alma mater and speak with a collection of a wide range of student groups, including the Bolivar Network, designed to support Latinx students there. The visit forced me to reflect on some of those more painful times, while allowing me to celebrate those experiences in a way I hadn’t previously.

It’s always special to go back to one’s alma mater, and doubly so when you are asked to impart some wisdom. For me, though, it was even more exciting as I brought my 12-year-old son with me. He had never been to UVA before. And he had never before seen a gathering of smart young people on the path to success who, as fellow Latinos, looked just like him. That’s why it was so, so important to me that he join me, beginning to see what his future might be like.

As I looked across the room that evening, I saw a collection of faces sharing many of the same emotions I had more than a quarter century ago. I also saw a group of amazing young people who needed to hear truth, learner to learner.

I never turn down the opportunity to talk to students about their futures and about the opportunities ahead. Whether it be in formal events or in one-on-one conversations resulting from a LinkedIn message or a career office connection, I will always take the time to do what I can to help. I also know that most of the advice they get is boring. A lot of it just doesn’t relate. Too often, students just receive the trite responses adults think they should receive – study hard, plan your future, be careful what you put on social media, earn top dollar.

I learned long ago that that just isn’t me, and that was reflected at the University of Virginia last week. Over the course of two hours, I offered some advice today’s students often don’t hear. But there were three items in particular that seemed to resonate.

First, don’t obsess over grades. Grades mattered when it was time to apply for college. Now is the time to make the most out of college. For me, that meant investing all of my time and attention working for The Cavalier Daily, one of the nation’s top collegiate newspapers. By the end of college, I was the managing editor of a daily newspaper, overseeing 150 volunteer staff and a $500,000 annual operating budget. We published 16 pages of news five days a week. That experience – and the internships and writing that came with it – led to my early jobs. One has to make the most out the college experience, and that includes diving deep into experiences outside of the classroom. In the nearly 24 years since I graduated from college, I have never once been asked my GPA as I pursued a new job.

Second, life isn’t fair. The perfect job likely won’t be offered. The salary you think you deserve may not be available. A great professional opportunity may end up being a living hell, as you work for a bully of a boss. It’s not fair, but it is life. Remember, you can do anything for a year as you plan the next step. In the early stages of your career, you need to practice the mantra of “positive and flexible.” Find the positives in a not-so-great experience. Figure out what you can learn from even your worst mistakes. I can look back at a truly horrible work experience I once had and can say I would do it again because of what it taught me. I may approach it a little differently now, knowing what I know, but even if the experience wasn’t fair, it was important in shaping who I am, professionally, today.

Finally, you be you. True success in life comes from knowing who you are and where your interests and passions lie. One of the worst things you can do is head down a professional path because you think it is what is expected of you. As I was leaving college, I fully expected I’d go to law school because that was what most arts and sciences grads at UVA seemed to do. Fortunately, the summer between college and law school taught me that I could do what I loved without earning a law degree. My career highlights have been the result of following my true passions. My career lowlights have been the result of just chasing a paycheck or a job title. My work has to be about me and what drives me, not just about what I majored in.

As we were walking away from the student union, I asked my son what he thought of the evening. A quiet boy who usually doesn’t share much, he opened up by telling me, “that was awesome.” He then explained that no one had ever told him some of those things and that he had never thought about a lot of what he heard. We began talking about his own postsecondary education, and how he will be empowered with more choices and options than he could ever imagine. That is mom and I would be there to help guide him, but the decisions would ultimately be his. I could see he was both enthralled and overwhelmed, probably just the mix he should have as a seventh grader.

We talked mostly about him needing to be him, and how he needs to continue to learn where his interests and passions lie, and we will help him find pathways to pursue them. If I got the wheels in his head turning – as well as the wheels in many of the Latinx students I met with – then I am doing my job and acting on my own professional passions.

Wahoowa!