The faculty at my former University/employer is engaged in complicated discussions over the possibility of re-naming their unit.  Currently, they are the School of Education and Allied Human Services (SOEAHS).  The AHS part was added not too long ago to properly recognize the many non-school-based programs within the unit.  When I was there, my feelings about those discussions ranged from “ridiculous” to “really important.”  At times I thought, “names don’t matter; quality content does.”  Other times I thought, “names send really important messages.”  Though I’m no longer a full-time faculty member there, I find myself in the latter camp today.  Maybe I’ve been reading too much Seth Godin, but I think what we call ourselves positions us within a marketplace of both consumers (students) and ideas. 

So, I took a look at the Top 5 graduate schools of education (according to the U.S. News & World Report) and found the following names:

• Teachers College, Columbia University - that’s the name of the unit.  Um, Dr. Fuhrman, the 19th Century called and they’d like their normal school-ish name back.  (NOTE: can they revoke my doctorate for being so mean?).
• Stanford University - Graduate School of Education - simple, straightforward, conservative (sorry, had to throw that in there).
• Harvard Graduate School of Education - also simple, straightforward
• Vanderbilt Peabody College of Education and Human Development - in the field, mostly referred to as Peabody College.  I like the inclusion of “human development.”
• UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies - cool; information studies!

I haven’t formally analyzed the data, but I’d bet that if you went further down the list, you’d find the modal circumstance to be “School of Education” (like VCU, where I work).  And, that makes me wonder a couple of things.  First, if, as I believe, education is much more than formal schooling, are the collective bodies of departments and programs within those units truly about education or are they nearly exclusively focused on the institution of schooling?  Second, where is “learning” in all of this?

I noticed that Stanford offers a doctoral prograrm in “Learning Sciences and Technology.”  Sounds like a fantastic program.  Harvard offers degrees in “Learning and Teaching.”  I like that learning comes before teaching (see names do matter!).  And, UCLA has two main departments, one of which is the Department of Information Studies.  That’s neat and interesting, but at first glance, I didn’t see the word “learning” anywhere within their mission statement.

Thus, ultimately, I’m left wondering what the relationship is between education, schooling and learning.  If we go by the names of these graduate institutions, learning is a subset of the larger thing called education (i.e. it’s part of one or more programs offered within a school of education).  In some cases, based on names alone, it’s hard to know where learning fits in at all.  I’m not comfortable with that.

If I were naming the graduate institution in which I worked, it would have the word “learning” in it.  Also, to meet the realities of the modern world, I wouldn’t include the word “school” in our name either.  Maybe we’d be something like the Learning Sciences Institute.  Except, that’s already taken.  I knew those people at Vanderbilt were smart!

Tags: education, graduate school, learning, names, schooling

 

Originally uploaded by seduction by snapshots

Those of us in the business of preparing school leaders through universities and those of us who work in institutions accredited by NCATE are held accountable to a set of standards developed collaboratively by a bunch of different organizations. Those standards, formerly known as the ISLLC standards, have been revised and re-named the Educational Leadership Policy Standards. They were approved in December and released within the last 6 weeks. You can see the new standards here (go to the links at the bottom of the page), along with the “research base” behind the standards. These are very important standards since, much like in the K-12 realm, the curricula of school leadership preparation programs will (for better or worse) be guided by them. That being said, before soliciting your opinions, here are a few of my own thoughts:

Of course, the first thing I did was a search for any form of the term “technology.” And, surprisingly, there are two such references (Standards 2H and 3B). That’s progress, but there’s still a significant part of me that feels like the NETS-A (National Education Technology Standards for Administrators) were not considered enough (if they were considered at all).

On one hand, I’ve come to believe that leadership for 21st Century schooling is not about the technology per se as much as it is about having a forward-thinking vision, the capacity to take risks, and the willingness to think about learning in accordance with 21st Century skills and dispositions. And, so on the first and last points, Standard 1 allows for facilitating the development of such a leader. That is, the standards don’t commit to any particular vision or conception or definition of teaching or learning.

On the other hand, that Part I of the NETS-A did not explicitly make its way into Standard 1 of the ELPS is disconcerting. Imagine if this statement, directly from the NETS-A had made its way into the ELPS: “Educational leaders inspire a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology and foster an environment and culture conducive to the realization of that vision.” Can you imagine what the inclusion of such a statement in Standard 1 would have meant to/for leadership preparation programs around the country? Furthermore, synthesizing Standards 2H and 3B, if educational leaders obtain technological resources and promote their use to support teaching and learning, shouldn’t there be a vision/plan for that?

Maybe I shouldn’t complain because I did have opportunities to comment on earlier drafts of the ELPS, but I know that other colleagues did make the case for greater integration of the NETS-A. And, while I’m not a huge fan of the whole standards and accountability movement, as long as we’re playing that game, I’d like for the rules to be appropriate.

What do you think of the new standards?  Do they resonate with your understandings/beliefs about effective school leadership?

Tags: education, ISLLC, leadership, standards, technology

There’s an argument/discussion/meme bouncing around the blogosphere that is RIGHT in my wheelhouse.  I learned of it through eduwonkette and she provides the links in the chain.  Since I’ve written about this before, I’ll chime in again…

The discussion is based on the premise that judging teachers using a value-added analysis is the equivalent of a system that judges baseball players using a sabermetric analysis.  Actually, even that summary is not entirely accurate because what Michael Lewis wrote about in Moneyball is not so much a system or form of analysis as it is an orientation.  Billy Beane, J.P. Ricardi, Theo Epstein and all of the other new baseball G.M.’s who’ve espoused Moneyball-like approaches, believe that there are inefficiencies in the market.  That is, there are data available that, when subjected to appropriate statistical analyses, might surface players who are undervalued based on more traditional forms of judgment.  These forms of player valuation, when added to the more traditional/standard methods, allow teams with less resources and less payroll flexibility to find players who are most cost-effective. 

The key there is the italicized segment.  Critics of the Moneyball/Sabermetric approach (including Murray Chass) have the wrong impression that it is intended to replace more traditional/standards of player valuation.  That’s simply not true.  Sabermetric analysis is an additional weapon in the arsenal of baseball decision-makers. 

Applying that back to the proposal by New York City proposal, I have no problem using value-added analysis as an additional measure to hold teachers (and principals?) accountable.  It should never be the single criterion for any important decision about an individual teacher.  But, the data are there, so let’s look at them.  As one principal says in the NY Times article:  “This should simply be one more way to think about things,” said Frank A. Cimino, the principal of P.S. 193 in Brooklyn, who said he was participating in the experiment. “It is going to tell you some things you don’t know, but it will miss the other things that go on in a classroom.”

Tags: accountability, education, evaluation, Moneyball, sabermetrics, teachers

If you’ve never seen Hall Davidson give a keynote presentation, you’ve really missed out.  He had a few thousand educators rolling on the floor (figuratively, of course).  Very bright, very funny…and inspiring!  I hope that one day I can present as well as he does.

Today, of all things, I learned about the law.  Three years of law school and 5+ years of teaching school law, and I learned that I knew nothing about copyright law.  Well, maybe not nothing.  But, apparently I’m in violation of copyright law by posting the journal articles in my scientifically-based blog post posts.  Should I take them down?  Will the copyright police come after me?  I suppose I could contact the authors and get their permission.  Sheesh.

Tomorrow morning I meet with John Hendron, who, by my account, is a bit of an innovator and leader in ed. tech. in my area.  I look forward to learning from John and then attending some more sessions.

 I’m leaving tomorrow morning for the annual conference of the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE), my new home state’s affiliate of ISTE.  I’m looking forward to networking and getting the lay of the ed. tech. landscape across the Commonwealth.  I’m certainly discouraged about the following facts from the 80 page program of the largest ed. tech. conference in VA:

• The program contains not one single mention of the word “principal” (or, therefore, AP). 
• Over 100 sessions and only ONE contains the word leadership in the title. 
• There are 11 sessions dedicated to the “leadership strand,” but they range in topics from digital safety to “using pivot tables in EXCEL to analyze SOL data” (I kid you not; that’s part of the leadership strand).

Still, it’ll be good to learn some cool new tricks.  I hope to report from there.

Tags: conference, education, leadership, technology