Patting myself on the back?!?!
21st Century Education, Ed. Policy, Ed. Research, Ed. Tech., Equity / Discrimination June 10th, 2008
By now you’ve perhaps read the Time magazine article, seen the New York Times ad, and/or read/heard elsewhere about this “movement” dubbed “The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education” spearheaded by Lawrence Mishel, Helen Ladd, Pedro Noguera and Tom Payzant. The list of signatories reads like a who’s who of educational and/or social policy and is notably diverse (hey, even Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch signed on together!).
If the full statement that this task force created looks familiar, it may be because these folks are clearly regular readers of my blog and ripped off almost all of my ideas from THIS POST nearly a month ago. OK, that’s probably not true, but I must admit that I feel sorta proud to have written a summary of my beliefs about education that overlaps so extensively with this “broader, bolder approach”. Consider the following comparison:
| I WROTE |
THEY WROTE |
| I think we too often use the terms “education” and “schooling” interchangeably. They are too very different things. I think of schooling as a subset of the larger idea of education. | This broader, bolder approach breaks with the past by embracing an expanded concept of education in two respects. First, conventional education policy making focuses on learning that occurs in formal school settings…The new approach recognizes the centrality of formal schooling, but it also recognizes the importance of high-quality early childhood and pre-school programs, after-school and summer programs, and programs that develop parents’ capacity to support their children’s education… |
| I think…the bodies of research that are most compelling with respect to improving student outcomes (notice I didn’t write “achievement”) are about small class sizes, quality early childhood education, and year-round learning. | Research support is strongest for the benefits of small class sizes in the early grades for disadvantaged children…Increase investment in developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school, and kindergarten education…By and large, low-income students learn as rapidly as more-privileged peers during the hours spent in school. Where they lose ground, though, is in their lack of participation in learning activities during after-school hours and summer vacations… |
| I think if you read or hear someone saying that there is a “program” or “initiative” or “reform” that significantly improves student achievement for a large group of students (lets say, for arguments sake, greater than 384), especially in a short period of time, they are lying (or, at least, terribly misleading you). | Despite the impressive academic gains registered by some schools serving disadvantaged students, there is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can close these gaps in a substantial, consistent, and sustainable manner. |
So, other than the fact that I’m a brilliant scholar of educational policy, what does this mean? Not much. And, overlap notwithstanding, I think this “bigger, bolder” approach does not go nearly far enough. For example, they write that the approach, “assigns value to the new knowledge and skills that young people need to become effective participants in a global environment, including citizenship, creativity, and the ability to respect and work with persons from different backgrounds.” Those are definitely important and worthy skills and dispositions (especially “creativity”), but what about 21st Century Skills such as digital literacy? I think it’s worth pointing out that there are no signatories that represent the ed. tech. community. No Tim Magner. No Don Knezek.
Also, I believe the approach is purposefully broad about outcomes, but I don’t see enough of an emphasis on learning.
I could go on, but I’ll stop now and wallow in my brilliance (-:
I think if you read or hear someone saying that there is a “program” or “initiative” or “reform” that significantly improves student achievement for a large group of students (lets say, for arguments sake, greater than 384), especially in a short period of time, they are lying (or, at least, terribly misleading you).
You never heard of project follow through (N = many thousands) the largest educational experiment in education history?
Where one of the tested interventions, Direct Instruction, significantly improved student achievement, to the tune of about a standard deviation, for about 2000 students in K-3.
Ah, Ken DeRosa! I’ve been meaning to add D-edreckoning to my aggregator for a LONG time and never did it. Thanks for reminding me.
Anyway, like the rest of the ed. policy world, I’ve chosen to ignore the Project FT studies. No, I’m mostly kidding. Truth is, I’ve been the principal or co-investigator on LOTS of large-scale studies, most of it “unpublished” (unfortunately). Those endeavors have hardened me and lead me to the conclusion you’ve challenged. I just don’t think achievement moves much one way or the other in short periods of time. That said, I don’t know enough about DI to comment really intelligently, but one guess that I would have is that DI teaches best what is measured by the tests used for that study. So, if you value what is measured by those tests, then DI may make a difference there. But, if you don’t value what those tests measure…