Quick, tell me how much you know about the people in the following list:

Maybe you recognize a few of those names? None? Well, those are the most recent recipients of the Roald F. Campbell Lifetime Achievement Award, an award given by UCEA “for the purpose of recognizing senior professors in the field of educational administration whose professional lives have been characterized by extraordinary commitment, excellence, leadership, productivity, generosity, and service.”

I know many of those folks personally. They are some of the brightest, most dedicated educators I could ever know. They are incredible scholars and thought-leaders in the field of educational leadership. They are VERY deserving of that award. But, let me ask you this…Have YOU ever heard them speak? Ever read anything they wrote? If not, why not?

In 2003, the National Football League instituted the Rooney Rule which dictates that all professional football teams must interview at least one minority candidate for an open head coaching position or any open senior football operations position.  The rule came about because Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, lamented the lack of minority head coaches throughout the history of the league.

There has been much discussion about the efficacy of the rule, especially lately.  And, there’s no way to attribute causality, but currently, 6 of the 32 teams have African-American head coaches (and, as of the writing of this post) there are rumors that Leslie Frazier may become the head coach of the Buffalo Bills).  That’s progress, but there is still disproportionality in a league where a little more than 3/4 of the players are African-American.

In education, as of 2007, approximately 45% of all public school students were categorized as a race other than Caucasian (SOURCE). As of 2007-08, approximately 16.9% of all public school teachers were categorized as a race other than Caucasian (SOURCE). Furthermore, as of that same year, 19.1% of all public school principals were categorized as a race other than Caucasian (SOURCE). Looking specifically at African-American students and educators, 15.3% of the students are African-American, 7% of the teachers are African-American and 9.6% of the principals are African-American.  We’re quickly approaching a day when the public schools in the United States serve more minority students than Caucasian students.  Yet, we’re nowhere near that with respect to teachers and especially leaders.

At the highest levels of school leadership, the numbers are even more disproportionate.  Reliable statistics on the superintendency are even harder to come by, but one estimate holds that 2% of all superintendents in the United States are of African descent.  Another estimate puts that at 5%.

I don’t want to go too much further here as my intent is to be mostly descriptive so as to raise questions.  I will, though, gladly point you to work done by colleagues of mine.  The paper to which I link here is based on a series of studies including the dissertation by the lead author.  Drs. Jackson and Shakeshaft reach some interesting conclusions, including discrediting the myth that there are too few African-American candidates in the pool or pipeline for superintendent positions.  I also note the conclusions about African-American superintendents in predominantly Caucasian districts. Their conclusion is essentially that African-Americans, especially males, need not apply. How many of YOU know an African-American superintendent leading a school system that serves mostly Caucasian students?

I urge you to read the Jackson/Shakeshaft paper, and even the small body of literature to which they offer citations.

So, what do you think? Do we need a Rooney Rule in public education?

[NOTE: don't bother with any legal mumbo jumbo about the current jurisprudence on affirmative action and/or equal protection. I know where we stand there. I'm just raising some issues here...I think.]

[NOTE: thanks to Scott McLeod for dreaming up this idea three years ago.  This is my contribution to Leadership Day 2009.  The Leadership posts I've already seen are great, and the collection of posts will ultimately make for an important and interesting contribution to the field of educational leadership.]

I have a doctorate in Politics and Education and when I’m asked what that means, I usually speak to a definition of politics I’ve “borrowed” (re-mixed?) from an adjunct professor with whom I took a course while in graduate school.  Dr. Dale Snauwaert, an adjunct professor at TC at the time, wrote about politics as the intersection of power and justice.  Combining my interests in the politics of education and educational technology, I’ve written much about justice and educational technology (see e.g. this article).  I have not, however, written much about power and educational technology…until now.

In my courses on the politics of education, I guide our exploration of power with two questions: (1) who has power? and (2) how is power organized/distributed?  Much has been written about who has power in the area of educational technology, though there’s more that needs to be written.  Today, though, I explore what I believe to be a major obstacle to school reform through the lens of educational technology: how power is distributed around educational technology.

Educational governance is ultimately about control and how that control is (or is not) partitioned among the various stakeholders matters immensely. I argue that in education, the system is multi-layered and overly partitioned.  I compare our educational system to onions and silos.

“The way authority is structured and exercised shapes the intellectual and moral character of the school, thereby profoundly influencing student development” (Snauwaert, 1993).

ONIONS

The U.S. education system is like an onion in that it has many levels and the more you try to peel away at those layers, the more you start to tear up.

Policy decisions are made by federal, state, and local education agencies.  Even locally, decisions are made at the district, school, department and classroom level.

In addition to aiding or hindering quality education, there are many consequences to the multilayered system, including the phenomenon of mutual adaptation (which I’ve written about here).  As McLaughlin wrote in an article in 1990 about school reform, “…it is exceedingly difficult for policy to change practice, especially across levels of government” (p. 12).

I was reminded of the onion last week at NECC, and my reflections from the conference reinforced my thinking.  The largest ed. tech. conference in the U.S. is nearly entirely classroom-focused and the conversations are nearly totally absent of policy context.  Yet, alongside NECC proper, SETDA (the umbrella organization of state education technology officers) was holding their Emerging Technologies Forum & Annual Convocation.  There was some overlap between the two events, but from my perspective, the state-level policy makers were meeting in parallel with the school and district-level folks at NECC.  Similarly, shortly after NECC, the Education Commission of the States held their annual National Forum on Educational Policy.

This sort of parellel play doesn’t advance anyone’s cause.

SILOS

Even within the same levels of decision making in education, we have a serious silo problem.  Like policymakers across levels of governance, educators within any given level exist and work within separate silos; i.e. they play in parellel.  Think of all the silos: subjects, grades, departments, etc.

One silo problem that is particularly problematic is the curriculum vs. technology distinction.  I’ve long wanted to do an examination of school district organizational charts to see how technology is related to curriculum.  I know that in some districts, they are separate departments, each with its own director.  In some districts, there is an IT department (hardware, networking, etc.) that is separate from the instructional technology folks who may or may not live/exist under the direction of the curriculum folks.

I used to do evaluation research for education technology vendors who would often tell me stories about the “curriculum witch.”  They would usually pitch their solution(s) to the technology department and come very close to making a sale only to have the “curriculum witch” show up at the 11th hour and declare the program/software/etc. inconsistent with the curriculum goals of the district.  I’m certain there has been wasteful spending across numerous districts because the “curriculum witch” never did intervene.

In Virginia, our ISTE affiliate is VSTE.  They recently moved their annual conference to an early December date.  In fact, their conference is November 30-December 2.  From December 2-December 4 is the annual conference of VAASCD, the Virginia affiliate of ASCD.  That organization is focused mostly on issues of curriculum and professional development.  That these conferences are back-to-back in different parts of the state makes it nearly impossible for anyone (myself included) to be able to attend both.  So, the technology people will meet with the technology people and the teaching/curriculum people will meet amongst themselves.  I know people who I respect greatly that lead each of these organizations and I’m not at all blaming anyone for this situation.  I’m only pointing this out as a situation that reinforces the silo problem about which I am writing.

I could go on, but I need to bring this around to Leadership Day 2009.  For me, true school reform will not happen until leaders at all levels and across the many silos get together to think about governance arrangements. Especially at a time when collaboration and communication are easier than ever, we need to work together across levels of government and annihilate the silos in our education agencies.  Tha t is a huge leadership challenge.

“The real work of learning happens in the classroom, in the interaction between teacher and student.  This interaction is affected by innumerable large and small decisions made by principals, school boards, superintendents, state legislatures, education department officials, and the federal government.  These decisions and their implementation can either aid or hinder quality education in the classroom.” (Committee for Economic Development, 1994, p. 2)

Photo Attributions:

• Leadership Day: Scott McLeod
• Onions: Darwin Bell
• Silo: Chris Knight

I am so very excited to use this space to recognize a woman who embodies leadership, humanitarianism and mentorship.

This week, at the annual convention of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), Dr. Charol Shakeshaft was honored with an Effie H. Jones Humanitarian Award.  According to AASA, “[t]hese awards…recognize AASA members who exemplify the professional qualities of advocacy, support, mentorship and encouragement of diversity in educational leadership.”  The page announcing the 2009 winners does a decent job of describing Charol’s contributions to the field of educational leadership.  I would add the following:

• Charol wrote THE seminal book on women in educational leadership.
• Charol has DEEPLY and positively impacted the personal and professional lives of dozens of school leaders directly through her work as a professor and mentor.
• Charol is most recently advocating for a profoundly underrepresented group; young people victimized by educator sexual misconduct.

And, personally, I consider Charol to be my primary mentor.  She has been a dear colleague and friend for over a decade, and I look forward to continued collaboration and friendship with her moving forward.

I commend AASA for recognizing Dr. Shakeshaft.  Please join me in congratulating Charol and in thanking her for all that she has done as a leader, a mentor and  humanitarian.

This past weekend, I had a wonderful opportunity to lead a conversation/session at Educon 2.1.  I had planned a 20-25 minute presentation to be followed by small-group and whole-group discussions.  But, at the last minute, I decided to scrap the presentation part and let the folks in the room talk.  At the wiki developed for the session, you can see the premise of the discussion.  The conversations were really good, though we never really got beyond the first question.

Using my Tablet PC, I recorded some of the ideas that seemed to resonate with the folks in the room and that struck me as particularly interesting.  Here are those ideas:

Additionally, one of the attendees was using Inspiration to document the conversation at her table.  Here’s what she came up with:

I’d love to get your thoughts.  Please comment here and/0r (if you really want to be 2.0ish) add your thoughts to the wiki.

For months now, I’ve been trying to figure out how to develop an online community to enhance our programs within the Department of Educational Leadership at VCU.  Currently, each course has its own Blackboard space.  We also send lots of e-mails to students, though sadly we don’t even have good e-mail groups in our e-mail client (that’s pathetic, I know).  So, communication across courses, across programs, and across the years is impossible.  It’s a sad state of affairs, and I’ve spent way too much time trying to figure out the best way to establish an online community for all of our students, faculty and even alumni.

I suppose my biggest problem is that I’m looking for the perfect one-stop solution.  I’m very familiar with Ning and I’ve been playing around with various wiki systems that work nicely as places for collaboration and communication.  Those are fine ways to create a single online community.  One problem for me, though, is that our department consists of many different groups, cohorts, etc. Here’s a graphical representation of our department:

I want each group, cohort, etc. to be able to communicate privately with each other, but to also be a part of the larger community.  So, I could, for example, setup a department-wide Ning and then setup each cohort as a group.  However, the groups within Ning don’t have the full functionality of Ning (e.g. they can’t setup their own document repository or a separate page for anything, really).  And, the groups are not private.

A second problem is that I want to be able keep track of activity with an RSS feed.  But, as you may know, private spaces (Ning, Wetpaint, etc.) don’t allow for RSS feeds.  This limitation also stops me from setting up a Ning or Wetpaint for each group, cohort, etc. and then setting up a department-level aggregate page via NetVibes or Pageflakes (a la Steve Hargadon’s approach here).

So, where am I?  Right now, I’m leaning towards a department-level Ning as the hub of our online community.  From there, I could setup groups for each cohort, group, etc. with a link to a private wiki for each cohort, group, etc. (leaning heavily towards WetPaint for that).  In the absence of RSS feeds, I’ll have to subscribe to each site via e-mail and then setup routing rules so that my inbox doesn’t get flooded.  It’s also going to be a naming nightmare.  But, that’s my best current solution.

If any of you smart people have better ideas, I’d be more than happy to hear them.  Thanks in advance!

In the not-too-distant future, LeaderTalk will transition to Education Week.  In other words, the blog will become part of the growing family of blogs under Education Week’s umbrella.  As an original contributor to LeaderTalk, I’m struggling with that transition.  The text of the e-mail I sent to LeaderTalk contributors is below.  If you, my dear readers of Ed. Insanity, have additional thoughts to help me think through my struggles, I’d appreciate it.

All,
Let me first echo Scott’s congratulatory remarks.  LeaderTalk has become an incredible communication space by and for educational leaders.  I’ve been proud to be an original contributor, though I haven’t written there lately.

That said, I have a philosophical conundrum that you smart people could surely help me think through.

I have always believed that there are too many educators (unlike you all) who are too locally focused and who would do well to consider their position within the larger world of public education. To that end,  I have always thought of Education Week as an incredible publication uniquely positioned to inform educators about important state, national and even international issues in education.  To me, they have always been THE trade publication in education.  When Al Gore invented the Internet…er, once Internet access became nearly ubiquitous, edweek.org was one of my very first stops for my daily reading.  I learned gobs by surfing through edweek.org on a daily basis.  However, some time not too long ago, edweek.org made a decision to go to a subscription service.    They have a few different access plans which you can see here: http://www.edweek.org/offer.html.

So, what’s my problem?  Well, I hate that I can’t read edweek.org fully without paying.  In fact, I think it borders on criminal that they charge for access.  There’s still plenty of content that’s available for free, but there’s lots of really good stuff that’s not.  And, if you play around on edweek.org for just a short period of time, you can’t help but notice the advertising on there. [NOTE: this week is not a good time to explore this issue b/c Ed Week is having a free open house; they've opened their site to everyone for a whole week...gee, thanks for the tease.]  I have no problem with ads.  Actually, the advertisements themselves are what should make edweek.org completely open access.  The cost of the top level of access to edweek.org is not enormous; it’s basically $80/year.  But, why should I pay that?  Couldn’t they pass that very minimal cost on to their advertisers who are making money hand over fist?  Shouldn’t they?

Surely, the vast majority, if not all of Education Week’s readers are educators.  And, quite frankly, I’m sick of private vendors taking money from education in this country.  Think about all of the hard-working public school educators who are probably underpaid to begin with who spend their own hard-earned money to equip their classrooms each year.  Now, to have access to THE premiere publication in the field, they have to pay Education Week.  Also, I believe that charging for access online is out of touch with the realities of the modern publishing world and also poorly models the idea of open access to information. eSchool News, easily the premier publication specific to the field of education technology is completely free in print form and online.

If you all can help me understand why I shouldn’t be bothered by Ed Week’s policies, I’d be happy to join you in the transition to becoming one of Ed. Week’s growing number of good blogs.  If not, I’ll have to bow out.  So, thanks in advance for your help.

Best,
JB

Been blogging less frequently lately, mostly because the tenure application deadline looms LARGE.  But, I got a bit riled up after reading an article that Kevin Jarrett pointed out via Twitter.

Blogging under the auspices of The Wall Street Journal (a highly respectable publication), John J. Edwards III wrote about a forthcoming book by two sociologists at the University of Texas-Arlington.  He surely learned of this book through a press release issued by the Office of Media Relations at UT-A.  I think it’s great that the folks in that office are promoting this book.  In fact, the public relations guru that works in my unit at VCU will be publishing an article about me and my blogging/professional networking in the next issue of our alumni magazine.

I do, however, have a couple of problems with this press release and the associated blog post by Mr. Edwards.  First, Edwards notes only that the book is “forthcoming.”  The press release says that “[t]he book is being published…with the release date to be announced.”  So, not only is the book not available to the public yet, but there isn’t even a date for release yet.  I don’t have a ton of experience with book publishers, but I have plenty of data from experiences with colleagues.  And I’m guessing that without even a date for release, we won’t see this book for a while.

That’s highly problematic.  When I read articles about educational research in the popular media, I’m instantly skeptical.  Not skeptical as in doubtful; but skeptical as in “I’m going to have to see the actual text of the report/article/book myself” so that I can make my own meaning of it.  Here, all I’ve got to go on is one blogger’s account of the book.  Furthermore, there’s no indication that Edwards read the book himself.  He quotes directly from the press release.  YET, amazingly (maybe not considering the usual credibility of the WSJ), there are dozens and dozens (I couldn’t count) of comments to the post.  I understand that Edwards used the press release to ask a couple of otherwise banal questions to his readers, but wouldn’t we all be better served if we had access to the book itself?  Wouldn’t the discussion within the comments be a more interesting and more informed discussion?

My department is launching a new Ed.D. program in educational leadership this coming fall semester.  In planning the program, we’ve had some really good and really important discussions about the sorts of skills and dispositions school leaders need to have.  I’ve been most interested in our conversations around “inquiry.”  There, we’ve concluded that school leaders need to be informed and critical consumers of research.  In fact, we’re working on a case/module where the doc. students will be asked to consider, for example, new math software.  There will be various activities built into that case/module, and among them will be an exploration of the research base on math software.  In an era where schools are mandated to implement only research-based programs, it’s crucial for educational leaders and policymakers to not just accept what others say about the research base for a given program.  They need to know how to find and critique the research base themselves.  This becomes particularly important in the digital age, where access to information is not bounded by space or time and where anyone with an Internet connection can provide information.

I recognize that the media relations folks at UT-A were doing their jobs by creating advance buzz for a book to be published by two of their faculty members.  And, I realize that there’s nothing inherently wrong with using a press release as a departure point for a blog post.  But, I just think a disservice has been done to the educational community here.

My second problem has to do with the book itself and the way it’s portrayed in the news release and the blog post.  The language used suggests that these researchers have devised some kind of novel argument.  Consider: “The authors explore topics like time-use in schools; the confinement and physical disciplining of young bodies as they carry backpacks and sit at cramped desks; the stress on fine motor skills; the performance principle and grading; the performance principle and testing; the disunity of mind and body; vocationalism; a fetish of facts and factoids; rote learning and regurgitation; worksheet-driven learning; classroom authoritarianism and competitive school sports.”  Isn’t the verb “to explore” usually associated with charting new terrain?  Perhaps this stuff is new to the researchers, but haven’t they ever read anything by the likes of Alfie Kohn?  Even Gary Stager?  According to the UT-A website, Dr. Agger is a professor of sociology and the humanities housed in the Department of Sociology.  Same with his co-worker and wife, Dr. Shelton.  They are sociologists and apparently not especially sociologists of education.  So, maybe they are not as versed in the literature on progressive education.  Maybe they do reference that literature.

And, is their argument/contention based on new data they’ve collected and analyzed?  Or, are they synthesizing others’ research?  Or, are they simply theorizing?

But, see I can’t know any of this for sure.  And, apparently I won’t know for sure for a while because it’s not clear when the book will be available.  That’s what’s so infuriating here.  Rather than creating advanced buzz, the fine folks at the Office of Media Relations have just thoroughly annoyed me.  They’ve treated you and me as uncritical consumers of information.

There’s quite a bit of really good edublogging and commenting that lies at the intersection of “change” and “21st Century Schools” (see e.g. Chris Lehmann’s blog and Will Richardson’s blog).  As one who has studied extensively the research and literature on school reform, school change, policy implementation, etc., I’m having a hard time with a few aspects of the conversations that are going on.

First of all, what are we changing?  Are we talking about a classroom (i.e. changing one teacher’s pedagogy?)?  Are we talking about changing multiple classrooms?  Are we talking about changing a whole school?  Are we talking about changing the whole institution of public schooling?  Those are all very different scenarios and require very different approaches.  And, it gets back to the macro vs. micro distinction I made in my last blog post.

More importantly, though, let’s please consider that there is a HUGE, DEEP pool of research and literature on school change. There’s not a huge need to re-think this stuff; there’s a lot to be learned from what has already been learned.

In the mid 1970′s, the Rand Corporation conducted a national study of four federally funded programs “intended to introduce and support innovative practices in the public schools.”  The Rand researchers examined a sample of 293 local projects funded by these four federal programs in 18 states.  This so-called “Change Agent” study remains the paragon of all “implementation” studies.  According to Milbrey McLaughlin (1990), one of the principal investigators on the Change Agent study:

“…the following strategies generally were seen to be ineffective:

• reliance on outside consultants
• packaged management approaches
• one-shot, pre-implementation training
• pay for training
• formal, summative evaluation
• comprehensive, system-wide projects

The following strategies generally were effective, especially when applied in concert:

• concrete, teacher-specific and extended training
• classroom assistance from local staff
• teacher observation of similar projects in other classrooms, schools, or districts
• regular project meetings that focused on practical issues
• teacher participation in project decisions
• local development of project materials
• principals’ participation in training (p. 12)”

Since the 1970′s we’ve learned even more about change and policy implementation.  McLaughlin revisited the study in an article in 1990.  Her main conclusion there was that some of the findings of the original study needed to be reconsidered, but mostly, things remained the same.  “A general finding of the Change Agent study that has become almost a truism is that it is exceedingly difficult for policy to change practice, especially across levels of government (p. 12)”  In one study I conducted, I was able to determine that of all the variance in student computer use across the country, less than 2% could be accounted for by differences in state-level policies.  An additional study of the effects of state-level policies on pedagogy showed that 3% of the variance in teaching practices could be attributed to state-level polcies.  As the Change Agent study taught us, effective change in schools doesn’t happen by “adoption,” it happens by mutual adaptation; the adaptation of a project or policy and the organizational setting to each other.

So, what does this all mean?  Well, I think we’d all to well to internalize the bullets above as a list of what works.  First, one-and-done, sit-and-git PD doesn’t work; it has to be ongoing and as close to the classrooms/teachers as possible.  Second, teachers must be included in the change process, especially as learners.  Third, leadership must be involved at all stages and at all levels.  Finally, change is interpreted locally and the context of the institution adapts along with the change.

I also want to bring our attention to the final bullet in the list of ineffective strategies: comprehensive, system-wide projects don’t work.  We can’t change the system all at once.  So, it seems to me that School 2.0 is going to have to come about in one of two ways.  Either we get enough teachers and leaders to understand why change needs to happen in their schools and HOW that happens effectively (and what not to do).  Or, we go outside the “system.”