Something (perhaps some thingS) is (are) rubbing me the wrong way about NECC.  I’ll reflect a bit more over time, but for today I want to write a bit about a related set of issues about which I am incredibly passionate.  My ed. leadership professorial friends/colleagues and I joke about what we perceive as an over-emphasis on issues of “social justice” “equity” and “diversity” at the annual conferences we attend.  Please understand that we all care deeply about those issues; it’s just that it’s gotten to the point where it seems like it’s all that gets discussed at a comprehensive conference. Well, after being at NECC for a few days, I long for some conversation about…”social justice” and “diversity” and “equity.”  Hang around the blogger’s cafe for a bit and tell me how much diversity you notice.  Sure, there are international folks and that’s awesome.  But, racial diversity?  Forget it.

I did a keyword search of the program and came up with the following results:

EQUITY - other than the Digital Equity Summit (which I’ve written about before), there are only two other instances of the word “equity” in the program.  One is for a session about “[r]ole playing a seventh to ninth grade student, participants will complete an inquiry activity using technology for supporting diverse learners.”  The other is about how the addition of interactive white boards have promoted classroom equity in one school district.  This is a joke and a crime.  Sorry.  That’s how I feel.

DIVIDE (looking for references to the digital divide) - appears two whole times in the program.  The first reference is for a session about the “digital divide” between what teachers and students can do with technology.  Give me a break.  The second reference is for a session I’m sorry I missed.  The session was about research showing what works for disadvantaged students.  Hooray for Dennis Harper, Generation Y with Trina Davis, Susanna Garza and Martha Peet.

JUSTICE (looking for references to social justice) - shows up twice but only because one workshop is being run twice.  In what sounds like a really interesting session, participants are asked to “[e]xplore the merger of social justice and technology by creating a podcast on the Civil Rights Memorial Center and learning from student producers.”  Nice.

DIVERSITY - Zero.  Zilcho.  NEVER appears in the program.

I’ve asked quite a few people I’ve spoken with either at the conference or out on the town if they watched Hard Times at Douglass High, the documentary that was all over HBO last week.  Not a single person I asked had seen the film.  How could that be?  How could there be so much attention on books like Here Comes Everybody and Wisdom of the Crowds (the author gave the keynote) and virtually no attention to an important film like Hard Times (and I don’t mean the Ridgemont High version)?

I DARE YOU to watch Hard Times (see preview below) and then to walk through the exhibit hall at NECC.  The conditions and consequences of poverty documented in the film stand in complete contrast to the glitz and excess of the exhibit hall.

Please people, how can we continue to talk about the pedagogical applications of Google Earth and how much we need to talk about how to do good presentations and, and, and?   And how can we continue to soak in the excess and the free giveaways when so many young people don’t have basic necessities of life.

Tags: diversity, equity, necc08, social justice

Last night, I watched and recorded the HBO documentary, Hard Times at Douglass High: A No Child Left Behind Report Card.  Hard Times is essentially a “year-in-the-life” cinema verite type film that “documents” the inner workings of one high school in Baltimore, MD that serves only African-American students (as a result of de facto segregation).  I’m recommending the documentary, with lots of caveats.  My greatest concern is that the film will feed streotypes about urban high schools.  My greatest hope is that people will watch the film and wake up to the reality that schooling, particularly in urban areas, is a difficult and complex institution that does not work for too many young people.

Though I’ve never taught in an urban high school, my research projects have allowed me to spend a LOT of time in various urban schools all across the country.  I’ve also taken courses on urban education, read all of the classic books about urban education, etc.  So, nothing in the film surprised me and I learned nothing new.  So, I’m guessing the film was not made for people like me.

However, for those who’ve only “heard about” schools like Douglass High (even writing “schools like…” is value laden and probably not my best choice of words), I imagine the film is pretty startling.  There’s a real sense of hopelessness, indifference and/or resignation that permeates the film.  There are a couple of nice stories about a few of the students, but mostly the statistics cited throughout the film are terrifyingly bad and the negative stories certainly outweigh the bad.  The images of students sleeping through the administration of the state tests are disturbing.  The “so be it” attitude of some of the teachers is really upsetting.  This is not a film to watch if you’re looking for a pick-me-up.

My own takes?  As a professor of educational leadership, I was wholly unimpressed by the principal.  She seemed kind and well-meaning, but she was not at all inspiring or personable.  I believe that school would be better served by someone with tons of energy, ideas and enthusiasm.  Also, I don’t understand the use of NCLB in the subtitle of the film.  Other than the frequent citing of statistics about outcomes, the film is NOT about NCLB; it’s simply an ethnographic look at one urban high school.

Having watched the film in the week leading up to NECC, I’m left conflicted.  On one hand, it feels like going to a conference with a massive exhibit hall loaded with glitzy, expensive products sold by many lucrative companies is so wrong-headed. How can interactive white boards and Google Earth, for example, help the kids in Douglass High, many of whom worry about where they will get their next meal?  Or, how can I concern myself with “big ideas” about the future of schooling and tech.-driven learning theories when there are so many schools like Douglass High where the status quo is simply unacceptable?  On the other hand, I wonder if discussing and thinking about “big ideas” like Classroom 2.0 or School 2.0 might help me think about ways to blow up the status quo.  I mean, what if “the best and brightest” thinkers at NECC were to be given the power to convert Douglass High into School 2.0?

A while back, David Jakes laid down a gauntlet to edubloggers and asked if we were ready to “earn it - really earn it” at NECC.  Well, I challenge those same folks to “step up” and figure out how the issues and ideas discussed at NECC (especially NECC Unplugged and Edubloggercon) can be used to serve those most in need of school reform.

Tags: necc2008, reform, urban education

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:

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 (-:

Tags: education, equity, outcomes, policy

Here’s the e-mail I sent to ISTE today. I haven’t heard back yet (save for the automated out-of-office reply). What do you think?

Greetings XXXXX,
First of all, thanks for all that you do with ISTE and especially the Digital Equity Summit. I have great interest, empirically and personally, in issues of digital equity in education. I’ve written about the issue, including here: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v15n3/

I will be attending NECC this year, for the first time. I only learned of the Digital Equity Summit today as I was searching the program. I’d be quite interested in attending (I’d have to change my return flight, of course, but that’s not your problem). However, I’m wondering why there’s an extra $50 charge for this event. The costs of attending NECC are fairly prohibitive to begin with, and it strikes me as ironic, then, that there would be an extra charge to attend an important event about how we can better serve those in most need (especially, financially). Furthermore, if the corporate sponsors that are profiting from the education enterprise truly wanted to show concern and true sponsorship, they would cover the cost for participants.

I certainly do not want to come off as angry or combative; I’m partly asking for some explanations or clarification on what appears, to me at least, to be an unfortunate and disconcerting situation.

Thanks in advance for any explanations or clarification you can offer. Perhaps I’ll see you at NECC?

Best,
JB

Tags: digital equity, NECC

A convergence of two events yesterday brought me to this post today. First, I read Paul Blogush’s post about an apparent lack of racial diversity within the conversations/networks related to School/Classroom 2.0. Second, of course, was Barack Obama’s historic evening.

I’ve written quite a bit about digital equity in education, including a blog post a while back (on MLK Day 2008). Today, I look at some recent statistics on computer uses in schools disaggregated by race. [NOTE: these data are generated with the NAEP Data Explorer. Thus, these are nationally representative data].

Looking first at computer use for math, by race, in 2007, at 4th grade:

and then at 8th grade:

What do we see? Well, two things: First, computer use for math is more frequent in 4th grade than 8th grade (BTW, that’s a consistent finding across lots of ed. tech. research; what’s up with the secondary school teachers?). Second, at both grade levels, white students are more likely than African-American students to “never or hardly ever” use computers for math (and, yes, statheads, those differences are “statistically significant”). So, I can’t say that African-American students use computers for math more than white students, but I can say they are less likely to “never or hardly ever” use computers for math in school.

It is fair, then, to ask what the students are doing on the computers for math. Is it just “drill and kill” kinds of stuff? Well, take a look at the following figure which shows the data on student use of computers to play math games (4th grade):

African-American students are more likely than any other group of students to be using computers for math games. That finding, IMHO, is good and important. Why important? Because if we want kids to be using computers to facilitate/advance learning, for African-American children, that needs to happen in the schools because there continues to be a significant digital divide in the homes. Consider the following:

Approximately 97% of white 8th grade students reported having access to a computer at home, compared to 84% of African-American students (and 83% of Latina/o students). Also, as per the table in the earlier blog post, African-Americans and people in rural areas are significantly less likely to have broadband Internet access.

So, the story (as I wrote in my earlier post) is that “the institution of public schooling is doing its part to level the digital playing field. The problem is that the significant inequities that exist within homes present a huge barrier to using technology to extend the learning day and to bridge a home-school connection.”

Thus, if we’re going to have serious conversations about School/Classroom 2.0, we need to be cognizant of issues of digital equity. Furthermore, we need a national policy agenda (Senators Obama and McCain, are you reading/listening?) that emphasizes eliminating the digital divide. Personally, I am going to be paying close attention at NECC to see if others are, in fact, mindful of these issues.

Tags: computer use, digital equity