You couldn’t expect a guy with a doctorate in the politics of education to let the education portion of Wednesday night’s presidential debate go unchecked, could you?

Apparently, both candidates support charter schools.  No surprise from McCain; the Republican party tends to support most forms of school choice (that’s a gross generalization, but I’ll live with that for now). That Obama supports charter schools signals an interesting policy shift, assuming that Obama’s stance is representative of the Democraticy party as a whole (which it may very well not be).  I’m personally pretty mixed on charter schools.  On one hand, I think any policy or set of policies based in free market principles where perfect information on the part of consumers is assumed is highly problematic in the field of education.  On the other hand, these days I’m for anything that attempts to disrupt the status quo in public education.

And, speaking of “perfect information,” both candidates at least implied that charter schools “work” or that they are “effective” in some way (as opposed to voucher programs, where there seemed to be some disagreement).  Well, that’s less than perfect information.  Consider this study conducted as part of NAEP’s pilot study of charter school performance in 2003.  According to the executive summary for the report, “After adjusting for student characteristics, charter school mean scores in reading and mathematics were lower, on average, than those for public noncharter schools.”

I also bring your attention to more recent research conducted by colleagues and “social associates” (I’m not sure I can call them “friends,” but I have been out socially with them on multiple occasions) Sarah and Chris Lubienski.  Based on their analyses of NAEP data, Sarah and Chris concluded that “charter schools, privately operated and publicly financed, did significantly worse than public schools in the fourth grade, once student populations were taken into account.”

(BTW, teachable moment…the next sentence in the NYT article is as follows: “In the eighth grade, it found, students in charters did slightly better than those in public schools, though the sample size was small and the difference was not statistically significant.”  That’s a nonsensical statement.  If the differences were not statistically significant, then nobody did better than anybody else; not even slightly better.  So, the first part of the sentence cannot logically precede the second part.  This bugs me!)

The body of research on charter schools and school choice policies more generally has become overly politicized.  There are too many researchers with agendas dabbling in that field, and too many policy advocates who cherrypick a single study to support their argument.  However, in my reasonably well-informed opinion, the two studies above are as “independent” as they come.

So, Senators Obama and McCain, I’m in favor of exploring any and all educational policy options, including choice-based alternatives.  But, let’s please not mislead the American public.

Tags: charter schools, choice, education, election, NAEP, policy

I think I’m on to something here (of course I do; why else would I be writing this?)…

A. There have been smatterings of dissatisfaction with the recently concluded NECC, particularly among the more experienced and “followed” edubloggers (see e.g. Will and Karl)

B. Great discussions about systemic educational change have been occurring in the edublogosphere, especially over at Chris Lehmann’s blog and Will Richardson’s blog.

I think part of the reason for A is a desire for what’s being discussed in B.

I say that because NECC (the subject of A) is ALL about the micro.; it’s about pedagogy, classroom tools, projects, etc.    The subject of B is macro; it’s about changing the “system.”

So, here’s my proposal.  Let NECC (and ISTE) be what it is; a place to learn about technology integration; a VERY important place for LOTS of educators.  CoSN’s annual conference, on the other hand, is the place where learning and conversations about policy, leadership, change can happen.  Apparently, CoSN doesn’t think professors (or higher ed. more generally) are worthy of attending their shindig, but I’m likely to crash their party next year (besides, I’ve been dying to go to Austin, TX anyway!).

Tags: COSN, education, NECC, policy, technology

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

I’m sure I’m not the first to write about this, but Scott McLeod delivered his latest list of the (potentially) top 50 P-12 education blogs and he got me thinking. The list is what it is…a ranking based on one metric: how many other blogs (and blogs only) have linked to a given blog. As long as Scott’s clear about that, which he very well is, then readers can make what they want of the list.

I commented, noting first that the list overwhelmingly consists of ed. tech. focused blogs. There are many reasons for this, most notably that blogging requires some technological awareness and a little bit of tech. savvy that ed. tech. folks are most likely to have. I also noted my surprise not to see certain educational policy bloggers on the list, such as Sherman Dorn, Matthew Tabor, Alexander Russo and Gary Stager (who I see as more of a bridge blogger). Dorn’s been blogging practically since I was born, and I learn more from him than just about any of the other bloggers I read.

I’m still searching for the right metaphor, because I don’t know that “echo chambers” is quite right; maybe it is, though. According to Wikipedia, “[m]etaphorically, the term echo chamber can refer to any situation in which information, ideas or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission inside an ‘enclosed’ space.” I’ve gotten myself in trouble in the past for suggesting that the edtechblogosphere is a closed space, so I have to be careful here. But, I’ve noticed that the ed. tech. folks on Scott’s list all tend to comment on each other’s blogs and they all tend to communicate with each other via Twitter and other communication media. There are LOTS of REALLY valuable reasons for that, mostly that there is lots of co-learning going on that way. [NOTE: I've noticed that the same sort of "echo chamber" exists for the ed. policy bloggers, although the echoes there are less frequent and more muted (IMHO), and I don't know that there's much electronic communication going on between them beyond the blogs].

So, maybe rather than a closed space, then, a problem as I see it is that there are very few nodes connecting the unfortunately and unnecessarily distinct networks (i.e. the ed. tech. networks and the ed. policy networks). When Gary Stager called out the ed. tech. bloggers for failing to write about the Reading First study, he (purposefully or not) served as a node/bridge but also pointed out just how little overlap there is between the tech. and policy networks. A few commenters thanked Gary for pointing out the “story”.

I’m problematizing this disconnect because, for me, it is symptomatic or an extension of the sort of compartmentalization that plagues the education sector generally. I believe that one of the reasons our public schools have not experienced rapid technological change is because the ed. tech. folks are treated as separate. Leaders and decision makers don’t really understand the issues, so they delegate it to the geeks and wireheads (I use those terms lovingly). It’s the same way with, for example, special education. Leaders and decision makers don’t really understand all of the laws, regulations, etc., so they delegate authority to THAT department and THOSE educators. We have the same problems in schools and colleges of education. For example, I work in a department of educational leadership. Separately, we have a Department of Special Education and Disability Policies. So, let’s say an educator wants to pursue a doctorate with the idea of serving as a special education policymaker or an assistant superintendent for special education. To which program does that educator apply?

We need more integration in education and less compartmentalization; fewer echo chambers. After all, everything is miscellaneous, right?

Tags: blogs, echo chamber, education, networks, nodes, policy, technology

I’ve been domiciled in Virginia now for over 6 months, and I enjoy learning the nuances of the Commonwealth.  Today, I learned that Virginia is the first state in the nation to mandate that public schools offer Internet safety classes for all grade levels.  I’m now curious to see what the actual regulation(s) look like, and to find out how schools and school divisions are handling this requirement (is it a one-time workshop?  is it ongoing?  who “teaches” this stuff?).  I’m also wondering about jurisdictional issues.  I wonder why schools have become the space for teaching about Internet safety.  Lots of bad things (mass shootings, predation, etc.) happen in malls.  Are schools also required to teach about mall safety?

Tags: Internet, policy, safety, schools