HOW DOES MULTITASKING CHANGE THE WAY KIDS LEARN?

by Annie Murphy Paul | MindShift | http://bit.ly/1bdBXpk

Flickr: Ben Seidelman | Using tech tools that students are familiar with and already enjoy using is attractive to educators, but getting students focused on the project at hand might be more difficult because of it.

May 3, 2013   ::  Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms: Investigators followed students into the spaces where homework gets done. Pens poised over their “study observation forms,” the observers watched intently as the students—in middle school, high school, and college, 263 in all—opened their books and turned on their computers.

For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computer—and also using email, looking at Facebook, engaging in instant messaging, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the web. Sitting unobtrusively at the back of the room, the observers counted the number of windows open on the students’ screens and noted whether the students were wearing ear-buds.

Although the students had been told at the outset that they should “study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course,” it wasn’t long before their attention drifted: Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.

“We were amazed at how frequently they multitasked, even though they knew someone was watching,” Rosen says. “It really seems that they could not go for 15 minutes without engaging their devices,” adding, “It was kind of scary, actually.”

“I don’t care if a kid wants to tweet while she’s watching American Idol, or have music on while he plays a video game. But when students are doing serious work with their minds, they have to have focus.”

Concern about young people’s use of technology is nothing new, of course. But Rosen’s study, published in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior, is part of a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitasking while learning. Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting in class has become common behavior among young people—so common that many of them rarely write a paper or complete a problem set any other way.

But evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. So detrimental is this practice that some researchers are proposing that a new prerequisite for academic and even professional success—the new marshmallow test of self-discipline—is the ability to resist a blinking inbox or a buzzing phone.

The media multitasking habit starts early. In “Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds,” a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and published in 2010, almost a third of those surveyed said that when they were doing homework, “most of the time” they were also watching TV, texting, listening to music, or using some other medium. The lead author of the study was Victoria Rideout, then a vice president at Kaiser and now an independent research and policy consultant. Although the study looked at all aspects of kids’ media use, Rideout told me she was particularly troubled by its findings regarding media multitasking while doing schoolwork.

“This is a concern we should have distinct from worrying about how much kids are online or how much kids are media multitasking overall. It’s multitasking while learning that has the biggest potential downside,” she says. “I don’t care if a kid wants to tweet while she’s watching American Idol, or have music on while he plays a video game. But when students are doing serious work with their minds, they have to have focus.”

“Parents can draw a line when it comes to homework and studying—telling their kids, ‘This is a time when you will concentrate on just one thing.’ ”

For older students, the media multitasking habit extends into the classroom. While most middle and high school students don’t have the opportunity to text, email, and surf the Internet during class, studies show the practice is nearly universal among students in college and professional school. One large survey found that 80 percent of college students admit to texting during class; 15 percent say they send 11 or more texts in a single class period.

During the first meeting of his courses, Rosen makes a practice of calling on a student who is busy with his phone. “I ask him, ‘What was on the slide I just showed to the class?’ The student always pulls a blank,” Rosen reports. “Young people have a wildly inflated idea of how many things they can attend to at once, and this demonstration helps drive the point home: If you’re paying attention to your phone, you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in class.” Other professors have taken a more surreptitious approach, installing electronic spyware or planting human observers to record whether students are taking notes on their laptops or using them for other, unauthorized purposes.

Such steps may seem excessive, even paranoid: After all, isn’t technology increasingly becoming an intentional part of classroom activities and homework assignments? Educators are using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as social sites created just for schools, such as Edmodo, to communicate with students, take class polls, assign homework, and have students collaborate on projects. But researchers are concerned about the use of laptops, tablets, cell phones, and other technology for purposes quite apart from schoolwork. Now that these devices have been admitted into classrooms and study spaces, it has proven difficult to police the line between their approved and illicit use by students.

In the study involving spyware, for example, two professors of business administration at the University of Vermont found that “students engage in substantial multitasking behavior with their laptops and have non course-related software applications open and active about 42 percent of the time.” The professors, James Kraushaar and David Novak, obtained students’ permission before installing the monitoring software on their computers—so, as in Rosen’s study, the students were engaging in flagrant multitasking even though they knew their actions were being recorded.

Another study, carried out at St. John’s University in New York, used human observers stationed at the back of the classroom to record the technological activities of law students. The spies reported that 58 percent of second- and third-year law students who had laptops in class were using them for “non-class purposes” more than half the time. (First-year students were far more likely to use their computers for taking notes, although an observer did note one first-year student texting just 17 minutes into her very first class—the beginning of her law school career.)

CAN THE BRAIN MULTITASK?

Texting, emailing, and posting on Facebook and other social media sites are by far the most common digital activities students undertake while learning, according to Rosen. That’s a problem, because these operations are actually quite mentally complex, and they draw on the same mental resources—using language, parsing meaning—demanded by schoolwork.

David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who’s studied the effects of divided attention on learning, takes a firm line on the brain’s ability to multitask: “Under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the same mental resources. An example would be folding laundry and listening to the weather report on the radio. That’s fine. But listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebook—each of these tasks is very demanding, and each of them uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.”

Young people think they can perform two challenging tasks at once, Meyer acknowledges, but “they are deluded,” he declares. It’s difficult for anyone to properly evaluate how well his or her own mental processes are operating, he points out, because most of these processes are unconscious. And, Meyer adds, “there’s nothing magical about the brains of so-called ‘digital natives’ that keeps them from suffering the inefficiencies of multitasking. They may like to do it, they may even be addicted to it, but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s far better to focus on one task from start to finish.”

Erin Scott

Researchers have documented a cascade of negative outcomes that occurs when students multitask while doing schoolwork. First, the assignment takes longer to complete, because of the time spent on distracting activities and because, upon returning to the assignment, the student has to re-familiarize himself with the material.

Second, the mental fatigue caused by repeatedly dropping and picking up a mental thread leads to more mistakes. The cognitive cost of such task-switching is especially high when students alternate between tasks that call for different sets of expressive “rules”—the formal, precise language required for an English essay, for example, and the casual, friendly tone of an email to a friend.

Third, students’ subsequent memory of what they’re working on will be impaired if their attention is divided. Although we often assume that our memories fail at the moment we can’t recall a fact or concept, the failure may actually have occurred earlier, at the time we originally saved, or encoded, the memory. The moment of encoding is what matters most for retention, and dozens of laboratory studies have demonstrated that when our attention is divided during encoding, we remember that piece of information less well—or not at all. As the unlucky student spotlighted by Rosen can attest, we can’t remember something that never really entered our consciousness in the first place. And a study last month showed that students who multitask on laptops in class distract not just themselves but also their peers who see what they’re doing.

Fourth, some research has suggested that when we’re distracted, our brains actually process and store information in different, less useful ways. In a 2006 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Russell Poldrack of the University of Texas-Austin and two colleagues asked participants to engage in a learning activity on a computer while also carrying out a second task, counting musical tones that sounded while they worked. Study subjects who did both tasks at once appeared to learn just as well as subjects who did the first task by itself. But upon further probing, the former group proved much less adept at extending and extrapolating their new knowledge to novel contexts—a key capacity that psychologists call transfer.

“This is not some universal norm that students and parents can’t buck. This is not an unreasonable thing to ask of your kid.”

Brain scans taken during Poldrack’s experiment revealed that different regions of the brain were active under the two conditions, indicating that the brain engages in a different form of memory when forced to pay attention to two streams of information at once. The results suggest, the scientists wrote, that “even if distraction does not decrease the overall level of learning, it can result in the acquisition of knowledge that can be applied less flexibly in new situations.”

Finally, researchers are beginning to demonstrate that media multitasking while learning is negatively associated with students’ grades. In Rosen’s study, students who used Facebook during the 15-minute observation period had lower grade-point averages than those who didn’t go on the site. And two recent studies by Reynol Junco, a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, found that texting and using Facebook—in class and while doing

homework—were negatively correlated with college students’ GPAs. “Engaging in Facebook use or texting while trying to complete schoolwork may tax students’ capacity for cognitive processing and preclude deeper learning,” write Junco and a coauthor. (Of course, it’s also plausible that the texting and Facebooking students are those with less willpower or motivation, and thus likely to have lower GPAs even aside from their use of technology.)

HELPING KIDS PRIORITIZE

Meyer, of the University of Michigan, worries that the problem goes beyond poor grades. “There’s a definite possibility that we are raising a generation that is learning more shallowly than young people in the past,” he says. “The depth of their processing of information is considerably less, because of all the distractions available to them as they learn.”

Given that these distractions aren’t going away, academic and even professional achievement may depend on the ability to ignore digital temptations while learning—a feat akin to the famous marshmallow test. In a series of experiments conducted more than 40 years ago, psychologist Walter Mischel tempted young children with a marshmallow, telling them they could have two of the treats if they put off eating one right away. Follow-up studies performed years later found that the kids who were better able to delay gratification not only achieved higher grades and test scores but were also more likely to succeed in school and their careers.

Two years ago, Rosen and his colleagues conducted an information-age version of the marshmallow test. College students who participated in the study were asked to watch a 30-minute videotaped lecture, during which some were sent eight text messages while others were sent four or zero text messages. Those who were interrupted more often scored worse on a test of the lecture’s content; more interestingly, those who responded to the experimenters’ texts right away scored significantly worse than those participants who waited to reply until the lecture was over.

“Listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebook—each of these tasks is very demanding, and each of them uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.”

This ability to resist the lure of technology can be consciously cultivated, Rosen maintains. He advises students to take “tech breaks” to satisfy their cravings for electronic communication: After they’ve labored on their schoolwork uninterrupted for 15 minutes, they can allow themselves two minutes to text, check websites, and post to their hearts’ content. Then the devices get turned off for another 15 minutes of academics.

Over time, Rosen says, students are able extend their working time to 20, 30, even 45 minutes, as long as they know that an opportunity to get online awaits. “Young people’s technology use is really about quelling anxiety,” he contends. “They don’t want to miss out. They don’t want to be the last person to hear some news, or the ninth person to ‘like’ someone’s post.” Device-checking is a compulsive behavior that must be managed, he says, if young people are to learn and perform at their best.

Rideout, director of the Kaiser study on kids and media use, sees an upside for parents in the new focus on multitasking while learning. “The good thing about this phenomenon is that it’s a relatively discrete behavior that parents actually can do something about,” she says. “It would be hard to enforce a total ban on media multitasking, but parents can draw a line when it comes to homework and studying—telling their kids, ‘This is a time when you will concentrate on just one thing.’ ”

Parents shouldn’t feel like ogres when they do so, she adds. “It’s important to remember that while a lot of kids do media multitask while doing homework, a lot of them don’t. One out of five kids in our study said they ‘never’ engage in other media while doing homework, and another one in five said they do so only ‘a little bit.’ This is not some universal norm that students and parents can’t buck. This is not an unreasonable thing to ask of your kid.”

So here’s the takeaway for parents of Generation M: Stop fretting about how much they’re on Facebook. Don’t harass them about how much they play video games. The digital native boosters are right that this is the social and emotional world in which young people live. Just make sure when they’re doing schoolwork, the cell phones are silent, the video screens are dark, and that every last window is closed but one.

• This story was produced by MindShift in conjunction with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University and Slate.

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• Facebook and texting made me do it: Media-induced task-switching while studying Original Research Article
  Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 29, Issue 3, May 2013, Pages 948-958
  Larry D. Rosen, L. Mark Carrier, Nancy A. Cheever   View Abstract

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• Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds

  Jan 20, 2010  ::  A national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that with technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7

  Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Foundation about young people’s media use.  It includes data from all three waves of the study (1999, 2004, and 2009), and is among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth.

  News Release

  Report: Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds

  The report was released on Wednesday, January 20, 2010, at a forum in Washington, D.C., that featured the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, media executives, and child development experts.

  Webcast of the Event

  Podcast of the Event

AFT Teach 13: SURVEY SHOWS PARENTS SUPPORT STRONG NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS

AFT Teach 2013 Conference Press Release + CONFERENCE HAND OUT |  http://bit.ly/12gpCNn

ParentsSurvey2013 Slides by 4LAKids

July 22, 2013  ::  Parents overwhelmingly believe that public schools are the single most important institution for the future of their community and of our nation, and they choose strong neighborhood public schools over expanding choice, charters and vouchers, according to a nationwide AFT poll released July 22. Support for strong public schools over expanded vouchers and charters is widespread, with 77 percent supporting this approach, and that support cuts across political and class lines.

Public school parents also soundly reject the austerity-driven policies being pushed in schools. More than two-thirds of parents see the following as reducing the quality of public education: teacher and staff layoffs; increased class sizes; school closings; high turnover rates; and cutbacks in art, music, libraries and physical education. And a 57 percent majority feel there is too much emphasis on testing today. Parents see adoption of common academic standards as a step forward for education by 72 percent to 22 percent.

When asked, parents want schools to do four things to help their children prepare to succeed in college and their careers: improve their knowledge and critical-thinking abilities; provide them with a safe learning environment; educate them about their rights and responsibilities as citizens of a democracy; and address their social, emotional and health needs.

"We believe in high-quality public education because it is an economic necessity, an anchor of democracy, a moral imperative and a fundamental civil right," says AFT president Randi Weingarten. "And this poll makes clear that not only do parents overwhelmingly believe in the promise of public education to help all children reach their dreams, their prescription for how to reclaim that promise matches what America's teachers want for their students and schools. And when teachers and parents join together, we can be an unstoppable force to fulfill the promise of education as a pathway to opportunity for all children."

The poll also showed that parents trust teachers, principals and other parents—not politicians and business executives—to have the right ideas for their schools. And, by a 2 to 1 margin, parents say we need elected officials who can work with teachers unions rather than officials who will stand up to teachers unions.

The poll was released as the AFT announced a major effort at the AFT TEACH conference in Washington, D.C., to partner with parents and community to reclaim the promise of public education.

"Reclaiming the promise of public education is about fighting for neighborhood public schools that are safe, welcoming places for teaching and learning," Weingarten said in her keynote speech at TEACH announcing the effort. "Reclaiming the promise is about ensuring that teachers are well-prepared, are supported and have time to collaborate. Reclaiming the promise is about enabling them to teach an engaging curriculum that includes art and music and the sciences. And reclaiming the promise is about ensuring that kids have access to wraparound services to meet their emotional, social and health needs."

The poll, conducted July 9-14, 2013, by Hart Research Associates, interviewed 1,003 parents living in urban, suburban and rural areas and who identify themselves as Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

Highlights of the nationwide parent poll:

• Best approach for improving education: 77 percent said the focus should be on ensuring that every child has access to a good public school in his or her community; just 20 percent said there should be more public charter schools and vouchers.
• Offer variety of subjects or devote more time to reading and math: 74 percent said it is important for schools to offer a well-rounded curriculum, including art, music and physical education; only 18 percent said schools should focus more on teaching reading and math and spend less time on subjects less important for success in college.
• Focus on the "whole child" or stick to the basics: 54 percent said schools should focus on teaching the whole child, including his or her emotional and social development as well as academics; 35 percent said schools should focus on teaching basic academics.
• Emphasis on testing:
  • 57 percent said there is too much testing; 29 percent said there is the right amount; and 8 percent said there is not enough.
  • 64 percent said their state's standardized tests do not accurately measure student achievement; 28 percent said they do.
  • 59 percent of parents said their child has felt worried or anxious about taking standardized tests.
  • 57 percent said testing has taken away too much time from teaching and learning.
• Overwhelming parental support for the following elements of an education agenda: Provide extra resources to turn around struggling neighborhood schools; hold charter schools accountable; provide more support/training for struggling teachers; expand/improve new-teacher mentoring; reduce class sizes, especially in the early grades; make public schools hubs of the neighborhood with longer hours, academic help and health services for families; provide extra pay for teachers in hard-to-staff schools; and ensure access to high-quality preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds.
• Parental disapproval of the following "reforms":
  • 79 percent disapprove of reducing salaries and benefits for teachers and other school employees.
  • 76 percent object to reducing spending on regular public schools and increasing spending on charters.
  • 61 percent oppose closing down low-performing public schools and assigning students to other schools.
  • 60 percent reject ending additional teacher pay for advanced degrees.
  • 58 percent disapprove of a longer school day; 53 percent oppose a longer school year.
  • 56 percent oppose taxpayer-funded vouchers for private school tuition.
• Who has right ideas for public education: 81 percent of parents said they believe teachers have the right ideas for their public schools; 77 percent said principals have the right ideas; 70 percent gave the nod to parent organizations; 39 percent said their governor has the right ideas; 37 percent had confidence in mayors/local officials; and 33 percent said business owners/corporate executives have the right ideas.

AFT Teach 13: COMMON CORE PANEL URGES THOUGHTFUL IMPLEMENTATION + smf’s 2¢

by Mike Rose, AFT Press Release | http://bit.ly/1dSTD5M

July 23, 2013  ::  A roundtable discussion on the opening day of the AFT TEACH Conference revealed how diverse voices find common threads when it comes to thoughtful, well-supported implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

Moderated by AFT vice president Mary Cathryn Ricker, who is also president of the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers, the session showcased comments from teachers, a test development specialist, the leader of a California parent advocacy group and an Ohio state legislator—stakeholders who look at the Common Core through very distinct lenses but often come to similar conclusions surrounding the new standards, which have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. Most of the speakers emphasized that there are no cheap fixes or easy workarounds when it comes to sound implementation—it has to be done well for this latest foray into standards-based reform to work.

Among the specifics the panelists called for were time for teachers to delve deeply into the new standards and collaborate on them, and exceptional professional development and resources that can transform the Common Core into effective strategies for the classroom. Communities also need to be knowledgeable about the Common Core and informed early about the fundamental changes they will bring to daily classroom life. And lawmakers must be ready to lead by advancing policies that match high expectations for children and teachers with high support.

"You should demand good professional development," said Peggy Brookins, a National Board-certified teacher from Marion, Fla. Prospects for success with the Common Core are real, she said. "The places you see it are those where people have been thoroughly trained," said Brookins, who has worked with writers of the new math standards.

Toledo, Ohio, teacher Kay Wait explained how teacher leaders and her school district moved early when it came to Common Core implementation. Training and alignment of curriculum and materials began in Toledo four years ago in grades K-2, with additional grades added each year. Today, 1,000 teachers in the district have received some Common Core training. This effort has been worthwhile and remains ongoing, said Wait, who is a district instruction planner for the Toledo Federation of Teachers. "Even in our situation, teachers don't feel they know everything they need to know," but the district's experience has shown "teachers really need the time to understand and to implement the Common Core to be successful."

A parent's perspective was offered by Cynthia Liu, founder and CEO of K-12 News Network and a leading parent advocate for strong California public schools. For Californians, there have been constructive developments in education of late—additional resources, for example, and new laws designed to create a seamless preK-21 delivery system. The Common Core also holds promise for excellence and equity, but parents are rightly concerned about testing associated with it. "A lot more needs to be done in terms of the testing piece," said Liu, citing concerns about student privacy, the inordinate amount of time devoted to assessments, and the profit factor. After years of severe underfunding, Californians "understand that we're just getting out of a starvation diet, and we don't want it to turn into just another payday for 'ed tech'" when it comes to resources that might go to testing rather than services.

Stuart Kahl, the founding principal of the testing company Measured Progress, also weighed in on the assessment piece of Common Core, with remarks that strongly cautioned against those who equate testing with school reform. He noted that the two major consortia developing tests for the new standards had scaled back their original, ambitious plans. Although the assessments ultimately should be an improvement over the status quo, they will never be anything close to a magic bullet for instilling school improvement based on deep investigation and critical thinking. "They are going to attend to the higher-order schools, but they are not going to go as far as people would like," Kahl said of the new tests, adding that he would like to see more true teacher-designed formative tests that are project-based and embedded into class life.

"Implementation is so critical, and your voices are the key" to improving the process, Ohio legislator Teresa Fedor told the TEACH audience. A former classroom teacher, Fedor is working to see that Ohio does not waste the opportunity, announced by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to postpone evaluating teachers using assessments tied to Common Core standards. The announcement came after the AFT's call for a moratorium on high stakes prompted more than 70,000 teachers, parents and concerned citizens to email the Education Department. Those voices are still needed at the state level, particularly in a state like Ohio, where reckless expansion of charter schools in recent years has produced "reform fatigue." For the state to move forward, "bipartisanship and real leadership are needed," the legislator said—something that requires grass-roots involvement in decision-making.

Ricker, who observed that the AFT's call for a moratorium on Common Core-related high stakes had sparked "a groundswell" of action at the grass roots, said it was a reflection of members' strong feelings on this keystone issue. Polls show that about 3 out of 4 AFT teachers support Common Core standards, but only about 1 in 4 believe they have the tools necessary to implement them effectively. She urged the audience, the AFT and its partners around the country to stay vocal and engaged in this vital issue.

 

smf: I was there, this is what happened – and the conversation was very interesting.

AFT is more on board with the CCSS than I. I continue to worry that the Common Core State Standards are a product developed by textbook publishers, electronic content developers and testing companies.

They are part+parcel of what Dr Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Finnish Ministry of Education calls the contagion of “GERM”: The Global Education ®eform Movement.  I doubt the altruism of their generosity and  the magic of their bullets …but never the profitability of their balance sheets.

Be suspicious, be very suspicious.

AFT Teach 13: RANDI WEINGARTEN’S STEM-WINDER/BARN-BURNER/ROOF-RAISING SPEECH TO THE ASSEMBLED MULTITUDES

Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education: Remarks of AFT President Randi Weingarten in Washington D.C. at the TEACH Conference on July 22, 2013

I. Introduction: The year that was

This year, there were many reminders of the role that educators play in the lives of America’s children.

Take Rhonda Crosswhite, a sixth-grade teacher at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla. When the tornado hit, Rhonda gathered her students in a bathroom stall, and threw her body on top of the children to shield them from the storm. As the twister ripped the roof off the school, one child began crying, saying, “I love you, I love you, please don’t die with me.” Over the howl of the wind, Rhonda calmed her students, telling them, “Quit worrying, we’re fine, I’m protecting you.” And she was. And she did.

“I love you. I love you. Don’t die with me.”

Six educators from Newtown, Conn., were unable to fulfill that plea this year: Principal Dawn Hochsprung. Therapist Rachel D’Avino. School psychologist Mary Sherlach. First-year teacher Lauren Rousseau. Anne Marie Murphy, a special education paraprofessional who died protecting a 6-year-old who loved her so much he had a picture of her on his refrigerator at home. Victoria Soto, who told the attacker that her students had left for the gym, while hiding the children behind her in a closet, shielding them with her body and saving several of their lives. I ask you to join me in a moment of silence to remember them, and to remember the students who perished.

Their sacrifice was rare, and heroic. Their commitment was anything but rare. I see it in this room, and in our colleagues throughout this nation. And it is heroic, too.

II. The power of public education

And that’s because we know the power of education to change lives, communities and nations.

We see that in the bravery of a young girl named Malala, who the Taliban tried to assassinate because she dared attend school and campaigned for the right for other girls to be able to do so.

Here at home, we recognize that public education is how we fulfill our collective responsibility to enable individual opportunity for each and every child. And we fulfill that responsibility through a system of great neighborhood public schools, where educators have the tools and resources to meet the needs of each and every child.

We believe in public education because it is the means by which we help all children dream their dreams and achieve them. And I mean all children—those who have abundant advantages, and those for whom every day is a struggle; those who worry about getting into a good college, and those who worry about their parents getting deported.

Educators like you help students build lives of great purpose and potential, by instilling essential knowledge and skills, including critical reasoning, problem-solving and working with others, and by promoting civic participation. We believe in high-quality public education because it is an economic necessity, an anchor of democracy, a moral imperative and a fundamental civil right, without which none of our other rights can be fully realized. And I believe that promise, that hope, that accomplishment, is a direct result of the work you do every day, the most important work in America. Let’s hear it for all of you.

For generations, parents’ aspirations for their children were matched and mirrored by the commitment we made as a nation to public education. But we need to be honest: That aspiration of a great public education for every child has never been totally fulfilled. And some are using the nation’s failure to achieve that goal as an excuse to abandon it—to deep-six the entire franchise.

But the goal of a great public education for every child is absolutely right. And today, I want to talk about the work we must do, and have been doing, to reclaim that promise—the promise of a great public education for all children.

III. Under pressure and under assault

That promise is under pressure and under assault.

It’s under pressure from economic and societal factors outside the schoolhouse that make it much more difficult to achieve success within the classroom. Nearly 1 out of every 2 students in public schools lives in poverty. Children from these households come to school with one-fourth the vocabulary of children from wealthier families—a disadvantage that could be overcome if our nation would invest in high-quality early learning opportunities for all children.

It’s not just vocabulary. Three out of every 5 teachers in America report they have children who regularly come to school hungry. There are more homeless families than at any time since the Great Depression. Think of the stress that’s putting on children. It’s not hard to see why out-of-school factors have twice the effect on student learning as in-school factors. And the reality is, when it comes to poverty, we have become the first responders.

This is not to absolve us of our vital role and responsibility. These factors don’t keep us from teaching, they keep us up at night. And they only heighten our commitment to safe, welcoming, collaborative public schools where children’s instructional, physical, social and emotional needs are met.

We’ve made real progress—though you don’t often hear about it. Once again, Diane Ravitch has stepped up, and, in her new book, she shows that, despite all the challenges, our schools are more successful. NAEP scores are improving. High school graduation rates are higher than they’ve ever been. And the work you’ve been assigning is more difficult than it’s ever been. Ask any parent—which, by the way, we have. And we’ll be releasing those poll results today. College attendance is higher than it’s ever been, although crushing student debt threatens that achievement.

And yet public education is under assault by those who want, for ideological reasons, to call one of America’s great accomplishments—public education for all—a failure. These are the people who aren’t in education to make a difference, but to make a buck—and who don’t want you to have the ability to stand together as a union and have a voice in the work you do. These are the people who demand and pursue austerity, polarization, privatization and de-professionalization. They say you can cut, cut, cut—not invest in—public education, and then they argue that public education is failing. Maybe they just never learned the difference between cause and effect.

They fixate on test-based accountability, which makes the bubble test the almighty, rather than enabling us to teach in a way that enriches and engages students and brings joy to learning. They emphasize sanctions instead of support, and shift responsibility—including their own—almost solely onto the backs of teachers. They promote vouchers and charters, gussied up as “choice.” They promote the “escape hatch” theory of education: Only a few will make it out. They believe in a market system. But a market system says, “There will be winners and losers.”

We need all students to have a pathway—and a chance—to become winners. That’s what a public education system is: the embodiment of the community’s belief that all children are important.

Which is why it infuriates me that some claim schools are run for adults, not children. It’s not adults versus kids; it’s adults doing everything in our power to help our kids, working to create strong neighborhood public schools.

The other side may have more money. They may have some big-city mayors and big-name foundations on their side. But they are lacking two very important things: They don’t have you. And they don’t have results.

People are beginning to see that the emperors of reform have no clothes. And as recent polling shows, parents are seeing this too.

Years of top-down edicts, mass school closures, privatization, and test fixation with sanctions instead of support haven’t moved the needle—not in the right direction, at least. You’ve heard their refrain: competition, closings, choice. Underlying that is a belief that disruption is good and stability is bad. Finnish education expert Pasi Sahlberg calls it GERM—the Global Education Reform Movement. And it is a germ that has been spreading. But we’ve got a prescription, even a cure.

IV. A continuation, not a commemoration

At this pivotal moment, a moment when we are reaffirming our commitment to all children, we are also preparing to mark an anniversary that reminds us of who we are, what we stand for and who we stand with.

Next month, we’ll celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march was a powerful expression of the desire to achieve long-overdue demands: passage of a comprehensive civil rights bill, jobs programs for the unemployed, and de-segregation of all public schools.

And the AFT was there. Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, John Lewis—who will speak to us tomorrow—and the other leaders of the march, were aided by the AFT, including a foot soldier for justice you may have heard of, the late AFT president Sandy Feldman.

The march embodied many ideas, and a key one was evident in the name of the march itself: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. You don’t have real freedom unless you have a good job.

True then, and truer now. There are a lot of elements to getting a good job; a strong economy would certainly help. But a critical factor is preparation, which means a great education. As Dr. King said in accepting the John Dewey Award from the United Federation of Teachers in 1964, denying people a first-class education submerges them in second-class status.

Denying anyone—anyone—a first-class education is something we didn’t accept then. And it’s something we don’t accept now. So when we gather on Aug. 24 here in Washington to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that march, our role is not about commemoration. It’s about continuation.

Yet for all the progress we’ve made in the last 50 years, we see many troubling signs. The right to vote, as we saw in a Supreme Court decision last month, is not as secure as it must be. Nor, sadly, is the right to walk your neighborhood without the fear of being killed—at least if you’re a young black man. Poverty continues to hollow out communities and families. The attacks on the labor movement haven’t just hurt the labor movement, they’ve hollowed out the middle class.

V. Common Core State Standards

To strengthen the middle class, to give children a path out of poverty, to give all children the tools they need to succeed—that is why we’re so committed to the success of the Common Core State Standards.

Yet, too many officials, by design or by default, have blown past the standards, and moved right to standardized testing. The tests are not the reforms. And we must fight that mistaken conflation because, if done right, and it’s a big if, the Common Core standards have huge potential.

They’re not the only thing kids need; we still have to press for the arts, libraries, manageable class sizes, wraparound services and other things we know benefit our students. The promise of the Common Core standards, however, is that they help all kids become problem solvers and critical thinkers—regardless of whether they’re from Bed-Stuy or Beverly Hills.

The standards offer a concrete way to address huge inequalities in educational opportunities. People intuitively get that kids can’t learn when they come to school hungry. People get that kids can’t become technologically literate if there’s no computer in the classroom. But many people don’t seem to get it when we say that kids—especially poor kids—aren’t going to acquire essential knowledge and skills unless there is a considered effort, complete with the appropriate investment and support, to bring those things into classrooms.

Without an effort to create common standards such as the Common Core, children’s access to the knowledge and skills they need will continue to be unequally distributed. Our support of the standards is an effort to break this cycle.

But I’ll bet that most of you haven’t had nearly enough time or support to translate these standards into classroom practice. Am I right?

That’s why we’re standing up to the officials who are rushing to make them count before they make them work. We’re standing up to those who talk the talk of standards without walking the walk of actually getting them into the classroom.

And that is why I recently called for a moratorium on the stakes associated with Common Core assessments. You intensified that call by sending tens of thousands of letters to Secretary Duncan and state chiefs, supporting the moratorium. And last month, citing the voices of teachers across the country, Secretary Duncan gave states an extra year to get the Common Core right, before making Common Core-aligned tests count.

But the standards are just one ingredient. High expectations for all students must be matched with high levels of support, especially for our high-needs students, our English language learners and our students with special needs. We have an obligation to ensure that every child has real opportunities and supports to achieve them—at every point in their education.

VI. Solution-driven unionism

That is why we are solution-driven unionists. Because we know we can’t just call out what doesn’t work—although God knows we’ve had to do that a lot this year—we have to demand and demonstrate what does.

For example, we have extended the reach of Share My Lesson. Nearly 300,000 educators have registered to access these fantastic teaching tools, and that number is growing.

We have proposed a way for all prospective teachers to get ample experience in real class-rooms alongside practicing teachers, and to meet a high standard—like the bar exam or medical boards—so they are ready from day one, not left to sink or swim.

We’ve created a mechanism to make teacher evaluations a serious and constructive process that provides for continuous improvement and feedback. It recasts tenure as a guarantee of fairness and due process, not as an excuse for managers not to manage and not as a cloak for incompetence. And speaking of tenure, it enables professional judgment, creativity and risk tak-ing. At the same time, if someone can’t teach after they’ve been prepared and supported, they shouldn’t be in our profession.

But I have a plea for those who fixate on how to dismiss teachers: Fixate instead on how we nurture, support and keep them. Put a dent in our far too high teacher attrition rates, and start valuing the great teachers and the great teaching we see every day in classrooms.

It galls me that ours is the only profession where experience is disparaged, not valued. It doesn’t happen in medicine, in law, in architecture or in engineering. And it shouldn’t happen in teaching. Our insight and our experience matter!

We have joined with community in meaningful ways. The AFT and community partners from 12 cities throughout the country have organized a series of town hall community conversations aimed at developing “bottom-up” solutions for struggling schools. In several cities, we’re working together to fix, not close, struggling schools and to wrap services around those schools—because we know this helps kids and ensures that neighborhoods are not hollowed out.

Take Philadelphia, where, with our community partners, we are fighting draconian cuts that starve the schools to the point that they can no longer function. The fantastic band from the Andrew Jackson School that we just heard will no longer exist when school starts this fall. That’s a tragedy, and that’s why, together, we’ve developed alternatives to the cuts, layoffs and school closings. By fighting against what doesn’t work, by advocating for what does, and by raising our voices, we are solution-driven.

But it often feels like an uphill battle. How often have you had to carry out a policy, administer an assessment, or follow yet another command from on high, and thought: “They just don’t get it. The people passing the laws and calling the shots are totally out of touch with what my students need and what it’s like in my classroom.

Like last week in the House of Representatives, where the Republican leadership pushed a successor to the No Child Left Behind Act, which they’re calling the Student Success Act—which turns out to be quite the Orwellian title. This bill would starve schools and children of resources and supports, and does nothing to address the pervasive overtesting that is draining the joy from teaching and learning.

This bill represents a historic abandonment of disadvantaged children. It reminds us that we need to be out there in a big way, making clear to every parent, every community member and every member of Congress that this agenda hurts our kids and our schools. And we are: on the ground, on the phones, on air, online and in the voting booth.

When you raise your voice, it will be joined by more voices than ever before. Today, I am proud to report to you that the AFT has more members than we have had at any point in our history—K-12 teachers, higher education faculty and staff, PSRPs, public employees and healthcare workers. We are on the move.

VII. Reclaiming the promise of public education

Even with more members than ever before, even being solution-driven, it’s not enough. But by uniting our voices, particularly in concert with parents and community, we can’t be ignored.

We need to do that, brothers and sisters, because we are at a crucial moment when we must reclaim the promise of public education—not as it is today or as it was in the past, but as what public education can be to fulfill our collective obligation, our community’s obligation, to help all children succeed.

Reclaiming the promise of public education is about fighting for neighborhood public schools that are safe, welcoming places for teaching and learning. Reclaiming the promise is about ensuring that teachers are well-prepared, are supported and have time to collaborate. Reclaiming the promise is about enabling them to teach an engaging curriculum that includes art and music and the sciences. And reclaiming the promise is about ensuring that kids have access to wraparound services to meet their emotional, social and health needs.

Taken together, all these things reflect our prescription for ensuring that all kids have the opportunities they need and deserve. This vision may look different community by community. But it has a few common elements. Reclaiming the promise will bring back the joy of teaching and learning. It’s the way to make every public school a place where parents want to send their kids, teachers want to teach and children are engaged. It makes our public schools the center of the community and fulfills their purpose as an anchor of our democracy and a propeller of our economy.

This is not a campaign. This is our core. And it must be the focus of our work going forward. Ours is a vision that works. It’s a vision of what parents want for their kids. And it’s a movement that can stop the privatizers, profiteers and austerity hawks in their tracks.

But they’re not going to roll over and go away. We need your help. None of us can be bystanders. We need to reach out to parents, the community and civic leaders. We need to open their eyes to the good things happening in our schools—as well as the challenges we face. We need to open their minds to our vision for great neighborhood public schools. We need to open their hearts to joining with us in the effort to ensure all our children get the great education they need and deserve.

And to do this, we need to open our schools—inviting parents, neighbors, civic, business, faith and community leaders to see what we do, to see what our kids need. It simply makes sense to bring together people with shared priorities and concerns in the very place we care about so much, the public schools where our children are nurtured and educated.

Only by working together can we reclaim the promise of public education.

VIII. Call to action—don't look to me, look to us

That work to reclaim the promise is already underway. Just look at what some of our members are doing.

We talk about political action being essential. Take Los Angeles, where, after years of scape-goating by the former mayor and corporate “philanthropists,” three teachers have won seats on the school board. Steve Zimmer was the first, then Bennett Kayser, and just recently Monica Ratliff. Her biggest expense against her opponent’s $2.2 million war chest? Refrigerator mag-nets. L.A., stand up.

Look at Sylvia Wilson, from the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers. Sylvia and two other retired Pittsburgh educators ran for school board and won. They’re already working with parents and the community on alternatives to closing schools and firing teachers. Sylvia, stand up.

We talk about how to use politics to get the programs and resources kids need. AFT St. Louis worked to pass a levy to put pre-K classrooms in every public school in the city, and an AFT In-novation Fund grant is helping train teachers and paraprofessionals who will be working in the-se classrooms. This will give thousands of students the opportunity to have a strong start on their educational journeys. A labor-management team from St. Louis is here today. Stand up, St. Louis!

We talk about being professionals whose voices should be valued. Yes, the AFT provided the platform for Share My Lesson. But look at what the teachers at the Edwards Middle School in Boston have done to fill this “digital filing cabinet” with amazing, rich content. In the five months that their Common Core math and social studies lessons have been on Share My Les-son, these resources have been downloaded more than 40,000 times. Stand up, Boston!

And, by the way, resources on Share My Lesson have been downloaded 2.8 million times!

Look at Kalebra Jacobs-Reed, a high school French teacher in Broward County, Fla., who has led an effort to introduce more teachers and paraprofessionals to Share My Lesson, and to connect community partners, as well: from parents to librarians to the school board to police officers who help with anti-bullying efforts. Stand up, Kalebra!

We talk about safe schools and healthy environments. Look at what Julie Holbrook, the food service manager in Keene Valley, N.Y., is doing. She created a school garden for students to grow fruits and vegetables. She found a way to make all the bread in-house, and to use local farms for eggs and produce—providing students with fresh, healthy and delicious meals. Stand up, Julie!

We talk about connection with parents and community. Look at Nick Faber, a Saint Paul Federation of Teachers officer and elementary school science teacher. Nick helped start a project at his school, where teachers visit parents in their homes twice each year to talk about parents’ hopes for their children, teachers’ expectations, and how they can work together. The union has helped expand the project to other high-needs schools in the district. That’s connection with community. Stand up, Nick!

Or what about Katie Walker, who now calls McDowell County, W.Va., home? McDowell is the eighth-poorest county in the United States. And yet, Katie and her fiance, after seeing a video about the AFT’s work to reconnect McDowell, moved there to make a difference. That’s commitment to community. Stand up, Katie!

And because of the work they’re doing to create community schools—and because, hey, I’m a New York gal—here comes the shoutout to the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. This upcoming school year, the UFT will have 16 schools that serve as hubs for students, families and communities. I recently visited one of those schools—P.S. 188 in Coney Island, a school hard-hit by Superstorm Sandy. They have adult education programs, a food bank and other supports for the community. Along with UFT president Michael Mulgrew, Karen Alford is leading the charge to create and support community schools in New York City. Karen, stand up!

And Cincinnati, since you have led the way on wraparound services and community schools, you stand up, as well!

Like a number of you, UFT members are putting books in the hands of low-income kids through First Book. Jose Vargas, Hector Ruiz and Nick Cruz arranged a book distribution in the Bronx that distributed 40,000 books. Stand up, Jose, Hector and Nick!

How about Jillian Ahrens, from Cleveland? When she won a prize for excellence in teaching, she donated it to First Book, to advance her work to use reading to help prevent bullying. Stand up, Jillian! All together, AFT members have put more than half a million books in the hands of kids who need them.

Even when we have to fight, it brings us closer to community—because we fight FOR our kids and our communities. In Chicago, where Karen Lewis led tens of thousands of people into the streets, the community saw we were fighting for strong neighborhood schools with the enrichment and support kids need. And that relationship with the community is our strength as we fight the closing of 49 schools there and layoffs of thousands of school employees. Stand up, Chicago!

And then there’s Philadelphia, where leaders like Jerry Jordan and Dee Phillips led the charge against school closures. And I was happy to lend a hand—even when that hand ended up hand-cuffed. Let’s see you, Philadelphia!

If you’ve registered voters, or knocked on doors, or made calls on behalf of a candidate or an issue, stand up and be recognized. If you’ve used Share My Lesson, stand up! If you’ve taught another teacher about the Common Core, or lent a helping hand in any professional way, stand up! If you’ve given kids books through First Book, stand up! If you’ve stayed up late at night worrying about a student, stand up. If you’ve worked to bring community into schools or to make our public schools the best they can be, stand up. If you will reclaim the promise of public education, stand up!

This is how we will ensure that all children have a gateway to opportunity, and reclaim the promise of public education. That’s our prescription. That’s your work. That’s our work. This is who we are. And that’s why I couldn’t be prouder to stand with you.

Thank you.

# # #

REBOOTING ONLINE EDUCATION: San Jose State's experience shows that even well-intentioned programs shouldn't be rushed.

Editorial by  By The LA Times editorial board | http://lat.ms/1aGPBh3

<<Oakland Military Institute junior Ciara Lowry talks about the online math course she is finishing from a computer lab in Oakland, Calif. The courses were offered by San Jose State and Udacity, the online education startup. (Laura A. Oda / MCT / May 31, 2013) smf: OMI is a charter high school founded by Governor Brown. Ms. Lowery is a high school junior; the SJSU/Unacity program affects high school students.

RELATED: San Jose State suspends collaboration with online provider

July 23, 2013, 5:00 a.m.  ::  The disappointing results from San Jose State's experiment with online courses shouldn't be interpreted to mean that such courses can't help students. But the classes the university offered in collaboration with online provider Udacity were practically a model of how to do online education badly: rushed into existence and sloppily overseen. No one was even aware that some students who had signed up for the classes lacked reliable access to computers. The one thing the college did well was monitor the results of the three pilot courses and call a timeout when failure rates proved unacceptably high.

It's hard to draw conclusions about one of the three courses because it enrolled a mix of students from varied backgrounds, while the comparable classes held on campus enrolled regular San Jose State students. But that wasn't the case for the other two courses, and overall, the results of this much-ballyhooed venture were startlingly bad: At least 74% of students passed the campus-based courses, while no more than 51% passed any of the Udacity courses.

Online courses can have tangible benefits. They overcome the limitations of brick and mortar; theoretically, at least, there is no limit to the number of seats. And they are a boon for working students who need flexibility in their schedules. But a rush to offer them, which Gov. Jerry Brown has been pressing for, would mean higher rates of failure, costing students time and money they can ill afford.

In fact, one of the problems with the pilot program was the haste with which the online courses were created — a result of Brown's direct intervention. They were patched together and did not include an orientation to familiarize students with such information as what kind of equipment they would need. Though they were in necessary math subjects, it's also troubling that one of the factors that went into selecting those particular courses was that Bill Gates wanted math courses. Gates is a supporter of Udacity and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped fund the pilot.

Even pilot programs must be carried out with more care. Online courses should be developed thoughtfully, from within the colleges, not as a result of top-down directives from the governor. The subjects that are offered should be based on student demand and faculty analysis of which would work best online. The preferences of even the best-intentioned billionaires should not be part of the equation. Nor should online courses be viewed as major money-savers, as Brown has pitched them. It still takes well-educated people, interacting with those who need an education, to provide high-quality courses, whether that's via the Internet or in a classroom.

LAUSD, CORE DISTRICTS LEAVE D.C. WITHOUT NCLB WAIVER… but still confident one is coming

By John Fensterwald EdSource Today | http://bit.ly/1bbDkoC

Rick Miller, left, executive director of the California Office to Reform Education, confers with Michael Fullan in Sacramento earlier this year. Fullan, a Canadian author on education reform, is the architect of the collaboration-focused model of school reform, on which CORE has based its NCLB waiver application. Photo by John Fensterwald.

July 22nd, 2013  :: Representatives of nine California districts did not head home from Washington on Friday, after two and a half days of intense discussions with federal officials, with the waiver from the No Child Left Behind law that they had been hoping for.

But Rick Miller, executive director of the nonprofit district collaborative that is submitting the waiver application, called the talks “productive” and said the districts are “one iteration away” from finishing a document for a final up or down decision by  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Duncan did not participate in the discussions last week, Miller said.

Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson characterized the status of the waiver as “closer but not done.”

“If there was not a chance of approval,” he said, high-ranking Department of Education administrators “would not have wasted their time or our time.”

Hanson and Miller were joined in Washington by Superintendents John Deasy of Los Angeles Unified, Richard Carranza of San Francisco Unified, Christopher Steinhauser of Long Beach Unified and interim Superintendent Gary Yee of Oakland Unified, along with other administrators with the California Office to Reform Education, or CORE, the umbrella organization the districts have created.

Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia already have received waivers from some of the penalties of NCLB, along with flexibility to use some Title I money funded for low-income children. A half-dozen other states have applications under review. The nine CORE districts, serving about 1 million of the state’s 6.2 million K-12 students, would be the first districts to receive a waiver. Department of Education officials, cautious about setting the precedent of bypassing state authorities – the California Department of Education in this case – have moved slowly and carefully.

Time is critical, however.

Miller had said July 15 was the deadline for a waiver. If the districts don’t receive a waiver, they must renew contracts with providers of tutoring and other services required of schools that haven’t met NCLB’s academic targets. But Miller said Sunday that the drop-dead date is early August, when the first of the CORE districts’ school trustees meet to vote on the contracts. Waiting that long is not ideal, but the waiver is worth the effort, he said. A postponement won’t throw implementation off greatly, since the first year of the three-year waiver period will largely involve planning – including the accountability criteria and the designs of teacher evaluations. Districts have already been working together on implementing the Common Core standards, one of the requirements for a waiver, Miller said.

The CORE districts are proposing a distinct approach to academic accountability and school improvement – one based on peer review and collaboration among districts’ teachers and administrators. This contrasts with having a state Department of Education in the traditional role of enforcer and compliance monitor. CORE would use some of the $100 million in freed-up Title I dollars to support the process.

It’s taken hours of talks and weeks of rewrites for federal officials to become comfortable with CORE’s framework, which is modeled after work among districts in Ontario, Canada. “This has not been tried on the scale we are proposing,” said Miller. The back and forth with the feds has “improved our thinking and made our application clearer.”

Local unions step up opposition

Approval of a district waiver would be controversial. Other state superintendents, who see a district waiver as undermining their oversight role, don’t like it. And teachers unions in the nine districts, angry that they were not consulted in writing the waiver application, have come out in opposition.

During the past week, they pressed ahead. The presidents of local unions wrote their superintendents calling on them to withdraw the waiver application or at least delay it for a year. In those letters and in a letter last month to Gov. Jerry Brown, urging him to oppose the waiver, the unions introduced a new argument. They said that approval of a waiver “would divert funding and momentum from the implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula,” the K-12 finance reform that Brown proposed and the Legislature passed at the end of June.

The “sweeping foundational changes implemented with the LCFF will take a back seat to the headline-grabbing approval of this consortium application,” the letter to Brown said.

The waiver would create a “parallel universe” that would conflict with the goal of LCFF to align fiscal priorities and academic outcomes and undermine LCFF’s goal of involving parents, teachers and administrators in the creation of a local district plan.

Brown has not responded publicly to the waiver application, and Evan Westrup, Brown’s press secretary, declined last week to comment on the letter. The State Board of Education endorsed the waiver in a vote earlier this year, before the passage of LCFF.

Hanson said that the waiver, which will mute the negative impact of NCLB, is compatible with the new funding reforms. Both serve the same goal: directing more resources toward underserved students.

Miller said the CORE application and the LCFF are “perfectly aligned.” The accountability metrics that the Legislature created with the formula and CORE’s range of academic and non-academic measures are similar enough that CORE districts will use the local accountability plan required by LCFF also to satisfy the federal reporting requirements.

“I frankly do not see what they are talking about,” Miller said, referring to the union presidents’  letter.

TURNING THE TABLES

from United Teacher: MR. DEASY’S POST-STULL CONFERENCE MEMO

by Warren Fletcher in the President’s Perspective column of United Teacher, the newspaper of UTLA | http://bit.ly/1bF5VSu

 

Note to UNITED TEACHER readers: As this issue goes to press, the results of the recent membership-wide “Stull of the Superintendent” had just been tabulated and released by UTLA. Unlike the 36,000 working educators of Los Angeles, Mr. Deasy will not have to endure a post-Stull conference. The following is an approximation of what his post-Stull memo could have looked like.

July 19, 2013

From: The Teachers and Health and Human Services Professionals of LAUSD

To: John Deasy, Superintendent

Re: A Data-Driven Review of Your Performance

Mr. Deasy, the purpose of this memo, and of UTLA’s recent superintendent survey, is to give you usable and timely information about your job performance and to help you to improve. As educators, we understand that an effective evaluation is not a “gotcha” activity. So, let’s take a look at what the data tell us about your performance on some of the key objectives of your job:

Objective 1: Ensuring that teachers have a central role in curriculum, instruction, and assessment

In this area, 81 percent of educators who responded gave you a rating of below average or poor, and your average score (on a scale of 1 to 5) was 1.40. These numbers are troubling. Every day, LAUSD teachers must do our jobs in an instructional environment that is characterized by more and more top-down teaching mandates and by immense pressures to reduce our teaching to mere test-prep. While this makes real teaching difficult, the true victims of this approach are our students. It is additionally troubling that, as the Common Core state standards are being implemented across California in the coming year, you and your senior administration are poised, once again, to treat classroom teachers as mechanical “deliverers of content,” rather than as the real professional experts that we are.

Suggestion for improvement: Visit as many classrooms in as many LAUSD schools as you can, but do not come into our classrooms assuming the role of an enforcer or an investigator. We know more than you do about our students’ needs. Listen more. Mandate less.

Objective 2: Ensuring that health and human services and credentialed support staff are prioritized

Your rating: 82 percent below average or poor; average score: 1.29. Again, these numbers raise serious concerns. The past five years of recession have been a time of savage budget cuts throughout the state, and every district in California has seen reductions in these vital services, such as student mental health, nursing, counseling, and librarians. But this superintendent evaluation element is based on whether you have, in the face of those budget challenges, given these vital student services appropriate priority. Again, the evidence is not encouraging. When the School Board recently adopted its “Class Size and Full Staffing Resolution,” you derided that attempt to restore services as a “directive to hire every human being on the West Coast.” Currently, more than 100 permanent counselors remain on the RIF Rehire List while students and schools do without services.

Suggestions for improvement: Bring back all of the permanent health and human services professionals from the RIF Rehire List (and all of the permanent teachers on the list as well), and start using the new dollars from Prop. 30 to fully staff these functions and to bring down the case-loads and ratios of nurses, counselors, and student mental health professionals. And, of course, reopen every school library, staffed by a credentialed teacher librarian.

Objective 3: Ensuring that schools have adequate custodial support (school cleanliness)

Your rating: 85 percent below average or poor; average score: 1.26. During your tenure, state budget cuts—which, it is understood, are outside your control—have resulted in many LAUSD custodial support positions being eliminated. This has meant that schools and classrooms are not regularly cleaned and that students are learning in less sanitary conditions. Unfortunately, your policy decisions and directives have made this situation considerably worse. By choosing to implement the Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) program in a top-down fashion, with little or no teacher input, you have ensured that a program with the laudable goal of feeding children has, unnecessarily, resulted in significant problems of cleanliness and of lost instructional time at nearly every school where it has been implemented.

Suggestions for improvement: Stop accusing teachers of being somehow anti-child simply because they question how you have implemented BIC. Accept that there is such a thing as constructive criticism. Demonize less. Listen more.

Objective 4: Working to ensure that teachers are fairly evaluated

Your rating: 84 percent below average or poor; average score: 1.29. In December, you signed an agreement with UTLA that met the requirements of the California Superior Court (that CST scores play some role in Stull evaluations) while creating safeguards against abusive practices (such as using AGT data in final evaluations). These were hopeful signs. Unfortunately, almost as soon as the ink was dry on that agreement, you and your senior administration began the unilateral rollout of the so-called Teacher Growth and Development Cycle (TGDC) evaluation model, with no input from rank-and-file classroom teachers. The TGDC is so cumbersome and impractical as an evaluation tool that even AALA, the principals’ union, has called for it to be shelved, or at least suspended.

Suggestions for improvement: Suspend the implementation of the TGDC, and seek the input of teachers (and maybe even from principals) about what a constructive and logical evaluation and observation system looks like. Stop trying to implement the latest fad. Stop experimenting on teachers and students.

Objective 5: Positively influencing the morale of the staff

Your rating: 86 percent below average or poor; average score: 1.22. The results on this objective are striking, and they mirror the results on other survey questions, such as “recognizes teacher effort and respects teacher work” and “creates an environment where teachers can feel free to express their views without fear of retaliation.” Of all of the elements of the survey, this is the one that most clearly and immediately “needs improvement.” Morale among L.A.’s teachers and health and human services professionals was already somewhat battered by the effects of the recession when you arrived as superintendent. But it has been on a distinct downward trajectory since then. The results of the survey, and countless narrative accounts by educators at all grade levels and in all subjects, paint a fairly consistent picture. The 2013 version of LAUSD is a place where the joy of teaching is systematically being replaced by the job of joylessly “delivering content.” It’s also a place where the teacher voice is routinely either demeaned or ignored.

Suggestions for improvement: To borrow the words of two of the survey questions, first, publically and clearly show teachers that you recognize our efforts and you respect our work, and second, take public steps to create an environment where teachers can feel free to express our views without fear of retaliation. Third, address us, teachers and health and human services professionals, like the adult professionals we are, not as if we were wayward children. Scold and lecture less. Respect and encourage more.

While the superintendent will not receive a post-Stull memo like this, the results of the survey have been forwarded to the members of the School Board for their consideration. They are the people who evaluate superintendents, and the data from our members will, I hope, be given its appropriate weight in their deliberations.

Giftedness: AMERICAN EDUCATION AND THE IQ TRAP + smf’s 2¢

For students, one score doesn't tell all.

A survey in 2011 found that the predominant method of measuring whether or not students are gifted is assessing their performances in both an IQ test and a standardized academic test. Above: Students at Jackson Elementary School in Santa Ana. (Los Angeles Times / January 16, 2002)

By Scott Barry Kaufman, Op-ed in the LA Times | http://lat.ms/134ukZl

July 20, 2013 :: What does it mean to be gifted in the United States?

A national survey in 2011 found that the predominant method of assessment, by far, is the administration of IQ tests and standardized academic tests. At least 34 states, including California, consider such tests an indication of giftedness; they are mandated by at least 16 states. In contrast, only nine states require the use of tests that measure "creativity" and even fewer require the assessment of leadership, motivation or a talent for the performing arts. Although no state permits a single IQ score to determine gifted eligibility, 18 states set strict cutoff scores, and testing is typically a one-shot deal: You're either gifted or you're not, for the rest of your life.

On every count, these policies profoundly limit the intellectual and innovative possibilities of all students.

I can attest to just how limiting the process is. As a child, I was diagnosed with an auditory disorder that made it difficult for me to process speech in real time. I repeated third grade. Then, after an anxiety-ridden IQ testing session in fourth grade, I was sent to a school for students with learning disabilities. By the time I reentered public school in sixth grade, the label "special ed" was hard to overcome, despite my yearning for more intellectual challenges. If it weren't for a couple of teachers (thank you Mrs. Jeuell and Mrs. Acton!) who considered the kid rather than the system's preconceptions, I might never have earned a doctorate at Yale.

How does the system go wrong? For one, educators frequently treat IQ scores as if all students with the same score have the same educational needs. In reality, everyone with the same score got there with a different pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. When properly interpreted, a comprehensive test battery can offer insights into working memory, abstract reasoning, visual-spatial ability, mathematical reasoning, reading comprehension, writing ability, vocabulary, auditory processing and processing speed. Research suggests that identifying these specific cognitive skills, not a single global IQ score, has the greatest value for determining who will benefit from various educational programs.

But even done well, standardized testing has limits. Many other factors contribute to learning and real-world success, from active learning strategies to intrinsic motivation, grit, self-regulation and outside support and encouragement.

Consider the Posse Foundation, a national scholarship program that recruits high school seniors with extraordinary potential that standardized testing has missed and helps them succeed in college and beyond. Nominated students, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds, undergo a three-month "dynamic evaluation" that involves group and individual interviews to assess leadership, communication, problem-solving and collaboration skills. The aim is to truly get to know the person, not just his or her numbers, to determine who can benefit from the program.

Although the average SAT score of Posse alumni is much lower (1,053 out of 1,600) than the average at the colleges and universities they attend, their academic performance matches that of the general student body at those institutions, many of which are prestigious, such as Cornell University and UC Berkeley. Among Posse graduates are a college dean, a cardiologist, a film director and a lieutenant in the Army. Many have earned graduate scholarships and doctorates. Posse's results demonstrate that people can achieve similar academic and life outcomes by drawing on different mixes of personal characteristics.

The testing system also goes wrong when educators assume that IQ scores and intelligence are immutable. Educational psychologist Kevin McGrew compared test results and reported that a given student's IQ could be expected to vary from 16 to 26 points depending on which IQ test he took. In one large-scale analysis based on 6,321 students, researchers found that only 35% to 40% of the students who met the gifted standard in third grade still met it by eighth grade. Undoubtedly, the reverse was also true.

IQ test score fluctuations may be due to test administrators making a scoring error or to students who zone out. But researchers also credit the brain's neuroplasticity and the importance of experience on its development. Reasoning training, for example, can strengthen connectivity in the "executive attention network," which is crucial to concentration, multitasking and the ability to integrate diverse ideas.

In other words, "human potential" is a moving target. A student's performance at any given moment on standardized assessments ought to be seen as an indication of readiness for engagement in a particular area, not a measure of static ability.

Is there a role for IQ testing in the education system? Yes, if it stands for intelligent testing, a technique pioneered by psychologist Alan S. Kaufman, not intelligence testing. Unearthing a child's fixed, innate level of giftedness should not be the goal of education. The tests and labels should never be used to limit a child's access to accelerated resources. Instead, testing is an opportunity to learn about the child's strengths and weaknesses, with the goal of tailoring a program to his or her needs.

Strict cutoff scores must be banished and global IQ scores deemphasized. The test scores have to be viewed in context: How do students behave during testing? What kind of learning opportunities and environment are they exposed to? What's their level of grit, leadership, creativity and talent for things other than academics? Perhaps most important, assessments have to be revisable.

It may be time for a paradigm shift: Perhaps we should stop describing people as gifted or ungifted and start describing a wide range of personal characteristics and environmental factors as potential gifts — and promote an educational culture that develops them.

Project Bright Idea offers an example of how this might work. It was founded on the assumption that all children benefit from gifted curriculum. The latest phase focused on K-2, with students whose economic and educational backgrounds don't usually land them in accelerated programs. It targeted a wide range of "gifted intelligent behaviors" including thinking flexibly, being self-reflective, creating, imagining and innovating, taking responsible risks, listening with understanding and empathy, and remaining open to continuous learning.

Virtually none of the students involved had been nominated for gifted and talented programs. But by second grade, about 1 in 4 was identified as gifted. And even those who weren't showed substantial improvements in the gifted behaviors that were taught. On top of that, one principal found that nearly every Bright Idea student scored 50% to 100% higher than students in the regular classrooms on every academic assessment given.

When I was in ninth grade, Mrs. Jeuell asked me a simple question: "What are you still doing in special ed?" It galvanized me. I talked my way into regular and then advanced classes, but I hit another roadblock. The school psychologist, my fourth-grade IQ test in hand, blocked my access to the gifted program. Mrs. Acton believed in me and let me unofficially join her "Challenge" class, allowing me to prove myself.

What happens when Mrs. Jeuells or Mrs. Actons don't materialize? How many children are trapped even now by the low expectations contained in a misunderstood and misused test score?

• Scott Barry Kaufman is an adjunct assistant professor of psychology at New York University and the author of "Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined."

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smf: It’s an old saw and this isn’t new wood, but: “All students are gifted …it’s just that some open their presents a little sooner than others.”

It oversimplifies the situation and it’s not absolutely true. There are kids out there who are smarter/more talented/possess greater ability than other kids. 10,000 hours of practice would never have made me a championship golfer or concert violinist. I am the parent of a young woman who is smarter - and has more God given talent than her parents. Maybe it’s the water in Mount Washington, or the climate or the elementary school or the outstanding nanny she had when she was young …or the Montessori preschool. Probably it’s all those factors plus the gene pool and the thankful biology that has her mother’s RNA trumping her father’s DNA.

Look at the picture of the kids above. They represent an ethnic subset of kids (predominantly Latino) who might not get identified as gifted. This has to do with the fact that IQ tests are skewed towards the Anglo – that teachers recoginze this - and to an uncertain amount of profiling/stereotyping.

Gifted programs offer more rigor to students; an opportunity to explore and expand their potential; to excel. (Highly (Gifted Programs conversely isolate a population of kids smarter than most teachers, protecting everyone.)

Our daughter was ID’ed early on as a potential gifted child. She skipped Kindergarten and was always at the top of her elementary school classes even though she was a year younger. There is no tracking in LAUSD …but she was always in the Blue Group. She was referred for Gifted (IQ) Testing between second and third grade– but then the District – in its infinite wisdom – lost her test results.

Welcome to Catch 22 – you only get one chance to take the test!  No exceptions!

Luckily LAUSD has a back door into the GATE program: If a teacher and the principal recommends a child as “High Achieving” the student gets into GATE anyway –they get their “orange jacket”. That, ultimately is the best way in because it means that a couple of qualified professionals who theoretically know what they are doing have gone out of their way in the identification based on observation over time. It’s an objective rather than subjective analysis.

But how many teachers and principals take the time to write the letter about brown students who outperform the averages? How many brown parents even know to ask their child’s teacher to please write the letter?

How many opportunities are lost to the soft bigotry of exceeded expectations?