Just want to connect a couple of dots between a very thoughtful, challenging essay by Dan Willingham and Andrew Rotherham that was re-released by Educational Leadership just recently, and another snip from Steve Hargadon’s interview with Linda Darling Hammond from last week. I think they frame the really huge problem we’re facing with the current assessment regime that should have us all rolling up our sleeves and setting to work despite the fact that none of our elected leaders seem to have a clue as to what’s best for our kids when it comes to this stuff.

The Ed Leadership essay suggests that while these “21st Century Skills” are really any century skills, the path to “success” (depending on how you define that) is more dependent on having those skills today than ever before. And the greater problem right now is that getting really deep exposure to those skills is at best a hit or miss (mostly miss) proposition for kids in our country today. As the authors say, it’s “akin to a game of bingo.” But there are big hairy problems here regarding curriculum, professional development and assessment. And here’s one part that really resonated:

Another curricular challenge is that we don’t yet know how to teach self-direction, collaboration, creativity, and innovation the way we know how to teach long division. The plan of 21st century skills proponents seems to be to give students more experiences that will presumably develop these skills—for example, having them work in groups. But experience is not the same thing as practice. Experience means only that you use a skill; practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.

It’s that last part that really hits home, and again speaks to the pressing need for rethinking the professional development we provide to our current teachers, and the preservice preparation we give new teachers. I know this is a recurring theme here, but if we really value these skills (and I think we should), how can we teach self-direction, collaboration, creativity et al if we’re not practicing those things ourselves? It would be like being asked to teach Physics with only a textbook understanding of it. It’s what Sheryl and I and our many community leaders are constantly trying to nudge teachers toward, being learners in all of those contexts. And for most, it’s hard work to get out of the traditional roles and expectations which don’t include much beyond management of the classroom, the curriculum and the outcomes.

But at the end of the day, it’s the assessments that drive this. And this is the most depressing piece, I think. Here are Rotherham and Willingham again, longish, I know, but important:

There is little point in investing heavily in curriculum and human capital without also investing in assessments to evaluate what is or is not being accomplished in the classroom. Fortunately, as Elena Silva (2008) noted in a recent report for Education Sector, the potential exists today to produce assessments that measure thinking skills and are also reliable and comparable between students and schools—elements integral to efforts to ensure accountability and equity. But efforts to assess these skills are still in their infancy; education faces enormous challenges in developing the ability to deliver these assessments at scale.
The first challenge is the cost. Although higher-level skills like critical thinking and analysis can be assessed with well-designed multiple-choice tests, a truly rich assessment system would go beyond multiple-choice testing and include measures that encourage greater creativity, show how students arrived at answers, and even allow for collaboration. Such measures, however, cost more money than policymakers have traditionally been willing to commit to assessment. And, at a time when complaining about testing is a national pastime and cynicism about assessment, albeit often uninformed, is on the rise, getting policymakers to commit substantially more resources to it is a difficult political challenge.

Producing enough high-quality assessments to meet the needs of a system as large and diverse as U.S. public schools would stretch the capacity of the assessment industry, and incentives do not exist today for many new entrants to become major players in that field. We would need a coordinated public, private, and philanthropic strategy—including an intensive research and development effort—to foster genuine change.
Substantial delivery challenges also remain. Delivering these assessments in a few settings, as is the case today, is hardly the same as delivering them at scale across a state—especially the larger states. Because most of these assessments will be technology-based, most schools’ information technology systems will require a substantial upgrade. [Emphasis mine.]

They paint a daunting picture. But what really irks me is that once again, we’re trailing the field when it comes not just implementing more effective assessments but even conceptualizing them. Listen to this short snip from the Linda Darling Hammond interview (full recording here), most of which I’ve excerpted below:

In other countries they’ve got assessments that are fewer, that are higher quality, that include predominantly open ended essays and items research projects and scientific investigations, and so when they think about what it means to going to school, and what you should be learning, they take seriously the question of what is the intellectual activity that we want to have going on here. They don’t just attach a bunch of rewards and sanctions to low quality test measures as we’ve done here and say let’s let that be the tail that wags the dog without thinking about what we want kids to be learning, doing and able to do with their knowledge when we get out. [Emphasis mine.]

What a concept.

Maybe it’s just that the people in charge don’t have the creativity, innovation and problem solving skills to figure this out. (They are products of the system, after all.) But here’s the deal: so what? School’s starting, and it’s 2010 which means we’re in “doing both” mode. We’re making sure the kids pass the test, but we also have to make sure that our own assessments are doing more to evaluate our students ability to do all those other things we want them to be able to do that aren’t currently being assessed.

So, I’m wondering, how are you doing that?

1. Can you describe how you personally use technology to access, create and share information?

2. In terms of technology use, what were the most innovative ideas for education that you saw in the Race To The Top applications that you reviewed?

3. The National Education Technology Plan calls for the end of “one size fits all learning.” Do you agree and, if so, what does that mean for students and teachers?

4. The plan also calls for teachers to take part in “online learning communities” and “personal learning networks.” What types of professional development should schools be engaging in to achieve those goals?

5. If you were to counsel teachers and administrators in their participation in these communities and networks, what three suggestions would you give?

6. Do you agree that skills such as collaboration, problem-solving and self-direction (among other “21st Century Skills”) are important for students to develop and, if so, how are current assessment regimes checking for those skills?

7. Do you believe that every student in the United States should have ubiquitous access to the Internet and, if so, what plans are in place to achieve that? If not, why not?

8. According to the National Council of Teachers of English, the following are the characteristics of “literate readers and writers” in the 21st Century. How are you personally meeting these standards?

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and
cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of
purposes
• Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous
information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments

9. How do you see technology being used by your own children and grandchildren to learn in the future?

10. (Yours?)

Steve Hargadon held an interesting interview with Linda Darling-Hammond last week that covered, for the most part, the ideas in her new book “The Flat World and Education” as well as some of her earlier works like “The Right to Learn.” While I was hoping to hear her go a bit more into depth about the role of technology in the reform or transformation of schools, and to also be more specific as to how to get to reforms she says we need, she did articulate a number of compelling ideas around why change is so slow and why it’s so difficult to move the needle on schools here in the US. I’ve snipped three fairly short segments from the full interview that I want to touch on in three separate posts. (Full recording here.)

The first discusses the idea that reforms are hampered by the lack of teachers who can teach in progressive ways, and that replication of successful school models is extremely difficult due to diverse circumstances (some have leadership, money, infrastructure, others don’t) and a political reality that forces us to change course every few years while other countries are going through a steady process of “continual improvement.” She says it’s hard to build a “system of good schools” here. Take a listen:

Here is one quote that’s worth mulling over.

“Progressive educational philosophies, that is approaches that are child-centered, that are really focused on empowering forms of learning that allow people to inquire for themselves and pursue knowledge in self-initiated ways as well as in other ways, those kinds of reforms demand infinitely skilled teachers, and our system has never been organized to produce infinitely skilled teachers in sufficient qualities to fuel those reforms over the long haul.”

The other day I Tweeted the question “What % of teacher ed programs prepare teachers NOT to be the focal point of the classroom?” and the responses were telling. Most said 5-10%, and my sense is that’s pretty accurate. No question, we’re not producing “infinitely skilled teachers” who are also “infinitely skilled learners” as well, and that’s exactly what we need to make these progressive philosophies happen in the classroom. It’s not rocket science; if we want students who “pursue knowledge in self-directed ways” and flourish in an inquiry driven environment, we have to prepare teachers to do that for themselves. And we’re not. We prepare teachers to teach, not to learn.

But I also found it striking that she connected our difficulty in sustaining change with what she termed our “disposable culture” here in the US. We try one reform and dispose of it, then we try another and dispose of that one, and then we try yet another. And I can’t help ask, whose fault is that? Throughout our education, we’re give out disposable assignments, have kids work on disposable projects that lead to disposable tests. I mean really, how much of what we actually have our kids do in school is really worth hanging onto in a “change the world” sense? I don’t mean to saddle the current system with causing everything that ails our society, but you have to admit, we own some of that…we reap what we sow.

Over the next couple of days, I’m going to put some thoughts together on two of the other topics she brings up, professional development and assessment. Regardless the lack of a discussion around technology and learning networks in much of her writing and discussions, there is no question that Darling-Hammond has one of the clearest voices in articulating the issues we’re facing in education today. Definitely worth listening to.

1.

The thunder clap makes all of us stop. It’s one of those loud, long, rumbling ones, the kind that rolls around in your belly like when you hit one of those hard, deep potholes in your car. It shakes the window panes in the old house, and in that initial crack, we all duck into ourselves a bit, feeling that split second of doom that big summer storms in the Georgia countryside often cause. My kids are throwing the Frisbee in the downpour, and they freeze for an instant as well. I start to tell them to jump inside, here under the porch and wait it out, but before I get the words out they’re leaping the puddles, heading in my direction. Smart kids.

The weird thing is that on every porch that I can see on the block, people are out, watching the rain, listening to the thunder. I don’t know if they’re passing time or just immersing themselves in the strange beauty of the storm, the sheets of water, the muted light, the heaviness of the air. But we’re sharing it, my wet, dripping kids, the dog across the street who’s sticking his nose out from under the tar paper roof of his doghouse, and the old black man on the opposite corner, folded into his porch swing, puffing on a pipe. We’re all watching, and waiting for the break.

Eventually it comes; the thunder rolls are farther away, the rain abates. We pick up the conversation that the noise silenced, the one about our kids and their schools. Miss Frances isn’t listening too hard, I can tell, as she gently glides back and forth on her own porch swing. At 91, her concerns are elsewhere. But her son Mike is deep into the troubles of the school system. “They had to cut 15 days out of the school year ’cause they run outta money,” he says as he lifts up the brim of his dirt-stained John Deere hat. “They’re gonna keep the kids longer during the days, but they just can’t afford to keep everything running on those other days.” And before he says it, I know what’s coming next. Not that it means less educational opportunity for his grand kids. Not that it’s a shame to cut the art and music programs to save the football team. Not that there will be fewer teachers, less technology, less learning going on in school this year. Mike runs his hand through his hair.

“I just don’t know what we’re gonna do with those kids for those extra three weeks outta school,” he says.

2.

There’s no doubt, I’m not from around these parts. I’m just looking for a pack of gum at 7:45 in the morning in Sidney, Iowa, and as I drive into the center of town, in my white Hyundai rental, I’m not seeing a lot of open stores to choose from. It’s one of those old, small Midwestern country towns, one with the “we-really-mean-it” city square built around the county government building smack dab in the center of town. I’m looking for some signs of activity, and as I start to curl around the courthouse I spy it; a line of pick up trucks outside a small gas station-convenience store on the corner. I zip into the parking lot and, not seeing any spaces, park awkwardly in front of the double glass doors. I’m running late; I’ll only be a minute.

As I get out of the car, through the windows, I see them, a line of men, most north of 60 I’m guessing, coffee cups in hand. They’re regulars, no doubt, and before I even step inside, I feel their gaze. They’re all jeans and caps and country, and I’m beige khakis, golf shirt and a pony tail. A couple of them nod kindly as I give my own silent, demure “good morning,” and after a couple of heartbeats worth of pause to take me in, they go back to their conversation. “It’s the schools that should be doin’ that,” one is saying, and all of a sudden, I’m tuned in, listening over my shoulder as I reach for a pack of Dentyne Ice from the candy shelf beneath the counter. “They’re just not teaching it as much as they should be.” I step away from the counter, buy a little time by pretending to look closely at the chocolate bars down below, wonder what the system is so deficient in, wondering, maybe…

“These kids just don’t know nothin’ about managing money,” he says, and I hear various sounds of assent from the others.

—

So here’s the deal with the change that many of us in this conversation are clamoring for in schools: we’re about the only ones talking it. The townsfolk down at the corner store aren’t demanding “21st Century Skills,” technology in every student’s hand, an inquiry based curriculum and globally networked classrooms. By and large the parents and grandparents in our communities aren’t asking for it. The national conversation isn’t about rethinking what happens in classrooms. No one’s creating assessments around any of this. And in fact, outside of the small percentage of people who are participating in these networks and communities online, the vast majority of this country and the world doesn’t even know that a revolution is brewing.

And, while it’s no shocker to say it, that’s what makes it really tough to be a leader in schools right now. Because if you’re doing your job, you’re thinking about doing things that no one out there is asking you to do. Which is, after all, what leadership is all about, isn’t it? I love Seth Godin’s quote from Tribes: “Leadership is a choice; it’s the choice not to do nothing.”Especially if basically standing pat will get you by.  Given the current expectations for “student achievement” and adequate yearly progress, most school leaders can continue to get away with tinkering on the edges and not do anything to really upset the chalk tray. You want to make it into Newsweek’s top high schools list? Just keep pumping those AP courses and prepping those test scores. Constructing “modern knowledge” and sharing it with other global learners online? Not finding the check box for that.

I’ve said it before, you want to lead right now, as an administrator or as a teacher? You have to do both: you have do all of those things the parents and the town fathers and Newsweek (well, maybe not Newsweek) want you to do, but you also have to start shifting and seeing what the future holds for the kids in your schools, regardless if anyone else can see it. You have to, as the superintendent at my old school Lisa Brady has begun to do, lead your staff and your school community to the place where they understand the need for change as well, a place that’s not just about test scores and AYP, but that’s about student learning and literacy in new forms, forms that look much different from our own but that will be crucial to our kids’ success. You have to be an advocate, wherever and whenever you can, to convince people that while doing both is hard and takes time and effort, that it’s worth it, that it’s the right thing to do for the kids in our schools.

Because if you’re waiting for the conversation in the coffee shop and the porch swing to act, you’re going to be waiting a long time.

Rather than teachers delivering an information product to be ‘consumed’ and fed back by the student, co-creating value would see the teacher and student mutually involved in assembling and dissembling cultural products. As co-creators, both would add value to the capacity building work being done through the invitation to ‘meddle’ and to make errors. The teacher is in there experimenting and learning from the instructive complications of her errors alongside her students, rather than moving from desk to desk or chat room to chat room, watching over her flock.

I love this vision of teaching from Erica McWilliam, articulated in her 2007 piece “Unlearning How to Teach” (via my Diigo network). I know the idea isn’t new in these parts, but the way she frames it really resonates. And it speaks to some important aspects of network literacy and the teacher’s role in the formation of and the participation in those student networks. At the end of the day, as she suggests in the quote above, we have to add value to the process, not simply facilitate it. Here’s another snip that gets to that:

A further point here – if we consider the student’s learning network as a type of value network, then, we must also accept that such a network allows quick disconnection from nodes where value is not added, and quick connections with new nodes that promise added value – networks allow individuals to ‘go round’ or elude a point of exchange where supply chains do not. In blunt terms, this means that the teacher who does not add value to a learning network can – and will – be by-passed.

I think that’s one of the hardest shifts in thinking for teachers to make, the idea that they are no longer central to student learning simply because they are in the room. When learning value can be found in a billion different places, the teacher has to see herself as one of many nodes of learning, and she has to be willing to help students find, vet, and interact with those other nodes in ways that place value at the center of the interaction, meaning both ways. It’s not just enough to add those who bring value; we must create value in our networks as well.

Another interesting point in the essay suggests that because of our emphasis on knowledge in the schooling process, we are actually creating a more ignorant society. I greatly admire Charles Leadbetter‘s work (If you haven’t read “Learning from the Extremes” (pdf) you need to), and this somewhat extended quote really got me thinking:

In a script-less and fluid social world, ‘being knowledgeable’ in some discipline or area of enterprise is much less useful than it was in times gone by. In The Weightless Society (2000), Charles Leadbeater explains the reason for this by exploding the myth that we are becoming a more and more knowledgeable society with each new generation. Leadbeater’s view is that we have never been more ignorant. He reminds us that we have a much less intimate knowledge of the technologies that we use every day than our forebears had, and will continue to experience a growing gap between what we know and what knowledge is embedded in our manufactured environment. In simple terms, we are much more ignorant in relative terms than our predecessors.

But Leadbeater makes a further point about our increasing relative ignorance that is highly significant for teaching and learning. It is that we can and must put this ignorance to work – to make it useful – to provide opportunities for ourselves and others to live innovative and creative lives. “What holds people back from taking risks”, he asserts, “is often as not …their knowledge, not their ignorance” (p.4). Useful ignorance, then, becomes a space of pedagogical possibility rather than a base that needs to be covered. ‘Not knowing’ needs to be put to work without shame or bluster… Our highest educational achievers may well be aligned with their teachers in knowing what to do if and when they have the script. But as indicated earlier, this sort of certain and tidy knowing is out of alignment with a script-less and fluid social world. Out best learners will be those who can make ‘not knowing’ useful, who do not need the blueprint, the template, the map, to make a new kind of sense. This is one new disposition that academics as teachers need to acquire fast – the disposition to be usefully ignorant.

As a parent, and I know I keep coming back to this lens more and more these days, I want my kids and their teachers to be “usefully ignorant.” It’s the basis of inquiry, and that type of learning can’t happen unless we give up this notion that we can “know” the answer and that it can be tested in a neat little short answer package. The world truly is “script-less”, and the more my kids are able to flourish with “not knowing” the more successful they will be. Just that concept will require a lot of “unlearning” when it comes to teaching and schools in general.

So how are you unlearning teaching?

So I’m asking for a little crowdsourcing feedback for a chapter I’m writing. I’m trying to frame out all the things that ideally need to be in place for an existing school to make the transition to one that provides a more relevant learning experience for kids in the context of the social online technologies that are disrupting the current model. Call it School 2.0, a 21st Centuryized School, or something else, but I’m wondering what qualities or conditions should we be working toward in order to successfully make a transition like that?

Here’s what I’ve been thinking (in no particular order in terms of the big buckets):

1. Technology

   1. Personal technology (computer, mobile phone, iPad, etc.) in the hand of every student, teacher, administrator, support staff

   2. Ubiquitous access to the Internet for every student at school and at home

   3. A robust network infrastructure at school that permits real-time access for all students simultaneously

   4. Excellent real-time support

   5. Responsible Use Policies that encourage technology use

2. Curriculum and Instruction

   1. A deep understanding on the part of every staff member of how to use technology, and specifically the Web, to learn

   2. Sustained, continuous professional development

   3. Performance-based assessments

   4. Teachers fluent in how to translate their personal understanding of technology into the classroom

   5. Personalized learning opportunities for students

   6. Student centered pedagogy

   7. Inquiry-based curriculum

   8. A balance between meeting the requirements of state testing and reshaping learning to teach students the skills they need

   9. Instruction for teachers and students about web-safety

3. Change Management

   1. A shared vision for modern learning in the school

   2. A shared vocabulary to facilitate conversations around change

   3. Support for trying (and failing) when implementing changes in the classroom

   4. Teachers working with each other across disciplines

   5. Common planning and discussion time for staff

   6. Community education around the new vision and how change will take place

   7. Measurement of progress and adjustment along the way

4. Leadership

   1. Making a strong case for change with every constituency including students, parents, teachers, staff, administration, board of education and community

   2. Leadership that encourages modern learning among teachers and students

   3. Teacher leaders that embrace and extend the vision

   4. A innovative budgetary approach

What have I missed?

There’s an old oak tree down on Miss Frances’s farm that requires more than a few minutes of inspection every time you lay eyes on it. You need to be a good 100 feet away from the thing to see its top, and when you sidle your back next to the massive trunk and tilt your head up, not one speck of the sky trickles through the gnarled branches and acorn laden leaves. It’s one of those natural wonders that makes you feel small in all sorts of ways.

“I figger that tree’s been aroun’ longer than anyone’s been by to see it,” Miss Frances notes, turning subtly in her rusted metal rocker to deposit a lip full of brown spittle into a 7Up bottle she’s been carrying around. She’s 91, her face wrinkled by too many years working the farm in the hot Georgia sun, yet still more than able to climb up on the old blue Ford International tractor and bush hog the property when it needs it. “How many years old you think that tree is?”

I’m tempted just to take wild guess, say 150 years or so and sit in the peaceful contemplation that would surely follow. But before I can get it out, Tucker says “Dad, can’t we figure it out? Isn’t there some formula or something online?” He comes over and takes my phone, and without prodding, Tess seems to know she’s going to need to find something to wrap around the circumference of the trunk. I look over at Miss Frances and shrug my shoulders, and she gives me a smile in the midst of her gentle rocking.

“I think there’s some string hangin’ in the old coop,” she half yells to Tess as she points the 7Up bottle in the general direction. Tess pulls back the wood frame door to the cage, seems to bat some cobwebs aside and carefully reaches in among the loose hanging chicken wire as I wonder when her last tetanus shot was.  She pulls out a yellowing loop of rope and runs toward the tree. “You have to wrap it six feet up the trunk,” Miss Francis says. “See if you can reach it up thar.” I approach to help, but Tess shoos me away. She’s 13 now. She can do it. And somehow, she does, walking the rope around the bottom of the trunk before shimmying it up with both hands until they’re over her head, marking the length with her fingers, letting go, and then laying the rope out in front of us so we can pace it off.

“I think I found it Dad,” Tucker says, looking up from the phone as I’m toe-heeling next to the rope, “but it says we need to have the width in centimeters.” I’m thinking they should know the conversion (don’t they learn that in school?) and I can see Tess trying to call it up to do the math. But by the time I get to 15 paces down the rope, Tucker says, “Nevermind, here it is in English.” I have to chuckle.

I let the kids do the calculating, and it turns out that the old oak is almost 200 years old, give or take a decade. Might even have been born in the 18th Century. “Whoo-wee that’s an old ‘un,” Miss Frances states, craning her neck upward. I look at her, then back up at it and for a second try to imagine the storms, the heat, the drought, the stresses it’s survived, but 200 years is hard to fathom. There’s not a dead branch on the thing that I can see. The tree, at least, will be here a few decades longer. “Hey Dad,” Tess says, “maybe we can measure it again next year.”

“Absolutely,” I say, hoping we’ll get the chance.

(All definitions from dictionary.com)

Is a school “an institution where instruction is given,”or is it a place where we come together to create and share knowledge?

Is a classroom “a  room, as in a school or college, in which classes are held,” or is it any place we can learn with others or on our own?

Is learning “knowledge acquired by systematic study in any field of scholarly application,” or is it knowledge created through exploration, inquiry and construction for our own application?

Is a teacher “a person who instructs,” or is it a person who “models and demonstrates” learning?

Is curriculum “a particular course of study in a school, college” that is delivered to the student, or is it more about a particular passion, around which a student constructs her own study?

Is assessment “the evaluation of a student’s achievement on a course,” or is it about the student reflecting deeply on the process?

Is a credential “evidence of authority, status, rights, entitlement to privileges, or the like, usually in written form,” or is it a peer-reviewed collection of artifacts, acts and shared learning?

I wonder.