Education is broken – it needs reform. Sound familiar? That was 2007. It is any better? Worse perhaps?

But what does this have to do with technology?
As educators find themselves re-imagining learning based on their own tech-based awakening, the sense comes quickly that this is not about new technology, access to information, 21st century skills, or even 2.0-goodness, but broader-based education reform. But just as quickly, it starts to feel like there is no hope of changing a lumbering, entrenched educational system with a tiny lever called technology.

However, we are not alone, and it would be a win-win for both tech-loving educators and education reformers to join forces. The technology and online collaboration tools being invented today could tip the balance in the effort to reshape education “in more productive and democratic fashions.” The virtual voices of students and teachers alike could finally be heard in force.

But what is school reform? What does that word mean? To me, it has nothing to do with test scores. “Progressive” is probably the label I most identify with. In my years of working with teachers and schools, my vision of reform means a continuing effort to make schools more democratic, human institution that elevate the potential of every person involved. But even those words are really meaningless; I’d probably agree with a hundred other conceptualizations of what reform is.

It’s a bit of a cop out to say that if you read this blog, or know me, you already have a notion of what i’m talking about. Sorry about that. But I’m going to ask your indulgence to skip over the definitions and go straight to the goodies.

I’d like to share some of the resources I find inspiring on this topic, things that resonate with me. Yes, it’s completely personal, so perhaps you’ll just have to try it out and see if these resources meet your needs. Here are some of my pins in my roadmap to educational reform.

Seymour Papert is called the father of educational technology, and the only one on this list who is tied to technology. But for me, his work is the tangible bridge between technology use in schools and education reform. I find his writing inspiring and a constant source of big ideas.

Alfie Kohn is a researcher, speaker and author who as Time magazine said is, “…perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.”

Coalition of Essential Schools are based on the work of Ted Sizer, a giant of progressive education. CES schools pledge to create and sustain personalized, equitable, and intellectually challenging schools. To me, The CES Common Principals are a great place to start when thinking about “what a school could be.”

Forum for Education and Democracy, founded by a group of prominent thinkers in education, including Deborah Meier, Angela Valenzuela, Pedro Noguera, Linda Darling-Hammond, Ted and Nancy Sizer, and others.

Susan Ohanian speaks and writes about making schools better places for students and teachers. She tracks “outrages” on her website – stupid test questions, ridiculous policies and laws, lies, contradictions and half-truths.

The Education Policy Blog – a group blog “…about the ways that educational foundations can inform educational policy and practice! The blog is written by a group of people who are interested in the state of education today, and who bring to this interest a set of perspectives and tools developed in the disciplines known as the “foundations” of education: philosophy, history, curriculum theory, sociology, economics, and psychology.”

Bridging Differences blog is a running conversation between two education grande dames, Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch. They have large areas of disagreement, but the blog is a great example of a dialog that is polite, respectful and constructive. This is a a MUST READ for any educator.

A longer list of my “go to” thinkers who feed my brain on education reform will have to wait… but I have one more -

Call to action - from the same 2007 conference on education reform where the opening quote of this blog came from.

Teachers and Teaching: Prospects for High Leverage Reform
Peter Henry (aka Mi Corazon)

Wedged between two Byzantine bureaucracies—unions and school districts, constrained by unreasonable public expectations, hammered by ideologues, criticized by the media, saddled with policies shaped by non-educators, America’s teachers have almost no room to maneuver. Their training, workplace, schedule, and assignment are mostly determined by others, and their curriculum arrives “canned” in the form of textbooks from large, well-connected corporations. In some schools, extreme instructional strategies tell them what words to say, when, and how, as if teaching can be reduced to a standard script.

There is, however, reason for hope: If teachers are liberated from these structural limitations, they have tremendous potential as “high leverage” reform agents. As Peter Senge maintains in his thoughtful classic, The Fifth Discipline, small, subtle modifications of a key organizational element can have a major systemic impact.

It goes on to call for two fundamental reforms:

1. Giving teachers autonomy, power, control and authority
2. Ending teacher isolation

And ends on this uplifting note:

A great and resilient society, capable of successful adaptation and change, cannot thrive with an educational system built in the 19th century—managed by top-down hierarchies, one-size-fits-all models and ruled by the cudgel of fear. Excellence is achieved through individual mastery, a collegial network awash with inquiry and creativity, undergirded by trust and tangible support from the larger community. If we want teaching excellence and the resultant development of full student potential, teachers must be lifted up, given the responsibility, authority and training which enhance their natural human abilities, and then respected for taking on this most crucial and challenging work.

Good stuff, eh? See why I don’t bother trying to come up with a definition of reform all by myself? Why not stand on the shoulders of giants.

Educators inspired by technology will see parallels in these resources with many of the thoughts expressed daily in the ed-tech segment of the edublogosphere. There is much to learn, many connections to make, and much to do.

But finally, at this time in history, we have to tools to actually make this happen. Ed-tech reformers have an important part to play… and we are not alone.

Sylvia

October 22, 2009

Jerry Bracey, Rest in Peace
Brilliant. Blunt. Independent. Truth. Integrity. Iconoclast. Irascible. Uncompromising.

After our colleague and friend Jerry Bracey passed away in his sleep during the night of October 20th at the age of 69, the memories and tributes hit our in-boxes, and it started to sink in that Jerry’s dominant presence as an eloquent and reliable truth-teller would no longer grace the educational landscape.

The evening before he died, Jerry was working on a new “Bracey Report” for us. It’s pure Bracey – forthright, clear, compelling, and grounded in evidence. We will finish that work and publish it at epicpolicy.org.

Just a few months back, Jerry put out a new book, Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality, which joins a shelf full of earlier works, including many published with EPIC/EPRU.

Some online tributes to Jerry are already up and can be read read here (Sherman Dorn), here (EdWeek, Debra Viadero), here (EdNotesOnline), here (WashPost, Jay Mathews), here (DairyStateDad), here (EducationExaminer, Caroline Grannan), here (Schools Matter, Jim Horn), here (Thomas Mertz), and here (SubstanceNews, George Schmidt). If there are others you feel should be added and posted at the EPIC website please email atepic@colorado.edu.

We have also responded to calls from many of the people who have been touched by Jerry and his work to create a memorial fund or project that we could donate to in his memory. We have now created one, attached to this policy center which has recently been Jerry’s academic home.

Working with the CU Foundation, we are building a memorial fund that would, if fully funded, provide a doctoral fellowship in Jerry’s name. We’re thinking of it as the Bracey Memorial Fellowship, given to a doctoral student with a research-based, hard-nosed commitment to further truth, equity, and social justice.

Pleased visit the memorial fund website to make a donation Don’t click the “in memorial of” option since you probably don’t have the info requested about his next of kin (his wife, Iris). Instead, just write “In memorial of Jerry Bracey” in the box. You may also mail checks, made out to “CU Foundation” with “EPIC – Jerry Bracey” in the memo line, directly to the School’s Development Officer, Margot Neufeld, at:

University of Colorado at Boulder
School of Education
Margot Neufeld
249 UCB, room 116
Boulder, CO 80309

The Foundation has no fees for memorial gifts — all the money goes to the gift purpose (student support in Jerry’s name).

If we reach the $25,000 level for all donations in Jerry’s name, we can create an ongoing scholarship/fellowship. Even if we do not reach that threshold, we would still use the money for student support in Jerry’s name.

©2009 EPIC. Education and the Public Interest Center, School of Education

The language being used in the press is interesting to watch. As Alfie Kohn points out, in a new article in The Nation, Beware of School “Reformers”, the word “reform” has been stolen. It seems to have been co-opted by people wanting to bust teacher unions and test kids more.

Several education blogs have expressed their feelings on this Orwellian turn of events. I urge you to read Deborah Meier, Scott McLeod, Tim Stahmer, Gary Stager, Doug Johnson, David Warlick, Mike Petrelli, and I’m sure more I’ve missed.

What occurs to me is that every time we allow simplistic slogans to do our talking for us, we run the risk of having them stolen, misinterpreted, and co-opted.

Now, this is hardly as momentous as whether reform is really mean-spirited test prep factories or happy places for children to learn — but I think that “21st century skills” and “___ 2.0″ have essentially become meaningless.

People use empty words for a reason, because it’s easier to use an evocative phrase that has no true meaning. The listener does all the work, adding their own imagination of what the phrase means. Then, voila!, the speaker has just concocted a brilliant metaphor that everyone can agree with because there are no messy details involved.

Marketers call these words, “empty vessels“, because in advertising, you want the consumer to imagine your product is perfect. What better way than to sell them their own imagination.

When I talk about teaching with technology, I intend it to mean giving students access to tools and teaching them to find answers to tough problems that challenge them. I want kids to be able to think and act, construct, compute, solve, share, and more. There are nuances and details that paint the complete picture of what I think teaching and learning should look like in the 21st century. And sure, many of these are simply aspects of what a good education should have provided in any century.

But I often hear people talk about “21st century skills” and invariably someone will immediately say, “Oh yes, we’ve bought active whiteboards for all our classrooms.” When you’ve been in as many classrooms as I have, you know that the vast majority of these whiteboards are being used as a projection screen and most of the rest are pushed awkwardly into a corner with boxes stacked up in front of them. Something didn’t translate. Obviously no one “planned” this, but somewhere between “We’re moving into the future!” and “Where can I roll this stupid thing so it won’t block the bulletin board,” there was a big failure to communicate.

Any idea that involves how human beings learn is complex, and complex ideas don’t make pretty speeches and zippy headlines. I wish I knew how to fix that.

It’s hard to know what Obama really believes about learning and what he believes will work for public schools. His own choice for his children’s school stands in direct contrast to statements he’s made about “accountability”. But soon we’ll see if he believes what’s right for his kids is the same as what’s right for everyone else.

We’ll see.

Sylvia

David has launched a project to quickly collect some ideas for education that will be presented to the new administration in Washington. The project features four phases (these are copied from David’s introductory blog post).

• Phase 1 -Spend about two-and-a-half days composing and posting clear and succinct (140 character limit) priority actions for a U.S. Ed Department aimed at promoting and empowering a system that better prepares today’s children for their future.
• Phase 2 -The Big Ideas web site will change, consisting of a list of the items that were posted. We, will collectively match up similar items into the basic foundation topics. Nothing will be deleted, only linked.
• Phase 3 -The basic topics that emerge will be listed, with associated items linked in, with a request that education bloggers and micro-bloggers post their insights about specific topics of interest.
• Phase 4 - Finally, the main topics will be listed, with links to an aggregation of associated blogs and micro-blogs. Educators will then be asked to visit the list and prioritize the list by order of importance and logical sequence.

Click here to launch the Big Ideas site.

OK – this means you
Two and a half days means that you have until Tuesday, November 11 or so. So get busy! It’s only a sentence or two, so you have to get the bottom line really quickly. C’mon you GenYES and TechYES teachers, let’s talk about authentic student work and trusting students and teachers. Have your students input their thoughts. You may be thinking that no one will listen to you, but you know what the last 8 years has done, and people need to hear the real voices of educators and students as we move forward.

If you don’t speak up, someone else will.

Sylvia

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“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw

Reasonableness as a roadblock to change
Who hasn’t heard something like this — “I totally believe in technology and project-based learning. But my board is really conservative, test scores are down, and my principal doesn’t like that kind of airy-fairy nonsense. Besides, five years ago we tried it and half the teachers used “project time” as a smoke break. So I was thinking that after testing is over I would have the kids do a project where the kids use vocabulary words and write a letter to the troops overseas. Maybe I could have them make a PowerPoint or do something with technology. I can probably squeeze the whole thing into 3 days. That way I can say it’s got language arts skills, 21st century skills, it won’t take too much time, and the board will love the troops angle. ”

Reasonable compromise or watered-down status quo with technology tacked on?

The problem is that by being reasonable, educators pre-compromise themselves out of strong, defendable positions. Project-based learning is a strong position to come from. There is research on how to do it, why to do it, and lots of examples of success. But by compromising even before you get to the negotiation, you lose out. You have lost your ability to create conditions of success, and you have lost your negotiating power.

Most likely when you get to the actual planning, the people you thought would be impressed by your reasonableness stun you by not appreciating it at all. They want MORE compromise. In your eyes, they are unreasonable. You’ve already compromised (in your head) and now there’s no more to give. How come they get to be unreasonable when you’ve worked so hard before the meeting even started? It’s not fair!

You must practice the art of being unreasonable.

The art of being unreasonable

• Dream big.
• Come to the negotiation with a plan that meets all your needs and only your needs, with justification for them. You can compromise later from a place of power.
• Don’t play fair. Kids lives are at stake. For example, take kids into a meeting and have them present. It’s hard to say no to cute 8 year olds. (This is not about doing illegal or unethical things!)
• Acknowledge other people’s fears but label them as fears, not roadblocks or reasons to change the plan. Invite them to participate as your plan unfolds, so they can see that their fears are unfounded.
• Just because you understand other people’s arguments doesn’t mean you have to accept or act on them. That’s what reasonable people do. The other side isn’t accepting your arguments; you don’t have to accept theirs. Remember, you are unreasonable!
• Find others who believe in the same things you do and create a personal support system.
• Don’t be a martyr. If your plan is getting crushed and it’s just not going to happen, walk away. Come back with a bigger and better one.

Be unreasonable, not a pain
I know. You are saying, “I work with unreasonable people all the time! It’s not pleasant! They think they know everything, everyone resents it and figures out sneaky little ways to sabotage the plan. I want to be seen as fair, so that everyone will want to work with me, not against me.”

Everyone wants to be liked. Educators are probably the nicest people of all. Would it be so bad if people thought of you as a rebel, a dreamer, or a force of nature instead of just “nice”? Add a few new adjectives to your personal profile. You might be surprised that not only will people still like you, they will respect you more. Allow your unreasonableness to come from a place of righteous power and promoting student welfare, not anger or self-promotion. Anyway, nobody likes a pushover.

“You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?” — George Bernard Shaw

Go ahead, you have my permission, be unreasonable.

Sylvia