School Leader

More thoughts on WKU doc symposium: Competition, contemplation, and more

The second day of the WKU Educational Leadership Doctoral Symposium began with another thought-provoking presentation on present trends in education that point toward a major shift of thinking and practice in the future. 

George Mehaffy, Vice President at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, shared the breath-taking developments underway in higher education as a host of new, successful, often-technology driven options have provided enormous competitive pressures on traditional colleges and universities.  Mehaffy made a powerful and passionate case that higher education must change to meet these new consumer demands and shared information showing how online learning, as just one example, can be just as effective or more effective than our more traditional modes.  In fact, Mehaffy argued that if colleges and universities don't respond to these demands, we will eventually be put out of business as students pursue cheaper, often more valuable learning experiences elsewhere.

Virtual learning institutions like University of Phoenix and Kaplan often get the brush off from traditional higher ed types who argue that their programs are low-quality (and, to be sure, there's been some justified attention given to the loan default rates for these universities), but Mehaffy suggests quality in such programs is often as good - and better - than from traditional sources.  Mehaffy pointed to other, non-profit ventures for providing (free) online learning such as Kahn Academy and MITx.

 My own sense is that the markeplace will work this out in the end.  If graduates of online or hybrid programs don't exhibit the skills needed, employers won't hire them.  If they do, higher ed institutions locked in the traditional mode better watch out: the power of school choice writ large.

Speaking of competition, in a later keynote presentation, Robert King, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, made a case for why Kentucky needs to continue expanding its number of postsecondary graduates.  His argument was primarily economic, and he pointed to how other countries have greatly outpaced us in this regard and in terms of overall student achievement.

I have some doubts about the value of merely increasing the quantity of our graduates, especially when the unemployment rate, even for the college educated, remains high.  Nevertheless, some of King's comments on how the quality of education can be improved, were worth noting.  King discussed at length recommendations from Marc Tucker's book, Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World's Leading Systems. 

Tucker noted fairly mainstream ideas for education reform including improving teacher and principal quality.  But, according to King, Tucker also advocates the idea of for-profit (and non-profit) enterprises run by teachers to provide educational services directly to schools and districts, arguing that the blue-collar mode of teaching neither serves students nor teachers well.  I haven't read Tucker's book, but King's comments made me put Surpassing Shanghai on my reading list.

Finally, I want to mention the delight I took in one of the doctoral student research presentations I attended.  Heidi Crocker, yoga teacher and instructor at Logan College of Chiropractic in St. Louis is also a student in WKU's doctoral program. 

Heidi shared a pilot study conducted in a St. Louis private school in which students and teachers regularly practiced mindfulness meditation.  Her findings echo the experiences from schools in San Francisco and my own experiences using meditation in the classroom, which I blogged about recently.  It was encouraging to see this kind of important, contemplative work underway in yet another school, where both children and adults could reap the benefits, and exciting to see the scope and reach of WKU's doctoral students and their work.

See my comments on yesterday's Doctoral Symposium activities here.

UPDATE (4/3/12): Reviewer Jay Greene offers a decidely negative take on Tucker's Suprassing Shanghai.

WKU Doc Symposium: Can existing educational structures meet our future needs?

The second annual WKU Educational Leadership Doctoral Symposium launched this morning with a thought-provoking presentation from Nathan Phelps, assistant professor in WKU's Honors College, on global trends and their implications for education. Mr. Phelps shared information about developments in demographics, natural resources, technology, and other areas that portend major changes in lifestyle and learning for the future.

In breakout sessions, symposium participants (which represented a cross-section of doctoral students, faculty members, and community leaders) discussed these trends, with a focus on the specific implications for our individual institutions. A key theme from Mr. Phelps' talk and our breakout discussions was the learner-centered nature of today's world (outside the realm of formal schooling) and the increasing demand for education to conform with this new model. Consumers have never had more choice in the products and information they consume, or the sources from which they draw it.

We know our current educational system struggles mightily to address the needs of individual students. The entire educational enterprise is based on a 19th century industrial model that doesn't lend itself easily to student differences (in part because we have - for many good reasons - pushed toward more uniform outcomes of student learning). Meanwhile, the 21st century demands not only marketplaces that are sensitive to individual needs and wants, but also a skillset based heavily on critical thinking, problem solving, and global perspectives.

A key question that emerged in my own breakout session was whether schools as they are currently configured can ever meet this challenge? Are all of our educational reform efforts tinkering around the edges of a system that is fundamentally insufficient for the demands of this century?

Our general consensus seemed to be that the current system of schooling must be dismantled wholesale and rebuilt from the ground up. Note that these were mostly professional educators participating in this conversation.

So what might replace schools as we know them? No specific ideas surfaced in our talk or in the panel discussion that followed, but it seems to me that no one-size-fits-all appoach (which is usually the only way government knows how to function) will work. Fundamentally, we need more choices in the educational options available to families. The only way to unleash innovation in education is to broaden a competitive marketplace of choices, where classical models can exist alongside more democratic (Montessori?) models or vocational oriented models or even all-virtual models of learning, all competing and responding to various student needs and preferences.

That doesn't mean I don't support all-out efforts to reform and improve schools as they are currently configured. There is definitely room to improve instructional quality, creating more student-centered and responsive learning environments, that more seemlessly integrate "schooling" and "real-world" learning.  But I question whether such reforms can be done large-scale and with significant long-term impact as long as government-run schools maintain a monopoly on learning.

Unsurprisingly, no one voiced this perspective at the symposium, which tells me the educational establishment isn't changing anytime soon, at least not on its own.

WKU Educational Leadership Doctoral Symposium this week

The second annual WKU Educational Leadership Doctoral Symposium will be this Thursday and Friday, March 29 and 30, at South Campus.  Check out the WKU News blog for more details.  This is a good opportunity for folks who might be interested in pursuing doctoral work at WKU to learn more about the program.  In addition to several keynote speakers, concurrent sessions will feature research presentations by recent doctoral graduates and candidates.  I'll be there, likely tweeting observations and blogging reactions. 

Montessori Madness

While you call tell from the title of Trevor Eissler's book, Montessori Madness: A Parent to Parent Argument for Montessori Education, that the author is gearing his message toward parents, her nevertheless provides a introduction to the Montessori method that is accessible and valuable to professional educators as well.

Eissler gears his book toward those who have little to no prior knowledge about Montessori education.  In an accessible and personal voice, he relates his own frustrations with the traditional education system as he considered options for his own three children.  Eissler explains that when he and his wife were  about to opt for homeschooling, they discovered a Montessori school in their community and became passionate advocates for the Montessori method.

Beginning with a pointed critique of traditional schooling, which he calls the "Factory Model of Education" (he frequently quotes Weapons of Mass Instruction author John Taylor Gatto, whose book I reviewed here and here a few months back), Eissler spends the rest of Montessori Madness explaining how Montessori schools differ, offering a child-centered approach that traditional schools, by their nature, cannot provide.

Eissler offers a readable introduction to Maria Montessori's conception of how children learn in their early years, describing the "sensitive periods" of development when, thanks to an "aborbent mind," children are most ready to learn in certain modes.  Far from the kind of "do your own thing" stereotype that some people have of Montessori classrooms, Eissler explains how the entire Montessori experience hinges on a carefully prepared environment and how a teacher (or "guide" in Montessori parlance) functions to allow the child a maximum of choices within a range of activities and opportunities geared specifically for the child's development level. 

In short, accessible chapters, Eissler describes the Montessori approach to discipline, competition, and reward and punishments that many parents exploring new educational options would be interested in.  Of particular interest to educators is his two-chapter discussion of Montessori's philosophy regarding errors a child makes during the learning process.  Eissler explains how making errors is a natural part of the learning process (and life itself), but notes that traditional schools treat errors as something to be avoided, punished (with bad grades, for example), or hidden.  In Montessori schools, Eissler says, errors are welcomed.  In many cases, the materials themselves include components that allow children to discover and correct their own errors.  The whole notion of a teacher "marking" a student's homework for errors is unknown in the Montessori environment (much of the traditional teacher's role is unknown in Montessori classrooms, and Eissler's discussion of the role of the "guide" will be most interesting to professional educators trained in the traditional mode).

Eissler ends his book by arguing that Montessori methods are demonstrably superior to traditional approaches to learning and calls upon parents to demand Montessori options in their public schools, where all children regardless of their family's affluence can have access to this compelling, child-centered approach. 

As a relative newcomer to Montessori and someone interested in educational policy and school choice, I was most interested in Eissler's argument, but was disappointed that he devoted only a few paragraphs at the end of the book to this topic.  Perhaps it was beyond the scope of what he was trying to accomplish to discuss the need for public Montessori options, but it's a discussion well worth exploring elsewhere.  It's hard to imagine the Montessori philosophy operating to its full capacity in a traditional public school, but the idea is not unheard of and many readers will be interested to learn more about how this works.

Likewise, as an educator with a background in middle and high school, I was left with many questions about how the Montessori approach works with older students.  Perhaps because his own children are still young, Eissler doesn't address this topic, and the reader will need to look elsewhere for additional information.

My criticism are largely the product of my own interests and needs as a reader.  Eissler doesn't attempt to make Montessori Madness all things to all people.  The end product is a good one.  As a non-educator (Eissler is a professional pilot who draws heavily on his own experiences in describing the learning process), the author writes in a straightforward and engaging way that will appeal to all readers.  Montessori Madness offers a great first step on the Montessori path.

See a series of video interviews featuring Trevor Eissler here.

Instructional sensitivity: Why teachers intuitively know standardized assessments aren't good measures of student learning

The annual Primary Sources report by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation examines teacher attitudes on a number of topics.  Recent headlines from this year's report focused on teacher perceptions of standardized testing.  For some good reasons worth discussing, a majority of teachers do not find standardized tests to be good measures of student learning or teaching effectiveness.  But the survey also revealed encouraging developments in teacher perceptions of formative and classroom-based assessments and the value of using the data from such measures in evaluating teacher performance.

Read the Education Week/Teacher magazine report on the survey here.

The national survey of more than 10,000 teachers found that only about a quarter of teachers consider standardized tests to be good measures of student learning.  Nearly half of all teachers say that students themselves don't take the tests very seriously.

This is a valid point, but there are better arguments for why standardized assessments have limited value for accountability and teacher evaluation purposes.  W. James Popham, author of Transformative Assessment, Everything School Leaders Need to Know About Assessment and other books, says that for a test to be used formatively, either to inform instruction or make judgments about the quality of instruction, assessments must be "instructionally sensitive."  In other words,

An instructionally sensitive accountability test would be one that would include many items that uninstructed students would tend to answer incorrectly and instructed students would tend to answer correcty.

Makes sense, right?  But for a test to meet this definition, Popham says it must have certain characteristics:

• First, it must be based on a modest number of important curricular targets.  In other words, the test can't attempt to measure too many different standards.  This is why assessment experts from Marzano to Schmoker to Reeves advocate that schools condense and prioritize their curriculum to focus on power standards that have leverage and endurance, and make students ready for the next grade level.  If a test tries to measure too many different standards, the number of items per standard will be too small to offer a valid measure of whether students have actually mastered the knowledge and skill described by the standard.
• Second, instructionally sensitive tests are based on learning targets that are clearly defined.  Teachers and students alike must be absolutely clear about the specific knowledge and skill that each of these prioritized standards is meant to describe, so that test items can match those skills accurately.  If a test tries to measure a standard that is too broad and vague, teachers and students are unlikely to be prepared for the various ways the items associated with that standard might be presented.

WKU's Dr. Mike Putnam to offer free SLLA prep session

The School Leader Licensure Assessment (SLLA) is a state mandated assessment for any individual wanting to obtain their School Administrator certification in the state of Kentucky.  This test will be given online by ETS the week of April 18, 2012 at a cost of $375.00.  Dr. Michael Putnam, Associate Professor, Educational Administration, Leadership, and Research at Western Kentucky University is offering to conduct a free SLLA review session for potential test takers.

The prep session will be held on April 14, from 9:00 a.m. t0 5:00 p.m. Central time in Gary Ransdell Hall Room 3076 on WKU's main campus.

This review session was created by Dr. Putnam and Dr. Dennis Bunch, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at The University of Mississippi. Kentucky currently has an overall pass ratio of 86.94% with a qualifying score of 160 on the SLLA.  Dr. Putnam has facilitated one test prep session in Kentucky culminating in a 100% pass ratio.  Both Dr. Bunch and Dr. Putnam have facilitated multiple review sessions in Mississippi which has a qualifying score of 169. The SLLA review sessions conducted by Dr. Bunch and Dr. Putnam have a current 92% overall pass rate by review session participants in a state where the current overall pass rate is 48%. 

Participants will

• Examine the six ISLLC Standards
• Participate in Multiple Choice and Constructed Response Question Training
• Participate in discussions
• Work hands-on, timed sample questions
• Provide, and be provided, real-time feedback

If you are interested in participating in this preparatory session, contact Dr. Putnam via email at Michael.Putnam@wku.edu  no later than the end of the day April 3, 2012.  No late registrations will be accepted.  In your email, give your name, phone number(s), current district, school, and professional position.  A lengthy review packet will be printed at no cost to you when you reserve your seat in the session.  If you find you cannot make the session, inform Dr. Putnam immediately either by email or by phone at 270-745-4271.

Montessori Elementary program open house March 23

Bowling Green, Kentucky's first-ever Montessori elementary program will open its doors this August 2012.  Associated with the Montessori School of Bowling Green, the new elementary program will welcome children ages six through twelve.  Benedicte Bossut, who is currently completing her training with Association Montessori Internationale, will be the school's first teacher.

Benedicte and other Montessori staff will hold an open house for interested parents on Saturday, March 23, from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. at the Montessori School of Bowling Green, 506 State Street.  Call (270) 846-1122 or email mesbgky@gmail.com for more information.

The video below offers an introduction to key aspects of a Montessori elementary education:

 

To see other School Leader blog posts on Montessori education, click here.

Upcoming opportunities for local educators: Screening of the film "American Teacher" and annual School Law Institute

Two upcoming events will be of interest to area educators.  On Tuesday, March 27th, a partnership of several Kentucky groups will sponsor a screening of the feature-length documentary film, American Teacher, at Bowling Green Junior High School.  Then on Thursday, March 29th, WKU, GRREC, and the law firm of English, Lucas, Priest, & Owsley will sponor the 8th Annual School Law Institute at the Sloan Convention Center.

American Teacher, a film directed by Vanessa Roth and narrated by actor Matt Doman, examines the difficult working conditions of public school teachers, focusing on the real stories of a select group of teachers in a variety of school settings.   This screening at BGJHS is sponsored by several educator professional organizations including the Kentucky Education Association and the Kentucky Association of School Administrators, along with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, United Way, and other groups.  The screening will be from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Here is an official trailer from the movie:

  

I have not seen American Teacher myself.  I am frankly a bit skeptical based on the trailer and reviews I perused online.  The overwhelming theme of the movie appears to be that teachers should be paid more money, and while I have no argument with that thesis, for a variety of reasons I think the American public wants to hear that plea alongside other, more specific and sweeping recommendations for how we can improve education.

Nevertheless, based on the impressive array of sponsors and just out of curiosity, I plan to attend and encourage others to do so as well.  While admission is free, organizers would like attendees to register in advance.

Later the same week, the 8th Annual School Law Institute will be held from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Sloan Convention Center.  I have attended this highly-regarded conference in the past and have found it extremely informative, especially for practicing and aspiring school administrators.  Topics this year include the following:

• Teacher discipline and the Americans with Disabilities Act
• The impact of past tribunal decisions on school administrators
• The effect of recent revisions to Federal Education Right to Privacy Act
• A review of special education legal developments over the last year

Email me for a flyer of the event (gary.houchens@wku.edu) or contact Beth Beckham at GRREC for more information or to register (beth.beckham@grrec.ky.gov).  Cost is $50 and includes lunch. 

Space is limited at both events so register in advance.

What's America's story really about? The problem with a national social studies curriculum

A compelling recent commentary in Education Week calls for a greater focus on civics education in schools, and while I agree with most of the authors' arguments, their essay raises serious questions about how we define the purpose of civics education, about the essential story of American history, and especially about the challenges of developing a national social studies curriculum. 

Social studies scholars James E. Davis, H. Michael Hartoonian, Richard D. Van Scotter, and William E. White, authors of an online history and civics program published by Pearson Education, argue that our relentess emphasis on standardized testing in reading, math, and science, while worthy and important, has had unintended consequences for the social sciences.  History and civics education have taken a back seat, and students are less prepared than ever to engage in civil dialogue about the key ideas and challenges facing the world in the 21st century:

[T]o be a citizen of the United States, among other things, requires developing a democratic mind—the intellectual ability to entertain contradictory or opposing ideas, hold tentative judgments, and make decisions based on facts supported by evidence. None of us is born with this capability. It must be learned, if not from the family, then in school.

I think we can all agree with this.  The authors go on to argue that American history can best be understood as the struggle between competing tensions that reflect our deepest values, and that students must be able to think critically about these competing tensions:

Since the time of the American Revolution, citizens have been engaged in arguments about shared values: How do we obtain the most individual freedom and how is freedom limited by our quest for equality? We believe in the right to pursue private wealth and at the same time understand we must invest in the public infrastructure, or common wealth, of our community, our state, and the nation. We are a people with an abiding reverence for the law and at the same time we realize that law is effective only when it reflects our best ethics.

Meditation as a classroom strategy

A recent Eutopia article offers a fascinating look at how one troubled school transformed its culture and climate through daily periods of meditation in which students and staff practice mindful "quiet time."

Visitacion Valley Middle School in San Francisco launched the program in 2007 and has since seen dramatic reductions in truancy, suspensions, and other classroom behaviors.  Through a program facilitated by the Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education, VVMS first experimented with teachers learning a simple meditation technique, and then introduced two 15-minute quiet periods each day during which students may meditate (parents volunteer whether to have their child instructed in the actual meditation practice), or they may engage in sustained silent reading.

The program has been well recieved by teachers, parents, and students, who all collectively report greatly reduced levels of stress.

I was pleased to read about this program and its success, and it conforms with my own experiences using simple mindfulness meditation in my own teaching practice. 

As a middle school teacher, I found my classroom perpetually disrupted by students' lack of concentration.  The kids would stampede into the classroom, distracted and distressed from home and school lives that were marked by overstimulation and a lack of quiet.  This caused a range of problems from poor classroom performance on the part of individual students to a higher level of off-task behaviors.

In response, I introduced my sixth through eighth graders to a simple meditation practice, whereby they would sit still but alert and pay attention to the sensation of their own breathing, gently returning their attention to their breath whenever it strayed.  We practiced for five minutes at the beginning of class (I was always afraid to sacrifice any more instructional time than that), and once students got over the novelty (lots of giggling at first), they came to love it.  After that five minute break, the classroom was always calmer and students were more centered, alert, and ready to learn.  On days when I would forget to have quiet time, students typically asked for it - and those were usually days when Ineeded the pratice as much as they did.

My experience affirmed that children can indeed learn to meditate, and that they benefit academically from building in quiet and contemplation to their normal school routines.  I hope other schools will follow the example and work toward becoming more mindful places of learning.