PSFA Daily News Digest

6 September 2012

www.nmpsfa.org 

Barbara Riley, Editor  ·  Email:  newsdigest@nmpsfa.org 

Santa Fe/ Superintendent Joel Boyd Unveils Parent Academy

By T.S. Last

ABQ Journal Staff Writer

September 6, 2012 

If families are involved in learning, they will be more active in their children's education, yielding greater student achievement.

That's the theory behind the Parent Academy, an idea being introduced by Santa Fe Public Schools' new superintendent, Joel Boyd.

• "It's based on the idea that parents are our partners," said Boyd, adding that he has experience with parent academies while he was a middle school principal in Philadelphia and as special assistant to the superintendent in Miami, Fla.
• "It's not brick and mortar, but a collection of programs and strategies that cover a whole host of needs determined by the parents themselves," he said.

Boyd, who began his new job Aug. 1, told the school board at its meeting on Tuesday that the decision to implement the Parent Academy in Santa Fe evolved from his entry plan.

• "One of gaps clear to me is the lack of an over-arching strategy to engage parents," he said. "This is our answer to that."

Boyd had his newly hired chief of staff, Latifah Phillips, outline the plan for the school board.

• "This is directly aligned with our strategic plan and core belief," she said, adding that a goal of the strategic plan is to engage families and that parents serve as their children's best teachers.

Phillips said that the academy will offer parents free-of-charge training in subject areas that will not only help them support their child's education but expand their own.

• Some courses could offer vocational certification, GEDs or opportunities to learn new skills.
• Or they could just help parents understand Common Core Standards,
• how Standards-Based Assessment tests are being implemented, or
• what they can do to prepare their child for college.

It'll be up to parents to decide what they want, she said.

"We're going to survey you and find out what courses you want," she told the audience, adding that listening sessions will be held in addition to surveys.

Course times and locations are also up to parents, though Phillips said the aim is scatter them throughout the city. The classes will be taught by school staff or other community members when appropriate.

Phillips said the hope is to provide parents with skills that can be utilized by the schools. Once learned, parents could take on leadership positions within the school their child attends, or assist other students and teachers.

Funding sources are still being explored, she said.

• Local businesses or organizations could donate money or their own expertise.
• Some funding could come from the district's partnership with Dollars 4 Schools, or from
• dollars set aside for parent engagement through Title I federal funds.

Phillips said pilot courses are intended to begin next spring, with expansion in the fall.

"The next step would be to convene an advisory group, made up of parents, school-based staff, district staff and community members," she said, including people with varied backgrounds.

The idea for a Parent Academy drew raves from school board members.

"Thank you," board member Steven Carrillo said emphatically.

A staunch supporter of Boyd, Carrillo said it's astonishing what has been accomplished in the superintendent's first 34 days on the job. "I'm excited about what's next," he said.

Board Secretary Barbara Gudwin said she was happy to see that certifications could be offered to parents. She said she hoped that some parents, especially those who are bilingual, could be put to use as volunteers.

Board Vice President Linda Trujillo said she was "jumping for joy" inside.

"I've been waiting for something like this and looking for this kind of leadership," she said. "I truly believe parents are our primary educators."

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Santa Fe/ 2 Top Santa Fe Public Schools Positions Filled

ABQ Journal Staff Report

September 6, 2012 

With the hiring of Latifah Phillips as chief of staff for Santa Fe Public Schools, two of five positions under Superintendent Joel Boyd's central office reorganization plan have been filled.

Phillips has been in town since Aug. 1 as part of Boyd's transition team. She got to know Boyd while he was assistant superintendent at the School District of Philadelphia, where she was executive director of non-instructional professional development and performance management.

Before that, Phillips was a first-grade teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y., and director of assessment for Mercy College's New Teacher Residency Program. She also spent time as a reading development specialist in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, and as an English teacher in Japan.

She speaks three languages - English, Spanish and Japanese - and has two master's degrees in education - from the University of Texas-Pan American and Columbia - to go along with a bachelor's degree from Cal-Davis.

Phillips, who will be paid a salary of $98,500, is in charge of community engagement, legislative affairs and media relations.

Another spot was filled by Almudena Abeyta, who was also introduced at Tuesday's meeting.

Hired last month as chief academic officer, Abeyta is in charge of curriculum and instruction, special education, multicultural education, athletics, arts education and student wellness departments and oversees the assistant superintendent for equity and instruction.

Abeyta, who has a master's degree from Harvard University, began her career as a kindergarten teacher in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. She went on to become principal in the Boston Public Schools system, where she was recognized as an exemplar for educating Latino students by the Mauricio Gaston Institute, an institute for Latino community development and public policy. She most recently was assistant academic superintendent for middle and K-8 schools with Boston Schools.

Abeyta earns $121,000 per year, the same rate she was paid at her last position in Boston.

The three remaining positions Boyd plans to fill are:

• chief accountability and strategy officer,
• multicultural director and
• general counsel.

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Rio Rancho/ Cool Vans Shoes Prize Money: $55,000 Will Help Foot Arts Bill

By Elaine D. Briseño

ABQ Journal Staff Writer

September 6, 2012   

The check has arrived, and Rio Rancho High School knows exactly how it's going to use the $55,000 in prize money from the Vans shoe company.

In late May, 19 RRHS art students in the class of Matthew Lutz were crowned the grand-prize winners in the company's national Custom Culture shoe-design contest.

The school received $50,000 for taking first place and $5,000 for designing the best "local flavor" shoe.

The bounty will be split up among the school's 11 art teachers and four visual arts programs across the district, which is the way Lutz said he thought it should be done this time.

• The group also won in 2010, and Lutz used the prize money to buy a computer and big-screen television, which he uses in his class to display images during lessons and for other purposes.
• "This will benefit the most students," he said. "And we had a lot of community support to advance. The voting determined the outcome."

The company narrowed the field of 900 schools to 10 for each of five different regions, and the public decided the five finalists in an online vote. The school will use $2,500 of the money to throw an ice-cream party for all students to thank them for their support.

To be fair, instructors were awarded $505 for every class they teach each semester.

Lutz will use his portion of the prize money, $6,060, to buy books for the classroom.

• "They will be art books to be used as visual aids in class," he said. "These can be used for years."

The contest required students to design four pairs of Vans shoes - two lace-ups, one pair of high-tops and a pair of slip-on canvas shoes. Each shoe represented a different theme: local flavor, action/sports, music and art.

The company will reproduce shoes with the school's designs and sell them online, at their stores and at Journeys shoe store.

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ABQ/ Early Literacy Center Opens at Albuquerque Library

The Associated Press

Alamogordo Daily News

September 6, 2012

New Mexico's largest library system has opened its first early literacy center.

Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry and First Lady Maria Berry opened the first center Wednesday. It's located at the Main Library in downtown Albuquerque.

The Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System is also planning to open two more centers.

• The early literacy centers will focus on using a variety of talking, reading, writing, playing and singing activities to get children ready to read.
• The activities will be based on a program developed by the American Library Association.

Grants from The Stocker Foundation and Lockheed Martin/Sandia National Laboratories are helping with the creation of the centers.

The Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System has 17 locations and manages the circulation of more than 4.5 million materials.

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Santa Fe/ PED License Ethics File Still Open at State Auditor's Office

By Joey Peters

Santa Fe Reporter

September 5, 2012

It's been nearly a year since SFR first reported on discrepancies within the educator licenses of certain Public Education Department officials. At the State Auditor's Office, a special investigations file stemming from a May 2011 complaint about the matter remains open.

It started last year when, amid rumors that several prominent PED officials didn't have proper teacher and administrator licenses, former El Camino Real Charter School Principal Pamela Engstrom and her husband Anders made several public records requests to try to set the matter straight. When the records came back, Anders, a former gaming auditor and current financial adviser at the Education Retirement Board, found irregularities within several PED officials' licenses.

Since then, the PED's explanation of how it handled the matter has been incoherent at best.

In December 2010, PED's Human Resources manager conducted an internal investigation that concluded no wrongdoing. After that, PED's then-Inspector General Sheridan Bamman continued to raise concerns that the December investigation, conducted in the last month of former PED Secretary Susanna Murphy's tenure, gave the impression of a cover-up.

Over the next four months, Bamman communicated with Hanna Skandera, who became the new PED secretary at the beginning of 2011, about conducting another investigation into the matter. In emails obtained by SFR, Bamman wrote to Skandera that she could provide "numerous current and former government officials and others who can testify" to the allegations of fraudulent licenses.

The emails suggest that Skandera was at first warm to Bamman's suggestion but soon decided not to proceed with her request. An email from Bamman to Skandera dated May 20, 2011 reads: "In the past you represented to me that the Governor's Office would appoint an external auditor. Apparently this is no longer your position."

In June, PED laid off Bamman as Inspector General amid downsizing, later rehiring her as a financial coordinator at a smaller salary.

Around that time, Anders Engstrom submitted a formal complaint to the State Auditor's Office to investigate the PED licenses he had obtained. Since opening the file, State Auditor Hector Balderas says he's reached out the PED many times and in September 2011 sent a formal letter asking for all reports or correspondences resulting from PED actions on the issue. Today, Balderas' office maintains that it still hasn't received complete information on the matter from PED.

But Behrens says that Skandera eventually asked for and received a second investigation into the license claims.

"The investigation was conducted by a outside party and recommended no action by PED, however the results were sent to the State Auditor's Office," Behrens wrote SFR recently.

He adds that the second investigation was conducted in July 2011 and lasted about two weeks. He didn't provide SFR with the name of the outside party that conducted it before press time.

But State Auditor Chief of Staff Evan Blackstone says PED only provided his office with "an internal review that contains a summary of findings" and nothing about an external investigation. Blackstone says his office will ask for more information this year during PED's annual audit.

"We are going to request some supplemental information as well as refer this matter for consideration to an independent public accountant," he tells SFR.

Similarly, SFR has also had trouble getting public records from PED.

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ABQ/ EDITORIAL: 'Techbooks' May Lead Way to Learning

ABQ Journal

September 6, 2012   

Bye, bye hitting the books. Hello, logging on to complete your science and social studies lessons.

This school year, Albuquerque Public Schools students will start using "techbooks" instead of textbooks. The school board has approved an $11.3 million contract with Discovery Education, which offers videos, interactive lessons, educational games, reading passages and glossaries. The seven-year contract also includes training for teachers this semester.

Part of the decision came down to cost. A new middle school textbook generally costs about $100, while the per-student cost of a Discovery "techbook" is about $45.

More importantly, the new direction should appeal to today's savvy students, who are accustomed to smart phones and electronic tablets.

Techbooks were introduced at Zuni Elementary last year as a pilot program. Zuni teacher Dan Gutierrez says he believes the most important thing about the Discovery approach is helping students learn to look for knowledge on a web-based platform.

And while some educators worry students who don't have Internet access at home may be left out, others say those students will benefit the most from being able to learn to use digital media at school.

"Closing the achievement gap can only become a reality by giving all students the richest learning opportunities available, regardless of their background," Zuni principal Deborah Elder wrote in a web posting.

Success with Discovery will hinge on making sure teachers are trained to effectively use the programs and that schools offer adequate computer lab time for all students.

But this looks like a good move to position students for today's world that functions around technology. Knowledge is power and Discovery has the potential to unlock new worlds to APS students.

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Clovis/ COLUMN: Students Off to Successful Start

By Cindy Kleyn-Kennedy [Instructional technology coordinator for the Clovis Municipal Schools]

Clovis News Journal

September 5, 2012

We're just beginning the school year, and wouldn't you know it, there are already some noteworthy items to celebrate.

During the summer, once again, teams of gifted students from Ranchvale and James Bickley traveled to the University of Tennessee to "Destination ImagiNation's Globals," (http://www.destinationimagination.org), participating in competitions designed to encourage creative problem-solving collaboratively.

Accompanied by Clovis Schools' Gifted and Talented teacher Carol Littlejohn and parents, students were escorted to this exciting event in Tennessee, where they lodged in university dorms, a unique adventure. Students competed with other students from around the world, showcasing their ingenuity through a variety of "Challenges" encompassing technology, science, theatre, improvisational, and/or structural events. As in the past, the team of students and adults raised money for the trip through fundraising and donations from local businesses,

Another highlight is the honor received by the Arts Academy at Bella Vista. Many are familiar with the New Mexico Music Educators Association's considerable involvement with music throughout the state of New Mexico; from organizing all-district and all-state choir and band events for secondary students along with numerous other activities and events.

The NMMEA also selects one elementary school in the state for the category of general honor music group, through completion of the all-state honors ensemble application process.

This year, our own Arts Academy at Bella Vista was selected as NMMEA's 2013 General Music Honor Group. AABV principal, Shelly Norris, and music teacher, Sara Hennessy, shared the details: "AABV was selected as the honor school for NMMEA; Mr. Myers (superintendent) called to congratulate us when we received our confirmation letter!"

The school won for their instrumental group, "Rhythmic Joy," 45 students, ranging from fourth through sixth grades playing xylophones, mettalophones, and various percussion instruments. These young musicians will have the opportunity to travel to all-state in January to perform.

By the way, Sara Hennessy, was named Elementary Music Teacher of the Year by NMMEA. In the words of NMMEA, "Rhythmic Joy is truly a superior ensemble. You and your students are not only a shining example of music education in our state, but also the southwest region and the entire nation."

In terms of in-district expanded educational opportunities, Ranchvale is trying an innovative approach to school assemblies this year. Principal Renee Mestas reported, "We're doing something new at Ranchvale this year in place of traditional assemblies; we are having 'learning assemblies.' Every month, one grade demonstrates, by way of song, dance, game show, skit, or other presentation, something tied to the NM Standards and Benchmarks they have just covered at their grade level. At these assemblies, students will also receive unique recognition for academic or personal accomplishment, and they will be followed with parent round-table discussions pertinent to current topics at the school."

This innovative, new approach promises to be interesting, and we will keep you informed about these exciting presentations as they happen.

Congratulations to all our exceptional students and those exceptional educators who go above and beyond, making it all possible.

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Washington DC/ E-Learning Funding Models Analyzed

Financing approaches vary widely from state to state

By Katie Ash

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 2 [Edweek.org]

August 29, 2012

Just as the size, scope, and type of virtual school options available vary widely from state to state, so too do the methods of paying for them.

For instance, the costs associated with operating a full-time virtual school are much different from the costs of providing supplemental online courses, which consequently need a much different funding formula.

While similarities in finance mechanisms exist between states, many choose to use a combination of those methods or create tailored policies that address specific state environments. But while the methods vary, advocates for online education agree that some models best support the growth and financial stability of virtual schools.

• To begin with, the money should follow the student, advocates say. That method is the only way to make sure virtual schools are not limited in the number of students that can enroll.
• n addition, proponents say, since virtual schools often provide more flexibility-allowing students to work at their own pace, often outside of regular school hours-the funding approach should also reflect such flexibility. Funding based on such traditional methods as seat-time or average daily attendance can be a problem, they say.

A few states, such as Florida and Utah, have begun tying funding for virtual schools to student outcomes instead of seat-time to better fit the structure of online education.

While it is hard to categorize how virtual schools are financed because of the myriad factors that go into such formulas, the following is a breakdown of the more common methods of funding, according to the Vienna, Va.-based International Association for K-12 Online Learning and the Durango, Colo.-based Evergreen Education Group, which were the primary sources for this analysis. Keep in mind that many states use a combination of methods.

State Appropriation

Many state virtual schools are funded by a fixed state appropriation or a line item in the budget, which is set by the legislature. When such schools are first launched, the appropriation typically works well because most of the startup costs go toward infrastructure, course curricula, and professional development. And if the virtual school has strong political support, the appropriation can be relatively large.

But as a state virtual school gets up and running, the appropriation method may begin to stifle the school's growth, say advocates, by limiting the number of students it can afford to take since funding is set at a fixed amount. Some state virtual schools see exponential growth each year-something a fixed appropriation doesn't take into consideration.

At the same time, funding through appropriation is hard for school officials to predict because it is subject to economic realities and changes in the political climate.

EXAMPLES:

Virginia

The state's school, Virtual Virginia, is funded largely on state appropriations, along with a small amount of income from out-of-state residents who take its courses. The appropriation dropped by a third, from about $3 million in 2009-10 to about $2 million in 2010-11 and 2011-12.

Kentucky

The Kentucky Virtual Schools program is mostly paid for through an annual state appropriation, which dropped from $800,000 to $753,000 in 2011-12. The school also receives some money through course fees paid by districts in the state.

Average Daily Membership (ADM) or Average Daily Attendance (ADA) for District Programs

Like many brick-and-mortar schools, some online schools, especially at the district or school level, are financed by the school's ADM or ADA. That means the school gets funding for the average number of its students over a given time.

The benefit of this method for online schools is that, unlike some other methods, it ensures that online schools are receiving an amount of funding per student equal to that of their brick-and-mortar counterparts.

However, this method ties aid to a time-based schedule, which is not necessarily in line with the structure of most virtual schools, because of the greater flexibility they allow in student schedules. Methods of calculating ADM or ADA are typically designed for brick-and-mortar schools and may not be able to consider that virtual school students could be learning on weekends or evenings.

EXAMPLE:

Idaho

Charter school funding is based on ADA.

Districts offering online or blended course offerings may count students in those courses as part of their average daily attendance, but they are not allowed to claim more than one full-time equivalent, or FTE, for each student.

Standard Charter School Funding

Some states with virtual charter schools pay such schools at the same rate as other charter schools. This approach provides virtual charter schools with equal funding compared with brick-and-mortar charter schools. But the method may not work well for a virtual charter school that draws students from multiple districts, as the charter funding formula can change from district to district.

EXAMPLE:

Michigan

Two virtual charter schools in there were recently authorized. They will receive the same rate of funding as other charter schools.

Charter School Funding With a Separate Rate for Online Schools

Other states devise a special charter school funding formula for virtual schools. That ensures that the school will receive the same amount of money for each student no matter which district he or she comes from. But such formulas tend to provide less money for virtual students than for students in regular schools, dropping below what some educators feel is adequate, said John Watson, the founder of the Evergreen Education Group. The Durango, Colo.-based consulting firm publishes the annual "Keeping Pace With K-12 Online Learning" report about the state of online education in the United States.

EXAMPLES:

Wisconsin

The state education department sets a flat rate for students who enroll in virtual charter schools through open enrollment.

Pennsylvania

Virtual charter schools receive aid based on the funding level of the student's resident district. Virtual charters bill districts directly and receive about 72 percent of the average funding for a student in a regular school.

Funding Follows the Student

In some states, the funding is tied to the student and will follow him or her to whichever school the student attends, whether brick-and-mortar or virtual. Advocates for virtual schools believe that this funding mechanism is the most effective for giving online schools the money they need to expand. The method ensures that virtual schools are receiving the same amount of aid as brick-and-mortar schools, and does not arbitrarily cap the number of students who can attend the virtual school because of funding constraints.

But this method can create tension between virtual schools and regular school districts, which often see virtual schools as siphoning funding from traditional districts.

EXAMPLES:

Maine

It recently passed a law that requires at least 99 percent of funding to follow the student to whichever school he or she is attending.

Utah

The funding follows the student down to the course level. So, for a student taking one virtual course and five in-person classes, the money would be split so the virtual school would receive funds for educating the student in one course, while the brick-and-mortar school would receive money for educating the student in five courses.

Competency-Based Funding

A handful of states have adopted policies that allow virtual schools to be financed not on such time-based principles as seat-time or ADM and ADA, but rather on the basis of student outcomes. Virtual school backers believe this method gives online schools more flexibility in letting students progress at their own pace, since they are not required to be in courses for a certain amount of hours.

A downside, though, is that this method may require a cumbersome amount of tracking and paperwork to ensure students are meeting proficiency standards. It also can be tricky to mesh this system with a time-based system if a student happens to transfer from one school to another. Lastly, critics of this funding mechanism warn that tying student performance to funding could give teachers an incentive to pass students who may not have actually learned the curricula.

EXAMPLES:

Florida

The Florida Virtual School, the longest-running and largest state-sponsored virtual school in the country, receives funding for each student only if that student successfully completes the course.

Utah

Funding for students is based in part on successful completion of the course. Schools receive half the funding for students at the beginning of the course and the other half after the credit has been earned by the student.

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Washington DC/ How Children Succeed: Which Matters More, Cognitive Ability or Motivation?

By Paul Tough

Slate.com [Washington Post magazine online]

September 5, 2012,

The following article is adapted from Paul Tough's How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, out now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, has made it her life's work to analyze which children succeed and why. She says she finds it useful to divide the mechanics of achievement into two separate dimensions: motivation and volition.

Each one, she says, is necessary to achieve long-term goals, but neither is sufficient alone. Most of us are familiar with the experience of possessing motivation but lacking volition: You can be extremely motivated to lose weight, for example, but unless you have the volition-the willpower, the self-control-to put down the cherry Danish and pick up the free weights, you're not going to succeed.

If children are highly motivated, self-control techniques and exercises-things like learning how to distract themselves from temptations or to think about their goals abstractly-might be very helpful. But what if students just aren't motivated to achieve the goals their teachers or parents want them to achieve? Then, Duckworth acknowledges, all the self-control tricks in the world aren't going to help.

But that doesn't mean it's impossible to shift a person's motivation. In the short term, in fact, it can be surprisingly easy.

Consider a couple of experiments done decades ago involving IQ and M&M's.

• In the first test, conducted in Northern California in the late 1960s, a researcher named Calvin Edlund selected 79 children between the ages of 5 and 7, all from "low-middle class and lower-class homes." The children were randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group. First, they all took a standard version of the Stanford-Binet IQ test. Seven weeks later, they took a similar test, but this time the kids in the experimental group were given one M&M for each correct answer. On the first test, the two groups were evenly matched on IQ. On the second test, the IQ of the M&M group went up an average of 12 points-a huge leap.
• A few years later, two researchers from the University of South Florida elaborated on Edlund's experiment. This time, after the first, candy-less IQ test, they divided the children into three groups according to their scores on the first test. The high-IQ group had an average IQ score on the first test of about 119. The medium-IQ group averaged about 101, and the low-IQ group averaged about 79. On the second test, the researchers offered half the children in each IQ category an M&M for each right answer, just as Edlund had; the others in each group received no reward. The medium-IQ and high-IQ kids who got candy didn't improve their scores at all on the second test. But the low-IQ children who were given M&M's for each correct answer raised their IQ scores to about 97, almost erasing the gap with the medium-IQ group.

The M&M studies were a major blow to the conventional wisdom about intelligence, which held that IQ tests measured something real and permanent-something that couldn't be changed drastically with a few candy-covered chocolates. They also raised an important and puzzling question about the supposedly low-IQ children: Did they actually have low IQs or not? Which number was the true measure of their intelligence: 79 or 97?

This is the kind of frustrating but tantalizing puzzle that teachers face on a regular basis, especially teachers in high-poverty schools. You're convinced that your students are smarter than they appear, and you know that if they would only apply themselves, they would do much better. But how do you get them to apply themselves? Should you just give them M&M's for every correct answer for the rest of their lives? That doesn't seem like a very practical solution. And the reality is that for low-income middle-school students, there are already tremendous rewards for doing well on tests-not immediately and for each individual correct answer, but in the long term. If a student's test scores and GPA through middle and high school reflect an applied IQ of 97 instead of 79, he is much more likely to graduate from high school and then college and then to get a good job-at which point he can buy as many bags of M&M's as he wants.

But as every middle-school teacher knows, convincing students of that logic is a lot harder than it seems. Motivation, it turns out, is quite complex, and rewards sometimes backfire. In their book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner recount the story of a study researchers undertook in the 1970s to see if giving blood donors a small financial stipend might increase blood donations. The result was actually that fewer people gave blood, not more.

And while the M&M test suggests that giving kids material incentives to succeed should make a big difference, in practice, it often doesn't work that way.

• In recent years, the Harvard economist Roland Fryer has essentially tried to extend the M&M experiment to the scale of a metropolitan school system. He tested several different incentive programs in public schools-offering bonuses to teachers if they improved their classes' test results; offering incentives like cellphone minutes to students if they improved their own test results; offering families financial incentives if their children did better. The experiments were painstaking and carefully run-and the results have been almost uniformly disappointing.

There are a couple of bright spots in the data-

• in Dallas, a program that paid young kids for each book they read seems to have contributed to better reading scores for English-speaking students.

But for the most part, the programs were a bust.

The biggest experiment, which offered incentives to teachers in New York City, cost $75 million and took three years to conduct. And in the spring of 2011, Fryer reported that it had produced no positive results at all.

This is the problem with trying to motivate people: No one really knows how to do it well. It is precisely why we have such a booming industry in inspirational posters and self-help books and motivational speakers: What motivates us is often hard to explain and hard to measure.

Part of the complexity is that different personality types respond to different motivations.

• We know this because of a series of experiments undertaken in 2006 by Carmit Segal, then a postdoctoral student in the Harvard economics department and now a professor at a university in Zurich.
• Segal wanted to test how personality and incentives interacted, and she chose as her vehicle one of the easiest tests imaginable, an evaluation of basic clerical skills called the coding-speed test. It is a very straightforward test.

First, participants are given an answer key in which a variety of simple words are each assigned a four-digit identifying number. And then a little lower on the page is a multiple-choice test that offers five four-digit numbers as the potential correct answer for each word. All you have to do is find the right number from the key above and then check that box (1C, 2A, 3C, etc.). It's a snap, if a somewhat mind-numbing one.

Segal located two large pools of data that included scores from thousands of young people on both the coding-speed test and a standard cognitive-skills test.

• One pool was the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, or NLSY, a huge survey that began tracking a cohort of more than 12,000 young people in 1979.
• The other was a group of military recruits who took the coding exam as part of a range of tests they had to pass in order to be accepted into the U.S. Armed Forces.

The high-school and college students who were part of the NLSY had no real incentive to exert themselves on the tests-the scores were for research purposes only and didn't have any bearing on their academic records. For the recruits, though, the tests mattered very much; bad scores could keep them out of the military.

When Segal compared the scores of the two groups on each test, she found that on average, the high-school and college kids did better than the recruits on the cognitive tests. But on the coding-speed test, it was the recruits who did better.

Now, that might have been because the kind of young person who chose to enlist in the armed forces was naturally gifted at matching numbers with words, but that didn't seem too likely. What the coding-speed test really measured, Segal realized, was something more fundamental than clerical skill: the test takers' inclination and ability to force themselves to care about the world's most boring test. The recruits, who had more at stake, put more effort into the coding test than the NLSY kids did, and on such a simple test, that extra level of exertion was enough for them to beat out their more-educated peers.

Now, remember that the NLSY wasn't just a one-shot test; it tracked young people's progress afterward for many years. So next Segal went back to the NLSY data, looked at each student's cognitive-skills score and coding-speed score in 1979, and then compared those two scores with the student's earnings two decades later, when the student was about 40.

Predictably, the kids who did better on the cognitive-skills tests were making more money. But so were the kids who did better on the super-simple coding test. In fact, when Segal looked only at NLSY participants who didn't graduate from college, their coding-test scores were every bit as reliable a predictor of their adult wages as their cognitive-test scores. The high scorers on the coding test were earning thousands of dollars a year more than the low scorers.

And why? Does the modern American labor market really put such a high value on being able to compare mindless lists of words and numbers? Of course not. And in fact, Segal didn't believe that the students who did better on the coding test actually had better coding skills than the other students. They did better for a simple reason: They tried harder. And what the labor market does value is the kind of internal motivation required to try hard on a test even when there is no external reward for doing well. Without anyone realizing it, the coding test was measuring a critical noncognitive skill that mattered a lot in the grown-up world.

Segal's findings give us a new way of thinking about the so-called low-IQ kids who took part in the M&M experiment in south Florida. Remember, they scored poorly on the first IQ test and then did much better on the second test, the one with the M&M incentive. So the question was: What was the real IQ of an average "low-IQ" student? Was it 79 or 97? Well, you could certainly make the case that his or her true IQ must be 97. You're supposed to try hard on IQ tests, and when the low-IQ kids had the M&M's to motivate them, they tried hard. It's not as if the M&M's magically gave them the intelligence to figure out the answers; they must have already possessed it. So in fact, they weren't low-IQ at all. Their IQs were about average.

But what Segal's experiment suggests is that it was actually their first score, the 79, that was more relevant to their future prospects. That was their equivalent of the coding-test score, the low-stakes, low-reward test that predicts how well someone is going to do in life. They may not have been low in IQ, but they were low in whatever quality it is that makes a person try hard on an IQ test without any obvious incentive. And what Segal's research shows is that that is a very valuable quality to possess.

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Washington DC/ COLUMN: A New Finnish Lesson: Why Gender Equality Matters in School Reform

By Valerie Strauss

Washington Post daily columnist

September 6, 2012

By Pasi Sahlberg

Finland's Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world's leading experts on school reform and the author of the best-selling "Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?"

Finland has come to be known as a nation where educational quality, equity, and productivity exist simultaneously. Those interested in understanding how the Finns have managed to achieve this level of educational performance often point to good teachers, rigorous curricula, and small class sizes. Indeed, some believe that there is a set of such factors that make education systems work well. Then there are those who claim that Finland is too different because of its size and demographics to be taken seriously as a model for large-scale education reforms in countries like the United States, Canada or England. Yet all of these attempts to explain good educational performance in Finland fail to see the big picture.

When trying to understand Finnish schools' success it is good to keep in mind that Finland scores high in many other international comparisons besides education.

• Finland is one of the most competitive market economies in the world according to the World Economic Forum, which also rates Finland's innovation system as a global leader.
• Corruption is likewise rare in Finland, reports Transparency International.
• Finally, people often forget that Finland is among the most equal countries in how wealth is distributed and in how women and men are empowered.

Gender equality is a particularly relevant variable to be included in the analysis of a country's child welfare and education policies.

• Finnish women were the first in the world to have equal political rights. Since 1906, women in Finland have had the right to vote and stand for elections, 14 years before the United States issued these rights to women.
• Women and men don't have equal political rights only in theory in Finland but women have exercised them actively since the beginning.
• At the moment, 43% of the members of Parliament and 47% of the government ministers are female in Finland.
• In 2000, the Finns elected the first woman to be the president of the country.
• Three years later, the first female prime minister took office.
• Today Finnish women enjoy unquestioned public respect as political leaders.
• In local governments, however, women are less represented; currently only one-third of elected representatives are women.

Countries vary significantly in gender equality, especially in politics.

• In the U.S. Senate and House, the power of female representation, at the moment, is the same, 17%. This means that men have six times the political weight of women in making policy.
• In England 22% of the Parliament is represented by women, barely exceeding the world's average.

Given the intimate understanding most women have of children's needs, it stands to reason that women legislators probably make better policy for children. This is evident in not only Finland but also in its Nordic neighbors, which are likewise home to considerable female empowerment in both political and corporate spheres.

In my work as an interpreter of educational reform in countries around the world, I have come to conclude that there are three essential features in Finnish society that have helped make Finnish education reforms successful. Many 'educational tourists' visiting Finland unfortunately overlook these features because they are considered welfare rather than education measures.

The first important feature is the support parents receive from the health care system prior to and right after the birth of the child.

• Welfare policies in Finland guarantee free health care for the mother and her infant.
• Parents are also issued a fully paid 12-month parental leave that parents must share between one another.
• Fathers normally take a share of that leave during the first few months following the child's birth.
• Mothers in Finland stay home until the baby is one year old;
• furthermore, mothers (or fathers) have the right to extended parental leave without losing their job until the baby is three years old.

The second critical element in Finland is the country's early childhood development and care system that is accessible to all families.

• This system guarantees all children the right to free health care and government-subsidized day care until they go to school at the age of seven.
• Most Finnish families exercise this right.
• Three- quarters of 3- to 5-year-old children in Finland are in daycare.
• In addition, over 96% of children attend tuition-free preschool at the age of six.

The third fundamental factor is a strong, systematic focus on child wellbeing once formal schooling begins.

• For example, every school must have a Pupil Welfare Team that deals with all possible issues related to children's learning, development, behavior or health in school and at home.
• A Pupil Welfare Team often consists of a medical doctor or nurse, and social worker who are normally employed by the district, and a school psychologist, counselor, special education teacher, and principal who are part of the faculty of the school.
• Moreover, a free hot and healthful school lunch for all children has been a norm in all Finnish schools for 70 years.

Finally, nearly half of Finnish students receive at some point from first to ninth grade remedial assistance to make up for learning deficits and other special educational needs. No stigma is attached to this form of intervention. And special education is provided as early as possible to get students on track before learning problems grow and self-esteem sinks. It is for this reason that many visitors note that well-being and happiness, not standardization and measured academic achievement, define Finnish schools.

Similar social and early education policies exist also in other countries. What distinguishes Finland from the United States and many other nations in child well-being policies is accessibility and affordability.

• In Finland, all children and families have the same right to childcare, health and educational services regardless of socioeconomic status.
• Another difference is that the primary purpose of early childhood education in Finland is not to enhance children's readiness for school.
• It is to support families in raising healthy and happy children.
• School readiness in Finland means that the school is ready to take children as they are and to be ready to serve different children as they are.

I was stopped to think about this issue during a recent visit to Finland of an American delegation of policy-makers and educators. In their conversation with the Finnish parliamentarians, one of the delegates asked what political powers were behind Finnish early childhood policies and the central place that wellbeing has in schools. The answer was short and simple: "Women."

They were told how gender quotas - at least 40% of each gender - in public boards, committees and councils have been in force in Finland since the 1980s. The Finnish parliamentarians argued that unless there had been an equal representation of women in the Finnish legislature and every political and professional taskforce, today's advanced maternity and childcare laws, and strong focus on wellbeing in school would never have come into being. By extension, if child wellbeing had not been regarded as so basic, the Finnish education system would never have evolved into today's success story.

Education historian Diane Ravitch is one of the most outspoken opponents of the corporate reform movement that injects business ideas and huge amounts of money into fixing American schools. She calls those behind this movement the "Billionaire Boys' Club." Tougher competition between schools, more choice for consumers, confrontation with the teacher unions, and punitive accountability have been typical features of this corporate reform movement. I assume Ravitch has a reason for using word 'boys' in that. It suggests that women are not equally represented in the boardrooms and philanthropic community that is a significant funder of public schools in the U.S. today.

How would education reforms funded by "Millionaire Moms" look like if women would have equal power in executive boardrooms deciding where the private money should go to improve school and how education policies should be altered? Would they follow the models from too often male-dominated business world? Or would they instead focus on care, learning and wellbeing of both children and their teachers in school? My guess is that early childhood development programs, better pay for all teachers (who are predominantly women), and more time for children to play in school would probably be more visible in American education reforms.

If there is a lesson from Finland to others it is: Better gender equality helps in building consensus and thereby adopting education and social policies that invest more heavily on wellbeing and holistic development of children at home and in school.

If Anne-Marie Slaughter is correct in her Atlantic cover story "Why women still can't have it all?" - and she is not alone in thinking what she does - the logical conclusion is that education reforms will continue to struggle and fail until women are equally represented in making policy.

The current global educational reform movement is a masculine construction of market rationale and power that is advocated by institutions where the women's voice is normally subordinated.

Protecting schools from this movement will be easier if people vote to close the gender gap in future elections. Ultimately, men also have much to lose. Without greater female empowerment, the next generation can't flourish as it should.

Sahlberg is director general of Finland's Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation. He has served the Finnish government in various positions, worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. and for the European Training Foundation in Italy as senior education specialist. Sahlberg has been an advisor for numerous governments internationally about education policies and reforms. He is a member of the board of directors of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), on the governing board member of the Center for Continuing Learning at the University of Helsinki, and a member of the Advisor Board for the Centre for International Benchmarking in Education (of the National Center on Education and the Economy). He is also an adjunct professor of education at the University of Helsinki and University of Oulu. He can be reached at pasi.sahlberg@cimo.fi.

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Middletown CT/ OPINION: Learning as Freedom

By Michael S. Roth [President of Wesleyan University, author, most recently, of "Memory, Trauma and History: Essays on Living With the Past"]

New York Times

September 5, 2012

In March, a task force organized by the Council on Foreign Relations tried to reframe the problems of the nation's public schools as a threat to national security. "Large, undereducated swaths of the population damage the ability of the United States to physically defend itself, protect its secure information, conduct diplomacy, and grow its economy," it warned, while also referring to students as "human capital."

While the report focused on K-12 education and called for better college preparedness, its instrumentalist rhetoric has remarkable affinities with that of critics who see higher education as outmoded.

• Conservative scholars like Charles Murray, Richard Vedder and Peter W. Wood ask why people destined for low-paying jobs should bother to pursue their education beyond high school, much less study philosophy, literature and history.
• The venture capitalist Peter Thiel has offered money to would-be entrepreneurs to quit college and focus on Web-based start-ups instead. Business school professors like Clayton M. Christensen tell us that "disruptive innovation" is causing liberal-arts learning to be "disintermediated" so as to deliver just what the "end user" needs.

From this narrow, instrumentalist perspective, students are consumers buying a customized playlist of knowledge.

This critique may be new, but the call for a more narrowly tailored education - especially for Americans with limited economic prospects - is not.

• A century ago, organizations as varied as chambers of commerce and labor federations backed plans for a dual system of teaching, wherein some students would be trained for specific occupations, while others would get a broad education allowing them to continue their studies in college.
• The movement led to the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, which financed vocational education, initially for jobs in agriculture and then in other industries.

The philosopher John Dewey, America's most influential thinker on education, opposed this effort. Though he was open to integrating manual training in school curriculums, Dewey opposed the dual-track system because he recognized that it would reinforce the inequalities of his time. Wouldn't such a system have the same result today?

To be sure, Dewey recognized the necessity of gainful employment. "The world in which most of us live is a world in which everyone has a calling and occupation, something to do," he wrote. "Some are managers and others are subordinates. But the great thing for one as for the other is that each shall have had the education which enables him to see within his daily work all there is in it of large and human significance."

Education should aim to enhance our capacities, Dewey argued, so that we are not reduced to mere tools. "The kind of vocational education in which I am interested is not one which will 'adapt' workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not sufficiently in love with the regime for that." Are we?

Who wants to attend school to learn to be "human capital"? Who aspires for their children to become economic or military resources? Dewey had a different vision. Given the pace of change, it is impossible (he noted in 1897) to know what the world will be like in a couple of decades, so schools first and foremost should teach us habits of learning.

For Dewey, these habits included awareness of our interdependence; nobody is an expert on everything. He emphasized "plasticity," an openness to being shaped by experience: "The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling."

The inclination to learn from life can be taught in a liberal arts curriculum, but also in schools that focus on real-world skills, from engineering to nursing. The key is to develop habits of mind that allow students to keep learning, even as they acquire skills to get things done. This combination will serve students as individuals, family members and citizens - not just as employees and managers.

Higher education faces stark challenges: the ravaging of public universities' budgets by strained state and local governments; ever rising tuition and student debt; inadequate student achievement; the corrosive impact of soaring inequality; and the neglect by some elite institutions of their core mission of teaching undergraduates.

But these problems, however urgent, should not cause us to neglect Dewey's insight that learning in the process of living is the deepest form of freedom. In a nation that aspires to democracy, that's what education is primarily for: the cultivation of freedom within society. We should not think of schools as garrisons protecting us from enemies, nor as industries generating human capital. Rather, higher education's highest purpose is to give all citizens the opportunity to find "large and human significance" in their lives and work.

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Washington DC/ OPINION: Poverty Must be Tackled But Never Used as an Excuse

By Michelle Rhee [Founder and CEO of StudentsFirst]

Huffington Post

September 5, 2012

A recent ad campaign we launched at StudentsFirst to raise awareness around the weak academic performance of U.S. students compared to their global peers drew all kinds of reactions. Many people were shocked to learn we're among the worst performing nations in the world in math and said they wanted to help bring about change. But some said our lagging scores weren't all that surprising, or even terribly disappointing, given high poverty levels in America. I find that response so troubling.

Poverty presents huge challenges in our schools. But expectations of academic success for a child should never hinge on the circumstances of his or her birth. Our schools can't fix all of society's problems, but what happens in classrooms everyday can make a huge difference in the life outcomes of all children. As such, our schools can and should be held accountable for ensuring all students are learning.

As a former teacher in an impoverished Baltimore neighborhood and the former chancellor of Washington, D.C. schools, where about 70 percent of kids are eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, I've seen firsthand the effects of poverty. It's not easy to complete your homework if your electricity has been cut off, you don't have a safe place to stay, you're hungry, or your eyes are drooping because there isn't an adult around most evenings to ensure you get adequate sleep. These are challenges most of us have never had to deal with, and there is no doubt principals and teachers in communities struck by poverty have much more difficult jobs than those who educate wealthier children. These educators absolutely need our support and deserve our respect and appreciation for the uphill climb they have chosen to take daily.

These challenges speak to the significant need for economic reform and for social programs and policies that better address economic gaps and inequities. We must do much more as a society, broadly, to address poverty. In my experience, schools can and must be an important part of that by providing educational opportunities to low-income kids that can help break cycles of generational poverty. America is far behind other developed countries in social mobility, meaning if you're a child born into poverty here, it's far more difficult to move out of poverty later on than in other countries. It's a terrible problem that goes against our ideals as a nation and which we have to solve.

Our schools and educators can play a key role, but they must be supported. In other words, we have to make sure poor children are getting some of their basic needs met at school, so they can focus on learning during class time. When I was in D.C., we made sure many schools provided kids in need with three meals a day. Schools also must have skilled nurses, counselors and social workers on staff and should offer high-quality wraparound services, so kids have safe places to do homework or get extra help before or after school. Since the achievement gap starts well before kids enter kindergarten, it's also important to make strong public pre-k programs available to low-income families.

But the truth is that these efforts alone won't propel our students from the bottom to the top of the international rankings in key subjects, nor will they close the huge and unconscionable academic achievement gaps between low-income kids in our schools and their wealthier peers. To solve those problems, we also have to rethink how instruction is delivered and how our schools are led.

Unfortunately, the effects of poverty are exacerbated by structural disadvantages that plague our high-needs schools. Schools that serve poor kids are much more likely than other schools to have high teacher-turnover rates, out-of-field teachers or long-term substitutes in their classrooms, and inequitable resource allocations. All of these factors contribute to lower student achievement levels, and often they're the result of obscure bureaucratic policies like last-in-first-out, seniority-based layoffs that force great teachers out of the classrooms in which they want to teach.

As a nation, we have to address these injustices, and we have to give the parents of children stuck in these schools the tools and authority to demand change. Their educational choices are unfairly limited by the nature of our neighborhood-based public school system and a lack of other economic options. While a middle-class family might move in order to send their kids to better schools, a family in poverty can rarely make that choice. So, it's imperative that we empower low-income parents to turn around their kids' schools and help with that effort. And we should embrace common-sense solutions that can improve our schools as a whole.

To begin with, low-income schools and districts should tackle the issue of attracting and keeping top teaching talent by offering higher salaries to effective educators willing to teach in and lead high-needs schools. Principals also must be freed from bureaucratic rules that prevent them from hiring and rewarding their own team. Too often, principals in low-income schools are forced to fill their vacancies with teachers excessed from other schools regardless of whether they are a good fit. These teachers may not be performing particularly well but have to be retained by the system because of seniority-based job protections. Principals in high-needs schools also must be allowed to reward their top-performing teachers with leadership roles and performance-based pay increases to help ensure they stay on the job. We allowed this in Washington, and many teachers told me the recognition and extra pay encouraged them to stick with teaching.

We also need strong evaluation systems to ensure that we're recognizing high-performing teachers and helping others improve. A growing number of schools and districts are developing more robust evaluations to help build a talented and effective teaching force. In Washington, new evaluations linked to better feedback and professional development have led to an increase in the number of highly effective teachers working in the system. Now, a quarter of all teachers in D.C. have earned that top rating. In schools, districts, and states across the country, we're starting to do what works, and starting to make a difference. It's common sense, so why aren't we doing this everywhere?

Too often, what is keeping us from replicating such success isn't a lack of know-how. It's a lack of faith. We can do better by our kids, but first we must believe in all of them and in our ability to help. If we do that, we can fix so much of what is wrong with our education system and what is keeping all of our children from reaching their potential.