Santa Fe/ Gov. Susana Martinez: Charter Schools are 'Pioneers' in Reform
By Patrick Lohmann
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
November 3, 2012
Gov. Susana Martinez addressed a coalition of charter schools Friday as part of the coalition's annual conference, reassuring the group that she would work to secure funding for charter schools.
She called them "pioneers" in reforming New Mexico education.
The conference of charter schools kicked off Friday to advocate for policy that would help charter schools and identify best practices for teachers and administrators. The governor stressed her support for the schools and vowed to oppose any legislation that would cut their funding or prevent more charter schools from opening.
- "We need all hands on deck, and charter schools are an important part of this effort," Martinez told the crowd of hundreds of charter school employees and advocates at the Marriott Pyramid hotel and conference center.
The crowd gave the governor a standing ovation after her short speech.
Albuquerque Public Schools has supported legislation in past sessions that would put a moratorium on the number of charter schools until more education funds become available. The district has also pushed for clarity in the laws that govern capital funding for charters.
Four of the top 10 schools in the state are charter schools, and charter schools are 10 of the 40 schools that received an "A" through the governor's school-grading program.
Since 2003, an average of six charter schools have opened each year, according to the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools' website.
Charter schools provide an alternative to parents who might not want to send their child to their neighborhood school, and the schools have more freedom in designing curriculum.
After the governor, Education Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera asked the coalition to continue innovating on behalf of all students in the state. She said the charter school structure allows teachers and administrators to be more creative in their approaches to education.
"We are asking and we are counting on your standing on the front lines, not just for your school but for every student in our state," Skandera said.
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Santa Fe/ Teachers Dispute Accuracy of Report on Absences
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
November 2, 2012
Santa Fe High teacher/coach Renzo Fancellu took one day off for an emergency last week.
"I didn't like it. We care about our process, we care about our kids, and we do not want our kids in the hands of just anybody," he said Friday. "We don't like that rhythm disrupted."
Yes, he said, in his 20-some years of teaching he has encountered a few slacker teachers in the system. But he knows many more teachers who never take a day off.
Fancellu is one of many district teachers upset with a statistic in the 100-day "Entry and Learning Plan" released Monday by Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd. The report said the district's instructional staff, including teachers, counselors and educational assistants, are each absent an average of 17 days during the 180-day school year.
That's not quite double the national average of nine absences per year for teachers alone, based on a 2009 study by Education Finance and Policy, a journal published by MIT Press for the Association for Education Finance and Policy.
The district calculated the absentee rate by dividing the instructional staff of 945 (which includes 850 teachers) by the overall number of leave days taken in the 2011-12 school year.
The 40-page report on challenges the district is facing was compiled by a team of six advisers.
On Thursday, the district's new chief accountability and strategy officer, Richard Bowman, said the absentee rate was developed in response to a question about how much time instructional staff take off in the course of a year.
- He said no one has broken down the numbers to show how many days were taken off because of sickness or for other reasons, such as professional development, jury duty, military leave or coaching.
- Nor has the district looked into specific absentee rates at individual schools. His office expects to have that information by the end of the calendar year.
"We wanted to break down the number for a specific policymaking decision," Bowman explained. "We are not making a value judgement on this [data]. We want to know, what is the net impact on students?"
The district's chief of staff, Latifah Phillips, added, "We also want to look at what portion of the absences central office is responsible for," in terms of pulling teachers from the classroom for professional development training or other purposes.
Bowman said the report's findings were not meant to antagonize teachers. And Phillips added that it might also help the district recognize teachers with perfect attendance.
Speaking by phone Friday, Boyd said the information is his report is not "an indictment of our teachers, but because it was not broken down, people feel it gives a misperception of our teaching staff." He added that the controversial figure "reflects an institutional challenge, not a criticism of the habits of our employees."
Both Bowman and Phillips said the report raised a few "flags."
- In Bowman's view, for instance, the fact that 57 percent of individualized education plans (IEPs) and re-evaluations within the Special Education Department were late at some point during the year is more worrisome than staff absenteeism because that can cause the district to lose federal funding.
Some teachers said they do not question the basic data regarding absent instructional staffers, but fault the district for presenting information that was not fully researched. "They pulled the trigger on this report too early without having all their ducks in a row," Fancellu said. "It is a public record, and it does need to be out there, but it needs to be accurate."
E.J. Martinez Elementary School teacher Terri Blackman said that based on information she received from an inside source, the average number of leave days is closer to eight than 17. She said she sent an email to Boyd asking him to clarify this because the report's data "makes it sound like we are all taking the day off ... that we're taking advantage of the system."
Blackman is one of five E.J. Martinez teachers who said Friday afternoon that they are frustrated by the decision to include a questionable number in Boyd's report.
- "Seventeen [absences] is fantastic," said teacher Rebecca Scott-Martinez. "I never heard of that. I'm here [at the school] all the time."
- All five teachers said Boyd may be listening to administrators, advisers, parents, students and community members, but to the best of their knowledge, he is not seeking out the input of teachers.
Bernice Garcia-Baca, NEA-Santa Fe president, wonders if Boyd's advisers "assume that teachers in Santa Fe are doing poorly and just don't care."
She cited some 20 reasons teachers may take leave and noted that at least six of them are education-related. Moreover, teachers get 10 days of sick leave every year, she said. And if they took 17 in one year, "They would get docked."
Millicent McFarland, a teacher at El Dorado Community School, said via email that teachers thought they had a champion in Boyd until this data was released. "He used patently false statistics, backed with no real data, to besmirch and insult teachers," she said. "All this is undoubtedly designed to put teachers in a bad light during salary negotiations so that there is no danger of community-supported job actions, as occurred in Chicago," where teachers did get raises.
- Garcia-Baca said district teachers are reeling from seemingly constant criticism these days, and adding to their disappointment is the fact that the district offered custodians and maintenance staff a 6 percent raise in salaries during recent collective bargaining procedures.
"We see that as a good indication that money is available for teacher raises this year," Garcia-Baca said, noting that teachers are still involved in collective bargaining with the district.
Boyd said he is not involved in the collective bargaining discussions, but he noted that the district has "other revenue sources for our general-service employees that we cannot access for our teachers."
Most district personnel, including teachers, have not received a raise in about five years. Earlier this year, the school board and former superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez did approve raises for five members of the current administrative team during a reorganization of central office functions.
Boyd developed a competitive-wage advisory committee to look into ways to find money to give district personnel a raise in school year 2013-14. The school board will receive an update on that committee's progress during the Nov. 7 board meeting.
- "We are committed to raises for teachers; it is a top priority," Boyd said Friday.
For now, raising morale may require attention, too, according to some teachers. "The morale of teachers is dramatically affected - and sometimes that's all we have," Fancellu said.
Blackman said Boyd should acknowledge his team made a mistake and start connecting with teachers, so "we can collectively be on the same page."
Boyd sent out a letter to district teachers Friday morning informing them of five planned staff forums to be held at various school sites in November. The first is at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, at Santa Fe High School.
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Santa Fe/ Absenteeism Report Stuns SFPS District Officials
By T.S. Last
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
November 4, 2012
Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Joel Boyd called the figures "startling."
School board president Frank Montaño characterized them as "incredible."
School board member Steven Carrillo's response was "Holy smoke!"
The school officials were reacting to findings that came out of an analysis of Santa Fe Public Schools released this week that indicated "teachers and other staff" in the district miss nearly twice the number of days of school as the national average.
According to a report, teachers and other staff members in SFPS missed an average of 17 days during the 180-day 2011-12 school year.
- That's nearly 9.4 percent of the time, or almost one day every two weeks.
- The national average is nine days each school year - 5 percent of the time, or about one day per month.
But in the wake of the presentation during a school board study session on Monday, school officials are doing a double take.
"We're taking a further look at the attendance figures, because that number is certainly alarming," said Latifah Phillips, chief of staff for the school district. "What we have is just a snapshot. We're going to look more deeply into those numbers and present a follow-up at the next school board meeting."
The next school board meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the central office.
Phillips emphasized that the figures for Santa Fe didn't reflect attendance for just teachers. Counselors and educational assistants were included too.
"We definitely need to clarify that," she said. "When the report was given, we took it as a red flag. Now we're looking at where is the problem and how extensive is it. We're still collecting data, and we need to segregate it so we can figure out what plan of action to take."
Tasked with breaking down the data is Richard Bowman, who was recently hired as the district's accountability officer. He said it's his job to make the numbers speak.
"What we're trying to do is get to the bottom of what's going on and how we can improve it," he said. "We want to find out what are the reasons, and what is our leverage of control."
Bowman said it's apparent absenteeism among school personnel is higher than it should be. The question is how to solve it.
"The types of questions you want to ask, about what to do next, are not included in the report," he said. "Going forward, we want to identify particular areas where we have data to make change. We want to be specific about the question, provide the right data and make it actionable and not judgmental."
The report was presented by Boyd's transition advisory team, established to gather data and information to assist him in crafting a reform agenda to put the district on a path for academic improvement.
Boyd, who came to Santa Fe after spending two years as assistant superintendent in Philadelphia, began his new job on Aug. 1.
During the presentation, Joseph Wise, chief education officer for Atlantic Research Partners Inc. and one of seven members of the transition team, said that absenteeism "is unusually high" within Santa Fe Public Schools and cited the numbers that appeared so alarming.
He later noted that there was also an especially high level of absenteeism among bus drivers, which caused other employees in the transportation department to abandon their usual duties and get behind the wheel in order to get kids to school.
The findings generated quite a bit of discussion.
- "Holy smoke! Either we have a lot of people who are sickly that we're hiring, or they're unhappy because people tend to miss work and take a lot of time off if they're super unhappy," Carrillo said, adding that if students are expected to attend school each day, so should school employees. "We need to be demanding the same from adults as we demand from our kids."
School Board President Frank Montaño agreed.
- "If that happens in the private sector, they wouldn't be around long. I'm curious how you're going to address that issue," he said, directing the question to Boyd.
Boyd said absenteeism by school staff came down to management of the workforce.
- "This is just one data point," he said. "My guess would be that this is not isolated to just teachers, that it rolls across principals, our maintenance workers, our administrators. And some of it has to do with simple management - how we're tracking attendance and what we're doing when people seem to be taking advantage of certain policies."
- "We have policies in place to support our workforce when people do become ill," he continued. "Unfortunately, when we're seeing numbers such as what we're seeing here, we know it goes beyond being ill, which means then we have a management issue."
Boyd said the board could expect to see recommendations for policy changes that would give managers support in supervising their staffs.
The report did offer a long-term goal for critical functions that directly relates to employee attendance. It suggested the district aim for an electronic timekeeping program that would track attendance, tardiness and overtime.
The system would be able to detect trends and identify peak periods for strategy planning. Intervention, in the form of conferences with employees who exceed a set number absences or days late for work, would then become part of the management process.
The report cites research that suggests policies creating or increasing incentives can help reduce absenteeism among teachers.
"Previous research suggests that policies regarding the number of absences, the ability to carry forward unused sick days, the benefits if any of not using all allowable days, the school-level requirements about reporting absences all have the potential to influence the actual rate of teacher absenteeism," says a paper titled "Are Teacher Absences Worth Worrying About in the United States." "In assessing the desirability of adjusting such policies, policy makers must weigh the costs of absences - budgetary, administrative, and educational - against the degree to which more lenient policies might make teaching an attractive career option."
The same paper concludes that teacher absences are worth worrying about. In addition to the costs associated with hiring substitute teachers, administrative resources are expended to secure substitutes for the day. Perhaps most importantly, teacher absenteeism affects students.
"When regular teachers are not in the classroom, opportunities for students to learn are cut short," it states. "This common sense conclusion is bolstered by statistical evidence showing that students whose teachers miss more days for sickness score lower on state achievement tests."
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Santa Fe/ Bernice García Baca, Teacher Union Head Lashes Out
By T.S. Last
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
November 4, 2012
Santa Fe Public Schools' new superintendent Joel Boyd ruffled some feathers among teachers last week with the release of data suggesting teachers and other staff may be absent at rates nearly twice the national average.
Bernice García Baca, president of the National Education Association in Santa Fe, the local teachers' union, thinks Boyd's transition team jumped the gun by releasing the information without thoroughly vetting the data.
- "I think an apology is in order," she said. "It was on TV and in both newspapers. It made us look bad."
García Baca said the report doesn't accurately reflect absenteeism among teachers in SFPS and fails to take other factors into consideration. She said the team should have been more inquisitive about what the data actually reflected and that the administration should have challenged it before it was published.
- "It's bothersome that they were able to publish this negative information without checking it. It shouldn't be done that way," she said.
She's not the only one upset. García Baca said the issue of absenteeism, which generated considerable discussion among school board members during the study session where the report was released, has also been a hot topic among teachers.
- "This whole thing has been disturbing to a lot of employees," she said. "There's usually a good reason for absences. That 17 days, it's a much-exaggerated number."
García Baca said the report affected teachers' morale, and already many of them feel overwhelmed and under-appreciated.
- "A lot of it seems to be anti-public school movement in some ways. It's another indication of a lack of appreciation and a lack of respect for the profession," she said.
After hearing from school employees in the days that followed the release of the report, Boyd sent out a district-wide email that showed up in teachers' in-boxes Friday morning.
- He clarified that the data is not a measure of teacher absenteeism, but reflects absences of all instructional employees, including teachers, teaching assistants and guidance counselors.
- All types of absences were recorded, including days dedicated to professional development, and it included absences for staff members who missed the entire year.
"The message is not about the habits of employees, but rather that our staff and students have to deal with too many interruptions in their instructional setting," Boyd wrote.
At about 6 p.m. Friday, the school district issued a press release, covering much of the same ground, but including a quote from Boyd in support of teachers.
- "While we continue to analyze attendance data, we should keep in mind the ultimate goal of supporting our students, teachers and staff," Boyd said.
That wasn't the apology García Baca was looking for.
- "I'm not sure Dr. Boyd and his cabinet have grasped the full impact of this on us, their staff," she wrote in an email to the Journal on Saturday.
- "It is impossible to un-ring a bell, and what people throughout New Mexico read, heard and likely believed is that very few Santa Fe educators have our students as a priority. Nothing could be more incorrect!"
García Baca, a counselor at Aspen Community School, said she's worked as a teacher and counselor in four other school districts, and the dedication exhibited by the vast majority of staff members in Santa Fe far exceeds what she's seen elsewhere.
During a phone interview Friday, García Baca said teachers are already under enough pressure.
- "With many people, there's a real sense of being overwhelmed by the different state mandates from the governor and Secretary-Designate Skandera," she said. "And now Superintendent Boyd has come out with a plan to make evaluations more stringent, and there is so much professional development. It seems our duties just increase and increase."
García Baca noted that on Friday, there were eight or 10 teachers absent as part of two-day training on core curriculum. She added that there were other reasons teachers miss school that have nothing to do with them being sick, including military leave and jury duty. Altogether, she said, there are 20 categories the district uses to track employee absences.
"Every one of those is counted into mix; it's not just sick leave," she said.
Richard Bowman, the district's new accountability officer, has been charged with breaking out the numbers to provide a clearer picture.
"The data set we had didn't break it down. Now we're looking into all the data systems, and there are several, and one of my jobs is to consolidate the data," he said. "We're looking into which data systems to use and combining them to get more detail."
It's a time-consuming process that Bowman said will take several weeks, if not months. Meanwhile, the district plans to present a follow-up on the advisory team's report during the school board meeting Wednesday.
In his email to the district staff, Boyd announced a series of forums aimed at gaining more input on the absenteeism issue. The first two are scheduled for Thursday and Friday, at Santa Fe and Capital high schools, respectively. Three others are scheduled for later this month.
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ABQ/ New APS Sports Stadium Halfway Completed
KOB.com Staff Report, Channel 4
November 3, 2012
Albuquerque Public Schools new west side sports stadium is halfway completed. The district giving residents a tour of the construction project near Interstate 40 and 98th street.
Construction of the football stadium and track and field started last spring. About a hundred people walked around the site that is hard to see from the road.
- "I'm really impressed with the layout of the stadium," Curt Kirschenman who lives nearby said. "Our biggest concern is the traffic flow. As far as the noise level, I think it's going to be down in. I don't think you're going to notice the noise so much."
- "When we had some of the opposition earlier I think we really listened to a lot of the concerns and I think people are very excited," Brad Winter, Chief Operations Officer with the school district said.
The 7,000 seat stadium is expected to be completed in time for the start of the 2013 high school football season.
The stadium is the district's third and it will serve 13 high schools. The first one was built in 1967.
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Rio Rancho/ $32,000 PED Grant to RRPS: 'Science ... Rocks!'
By Elaine D. Briseño
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
November 3, 2012
Brian Montoya stands at the front of the classroom, arm across the shoulder of Tyler Aldridge , who has his arm linked around Montoya's waist.
The two aren't embraced in a friendly hug. They are teacher and student at Puesta del Sol Elementary, and they are demonstrating for the room of students how the dual motors on a robot operate. Aldridge, a fifth-grader, giggles as he waits for his instructions.
"OK, what do we tell our motors to do if we want our robot to go in circles?" Montoya asks the class.
There is a slight pause.
"Make them go in opposite directions," one student finally yells.
"Yes. You are right," Montoya says.
Aldridge, the left-hand motor, starts to run backwards while Montoya, the right-hand motor, runs forward. The two, still linked, go around and around as the class cheers them on.
The students are in the beginning stages of learning how to program a robot. The 30 fourth- and fifth-grade students are enrolled in the school's weekly science and robotics club, which started late last month and will continue until the end of the school year.
The kids will spend the next several months writing programs for their robots in preparation for a statewide robotics competition in May. The school club is in its fifth year but is using outdated equipment, Montoya said.
A $32,000 grant from the Public Education Department to Rio Rancho Public Schools will change all that. The grant will allow Puesta del Sol and Mountain View and Eagle Ridge middle schools to buy robot kits and laptops, which will be used for programming.
Puesta will get the largest chunk of money at $17,000, and Montoya said there will be laptops and robots available for other teachers to use during the school day as well.
Puesta principal Bryan Garcia said the grant will help support an already established and successful program.
This grant "is creating exciting learning opportunities for our students that promote problem-solving, critical thinking, and hands-on skills ...," he said in an email to the Journal.
The idea of the program, Montoya said, is to get students excited about science while applying what they are learning at school.
"OK, class. Science ...," Montoya says at the start of class Thursday after school.
"Rocks!" they all scream.
That day's task was to familiarize the students with the concept of programming and introducing them to the computer software they would use to write the instructions for their robots. It's what led to Montoya and Aldridge running in circles.
"This robot has a program, but it doesn't have a brain," Montoya says. "You are the brain. The robot does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do, and you learn by trial and error."
Montoya then instructs the students to start playing with the software and practice putting together commands for the robots.
Aldridge, who is now seated, is sharing a computer with fellow fifth-graders Jacob Boulton and Nick Rotert .
"Do that. Do that," Aldridge tells Boulton. "Let's make it go around."
Montoya helps mentor the programs at Mountain View and Eagle Ridge.
- Mountain View will get $10,000 of the grant to buy laptops for its 26-member robotics club, which meets twice a week before school.
- Eagle Ridge will see $5,000 of the money and will use it to buy laptops and robot kits so it can start an after-school robotics club.
Both middle schools will also send several teams to the spring robotics competition.
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Santa Fe/ Questa Suspended School Boards' Case Delayed, PED Hearing Now Set for Dec. 10
By T.S. Last
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
November 4, 2012
Attorneys who were representing Questa Independent School District school board members in a dispute with the New Mexico Public Education Department are no longer doing so, and a public hearing to address PED's suspension of the school board has been postponed.
The hearing, originally scheduled for Monday in Taos, is now set for Dec. 10.
A PED spokesperson would not provide a reason for the postponement. PED officials did not respond Friday to emails and phone messages seeking comment.
Attorney John Kennedy of the Cuddy & McCarthy law firm said his relationship with the school district ended Wednesday but declined to give an explanation, citing attorney-client privilege.
Asked if the hearing was postponed because of this new development, Kennedy said he didn't know because he wasn't part of the decision to postpone.
The purpose of the hearing was to address allegations by current or former school district employees of fist fights between school board members, conflicts of interest, harassment by board members of district employees and violations of the Open Meetings Act, among other issues.
PED cited the allegations in its "Notice of Disapproval and Immediate Suspension from Authority" on Sept. 18. It also referred to a persistent 3-3 voting split on the board after the July resignation of board member Urban "Bob" Jaramillo. The tie votes prevented the district from conducting business. PED Deputy Secretary Paul Aguilar was appointed to oversee the school district's operations.
On Oct. 18, Kennedy submitted a response on behalf of the school board, refuting most of the charges and taking aim at Education Secretary-Designate Hanna Skandera for her handling of the situation.
The letter states that notarized statements obtained by PED investigators were general in nature, failed to specify time frames for the alleged misconduct and reciting hearsay.
"Had PED done a thorough investigation, it would have learned that there are clearly two sides to every story, and that the reliance upon one-sided information has tainted conclusions reached and the decisions made by PED and the Secretary-Designate," Kennedy's response reads.
The letter claims that after the board failed to reach an agreement on filling the board vacancy left by Bob Jaramillo after 45 days, Skandera had the authority to appoint someone to fill the position until the next school board election. But she failed to do so.
"Thus, the Secretary-Designate's inaction has contributed to the inability of the Questa School Board to move forward," the letter read.
The response also states that according to law, suspension should only occur when "the educational process in the School District has been severely impaired or halted as a result of deficiencies so severe as to warrant disapproved status," and that neither the statute nor PED regulations in the Administrative Code provide any standards for Skandera to take such drastic action.
It states that the school board was in unanimous agreement that suspension was "unwarranted and constitutes an arbitrary and capricious action by the Secretary-Designate."
Most of the allegations involved three school board members - Tammy Jaramillo, Matthew Ortega and Daryl Ortega - who PED said formed a "faction" on the school board.
The school board response said factions were not unusual with governing bodies and addresses each of the allegations against the school board members.
In summary, Kennedy [whose relationship with the school district ended Wednesday] submitted a response on behalf of the school board outlining these points:
- While allegations claim that Tammy Jaramillo and Daryl Ortega pressured former superintendents to fire certain employees, no one ultimately was fired.
- Regarding charges that Matt Ortega struck his son in a school parking lot: Ortega denied it happened and the Children Youth and Families Department concluded the allegations were not substantiated.
- When former superintendent Albert Martinez banned Matt Ortega from school property, it was only for a short time and occurred a year ago. Further, banning a school board member is not grounds for immediate suspension of the board.
- The minutes of a meeting at which board members, including Daryl Ortega, approved a resolution allowing Ortega's business to bid on school projects were in error. Daryl Ortega actually abstained from the vote, so there was no conflict of interest.
- The board was in unanimous agreement that allegations that Matt Ortega interfered with and delayed a project to lay electrical lines in fact caused no delay.
- Board members disputed there was ever a fist fight in the parking lot between Matt Ortega and a former board member during a meeting.
- While police were called upon to attend school board meetings to maintain order, it's not uncommon for law enforcement to be present when controversial issues are discussed and also not grounds for suspension.
- No dates or individuals were identified regarding alleged violations of the Open Meetings Act, so that concern could not be responded to.
- A substantive response to allegations the staff had been accused by school board members of immoral or illegal activities could not be provided because the accusations were too generic and vague.
- While board members have walked out of meetings, it's not unusual for governing bodies to lose quorums, and that wasn't a regular occurrence with the Questa school board.
"Again, these are matters which do not rise to the level of grounds for disapproval and immediate suspension of the School Board, and can be cured by the prompt appointment of a seventh Board member," Kennedy's response states.
The letter goes on to say that the board should be reinstated without conditions and offers a corrective action plan.
The plan includes having the board undergo training in open meetings laws; more communication between the board, superintendent and employees; and training in conflict-of-interest laws, procurement code and compliance as well as parliamentary rules of conduct.
The plan also suggests "close oversight and monitoring of school board meetings and activities" could be achieved through audio and video-taping of meetings and retention of a mentor-monitor to assist the board in conducting business and mediating disputes.
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ABQ/ EDITORIAL: Santa Fe Schools Take on 'Mañana' Today
ABQ Journal North
November 3, 2012
Three months into his new job, Santa Fe Public Schools' Superintendent Joel Boyd is still talking like an outsider.
And that's a good thing.
This week Boyd presented his team's report on his 100-day entry and learning plan for the district. The underlying theme is the urgent need to change SFPS' "mañana" culture.
Glaringly absent is any mention of the difficulty in bringing low-income/minority students up to grade level, the challenge of educating students whose parents aren't engaged in the process, or the rationale that everyone is already doing the best they can.
How refreshing.
Instead, Boyd and his advisory team - which includes Robert S. Peterkin, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Education - say the district needs to create a culture of urgency with teaching and learning at the core, establish institutional leadership on campuses and hold adults accountable for their job performance and student success.
Those are vital changes - SFPS has a graduation rate just over 50 percent, and only one of its 27 schools managed to raise student performance in math and reading last year.
The coming months will tell if Boyd can successfully implement his recommendations and continue to challenge an apologist status quo that champions the state's consistently underperforming public schools.
But three months in, it is gratifying to hear a leading educator say his schools should - and can - do better.
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Santa Fe/ EDITORIAL: Culture of Mañana? We Don't Think So
The New Mexican
November 4, 2012
We commend Superintendent Joel Boyd for his energy in finding solutions for the Santa Fe Public Schools, whether he is meeting with children, talking to parents or digging deep to fix what ails the schools.
That said, it's still troubling to hear an official school district report state that Santa Fe has a "self-described culture of mañana."
Given the history of prejudice and discrimination against native New Mexicans dating back to Territorial times, that phrase should be out of bounds. Granted, the report did say that "multiple interviewees described this lack of urgency as an example of SFPS' 'mañana' culture, which the team finds both culturally offensive and operationally dysfunctional."
The team - experts who helped Boyd conduct a deep dive into the district - is correct. The term is culturally offensive, and we think Boyd and his team could have made the point about urgency without repeating the offense. In fact, if a number of school district employees are using that term, it's time for a session on sensitivity.
Criticize school practices, teacher performance, student test scores and the like - but using such a culturally charged phrase only muddies the message.
That message, of course, is that Santa Fe's children deserve a better education. The adults in the system - teachers, administrators and staff - must approach change with a sense of urgency and excitement. Of course, what that change is remains to be seen. So far, and this is a smart approach, the superintendent has focused on identifying problems and systems that need fixing before he lays out his plan of action.
One issue he points to, the lack of enough bilingual teachers, has plagued the district for decades. It is not as though administrators, all the way back to Superintendent Eddie Ortiz, did not beat the bushes for bilingual teachers, often falling short because other districts offered bigger bonuses and more perks. Perhaps, though, Boyd has new ideas that can attract those teachers to Santa Fe; we know that he already has made hiring bilingual top administrators a priority.
We look forward, too, to hearing how Boyd goes forward with his solutions to the many challenges facing the schools. Board President Frank Montaño put it well, asking: "What are we going to do next?" That answer, of course, will come another day - but please, let's avoid the term mañana while we wait.
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Santa Fe/ COLUMN: SFPS District to Kick Off Parent Academy
By Robert Nott [The Learning Curve column]
The New Mexican
November 4, 2012
Public schools in Montgomery County, Md., offer parents free, one-time classes such as "Help! My Child is Disorganized," and "How to Respond to Children When They Are Disrespectful" through a parent academy designed to encourage parental involvement in children's schooling. The idea is to give parents an inside view of how certain aspects of the school system work - how to understand Standards Based Assessment data and how to keep kids safe and healthy, for instance.
This model has grown in popularity over the past five to 10 years. Portland public schools and Miami-Dade County schools, for instance, both have parent academies. In most cases, these classes and courses are offered throughout the semester to meet the scheduling needs of families. In
St. Paul, Minn., the district offers an ambitious seven-week course.
Under the new leadership of Superintendent Joel Boyd and his chief of staff, Latifah Phillips, Santa Fe Public Schools intends to kick off a pilot program in February. Right now, the plan is to offer parents four different areas of study.
- Arts classes - pottery, painting and beadwork, for example - will be included in the plan, as will
- certification classes designed to help parents qualify for a GED certificate.
- Also on the proposed agenda are courses in computer training, Spanish and English, and personal nutrition.
Perhaps most importantly, the district plans to offer classes to help parents understand the culture of student achievement, or, as Phillips puts it, "understanding schools and classrooms [and] what it means if your school is in a 'transformation zone' or received a certain letter grade from the state."
In short, it will serve as an A-Z parents guide to the public school system.
Phillips said she and others leading the initiative are sending out surveys this week in both English and Spanish to parents to gauge interest in various aspects of the program and to determine when and where parents would like these academies to take place.
- The survey asks whether parents are interested in courses on understanding Common Core Standards, a set of standards adopted recently by most states that encourages critical thinking among students. They are being implemented this year in kindergarten through third grade.
She said schools, as well as community centers and faith-based organizations, may be utilized as learning centers. She added that the district has already built a core group of about 40 parents to push the initiative, and has divided the responsibilities among four leaders and four regions.
- Clara Evans - the former assistant principal of De Vargas Middle School who was recently hired to serve as the district's multicultural education director - oversees Region 1, which includes Capital High School, Ortiz Middle School and several elementary schools including Sweeney, Piñon and Ramirez-Thomas. She said the parent academy is "greatly needed. We have been waiting for this for a long time. We can teach parents how to navigate some of the district's resources."
She thinks the academy can go a long way toward garnering parental trust, including among Spanish-speaking parents who feel as if they have been ignored or overlooked. (To that end, the district has made sure a Spanish-speaking translator is on hand at all public meetings.)
Phillips said parent academies are growing in popularity - Albuquerque Public Schools is reportedly toying with the notion - because "school districts realize it takes partnerships between parents and school leaders to make it work." Parents, she said, are students' first teachers.
Though the survey is 10 pages long, Phillips - who speaks English and Spanish - said it should take less than 10 minutes to complete - so she is encouraging all parents to fill it out and get it back to the district. Visit www.sfps.info.
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Santa Fe/ OPINION: Superintendent's Report Overstates Teacher Absences
By Bernice García Baca [President of NEA-Santa Fe and counselor at Aspen Community Magnet School]
The New Mexican
November 2, 2012
Our union, the National Education Association serves a myriad of purposes for educators, but one of the most essential is defending our collective professional reputation. Santa Fe Public Schools faculty and staff took an unwarranted beating in the print, radio and television media recently because of the presentation of Superintendent Joel Boyd's "Transition Advisory Team Report"
While there is useful information in this report, several points were made that, in my opinion, lean toward anti-public school forces. Blasted through the media was the completely inaccurate and misleading "finding" that my colleagues and I take an average 17 days of sick leave every year. "Startling!" That was Boyd's reaction, and he was not alone in this emotion. I, too, was startled, but probably for completely opposite reasons. The surprise from Boyd and at least one school board member seemed to stem from believing the report to be accurate. My immediate thought, though, was that this could not be correct and was probably derived by counting the number of substitutes hired throughout the year. My second thought was, that if I were a reporter, this one issue would make a great headline.
I was correct on both points. Public opinion weighed in on all sides. I asked Boyd's team to research the absences data, and a day later the analysis was done that should have been conducted before publishing this grossly misleading statement. There are 20 different categories for which substitutes are hired, and sick leave is only one of the 20. Some other reasons for which "subs" were hired included Family and Medical Leave Act long-term absences, coaching, jury and military duty, and workers compensation. Importantly - six categories included in the total are for educational leave, and those include large numbers of subs for district-, state- and federally mandated initiatives.
It is obvious that the actual average of sick days taken is much less than the well-publicized 17. But let's look at why sick leave, which can justifiably be considered part of compensation, is taken. Do parents want a teacher with the flu or other contagious conditions in the classroom? Have you ever had to take a doctor's appointment during the work day because your doctor is in another town, or only has certain appointment times available, or works here only two days a week, or ... ? Have you ever sustained an injury, sometimes at your workplace, which precludes your doing your job?
Yes, educators are just like everyone else, although with an extra challenge of having to build up antibodies to the various ailments our 30 to 700 students might share with us. (That 700 number is not a misprint - elementary counselors and nurses frequently have caseloads of this size if assigned to two or more schools, or maybe "just" 600 if at one of the larger schools.)
Superintendent Boyd already has made a statement to staff about the disparaging claim in the report; by the time this is published, I hope he will have made a public retraction as well. Unfortunately, the damage could be done to our already-battered reputations. However, the most important critics - the students we help through each day of new discoveries, know the truth of our dedication to them and to the Santa Fe Public Schools.
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Washington DC/ Report: Scrap One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Teaching ELLs
By Lesli A. Maxwell
Education Week [Ed week.org]
November 2, 2012 11:45 AM
As more and more school districts around the country put the common standards in English/language arts and mathematics into practice, one refrain is growing louder and louder: Instruction for English-learners must change radically.
Of course, the instructional shifts required in the common core are significant for all students, but for the nation's large-and growing-population of English-learners, traditional approaches of teaching them the language by emphasizing grammar and syntax, for example, have to give way to instruction that allows ELLs to understand content, think critically, and communicate ideas-even if imperfectly.
These shifts will be most critical in the secondary grades, where too often the focus for English-learners is on making sure they learn the language and little else.
So argues a new policy brief released this week from the Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education.
The Alliance's report zeroes in on
- what teachers can do to understand and leverage the linguistic and cultural strengths of their ELL students and create supportive, discourse-rich classrooms where students interact and communicate constantly with both ELL and non-ELL peers about complex, academic content across all subjects.
- It also calls attention to how state policy governing curriculum, assessment, and teacher preparation could be improved in order to support the changes in classroom practices that English-learners will need to tackle the more rigorous content in the common standards as they develop their language skills.
Specifically, for states, the Alliance report recommends that all of them
- update and/or adopt English-language-proficiency standards that are directly connected to the common core standards, a process underway in many states already.
- States should use a common definition of who an English-language learner is and
- allow for multiple pathways for ELLs to progress through the language acquisition process and
- take mainstream courses with their non-ELL peers-an especially important policy at the high school level, the Alliance contends.
The report urges states to require both traditional and alternative preparation programs to provide prospective teachers with "substantial clinical experiences" with English-learners and a curriculum designed specifically to prepare them for working with such students.
States should also require teacher who work with ELLs to be fully certified to teach them.
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Denver CO/ Metro School Districts Get into Race for Federal Grants
By Yesenia Robles
The Denver Post
November 5, 2012
A handful of metro-area school districts just submitted applications for the most recent round of Race to the Top, where school districts instead of states vie for a chunk of the federal education money.
Among those applying are Adams 12 Five Star Schools, Mapleton Public Schools and Denver Public Schools.
If they win, Adams 12 and DPS will invest in similar software systems that would personalize education.
- "The goal is to get every student and every teacher online, whether it's with a laptop or a tablet, and to have them connect through a platform to work in a blended learning environment," said Adams 12 grant director Amy Bruce.
- "The system we desire automatically gives teachers a visual of, say, the seven students in critical need and tells them what issues they're having.
The software and technology that Adams 12 envisions providing - with the grant of just less than $10 million - would give teachers recommendations of additional resources to share instantly with students.
The platform also would allow parents and students to track progress and easily access the personalized resources.
- "Imagine that each kid can virtually communicate with their teachers or other students," Bruce said. "Think about how much more readily you can engage parents without having to require that they show up in person at a certain time. It's such a win-win vision."
DPS has requested $42 million, a large portion of which would be used for similar software. Another portion would be distributed to schools through proposals in chunks of up to $300,000. A panel would review each school's plan for the money.
"One school leader might say, 'I want iPads, I want more computers, I want clickers because I want to track what my students are learning, or I want high-dosage tutoring,' " said Alyssa Whitehead-Bust, DPS chief of innovation and reform.
In Adams 12, the technology would be implemented only for the district's three STEM schools - which focus on science, technology, engineering and math - and for an estimated 1,400 other students in the feeder system for Northglenn High School. If there are positive results, the district will look at ways to spread the changes to the whole district.
Mapleton Public Schools has requested a $20 million grant in hopes of extending the school year to 185 days and reducing summer break to five weeks.
The district would partner with community groups to provide enrichment opportunities and camp-style programs during other extended school breaks.
Officials from each district said they hope to deploy their plans even if they don't land Race to the Top grants in December.
"This is the next step we've been thinking about for a while," said Mapleton assistant superintendent Jackie Kapushion. "Race to the Top was an opportunity for us to implement that plan in a very expedited way."
Aurora Public Schools and the Boulder Valley School District had intended to apply but decided against it.
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Somerset NJ/ Hurricane Sandy Gas Station Crisis Solution from High School Students
By Emmeline Zhao
Huffington Post
November 2, 2012
The millions out of power in areas affected by Superstorm Sandy have been struggling to find gas stations still open with resources. But one group of high school students in New Jersey have - overnight - devised a solution.
Members of IMSOCIO [Scholars Organizing Culturally Innovative Opportunities] at Franklin High School gathered Wednesday night to launch a crowd-sourced map that locates open gas stations in the New York-New Jersey area.
- Stations are identified by green, red or yellow pins - each representing an open, sold out or charging station.
- The map has now identified nearly 100 stations in the area, and has garnered attention from local news stations - so much so that the site crashed for a few hours Thursday afternoon due to high traffic.
Dayana Bustamante graduated from Franklin High this May and now attends Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburg, N.J. She remains active in IMSOCIO - short for Scholars Organizing Culturally Innovative Opportunities - and has been the most vocal online advocate of the group's latest mapping initiative.
- "I'm a bit shocked, I didn't think it'd be such a big hit," Bustamante told The Huffington Post Thursday afternoon.
- "We started this up last night, we just wanted to help. It was a small idea, I personally needed gas, we all needed gas. So we started out with five points and just had more friends and high school students get involved."
The group started as a summer program for underprivileged students, particularly those of Latino backgrounds, to keep them academically engaged during school off-months, IMSOCIO organizer Wansoo Im says. The Rutgers University adjunct professor leads the teens in planning projects that map the community.
"This is a service learning project, by using community mapping students can use technology to serve the community," Im told HuffPost. In the past, IMSOCIO members have created maps that, for example, chart out safe routes to school.
The IMSOCIO team has received an influx of emails and Tweets supporting the gas station map project. What makes the site especially appealing to users, Bustamante says, is its ability to immediately accept updates from the public and its availability on both desktop and mobile platforms. The team is also taking tips via Twitter.
- "If there's anything wrong, people can always update and say they only accept cash here or they ran out of gas here," Bustamante said. "You can't really fail."
Meanwhile, 13 of the area's 33 fuel terminals were closed Thursday, severely limiting gas stations' access to fuel. Thousands of stations in New Jersey and Long Island were also closed due to power outages.
As images of massive lines of cars waiting for gas permeated the media while thousands scrambled to find operating stations Thursday, those on Twitter thanked the Franklin High teens for their work - and directed Newark Mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to the site as well.
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New York NY/ The Year of the MOOC
By Laura Pappano [Author of "Inside School Turnarounds" and writer in residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women]
New York Times
November 2, 2012
In late September, as workers applied joint compound to new office walls, hoodie-clad colleagues who had just met were working together on deadline. Film editors, code-writing interns and "edX fellows" - grad students and postdocs versed in online education - were translating videotaped lectures into MOOCs, or massive open online courses. As if anyone needed reminding, a row of aqua Post-its gave the dates the courses would "go live."
- The paint is barely dry, yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses.
- That's nothing. Coursera, founded just last January, has reached more than 1.7 million - growing "faster than Facebook," boasts Andrew Ng, on leave from Stanford to run his for-profit MOOC provider.
"This has caught all of us by surprise," says David Stavens, who formed a company called Udacity with Sebastian Thrun and Mike Sokolosky after more than 150,000 signed up for Dr. Thrun's "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" last fall, starting the revolution that has higher education gasping. A year ago, he marvels, "we were three guys in Sebastian's living room and now we have 40 employees full time."
- "I like to call this the year of disruption," says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, "and the year is not over yet."
MOOCs have been around for a few years as collaborative techie learning events, but this is the year everyone wants in.
Elite universities are partnering with Coursera at a furious pace. It now offers courses from 33 of the biggest names in postsecondary education, including Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke. In September, Google unleashed a MOOC-building online tool, and Stanford unveiled Class2Go with two courses.
Nick McKeown is teaching one of them, on computer networking, with Philip Levis (the one with a shock of magenta hair in the introductory video). Dr. McKeown sums up the energy of this grand experiment when he gushes, "We're both very excited." Casually draped over auditorium seats, the professors also acknowledge that they are not exactly sure how this MOOC stuff works.
"We are just going to see how this goes over the next few weeks," says Dr. McKeown.
Traditional online courses charge tuition, carry credit and limit enrollment to a few dozen to ensure interaction with instructors. The MOOC, on the other hand, is usually free, credit-less and, well, massive.
- Because anyone with an Internet connection can enroll, faculty can't possibly respond to students individually. So the course design - how material is presented and the interactivity - counts for a lot. As do fellow students. Classmates may lean on one another in study groups organized in their towns, in online forums or, the prickly part, for grading work.
- The evolving form knits together education, entertainment (think gaming) and social networking. Unlike its antecedent, open courseware - usually written materials or videotapes of lectures that make you feel as if you're spying on a class from the back of the room - the MOOC is a full course made with you in mind.
The medium is still the lecture.
- Thanks to Khan Academy's free archive of snappy instructional videos, MOOC makers have gotten the memo on the benefit of brevity: 8 to 12 minutes is typical.
- Then - this is key - videos pause perhaps twice for a quiz to make sure you understand the material or, in computer programming, to let you write code.
- Feedback is electronic. Teaching assistants may monitor discussion boards. There may be homework and a final exam.
The MOOC certainly presents challenges.
- Can learning be scaled up this much?
- Grading is imperfect, especially for nontechnical subjects.
- Cheating is a reality.
"We found groups of 20 people in a course submitting identical homework," says David Patterson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who teaches software engineering, in a tone of disbelief at such blatant copying; Udacity and edX now offer proctored exams.
Some students are also ill prepared for the university-level work. And few stick with it. "Signing up for a class is a lightweight process," says Dr. Ng. It might take just five minutes, assuming you spend two devising a stylish user name. Only 46,000 attempted the first assignment in Dr. Ng's course on machine learning last fall. In the end, he says, 13,000 completed the class and earned a certificate - from him, not Stanford.
That's still a lot of students.
The shimmery hope is that free courses can bring the best education in the world to the most remote corners of the planet, help people in their careers, and expand intellectual and personal networks.
- Three-quarters of those who took Dr. Patterson's "Software as a Service" last winter on Coursera (it's now on edX) were from outside the United States, though the opposite was true of a course on circuits and electronics piloted last spring by Dr. Agarwal.
- But both attracted highly educated students and both reported that over 70 percent had degrees (more than a third had graduate degrees).
- And in a vote of confidence in the form, students in both overwhelmingly endorsed the quality of the course: 63 percent who completed Dr. Agarwal's course as well as a similar one on campus found the MOOC better; 36 percent found it comparable; 1 percent, worse.
Ray Schroeder, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at the University of Illinois, Springfield, says three things matter most in online learning:
- quality of material covered,
- engagement of the teacher and
- interaction among students.
The first doesn't seem to be an issue - most professors come from elite campuses, and so far most MOOCs are in technical subjects like computer science and math, with straightforward content. But providing instructor connection and feedback, including student interactions, is trickier.
- "What's frustrating in a MOOC is the instructor is not as available because there are tens of thousands of others in the class," Dr. Schroeder says. How do you make the massive feel intimate?
That's what everyone is trying to figure out.
Many places offer MOOCs, and more will. But Coursera, Udacity and edX are defining the form as they develop their brands.
- Coursera casts itself as a "hub" - Dr. Ng's word - for learning and networking. The learning comes gratis from an impressive roster of elites offering a wide range of courses, from computer science to philosophy to medicine. Not all are highbrow or technical; "Listening to World Music" from the University of Pennsylvania aims to broaden your iPod playlist.
While Coursera will make suggestions, Dr. Ng says, "ultimately all pedagogical decisions are made by the universities." Most offerings are adapted from existing courses: a Princeton Coursera course is a Princeton course. But the vibe is decidedly Facebook - build a profile, upload your photo - with tools for students to plan "meet-ups" with Courserians in about 1,400 cities worldwide. These gatherings may be bona fide study groups or social sessions. Membership may be many or sparse.
No one showed at the meet-up that Stacey Brown, an information technology manager at a Hartford insurance company, scheduled for a 14th-floor conference room on a Thursday after work, despite R.S.V.P.'s from a few classmates in the area. He's taking three Coursera MOOCs, including "Gamification" from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. In addition to the learning - and dropping to bosses that he's taking a Wharton course - Mr. Brown says, "I hope to get a network."
Others like the discipline a group offers. Kimberly Spillman, a software engineer, started taking seven MOOCs and completed three. "The ones I have study groups with people, those are the ones I finish," Ms. Spillman says. She first joined a group for Dr. Thrun's artificial intelligence course, and then ran one for a Udacity course on building a search engine, organizing Thursday-evening discussions of the week's material followed by a social hour at a nearby pub. Fifteen people met each week at the Ansir Innovation Center, a community space with big tables and comfortable chairs, in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood of San Diego.
- Udacity has stuck close to its math and computer science roots and emphasizes applied learning, like "How to Build a Blog" or "Building a Web Browser." Job placement is part of the Udacity package. "The type of skills taught in computer science, even at elite universities, can be very theoretical," Dr. Stavens explains.
Udacity courses are designed and produced in-house or with companies like Google and Microsoft. In a poke at its university-based competition, Dr. Stavens says they pick instructors not because of their academic research, as universities do, but because of how they teach. "We reject about 98 percent of faculty who want to teach with us," he says. "Just because a person is the world's most famous economist doesn't mean they are the best person to teach the subject." Dr. Stavens sees a day when MOOCs will disrupt how faculty are attracted, trained and paid, with the most popular "compensated like a TV actor or a movie actor." He adds that "students will want to learn from whoever is the best teacher."
That means you don't need a Ph.D. While there are traditional academics like David Evans of the University of Virginia, "Landmarks in Physics," a first-year college-level course, is taught by Andy Brown, a 2009 M.I.T. graduate with a B.S. in physics. "We think the future of education is guys like Andy Brown who produce the most fun," Dr. Stavens says. Mr. Brown's course is an indie version of "Bill Nye the Science Guy" - filmed in Italy, the Netherlands and England, with opening credits for "director of photography" and "second camera and editor."
Whether explaining what the ancients believed about the shape of the earth or, in Dr. Thrun's statistics course, why you are unpopular, statistically speaking, voice-overs are as nonthreatening as a grade school teacher.
"You feel like you are sitting next to someone and they are tutoring you," says Jacqueline Spiegel, a mother of three from New Rochelle, N.Y., with a master's in computer science from Columbia who has enrolled in MOOCs from Udacity and Coursera. While taking "Artificial Intelligence," she discovered she liked puzzling through assignments in online study groups.
The class was tough and took "an embarrassing amount of time," says Ms. Spiegel, who found that consuming lectures by smartphone during her 14-year-old's 6 a.m. ice skating sessions worked less well than being parked at a desktop. "I would listen to the lectures, then I would listen to them again." Her effort was huge - some 22 hours a week - but rewarding. Ms. Spiegel befriended women in India and Pakistan through Facebook study groups and started an online group, CompScisters, for women taking science and technology MOOCs.
- If Udacity favors stylish hands-on instruction, edX aims to be elite, smart and rigorous; don't expect a gloss of calculus if you need it but never took it. Some 120 institutions have been in touch; only Berkeley and the University of Texas system have been admitted to the club.
EdX's M.I.T. roots show in its staff's geeky passion for building and testing online tools. They collect your clicks. Feedback from the MOOC taught last spring by Dr. Agarwal (who, students learn, is obsessed with chain saws) revealed that participants would rather watch a hand writing an equation or sentence on paper than stare at the same paper with writing already on it.
The focus is on making education logical. "Someone who is consuming the course should know it is not serendipity that the course is chunked in a certain way, but that there is intentionality to sequencing video," says Howard A. Lurie, vice president for content development.
With mini-notebook in hand, he has been leading the "daily stand-up" meeting (so called because attendees lean against walls) to keep course development on schedule. After one meeting, Lyla Fischer, a 2011 M.I.T. graduate and edX fellow, sat at her computer, a tag still dangling from the chair, and edited the answers for problem sets in Dr. Agarwal's course. Last spring, students could download PDFs with brief answers. Now, she says, "there is a full explanation of how to do it, here are the steps," right on the site.
"We are trying to use the magic of all the tool sets we have," Mr. Lurie says. Students control how fast they watch lectures. Some like to go at nearly double the speed; others want to slow down and replay. Coming: If you get a wrong answer, the software figures out where you went wrong and offers a correction.
Assignments that can't be scored by an automated grader are pushing MOOC providers to get creative, especially in courses that involve writing and analysis. Coursera uses peer grading: submit an assignment and five people grade it; in turn, you grade five assignments.
But what if someone is a horrible grader? Coursera studied the peer grading of 2,500 student submissions for a Princeton sociology MOOC by having them graded a second time by Princeton instructors - yes, the professors hand-graded all 2,500 assignments - and found comparable results. Still, Coursera is developing software to flag those who assign very inaccurate grades to give their assessment less weight.
Mr. Brown, the Hartford I.T. manager, does not have confidence in peer feedback. "This could be a 14-year-old kid in South Africa answering me," he says, thinking of his 14-year-old. The challenge is not just in grading. The diversity of MOOC takers - teenagers to retirees, and from across the globe - means classmates lack a common knowledge base and educational background. Out-of-their-league students, especially in highly technical courses, can drag down discussions.
Which course is right for you? What prerequisites are really needed to perform well? Princeton's "Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes" on Coursera recommends basic linear algebra and multivariable calculus but the "instructor will see if part of the course material can be presented without requiring this mathematical background." "Introduction to Computer Science" from Harvard lists prerequisites as "none" - as long as you're Harvard-ready. Where are the Yelp reviews?
- "We desperately need crowdsourcing," says Cathy N. Davidson, a Duke professor of English and interdisciplinary studies. "We need a MOOCE - massive open online course evaluation."
Most important, what do you get for your effort? Do you earn a certificate? A job interview? Or just the happy feeling of learning something?
"If one is going for the knowledge, it's a boon," says Dr. Schroeder of the University of Illinois. "If one is looking for credit, that is one of the challenges. How do we fit this into the structure of higher education today?"
Dr. Agarwal predicts that "a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with edX certificates." He expects students will one day arrive on campus with MOOC credits the way they do now with Advanced Placement.
The line between online and on campus is already blurring.
- This spring Dr. Davidson will teach a class called "Surprise Endings: Social Science and Literature" at Duke and as a MOOC, with her Duke students running the online discussions.
- This fall, San Jose State students are taking Dr. Agarwal's course on circuits and electronics, with professors and teaching assistants on campus leading discussions. They add their own content, including exams.
- In the spring, Massachusetts Bay Community College in Wellesley will use an edX MOOC in introductory computer science.
Dr. Stavens promises more change, and more disruption: "We are only 5 to 10 percent of the way there."
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Washington DC/ OPINION: String Figures and Early Higher Cognitive Learning
By James R. Murphy [Retired educator]
Huffington Post
November 2, 2012
A recent article in Science magazine discussed the windows of learning which every person experiences early in their life.
Development of the senses begins before birth and the language window begins in infancy and closes early in childhood. That is why a second language is so hard to learn if one begins much past nine or 10 years of age. My special interest as a teacher is the window of higher cognition which begins early in childhood and gradually diminishes by adolescence.
It is surprising that so much of the plasticity and ease of learning occurs during childhood, and I think that a major mistake is made by the educational establishment in NOT taking advantage of this opportunity to develop and enrich one's learning skills early on. It is much harder to develop these skills as one nears puberty and beyond. It is a mistake to underestimate the capacity of a young child to handle complex higher cognition learning.
So how should a school system go about incorporating a strategy to take full advantage of this opportunity. I have a simple plan to jump start this process at minimal cost and disruption of the current schools.
I have been involved with teaching string figures to children and teenagers for more than thirty years and have come to some hard and fast conclusions.
- The hands (especially intricate finger patternings) are a remarkably useful tool for the flowering of the brain's potential.
- Children and teenagers who participate in learning activities using the hands (playing instruments, learning string figures, etc.) do much better in learning all other subject matters than those who have no such experience. I taught in Music and Art high school in New York City and the instrumentalists tended to be the best all round students.
- It is crucial that this training start early and then continue throughout the time period when the human animal is predilected to learn (say 4 to 24).
- I believe the brain's explosive growth in the evolution of humans was first led by the hands and only later by the throat, tongue, larynx speech acquisition.
- It is a sadness that modern society tends to devalue the hands insofar as what an educated person takes pride in as accomplishment. My father put it best, "The man who washes his hands before he works makes more than one who washes his hands after."
The first five years of formal schooling should be for preparing the basic systemic neuronal capacities. Then comes an extended time for learning.
This period of time is necessary for all the complex modalities of the adult human to become fully developed. It is crucial that a there be a concentrated effort in learning how to learn and learning the richness of man's cultural heritage.
We all like to be smart, but learning new things can look to be too hard unless one has a history of successful learning to give one the courage to persevere into new challenging spheres. So it is crucial that we try to impart a truly understood accomplishment in learning early on. Children should learn instruments and make music. Children should learn string figures.
