“Let me introduce our new TA, Alexa!” This may be a plot in a science fiction movie, but that day may soon come true in school. Recently, “the toy-giant Mattel announced it had pulled the plug on plans to sell an interactive gadget for children” (NPR). The device, named Aristotle, looked similar to a baby monitor with a camera, but could “displace essential parenting functions, like soothing a crying baby or reading a bedtime story.” Aristotle, powered by artificial intelligence, can collect large-scale data about a child’s behavior by tracking and surveillance and then through computation, interact with the child.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are two very hot buzzwords right now. AI is a broader concept about machines being able to carry out tasks in a smart way (Forbes). ML refers to some specific application of AI, namely, feeding machines with data and let machines learn for themselves. The life of AI and ML depends on ubiquity and big data.
What questions should educators ask before AI and ML creep into classrooms?
Increasing the collection and computing of big data in children’s lives is the trend of AI and ML, but it challenges educators. The 2018 Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC) discussed at least four areas where scientists and educators should consider using the ubiquity of technologies and big data to benefit children. The identified areas include:
Control and ownership –
To what degree can and should students and parents control data about them?
Are control, ownership, and data privacy transparent and easy to understand for all stakeholders (i.e., students, parents, teachers and school administrative staff)?
Nearly 20 percent of the country’s students are enrolled in rural schools, yet are not provided the same focus in national policy or research as students in urban and suburban school districts. “Out of the Loop,” a new report from the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA), Center for Public Education (CPE), finds that poverty, isolation and inequities are exacerbated for rural students by the lack of attention to the unique needs of this considerable student population.
While not equally distributed across the country, CPE’s analysis notes, approximately one-half of school districts, one-third of schools, and one-fifth of all students in the United States are in rural areas. Inadequate funding, lower literacy rates, and less access to advanced courses such as AP and STEM classes impact rural students’ achievement, creating significant barriers to their success.
“The unfortunate reality is that there are academic and digital disparities in rural districts and students’ access to robust opportunities therefore can vary widely,” said NSBA Executive Director and CEO Thomas J. Gentzel. “Policymakers have a real opportunity to help level the playing field for rural students, however it’s going to require thoughtful solutions that are tailored to the unique conditions of specific communities.”
In its study of rural students CPE found that:
Child poverty runs higher in rural counties. Approximately 64 percent of rural counties experience high child poverty rates, compared to 47 percent of urban counties. Further, rural children are more likely to experience extreme and generational poverty.
Access to rigorous and advanced coursework is limited. Rural schools on average offer half as many advanced math courses as their urban counterparts.
Although rural students are more likely to obtain a high school diploma than urban students, they are significantly less likely to attend college or earn a degree.
CPE also points out significant hurdles faced by rural districts and schools:
Hiring and retaining qualified educators is particularly difficult, especially in STEM positions.
Inadequate funding is a constant challenge. Funding is typically tied to the size of the student population, creating severe operational challenges for districts with smaller student pools. Also, transportation costs can be extensive in counties where students need to be bused long distances.
Internet access and virtual learning are a challenge as both rural students and their schools contend with slow or no internet connectivity.
“Rural schools face many of the same challenges as their urban counterparts – high poverty and inadequate resources among them,” said Patte Barth, Director of the Center for Public Education. “Yet as our report shows, the proposed solutions for metropolitan settings, such as school choice and extended time in school, don’t necessarily serve the unique circumstances of less-populated communities. Clearly, the nation needs a specific focus on policies and practices that will improve outcomes for the one-fifth of its children who attend rural schools.”
“Every student deserves the opportunity to receive an education that prepares them for future success, whether they live in an urban, suburban, or rural community,” said Gentzel. “This means recognizing the unique challenges facing rural districts and confronting them head on with actions aligned with the research.”
THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION — This post is from blogger Jillian Luchner, who is a Policy Associate with the Afterschool Alliance. The Afterschool Alliance is a nonprofit public awareness and advocacy organization working to ensure that all children and youth have access to affordable, high-quality afterschool programs.
The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the long-awaited successor to No Child Left Behind, creates a unique framework for school boards, teachers, administrators and communities to work together to make sure all children have access to high-quality, well-rounded education.
At the NSBA’s January 19 forum, “Public Education Agenda for America’s Success,” panelists discussed how the new law, new administration, and new Congress would affect education across the nation. Despite some level of uncertainty, panelists spoke to how school boards and local – even family level -decision making could be expected to play a larger role than in the recent past. When asked specifically about what school boards might do, much of the panelists’ conversation focused on the regular school day, but panelist Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute noted that afterschool programs are a time-tested, research-based part of the solution that should not be overlooked.
Afterschool and summer programs across the nation have a strong history of supporting school systems’ efforts to provide students with a well-rounded education that puts them on the path to wellness and success. These out-of-school-time programs provide students with educational opportunities, enrichment activities, access to physical activity and nutritious meals and snacks, as well as opportunities to build leadership and social connections. Notably, afterschool programs do all that during what’s sometimes called “prime time for juvenile crime” – the afternoon hours when children are most likely to be either perpetrators or victims of crime and when working parents worry most about their children’s safety.
Research shows that students who regularly attend quality afterschool programs improve their academics, have better school attendance and are more likely to graduate. Moreover, , the Afterschool Alliance’s recurring, nationally representative parent survey, consistently finds that parents strongly support afterschool programs. In the 2014 survey, the most recent, 89 percent of parents with a child in a program reported being satisfied with the program. In addition, 84 percent of all parents supported public funding for afterschool, while more than 7 in 10 said they think afterschool programs reduce the chance that their child will participate in risky behavior. Additionally, 80 percent of parents report that their children’s programs offer students opportunities for physical activity, and three in four parents are happy with the healthy snacks their student’s program provides. Despite high demand, for every child enrolled in an afterschool program, the parents of two more children say they would sign their children up, but cannot either because a program isn’t available or because it isn’t affordable.
District school boards often play an important role in leveraging resources to expand access to afterschool and summer opportunities. Afterschool and summer programs are frequently operated as a partnership among community nonprofits and school districts, with funding from federal, state and local sources as well as businesses, foundations, parent fees and other contributions. The average 21st Century Community Learning Center (a federally funded program that supports competitive grants in every state) has nine partner organizations with which it coordinates, which contribute in financial and in-kind support.
Across the nation, school system partnerships with afterschool programs have expanded opportunities for students while helping districts meet their goals for student success and family involvement.
The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Public School System has an out-of-school-time office that works with 80 different district partners to oversee summer programming for thousands of district students. Using research-based systems of support, the office coordinates closely with out-of-school time providers in the district and supports data, quality and systems-building to meet the city’s goals of graduation and college- and career-ready students.
In the early 1990s, the Corbin Independent School District (Kentucky) created the Redhound Enrichment afterschool program after conducting a community needs assessment in the district. Originally focused on providing a much-needed safe place for children in the afternoon hours, the program subsequently expanded its offerings to include more academic components, with the support of a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant. Twenty-five years later, the program is still in operation, employing a project-based learning model to provide a mix of academic supports, hands-on activities, physical activity and opportunities to primary and secondary students.
In Redwood City, CA the district builds partnerships with non-profit and private providers including youth centers, parks and recreation, Boys and Girls Clubs and the YMCA to offer afterschool opportunities. The programs give children opportunities for academic support, developing new skills and relationship building as well as other opportunities. Parent surveys show 97% satisfaction with the programs.
Such efforts are the tip of the iceberg, as afterschool programs across the nation work with school districts to promote student success.
With the Every Student Succeeds Act going into full implementation this year, now is a perfect time for districts to coordinate more closely with afterschool and summer learning programs. Final state plans are due to the federal Department of Education in either April or September and many state drafts (see our map) are out now. As part of that process, school districts will engage parents and other community stakeholders to consider how to meet state goals for improving graduation rates, academic achievement and student engagement and reducing chronic absenteeism.
Afterschool and summer programs are well-poised to help meet all these goals, and the 50 statewide afterschool networks stand ready to help connect school districts with afterschool and summer learning programs in their communities.
Jillian joined the Afterschool Alliance team as a Policy Associate in 2015. Her work involves tracking trends in afterschool policy and programs at the state and federal level and communicating successful and innovative approaches toward supporting youth during out-of-school time. Jillian worked for years as a teacher and afterschool educator in the Washington D.C. region. She also served as an AmeriCorps VISTA and community development director in California’s Central Valley. She holds undergraduate degrees in Economics and Geology and a Master’s in Public Policy specializing in education from the University of Maryland at College Park.
CENTER FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION – School “resegregation” has been in the news lately, but is it real? Are our schools becoming less diverse, even as our student body becomes increasingly so?
Source: Center for Public Education, Originally published February 21, 2017
We recently released a report on school segregation in the U.S. While we think that following national trends are helpful, and that lessons can be learned from one region to another, we also acknowledge that segregation looks different in each region, state, and metropolitan area. So, even though racial balance overall has been improving over the past 10 years as an average of all metropolitan areas in the U.S., the reality is that it’s been getting better in about 65 percent of cities and getting worse in the other 35 percent. We should definitely be working to learn best practices from those who are improving student integration to apply to areas that are getting worse.
Brown v. Board of Education really addressed de jure segregation, or laws that required that black and white students attend different schools. These laws were on the books in 17 southern states at the time of the landmark 1954 court case. States didn’t truly begin to integrate schools until the late 1960s, as the courts enforced Brown v. Board, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1968 court case Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. As the graph below shows, the South saw the greatest decrease of black students in racially isolated schools of any region from 1968 to 1989, as they were the ones that originally had segregation laws that were overturned. Court orders were in place in many southern school districts through the 1980s, with a few still being in place today.
What should also be noted in this graph is that the Northeast has the highest rate of black students in isolated school settings. Some of this may be attributable to having smaller school districts, which allows for more sorting and separation of students of different races and less ability for school district leaders to truly integrate schools if they have little diversity within their borders. However, Maryland has one of the highest rates of isolated schools for black students, despite having large, county-wide districts (Maryland also has a high proportion of black students). It may also be due to large, segregated urban areas that have greater impacts on statewide segregation rates. For example, New York City public schools have very few white students, which means that black students are isolated, weighing heavily on racial isolation statistics for the entire state. Nearly two-thirds of black students in the state of New York attend schools that are less than 10 percent white, making New York the most isolating state for black students. Chicago has a similar impact for Illinois.
Of the largest 25 metropolitan areas, Chicago has the highest dissimilarity rate between black and white students; 79 percent of black students would have to move to a school with more white students in order to achieve complete racial balance (in which all schools have equal proportions of each student group). While this, of course, is not practical, as families often live in segregated neighborhoods, it highlights the separation between students living in the same metropolitan area.
We can do better. We did do better, but we let gains in integration slide. School leaders need to start thinking innovatively across attendance zones and district boundaries to ensure that all students are exposed to a diverse set of peers and equal resources. That means having community support from parents who understand that diverse schools benefit all students.
A new report — “Busting the Myth of ‘one-size-fits all’ Public Education,” — from the Center for Public Education (CPE) found an abundance of choice in public schools, both in program offerings and school selection. CPE is the research tank for the National School Boards Association (NSBA). The report comes at an opportune time with the increasing focus in Washington, D.C. and state capitals on educational choice.
“Extraordinary activities and approaches occur in public schools every day because school boards and school leaders continually devise and employ innovative approaches to help students succeed,” said Thomas J. Gentzel, Executive Director & CEO of the National School Boards Association. “The constant effort to enhance public education has produced an amazing array of learning opportunities spanning course selection, learning styles, and choice of school.”
Public schools are not the monolith critics of public education make them out to be. CPE found that the broadest range of educational and extracurricular options exists in public schools. The report notes that while larger public high schools offer more program choices than smaller ones, even small public schools do better compared to private high schools in programs for which data is available: Gifted or Honors classes, Advanced Placement, and distance learning. High-poverty public schools also outpace private schools overall on high-level course offerings.
Other key findings in “Busting the Myth of ‘one-size-fits all’ public education,” include:
Public high schools offer more educational and extracurricular options for students including the arts, Advanced Placement, Gifted or Honors classes, and distance learning opportunities than private schools.
Public schools are more likely to offer afterschool child care and tutoring or enrichment activities.
School counselors play a key role in students’ learning and care: Eighty percent of public schools have at least one part-time counselor compared to only 32 percent of private schools.
The vast majority of public high schools offer access to hands-on college experience with almost all (98 percent) offering career preparation.
The majority of public school students have the option to transfer to schools within their districts or neighboring districts.
“The neighborhood public school remains the school of first choice for the large majority of families, as school districts offer a growing range of options in their efforts to better serve the different interests and needs of individual students,” said Patte Barth, Director of the Center for Public Education. “This not only includes the nearly two-thirds of school-aged children who have access to public schools outside their attendance zone. As this report shows, curricular and extracurricular options abound inside the public school building, too, that are designed to engage students in learning.”
School choice advocates tend to define educational choice in a binary way – with the sole focus on choice of school building. But that approach fails to recognize the number and range of options that are offered inside public school buildings. When it comes to choices and opportunities for students, CPE’s report shows that public schools offer the broadest range of educational choices and are not “one-size-fits all.”
Read the report, “Busting the Myth of ‘one-size-fits all’ Public Education,” by Patte Barth and Chandi Wagner at http://bit.ly/2wO14Q5
I was a fourth-grade teacher in Tulsa, Okla., when I decided to go back to school myself and study education research. I continued to teach and the difference in my instructional style after attending graduate school was like night and day. I attribute a great deal of my own personal growth as a teacher and the success of my class to simply addressing the social and emotional aspects of my students.
When I began my second year of teaching, I decided I needed to foster some social skills in my fourth-graders before I could really begin tackling the academic subject material. I remember feeling this might be a big risk. My class was below grade level academically, but I felt that not addressing the social and emotional issues was where I went wrong in my first year. As a consequence, my first year of teaching resulted in an out-of-control classroom that got in the way of numerous academic learning opportunities.
So, I began my second year by teaching my students how to talk to one another in a productive and nonjudgmental way. This may seem like something you would expect a nine or 10-year-old to be able to do, or a skill that they would simply pick up over time, but I felt that it was necessary to teach this as explicitly as one would teach multiplication.
During my first year as a teacher, I tried to limit student-to-student interaction because it often lead to arguments and disruptions, but I knew that this was a skill that all people needed in their lives. To directly teach this skill, we engaged in a lot of role playing as a class. Students would practice disagreeing about nonacademic subjects in a respectful way so that they could make the distinction between a subject disagreement and a personal attack. My goal was for them to be able to eventually talk about an idea and disagree about something, without taking it personally, and to be able to understand a different perspective.
To understand another perspective on a subject is a type of critical thinking, but also a form of empathy. So, when I designed the behavior system in my class, I wanted one of the first consequences to be a reflection sheet and one-on-one discussion with me and the student. Students would fill out a paper where they explained their behavior and the reasoning behind it. I would then ask them questions to walk them through the process to reflect on their choices and understand how the other student or students were feeling because of that choice. Then we would discuss different ways to handle the situation in the future so that the student could learn from his/her mistake instead of repeating it.
My second year of teaching was so much more enjoyable for me and my students, and I think a big reason was because of these changes. Instead of simply reacting to behavior, I could anticipate it and address some of the underlying causes head on. That year, my students grew substantially in their academic subject knowledge, but hopefully they also left my class with skills like empathy, collaboration and self-reflection which are just as important for success.
Nearly 20 percent of the country’s students are enrolled in rural schools, yet are not provided the same focus in national policy or research as students in urban and suburban school districts. “Out of the Loop,” a new report from the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA), Center for Public Education (CPE), finds that poverty, isolation and inequities are exacerbated for rural students by the lack of attention to the unique needs of this considerable student population.
