Last month, a pair of Apple shareholders demanded in an open letter that the company address growing concerns about children’s addiction to their products. In light of research on the detrimental effects of electronic-media use, investment firm JANA Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System argued, parents need better resources to make sure children are using devices “in an optimal manner.” While Apple defended its parental controls and protections for children, the letter was proof that more people are starting to realize what many in the scientific community have been saying for years: Overuse of screen-based technology is bad for children’s health.
Modern technology is powerfully addictive, especially for the young, developing mind. With teenagers ages 13-18 averaging almost nine hours of entertainment media use a day—that doesn’t include homework or other media use in school—it’s no wonder many parents are starting to notice. (Even two of technology’s most prominent creators, Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, famously admitted in interviews that they limited their own children’s screen use.) Psychologists and neuroscientists have shown correlations (and in many cases, causation) between overusing technology and lower grades, trouble sleeping, inability to focus, poor self image, and depression and anxiety. Some research even shows a decrease in gray matter—the brain tissue responsible for sensory perception, memory, emotion, and self-control—in a technology addict’s cerebral cortex.
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
At a certain moment last year, an uncomfortable silence took hold in my classroom. Lauren had volunteered to read the part of Mama during a reading of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Lauren was an excellent student: She was kind, insightful, a frequent participant in class discussions, and a remarkably hard worker. That day though, her mind was elsewhere.
In perfect silence, her classmates stared at me with faces that anticipated how I would respond to Lauren’s missed cue. I looked in her direction, waiting for some acknowledgement on her part before breaking the silence. Eventually, she caught on. “Oh, God,” she said, re-orienting herself. “I’m so sorry.” Her classmates giggled and sighed, as she put aside her iPhone and struggled for some time to find her place in the paperback. We weren’t able to finish the scene before the bell rang.
Of all the individual struggles I had with students and their smartphones over the past few years, this one got to me most. This wasn’t a case of a student being disengaged or bored—she had volunteered to read, after all—yet, Lauren’s impulse to check her Twitter account was strong enough that she was willing to risk stalling the entire class’ progress to satisfy it. Surely, I told myself, the smartphone issue was more complex than I wanted to believe.
Indeed, the numbers are staggering: According to Common Sense Media’s 2015 Census, on any given day the average American teenager consumes just under nine hours of entertainment media, excluding time spent in school or for homework. This raises the question: Where can learning fit in?
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
I’ve now been doing the Education Week RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings for about a decade, striving to recognize scholars who do academically significant research while also contributing to the public square. After all, I’ve long argued that on an issue like education, our impassioned public debates benefit when scholars take the time to engage. Of course, encouraging this kind of activity always runs the risk of introducing perverse incentives.
As I’ve written each year for most of the past decade, I have addressed two common questions while unveiling the rankings: Can somebody game this rubric? And are you concerned that this exercise will encourage academics to chase publicity?
In years past, I’ve dismissed these worries, noting that if scholars were motivated to write more relevant articles, pen more popular books, or communicate more accessibly, that would be great. And, while there’s obviously a point where communication turns into sleazy self-promotion, most academics were so far from that point that I wasn’t unduly concerned…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
In this special collection of Commentary essays, Frederick M. Hess and four education scholars discuss the pros and cons for academics who want to wade into public debate.
Editor’s Note: This Commentary is part of a special report exploring game-changing trends and innovations that have the potential to shake up the schoolhouse.
Read the full report:10 Big Ideas in Education.
My career has been motivated by two questions: What underlies opportunity gaps in educational outcomes? And how can we use empirical insights to help close them?
My first attempt to use scientific evidence to improve educational practice was with a team of management consultants who were working with a charter-management organization to reduce class sizes from 25 to 23 students in secondary schools. I shared with them the landmark Tennessee STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) study, which found that class-size reductions improved academic outcomes for younger children but only when class sizes were reduced to between 13 and 17 students. The team quickly changed course in response.
About the Author
Lisa Quay is the executive director of Mindset Scholars Network. Based in Los Angeles, she previously worked at the Stupski Foundation, Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the Berkeley School of Law, and the Bridgespan Group.
How easy, my 23-year-old self thought. All you have to do is put up a slide with facts, and people will change their behavior! I learned quickly, however, that “facts” are never straightforward, and data alone are never enough.
My understanding of this disconnect between research and practice has deepened in my work with Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth and the 26 other leading scientists studying individual and structural factors that shape achievement motivation as part of the Mindset Scholars Network…
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Editor’s Note: This Commentary is part of a special report exploring game-changing trends and innovations that have the potential to shake up the schoolhouse.
Read the full report:10 Big Ideas in Education.
I have spent many years working in education as a teacher and social worker, and it is clear that schools are no longer just a learning environment for young people. As the number of students affected by homelessness or living at or below the poverty level continues to increase, the demand for services for those affected also increases. Schools have become sanctuaries that provide food, warmth, and support, with a little education thrown in. The reality is that learning takes a back seat for a child whose basic needs are not met.
Shining a light on youth homelessness galvanizes districts to confront the prevalence of homelessness and begin creating solutions. Congress passed the McKinney-Vento Act more than 30 years ago, issuing landmark legislation that recognized a shared responsibility among community members to care for young people who live without safe and stable housing. And in 2012, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness began a coordinated effort across federal agencies to end youth homelessness by 2020. Despite these efforts, homelessness continues to have a big impact on the academic and economic success of our students. Homelessness can contribute to students’ failing classes and affect their social-emotional well-being. For school districts, it can topple graduation rates.
About the Author
Kerry Wrenick is the state coordinator for homeless education at the Colorado Department of Education. Based in Denver, she was the president of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth from June 2016 to October 2017.
It has been my challenge to find a better way to support these students to help them reach their full potential.
In 2015, I was the McKinney-Vento liaison for Kansas City Public Schools—which are located in the highest-poverty county in the state of Kansas. The community had nearly 1,200 identified homeless students and counting, and families were turning to our schools for help. But a lack of resources and funding to provide assistance compounded the problem. We couldn’t count on federal grant funds alone, which then rounded out to about $50 per student.
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
By Donna Fletcher (Conference Coordinator, National Science Teachers Association)
As a parent, I recognize that I am my children’s biggest advocate and I work hard to make sure that they have the best learning opportunities inside and outside of the classroom.
When I relocated from Washington, D.C. to Florida, I struggled to find schools that were rigorous in their instruction, included strong community and parental involvement, provided a diverse selection of extra-curricular activities, and offered the support services my children needed. Eventually, I found a school that met the majority of my expectations, but that school was located in a different county. As a result, I relocated to an address within that area. With a background in education and familiarity with the District of Columbia Public Schools system (DCPS) through my older children, I constantly found myself comparing the materials being taught at my children’s elementary school to the lessons that were taught in DCPS over 15 years earlier. To my chagrin, my younger children were lagging far behind, academically.
Therefore, my search to find a more rigorous academic program led me to placing my younger children in a private, Christian-based school. However, I have found that while private schools promote a superior academic experience, in actuality, they lack more than they deliver. Academic rigor, community and parental involvement, extracurricular activities, and the passion needed to encourage the love of learning were all missing from the private school my children attended. Thus, my search continues.
The new national education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), gives more power back to states to determine their own academic standards, but provides several grant opportunities to ensure school districts are implementing evidenced-based interventions to improve academic achievement. Student Support and Enrichment Grants combine several programs from No Child Left Behind to improve academic achievement by providing all students with funding for improved school conditions, well-rounded learning, and efficient use of technology. Title IV, Part B of ESSA also provides opportunities for communities to expand or establish community learning centers, which provide a broad array of resources; including meaningful parent engagement.
Florida has updated its academic standards in an attempt to align them with college-and-career-ready expectations twice, since 2011; the most recent update occurred in 2015. However, Florida’s ESSA plan does not explain the process through which updates have occurred. Florida does attempt to emphasize a well-rounded education by including progress in science and social studies as an indicator of school success. However, Florida fails to include progress in English Language Proficiency (ELP) as an indicator of school success and will only provide assessment instructions in English; despite a diverse student population. Furthermore, Florida does not incorporate student subgroup (race/ethnicity) data in its school grading system. Student subgroup data will only be reported on school report cards. This process does not guarantee struggling subgroups will be identified and supported. Florida proposes to use a simple A-F grading system to identify underperforming schools. For schools that do not earn a “C” grade after two years, the plan calls for the schools to close or turn over operations to a charter or an external operator. While schools are held accountable for continued failure, as a parent, I am concerned about the impact on students who are enrolled during the two-year improvement period. Lastly, Florida does not explain how it will use the set-aside Title I dollars for school improvement or how the state will encourage the equitable distribution of funds.
Overall, while the plan clearly articulates its intentions, it provides little explanation for how the stated goals will be achieved. How can I, as a parent, get more involved and engaged to help advocate for my children? For my children, who are in the middle of the pack, how can they receive resources to accelerate their abilities to the next level? How does Florida’s ESSA Plan empower parents to choose higher-performing schools with very few available spots for students zoned to under performing schools?
Florida’s ESSA plan is not an all-encompassing document; specifically as it relates to the lack of information regarding explanations for funding, school accountability, and amended academic standards. The consolidated state plan should be viewed as one additional resource in the search to find answers and be empowered to impact our children’s education. As a parent, my goal is to support instruction received inside the classroom by fostering added learning through enriching opportunities outside the classroom and like all parents I want the best for my children.
Donna Fletcher is a mother to eight children, Conference Coordinator for the National Science Teachers Association, and a fierce parent advocate. Fletcher has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of the District of Columbia and a Masters in Human Development from George Washington University.
Public education in America needs reform—and badly. There is an abundance of data showing the underperformance of our nation’s public schools. For example, the results of a major cross-national test, the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment, placed American students 30th in math and 19th in science out of all 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an organization of the largest advanced economies. And the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress administered by the U.S. Department of Education found that a mere 40 percent of 4th graders, 33 percent of 8th graders, and 25 percent of 12th graders were “proficient” or “advanced” in math.
That’s not to say that all public schools are bad—quite the contrary. However, ineffective education tends to center in large, urban areas. When was the last time you heard someone say they wished they could move to Detroit to send their kids to that city’s public schools? It’s a pointed question—but the answer would be just the same if you said Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, or Philadelphia. This is not a single state or a single school’s problem—it is a systematic problem for the entire country.
Consider this sad reality: Our nation produces technology so advanced that I could use the phone in my pocket—which is already three generations old—to take a video of you and email it to someone in London, but at the same time we can’t seem to teach a 4th grader to read in Detroit. Does this make sense? Why have we allowed this state of affairs to arise?
Read the full story here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Gary Wolfram is the William Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College in Michigan.
Many years ago when I was teaching middle grade students, I had a daily activity I called ‘banned word of the day.’ I used words such as “interesting,” “like,” “nice,” and, “cool.” I would write the word on the chalkboard, draw a circle around the word, and draw a line through it. Doing that signaled to my students that they could not use that word that day. I was tired of reading book reports that described each and every book as “interesting” and wanted to push my students to expand their vocabularies. The students made a game out of the activity and listened carefully to each other, waiting for someone to slip up. Several times a day I would hear someone shout out, “Oooh, Mrs. Billings, she said ‘interesting.'” The students and I had a great time with these banned words of the day.
However, one day one of my bright students in the urban school in which I taught said, “Mrs. Billings I don’t think ‘banned word of the day’ is right.” When I asked why, he replied, “You’re teaching us U.S. history and all about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and I think ‘banned word of the day’ is a violation of my right of free speech!” His statement produced a big smile on my face. Here was a student who was actually putting school knowledge to practical use. He was right. As much as I would like for students to use more expressive and expansive vocabularies, they had a right to use any words in school, as long as they were not obscene, racist, sexist, or homophobic.
Now, we learn that the Trump administration is considering banning certain words. According to The Washington Post, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been prohibited by the current administration from using a list of words in any of its official budgetary documents for the coming year. Those words are “diversity,” “transgender,” “vulnerable,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based,” and “entitlement.” This choice of banned words reflects, not an attempt to expand the officials’ vocabularies, but rather an attempt to choreograph the science and funding landscape to prohibit certain types of research. If you cannot say “diversity,” then how can you fund projects focused on diversity?
Read the full story here: May require an Education Week subscription.
When people think of “urban education” in its most favorable light, they think of dedicated education professionals working hard in difficult conditions to eliminate the achievement gap by raising the academic achievement levels of their low-income, disadvantaged students.
However, a more widely held perception is that we are treading water in a stifled and almost hopeless effort to help kids who probably do not have a chance to succeed.
What an outdated, energy-sapping, and inappropriate mode of thought for this point in the 21st century. If that is our sole focus, then we should turn in our uniforms and get out of the fight.
We need to change the paradigm and broadcast our goal of preparing the next generation of students to fill the known, and the as-of-yet-unimagined, workforce needs of tomorrow.
Let us stop looking back with our heads down and look up to the future with an intentional eye on the unequivocal target of excellent career-life preparedness for all students. Let us embark upon a new frontier of technology, science, and social development that fills a need that has for too long gone unfilled in America.
Our families, students, and the nation’s economy need us to modernize our effort.
Every year, thousands of companies line up to apply for the 85,000 H-1B visas available to bring in foreign professionals to take on largely high-tech jobs awaiting them in the U.S. Those visas were filled in just four days in April, and some 235,000-foreign-born workers applied for them.
Among other things, the importation of foreign talent tells us there are plenty of jobs in our country, but simply not enough young people prepared to take them; that is where we, as urban education leaders, come in. Rather than wringing our hands about whether political types will provide enough funding for closing the achievement gap, we should be pushing the notion our country loses ground to other nations by our fear of tapping into the resources that our urban schools represent.
We should point out, with help from both the private sector and government, that we can generate enough bright and capable young people to fill the critical technology, medicine, education, and science jobs that will energize our economy, raise the standard of living, and create even more jobs.
It is time we shift the paradigm away from either a perspective of urban education as an inevitable failure or a deficit that can only be addressed by benevolent outsiders on a missionary quest of salvation. It is time we lean into urban education as a place to jump-start the revitalization of an old-fashioned plodding system into a model for the 21st century.
We took the first step at the end of September with our 50th Annual CUBE Conference, where hundreds of champions and experts at the forefront of urban education came to share their experiences, lessons, and ideas for the future.
We must see the young people — impacted by historical oppression, contemporary marginalization, and repeated hobbling by current circumstances — as the potential leaders they are. And, we must get them to see their future not as a perennial game of catching up, but as leading the world.
The world, the economy, and our children await our leadership in this area. It is imperative we answer the call.
–written by Micah Ali (mali@compton.k12.ca.us), a member of California’s Compton Unified School Board and the 2017-18 chair of the CUBE steering committee.
This article first appeared in the Decembe 2017 issue of American School Board Journal (ASBJ). Read more from ASBJ here.
By Lynette Monroe (Program Assistant, NNPA ESSA Media Campaign)
Education officials in Texas put a lot of work into the Every Student Succeeds Act state plan that they submitted to the Department of Education. We can all learn from what they included and what they chose not to include.
The Texas plan is supported by the strategic priorities of the Texas Education Agency (TEA). These priorities include: (1) recruiting, supporting, and retaining teachers and principals; (2) building a foundation of reading and math; (3) connecting high school to career and college; and (4) improving low-performing schools. TEA acknowledges these priorities require support and therefore list three prerequisites referred to as “enablers” for effective implementation of these strategies. These enablers include: (1) increased transparency; (2) ensuring compliance; and (3) the strengthening of organizational foundations.
Overall, Texas’s plan is designed to implement ESSA as Congress intended; allocating resources and funds according to need, closing the achievement gap, and increasing community partnerships. TEA states several long-term goals. The first, being that by the year 2030, sixty percent of Texans aged 25-34 will possess some form of post-secondary credentials. Another long-term goal is a 94 percent high school graduation rate. For English Language Learners, TEA proposes that by 2032, forty-six percent of students should be achieving English language proficiency. To support these long-term goals, Texas has established short-term targets in five-year intervals.
A major component of equitable resource allocation is the collection of data. TEA evaluates academic performance by ethnicity, economically disadvantaged, students receiving special education services, students formerly receiving special education services, English learners, continuously enrolled, and mobile. The minimum size for subgroup data reporting is 25. Data for subgroups 10 or smaller will be calculated using a three-year composite score. Considering the population of Texas metropolitan areas, it seems the subgroup size of 25 is appropriate. TEA will also periodically review the resource allocation process for local education agencies; which could include a review of per-pupil spending.
ESSA requires that schools use three academic measures and one non-academic school quality or student success measure to determine school achievement. TEA has chosen to use the “percentage of assessments at or above the Meets Grade Level standard for all students and student groups by subject” as their school quality and student success measure for elementary and secondary schools. For high schools, TEA will use college, career, and military readiness to include: students who earn dual credits; students who successfully complete AP Exams, students who are awarded associate’s degrees while in high school, students who enlist in the military, etc. These “non-academic” indicators are disappointing since the U.S. Department of Education encourages less emphasis on testing. Four of the six indicators of school success identified by TEA include an element of testing. Students deserve holistic education that values social development as well as academic achievement. Primarily focusing on test scores as a means of determining success devalues other important categories of intelligence, such as musical-rhythmic and harmonic abilities.
Texas does deserve praise for their inclusion of a “Closing the Gaps Domain” in their A-F accountability system. The Closing the Gaps Domain focuses on educational equity for all children; irrespective of ethnicity, economic status, or special education status. The Closing the Gaps domain must represent at least 30 percent of the overall school rating. Any school that has one or more significant gaps in achievement between subgroups will be identified for targeted support and improvement. TEA will also use a ranking system; comparing school progress to other schools with similar student demographics.
Texas also seems to have made every effort at establishing community partnerships by proposing numerous consultations under a variety of circumstances. Campuses that need comprehensive support or require even more rigorous interventions must undergo a district-led improvement plan. However, before any plan may be submitted the district must consult with parents and community members. TEA has also included parent and community feedback in their initiatives to reduce the risks of student drop-outs; the Texas Readers Initiative focuses on creating parental and public awareness while the redesign of school report cards assists parents in better understanding their child’s learning needs.
So, although school accountability measures focus primarily on testing, and support for a well-rounded curriculum like the promotion of the benefits of a free enterprise system, as well as, religious literature including “the Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament) and New Testament, and its impact on history and literature,” Texas made a concerted effort to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act according to the original intention of the law to allocate resources and funds according to need, close the achievement gap, and increase community partnerships.
Lynette Monroe is a master’s student at Howard University. Her research area is public policy and national development. Ms. Monroe is the program assistant for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign. Follow Lynette Monroe on Twitter @_monroedoctrine.
Commentary By Donald Coburn
When people think of “urban education” in its most favorable light, they think of dedicated education professionals working hard in difficult conditions to eliminate the achievement gap by raising the academic achievement levels of their low-income, disadvantaged students.