Innovation!
Writing commentaries on the best use of stimulus funds has become a thriving cottage industry. Don’t fund the status quo! the general argument runs. Fund innovation instead!
I’m beginning to wonder if we should start using the word “improvement” instead of innovation. This strategy might help us counter the tendency of some innovation zealots to value novelty over quality.
Former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner offered an egregious example of that tendency late last year, when he advocated the abolition of all but the largest school districts. To him, innovation seems to mean doing something drastic and doing it now.
More recently, Harvard’s Clayton Christensen showed a similar tendency when he argued that the feds should withhold stimulus funds from traditional teacher training institutions and devote them to alternative certification programs instead. “The government must … back the winners,” he wrote, “not defend the old institutions.” Of course, the jury is still out on the relative merits of traditional and alternative teacher training. But for Christensen, innovation is apparently its own reward.
Yet if quality is our goal, we should probably follow Linda Darling-Hammond’s lead and “put aside the tired debates over routes into teaching and focus on a clearer destination: substantially higher levels of teacher effectiveness.” To do so, she argued last April, we should “apply lessons from both traditional and alternative programs in new syntheses that substantially increase teachers' knowledge and skills.” On it's own, "innovation" isn't good enough.
In the absence of strong evidence of effectiveness, “innovation” seems to mean “my favorite reform idea.” Even worse, commentators often contrast their favored innovations with ostensibly passé improvement strategies such as professional development, family engagement, or standards-based reform.
Even Stanley Litow’s fine July 7th commentary in Education Week is guilty of this problem. At one point, Litow writes:
But if all we do is spend more on teacher development, in the same way we do now, it might not result in measurable improvement. If we decrease class size or lengthen the day without altering teacher quality, we might not see improvement either. If we test more often but leave the quality of the testing intact, that too might result in little benefit—and perhaps even have some disadvantages.
If you’re expecting Litow to argue for better teacher development and better assessments, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, he calls for investments in an array of technologies to improve district administration, classroom instruction, and parent engagement. Many of his ideas are truly compelling and do deserve to be funded. But let's be honest: Where’s the evidence that they will deliver big gains? If anything, recent research on the impact of technology on education has been disappointing.
“But innovative technologies have been poorly implemented!” technology advocates will object. And they’re right. Yet poor implementation has also hampered many worthy improvement efforts that don't go by the name of innovation these days. That hasn't stopped some innovation advocates from calling for the government to de-fund important areas like teacher professional development.
I'm all for innovation. We certainly won't get anywhere if we continue to do things the way we have always done them. But we shouldn't abandon important work in vital areas like standards, assessment, professional development and family involvement just so we can move on to the cool new thing.
SIGN UP
Visionaries
Click here to browse dozens of Public School Insights interviews with extraordinary education advocates, including:
- 2013 Digital Principal Ryan Imbriale
- Best Selling Author Dan Ariely
- Family Engagement Expert Dr. Maria C. Paredes
The views expressed in this website's interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Learning First Alliance or its members.
New Stories
Featured Story
Excellence is the Standard
At Pierce County High School in rural southeast Georgia, the graduation rate has gone up 31% in seven years. Teachers describe their collaboration as the unifying factor that drives the school’s improvement. Learn more...
School/District Characteristics
Hot Topics
Blog Roll
Members' Blogs
- Transforming Learning
- The EDifier
- School Board News Today
- Legal Clips
- Learning Forward’s PD Watch
- NAESP's Principals' Office
- NASSP's Principal's Policy Blog
- The Principal Difference
- ASCA Scene
- PDK Blog
- Always Something
- NSPRA: Social School Public Relations
- AACTE's President's Perspective
- AASA's The Leading Edge
- AASA Connects (formerly AASA's School Street)
- NEA Today
- Angles on Education
- Lily's Blackboard
- PTA's One Voice
- ISTE Connects
What Else We're Reading
- Advancing the Teaching Profession
- Edwize
- The Answer Sheet
- Edutopia's Blogs
- Politics K-12
- U.S. Department of Education Blog
- John Wilson Unleashed
- The Core Knowledge Blog
- This Week in Education
- Inside School Research
- Teacher Leadership Today
- On the Shoulders of Giants
- Teacher in a Strange Land
- Teach Moore
- The Tempered Radical
- The Educated Reporter
- Taking Note
- Character Education Partnership Blog
- Why I Teach
As a teacher 20 years, I've
As a teacher 20 years, I've seen enough "innovation" to choke on. I've been around long enough to see one cure-all after another but nothing seems to make my life in the classroom any easier. I love my kids, so I wonder why we keep doing this to them.
The politics is making
The politics is making teaching profession very difficult. It is disappointing to see that for most cities, hiring of school leaders depend on whom you know and what you know. those who are hired on that basis are called to do what politicians want them to do. These hired end up become incompetent in solving education matters, providing solutions to improve teaching and student learning. These hired are really school managers and far less school instructional leaders. Hiring competent instructional leaders in our public schools, those with higher degree of educational leadership might be the key to solving most of education matters. Let us stop to celebrate incompetency by keeping the blame on students and parents. Respecting teaching as a profession is necessary for everyone, politician or not, to improve our schools with less cost.
I hope I did not offend anybody. If so, then I am sorry.
Well, anonymous, I guess you
Well, anonymous, I guess you can't please everyone all of the time!
I agree with you that we need competent instructional leaders, but--to give administrators with or without leadership degrees a break--it's not always easy to know what the right path is. My worry is that some people touting innovation risk overstating the benefits and understating the risks of new policies. As a nation, we don't devote many resources to education research, and the research we produce doesn't always benefit practitioners, policymakers and communities.
Great post! I think you're
Great post!
I think you're right, we need to continue our work at improving the basic principles which include standards, assessment and quality instruction. Sadly, as school leaders, few of us have really been trained in designing our efforts for quality. We under plan and quickly jump to the next hot topic. By and large, these hot topics are important and valuable, but typically fail when placed inside of schools that have no systemic spine to them. Until our profession learns to focus on systems of continual quality improvement, we are destined to be whipped around by the likes of Gerstener and Christensen. The flaw in their argument is the assumption that anything has to be better than the status quo. Once they realize that their alternative needs to be systemic, the flaws will become apparent.
While we must make sure
While we must make sure meaningful learning takes place in our classrooms we must realize that children today have been around technology since birth. We must learn to handle technology well enough to be able to use it effectively in enhancing our students' learning experiences.
Anonymous: Let's hope the
Anonymous: Let's hope the next round of innovations actually helps you in the classroom.
Charles: "The flaw in their argument is the assumption that anything has to be better than the status quo." That's very well put. Some national commentators have made that argument explicitly! The notion that we should do anything, anything at all, to improve the current system can get us into very deep trouble. Focus on process and continual improvement is necessary. Many excellent reform ideas--old and new--have foundered on reformers' disdain for process.
Alina: I actually agree that children should learn to use technology well, because they'll use it for better or worse regardless of what schools do. If we do not help students to use technology in ways that enhance their learning/understanding of challenging and important content, we'll end up leaving them to their own devices--literally. (For an interesting discussion of this and related issues, see http://education.change.org/blog/view/books_were_nice.
Still, I think we should be cautious about assuming that technology=innovation=change=improvement. Technology has tremendous potential to benefit teachers, children and even parents, if it's yoked to sound principles of instruction and learning.
You are absolutely right! The
You are absolutely right!
The truth of the matter is that I got perturbed by the opposition to change. Granted not all change is good.
As educators we must meticulously research, assess,
and screen alternatives before we engage our students.
New and old effective knowledge alike, can only be put
to good use by educators willing to weave it into their curriculum in an effort to enhance the socio-academic development of our students. This doesn't imply that subject matters such as Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, Foreign Languages, and Social Studies should be disregarded... not at all!
I instruct public school teachers how to integrate technology in their classrooms and offer workshops on how to better address learning in the XXI Century. Much too often I find teachers tired of their careers, unwilling to improve and/or update their deliveries in class limiting their students' learning experiences, extinguishing their creativity and the desire to be lifelong learners.
I don't encourage wasting time trying out fads. I promote wise implementation of proven educational options.
Alina Moran
Curriculum Design & Technology Specialist
BrainStrong, Inc.
amoran @brain-strong.com
Where we're short is
Where we're short is methodology for reliably effecting transparent improvement/innovation/accomplishments in the el-hi enterprise. Few initiatives can answer a few commonsense questions:What do you want to do?How will you know when you've done it?What's the rough scenario for getting it done?How much incremental cost will the initiative require?How much time will it take to complete the initiative?Without credible responses to these questions, the initiative is bulls**t (using that term technically).
Thank you, Dick. You'll
Thank you, Dick.
You'll notice that I redacted your "technical term" a bit--We're a PG-13 website, after all...
You list important questions, and it would behoove "reformers" and "establishment" alike to have answers to those questions when they seek to get something done.
Most technology funding in
Most technology funding in our district seems to be used to support the district tech framework...not used to support instruction or the teaching of technology to students or teachers.
If we are equating innovation with increased use of technology, the ones benefitting in my neck of the woods are administrative staff and state department of education employees. Student data systems, new phone systems, school notification systems (grades, weather, general school news). The money appears to be going to make those tasks easier thereby making the jobs of those assigned those tasks easier. I haven't yet figured out just how that is improving the quality of education. To do that I think we have to talk about changes happening IN THE CLASSROOM.
Oh, by the way, tech department can't seem to find the time or funding to support tech in the classroom.
Leadership seems to have a
Leadership seems to have a hand in what troubles your neck of the woods.
Take a stand and hold your ground. If that fails go higher in the ranks and report what is going on and how it's affecting your student population until someone listens.
Too many folks in leadership positions have never spent a day teaching. They are not in synchronization with educators.
Alina
Anonymous: While I certainly
Anonymous:
While I certainly cannot address the situation in your district, I do think district-level technologies to keep better account of student data and other information can create efficiency, save money and support instruction--if well implemented! I'm sorry to hear that useful technologies have not made it into your classroom.
I've heard other teachers complain that technologies HAVE indeed made it into their classrooms, and that the technologies are more hindrance than help. That raises the larger questions of how well the technology has been integrated into the district's/schools goals, whether teachers have been fully involved in the selection and implementation process, and whether they receive support for using the technologies well.
These questions are not at all new, but they continue to bedevil some who rush into tech adoptions without laying the groundwork for success.
Post new comment