A new report by LFA and Grunwald Associates, with support from AT&T, examines how parents perceive the value of mobile devices, how they see their children using mobiles, and what they think of the possibilities for mobile learning.
Blog Posts By Cheryl S. Williams
The May 22, 2011, Outlook Section of The Washington Post contained a column titled “5 Myths about fixing America’s schools” by Paul Farhi that is one of the few articles in the mainstream press to focus accurately on public education in the United States. At the 
Learning First Alliance (LFA), we are well aware that all of us at the local, state, and national level need to be vigilant in our efforts to improve the public school experience for all our students, especially those who live in poverty and/or have physical or emotional disabilities. And, at no time do any of the members of LFA suggest that we should do away with achievement testing; however, based on the depth and length of experience working in and with local public schools, the education leadership of the 17 member organizations of LFA know that easy answers, proposed quick fixes, and punitive use of standardized test data contribute nothing to sustained school improvement. A look at the five myths detailed by Mr. Farhi makes the case for a constructive conversation that is built on the truth around the work we do:
- Myth #1: Our schools are failing. What we know is that we have a serious equity issue with US public schools. In areas where communities are affluent and community members value education, the public system is quite good. Such is not the case in poor communities without supportive infrastructure. However, even with the equity challenges, the percentage of American’s earning a high school diploma has risen steadily for 30 years and the percentage of 16-to-24 year olds who were not enrolled in school and ...
All of us can agree that the United States needs to carefully examine our efforts in STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math) with an eye towards improving rigor, expanding reach and ensuring that more of our students are both interested and proficient in these subjects. Certainly, from an economic health and employment standpoint, we should all be concerned with raising the bar on STEM standards while nurturing the effectiveness of the professionals who teach these subjects. However, agreeing on the “what” that needs to be done is always easier than agreement on the “how” to get the job done. ...
It’s been more than a week since the U.S. Department of Education sponsored International Summit on the Teaching Profession took place in New York City. For those of us who were observers, the conversation was valuable but the extended time spent sitting and listening challenged our ability to absorb all that was being exchanged. However, a few themes kept resurfacing:
- In countries with high performing students as measured by the PISA tests, the teaching profession is held in high esteem and attracts the strongest students to its preparation programs.
- Conversely, those same countries support a highly selective process for identifying potential teachers and
...
The theme of the March issue of Principal Leadership, the publication from NASSP, is “Seeing the Future…” and features thoughtful articles by Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, Richard Rothstein, Diane Ravitch, and George H. Wood. Each article explores the complexity of the issues facing public education today and going forward and explicates the simplistic approaches currently in vogue to “fix” schools. In his look at “The Future of Public Education” George H. Wood captures both hope and despair for the institution of public schooling. The despair is the short term view with subsequent hope for long term change.
Wood’s despair, shared by many of us who have spent our careers working in public education, is around the current rhetoric and policy initiatives labeled as “reform” that redirect funds toward programs that fail to address the core problem and result in the scapegoating of professionals in the field. While acknowledging that many institutions of teacher preparation are dropping the ball when it comes to turning out the teachers that schools need, what is now being touted as an innovative approach is teachers who come through “quickie” certification programs and who focus on drilling kids to succeed on tests. Also, the notion that new teachers who come through alternate certification programs are somehow more capable of working with students in ...
Technology has redefined how we work, play and communicate at work and at home. For those of us involved in advocating for technology’s appropriate role and substantial impact on public K-12 schooling, the redefinition has been slower than we would have liked. The Learning First Alliance (LFA) hopes to accelerate more widespread understanding and implementation of technology for both instruction and information management by expanding our coalition to include, effective March 1, 2011, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). ISTE represents more than 20,000 educators, 80 affiliate member groups, 89 countries, and 65 education technology corporations in their efforts to advance excellence in learning and teaching through innovative and effective uses of technology.
ISTE’s value system aligns nicely with LFA goals and objectives and includes the belief that:
- strategic partnerships and collaboration are essential to realizing a shared vision for education excellence
- organizational excellence focuses on innovation, transparency, and fiscal responsibility
- power resides in a diverse and inclusive global community of members who learn, teach, and lead to advance the field
- global connections and partnerships advance educational excellence, teaching, and leadership for all stakeholders
For too long K-12 education leaders have communicated within silos of ...
In a recent report titled, Building Professional Development to Support New Student Assessment Systems, Stephanie Hirsh, executive director of Learning Forward, reminds us that all the innovations and new data points in the world won’t improve student outcomes unless the teachers responsible for student learning have their own learning needs met. We know that key elements for successful, continuous professional learning must include collective responsibility, time and support, use of data, collaboration, classroom-based support, and access to external expertise. Deep understanding and thoughtful planning will be required of all educators at all levels in the state and school district if new assessment systems are to transform instruction rather than to act as another add-on to a teacher’s day.
We know (and have known for years) that the highest performing school systems focus on recruiting, mentoring, and developing great teachers. These systems also know that professional development is a career-long imperative. New assessment systems and Common Core Standards will provide teachers with powerful new resources to guide all students toward college and career readiness. However, the success of these new systems will rely on the ability of educators using them to ...
As I continue my journey through the Learning First Alliance (LFA) member publications, I encounter more articles rich with ideas than I can write about. However, the January 2011 issue of The School Administrator, published by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), offers up an opinion column that I found especially compelling. Harold Kwalwasser, a private attorney in Washington, DC, who is researching and writing a book on school reform, has penned a column entitled “Overselling the Myth of the Bad Teacher and Tenure”, that boldly states that, “Eliminating teacher tenure is at risk of being seriously oversold.”
Kwalwasser has spent the past year researching more than 40 successful school districts, high-performing charters, and respected private schools for a book he’s writing on what works in education. What he learned is that while tenure is often central to political talk, it has very little to do with success or lack thereof on the ground. In districts that were organized to promote learning, teachers were motivated even with tenure in place and the system had its own way of encouraging poor performers to leave. High performing school districts assess students frequently and make the data available to principals and teachers. The transparency and ...
One strategy I’m using to get up-to-speed in my position as the new executive director at the Learning First Alliance (LFA) is to delve into the LFA member publications that land on my desk almost daily. It is true that each publication is a wealth of thoughtful articles that examine the challenges and rewards professional public educators across the nation deal with on a regular basis. I’m reminded that some of my favorite thought-leaders continue to seek new information, explore alternate approaches, and share their observations in ways that remind me that we know a good deal about how to make schooling better, we just lack the will or if not that, the systems thinking approach that could help us do what we know will make us better.
An example of that reality is the article authored by Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor of Education at Stanford University and supporter of teachers par excellent, in the Winter 2010-2011 issue of the American Educator, published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Dr. Darling-Hammond’s article “Soaring Systems” looks at three nations’ public education system, each of whom started with very little and purposefully built highly productive and equitable systems in the space of only two to three decades. Before considering what those three countries, Finland, Singapore, and South Korea, did to ...
I was anxious to read the December/January issue of the Phi Delta Kappan because the cover promised a focus on how we can use technology to improve teaching and learning, a field I’ve been immersed in for some time. But once I delved into the issue, while the technology articles were interesting and represented a variety of viewpoints, I was really excited to see the article on the Kalamazoo Promise. Full disclosure here: my good friend and colleague, Jim Bosco, professor emeritus in the Education Department at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, had told me about this project several years ago as it was kicking off. The article details the progress of a project that promised a fully paid college education for any Kalamazoo public school student who graduated with an academic record strong enough to be selected for admission to a state-supported institution of higher education. Jim was excited about the project and his enthusiasm was infectious. Here was a community that focused first on the outcome they wanted….every student proceeding to post-secondary education….not how the school district was going to ensure students took advantage of the “carrot.” ...
I was intrigued by two stories in the December 13 issue of Newsweek on the subject of public school reform in the United States: the cover story, an essay authored by Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools whose picture and quote “I’m not done fighting” graced the cover (as a former English Language Arts teacher, I would have hoped for a more elegant word choice, but then I suppose space was an issue); and a second story, buried in the middle of the magazine entitled “Give Peace a Chance”, featuring a full page photograph of the president of the Hillsborough County, FL teacher’s union and chronicling the successful school improvement efforts in that school district, the result of collaboration among all the professionals in the system, including the teachers’ union. As a career educator, I think the more provocative magazine cover would have featured photographs of both women juxtaposed with the question: What will it REALLY take to improve all our schools?? ...
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