Jan The Marketing Man » Education 2010 http://janthemarketingman.com The Marketing Manifestation Website Blog Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:45:09 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 No gold stars for successful L.A. teachers http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/no-gold-stars-for-successful-l-a-teachers/ http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/no-gold-stars-for-successful-l-a-teachers/#comments Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:51:01 +0000 Guest Author http://janthemarketingman.com/?p=1407

latimes.com

L.A. Unified has hundreds of excellent instructors. But no one asks them their secrets to success, and most of the time no one praises them. Often their principals don’t even know who they are.

By Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times

It’s a Wednesday morning, and Zenaida Tan is warming her students up with a little exercise in “Monster Math.”

That’s Tan’s name for math problems with monstrously big numbers. While most third-graders are learning to multiply two digits by two digits, Tan makes her class practice with 10 digits by two — just to show them it’s not so different.

On this spring day, her students pick apart the problem on the board — 7,850,437,826 x 56 — with the enthusiasm of game show contestants, shouting out answers before Tan can ask a question. When she accidentally blocks their view, several stand up with their notebooks and walk across the room to get a better look.

The answer comes minutes later in a singsong unison: “Four hundred and thirty-nine billion, six hundred and twenty-four million….”

Congratulations, Tan tells them, for solving it con ganas. That’s Spanish for “with gusto,” a phrase she picked up from watching “Stand and Deliver,” a favorite film of hers about the late Jaime Escalante, the remarkably successful math teacher at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has hundreds of Jaime Escalantes — teachers who preside over remarkable successes, year after year, often against incredible odds, according to a Times analysis. But nobody is making a film about them.

A teacher’s value-added rating is based on his or her students’ progress on the California Standards Tests for English and math. The Times has rated about 6,000 Los Angeles Unified School District elementary school teachers using the method. Search a teacher by name or school using the form below.

Most are like Zenaida Tan, working in obscurity. No one asks them their secrets. Most of the time, no one even says, “Good job.”

Frequently, even their own colleagues and principals don’t know who they are.

As part of an effort to shed light on the work of Los Angeles teachers, The Times on Sunday is releasing a database of roughly 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers, ranked by their effectiveness in raising students’ scores on standardized tests of math and English over a seven-year period.

The findings are based on an approach called value-added analysis, which is designed to allow fair comparisons of teachers whose students have widely varying backgrounds. Although controversial, the method increasingly has been adopted across the nation to measure the progress students make under different instructors.

L.A. Unified has had the underlying data for years but has chosen not to analyze it in this way, partly in anticipation of union opposition. After The Times’ initial report this month showed wide disparities among elementary school teachers, even in the same schools, the district moved to use value-added analysis to guide teacher training and began discussions with the teachers union about incorporating data on student progress into teacher evaluations.

The results of The Times’ analysis are not a complete measure of a teacher by any means, but offer one way to see whether an instructor is helping — or hindering — children in grasping what the state says they should know.

The Times found that the 100 most effective teachers were scattered across the city, from Pacoima to Gardena, Woodland Hills to Bell. They varied widely in race, age, years of experience and education level. They taught students who were wealthy and poor, gifted and struggling.

In visits to several of their classrooms, reporters found their teaching styles and personalities to differ significantly. They were quiet and animated, smiling and stern. Some stuck to the basics, while others veered far from the district’s often-rigid curriculum. Those interviewed said repeatedly that being effective at raising students’ performance does not mean simply “teaching to the test,” as critics of value-added analysis say they fear.

What’s clear from the data is that these teachers have an immediate and profound effect on how much children learn. On average, their students leapt 12 percentile points on tests of English, from the 58th to the 70th. In math, the gains were more stark: a 17 percentile point jump, from 58th to 75th. All in a single year.

The idea of publicly rating teachers by name has generated enormous controversy among educators and experts across the country. The debate has focused on whether the method is sound and the publicity is fair to those with low rankings.

Often lost in that discussion are the benefits of singling out those who consistently succeed.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said as much in a speech last week, denouncing a culture in public education that has long been averse to talking about success stories.

“The fact is, rather than shining a light on effective teachers, our education system hides them,” he said.

Mystery of good teaching

Experts have long known that highly effective teachers can overcome the challenges students face both inside and outside of school. But why they are so successful — and whether their skills can be passed along to others — remains largely a mystery.

Most of the things districts track about teachers — their age, years of experience, education and credentials — do not appear to matter much, at least when it comes to raising students’ performance on tests.

What does matter? Is it chemistry, technique, dedication, rigor? Might it be a thousand smaller, almost invisible things, depending on the subject and type of students?

Hundreds of books purport to answer those questions, but no clear consensus has emerged. And few of the competing theories have been rigorously tested, said Thomas Kane, a leading education researcher at Harvard University.

“It’s very difficult for an individual teacher to distinguish between the valuable suggestions and the snake oil,” he said.

That’s in large part because there is no agreement on how to identify the best teachers. It’s something Kane and other education researchers have spent much of the last decade trying to sort out.

In a seminal study in 2008, Kane and a colleague set out to experimentally test the reliability of the value-added approach, which assesses a teacher’s effectiveness by measuring the year-to-year gains of each student on standardized tests.

Among other things, some researchers had been concerned about the wide variation in value-added results for individual teachers from year to year, the potential for error in the findings and the possibility that the results would be skewed by how students were assigned to classrooms.

In Kane’s experiment, conducted at Los Angeles Unified with administrators’ permission, 156 district teachers who volunteered for the project were randomly assigned to classrooms. Kane and his colleague tried to predict, using value-added analysis, how students would do under those teachers. The projections were then compared with the students’ actual results.

The conclusion: Value-added analysis was a strong predictor of how much a teacher would help students improve on standardized tests. The approach also controlled well for differences among students, the study found.

With $45 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Kane and other researchers are now following 3,000 teachers in six school districts to see if other types of evaluation — including sophisticated classroom observations, surveys of teachers and reviews of student work — are also good measures of teacher performance.

In the meantime, Kane said that, although it is not perfect, “there is currently not a better measure of teacher effectiveness than the value-added approach.”

Wide-ranging advice

Identifying the most successful teachers is merely a first step. The next is to study them closely and find ways to pass their techniques on to others.

It is no simple undertaking.

Some of the top teachers in The Times’ analysis said in interviews that they weren’t sure exactly what made them effective, or were skeptical that whatever it was could be distilled and passed on.

Diane Hollenbach, who recently retired from Broadous Elementary School in Pacoima, was the most effective elementary school teacher of the roughly 6,000 analyzed by The Times.

“The ones that love their students and love their job do well,” she said. “You can’t bottle that, and you can’t teach it.”

Others had wide-ranging advice for their fellow teachers.

Jilla Sardashti, who taught last year at Parmelee Avenue Elementary School in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood, said she teaches critical thinking skills from the first day of school.

“These kids are as smart as any other kids in the district,” said Sardashti, whose students are mostly poor and Latino and often still learning English. “I’m really good at figuring out what they need, and I provide them with experience to know about the world around them.”

Hollie Bloch, who retired in July from Balboa Gifted Magnet in Northridge after teaching in the district 39 years, said that challenging students — especially high-achieving ones — was essential.

“I teach Shakespeare to children,” she said. “If the teacher’s expectations are high, and you have control of the classroom, those kids should do well.”

Said Aldo Pinto, a 32-year-old teacher at Gridley Street Elementary School in San Fernando: “The biggest challenge is getting them to buy into the fact that school is important.”

He does that by telling students his own story as the son of Mexican immigrants.

Pinto, like most other teachers interviewed, said his good results had not been recognized.

“No one is ever really singled out, neither good nor bad,” said Pinto. “The culture of the union is: Everyone is the same. You can’t single out anyone for doing badly. So as a result, we don’t point out the good either.”

“When I worked at a bank, I was employee of the month,” he added. “For LAUSD, for some reason, it’s not a good thing to do.”

Extraordinary achievements

Morningside Elementary in San Fernando is in many ways an average school for the district.

Like students at Parmelee, its pupils are largely poor and still struggling with English. Its test scores are below the state goal but in the middle of the pack for L.A. Unified.

In this very ordinary school, year after year, Tan quietly accomplishes extraordinary things.

In the 2008-09 school year, four of Tan’s students started below grade level in math. By the end, they were all advanced. In English, nine of her students started below grade level. All but two ended the year at grade level or higher.

Tan is 62 but looks to be in her 40s. An immigrant like many of her students, she understands what they face. She is still self-conscious about her strong accent from her native Philippines, which she left at 27.

When not teaching, she is a marathon runner, with the wiry frame to show for it. Last spring, she finished Boston’s in 4 hours, 20 minutes.

Inside the classroom, she sets a sprinter’s pace, at times zipping around her students’ desks in an athletic shirt and shorts.

Tan is not reading from a district playbook or drilling her students in how to take tests. She says she has little patience for the district’s rigid curriculum and at times ignores it. That gets her into trouble on occasion with district administrators, who urge teachers to stay on the same pace.

Tan brims with innovative ways to reach limited-English students, handle discipline problems and keep the kids engaged. “I do a lot of singing, games,” she said. “It doesn’t look like a lesson.”

But no one asks for her advice. She says her fellow teachers at Morningside consider her strict, even mean. She tends to keep to herself.

“Nobody tells me that I’m a strong teacher,” she says.

That’s OK by her, she adds. Year after year, she watches her students make enormous progress and feels a quiet sense of satisfaction.

Second-generation success

Tan’s students made strong gains in each of the seven years analyzed by The Times. Indeed, she seems to have been pulling students up for a generation.

About twenty years ago, Karina Reyna and her twin sister both had Tan as their first-grade teacher, an experience Reyna still remembers vividly.

The girls had been born in Mexico and entered the U.S. illegally with their parents, neither of whom had graduated from high school. The family lived in a working-class area in San Fernando, where Reyna’s father installed carpets.

By first grade, Reyna said, she still didn’t speak English. Ms. Tan was determined to change that.

“I really didn’t like her,” Reyna recalled. “I remember crying every day.”

Tan pushed Reyna relentlessly, accepting nothing but her best work. Reyna’s English improved, but when she continued to struggle in math, Tan stayed after school to help her catch up.

“Now I recognize it wasn’t mean, it was strict,” Reyna said. “She was pushing me to do what I was capable of. Maybe she even saw something I didn’t see.”

Reyna and her sister Daniella stayed in touch with Tan over the years. Tan attended their 15th birthday party and years later Daniella’s 2006 graduation from Cal State Northridge, which both sisters attended after becoming U.S. citizens.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget her,” said Reyna, who works for an insurance company and plans to finish her college degree soon. “Without her, there wouldn’t have been somebody saying, ‘You have to finish school; you have to go to college.’ ”

When Reyna learned that her daughter, Jazmin, had been assigned to Tan, she was convinced the girl would thrive.

“I told her, ‘She’s really strict,’ ” Reyna recalled. ” ‘You’re going to be pushed, but it’s going to be good for you.’ ”

She was right.

Jazmin entered Tan’s class in 2007 above grade level in math. By the end of the school year, she had vaulted 74 points to 600 on the state test — a perfect score.

Having just finished fifth grade, Jazmin was recently accepted into a gifted-magnet middle school. Reyna expects her to graduate from college and go into medicine. She hopes her son, a kindergartener, will also be assigned to Tan.

“She pushes kids to be their best,” Reyna said.

Evaluation form limited

Tan measures her success in stories like these.

But by the LAUSD’s measure, Tam simply “meets standard performance,” as virtually all district teachers do — evaluators’ only other option is “below standard performance.” On a recent evaluation, her principal, Oliver Ramirez, checked off all the appropriate boxes, Tan said — then noted that she had been late to pick up her students from recess three times.

“I threw it away because I got upset,” Tan said. “Why don’t you focus on my teaching?! Why don’t you focus on where my students are?”

Ramirez said he wants to give more recognition to his excellent teachers, but with no objective measure to rely on, he’s concerned about ruffling feathers.

“What about the teachers who feel they should have been recognized?” he said. “There’ll be a whole mess. The district knows this would open up a can of worms.”

“That’s why it doesn’t happen.”

jason.felch@latimes.com

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

]]> http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/no-gold-stars-for-successful-l-a-teachers/feed/ 0 The Socialist State Of Education Is Shrinking http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/the-socialist-state-of-education-is-shrinking/ http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/the-socialist-state-of-education-is-shrinking/#comments Sat, 04 Sep 2010 06:30:19 +0000 Guest Author http://janthemarketingman.com/?p=1396

[Note: The reason for highlighting this article is to point out the trends in technology that are changing established institutions, specifically public education, not to criticize or ridicule Teachers - in any way, shape or form.

Just as e-mail killed (some of) the Post Office, the Internet (is still) killing newspapers and "mainstream" media and Amazon.com (largely) killed the shopping center bookstores as well as set the stage for iTunes to (almost completely) kill the record store - none of these "deceased" institutions are "bad" or "evil".

They just did not change with the times. At least not fast enough to keep pace.

We will always need Teachers and I have the utmost respect for their dedication, contribution - and tolerating a lot of "crap".

Sadly, they are in the same situation as the cheerful Post Office worker, hard working investigative newspaper reporter, helpful book store or record store employee.

One hundred years ago, the best buggy whip manufacturing worker could find fortune in the automobile industry  - because we will always need transportation - it is just a question of what kind.

I believe the same is true for teachers. Allow technology to be your friend - don't treat it as your enemy.]

Via Flopping Aces Blog

The Virtual School, grades K-12, is catching on and is offering parents a option in the education of their children. Oregon has an excellent program in place and several states are also involved with the idea.

Children have lesson plans and lectures that are presented on the computer. Their actual school day can usually be completed in less time, excluding homework and the children can still engage in sports and social clubs after school. Thus they achieve the social interaction at school, but their school work is completed on a laptop at any location.

An obvious advantage is that the best teachers can be used to teach an infinite number of students and students don’t necessarily need to be held back by under performing and boring teachers that the seniority system of the Teachers’ Union maintain in position. Union Teachers can have their small classes, because after this system is improved, only parents that want to use the school as a free baby sitting service will want to send their kids to ‘physical’ school. The brick and mortar schools with their outrageous costs will be much smaller in the future and the demands and influence of the Teachers’ Union will become a part of our Socialist past.

In the future, parents who want the best possible education for college preparation will be able to pay for premier classwork to guarantee success in college or trade school. The advantages are limitless, but one of the most important aspects of the virtual school will be to neutralize the influence of the teacher unions on state and national politics.

Virtual Schools will be unstoppable once the sanctimonious cries from the unions are muffled. A quality public education can become available to more students throughout the country, a student can progress at their own rate and challenge themselves to greater achievements: no longer will students be condemned to an inferior education because of poor teachers and administrators. The educational costs and teacher pensions will become a nightmare of the past. In a few years the brick and mortar school will signify the substandard education of unmotivated parents and students.

Only highly motivated teachers will be needed, those who can inspire and actually teach, but why should we have any other type of teacher except to fill the union rolls.

]]> http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/the-socialist-state-of-education-is-shrinking/feed/ 0 Newsweek – The Creativity Crisis http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/newsweek-the-creativity-crisis/ http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/newsweek-the-creativity-crisis/#comments Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:03:10 +0000 JanRisbergsJr http://janthemarketingman.com/?p=1201

The Creativity Crisis

For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.

by Po Bronson and Ashley MerrymanJuly 10, 2010

Experts assess 10 drawings by adults and children for signs of out-of-the-box thinking. View gallery.

How Creative Are You?

Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective” and “an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.”

The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).

In the 50 years since Schwarzrock and the others took their tests, scholars—first led by Torrance, now his colleague, Garnet Millar—have been tracking the children, recording every patent earned, every business founded, every research paper published, and every grant awarded. They tallied the books, dances, radio shows, art exhibitions, software programs, advertising campaigns, hardware innovations, music compositions, public policies (written or implemented), leadership positions, invited lectures, and buildings designed.

Nobody would argue that Torrance’s tasks, which have become the gold standard in creativity assessment, measure creativity perfectly. What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University recently reanalyzed Torrance’s data. The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.

It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children.

Around the world, though, other countries are making creativity development a national priority. In 2008 British secondary-school curricula—from science to foreign language—was revamped to emphasize idea generation, and pilot programs have begun using Torrance’s test to assess their progress. The European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, holding conferences on the neuroscience of creativity, financing teacher training, and instituting problem-based learning programs—curricula driven by real-world inquiry—for both children and adults. In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.

Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”

Overwhelmed by curriculum standards, American teachers warn there’s no room in the day for a creativity class. Kids are fortunate if they get an art class once or twice a week. But to scientists, this is a non sequitur, borne out of what University of Georgia’s Mark Runco calls “art bias.” The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.

Researchers say creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom. The argument that we can’t teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false trade-off. Creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process. Scholars argue that current curriculum standards can still be met, if taught in a different way.

To understand exactly what should be done requires first understanding the new story emerging from neuroscience. The lore of pop psychology is that creativity occurs on the right side of the brain. But we now know that if you tried to be creative using only the right side of your brain, it’d be like living with ideas perpetually at the tip of your tongue, just beyond reach.

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.

Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with.

Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.

Is this learnable? Well, think of it like basketball. Being tall does help to be a pro basketball player, but the rest of us can still get quite good at the sport through practice. In the same way, there are certain innate features of the brain that make some people naturally prone to divergent thinking. But convergent thinking and focused attention are necessary, too, and those require different neural gifts. Crucially, rapidly shifting between these modes is a top-down function under your mental control. University of New Mexico neuroscientist Rex Jung has concluded that those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better. A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.

A fine example of this emerged in January of this year, with release of a study by University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Daniel Ansari and Harvard’s Aaron Berkowitz, who studies music cognition. They put Dartmouth music majors and nonmusicians in an fMRI scanner, giving participants a one-handed fiber-optic keyboard to play melodies on. Sometimes melodies were rehearsed; other times they were creatively improvised. During improvisation, the highly trained music majors used their brains in a way the nonmusicians could not: they deactivated their right-temporoparietal junction. Normally, the r-TPJ reads incoming stimuli, sorting the stream for relevance. By turning that off, the musicians blocked out all distraction. They hit an extra gear of concentration, allowing them to work with the notes and create music spontaneously.

Charles Limb of Johns Hopkins has found a similar pattern with jazz musicians, and Austrian researchers observed it with professional dancers visualizing an improvised dance. Ansari and Berkowitz now believe the same is true for orators, comedians, and athletes improvising in games.

The good news is that creativity training that aligns with the new science works surprisingly well. The University of Oklahoma, the University of Georgia, and Taiwan’s National Chengchi University each independently conducted a large-scale analysis of such programs. All three teams of scholars concluded that creativity training can have a strong effect. “Creativity can be taught,” says James C. Kaufman, professor at California State University, San Bernardino.

What’s common about successful programs is they alternate maximum divergent thinking with bouts of intense convergent thinking, through several stages. Real improvement doesn’t happen in a weekend workshop. But when applied to the everyday process of work or school, brain function improves.

So what does this mean for America’s standards-obsessed schools? The key is in how kids work through the vast catalog of information. Consider the National Inventors Hall of Fame School, a new public middle school in Akron, Ohio. Mindful of Ohio’s curriculum requirements, the school’s teachers came up with a project for the fifth graders: figure out how to reduce the noise in the library. Its windows faced a public space and, even when closed, let through too much noise. The students had four weeks to design proposals.

Working in small teams, the fifth graders first engaged in what creativity theorist Donald Treffinger describes as fact-finding. How does sound travel through materials? What materials reduce noise the most? Then, problem-finding—anticipating all potential pitfalls so their designs are more likely to work. Next, idea-finding: generate as many ideas as possible. Drapes, plants, or large kites hung from the ceiling would all baffle sound. Or, instead of reducing the sound, maybe mask it by playing the sound of a gentle waterfall? A proposal for double-paned glass evolved into an idea to fill the space between panes with water. Next, solution-finding: which ideas were the most effective, cheapest, and aesthetically pleasing? Fiberglass absorbed sound the best but wouldn’t be safe. Would an aquarium with fish be easier than water-filled panes?

Then teams developed a plan of action. They built scale models and chose fabric samples. They realized they’d need to persuade a janitor to care for the plants and fish during vacation. Teams persuaded others to support them—sometimes so well, teams decided to combine projects. Finally, they presented designs to teachers, parents, and Jim West, inventor of the electric microphone.

Along the way, kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas. And they’d unwittingly mastered Ohio’s required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. “You never see our kids saying, ‘I’ll never use this so I don’t need to learn it,’ ” says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. “Instead, kids ask, ‘Do we have to leave school now?’ ” Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state’s achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.

With as much as three fourths of each day spent in project-based learning, principal Buckner and her team actually work through required curricula, carefully figuring out how kids can learn it through the steps of Treffinger’s Creative Problem-Solving method and other creativity pedagogies. “The creative problem-solving program has the highest success in increasing children’s creativity,” observed William & Mary’s Kim.

The home-game version of this means no longer encouraging kids to spring straight ahead to the right answer. When UGA’s Runco was driving through California one day with his family, his son asked why Sacramento was the state’s capital—why not San Francisco or Los Angeles? Runco turned the question back on him, encouraging him to come up with as many explanations as he could think of.

Preschool children, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day. Why, why, why—sometimes parents just wish it’d stop. Tragically, it does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions.

Having studied the childhoods of highly creative people for decades, Claremont Graduate University’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and University of Northern Iowa’s Gary G. Gute found highly creative adults tended to grow up in families embodying opposites. Parents encouraged uniqueness, yet provided stability. They were highly responsive to kids’ needs, yet challenged kids to develop skills. This resulted in a sort of adaptability: in times of anxiousness, clear rules could reduce chaos—yet when kids were bored, they could seek change, too. In the space between anxiety and boredom was where creativity flourished.

It’s also true that highly creative adults frequently grew up with hardship. Hardship by itself doesn’t lead to creativity, but it does force kids to become more flexible—and flexibility helps with creativity.

In early childhood, distinct types of free play are associated with high creativity. Preschoolers who spend more time in role-play (acting out characters) have higher measures of creativity: voicing someone else’s point of view helps develop their ability to analyze situations from different perspectives. When playing alone, highly creative first graders may act out strong negative emotions: they’ll be angry, hostile, anguished. The hypothesis is that play is a safe harbor to work through forbidden thoughts and emotions.

In middle childhood, kids sometimes create paracosms—fantasies of entire alternative worlds. Kids revisit their paracosms repeatedly, sometimes for months, and even create languages spoken there. This type of play peaks at age 9 or 10, and it’s a very strong sign of future creativity. A Michigan State University study of MacArthur “genius award” winners found a remarkably high rate of paracosm creation in their childhoods.

From fourth grade on, creativity no longer occurs in a vacuum; researching and studying become an integral part of coming up with useful solutions. But this transition isn’t easy. As school stuffs more complex information into their heads, kids get overloaded, and creativity suffers. When creative children have a supportive teacher—someone tolerant of unconventional answers, occasional disruptions, or detours of curiosity—they tend to excel. When they don’t, they tend to underperform and drop out of high school or don’t finish college at high rates.

They’re quitting because they’re discouraged and bored, not because they’re dark, depressed, anxious, or neurotic. It’s a myth that creative people have these traits. (Those traits actually shut down creativity; they make people less open to experience and less interested in novelty.) Rather, creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world.

The new view is that creativity is part of normal brain function. Some scholars go further, arguing that lack of creativity—not having loads of it—is the real risk factor. In his research, Runco asks college students, “Think of all the things that could interfere with graduating from college.” Then he instructs them to pick one of those items and to come up with as many solutions for that problem as possible. This is a classic divergent-convergent creativity challenge. A subset of respondents, like the proverbial Murphy, quickly list every imaginable way things can go wrong. But they demonstrate a complete lack of flexibility in finding creative solutions. It’s this inability to conceive of alternative approaches that leads to despair. Runco’s two questions predict suicide ideation—even when controlling for preexisting levels of depression and anxiety.

In Runco’s subsequent research, those who do better in both problem-finding and problem-solving have better relationships. They are more able to handle stress and overcome the bumps life throws in their way. A similar study of 1,500 middle schoolers found that those high in creative self-efficacy had more confidence about their future and ability to succeed. They were sure that their ability to come up with alternatives would aid them, no matter what problems would arise.

When he was 30 years old, Ted Schwarzrock was looking for an alternative. He was hardly on track to becoming the prototype of Torrance’s longitudinal study. He wasn’t artistic when young, and his family didn’t recognize his creativity or nurture it. The son of a dentist and a speech pathologist, he had been pushed into medical school, where he felt stifled and commonly had run-ins with professors and bosses. But eventually, he found a way to combine his creativity and medical expertise: inventing new medical technologies.

Today, Schwarzrock is independently wealthy—he founded and sold three medical-products companies and was a partner in three more. His innovations in health care have been wide ranging, from a portable respiratory oxygen device to skin-absorbing anti-inflammatories to insights into how bacteria become antibiotic-resistant. His latest project could bring down the cost of spine-surgery implants 50 percent. “As a child, I never had an identity as a ‘creative person,’ ” Schwarzrock recalls. “But now that I know, it helps explain a lot of what I felt and went through.”

Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.

]]> http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/newsweek-the-creativity-crisis/feed/ 0 I Paid $100,000, and All I Got Was This Lousy Degree http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/i-paid-100000-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-degree/ http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/i-paid-100000-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-degree/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:48:05 +0000 Guest Author http://janthemarketingman.com/?p=1146

| June 2, 2010

Via Reason.com

Two recent New York Times articles try mightily to elicit sympathy for borrowers whose bad financial decisions turned out badly.

“Your Money” columnist Ron Lieber asks us to feel the pain of Cortney Munna, a 26-year-old NYU graduate who owes $100,000 for “an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies” that is not quite as lucrative as she expected. Munna “makes $22 an hour working for a photographer” in San Francisco (one of the most expensive cities in the country) and dreads the thought of “slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back,” which she says “feels wrong to me.” To his credit, Lieber assigns some responsibility for this state of affairs to Munna and her mother, who says:

All I could see was college, and a good college and how proud I was of her. All we needed to do was get this education and get the good job. This is the thing that eats away at me, the naïveté on my part.

But Lieber also wants to blame Citibank (featured in a photo accompanying the column) for “handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who had already amassed debt well into the five figures.” That may turn out to have been a bad business decision, but is it a bank’s job to tell a loan applicant what her priorities should be? Citibank made it possible for Munna to realize her dream of attending the college of her choice instead of various less expensive options, and Lieber is saying, in effect, that it should have told her to aim lower. Likewise, he faults NYU’s financial aid office for not giving Munna better advice, which would have meant suggesting that she attend a different, cheaper school. Not only is it unrealistic to expect a college to send away a student who is ready to pay full tuition, but at the time Munna and her mother probably would have resented the suggestion.

While Munna is paying the price for her financial folly, the borrowers featured in a story on the front page of Monday’s Times have decided that gradually paying off one’s debts is for suckers. Alex Pemberton and Susan Reboyras are taking advantage of the long delay between foreclosure and eviction in Florida to live “rent free” in St. Petersburg while spending the money that would have gone toward their mortgage on steak dinners, casino trips, and excursions in their “gas-guzzling airboat.” According to the Times, this couple represents a trend:

A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero. They use the money they save to get back on their feet or just get by.

“Instead of the house dragging us down, it’s become a life raft,” says Pemberton. “It’s really been a blessing.” He and his wife rationalize defaulting on the debt by citing the mortgage company’s stupidity in lending them money (emphasis added):

“We could pay the mortgage company way more than the house is worth and starve to death,” said Mr. Pemberton, 43. “Or we could pay ourselves so our business could sustain us and people who work for us over a long period of time. It may sound very horrible, but it comes down to a self-preservation thing.”

They used the $1,837 a month that they were not paying their lender to publicize A Plus Restorations [a business that restores pest-plagued attics], first with print ads, then local television. Word apparently got around, because the business is recovering.

The couple owe $280,000 on the house, where they live with Ms. Reboyras’s two daughters, their two dogs and a very round pet raccoon named Roxanne. The house is worth less than half that amount—which they say would be their starting point in future negotiations with their lender.

“If they took the house from us, that’s all they would end up getting for it anyway,” said Ms. Reboyras, 46.

One reason the house is worth so much less than the debt is because of the real estate crash. But the couple also refinanced at the height of the market, taking out cash to buy a truck they used as a contest prize for their hired animal trappers.

It was a stupid move by their lender, according to Mr. Pemberton. “They went outside their own guidelines on debt to income,” he said. “And when they did, they put themselves in jeopardy.”

That’s one way of looking at it.

More on borrowers who blame lenders for enabling them to buy an overpriced college degree here and here. Tim Cavanaugh on mortgage deadbeats here.

]]> http://janthemarketingman.com/education-2010/i-paid-100000-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-degree/feed/ 0 Amazon vs. Apple = Happy Days for Writers? http://janthemarketingman.com/global-microbrand/amazon-vs-apple-happy-days-for-writers/ http://janthemarketingman.com/global-microbrand/amazon-vs-apple-happy-days-for-writers/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:49:24 +0000 Guest Author http://janthemarketingman.com/blog/?p=773

Amazon vs. Apple = Happy Days for Writers?

Posted By Roger L Simon On January 20, 2010 @ 11:54 pm

I put a question mark on the title of this post because I’m a writer and we’re not used to happy days. And even if we have them, must of us grump around anyway like the self-pitying louts we are.

NEVERTHELESS… there is a potential bonanza for book writers (or authors, as we pretentious types prefer to call ourselves) in the news that Amazon [1]has gone into competition with the expected Apple tablet and, as of June 30, is offering authors and publishers a 70% royalty for their copyrighted work to be published on the Kindle.

The devil is hugely in the details on this, but this is something of a revolution and could be very good news for writers indeed, but not such good news for publishers. As a relatively established – and suddenly greedy – writer I’m thinking, what do I need a publisher for? Why should I split the 70% with those thieves? For what? Cover art? I can hire someone myself for peanuts (well, large size peanuts anyway). Publicity? I can bribe my fellow bloggers with a flat beer to promote the damn thing. And, okay, a few of those publishers are or have pretty good editors, but there’s always spellcheck and that weird grammar helper on Microsoft Word. (Does anyone know how to use that?) And now Amazon (and Apple) provide the distribution. I don’t even have to lick envelopes. Or pay my daughter to do it.

All right, I’m joking around a bit, but I’m still digesting this. When I was young, I aspired to have my books published by fancy names like Random House and Simon & Schuster and succeeded on occasion, but they only paid a ten percent royalty. The lure was they gave me an advance against those royalties, which sometimes earned out and sometimes didn’t, but that lure is seeming much less appealing at a seven-to-one ratio. It doesn’t even take a scratch pad to do the simple math. Sell fifty thousand downloads of a book for $8 a pop on Amazon and you just made yourself $280,000. This would have been an amazing bonanza for Georges Simenon who wrote his crime novels in eleven days. I’m lazy. It usually takes me six months to write a book. Of course, it could be I won’t sell anywhere near fifty thousand downloads, but the risk involved has suddenly gotten a lot more attractive, just as it has, I assume, for many other authors and would be authors. If publishers wish to succeed in this brave new e-world, they are going to have to drastically alter their royalty schedules. Massachusetts wasn’t the only revolution this week.

Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/01/20/amazon-vs-apple-happy-days-for-writers/

URLs in this post:

[1] Amazon : http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10437897-1.html

]]> http://janthemarketingman.com/global-microbrand/amazon-vs-apple-happy-days-for-writers/feed/ 0 How Online Learning Is Revolutionizing K-12 Education and Benefiting Students http://janthemarketingman.com/information-marketing/how-online-learning-is-revolutionizing-k-12-education-and-benefiting-students/ http://janthemarketingman.com/information-marketing/how-online-learning-is-revolutionizing-k-12-education-and-benefiting-students/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:46:22 +0000 Guest Author http://janthemarketingman.com/blog/?p=745

How Online Learning Is Revolutionizing K-12 Education and Benefiting Students

On January 12, 2010 @ 3:28 pm

Abstract: Virtual or online learning is revolutionizing American education. It has the potential to dramatically expand the educational opportunities of American students, largely overcoming the geographic and demographic restrictions. Virtual learning also has the potential to improve the quality of instruction, while increasing productivity and lowering costs, ultimately reducing the burden on taxpayers. Local, state, and federal policymakers should reform education policies and funding to facilitate online learning, particularly by allowing funding to follow the students to their learning institutions of choice.

Historically, American students’ learning opportunities have been limited and shaped by factors beyond their control. Geography has been an important factor. Does the child live near a good school? If not, do her parents have the financial means to place her in a quality learning environment? Access to quality instruction has been another factor. Was the child placed in a class with the best teacher? Are the teacher’s lessons–designed to instruct a classroom of 16 or more students–tailored to her level, learning style, and interests?

The development and proliferation of online learning and virtual learning options is beginning to break down these barriers. In the future, students will be able to receive customized instruction from teachers anywhere in the United States or even in the world. The best teachers will use technology to reach many more students. Virtual and blended-learning programs will enable mass customization in education, allowing students to learn at their own pace in ways that are tailored to their learning styles and interests.

The online learning revolution is already underway in the United States. As many as 1 million children (roughly 2 percent of the K-12 student population) are participating in some form of online learning. Today, 27 states offer statewide virtual schools that allow students to take a class online, and 24 states and the District of Columbia offer students the opportunity to attend a virtual school full-time. Growing numbers of school districts are offering virtual learning options that include supplemental instruction or blended-learning programs, which use online learning in combination with face-to-face instruction.[1] [1] Enrollment in online learning programs is expected to grow over the next decade. One analysis has predicted that half of high school classes will be online within a decade.[2] [2]

Students appear to be benefiting from online learning programs. While evidence about the effectiveness of K-12 online learning programs is limited, there is reason to believe that students can learn effectively online. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education published a meta-analysis of evidence-based studies of K-12 and postsecondary online learning programs.[3] [3] The study reported that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”[4] [4] In addition, online learning has the potential to improve productivity and lower the cost of education, reducing the burden on taxpayers.[5] [5]

The available empirical evidence on the effectiveness of online learning programs suggests that federal and state policymakers should enact policies to expand online learning opportunities. State policymakers could enact policies that expand, replace, or supplement the learning opportunities available in traditional schools. Federal policymakers could reform policies to allow states to develop innovative online learning programs and expand students’ learning options. Moreover, specific federal agencies–including the Department of Defense, State Department, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)–could use online learning to better accomplish their educational missions.

What Is Online or Virtual Learning?

Online learning is quite different from the traditional concept of education, which involves a school building, a classroom with rows of desks, and a teacher standing next to a chalkboard. What does it mean to say that a child is being taught through an online or virtual education program? How would a child interact with a teacher online, and how would such an online program be funded or governed?

Existing online or virtual learning programs differ from traditional education in a number of significant ways:

  • Scope. Online programs can be either comprehensive or supplementary to a child’s education. Some online learning programs are full-time. The students enrolled in a full-time online learning program do not attend a traditional brick-and-mortar school, but learn almost entirely online. Supplemental programs offer students the opportunity to take individual courses in an online setting to complement their instruction in a traditional school. For example, a student who wishes to take a class that is not offered by his or her school, such as an advanced placement course, could enroll in an online learning program in that subject.
  • Teacher interaction. Online learning can be delivered in multiple ways. Students can participate in online learning through either synchronous or asynchronous instruction. In synchronous instruction, students and instructors interact in real time. In asynchronous instruction, students learn at their own pace and on their own time schedules. Teachers evaluate their performance and provide feedback, such as grading performance on assignments and answering questions. In both settings, online learning programs generally require regular communication between teachers and students by phone, e-mail, instant messaging, and video conferencing.
  • Physical location. Some online learning programs allow students to learn exclusively from home, essentially on their own. Other online learning programs are housed in a physical location like a school. In addition, some schools offer “blended learning,” which combines online learning with face-to-face instruction.
  • Jurisdiction. Online learning programs can be funded publicly or privately. Among the public programs, online learning programs can be funded and governed by the state or school district. Many states now offer statewide online learning programs or virtual schools, which allow students to enroll in individual classes. Some states have “cyber schools” or virtual charter schools that students can “attend” full-time. In addition, many school districts and schools offer their own online learning options within the traditional school setting. In these respects, online learning programs can be funded or governed by the levels of government that traditionally oversee American public education: states, school districts, and chartering authorities. However, these jurisdictions, which are largely based on geography, are beginning to change because online learning allows students to receive instruction across district, state, and even national boundaries.
  • Range of students served. Online learning programs can serve students of all ages and learning backgrounds. Most online learning programs focus on serving older or high school students. A survey of school district administrators about online learning reported that an estimated 64 percent of students participating in fully online programs are in grades 9-12. Elementary students (grades K-5) comprise 21 percent and middle school and junior high school students (grades 6-8) account for the remaining 15 percent.[6] [6] The survey also revealed that online learning programs are serving a diverse range of student needs from advanced coursework to remedial education. For example, a majority of respondents agreed that each of the following were important reasons for online learning: “Offering courses not otherwise available at the school”; “Meeting the needs of specific groups of students”; “Offering Advanced Placement or college-level courses”; and “Permitting students who failed a course to take it again.”[7] [7]

The Potential Benefits of Online Learning

Given the many ways that the information revolution and the Internet have already changed and improved the lives of Americans, the potential educational benefits of online learning are very significant. A number of scholars and analysts have examined the potential benefits of online learning. Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb predicted that virtual education will fundamentally transform K-12 public education in the United States for the better in their 2009 book Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education.[8] [8] Clayton Christianson, a professor of business at Harvard University, and his coauthors Curtis Johnson and Michael Horn discussed how online learning will revolutionize learning in Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.[9] [9] Education experts Elizabeth Kanna, Lisa Gillis, and Christina Culver examined the potential benefits of virtual learning from a parent’s perspective in Virtual Schooling: A Guide to Optimizing Your Child’s Education.[10] [10]

Therefore, it is reasonable to expect virtual education to improve learning opportunities for American students in a number of ways:

  • Increased access to high-quality teachers. Online learning could address main discrepancies in American education–the disparate access to high-quality teachers and instruction caused by socioeconomic and geographic differences. A child’s chances of attending a school with high-quality teachers largely depend on where she lives, which is shaped by her parents’ financial means. Online learning could give all students, regardless of where they live, access to the best instructors. It could also address teacher shortages. In some subjects, such as science and mathematics, some schools have difficulty employing skilled teachers and therefore cannot offer students instruction in certain subjects. However, through online learning, a student attending a school without a physics teacher, for example, could learn physics from a teacher in another school district or even in another state.
  • Mass customization and optimization. Public education in the United States generally treats students in a standardized manner. For example, students are typically grouped by age, rather than by achievement level or learning style. Online learning has the potential to provide all children with customized education. Students can receive instruction at their own pace and in ways tailored to their unique learning styles and interests. Increased customization can make the learning process more enjoyable and productive. Moreover, it will also allow for more accurate feedback on students’ progress, enabling parents to monitor their children’s progress more closely and to hone accountability.
  • Increased flexibility. Online learning can provide students with greater flexibility in when and how they learn. Most instruction in American schools occurs each year between fall and spring and on weekdays between 8 am and 4 pm. Virtual learning allows students to learn anytime at their own pace. This allows students and families to use their time more efficiently to pursue other interests and activities. In addition, the flexibility of online learning can particularly benefit students who have specific challenges in their education, such as those who must change schools frequently and those who have fallen behind in their studies.
  • Improved flexibility for teachers. Online learning will also provide teachers with new career options and increasingly give teachers more freedom to instruct students in more productive ways. This has the potential to expand the talent pool of the teacher workforce and improve teacher quality overall. For example, teachers who are parents could value the flexibility of teaching from home, which allows them to balance their career more easily with their parental responsibilities.
  • Improved productivity and efficiency.Online learning has the potential to improve productivity and lower the cost of education, thereby reducing the burden on taxpayers. Moe and Chubb made this point in Liberating Learning: “Schools can be operated at lower cost, relying more on technology (which is relatively cheap) and less on labor (which is relatively expensive).”[11] [11] They estimate that a school could reduce its teaching staff by approximately one-sixth if elementary school students spent one hour per day learning electronically. The cost savings could be used in a number of ways, such as investing more in teacher training or teacher pay to improve teacher quality and effectiveness.[12] [12]
  • Innovation. The increasing use of online learning will provide instructors and online learning operators with incentives to innovate and develop new learning tools that could improve students’ learning options in ways unimaginable today.

The Empirical Evidence

While there is good reason to anticipate these theoretical or potential benefits, some evidence is already clear. Initial empirical evidence suggests that students can benefit from online learning options. A 2009 report from the U.S. Department of Education presented the findings of a meta-analysis of the evidence-based studies of online-learning programs, including 44 studies involving postsecondary students and seven studies involving K-12 students.[13] [13] The meta-analysis reported that, “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”[14] [14]

The report included other findings that may help policymakers understand how online learning affects students’ learning. For example, the report stated that instruction combining online learning with face-to-face elements produced better results than purely online instruction. Moreover, the researchers reported that students who participated in online learning and who spent more time on task benefited the most.

Many of these studies involved older students, and the researchers suggest caution when interpreting their findings, but the preliminary evidence suggests that online learning can provide a quality educational experience. This should give policymakers the confidence to expand the opportunities for online learning.

Virtual Learning in the United States

A recent estimate found that more than 1 million K-12 students participated in online courses in 2007-2008, an increase of 47 percent over 2005- 2006.[15] [15] This amounts to approximately 2 percent of the K-12 student population. The Evergreen Education Group reported in November 2009 that 27 states have state virtual schools and 24 states have full-time, statewide online schools. In all, 45 states and the District of Columbia have a state virtual school or online initiative, full-time online schools, or both. Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont are the only states without a statewide virtual school or full-time online schools.[16] [16]

In addition to these statewide or full-time virtual schools, many school districts offer blended or full-time online learning courses. The 2009 Sloan Consortium survey found that 75 percent of districts had one or more students participating in some form of online learning. Moreover, 66 percent of school districts with students participating in online learning expected participation to increase.[17] [17]

Parents and policymakers should note that the availability of online learning programs varies widely from state to state. For example, a student in Florida has more opportunities to learn online than a student in Maryland. The Florida Virtual School is the largest statewide, supplemental virtual learning program in the country with an enrollment of 154,000 in 2008-2009, compared to only 710 students in the Maryland Virtual School program.[18] [18] These different participation levels are primarily the result of differences in access and funding. The Florida Virtual School is a statewide supplemental program offered to all Florida students and supported by state government funding. In Maryland, students must obtain permission from their school districts before participating in the Maryland Virtual Program.

In addition to these publicly supported virtual learning programs, parents and students also have access to independent online learning programs offered by providers that range from companies, such as K12, and universities, such as Johns Hopkins University.[19] [19] The for-profit education industry accounts for approximately 10 percent of the education sector.[20] [20] As virtual learning becomes more popular, parents should expect to have increased opportunity to purchase online learning services from a diverse range of independent providers.

How to Expand Learning Options Through Online Learning

State and federal policymakers could enact a number of educational reforms that would improve learning options for students.

What State and Local Policymakers Should Do. State and local policymakers are best positioned to reform K-12 education and expand online learning options. If policymakers wish to provide online learning options to students in their state, they will need to transform the current system of education finance and governance, which funds and regulates a system that was largely designed in the 19th and 20th centuries. In general, policymakers need to reform education policies to create a venue for online learning (such as a state virtual school or cyber charter schools), incorporate online learning into the traditional school system, and perhaps most importantly reform funding systems to facilitate greater parental choice, including access to online learning programs.

To expand learning opportunities for students in their communities by reforming education policies that strengthen online education, state and local policymakers should:

  • Enact or expand statewide virtual schools. Every state could create (or expand) a statewide virtual school program to allow students across the state to participate in a supplementary or full-time online learning program. Today, the Florida Virtual School is a model of a thriving statewide virtual school program. Policymakers also need to reform funding formulas to enable students to choose to enroll in statewide virtual programs without requiring the permission of their schools or school districts.
  • Reform charter school laws to allow virtual charter schools. Today, 40 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws that allow the creation of independently managed public schools. However, not all states allow online or virtual charter schools. To expand access to online learning, policymakers should pass charter school laws that allow the creation of online or virtual charter schools.
  • Enact or expand hybrid online learning programs. In addition to creating new vehicles for online or virtual learning, school districts and public schools can implement online learning programs on their own. By creating hybrid learning programs or enacting online learning programs at the school or district level, they can complement traditional instruction offered in the schools. School districts could partner with existing online learning programs and share best practices with other schools on how best to incorporate online learning into their curricula.
  • Explore opportunities to partner with other states, schools, and online learning providers. While policymakers and legislators traditionally design education policies within states and district boundaries, states and school districts will have increasing opportunities to partner with other communities and organizations. For example, states could form partnerships or cooperatives to provide regional virtual schools. States could also work with public and private universities to develop online learning programs. Policymakers interested in expanding online learning opportunities for students in their state or community could develop creative policies to provide the best online learning programs.
  • Allow funds to follow the student. Whether students have access to online learning options will largely be determined by policymakers’ willingness to reform education funding to facilitate greater parental choice. This factor largely explains why the Florida Virtual School enrolls 154,000 students while the Maryland Virtual School enrolls only 710 students. If policymakers want to open the possibilities of online learning to all students, they must reform school funding mechanisms to allow the money to follow the students to their providers of choice. This could include reforming a state’s share of per-pupil funding to allow payment of a per-credit amount to a statewide virtual school if the student takes a course online. In other words, if a student takes one-fifth of her courses online, one-fifth of her share of the school’s per-student enrollment funding should be redirected to the virtual school. States could also provide scholarships or vouchers directly to parents to purchase online learning services for their children.

What Federal Policymakers Should Do. The federal government’s role in public education has traditionally been limited. However, since the 1960s, the federal government has become increasingly involved in funding and regulating public education. As of the 2004-2005 school year, the federal government provided 9.2 percent of the funding for public elementary and secondary schools in the United States.[21] [21]

To improve learning opportunities for students, Congress and the Administration should:

  • Reform U.S. Department of Education programs to allow state flexibility and student-centered funding. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 established the Department of Education’s basic approach to funding K-12 education. The current version of that law, No Child Left Behind, will soon be considered for reauthorization. When Congress reauthorizes federal education funding, policymakers should allow states greater flexibility in how they use federal education funding, including funding virtual education programs. In addition, states should have the option to allow Title 1 federal funds to follow disadvantaged students to schools of their choice, including online or virtual learning programs.
  • Reform federal K-12 education programs outside the Department of Education to use online learning. Beyond the Department of Education, dozens of federal departments and agencies fund K-12 education programs. Federal policymakers should consider using online or virtual learning to improve effectiveness and efficiency of these programs. For example, the Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) currently educates approximately 85,000 children of military personnel[22] [22] and is developing plans to create an online virtual high school for the 2010-2011 school year.[23] [23] A virtual school for the children of military personnel would likely expand their educational opportunities and minimize disruptions caused by transferring to new schools when their parents are transferred to new assignments.Themission of the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) is to “to provide quality education opportunities from early childhood through life in accordance with a tribe’s needs for cultural and economic well-being, in keeping with the wide diversity of Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages as distinct cultural and governmental entities.”[24] [24] The BIE serves 42,000 Indian students in 184 schools on 64 reservations and in 23 states. Many of these schools are in remote locations and face some of the same challenges of rural schools, including small teacher pools and limited course offerings. A virtual school for BIE students could expand learning opportunities for Native American students and strengthen their ties with students from other communities. Such a virtual school could be voluntary and structured in a culturally sensitive manner consistent with BIE’s mission.The State Department assists the families of personnel serving overseas by providing an allowance to purchase education for their children.[25] [25] According to the State Department, access to quality schooling for their children is an important consideration for Foreign Service officers and others when choosing overseas posts. Like the DODEA, the State Department could create a K-12 virtual school for its personnel or it could expand its “home study” reimbursement program by creating partnerships with virtual schools in the United States.

    Through the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program (CFCIP), the federal government currently provides funding to states to assist with the education of children in foster care. Since instability is a common problem for foster children,[26] [26] virtual school programs could be particularly beneficial. Congress could reform the CFCIP to allow foster children to use the federally funded education and job training vouchers for virtual learning programs.

Conclusion

Online learning has the potential to revolutionize American education. Today, as many as 1 million children are participating in some form of online learning. Twenty-seven states offer statewide virtual schools that allow students to take classes online, and 24 states and the District of Columbia offer students the opportunity to attend a full-time virtual school. School districts are increasingly offering virtual learning options, such as supplemental instruction or blended-learning programs that combine online learning with face-to-face instruction.[27] [27] Enrollment in online learning programs is expected to grow over the next decade. One analysis estimates that half of high school classes will be online within a decade.[28] [28]

Students appear to be benefiting from online learning programs. A meta-analysis of empirical evidence on online learning programs found that students learn as well or better online as in a traditional school setting. Other potential benefits included expanded access to talented teachers, customized learning, more flexibility for families, and improved school productivity.

Local, state, and federal policymakers would be wise to reform education policies to expand students’ learning options by increasing their access to online learning.

Dan Lips [29] is Senior Policy Analyst in Education in the Domestic Policy Studies Department at The Heritage Foundation.

[1] [30]John Watson, Butch Gemin, Jennifer Ryan, and Matthew Weeks, Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning: An Annual Review of State-Level Policy and Practice, Evergreen Education Group, November 2009, at http://www.kpk12.com/downloads/KeepingPace09-fullreport.pdf [31] (November 16, 2009).

[2] [32]Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn, “How Do We Transform Our Schools?” Education Next, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Summer 2008), at http://educationnext.org/how-do-we-transform-our-schools [33] (November 16, 2009).

[3] [34]Barbara Means, Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia, and Karla Jones, “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practice in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies,” U.S. Department of Education, May 2009, at http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence
-based-practices/finalreport.pdf [35] (November 16, 2009).

[4] [36]Ibid., p. xiv.

[5] [37]For example, Florida Tax Watch analyzed the fiscal impact of the Florida Virtual School, a model statewide virtual school, and reported that an enrolled student received $1,048 less in government funding than a student attending a traditional public school. This savings estimate does not include the costs for school facilities and maintenance if the student had enrolled in public school. Florida Tax Watch, Center for Educational Performance and Accountability, “Final Report: A Comprehensive Assessment of Florida Virtual School,” November 5, 2007, p. 77, at http://www.floridataxwatch.org
/resources/pdf/110507FinalReportFLVS.pdf [38] (November 23, 2009).

[6] [39]Anthony G. Piccianno and Jeff Seaman, “K-12 Online Learning: A 2008 Follow-Up of the Survey of U.S. School District Administrators,” Sloan Consortium, Hunter College, and Babson Survey Research Group, January 2009, at http://www.sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/pdf/k-12_online
_learning_2008.pdf [40] (December 28, 2009).

[7] [41]Ibid., p. 12.

[8] [42]Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb, Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009).

[9] [43]Clayton M. Christianson, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008).

[10] [44]Elizabeth Kanna and Lisa Gillis, Virtual Schooling: A Guide to Optimizing Your Child’s Education (New York: Palgrave MacMillen, 2009).

[11] [45]Moe and Chubb, Liberating Learning, p. 7.

[12] [46]Ibid., p. 80.

[13] [47]Means et al., “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practice in Online Learning.”

[14] [48]Ibid., p. xiv.

[15] [49]Picciano and Seamon, “K-12 Online Learning.”

[16] [50]Watson et al., Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning.

[17] [51]Ibid.

[18] [52]Ibid.

[19] [53]For more information on K12 and the Center for Talented Youth, see K12, “Enroll or Buy,” Web site, at http://www.k12.com/enroll-or-buy [54] (December 28, 2009), and Johns Hopkins University, Center for Talented Youth, Web site, at http://cty.jhu.edu/ctyonline [55] (December 28, 2009).

[20] [56]Carrie Lips, “Edupreneurs: A Survey of For-Profit Education,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 386, November 20, 2000, at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa386.pdf [57] (December 28, 2009).

[21] [58]U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics: 2008, Table 173, at http://www.nces.ed.gov
/programs/digest/d08/tables/dt08_173.asp [59] (November 23, 2009).

[22] [60]Department of Defense Education Activity, “DoDEA Facts,” at http://www.dodea.edu/home/about.cfm?cId=facts [61] (November 23, 2009).

[23] [62]Zach Miners, “Military to Debut Virtual School,” U.S. News & World Report, November 5, 2009, at http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2009
/11/05/military-to-debut-virtual-school.html [63] (December 28, 2009).

[24] [64]U.S. Department of the Interior, “The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE),” updated October 19, 2009, at http://www.bia.gov/WhatWeDo/Service
Overview/IndianEducation/index.htm [65] (November 23, 2009).

[25] [66]U.S. Department of State, Education Options for Foreign Service Family Members, chap. 5, at http://www.state.gov/m/dghr/flo/c23960.htm [67] (November 23, 2009).

[26] [68]Dan Lips, “Foster Care Children Need Better Educational Opportunities,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2039, June 5, 2007, at http://www.heritage.org/research/education/bg2039.cfm [69].

[27] [70]Watson et al., Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning.

[28] [71]Christensen and Horn, “How Do We Transform Our Schools?”

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