The Global Search for Education
“Multiple choice tests have been the dominant type of test in this country since World War I, but that is about to change.” — Roger Benjamin
If not the SAT, What?
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
What if educators were able to assess the 21st century skills that thought leaders in The Global Search for Education series talk about week after week? What if this 21st century replacement for the SAT was able to measure high school students’ critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem solving, and written communication; in other words, all the essential skills that both educators and employers have said students need to succeed in college and the workplace?
Until we are able to assess critical thinking, it probably won’t get taught. PISA’s international problem-solving standardized test does assess this, but according to Harvard University’s Dr. Tony Wagner, when it comes to the forward thinking model for American schools and colleges to watch, “The College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA/CLA) is really in a class by itself.” Wagner sees CWRA as an essential part of what he calls “Accountability 2.0.” But he adds it “should be accompanied by audits of students’ digital portfolios which show evidence of progressive mastery of the skills that matter most, such as critical and creative thinking, communication, and collaboration.”
Naturally, I was curious to learn more about this promising candidate for the gold standard in the future world of assessment. I recently got the opportunity to chat with the President of the New York based CAE (Council for Aid to Education), home of the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), Dr. Roger Benjamin. Prior to his role at CAE, Roger was a senior research scientist at RAND from 1990 to 2005 (director of RAND Education from 1994-1999).
“It is becoming clear that schools, colleges and employers are eager to move beyond reliance only on multiple choice tests.” — Roger Benjamin
Do you think that standardized tests should be used to evaluate the abilities of high school students for admission to college? Do you think that GPA alone would be sufficient?
I do think there is a role for standardized tests because of the grade inflation in high school GPA’s, widely disparate metrics used to evaluate students, and the advantages students from affluent high school districts have compared to students from disadvantaged schools. There are students everywhere in the United States that, when given the chance, demonstrate extraordinary potential. Standardized tests are therefore an important additional tool for admissions officers. However, standardized test protocols must become better aligned with the education reform movement underway, including the common core standards movement which calls for open ended tests instead of the heavy reliance on multiple choice tests, which are not worth teaching to.
In your own words, would you describe for me what you believe the current SAT measures versus your own performance assessments?
The SAT measures the aptitude high school seniors have for doing well in college through reasoning and verbal abilities tests. The CWRA measures high school students’ critical thinking, analytical and quantitative reasoning skills, problem solving, writing mechanics and writing persuasiveness skills that educators and employers believe high school graduates need to have to succeed in college and work.
“There are important soft skills such as creativity and collaboration, but the challenge is how to measure them at the same level of scientific reliability as the skills that we are currently measuring reliably.”— Roger Benjamin
Why is the College and Work Readiness Assessment a better option to the SAT?
I would replace the word “better” with the word “different.” The CWRA is more congruent with the requirements of today’s “Knowledge Economy” in which it is more important to be able to access, structure and use information than to only accumulate facts. Multiple-choice questions require the ability to recognize a painting. In comparison, performance tasks require the student to paint. Definitions of learning have shifted to the ability to apply what one knows to new situations. Performance assessments capture this change. We are not sure whether the CWRA+ will compete directly with the SAT or be thought of as additional important information for college admissions officers. However, it is becoming clear that schools, colleges and employers are eager to move beyond reliance only on multiple-choice tests.
Students learn best when they are being taught to learn as opposed to being taught to pass a test. Can we overcome the problem of teaching to a test?
A strong point of the performance tasks (case studies and realistic problems) of the CWRA+ and CLA+ is that it is very difficult to teach to these tests. There are not simple “right” or “wrong” answers. The focus is on how well the student reasons, not on whether they get the “facts” right. Indeed, all the facts needed to answer the tasks are provided to the students taking the test.
The SAT is a multiple-choice test with the exception of the writing test. Grading of the multiple-choice test is easy. The answers are either right or wrong. The CWRA assessment is more about judgment. How do you assure grading consistency across the exams taken in different locations and at different time periods?
Performance assessments such as CWRA have been around a long time. Teachers have not liked multiple-choice tests but we could never figure out how to take to scale the more complicated problem solving assessments that constitute the CWRA. However, we can now train human scorers to score open-ended essays based on scientifically designed rubrics as reliably as multiple-choice tests. Moreover, computer assisted scoring, built on our human scoring protocols, score these responses at levels that are as reliable as human scoring, which further reduces error and cost.
“Multiple-choice questions require the ability to recognize a painting. In comparison, performance tasks require the student to paint.” — Roger Benjamin
What would be your best argument for keeping the SAT?
It is relatively cheap and easy to administer and score. It has a significant number of reliability and validity studies that corroborate its efficacy in predicting a student’s GPA in the first year of college.
You speak a lot about measuring critical thinking skills. How much do these new CWRA assessments require students to have honed their creative skills?
That’s a good question. We know that students in the arts and sciences at the college level do better than students who are in vocational or applied subjects. We think that is probably because they do more analytic based writing and are involved in more open Q and A sessions. However, there is a lot of work to be done on how creativity plays into doing well on assessments like this. So that is an interesting question.
Do you believe that strong creative skills are important to the process of identifying problems and finding solutions?
There are important soft skills such as creativity and collaboration, but the challenge is how to measure them at the same level of scientific reliability as the skills that we are currently measuring reliably. Hopefully we will succeed in measuring these additional skills that are also very important.
“The CWRA measures high school students’ critical thinking, analytical and quantitative reasoning skills, problem solving, writing mechanics and writing persuasiveness skills that educators and employers believe high school graduates need to have to succeed in college and work.”— Roger Benjamin
How many schools nationally are using the CWRA performance assessment and how many college admissions offices are asking for it? How many will accept it instead of the SAT?
This year, 120 high schools are using it. We are now talking to college admissions officers and leaders of colleges who are aligned with high schools that feed into them, and are also CWRA+ users, about accepting the CWRA+ results in addition to SAT or ACT results. There is much controversy in education at present about standardized testing, with many believing all standardized testing should be eliminated during primary and secondary school, with just one test given at the end of secondary school.
What are the logistical issues you face in getting broader distribution for the CWRA assessment?
We now have a new version of CWRA called CWRA+ to be used in the college admissions space. We have started to market this new assessment through partnerships with colleges who will accept the CWRA+ results as part of admissions’ records. The Obama administration’s Race to the Top program launched the biggest testing educational initiative ever funded by the federal government and we won the right to develop a number of assessments. These newer assessments are becoming mainstream almost overnight. It’s because of the “Knowledge Economy” - content is important but when you can google for facts you’ve got to be able to think about what it is you’re going to be googling for. Multiple-choice tests have been the dominant type of test in this country since World War I, but that is about to change.
Dr. Roger Benjamin and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of Tech Valley High School, Rensselaer NY; New Tech Network and Traverse Bay Area Independent School District, Michigan/Mancelona Public Schools/Joanie Moore.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“We need to establish platforms for teachers to initiate their own changes and make their own judgments on the frontline, to invest more in the change capacities of local districts and communities, and to pursue prudent rather than profligate approaches to testing.”— Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley
What is the Fourth Way?
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
The Fourth Way is a powerful new vision to bring about effective educational reform.
Even after one has identified that the old ways of doing things are no longer working, coming up with system-wide comprehensive solutions as to how to develop better schools and school systems is challenging. Professor Andy Hargreaves and Professor Dennis Shirley believe they have found those solutions. They have examined over three decades of research evidence on educational change around the world in some of the leading education systems, and from these global lessons have developed a dynamic new plan for the future of schooling. I was able to catch up with Hargreaves and Shirley to talk about the inspiring ideas laid out in their latest book, The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence (Corwin, September 2012). Andrew Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College, and is the elected Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, London. Dennis Shirley is Professor at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.
“Alberta funds almost all its schools and districts to design and evaluate their own innovations. Teachers are the drivers of change, not the driven.” — Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley
In your own words, what is the Global Fourth Way?
The “First Way” of the 1960s and 1970s created interesting innovations here and there, but it overprotected teachers’ autonomy and kept them isolated from new research, outside scrutiny, and each other.
The “Second Way” that emerged in the 1980s, and that remains pervasive in the U.S. today, enforced consistency through more testing, standardization and accountability, and introduced competition through school choice. Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all system of prescribed curriculum programs and teaching-to-the-test led to professional disillusionment and made it difficult to attract and retain excellent teachers.
The “Third Way” added data-driven decision-making to US teachers’ toolkits, but it has skewed attention towards the performance metrics themselves and away from the people and the learning that the numbers are meant to represent.
It’s time to move beyond the limitations of these first three ways of change where there has been too much freedom, too much force, or too much fascination with data and spreadsheets.
Our new book describes a better “Fourth Way” that draws on our first-hand international research to get us beyond those limitations. This includes pursuing an inspiring and inclusive vision for US education rather than simply racing to the top, being committing to education as a common goodwhere schools work together for the benefit of all children, and promoting the innovation and creativity that leads to modern economic success. To become more successful innovators, we need to establish platforms for teachers to initiate their own changes and make their own judgments on the frontline, to invest more in the change capacities of local districts and communities, and to pursue prudent rather than profligate approaches to testing. The Fourth Way is about reforming rather than destroying teacher associations, and it integrates technology with high quality teaching instead of replacing teachers with iPads and online learning at every opportunity.
“In Finland, within very broad government guidelines, teachers create their own curricula together across schools in every community and district. They don’t confine collaboration to their own individual schools and to just implementing other people’s ideas.” — Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley
We need high quality teachers and high quality school principals and leadership. What can we learn from your global research about developing school principals and leadership?
Three things are critical. First, in high performing countries, principals are working with highly qualified teachers who come from the top tiers of the graduation range, who have been rigorously prepared in universities and through supervised practice in schools, and who remain in education for all of their careers. The job of principals there is to get the best out of these highly capable teachers, sharpen their collective focus, and keep moving them forward. In the U.S., teachers are less well qualified, less well prepared because they are trained in short programs that occur outside of universities, and they turn over more quickly. This means that principals have to spend excessive amounts of time plugging holes and repairing deficits in the teaching force.
Second, high performing systems know their teachers well long before they even aspire to become principals. District and Government administrators spend a lot of time in schools. They develop, select and certify their leaders over long periods of time, instead of certifying them first, selecting them later and developing them as an afterthought.
Singapore’s performance management process systematically identifies and supports those teachers who have the potential to be future principals.
Finland’s principals are usually selected from and promoted within their own schools where their success is proven, and where their role is to be first among equals in “a society of experts.”
Canadian principals also normally move up within their own district, where, as teachers, they have been known by district staff who get out and about in the schools.
Third, principals spend more time working with their teachers and in classrooms. How can they do this? Because, as Finnish principals told us, they are not spending vast amounts of time constantly reacting to government initiatives or filling out evaluation checklists.
“We disagree with the assertion that great teachers can be replaced by online alternatives. The futuristic claim that technology will triumph over teachers ignores all the social and relational dimensions of teaching and learning.” — Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley
Teamwork and teacher collaboration at school level are important to successful outcomes. What inspiring examples of collaboration have you seen around the world?
Singapore gives 10% “white space” time to all of its teachers to come up with their own innovations outside of the official curriculum. This encourages teachers to turn to their colleagues for inspiration and ideas.
Alberta funds almost all its schools and districts to design and evaluate their own innovations. Teachers are the drivers of change, not the driven. One condition of funding is that schools must have explicit plans to share what they are learning with others.
In Ontario, teachers come together to look at charts of how well all students are progressing in every class. All achievement in every class is completely transparent. This isn’t a strategy to shame poorly performing teachers or even a prompt to come up with quick fixes that will get rapid gains in test scores. Instead, teachers look at the faces behind the numbers and develop a strategy for each child. Across all grades, all teachers take collective responsibility for all students’ success.
In Finland, within very broad government guidelines, teachers create their own curriculum together across schools in every community and district. They don’t confine collaboration to their own individual schools and to just implementing other people’s ideas.
“In high performing countries, principals are working with highly qualified teachers who come from the top tiers of the graduation range, who have been rigorously prepared in universities and through supervised practice in schools, and who remain in education for all of their careers.”— Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley
What did you learn from studying the California education system (CTA) example?
In 2005, the California Teachers’ Association sued Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for taking more than $5 billion out of the state’s education budget and thereby violating state legislation that provided a minimal funding ratio for the schools. The Governor settled the lawsuit in 2006 and the CTA used the restored funds to create a new “Quality Education Investment Act” (QEIA) that concentrated on working with close to 500 schools serving the state’s most needy students. QEIA schools receive special funding for reduced class sizes, professional development, leadership training, and, in the high schools, more guidance counselors. In every QEIA school, teacher leaders are responsible for the resources and the strategy. Early results indicate that QEIA schools are performing better than non-QEIA schools in similar circumstances. This is especially true for students of color and in poverty.
The CTA example challenges everyone to understand that all teachers’ unions must undergo the kind of internal transformation that has been occurring within the CTA. What teacher unions now need is the same as schools and school systems: greater collective professionalism focused on teaching and learning across the spectrum.
“Singapore gives 10 percent ‘white space’ time to all of its teachers to come up with their own innovations outside of the official curriculum. This encourages teachers to turn to their colleagues for inspiration and ideas.” — Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley
I was interested in what you say about professional development in Singapore in terms of the systematic approach to teachers’ professional growth. Can you explain how they approach PD?
Teacher assessment is very rigorous in Singapore and is closely tied to teachers’ professional development. After completing their first years of teaching, all teachers are invited to a periodic “tea time” with their principal or a Ministry of Education official to go over their evaluations, discuss their current aspirations, and explore possibilities for continuing learning and professional growth in the years to come. Singaporean teachers move along one of three tracks (master teacher, administrator, curriculum leadership) and switch between them as they reflect on their progress. Singaporean teachers also move back and forth between their teaching roles and positions in the Ministry of Education or the National Institute of Education, where all teachers and principals are trained to develop and contribute to a greater understanding of the profession as a whole.
Clayton Christensen has stated that “online learning is entering the system in a way that could eventually disrupt the classroom.” What are your thoughts on this?
There is much to admire in Christensen’s prediction, which we discuss in detail in our book. But we disagree with his assertion that great teachers can be replaced by online alternatives. The futuristic claim that technology will triumph over teachers ignores all the social and relational dimensions of teaching and learning. These include inspiration, impulse control, being part of an inclusive and diverse community, finding different ways to be engaged with your learning, and receiving adult guidance in making judgments and decisions, including those that occur online. Neglect of these dimensions has defeated the champions of television, video and teaching machines throughout history.
However, technology does have a role to play in today’s schools if it is effectively yet judiciously integrated in the culture of our schools. In Singapore, we have seen teachers use Twitter to collect real-time feedback from their students. In Ontario, assistive technologies help students with learning disabilities to make great strides forwards, especially when new technologies are part of all students’ learning. In these cases innovative technologies and effective teaching are working together, rather than at cross-purposes.
The Second and Third Ways of U.S. education reform are giving us more markets, more mandates, and more machines as answers to all our ills. This is the opposite of what high performers are doing everywhere. America will not achieve high-performance if it replaces teachers with machines or turns teachers into machines. It will only improve its schools when it, too, embraces an inspiring vision for the common good that rests upon the high quality and effective collaboration of its teachers and leaders.
Dennis Shirley, C. M. Rubin, Andy Hargreaves
Photos courtesy of Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“Finnish schools are fear-free places where children don’t need to worry about competition, failure or performance that in many countries are fueled by standardized testing.” — Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Elvi Rista
What Will Finland Do Next?
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
Systematic pursuit of children’s wellbeing and happiness in secure environments takes precedence over measured academic achievements in Finnish schools, according to Pasi Sahlberg, author of the 2013 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award winning book, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? It was the book many educators turned to last year to find ways to make their own schools better. Sahlberg explained to me that Finland will continue to work on the same mission it has had for over 40 years: to give access to high quality and safe schools for all children regardless of their family backgrounds, domiciles, mother tongues, or abilities. Thinking forward, what can we learn from the newer strategies being pursued by Finland’s education reformers to stay at the top? I asked Pasi to discuss this further in The Global Search for Education.
“Today nearly 45 percent of Finnish 16-year-olds choose to study in vocational upper secondary schools and 50 percent in academic high schools. I am an advocate of flexible learning pathways that provide individuals personalized options to study what they believe will help them to be successful in life.”— Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Liisa Takala
There are significant factors beyond the classroom that ensure Finnish children thrive in school. Can you summarize the support services provided currently and what you think needs to be improved?
Most Finnish children go to optional pre-school at age 6 and compulsory education begins at age of 7. I belong to those who don’t believe that starting school earlier would actually be beneficial to children’s cognitive or social development. Finland has a universal heavily subsidized public childcare service that gives all children a right to daycare and offers them an environment to develop and grow as individuals without any pressure of academic or other performance. Play, music and learning to be with other children are common modes of children’s lives in daycare.
Another important aspect of Finnish schools is systematic pursuit of wellbeing and happiness, especially during the early years of primary school. Finnish schools are fear-free places where children don’t need to worry about competition, failure or performance that in many countries are fueled by standardized testing. Every school in Finland has a Pupil Welfare Team that monitors and processes issues related to behavior, health and progress of children. It consists of the school head, a special education teacher, school nurse or doctor, psychologist and social worker. The main aim of this team is to prevent problems that might jeopardize wellbeing. Primary school teachers put wellbeing and happiness of their pupils before measured academic progress.
Despite this, there is a growing concern among psychologists and pediatricians that the quality of children’s lives outside of school is declining. Some argue that parents increasingly leave upbringing of their children to schools. Teachers continue to urge parents to take more responsibility for their children e.g. giving more time and attention to them at home. What Finland needs first and foremost is better alignment of responsibilities between homes and schools and perhaps a national program that would help mothers and fathers to take better care of the young ones and simply love them more. In this worrying situation it is paramount that Finnish politicians secure sufficient funding for child wellbeing services in all schools.
“What Finland needs first and foremost is better alignment of responsibilities between homes and schools and perhaps a national program that would help mothers and fathers to take better care of the young ones and simply love them more.” — Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture
Is the problem for some OECD countries about catching up with global college graduation rates or is the problem about improving options for learning pathways so graduates are equipped with the skills they need to find jobs in the real world?
I am an advocate of flexible learning pathways that provide individuals personalized options to study what they believe will help them to be successful in life. For example, I think that the U.S. school system would benefit from a dual system in high school where young people who are interested in doing or making things with their hands, for instance, could have high quality vocational programs or schools that would equip them with the skills they need to find jobs or employ themselves. There are many education systems around the world, including Finland, where upper secondary education has distinct tracks for classical academic studies and professional learning. Higher education will become more easily accessible through digital learning very soon, and I believe college graduation rates as a proxy for the advancement of an education system will lose part of their meaning.
“A universal standard for financing schools, so that resources are channeled to schools according to real needs: this is essential in order to enhance equity and quality in American education.” — Pasi Sahlberg Photo courtesy of Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture
Can you talk about Finland’s forward thinking goals in vocational education?
As I mentioned earlier, Finland is one of several European countries with a competitive option for 16-year-olds to choose technical and vocational studies rather than to continue academic learning in high school that is predominantly a road to liberal arts degrees. Some people argue that vocational schools are second or even third options for young people and therefore motivation and discipline are often issues in these schools. But it doesn’t need to be so. Barely 20 years ago, vocational education was a bad word among parents and many students in Finland. About one third of lower secondary school leavers at that time entered vocational schools, some because the bar to academic high school was too high. Drop out from these schools was a chronic problem. Systematic polishing of the image of vocational education started in the 1990’s in Finland.
First, curriculum in vocational schools was adjusted closer to the standards of academic high school. This brought more general subjects accessible to all students in vocational schools. Second, a significant proportion of vocational studies was shifted to real work places where students are able to learn in practice the knowledge and skills they need in their future jobs. Third, vocational and academic high schools were required to design and provide instruction that enabled students more flexibility and choice. This has led to an increasing number of double diplomas when vocational school students also matriculate from academic high school and thereby earn a license to apply to academic universities. Finally, newly established non-university higher education systems opened doors to vocational school graduates to further learning.
I would also like to emphasize the important role that career guidance plays in Finnish basic school (grades 1 to 9). All students have weekly lesson time with qualified career counselors in upper grades of basic school. Students also spend a two-week period in a workplace to learn about the world of work and test their own perceptions of different occupations. The aim of career guidance is to minimize wrong choices by making available individualized information and help before young people make their decisions for further studies.
Today nearly 45 percent of Finnish 16-year-olds choose to study in vocational upper secondary schools and 50 percent in academic high schools. Competition to some vocational programs has become fierce. Much of the negative stigma that vocational schools had in Finland 20 years ago is gone.
“I would like to see more educating children [around the world] to feel empathy and as Sir Ken Robinson says, finding their talents through music, arts and physical education in tandem with traditional academic curriculum.” — Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture
“Online learning stands a much better chance to improve over time and eventually become good enough to offer a competitive value proposition even for mainstream students. That’s when the classroom system will really change. Parents will start demanding it.” - Clayton Christensen. What is your response to Clayton’s argument?
I think Clayton is a visionary and his view to how technology will change schools will probably be pretty close to his prediction. But there are different scenarios for how this will play out.
One scenario is that schools will race after technology and align core instructional operations to rely on digital and other technological solutions. This will certainly change classrooms and what goes on in them. Learning would still primarily take place in schools supported by homework as it is now.
A second scenario views schools merely as places for facilitation of study and checking of achievement. Learning could be from any place. Personalized digital learning would be the most common mode of study.
A third scenario would be to elevate schools as places for social learning and developmental skills. Cooperative learning, problem solving and cultivating the habits of mind would be at the heart of school life.
I am already seeing signs of the third scenario around the world. There are parents who have started to demand it because they think that their children spend too much time with technology and that schools should help them to learn to be with other people. I would like to see more schools educating children to feel empathy and as Sir Ken Robinson says, finding their talents through music, arts and physical education in tandem with traditional academic curriculum.
“The Finnish school system cannot be transferred anywhere else in the world. Many of the successful aspects of Finland’s education system are rooted deep in our culture and values.” — Pasi SahlbergPhoto courtesy of Finnish Ministry for Education and Culture
Jack Buckley, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said he“has always been a little puzzled by the high level of attention trained on Finland. Finland captured the world’s attention for a variety of reasons but there are other places to look for case studies.” How do you see this?
In my book, I raise two points of warning. First, I am not saying that Finland has the best education system in the world and that others should imitate what we have done. This global fame has actually been quite embarrassing for us Finns. Finnish educators are not thrilled about PISA, TIMSS, or any other international comparisons. We would rather hope Finland is seen as a country where four out of five taxpayers trust our public school system, and where three out of four citizens think that our publicly funded education system is our most significant accomplishment since independence in 1917. We celebrate these achievements rather than high rankings in global education league tables.
Second, I make it very clear that the Finnish school system cannot be transferred anywhere else in the world. Many of the successful aspects of Finland’s education system are rooted deep in our culture and values, which are different from those in the U.S. For example, high levels of trust in people and institutions, pursuit of equality and fairness in society and life, and willingness to pay taxes for common good are some of the Finnish conditions that don’t exist everywhere. What we can do, as Jack Buckley and others suggest, is take a global look and learn from one another.
There are some concrete lessons that American educators and policy-makers could learn from Finland. Since standardization has become one of the principles in American education policy, I would suggest that rather than over-standardize teaching and learning in schools by prescribed curricula and frequent high-stakes testing, three other aspects of education should be standardized instead.
First, a universal standard for financing schools, so that resources are channelled to schools according to real needs. This is essential in order to enhance equity and quality in American education.
Second, a universal standard for time allocation in schools, allowing pupils to have a proper recess between classes and a balanced curriculum among academic learning, the arts and physical education.
Third, a universal standard for teacher preparation that follows standards in other top professions. Initiating a bar exam for teachers is a step towards higher professional standards in teaching.
Pasi Sahlberg and C. M. Rubin
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“The English Baccalaureate has the merits of strengthening the general academic education of lower achieving students and removing useless, mostly quasi-vocational subjects.” — Michael Young
UK on Testing
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
“It is time for the race to the bottom to end. We believe it is time to tackle grade inflation and dumbing down.” — Michael Gove
In the fall of 2012, the British Education Secretary, Michael Gove, outlined proposals for new qualifications in core academic subjects called English Baccalaureate Certificates. Mr. Gove stated that these new reforms would prepare British students for the 21st century and allow them to compete with the best performing education systems around the world.
Are the new performance measures proposed by Michael Gove a solution to “teaching to a test,” improving standards and the overall quality of learning for all students in the UK education system? I asked Michael Young, Emeritus Professor of Education with the School of Lifelong Education & International Development at the Institute of Education, University of London, to share his perspectives.
In 2004, Michael Young was commissioned to write a report on the implications of National Qualifications Frameworks for developing countries (ILO 2005). He has been an adviser to countries in Europe, Africa and Asia on their policies on qualifications. His book, Bringing Knowledge Back In (2010), won second prize as UK Education Book of the Year.
“The performance tables, which rank schools with implications for resources and student intakes, shape all school decisions, so few of the educational benefits of the E Bacc will be realized as long as they are in place.” — Michael Young
What do you believe are the best and weakest arguments for having the English Baccalaureate Certificates replace the GCSE’s? What would be your best arguments for keeping the GCSE exams?
The main reason why none of the main political parties will risk supporting the widely held view that GCSEs (the 16+ examination) should be abolished is that they are used as the basis of performance tables which enable government to assert a degree of control over schools at a time when they are weakening the existing controls of local government over schools.
GCSEs are a relic of two earlier initiatives. GCE O levels were established in 1951 to cater for at most 20-30 percent of each cohort (each class of students). At that time, the majority of pupils left school at 15 (with no certificates) for unskilled factory and office work. This youth labour market disappeared in the 1970s, so these kids were staying on in school with no certificate to aim for. A new certificate, the Certificate for Secondary Education (CSE), was created for the low achievers. GCE’s and CSE’s were then merged in the 1980s to create the existing GCSE’s, with five grades (A - E); A, B, C being equivalent to the old O levels and D, E, F, and G replacing the CSE’s. The latter became largely worthless for either employment or progression to higher levels and the focus of schools was on grade C or above.
At the same time, assessment for exams was changed from being norm referenced to criterion referenced, with no limits on the numbers being awarded any grade. The proportion of A - C’s increased every year and this led to a demand for an A* grade to differentiate the A’s. The government feared that if they scrapped GCSE’s (most other European countries do not have a 16+ examination), England would drop in the international performance tables (e.g. PISA), and that this might cost them votes. Also, there is no tradition for trusting teachers to maintain standards without tests and tables. The problem is that students are increasingly ‘trained for the tests’ and, according to employers and university teachers, know less and less.
The English Baccalaureate (the E Bacc) is a performance measure not an examination. Until it was introduced, performance tables were based on 5 subjects, but only three were compulsory (English, maths and general science). The E Bacc merely extends the number of compulsory subjects to include two sciences, a foreign language and a humanities subject. This has had two consequences: First, schools are dropping many non E Bacc subjects with much opposition from sports and arts communities. Second, schools with, say 30 percent of pupils achieving 5 A-Cs on the GCSE subjects, only achieved 5 percent (or less) on the E Bacc, primarily because they had dropped foreign language when it stopped being compulsory.
The English Baccalaureate has the merits of strengthening the general academic education of lower achieving students and removing useless, mostly quasi-vocational subjects. The government claims that the E Bacc subjects take up 70 percent of the school timetable, leaving adequate time for arts and sports. However, the performance tables, which rank schools with implications for resources and student intakes, shape all school decisions, so few of the educational benefits of the E Bacc will be realized as long as they are in place.
The English Baccalaureate is an ill thought out, off the cuff scheme. A better approach would be something along the French Baccalaureate lines, i.e. a three pathway (general/technological/vocational) Baccalaureate with 20+ percent of the curriculum in common, which students can take at different ages and for which there is no external examination at 16.
“A better approach would be something along the French Baccalaureate lines, i.e. a three pathway (general/technological/vocational) Baccalaureate with 20+ percent of the curriculum in common, which students can take at different ages and for which there is no external examination at 16.”
— Michael Young
What about taking an approach similar to the International Baccalaureate that measures student’s performance against global peers?
I am a great admirer of the IB, but as an 18+ exam it cannot include more than about 30-40 percent of each cohort without a more applied pathway. I would have a single external examination taken at different ages and abolish performance tables. The key issue is to develop a system in which assessment does not drive curriculum. I am not against the English Baccalaureate in principle. What worries me is its inevitable link to performance tables.
Students learn best when they are being taught to learn as opposed to being taught just to pass a test. Agree?
I agree as long as ‘teaching to learn’ is through specialist subjects. You can only teach or learn something. Teaching to learn and learning to learn are the products of good subject teaching.
As I said earlier, we have standardized tests for social control reasons. However, if you don’t have standardized tests, the social control issues remain. Finland is a good example. They always score high on PISA rankings but they have no external tests and no inspections. How do they do it?
First, Finns put a high value on education for all - originally out of fear of ‘big brother’ - the Soviet Union.
Second, teaching is a high status profession in Finland. Education faculties in Finland have the highest number of applications for each place.
Third, the richest, most powerful, and most successful parents use the state schools, i.e. less than 1 percent of children go to private schools. They have a stake in the quality of schools. In England, 7 percent of schools are private (fee paying). The political pressure is not to improve state schools but to control them. The rich have no stake in the state schools!
Fourth, a society has to control schools either by a consensus valuing education for all, or through tests and inspections. If you abolish the latter without establishing the former, you face chaos.
“In England, 7 percent of schools are private (fee paying). The political pressure is not to improve state schools but to control them. The rich have no stake in the state schools!” — Michael Young
What role should the British government play in education?
Up until the 1980’s and Margaret Thatcher, public education was managed as a relatively inefficient system by a troika of central government, local government, and teacher unions. Thatcher broke all of that up as she thought local government and unions (the providers) had too much power, and parents and employers (consumers) not enough. So she used government to replace ‘provider control’ by a ‘market.’
Why not allow local governments to determine their cities’ or towns’ own educational standards?
It is the rational but not politically realistic option. It’s a view largely shared by the Labour party since Blair.
“A society has to control schools either by a consensus valuing education for all, or through tests and inspections. If you abolish the latter without establishing the former, you face chaos.” — Michael Young
Surveys indicate that parents want to see the arts included in the new Baccalaureate. What are your best arguments for keeping the arts in this new assessment?
As I said before with regard to other subjects, if they keep the performance tables and bring arts into the E Bacc, it will destroy the arts, as schools will be under pressure to teach to the test! A better but unlikely solution would be to abolish the performance tables and broaden the E Bacc.
Since not every child will pass these new exams, what else can be done to prepare children for the real world and make them more competitive in the job market?
In the last decade, lower achieving students have been encouraged to obtain certificates which have no value outside the tables themselves, as they provide no progress to higher level study and employers do not rate them for jobs. The fact that the students get certificates masks the reality that they are not learning anything. At least the E Bacc’s base curriculum will highlight rather than mask low achievement. The problem is that many schools lack specialist subject teachers in the E Bacc subjects, so unless something is done about teacher supply, nothing will improve.
Michael Young and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of the Institute of Education, University of London.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“Providing college tuition-free without getting the money back through taxes for the better educated means that the poor end up subsidizing the education of the rich.” — Andreas Schleicher
On US Education Problems
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
According to Andreas Schleicher of OECD, the United States is unique among countries in that the generation of workers entering the US workforce does not have higher college attainment levels than the generation about to leave the workforce. He further believes a key strategy to addressing this problem is improving equitable access to education across the board and that good examples of how to achieve this can be found in other education systems such as Finland, Canada, Japan or Korea. None of this sounds particularly new, but I wondered if Andreas were making the big picture education decisions, how would he address some of our key issues? We recently had the opportunity to discuss this further.
Andreas Schleicher is Special Advisor on Education Policy to OECD’s Secretary-General, and is Deputy Director for Education. He also provides strategic oversight over OECD’s work on the development and utilization of skills and their social and economic outcomes. This includes the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), and the development and analysis of benchmarks on the performance of education systems (INES).
“Spending in the US is regressive in that schools in disadvantaged areas end up with less resources than schools in socially advantaged areas (in virtually all other industrialized countries it is the other way round).” — Andreas Schleicher
Should government provide tuition free education from pre-school through college?
There is no free education; someone has to pay. If governments provide free education from pre-school through college, they need to back that up with a steeply progressive tax system so that the better qualified people end up paying the bill eventually. The Nordic countries in Europe show that this can work, and work well. The other good option is to ask students to pay tuition and to back that up with a universal student support system that provides an income-contingent loan system complemented with a scheme of means-tested grants. In that way you minimize risks for students, avoid that they end up with huge debt that they cannot pay back, and you provide special assistance to those students who would otherwise be prevented from attending university. The UK shows how this can work. Providing college tuition-free without getting the money back through taxes for the better-educated means that the poor end up subsidizing the education of the rich.
Are you in favor of privatizing public schools?
Results from PISA show no performance advantage of private schools, once you account for social background. However, cross-country analysis of PISA suggests that the prevalence of schools’ autonomy to define and elaborate their curricula and assessments relates positively to the performance of school systems, even after accounting for national income. School systems that provide schools with greater discretion in deciding student assessment policies, the courses offered, the course content and the textbooks used are also school systems that perform at higher levels. So perhaps the question for countries is not how many private or charter schools they have, but how they enable every public school to assume charter-type responsibility.
“Perhaps the question for countries is not how many private or charter schools they have, but how they enable every public school to assume charter-type responsibility.” — Andreas Schleicher
Since every child is probably not meant to pursue a liberal arts education, what would you do to make our children more competitive in the skilled trade jobs market?
Our data show that when employers are involved in designing curricula and delivering education programs at the post-secondary level, students seem to have a smoother transition from education into the labor market. Compared to purely government-designed curricula taught in school-based systems, learning in the workplace offers several advantages: it allows trainees to develop “hard” skills on modern equipment, and “soft” skills, such as teamwork, communication and negotiation, through real-world experience. Hands-on workplace training can also help to motivate disengaged youth to stay in or re-engage with the education system. Workplace training also facilitates recruitment by allowing employers and potential employees to get to know each other, while trainees contribute to the output of the training firm. Workplace learning opportunities are also a direct expression of employers’ needs, as employers will be ready to offer opportunities in areas where there is a skills shortage.
“Our data show that when employers are involved in designing curricula and delivering education programs at the post-secondary level, students seem to have a smoother transition from education into the labor market.” — Andreas Schleicher
Do you think that the United States needs to do more in the area of early childhood education, and if so, what?
One the one hand, the US falls well behind most countries in the industrialized world when it comes to early childhood education, and this is clearly a key lever to raise quality and equity in learning outcomes. At the same time, the US does really well when you look at student performance in primary education, so-so when it comes to performance in middle school, and not very well when it comes to performance in high school. This suggests that students actually get quite a strong start, but the school system adds less year after year than what children in other countries learn. That is something you don’t address with better early childhood education but with a better school system.
What do you think is the best way to fund our public schools?
The US spends plenty of money on public schools, but our data show three things. First of all, a disproportionally high share of that spending does not make it into the classroom. Secondly, spending is regressive in that schools in disadvantaged areas end up with less resources than schools in socially advantaged areas (in virtually all other industrialized countries it is the other way around). This does not allow the US to attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classrooms, which would make public spending most effective. Third, high performing countries tend to prioritize the quality of teachers and the size of classes. The trend in the US over the last decade has gone the other way around.
Andreas Schleicher and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of OECD
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“Albertans felt students needed to be three things: engaged thinkers, ethical citizens, and they needed to have an entrepreneurial spirit.” — Jeff Johnson
Forward Thinking
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
Education, Innovation, Infrastructure — whichever way you line up the words, they all lead back to education. Because once a nation has goals for where it wants to be in 5 or 10 or 20 years, that nation is going to need to have a competent, competitive workforce to realize its goals.
Developing the nation’s plan means collaboration. And the collaboration part is perhaps the toughest because people tend to argue about significant matters and you will never find enough educators who will agree on the biggest issues — or will you? Interestingly, my five interviews over the past 5 weeks in The Education Debate 2012 series with Howard Gardner, Richard Riley, Diane Ravitch, Andy Hargreaves and Linda Darling Hammond often sound similar because there are many commonalities among the solutions proposed for how to improve student achievement in an educational system.
Today I want to focus on a forward thinking education initiative in Alberta, Canada called “Inspiring Education.” I recently had the opportunity to discuss it with the Honourable Jeff Johnson, Minister of Education for Alberta. Johnson’s appointment as Minister of Education in May of this year built on his experience as co-chair of the pioneering “Inspiring Education” committee. He was previously Minister of Infrastructure, Minister responsible for the Oil Sands Secretariat, and Parliamentary Assistant to the Treasury Board. Jeff also has experience working in the financial markets as a futures trading floor pit boss and in building a series of successful small businesses.
“Albertans felt the educational system was too caught up in the old ways - based on the desires of trustees, teachers or politicians instead of on what is best for the students and the students’ learning.”— Jeff Johnson
Can you talk about the Albertan “Inspiring Education” initiative - your goals and objectives?
The Education Minister of the day brought together a steering committee of about 20 people, which I chaired, and tasked us with asking Albertans from all walks of life one main question: What kinds of skills and attributes should an educated Albertan graduating in 2030 have? What we heard was that Albertans felt students needed to be three things: engaged thinkers, ethical citizens, and they needed to have an entrepreneurial spirit.
By engaged thinker, we are talking about skills like being able to think critically, being creative, having digital literacy and being cooperative. It also extends beyond our K-12 system, and includes being a true life-long learner.
In terms of the ethical citizen, we want to make sure kids are contributing to their communities. The character traits we require for an ethical citizen would be young people who are empathetic, have good communication skills and who through teamwork and collaboration contribute fully to the community and to the world.
Finally, Albertans are really proud of our history of being pioneers and entrepreneurs. The people who immigrated to Alberta were not wealthy people. They came to Alberta for opportunity, and it was that history that really influenced us to include entrepreneurial spirit as the third element of what we call our three E’s. We wanted our kids to learn to take risks, to be resilient, competitive, resourceful, confident and self-reliant. We wanted to prepare kids for the global economy, for the ever-changing digital age. We wanted to make sure they are ready for the jobs that will be waiting for them, in many cases jobs that don’t even exist yet. And that they are skilled enough so that if the job doesn’t exist, they can create it.
“Much of the content in the curriculum is going to be obsolete in 15 years from now.” — Jeff Johnson
What system changes did these goals require you to make?
First, we had to build a system that was more centered on the student. Albertans felt the educational system was too caught up in the old ways - based on the desires of trustees, teachers or politicians instead of on what is best for the students and the students’ learning.
The second major change we felt we should make was to move to a system that was based on competency versus regurgitating content. Every student learns at an individual pace, but our educational system was not set up to deal with that. So the challenge was to move to a system that was based on mastering competency, not just serving a set amount of time in a desk and memorizing facts for a test. When kids can move faster we need to make sure we’re able to challenge them.
The other problem we faced was that our curriculum in Alberta was very standardized and allowed very little flexibility for educators. Much of the content in the curriculum is going to be obsolete in 15 years from now. We want to move to a system where numeracy and literacy remained at the core of learning, but where educators are teaching in a way that will instill our three E’s in kids.
Are your teachers equipped to handle this shift in orientation?
The need for additional training varies teacher by teacher. I think a lot of the newer teachers coming into the system are ready and willing to embrace this new approach. Some will need professional development, and that is a good thing. It isn’t our intention to turn the system on its head and start a revolution - it is more of an “informed transformation”. We have a good system now, one of the best in the world in fact, so we want to move forward without throwing out the good that we’ve already got.
“The need for additional training varies teacher by teacher. I think a lot of the newer teachers coming into the system are ready and willing to embrace this new approach.” — Jeff Johnson
In terms of student assessment do you foresee any changes in your testing practices to accommodate this new orientation?
Curriculum and assessment are obviously inter-related, and both will have to evolve. We currently use standardized tests at four points in a student’s life. We do standardized testing at grades 3, 6 and 9. Then we have the Diploma Exams in Grade 12, which are essentially our entrance exams for post-secondary. Our plan is to focus on the lower grades first and introduce new tools to assess, eventually moving to other grades.
What about class size and special learning needs?
Albertans told us clearly that all kids are special, and we need to make sure we support them all. So we are striving for a system that recognizes the differences in students and is able to challenge every child. It’s going to be different for every child, whether it’s learning difficulties, language barriers or gifted children - or anything else. In Alberta we want inclusiveness for the special needs kids and for the gifted kids. We’re in the process of changing our funding to reflect this too.
“Not every kid needs or wants a liberal arts degree. There are incredible occupations and success to be had in other channels.” — Jeff Johnson
How do you see blended-learning systems and other technology evolving in your school system by 2030?
Technology presents one of the biggest challenges and also one of the biggest areas of opportunity. With the finances that governments and public school systems have, it is impossible to keep the latest greatest technology in the classroom. The technology is just becoming outdated too fast. One of the things we seek to do in our system is ensure that the technology that kids use at home every day becomes part of their learning experience. We’ve got a lot of ‘bring your own device to school’ in terms of kids using their devices as part of their learning. At the core of it, this is not about using technology as a teaching tool, but more about using it as a tool to create knowledge.
What did Albertans tell you about teaching ethics in the classroom, i.e. to tie in with your ethical citizen goal?
There are a couple of points here. Albertans told us they did not want the government or teachers to have to become the parent. Ethics has got to initially come from the home and the family, and it’s different for every family. What we want to instill as part of building ethical citizens are things like honesty and respect. It means that in our schools you’re going to be honest. You’re going to work hard. You’re going to value diversity and respect other people’s differences. The expectation is that the school system will teach these things because they represent what is important as a citizen.
“People who have honed their artistic skills are more observant, and are better able to find problems and find creative solutions.” — Jeff Johnson
What roles will the arts play in your education system reforms?
You cannot give students 21st century skills such as critical and creative thinking without the arts. If we want kids to be able to think outside the box, if we want kids to be able to innovate, we need to expose them to art and artists.
Exposure to the arts fulfills several needs. It obviously helps ensure we maintain our culture and create new artists. But it doesn’t end there. People who have honed their artistic skills are more observant, and are better able to find problems and find creative solutions. So incorporating the arts is also about making sure we have future business people, scientists, doctors and engineers too.
What are your views on higher education choices? Do all students need to go on to a liberal arts education? What about vocational colleges?
Post-secondary is about more than just university. Our post-secondary system in Alberta includes lots of choices for young people, including great universities, colleges and technical institutes. All are good options, and we need to make sure kids see value in all of them.
After all, we know that only about 17 per cent of our kids graduating go to traditional university. Many of the rest are pursuing colleges and technical institutes because that training offers access to very well paid, highly gratifying occupations.
Not every kid needs or wants a liberal arts degree. There are incredible occupations and success to be had in other channels, and I think we need to get better at offering different options earlier.
Jeff Johnson and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of Alberta Education
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“The iPad has enabled greater access for both the education consumer and the creator.” — Tony Wagner
Education Technology
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
EdTechTeacher will host the first national iPads in education summit, bringing together educators, researchers, tech directors, principals, school leaders and industry partners to identify best practices for integrating iPads into education. The conference will be held from November 6th to 8th at The Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Schools and districts nationwide continue to invest in mobile technologies. The EdTechTeacher iPad Summit hopes to provide educators in this country and overseas with a forum to discuss how to leverage these devices in order to further empower teachers and students as creators of their own learning. “While there are some technical sessions,” explains the EdTechTeacher team, “the focus is on creating effective pedagogy, enriching curriculum, and leveraging the device in order to support students and teachers as innovators.”
“Knowledge is rapidly becoming a commodity and is increasingly democratized and globalized.”— Tony Wagner
The keynote speaker at the conference is Tony Wagner, Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. Wagner, an advocate for the need to better prepare students for 21st-century careers and citizenship, collaborated with noted filmmaker Robert Compton to create the 60 minute documentary, The Finnish Phenomenon: Inside The World’s Most Surprising School System. Tony’s latest book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World (Simon & Schuster), provides a powerful rationale for developing an innovation-driven economy. He explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. What role can the iPad play in their education? What additional professional development for teachers is needed? What examples of best technology practices can we learn from around the world? Tony agreed to discuss these subjects with me.
“Students will need to learn to work in teams, understand and solve problems using multiple disciplines, persevere, take risks, and learn from mistakes.” — Tony Wagner
How has the iPad made learning in education more innovative, and how can educators use the iPad to achieve significant innovation in teaching and learning?
First, the iPad has made using most computer-based learning applications far more accessible and intuitive. You no longer need to take students to a special room full of computers for that occasional experience; you don’t need to pull a laptop cart around the school. And students don’t need hours of training to learn how to use the device or its applications. Assuming a decent broadband connection, most computer related work - researching, writing, sharing - can happen at any time and for every student, with little or no advance preparation. Secondly, the comparative ease of creating and distributing an iPad app, versus writing a program for a computer, has given rise to a dramatic increase in the number of education-related applications being created and disseminated. In short, the iPad has enabled greater access for both the education consumer and the creator.
“We need assessments of the skills that matter most - like the online test called the College and Work Readiness Assessment, which measures problem-solving, reasoning, and writing skills.” — Tony Wagner
Is the missing link in education technology trained teachers?
Having teachers who are comfortable with the technology and who know how to apply it in the classroom is critical, but that problem will be mostly solved by time. As older teachers retire in growing numbers in the coming years, and many young people who are digital natives come into teaching, I think we will see a much more rapid adoption.
But the real question is: what will this technology will be used for? I toured a school district recently that had, with corporate help, put web-connected white boards and student clickers into every classroom at huge expense. But, in classroom after classroom, what I saw was all of this technology being used for drilling and test prep. Instead of having work sheets on their desks, students had clickers that enabled them to “vote” for the right answer on the practice test. More and better teacher preparation won’t solve this problem. We need assessments of the skills that matter most - like the online test called the College and Work Readiness Assessment, which measures problem-solving, reasoning, and writing skills - to encourage more powerful teaching and learning, both with and without the new technologies.
“As older teachers retire in growing numbers in the coming years, and many young people who are digital natives come into teaching, I think we will see a much more rapid adoption.” — Tony Wagner
Can you share a couple of examples of good teaching/technology practice that you’ve seen in top education systems around the world, for instance, in Finland?
In Finland, what I saw was much less teacher-centric uses of technologies - I don’t recall seeing a single white board, for example - and much more student-centric technology applications. I saw students using Moodle (the e-learning platform) to share and discuss work. In a marketing class, I saw students discussing how various social networking applications were being used to market products and services. Here in the US, I’ve seen some schools like High Tech High require all students to have digital portfolios that show evidence of progressive mastery of the skills that matter most. I’ve seen virtual dissections in biology classes that teach far more than having to actually cut up a frog. And I’m excited about new software being developed that will enable students to better understand disruptions of complex ecosystems through simulation. Finally, the US Army has developed a wide variety of gaming applications to teach strategy.
“Developing the skills, habits of mind, and dispositions of an innovator, in my view, requires effective coaching - that is what I think all teachers must strive to become.” — Tony Wagner
Online education continues to be an ever larger force in how students learn - how far can it go to changing education as we know it?
Knowledge is rapidly becoming a commodity and is increasingly democratized and globalized. You no longer need to be in a classroom to acquire the knowledge you want or need. But in my view, knowledge is only one of the three pillars needed for life-long learning, work, and citizenship in the 21st century. In addition to knowledge, students also need so-called 21c skills, such as those I’ve described in The Global Achievement Gap. Finally, students need the motivations and dispositions that will enable them to innovate - to solve problems creatively - in whatever they do, which I’ve written about most recently in Creating Innovators. They will need to learn to work in teams, understand and solve problems using multiple disciplines, persevere, take risks, and learn from mistakes. They will need to be intrinsically motivated to acquire new knowledge and skills throughout their lives. Developing the skills, habits of mind, and dispositions of an innovator, in my view, requires effective coaching - that is what I think all teachers must strive to become.
For more information:
Creating Innovators
EdTechTeacher iPad Summit
Tony Wagner and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of EdTechTeacher and Tony Wagner.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“A nation’s moral economy invests in education for everyone’s good wherever it can, and makes prudent economies that do not harm the quality of teaching and learning whenever it must.” — Andy Hargreaves
The Education Debate 2012 — Andy Hargreaves
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
In this presidential election, I believe it is critical to vote for the candidate who has the most impactful 21st century vision for education because addressing our issues now is essential for the U.S. to maintain its prosperity and global leadership in the next decades. Matters such as economic strength, innovation, employability, reducing poverty, progress toward racial and gender equality, reducing crime, and building global citizenship are all related to the effectiveness of our education system. Education should not be the privilege of a select few, but the basic civil right of every American child. We must act conclusively to narrow our domestic achievement gap and to narrow our international achievement gap so that our students will be able to compete globally in the next decade. We must invest now in the necessary changes to our education system in order to meet the challenges America will face tomorrow.
Today in The Education Debate 2012, I continue my conversations with distinguished U. S. education leaders about the major issues facing this country by talking with Andy Hargreaves. Hargreaves’ book, The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence (Corwin Press 2012), co-authored with Dennis Shirley, reveals the key qualities behind the high performance of some of the world’s top educational systems: Singapore, Finland and Canada. His most recent book,Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School (Teacher’s College Press 2012), co-authored with international reform expert Michael Fullan, sets out a clear vision as to how to achieve high return from all teachers and teaching. Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at Boston College. He studies and advises on high performance in schools and educational systems around the world.
If you were Education Secretary of the United States, what would be your position on the key education issues of our times?
I would follow the principles of best business practice, and work with my team to benchmark the United States against the highest performing systems in the world such as Finland, Canada and Singapore. With open eyes, and no excuses, this would prompt us to determine what we can learn from other high performers that could benefit our own people.
“To increase the human capital of our students, we must invest in the professional capital of our teachers.” — Andy Hargreaves
What should the role of federal government be in K- 12 education? How much more funding should be given to education reform and in what major areas should it be spent?
This nation needs a positive and inspiring educational vision. All of America’s educational system, not just its world-class universities, must be among the best in the world. On the influential international PISA tests of student achievement at age 15, however, the U.S. falls somewhere between 17th and 31st out of 65 countries, depending on the subject being tested. On United Nations measures of child well-being, the U.S. ranks next to last.
All high performing countries make strong investments in their public systems. Their private systems are small or negligible. Charter schools are not a serious option. A nation’s moral economy invests in education for everyone’s good wherever it can, and makes prudent economies that do not harm the quality of teaching and learning whenever it must.
How can this be achieved in America? First, the U.S. can move core funding of public schools away from property taxes, and the inequities they create between districts, towards other forms of taxation. Second, the U.S. can invest in improving the quality of teaching and learning everywhere so that all teachers are able to deal with a wide range of abilities and special educational needs in their own classes with support where necessary. Third, the U.S. can institute a more prudent and cost-effective system of educational testing on the lines described below.
The job of an effective federal system is to inspire the profession and the public, to steer and support schools in a desired direction, to build better partnerships with and interactions among teacher unions, state departments and school districts, and to monitor and make transparent how the system is progressing. It is not to micromanage everything from Washington. Canada has no federal ministry of education. Finland’s National Board of Education consists of less than 20 officials. The district is where all the work gets done. School districts are not only the cornerstones of high performing systems; they are also a foundation of American public democracy. This is not the time to put our school districts up for auction. Now is the time to galvanize them into action.
“The U.S. educational system has been colonizing the sinking sands of centralization and standardization that other high performing systems have been leaving behind.” — Andy Hargreaves
What would be your position on improving the teaching profession, including recruitment, teacher training, compensation, and assignment to low income schools?
To increase the human capital of our students, we must invest in the professional capital of our teachers. Top performing countries draw their teachers from the top third of the graduation range, they train them in rigorous university preparation programs where they undertake deep research into their practice, and they have to undergo extensive practice-based experience in schools. We must align teacher preparation practice with that of the highest performing countries. America’s teachers need to be the best. Finns believe that teaching is as difficult as medicine or law, and it is therefore just as hard to enter. Singaporeans say teaching is as challenging as engineering, so they pay teachers a starting salary that is comparable to engineers. America must communicate the same messages about teaching and also back them up.
As Education Secretary, I would ask Teach for America to take on its biggest challenge yet: to lead a national effort in partnership with teachers’ professional associations to improve teacher retention. Fifty percent of public school teachers currently leave teaching within 5 years. In urban schools, they exit within 3. Most of our teachers need to stay in the job until they hit their peak - well beyond 5 years. The best way to do this is by increasing the quality of leadership, support and professional interaction in schools, and by reducing the micromanagement that undermines teachers’ capacity to exercise their judgments as true professionals.
A big part of transforming the teaching profession involves teacher unions. In Canada’s highest performing province — Alberta — over 50 percent of the revenues of the Alberta Teacher’s Association are allocated to professional development. This contrasts with a figure of under 5 percent in most U.S. teachers’ associations. When the California Teachers’ Association took the responsibility to turn around hundreds of the state’s lower performing schools, the result of becoming more obviously engaged with the core work of teaching and learning was a surge in activism among younger members. Our quest should not be to remove or replace teacher unions, but to reform and renew them.
What would be your position on school choice, including charter schools and their expansion, private schools, vouchers, and investment in inadequately staffed and facilitated low income schools?
Parents have a right to choice in education. Charter schools are warranted where they offer something that the public system does not provide locally, where the local public system is inadequate, or where the existing system shows little inclination to innovate and would benefit from an outside push. However, in general, charter schools do not outperform other public schools, they often rob local schools of teacher and student capacity, and most charter schools turn out to be more traditional than the public schools they replaced.
If all our schools were good, as they are in Finland, most parents would choose their local district school. We can do better at turning around low performing schools. High performing systems improve their schools not by having intervention teams descend in from a great height, but by building collective responsibility where strong schools assist weaker neighbors, where resources are disbursed from the district or the state department to schools to make this assistance possible, and where these collaborative efforts run across district boundaries. Charter schools can and should be part of this culture of collective responsibility. Indeed, it can be written into their charters.
“The U.S. can move core funding of public schools away from property taxes, and the inequities they create between districts, towards other forms of taxation.” — Andy Hargreaves
What would be your strategy to address the domestic and international achievement gaps, including your position on early childhood education, standardized testing, on-line modular education, and teacher/principal accountability?
Most U.S. reforms do the opposite of high performing competitors. These countries understand there is no substitute for strong, high quality teachers who work together to develop good teaching and who exercise shared responsibility for all students in their schools. As the U.S. increases standardized testing from Grade 3 up to Grade 8, Canadians only test Grades 3 and 6 at most, Singapore has just one high-stakes test in Grade 6, and Finland tests samples of students rather than taking a census of all of them. U.S. testing must become more prudent if we are to see improvements in the quality of teaching that avoid teaching to the test, concentrating on students near the cut scores, narrowing the curriculum, eliminating the arts, and rotating teachers and principals in and out of already unstable schools in a constant panic to lift the scores.
Accountability is the remainder that is left once responsibility has been subtracted. But we have put accountability first and created high threat environments that have distorted teaching and learning in a drive to lift up the scores. This can change if we test samples rather than take a census, if we test fewer grades less often, and if teachers become collectively responsible for all students’ success. In the push to narrow achievement gaps, we have inadvertently widened the learning gaps between standardized teaching in highly pressured urban schools and more innovative learning experiences in the affluent suburbs. I would set about narrowing this learning gap.
What would be your position on curriculum reform, including the role of the arts, the treatment of ethics, and the adoption of blended online learning?
China is promoting more school-designed curriculum and innovation. Finland supports all young people to study creative arts until the end of high school. Singapore emphasizes character education because in Singapore, the first priority is to your nation, the second is to your community, and the third is to yourself. Like Singapore’s national education initiative, we need to Teach Less and Learn More: to leave more curriculum time for high quality professionals to exercise the professional flexibility that engages students’ diverse interests and needs in depth. Unfortunately, the U.S. educational system has been colonizing the sinking sands of centralization and standardization that other high performing systems have been leaving behind. If we want more innovative thinking among our students, our teachers must have the opportunity to practice innovative teaching themselves.
Technology is part of the transformation in teaching, but there is no consistent evidence to suggest that online learning options that bypass the teacher are the answer. Like overhead projectors or chalk, digital technologies in the hands of good teachers can be a great asset. In the hands of poor teachers or no teachers, these technologies are just another expensive gimmick.
Andy Hargreaves and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of Boston College and Andy Hargreaves.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
“The low-income schools that are struggling seem to get the teachers that are not the best. The states have to change that situation and put the priority on placing the top teachers in low-income schools.”— Dick Riley
The Education Debate - Richard Wilson Riley
C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
The last presidential debate offered little in the way of focus on education and related policy. Today in The Global Search for Education series, I continue my conversations with education luminaries to discuss the issues that we believe will be a priority for the next President of the United States.
My imaginary Secretary of Education this week is former U.S. Secretary of Education and past Governor of South Carolina, Richard Wilson Riley. A lifelong advocate for high-quality education, many Americans (according to The Christian Science Monitor) regard Riley as “one of the great statesmen of education of the 20th century.” Serving for both of President Clinton’s terms, Riley helped to launch many historic initiatives to raise academic standards, improve instruction for the poor and disadvantaged, modernize schools, expand grant and loan programs for higher education, and improve teaching, among other significant advances.
Currently, Dick Riley speaks, provides leadership and serves in an advisory and collaborative capacity with many entities to promote education improvement in the United States and abroad.
What should the role of federal government be in K- 12 education? How much more funding should be given to education reform and in what major areas should it be spent?
The federal government should establish national priorities, such as helping disabled children (IDEA) and low-income children (Title 1). Those big national priorities that generally are funded by the federal government should continue to be part of the national policy.
The other part of national education policy should be about encouraging and challenging states to improve and to reform education through innovation. We should continue to call for challenging academic standards in core subjects, allowing public charter schools as part of choice, encouraging high teacher performance - those kinds of things are part of the President’s reform package. All of those measures should be put in place by the states. The states should be submitting plans for getting those things done. So that’s how I see the role of federal government policy.
Continuing to fund education during a time of economic recession is one of the main strengths of President Obama. In the middle of a recession that was not of his making, a recession that was handed to him when he took office as president, Obama made education a priority. He recognized that this is a knowledge-based economy, not just nationally, but globally. He recognized that we could not turn around an economy if our education system was failing. He took the initiative to prioritize education. I thought and still think that this was a brave and courageous thing to do. And, frankly, I think it has worked.
What would be your position on improving the teaching profession, including recruitment, teacher training, compensation, and assignment to low-income schools?
I have enormous respect for teachers. Not all of our teachers are high-quality teachers but certainly the greater percentages of them are. Further, they generally are committed to moving through all the areas of education reform, such as technology. So I have a very good feeling for teachers.
Countries that seem to rank highest in education right now, like Finland, have prioritized teacher recruitment. They get the very top students for the education profession. They do this by offering higher compensation and other benefits. It works. I think we need to do more in that regard, particularly in terms of finding ways to attract the brightest students to the profession of teaching.
I do not think teachers are being compensated as professionals, and they should be. When you pay teachers more, you can demand more. Also, I am a strong believer in the benefit of teachers working collaboratively with each other. I believe in high-quality teachers helping to improve those that are not. I do not believe in putting one teacher in the classroom and saying that’s it, you’re on your own. When teachers work in teams, students also will learn the importance and value of working in teams.
Right now we seem to send our best teachers to the best K-12 schools. The low-income schools that are struggling seem to get the teachers that are not the best. The states have to change that situation and put the priority on placing the top teachers in low-income schools. It would be a great help if we could move in that direction.
“I firmly oppose vouchers. Public schools are struggling for resources and I believe the idea of shifting a massive amount of money over into the private schools is a mistake.” — Dick Riley
What kinds of things could the states do to make this happen?
For instance, a school in a poor community could provide a residence for a young, high-quality teacher to live in that community. Other incentives could be provided to encourage better teachers to move into low-income school areas. And assistance could be provided for current teachers in low-income schools to gain National Board certification and other professional development to improve their teaching skills.
What would be your position on school choice, including charter schools and their expansion, private schools, vouchers, and investment in inadequately staffed and facilitated low-income schools?
I very much support public school charters. As you know, I was involved in the Clinton administration and we supported charter schools as an option for school boards to develop more public school choice and more school creativity. As with opening any new school, granting a charter does not automatically guarantee success; but generally it has proven to be a good option for students and families, as well as has spurred other creative ideas within the system.
I firmly oppose vouchers. Public schools are struggling for resources and I believe the idea of shifting a massive amount of money over into the private schools is a mistake. I support quality private schools. I support quality parochial schools. But I will continue to oppose strongly the use of public money for private or parochial school vouchers.
What would be your strategy to address the domestic and international achievement gaps, including your position on early childhood education, standardized testing, on-line modular education, and teacher/principal accountability?
Achievement gaps are a major issue, and we need to deal with them.
First of all, I believe we need to look at both domestic and international comparisons in terms of setting our standards and our strategies for improvement.
The only way you can close gaps in the long term is to invest more in early childhood education. All students improve as they move through the system. However, the gap becomes very difficult to close, or even narrow, when local communities don’t make pre-school a priority. Early childhood education involves a lot of things, including parental involvement and proper healthcare to ensure children are better developed by the time they get to kindergarten. We need to focus on this, especially in low-income areas. I very much support strengthening early childhood education.
With regard to standardized testing, that is very important. But we need multiple measures of assessment to determine a child’s (and school’s) academic status and growth. Formative tests that are given on a regular basis and provide timely feedback to teachers, students and their parents are particularly effective in determining what a child knows or doesn’t know and how that child’s instruction should be adjusted to gain continuous improvement.
Evaluating teachers and principals has always been difficult and it’s receiving a lot of discussion nowadays, as it should. I believe that student achievement, especially as far as improvement is concerned, is an important part of evaluating teachers. However, I do not believe that it should be the only method of assessment used. A thoughtful school principal will look at all the different factors that affect good teaching. He or she will develop a system within the school where teachers are collaborating and helping each other to do better, a system where students are learning from students. Observing a teacher’s work in the classroom (either sitting in or using videos) and assigning mentors to work with teachers on teaching methods are other ways that performance can improve.
Evaluating a teacher also depends a lot on who the students are. A teacher with very bright students in a well-to-do suburb is more likely to achieve more in the classroom than a teacher who has students from a very poor neighborhood where the parents (who possibly didn’t have a good education themselves) are struggling. It’s very hard to compare teachers in these situations. I am a great believer in looking at individual student improvement rather than how students are doing side by side. If the students are improving, my feeling is the teacher must be doing a pretty good job.
“I do not think teachers are being compensated as professionals, and they should be. When you pay teachers more, you can demand more.” — Dick Riley
What would be your position on curriculum reform, including the role of the arts, the treatment of ethics, and the adoption of blended online learning?
Technology is now clearly a part of our education system and will continue to change the way we provide education today and in the future. I personally like the blended learning ideas - that is, a blend of online and face-to-face interaction with students. Online learning allows us to reach out in many ways. In addition, it can be done quickly, from any location and at all times of the day. Blended learning will be an important part of education.
I strongly support music and the other arts in education. Enhancing the creative side of learning is extremely important, and studies have shown that music instruction has a beneficial effect on learning math and other core subjects. Learning to be creative, informed and well-rounded is important for our economy and it is important for our world.
Ethics is a very important part of growing up and learning. Parents have a strong role to play in that but so do schools and teachers. Positive role models are one of the best ways to illustrate strong ethics.
What would be your position on how to make college affordable for more qualified low-income students?
The cost of a college education is becoming a big national problem.
I am supportive of early college high schools. This idea of students finishing high school with one and in some cases two years of college behind them will save students money and time. The total cost of a four-year degree also can be reduced by spending the first two years at a community or technical college. This is good.
In President Obama’s plan, he encourages cost containment by colleges and universities. I think they all should be aware of this, paying attention to it and doing something about it. Pell grants, which the President has increased by more than 50%, are a tremendous benefit to low-income students. Also, significant cost savings to students, their families and all taxpayers have resulted from the federal Direct Lending program. With the community colleges and early college high schools programs, plus cost containment, Pell grants and Direct Lending, among others, we all should be able to work together to make college more affordable.
Dick Riley and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of Riley Institute at Furman University and Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough L.L.P.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Andy Hargreaves (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
The Global Search for Education
The Education Debate 2012 — Howard Gardner
The Education Debate 2012 — Howard Gardner
By C. M. Rubin with Harry Rubin and Michael Freeborn
Has there ever been a more important time to debate the big picture questions of education? As nations around the world reform education to prepare their students for the 21st century workplace, are our students ready to compete? In five interviews with education luminaries, I’ve asked them to imagine they were Secretary of Education and to discuss how they would address the issues facing America.
Today, my imaginary Secretary of Education is Dr. Howard Gardner. Dr. Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among numerous honors, he received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. Dr. Gardner has received honorary degrees from 26 colleges and universities. In 2005 and 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. His most recent book is Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter.
“Asking me to be Secretary of Education is a stretch, if not a counterfactual state of affairs, since my ideas and values are quite distant from those of my predecessors. Nonetheless, if, knowing of my views, a hypothetical President were to appoint me, here’s how I would answer his or her questions.”
What should the role of the federal government be in K-12 education? How much more funding should be given to education reform and in what major areas should it be spent?
The Federal Government plays a crucial role in ensuring civil rights and equitable distribution of funds to districts-in-need and to talented students. In the last few decades, it has become involved in issues of curriculum and assessment. While the motivation may have been praiseworthy, the results have been mixed. In many ways, the education that has been promoted is regressive; it presumes a population that was needed in the 19th or 20th century, rather than the graduates that we should want and need for the 21st century (versatile, critical and creative problem solvers, and responsible, decent, well-informed citizens). The curriculum has been increasingly narrowed to STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects and the assessments to multiple choice, fact-centric instruments.
Every educator and every parent in America should read Pasi Sahlberg’s book, Finnish Lessons. Finland has catapulted from a country with a mediocre educational system to perhaps the most admired system in the world. It has done so by ignoring the GERM (Global Educational Reform Movement) approach to educational reform (Sahlberg’s sardonic term) favored by the U.S. and England.
Finnish education features: 1) a highly professionalized teacher cohort; 2) a very ‘flat’ system. Schools around the country look similar to one another and each classroom contains the range of students. Teachers are expected to deal with the range - little talk about ‘special needs’ or ‘special education.’ There is plenty of art, music, and crafts in the system, and the amount is being increased this year! Also, through ninth grade, there are few formal tests.
What would be your position on improving the teaching profession, including recruitment, teacher training, compensation, and assignment to low income schools?
The key to a high performing educational system — whether it is in Finland, Singapore, or Canada — is a highly professionalized teacher corps. Professionals know their subjects and how to teach them effectively. They are given status, autonomy, and a reasonable standard of living, on the assumption that they can make judicious decisions about complex, not easily solved dilemmas. (For more on the good professional, see goodworkproject.org). The bulk of federal discretionary funds should be used to shift our country from a K-12 teaching cohort that is not distinguished academically and has not had the opportunity to act in a professional manner to a cohort that is as well-informed as our best engineers and physicians and as thoughtful and fair minded as our best judges.
The most skilled teachers should work in the most challenging districts and should be compensated accordingly. We should be recruiting from the same ranks as Teach for America, but not for a two year immersion — rather for decades-long dedication to a noble profession. Teacher training should take place over several years, largely on site, and not in brief ‘boot camps’. There should be a career path from intern to teacher to master teacher and teacher-of-teachers. The issue is NOT price — we spent trillions on wars, and give huge tax breaks to multi-millionaires, with hardly any second guessing.
What would be your position on school choice, including charter schools and their expansion, private schools, vouchers and investment in inadequately staffed and facilitated low income schools?
Given the disagreements and different value systems across the American educational system, the experimentation involved in charter schools has probably been worthwhile. It has hardly been revolutionary in any sense, and certainly not in results. I have stated for twenty years that we cannot expect charter schools to be notably better than regular public schools because ultimately they draw on the same population of teachers and students and, except in a few cases, have available equivalent funding.
In a country that was truly serious about educational reform, one would aim for excellently trained teachers in the full range of public schools, and there would be no need for charters or vouchers. The needed experimentation can be done within the public system as happens, for example, in Singapore.
Howard Gardner
What would be your strategy to address the domestic and international achievement gaps, including your position on early childhood education, standardized testing, on-line modular education, and teacher/principal accountability?
Though it is politically incorrect to say so, I think the U.S. has spent much too much time and energy documenting the achievement gap. Any social scientist, indeed any reasonable observer, could have told us twenty years ago that there would be large achievement gaps across racial and socio-economic groups. And any person with common sense could indicate the kinds of steps that were likely to lead to the reducing of the achievement gap.
In the U.S., we have a figure/ground problem. The dominant figure has become test scores and international comparisons — everything is focused on this ‘league table’ mentality. As a person who believes in the United States as it once was, the ‘figure’ should be the kind of society that we want to have and the kind of human beings that we want to nurture. All education, including testing and ranking, should be organized around the attainment of that vision. I believe that if we succeeded in having schools that were as good as our country can be, the test scores and rankings would take care of themselves. Remember, too, that the U.S. remained predominant, despite earlier threats from the Soviet Union and Japan; this was not about our test scores, it was about the health of our society.
What would be your position on curriculum reform, including the role of the arts, the treatment of ethics, and the adoption of blended online learning?
Our educational system ought to reflect the highest values of our society. I believe that education in the arts should be as central in the lives of young people as education in science or mathematics. Moreover, and this may ensure my marginality in current discourse, I believe that education in the arts needs no justification in terms of ‘transfer’ to other subjects or to its generation of wealth; it is a ‘good’ in itself. Indeed, societies are ultimately remembered for their art and culture, and that is as it should be.
Since I’ve devoted almost twenty years to the promotion of ethical thinking in young people, I don’t have to reiterate the importance of ethics in the educational system. There is nothing wrong with courses in ethics. But ultimately, the most powerful ‘treatment’ is the way that adults behave, at home, at school, and in the workplace; and the kinds of signals given by our society to those who behave ethically and those — often working on Wall Street — who do not. If ethics is ‘in the air’ and ‘on the street’, young people will notice; and if ethical behavior is honored in the breach, rather than in the observance, that will, alas, be noted as well.
When I describe my studies of ‘good work,’ to strangers, their eyes often glaze over. Hearing about ‘bad work’ is so much more tantalizing. But I gain attention when I point out that all over the world, people admire our legal system, our judicial system, our journalism, our institutions of higher education. And yet, I can testify first hand, that we are doing our best, as a society, to undermine those institutions. What a tragedy! That is because, over the last four decades, ethics has taken a back seat to the accumulation of wealth, by any means possible. The best political system is NOT untrammeled capitalism; it is the subtle blending of democracy, capitalism, and socialism — as observed in Scandinavia and in Northern Italy.
What would be your position on how to make college affordable for more qualified low income students?
Again, I risk being politically incorrect. I am great believer in the liberal arts, as conveyed in our best residential colleges, and I believe that Yale (and Swarthmore and Williams) are worth what they charge — and of course, they actually cost more than they charge. It would be tragic if these schools were to abandon their educational mission, again at the very time that the rest of the world (e.g. ,Singapore, the Emirates) are trying to emulate them.
But, alas, an education like this is only available to families that are affluent, or to the lucky few who benefit from need-blind admissions; the inequity of human, social and financial capital is fanning the distance between the haves (the upper 1 percent) and everyone else.
I have several suggestions:
- We need to determine what can be accomplished well ‘online’ and transmit as much of education as we can in ways that are inexpensive and widely accessible.
- We need to redirect as much of governmental and charitable discretionary funds to provide opportunities for the talented who lack the money for a higher education.
- We should provide forgivable loans to those who go into public service careers.
- We need to experiment with blended learning, such that students can have residential experiences while living at home, so that they don’t need to move across country into expensive housing.
- We need to improve our primary and secondary education so that we don’t need the remedial courses required for millions of students in our community colleges and other non-selective institutions.
- At some point in their lives, all individuals who would like a broader liberal arts education ought to have the opportunity, but there is absolutely no need to provide this to all 18 years olds. Many of them are much better off in the workplace — both for them and for our workplaces.
Howard Gardner and C. M. Rubin
Photos courtesy of Harvard Graduate School of Education.
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (US), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Professor Clay Christensen (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Andy Hargreaves (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (US), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. Eija Kauppinen (Finland), State Secretary Tapio Kosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (US), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.
Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
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