Bridging two mountains

Yesterday's Edublogger conference here at NECC in Atlanta was as exciting as only being in a huge group of like-minded educators can be. Keywords of engagement, authentic learning/assessment, creativity, information fluency, and global citizenry were common as ticks on a coon dog. (Sorry, being in the South has had an effect.)

What I wonder, though, is if education technology change isn't creeping up on many of us in that group from quite a different direction - through the use of technology to assess and use data to determine learning needs of individual students.

Now, by "learning needs" I would suggest that there is a dichotomy of what constitutes "learning needs" in the educational community. Look at the NETS standards, the blogosphere, and the work of Stiggens and Kohn and other progressive educators, engagement, authentic learning/assessment, creativity, information fluency, and global citizenry are the goals - the mountain the group yesterday is trying to climb.

But another real mountain exists in schools and classroom that may be more representative: the goals represented by NCLB, summative assessments, and the focus on basic skill attainment and fact-heavy content standards. To put it bluntly, test scores are of more concern to my teachers and administrators than nearly anything else. Too many of the things we believe in remain "nice extras" or more likely, distractions for the classroom teacher.

Some teachers like Vicki Davis seemed to have naturally bridged the gulf between the mountains - through her personal courage and belief that  this way of learning is just plain more important than test scores. But how do will build bridges for the rest of the educational world?

I can think of some important ones: 

Make sure assessments are used to differentiate instruction. We need to use the data we get from tests to individualize the educational process. As a teacher, I now empirically KNOW that I have kids with different skill levels in my classes. But I have to now take that knowledge and make sure every child is custom educated - not mass education. This might be the way educational technology (value-added testing) that may have the biggest positive impact on classrooms (and was not really addressed by we edubloggers yesterday to any great extent - at our peril.)

Have 21st skills recognized as being as important as the 3rs.  The "refreshed NCLB" requirements must include holding schools and teachers accountable for making sure students master the skills represented by the "refreshed" NETS standards. This will be a tough sell. (Despite the lip service, I am not convinced that business really wants creative thinkers.)

Make the case for engagement = learning. On a gut level, all teachers know that a student that is not engaged at least a certain level is not learning. (Duh.) But is there research saying the the greater the level of engagement, the greater the amount of learning? This is important given technology's power in engaging our Net Generation students. We can't rely on gut feeling to make this case, especially in a high stakes testing environment.

As you go through the vendor area (or look at ed tech publications), make a mental note of which products and services support the constructivist/21 century skill mindset (read Sylvia Martinez's June 23rd Generation Yes blog entry) and how many support the NCLB basic skills emphasis. Folks, the big money is going to the second group.

There is an old maxim about a person who climbs a huge mountain, only to turn around on reaching the summit to see the rest of his party has climbed another mountain. Are you climbing the same mountain as the rest of the educators in your schools? And if not, how do you build bridges between the peaks? 

Comments

[Ric Murry]

Doug,

Thanks for the update. I'm not able to be there, but I have Skyped Vicki Davis, been following on Twitter and Technorati to try and keep up.

I appreciate your analogy here, and have been thinking through the gap of vision and reality in my experience...much like your dichotomy description.

Here's where I always seem to get stuck. As you say, technology has the ability to assist in assessment. I fully agree and have written to this effect here.

A change in thinking I cannot imagine occuring is the ability for teachers to get the information they need in a timely manner so students will care about the results of their test scores. I summerized my frustration with this by saying,

I attended a conference where we participated in Whale Done. I'm sure many of us have had training in behavior correction, but I'll use the Whale Done comparison.

So how do we make the change to using technology for assessment, so we can get more immediate results, so we can actually make a difference for our students? By the time an individualized plan could be created for a student, the student will have forgotten their "unacceptable behavior" that requires correction.

The student, in most cases, has moved on to the next grade, to a new teacher. The new teacher falls into the trap of "blaming last year's teacher for not teaching (it's the way they have been trained to believe), so they believe they can use their approach and make the test scores rise. The focus is not on the individual student's need, it focused on the school's category in which the scores were low.

How do we bridge these gaps?

[Ric Murry]

Sorry, my quote did not work...here it is to make sense. of the previous comment.

The Whale Done approach...

Why don't we realize that the "unacceptable behavior" is the behavior of the STUDENT, not the teacher. Blaming the teacher is too easy, and we shouldn't take it anymore. [The scene in Network flashes in my mind.]

In the whale training situation it works like this:

* Unacceptable behavior - whale goes in wrong direction
* Initial reaction - trainer does not acknowledge whale's incorrect behavior
* Redirection - trainer immediately becomes more "hands-on" with whale to get the correct behavior
* Acceptable behavior - whale goes in right direction
* Reaction - trainer acknowledges whale with personal interaction (back rub, fish, etc.)
* Repeat acceptable behavior - habit is formed and behavior is frequently revisited to make sure it sticks

In education it works like this:

* Unacceptable behavior - student(s) score too low on high-stakes, standardized test
* Initial reaction - months go by until results are received so there is no initial reaction
* Redirection - student(s) are in next year of school, and have forgotten their original behavior. There is no redirection to the one with the "unacceptable behavior." In the interim, teachers are targeted for retraining by doing the same thing with a different name [new program].
* Acceptable behavior - students are never given the opportunity to be immediately redirected, so they are unsure of what to do to achieve acceptable behavior status. They become frustrated, and continue to underperform.
* Reaction - teachers don't know if they are encouraging the correct behavior or not in their students. We can only encourage effort not acceptable behavior.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Ric,

Sorry about the quote. I had to turn off the link back feature since I was getting deluged with spam.

I appreciate the Whale story and your concerns. On a very pragmatic level our school uses the NWEA MAPS tests twice a year with grades, K-10. These computerized tests give teachers feedback as soon as the kids leave the lab and can use the data to be grouping kids according to need.

What I don't think is happening yet, at least at the high school level, is teachers using the data to address the learning needs of individuals. Still all whole group instruction. There is still that missing link!

I do hope that eventually this will have a very positive effect. The tools are getting there.

Thanks again for writing in. I'm following the conference session I can't get to virtually as well!

All the very best,

Doug

[sylvia martinez]

Hi Doug,
The post of mine, "NECC, Buyer Beware" is here http://blog.genyes.com/index.php/2007/06/23/neccbuyerbeware/

For some reason the first time I posted it the link came up with some very weird characters. Ah technology ;-)

It's simply a call for more transparency about corporate sponsorship. Everyone knows what you are getting in the exhibit hall, but it's being allowed to leak out into sessions.