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  • Building a College Town

    Posted on February 19, 2012 by Jim Comment

    I went to college in a college town.  Blacksburg, Virginia, would almost not exist without Virginia Tech, and the school almost certainly would not have prospered without the local support of the community and leaders there.  Philadelphia would not be what it is were it not for the many schools in and nearby.

    We are extremely lucky to have a university in our township.  Say what you will, and I could say a lot, about nonprofits and their impact on the local economy, but I make an exception for educational entities.  In a world where intellectual skill is and will forever be the stock of trade, we should rejoice that we have access to so much in our region and in our very midst.

    The news that our school district is working to expand the relationship with Arcadia is terrific.  The potential for our district to reduce the cost of athletic field upgrades and maintenance while allowing Arcadia to grow more capable provides mutual benefits and continues to open the door to even more opportunities.

    Indeed, our district already has a strong relationship with Arcadia through existing dual-enrollment programs for our high school students.  In these programs, students earn actual college credits for courses taken to meet their high school requirements.  And this isn’t just with Arcadia, but also with Montgomery County Community College, Manor College, and Penn State.  We are truly lucky to be able to offer these opportunities to our students.

    But I’m going to present a few ideas in the hope that there might be more areas of collaboration possible from this burgeoning alliance.  These ideas go beyond just our school district in the belief that our entire community can both support and benefit from having Arcadia within our borders.

    Here goes:

    1. Cheltenham benefits from a strong citizenry that is engaged to work together in collaboration on many important topics.  Community access to classrooms for meeting spaces for a nominal fee to cover cleaning/energy use (especially spaces with video presentation capability) would be a great help to these groups.  If there could be 1 or 2 rooms available, it might help folks on the west end of the township have a place to meet versus driving to Rowland Community Center or having to use the too-large Glenside hall or too-expensive and too-imposing Curtis Hall.
    2. Cheltenham residents believe in education and often possess a high level of education, which presumably means that many also believe in the concept of life-long learning.  Community access to audit courses for a reduced fee or reduced tuition for matriculated students once classes fill to a certain level could be mutually beneficial.  I know that Arcadia needs to make money to stay viable, but once a course fills to a certain level, adding a limited number of additional students (especially auditing students) would seem like getting free money at a modest or near-zero marginal cost.
    3. Along with access to courses could come an expanded relationship with our library system to enable a richer resource for research and study than is possible through our public system.
    4. We have long needed a community health club or similar facility.  Community access to other athletic spaces might be provided, again for a modest fee, that allows Arcadia to sustain their own facilities at a reduced cost.
    5. We should continue to establish or expand relationships with the faculty, especially township residents, as a way to leverage their knowledge and research (along with their students) to discuss and guide the development of new solutions for our community.  Universities have access to funding that communities may not have.  There are bound to be opportunities for grants and other programs where collaboration is mutually beneficial.

    By the way, I’m OK with fees and I’m not looking for a hand-out from anyone.  Fees limit access to only those with proper intentions and motivations.  Fees bring commitment to both parties.  Modest fees also keep the access relatively open while ensuring that costs are accounted for fairly.

    I welcome thoughts on whether this makes sense, though.  To me, being able to tout this relationship through the realty community should be a nice feather in our cap for new home buyers, not to mention putting the benefits of living in Cheltenham and with Arcadia in the mouths of every homeowner and resident.  And to me, this is only win-win.

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  • Why I’m Skeptical About Apple iBooks

    Posted on January 30, 2012 by Jim 1 Comment

    The recent news that Apple has a new product offering electronic text books may sound interesting, given their recent string of “gotta have it” products, but be careful about believing that Apple is doing any favors for education here.

    The article below expresses concern that Apple has set its sights on the open standards that make it possible for schools, already, to obtain electronic textbooks at reasonable costs.

    http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/how-apple-is-sabotaging-an-open-standard-for-digital-books/4378

    There is no doubt in my mind that expanding the use of technology to bring textual information to students in ways that can also integrate other forms of knowledge sharing, collaboration, and communications at a lower overall cost is something that schools need to be looking at carefully.  The challenge, however, is that there is risk is picking a path with new technology and one of the best ways to minimize that risk is by using open standards that allow schools to purchase resources competitively.

    Fundamentally, open standards help schools cut costs by supporting competitive purchases.

    I fear that Apple is no friend here and school boards should be establishing policies that support the promulgation of open standards wherever educational achievement is involved.  In the same way that boards fight against profiteering in other significant areas of education, we should fight it for a major supply source that is critical to quality, cost-effective public education.

    The more I learn about Apple, and all the sides of Mr. Jobs, whom I have admired at times and yet feared at others, the more I’m cautious about their goals.  I certainly don’t think we want our children to grow up like the children in China, but it’s not clear, to me at least, that Apple cares about the work force at their Foxcon facility, or about anything but its profits.

    http://www.cbs.com/pepsimax/video/?pid=H7eT46zj35WJwi8J_6BOvJpv_jgRTC1N

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  • The Horror of Chester-Upland Continues

    Posted on January 26, 2012 by Jim Comment

    We should all be horrified and saddened by what is happening in Chester-Upland.  I don’t like seeding fear, but right now, few school districts are safe from the devastation that is creeping across our educational system in PA.  Unfortunately, the cycle of buying government to create more self-serving laws and budgets will continue unless we Stand Up For Public Education and demand change that prevents for-profit entities from tearing down America’s most valuable asset, our public educational system.  Unfettered capitalism in education is a recipe for disaster and we must educate others to support proper laws that, in turn, support educational achievement without robbing communities to pay profits for charter school companies.

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  • Whew! 2011 is Over! Some Topics for 2012

    Posted on January 1, 2012 by Jim Comment

    The following is a set of random thoughts that have collected over the past year, month, or so.  I wanted to gather my thoughts back up after a busy year and hope to pursue these topics more completely during the coming year.

    Because time is always short, I want to make my posts go more quickly and I may not always reference my sources properly.  You will find many of them in my new .info site (linked at the top of this blog) where you will also find the list of news and blog sources I follow (I’m a Feedly fiend).  Follow them yourself if you’re interested in tracking the zeitgeist of public education as I try to.

    Here goes:

    1. Budgeting challenges will not cease in 2012.  Act I will not go away, however ill-conceived it is.  Unending state budget cuts will likely continue as Pennsylvania opts out of its responsibility to education and shifts its support toward moving public dollars to private enterprises that in turn fund political campaigns.  This transfer will drive more burden to homeowners, since PA has yet to develop a method for funding schools other than through the predominant use of property taxes.
    2. Educational Technology (or EdTech) will continue to improve.  eLearning or Blended Learning or Open Educational Resources (OERs) like MIT and Stanford are democratizing education through multiple alternative educational resources (online and offline) and permitting new paths for teachers to be used as highly experienced guides rather than the sole fountain of knowledge in the classroom.  In addition, new technology is being created that can help develop students’ communication, collaboration, creative,  and critical-thinking skills.  This isn’t going away.
    3. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education took a pause in the past decade or two.  Something about not being cool to be smart has left us with a gap in STEM graduates to propel our economy.  This situation has to end.  If iPads and Twitter are cool, then STEM is cool and we have to promote STEM education for every child to pursue it in their own way.  Even gardeners and auto mechanics need to understand the science behind their work to reach their full potential.
    4. Better student engagement is continuing, often embracing them and their learning through technology, but also by supporting educational engagement through more self- or group-directed project-, problem-,  and inquiry-based learning approaches.  But technology is not the only way that students engage with their learning environment.  Technology is just a new way and one that we need to understand both for privacy and security reasons as well as the social and educational impacts.   PBL and IBL approaches are being explored by many districts so there will be more to report here.
    5. Results Only Learning Environments (ROLEs) sprang up in 2011 after Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, described Results Only Work Environments where employees were given a much freer rein to perform while being held accountable for the results or outcomes.  A number of prominent companies are embracing this approach with success.  In ROLEs, engaging students and giving them the freedom to learn in their own way while remaining focused on outcomes that reflect deep understanding of the material (critical thinking, too) could be a new design for education.  There are already teachers out there willing to experiment with this approach.
    6. I look forward to seeing the expansion of programs to provide mentoring for all students to give our them the benefits of our incredibly diverse community — diverse in education and career choices.  We can help our students network better and get into the best schools for their interests and career aspirations.  In this way, I believe we can also provide support for alternative career paths, remembering that all careers require critical thinking and analytical skills to be successful.
    7. I’m hoping for the end of narrow assessments in reading and math as the benchmarks for a quality education.  NCLB wasn’t wrong in its intent, but in practice it has damaged our educational system and we need to drop back and rethink how we both raise achievement AND support broad skill development in less measurable but often far more valuable skills of creative, critical, and collaborative thinking.  I think our teachers should lead the way.
    8. I’m tired of Michelle Rhee’s teacher bashing.  We need more support for teachers with less presumption that they need constant oversight and externally imposed scrutiny.  Teachers are not the problem.  They are the solution.  They are professionals.  Let’s engage them in a dialog on how to improve education and the teaching profession.  “Working” in our schools should be engaging and inspiring and there is little that can’t be discussed to get us there.  Also, teaching is a team sport, and we need to support that approach where possible.
    9. School climate affects learning.  We need to continue our efforts to end bullying and cyberbullying between and amongst students and teachers.  For both privacy and legal reasons (boards sit as judge and jury on some disputes), it’s tough for board members to know how much of a problem this is, but that doesn’t mean we don’t support measures to evaluate, understand, improve, promote a healthy school climate.
    10. Vouchers will continue to be wrongly seen as a savior when, in fact, they do nothing to improve student achievement, do not provide the magical opportunity to urban schools that they are believed to, and only serve to take public funds out of the public school system handing it to private interests.  (The Atlantic Monthly just published an article noting that Finland has no private schools.)  The public effectively killed the voucher idea in 2011.  2012 will not be easy, but I’m hearing that political races might remove the topic from discussion.  Let’s hope so, and let’s hope that the profiteers that benefit from goofy charter school funding rules will continue to be exposed and held accountable.
    11.  On that note, private and charter schools will probably continue to be unaccountable for the large sums handed to them.  The situation in Chester Upland, where a charter school is suing an already beaten-down district, is horrific, but the situation is a symptom of wrong-headed ideas on education funding, including cuts to our weakest school districts.  The horror is that we’re affecting a group of students and condemning them to a life without the best skills and insights we can give them.  We all lose here, folks.
    12.  I just heard about a new “open campus” concept where students can cross district lines to pursue special courses.  Under such a concept, Cheltenham could be a provider of certain programs (like the arts) while neighboring districts could play to their strengths, possibly optimizing costs.  Interesting idea requiring much more analysis.
    13. We’ll continue the terrific progress of rebuilding and renovating our district.  We can’t be a first class district with third class schools.  We simply can’t afford the money it takes to maintain them.  Our new schools are bringing the best and most economical solutions to building design and to learning spaces.  I firmly believe we’ll see improved student performance as these new schools come on line.
    14. For folks who fear the number 13, have no fear.

    So these are just some of the topics I will continue to monitor and discuss.  Comments and suggestions are always welcomed.

    Overall, I believe our schools are terrific.  Our teachers are terrific.  Our community supports strong, diverse, creative, and cost-effective public education for all of our students.  The budget situation is tough, but this is a great time to be on the Cheltenham School Board.

    Have a wonderful year!

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  • Assessing ESEA Flexibility

    Posted on September 25, 2011 by Jim Comment

    I encourage a review of the ESEA Flexibility proposal.

    I was very interested in the suggestions for “Consultation” and this proposal should be great motivation for community and stakeholder discussion.

    There is good and bad in this proposal.  It essentially guts NCLB and replaces it with state-level approaches, though generally those approaches must be based on multi-state or nationwide, but state-level agreements.  And though it opens the door to other areas for achievement, the new proposal still focuses too much on basic reading/math skills.  This may be OK for poorer, Title I schools, a heavy focus area of the proposal, but our community needs a broader set of achievement metrics.  Discussions on High Quality Teachers, High Quality Assessments, and Student Growth will be valuable.

    The proposal is short on metrics and clear statements of desired outcomes, but that may be intentional.  I’m disappointed that it doesn’t do enough to support programs that address underlying poverty, instead leaving states and districts to figure things out.  Our nation still not getting serious on this supreme factor in student achievement.

    I am very pleased with the recognition that students should be prepared for college OR other careers.  Hopefully, this will generate more community discussion and media attention on technical skill development.  Our own career-tech school is a shining example to be promoted.

    There are many items that local communities can explore with or without an ESEA waiver.  I support discussions on how to inform and engage our community on these topics.  As always, I welcome thoughts on this discussion.

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  • Youth Sports Head Trauma — Time to Take Action?

    Posted on August 21, 2011 by Jim Comment

    Many may have seen the October 11th, 2010 60-Minutes article on football head trauma (I don’t have a link for it anymore).  There’s also a NY Times article on the NFL injury report referenced in the 60-Minutes report.  The National School Boards Association also published a recent article on this important topic, which covers more than just football injuries.  According to NSBA’s report, 1 in 10 sports injuries involves head trauma.

    I support sports of all kinds, but it’s pretty clear now that our children are at risk in some areas.  The danger of injury at a young age appears to be most damaging, too.  It’s time to review my stance on this and I want to do the right thing for all of the stakeholders.

    If you have information about this issue, please share it with me.  I want to be better informed so I can ask good questions.

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  • Another Meaningless Statistical Analysis of School Performance

    Posted on January 8, 2011 by Jim Comment

    One great benefit of my having sat on a school board for the past 15 months is that it has forced me to dig into the details behind some of the bold statements made almost daily by well-meaning, but mathematically-challenged individuals who regularly tell us what’s wrong with education in the US.  As a fortunate former student of Temple professor, John Allen Paulos, author of NY Times bestseller “Innumeracy”, wherein he laments the sad state of the media’s and many others’ ability to discern relevant fact from fiction with statistical analysis; I am often keen to check the facts and assumptions on various reports that claim some blinding realization after a new analysis of data.

    Here’s just one more recent example of what I now consider to be complete and utter drivel as it proceeds to use a limited set of metrics, highly nuanced in their own right, to draw a value conclusion for the cost of public education.  It is a report by a group interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics or STEM education (of which I am an obvious fan), but sometimes even these well-meaning, and presumably well-educated folks fail to get things quite right.

    So let me make this very clear and simple, because it is.  Quality and value in education is NOT measured just by performance on the core subjects of reading and math in relation to aggregated, district-level, per-student costs.  It is completely irresponsible to suggest otherwise, and we parents, and anyone who understands that a productive, innovative society contains more than just good readers and mathematicians; must speak out that we want our schools to be more than just mills for a limited set of core academic subjects.  We want good productive, global citizens and the best schools deliver that – my own being just one example.

    Providing more, costs more.

    It takes staffing, training, facilities, and planning to offer quality programs outside of the core subjects, but there are no national metrics that measure the quality of the students that result from such programs.  Whether it is through sports, the arts, advanced and elective subjects, or the wide array of extracurricular activities offered by wholesome communities, we know that students become better people through these programs and they are CHEAP to offer when they are included as part of a total academic program of study and local educational system.

    We have to fight for the development of national comparative metrics to show that schools that offer more also deliver more.  While I do not have a specific list of such metrics, they would likely include a multitude of accreditation bodies in sports, the arts, etc. that evaluate the quality of the “beyond core” programs.  They almost certainly include long-term information gathering that follows students after they leave our schools with such considerations as continued college performance, job placement and salary statistics, award tracking, publishing statistics, and beyond.  Many of these items are not even being collected today, so this is a real uphill battle, but with modern technology, it is increasingly possible to do so without violating any privacy concerns.

    So, what works and how do we know we’re getting our money’s worth?

    The exact things that affect student achievement are often unclear, but through all of the research I have dug into, poverty, quality teacher training, and parent involvement are clear outliers for what works.  This is no surprise, which is probably why it receives almost no media attention.  The basic ideas are that students learn best when they are prepared to learn (fed, rested, and clothed), have a supportive environment at home, and have qualified instructors who inherently seek to collaborate and bring new approaches to teaching.  And we generate the best new citizens when we offer a broad array of intellectual experiences and training, which naturally implies a “beyond core” approach to total education.

    I note here again the book and this summary article by Diane Ravitch who presents, with much greater credibility and detail, her experienced recommendations for a value system in public education.  These are not complicated ideas, but they do take focus and dedication, which makes them hard to do.

    And for a reasonable example of statistical analysis, here’s one by a principal in Kansas showing how poverty is a significant factor in achievement and demonstrates a proper interpretation of  the recent PISA study (a study that, by the pundits, showed that the US was clearly lagging internationally).  This analysis shows if the US performance is considered against like levels of poverty, we are actually exceptional in our performance.  (Might this indeed be the reason that the US has lead the world economy and is forecast to do so for decades to come?)  We should be proud of the US public education system, contrary to the punditry.

    The reason this analysis is more credible is that it is not trying to draw conclusions based on data that was not collected and there is only one, simple hypothesis being made, i.e., that there is a strong correlation between poverty and achievement.  While we must always be cautious about drawing causes from correlation, the intermediate links between poverty and academic performance are simply too easy to see.  Poverty negatively affects academic achievement, and we should fight its existence and effects on education.

    Finally, lest you believe private or charter schools are somehow a standout here, please know that neither category of school is accountable to the public in the way that truly public schools are.  Private schools do not even report their academic testing metrics or their financial data.  While there are some strong performers just as in conventional public schools, in general, charter schools, and especially cyber-charter schools, provide little or no benefit in academic performance.

    Producing outstanding young people requires more than just the core academic subjects, and good programs cost money.

    In the end, our metrics need to be expanded to reflect all that we have and want in our public education system.

    Addendum:

    The Economic Policy Institute recently published this article that speaks directly to many of these issues.

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  • Six of Seven District Schools Earn State Achievement Award

    Posted on December 27, 2010 by Jim 1 Comment

    Congratulations to our hardworking students, families, teachers, and administrators for their efforts to make Cheltenham shine in 2010!

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  • Going Beyond the Core

    Posted on December 19, 2010 by Jim Comment

    Almost from the start of my term on the Board, I have struggled with how to understand value and affordability metrics in education.  As an engineer, I’ve been taught to analyze any system for its structure of performance, feedback, and control.  This is the essence of any accountability system.

    Of course, the difference is that schools are not machines and students are not widgets that we can mass-produce, but they are systems.  Both schools and students are vastly more complex than machines, so we should not hope than any simple system of metrics can adequately guide us with feedback or control, as they might with more simple systems.  This is why we have to be very cautious about using the PISA and NAEP reports, interesting though they may be, to guide our perspective on the full range of services and courses that we offer at our schools.  Producing quality adults requires a much broader set of experiences than can be measured by the simple math and language arts testing that is currently done, and we certainly cannot limit or guide funding based on a desire to generate high performance in only those subjects.

    One major challenge is: how do we measure a quality educational experience, one that produces a productive, creative, and engaged population; and thus how do we get credit for and be accountable for providing the kind of education that produces that population.  And this accountability applies to everyone in the system, not just a subset, say, of teachers.

    Given that we are, today, driven by these few metrics, another challenge is: how do we embed broader knowledge exposure into these core courses so that students have the full enrichment needed to appreciate a subject and the bigger picture.  I have begun to see research and implementation of project-based learning as a way to do exactly this.  I’m encouraged by the new ideas and have supported examinations of project learning in our local discussions.

    From what I’ve learned in just the last year, school districts are under intense pressure to cut costs for all but the “most essential” courses and services.  But who makes these decisions and how do we decide what is most essential?  Today, it is often the state legislature with little input from district leadership or teachers.

    Please don’t misunderstand me.  As an engineer, I’m a big fan of math, science, and technology education, so-called STEM education, but one obvious casualty of our laser focus on math and language arts has been our fading offerings in the arts and humanities across the nation.  While we are required by state laws to offer certain courses outside of math and language arts, cost constraints are placing great pressure to do only the bare minimum to meet those requirements and to focus much of our effort on performance on a only a few metrics.  This is just wrong with potential serious consequences.

    Our democracy and, indeed, our humanity is dependent on the maximization of population with knowledge across a broad array of subjects.  Only then can we hope to benefit from the diversity of perspective that will enable us to continue to solve our greatest cultural and scientific challenges.  We have to find a way to make offering a broad range of courses part of the the economically incentivised accountability, feedback, and control systems.

    I’ll close with two recent articles that highlight the importance of supporting the humanities and encouraging students to “go beyond the core”.  While costs are always a factor, I believe we cannot let the economics tied to using a narrow set of metrics drive the humanity out of education.

    “Don’t underestimate value of a liberal arts education“, Professor Victor Hanson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

    Minnesota program encourages 8th graders to “go beyond the core” in selecting their high school courses. 

    I welcome your perspective on this subject.

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  • Improving Family-School Partnerships

    Posted on October 16, 2010 by Jim Comment

    At the recent PASA-PSBA School Leadership Conference, I enjoyed a good discussion on this topic by a presenter from the National PTA.  True, our district is based on the National PTO group, but a good idea is a good idea, and I will “steal shamelessly” (to quote GE’s Jack Welch) when it can help.

    The presentation was based on a PTA-developed program for evaluating and implementing partnerships though the use of an up-front survey connected to a simple rubric (Edu-term warning: Rubric = a scoring measure and improvement plan in one document).

    To be fair and balanced, PTO Today, the group that supports our PTO structure, also has a very good parent-involvement approach with many good ideas, but based on my history with our UPG, I found the survey and rubric approach to be more easily implemented for a group of parents that changes frequently.  The rubric is perhaps more focused on the relationship between families and administrations.

    You be the judge and use what you believe works.  I offer this as additional support for all parent involvement activities.

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