Dear Commons Community,

An announcement was made yesterday that Chicago would close 54 public school in order to address substantial funding deficits in the education system.  The New York Times reported:

“Barbara Byrd-Bennett, chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, stated:

“The district said that it would save $560 million over 10 years by reducing investment in the closed buildings and cut annual operating costs by $43 million.

The closings represent about 8 percent of the 681 public schools in Chicago, the third-largest school district in the country. More than 400,000 students are enrolled in public schools, a large majority black or Hispanic and from low-income families.

… The final decision came just two weeks after a state commission in Pennsylvania announced a decision to close 23 schools in Philadelphia. Districts in Detroit, Newark and Washington have also closed schools in recent years.

In Chicago, where about 100 schools have already been closed since 2001, Ms. Byrd-Bennett has said that the district needs to reduce a $1 billion deficit. “By consolidating these schools, we can focus on safely getting every child into a better performing school close to their home,” she said Thursday.”

Response to this decision was quick and forceful:

“Union leaders and parent activists protested the decision, saying that closings can undermine neighborhoods and cause safety problems for students who may as a result have to cross gang lines.

“We’re going to have abandoned buildings,” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, in an interview. “They destabilize the neighborhoods around them.”

“They are moving people around on spreadsheets,” Ms. Lewis added. “And children are not spreadsheets.”

Some parents worry that their children will not get the attention they need once schools are consolidated and class sizes expand.”

A sad situation for American education and the country in general.   Just think what we could have done for Chicago’s children with a small fraction of the trillions of the dollars spent on the Iraq War during the past ten years.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A couple of weeks ago I gave a keynote at Pace University on blended learning and MOOCs.  During the session, a question arose about the exact definition of a MOOC.  In addition to the usual massive open online course definition,  I indicated that the term is open to several definitions.  In an effort to add some levity to the session, I commented that in some neighborhoods of New York, to call someone a “MOOK”  (spelled with  a “K”) was  not a compliment and  could get one into trouble.  I also mentioned that if you wanted to know more about a MOOK in this respect to see the movie, Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Harvey Keitel and Robert Di Niro.  Low and behold I was just sent a URL for a youtube video showing the MOOK scene in this movie.  It is quite hilarious and worth your time.  It will give you a whole other perspective on the term.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Senate passed a measure limiting National Science Foundation funding for political science research projects yesterday.   As reported in The Huffington Post:

“Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) submitted a series of amendments to the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013, the Senate bill to keep the government running past March 27. One of those amendments would prohibit the NSF from funding political science research unless a project is certified as “promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States.”

“Studies of presidential executive power and Americans’ attitudes toward the Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American’s life from a threatening condition or to advance America’s competitiveness in the world,” Coburn wrote in a letter to NSF director Subra Suresh last week explaining his proposal.

Coburn’s NSF amendment was approved by the Senate during a voice vote on Wednesday afternoon.

“I’m pleased the Senate accepted an amendment that restricts funding to low-priority political science grants,” Coburn said in a statement following the vote. “There is no reason to spend $251,000 studying Americans’ attitudes toward the U.S. Senate when citizens can figure that out for free.”

The passage of Coburn’s amendment was met with backlash from members of the academic community, including the American Political Science Association.

“Adoption of this amendment is a gross intrusion into the widely-respected, independent scholarly agenda setting process at NSF that has supported our world-class national science enterprise for over sixty years,” the association said in a statement. “The amendment creates an exceptionally dangerous slippery slope. While political science research is most immediately affected, at risk is any and all research in any and all disciplines funded by the NSF. The amendment makes all scientific research vulnerable to the whims of political pressure.”

Slippery slope indeed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article today on the transformation of Adlai E. Stevenson High School into a nine-school complex.  Marc Sternberg, a deputy chancellor for the New York City Department of Education, commented that “The work that is happening at the Stevenson campus is dramatically better today, without question, than it was in 2004…And we have a long way to go.”

Student outcomes data paint a mixed picture.

“The graduation rate for schools in the building has nearly doubled, to 57.3 percent at the five traditional four-year schools with graduating classes in 2011, according to statistics from the city’s Education Department.

Attendance at Stevenson has gone from 75 percent a decade ago to 81 percent across the nine schools this year. And while city data shows a 62 percent plunge in violent crime in the building since 2004-5, the state says that overall episodes in the schools have declined much less steeply.

And SAT scores — under 10 percent of students took the test in 2011 — show no marked improvement. Scores on the English Regents exams have climbed, but those on the United States history and government test are no better than Stevenson’s were a decade ago. According to state data, only about 2.4 percent of the students who started at six small schools in the building in 2007 were equipped to do college work four years later — far below the city’s average of 20.7 percent.

Still, only 14 percent of students graduated with a Regents degree from Stevenson in 2005; at the five schools with graduating classes in 2011, 40 percent did.”

I would agree with Mr. Sternberg that there appears to have been improvements but the 2.4 percent of the students who are college-ready is troubling and casts doubt on other metrics such as the higher graduation rate.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The media are running articles, conducting interviews, and commenting on the 10^th anniversary of the Iraq War.

Michael Moore, Oscar-winning film director of documentaries, was on Piers Morgan last night calling for President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to be tried as war criminals for lying to the American people about the need to go to war.  Moore commented that there could be “no greater lie” than leading a country to war on false pretenses. (See video below.)

A letter on truthdig, written by a wounded Iraqi veteran likewise accused Bush, Cheney and Rumsfled of “egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole”.

A New York Times editorial concluded:

“The Iraq war was unnecessary, costly and damaging on every level. It was based on faulty intelligence manipulated for ideological reasons. The terrible human and economic costs over the past 10 years show why that must never happen again.”

I hope sincerely that we learned from Iraq that it “must never happen again”. However, we  have political ideologues completely involved in all levels of government, the news media, and our private enterprises and organizations.  A few votes here and there in a close national election and the ideologues will be making our country’s war policies again.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Rob Jenkins, Associate Professor of English, Georgia Perimeter College, in his “Two-Year Track” column in The Chronicle of Higher Education,  comments on the appropriateness of MOOCs for community college students and sees them as a “massively bad idea”.  He is skeptical that community college students will do well in such courses.  To the contrary, he predicts very large drop-out rates.  To make his case, he focuses on the legislation being proposed in California that would require public colleges and universities to grant credit for students closed out of courses.  Here is a sample of his analysis:

“We know that succeeding in online classes requires an extraordinary degree of organization, self-discipline, motivation, and time-management skill…

… we know—or at least we seem to be learning—that MOOCs work best for certain types of students and certain types of courses. The students, of course, are once again the most self-disciplined and internally motivated—primarily, in fact, students who have had successful learning experiences in more traditional settings, including many who have already earned degrees. In other words, not community-college students.”

His conclusion:

“…to recap, California’s plan (or to be fair, one senator’s plan) is basically to dump hundreds of thousands of the state’s least-prepared and least-motivated students into a learning environment that requires the greatest amount of preparation and motivation, where they will take courses that may or may not be effective in that format.

Here’s a prediction: Those students will fail and drop out at astronomical rates. Then the hand-wringing will begin anew, the system will pour millions more dollars into “retention” efforts, and the state will be in an even deeper fix than it is now.”

We shall see!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In February, 2013, The Chronicle of Higher Education attempted to survey every professor who has ever taught a MOOC. The online questionnaire was sent to 184 professors, and 103 of them responded.  The results provide the first insights into a substantial number of faculty who have taught a MOOC.

On the positive side:

“Many of those surveyed felt that these free online courses should be integrated into the traditional system of credit and degrees. Two-thirds believe MOOCs will drive down the cost of earning a degree from their home institutions, and an overwhelming majority believe that the free online courses will make college less expensive in general…

… the positive response may come as a surprise to some observers. Every year the Babson Survey Research Group asks chief academic administrators to estimate what percentage of their faculty members “accept the value and legitimacy of online education”; the average estimate in recent years has stalled at 30 percent, even as online programs have become mainstream.”

On the downside:

“The average [student] pass rate was 7.5 percent, and the median number of passing students was 2,600…

72% of the faculty responding did not believe that their institutions should grant credit for MOOC courses…

“The insights that come with teaching massive online courses also come at a price. Many professors in the survey got a lot out of teaching MOOCs, but teaching MOOCs took a lot out of them.

Typically a professor spent over 100 hours on his MOOC before it even started, by recording online lecture videos and doing other preparation. Others laid that groundwork in a few dozen hours.

Once the course was in session, professors typically spent eight to 10 hours per week on upkeep. Most professors managed not to be inundated with messages from their MOOC students—they typically got five e-mails per week—but it was not unusual for a professor to be drawn into the discussion forums. Participation in those forums varied, but most professors posted at least once or twice per week, and some posted at least once per day.

In all, the extra work took a toll. Most respondents said teaching a MOOC distracted them from their normal on-campus duties.

“I had almost no time for anything else,” said Geoffrey Hinton, a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto.

“My graduate students suffered as a consequence,” he continued. “It’s equivalent to volunteering to supply a textbook for free and to provide one chapter of camera-ready copy every week without fail.”

Professor John Owens, at the University of California -Davis, had a similar experience. He spent 150 hours building his MOOC, “Introduction to Parallel Programming,” for Udacity. More than 15,000 people registered. Once the course started, he spent about five hours per week on it, posting frequently on the discussion forums.

Although Mr. Owens did not ask for relief from his normal teaching load to make time for his MOOC, he doubts that he would have gotten it if he had asked.

“It’s out of ‘my own’ time, which is quite limited,” Mr. Owens reported. “So, yes, other areas of my job suffered.”

The article went on to mention that:

“The findings are not scientific, and perhaps the most enthusiastic of the MOOC professors were the likeliest complete the survey. These early adopters of MOOCs have overwhelmingly volunteered to try them—only 15 percent of respondents said they taught a MOOC at the behest of a superior—so the deck was somewhat stacked with true believers. A few professors whose MOOCs have gone publicly awry did not respond to the survey.

But the participants were primarily longtime professors with no prior experience with online instruction. More than two-thirds were tenured, and most had taught college for well over a decade. The respondents were overwhelmingly white and male. In other words, these were not fringe-dwelling technophiles with a stake in upending the status quo.”

The debate about MOOCs goes on.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Republican House Speaker John Boehner made a most significant comment yesterday on ABC’s This Week, when he said that he “absolutely trusts” President Barack Obama.  Furthermore, Boehner said that the two have a good relationship and that they’re “open with each other … honest with each other.” But that they also have some big differences.

To me this was an enormously important comment on Boehner’s part given that elements of his party absolutely refuse to compliment the President. Remember the vitriol that came from the Republican leadership and media when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie embraced and thanked Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  It might just be symbolic but it is important for leaders of our two parties to demonstrate civility to and respect for one another.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article that examines the results of SAT scores, income and attendance at selective colleges.  Referring to a new analysis conducted by conducted by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard, the article comments:

“Most low-income students who have top test scores and grades do not even apply to the nation’s best colleges, according to an analysis of every high school student who took the SAT in a recent year.

The pattern contributes to widening economic inequality and low levels of mobility in this country, economists say, because college graduates earn so much more on average than nongraduates do. Low-income students who excel in high school often do not graduate from the less selective colleges they attend.

Only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country’s 238 most selective colleges, according to  Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Christopher Avery of Harvard, two longtime education researchers. Among top students in the highest income quartile, that figure was 78 percent.

The findings underscore that elite public and private colleges, despite a stated desire to recruit an economically diverse group of students, have largely failed to do so…”

Dr. Hoxby and Dr . Avery, both economists, compared the current approach of colleges to looking under a streetlight for a lost key. The institutions continue to focus their recruiting efforts on a small subset of high schools in cities like Boston, New York and Los Angeles that have strong low-income students.

The researchers defined high-achieving students as those very likely to gain admission to a selective college, which translated into roughly the top 4 percent nationwide. Students needed to have at least an A-minus average and a score in the top 10 percent among students who took the SAT or the ACT.”

In sum, this is troublesome commentary on counseling and recruitment policies at some of our selective colleges but maybe not unexpected.  For instance, while the article refers to the difficulty of getting financial aid information to students, it does not comment on cultural issues and the desire of many students to stay in the familiarity of neighborhoods and small towns where they feel the support of family and friends.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Pamela Paul, the features and children’s books editor at The New York Times Book Review, explores gaming and K-12 education and questions its value in an op-ed piece today.  Citing a number of studies and surveys, her analysis is that a good deal of learning is hard, tedious, and repetitive.  It isn’t fun and games.   For example:

“Many of the games marketed as educational aren’t as much fun as video games children would play if left to their own devices. But the added bells and whistles still make it harder for them to focus on plain old boring work sheets and exams. Imagine how flat a work sheet would seem after a boisterous round of Zap the Math From Outer Space.

Technologists aim for educational games that are “immersive” and “relevant,” “experiential” and “authentic,” “collaborative” and “fulfilling” — adjectives that could easily apply to constructing an art project out of found objects. It’s easy to foresee a future in which teachers try to unpeel children from their screens in order to bring them back to such hands-on, “real world” experiences. To renew their “focus.” “Imagine if kids poured their time and passion into a video game that taught them math concepts while they barely noticed, because it was so enjoyable,” Bill Gates said last year. Do we want children to “barely notice” when they develop valuable skills? Not to learn that hard work plays a role in that acquisition? It’s important to realize early on that mastery often requires persevering through tedious, repetitive tasks and hard-to-grasp subject matter.”

She also defends the teachers who have expressed concern about gaming and technology in the classroom:

“When experienced teachers express skepticism about the value of computer games in school, they’re often viewed as foot-draggers or change-resistant Luddites. A 2012 Project Tomorrow report (paid for in part by the technology industry), found that only 17 percent of current teachers believe technology helps students deeply explore their own ideas.

“Technology firms are understandably eager to enter the lucrative school market and acquire customers at the earliest age. News Corporation is introducing in schools a new tablet computer that directs a child’s wandering gaze with the on-screen message: “Eyes on teacher.” Perhaps the child would have done just that had he not had a colorful screen blinking in front of his face. Take-home games for the device include one in which Tom Sawyer fights the Brontës. (Lest children avert their attention to the actual books.)”

Her conclusion:

“How’s this for a radical alternative? Let children play games that are not educational in their free time. Personally, I’d rather my children played Cookie Doodle or Cut the Rope on my iPhone while waiting for the subway to school than do multiplication tables to a beep-driven soundtrack. Then, once they’re in the classroom, they can challenge themselves. Deliberate practice of less-than-exhilarating rote work isn’t necessarily fun but they need to get used to it — and learn to derive from it meaningful reward, a pleasure far greater than the record high score.”

I would have to agree with Ms. Paul.  While I have always been a major proponent of teaching with technology, I also support the primacy of the pedagogical value of the applications.  Gaming programs such as The River City Project developed by Chris Dede at Harvard have much to offer and is well-done.  But much of the gaming that has evolved in K-12 in recent years is designed more for the “fun and games” and lack the development of deep learning skills.  Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch [News Corporation] are of a mind that any technology is good for kids and they are wrong.

Tony