Dear Commons Community,

The New York State Education Department blinked in response to the opt-out movement and has decided to shorten the Common Core standardized tests in 2016 and again in 2017.  As reported in the New York Times:

“New York State’s standardized tests for third through eighth graders will be shortened this year, the education commissioner said on Wednesday, the latest retooling of a group of exams that have grown so unpopular that 20 percent of eligible children sat them out this past spring.

The commissioner, Mary Ellen Elia, said at a meeting of the Board of Regents in Albany that some multiple choice questions would be shaved off the math assessments and a number of passages would be cut from the reading exams taken next year. A spokeswoman for the Education Department said that the tests would be shortened for students in each grade, and that they would be trimmed further in 2017.

This move is the second time tests have been shortened since they were introduced in 2013, when the state became among the first in the nation to align its tests with the Common Core standards, a set of rigorous learning goals designed to prepare students for college.

The new tests, which are given over parts of six days, led to a steep drop in passing rates in 2013, and they have not improved much since then. In 2015, just 31 percent of the state’s students passed the reading tests, and 38 percent passed the math exams.

Resistance to the state assessments from parents and teachers has grown, and “opt out” became a rallying cry this year as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo moved to make teachers’ annual ratings more dependent on test scores. (On Wednesday, the Regents voted to give teachers more opportunity to appeal those ratings.)

Though both state and federal education officials have expressed concern that the test-refusal movement was depriving schools of a useful analytical tool, the officials also have backed off from earlier threats that they could withhold money from school districts with high opt-out numbers.

In response to the pressure, the state also has announced two separate review efforts to evaluate the tests and standards. One review, which was demanded by lawmakers, is being led by Ms. Elia, while the other was ordered by Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.

And this summer, the Education Department also announced that it was parting ways with Pearson, the international education company that has designed the state tests thus far. In its place, the agency hired Questar Assessment, a smaller company based in Minneapolis.

The announcement on Wednesday on test length, however, seemed unlikely to quiet critics.

“Half a disaster is still a disaster,” said Loy Gross, a co-founder of the parent activist group United to Counter the Core, who added shortening the tests was just tinkering around the edges of a very large problem.

“And no,” she added, “it’s not going to appease parents who will continue to opt their kids out of tests.”

This is the beginning of a good move for the children of New York but as Ms. Gross says half a disaster is still a disaster. 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mayor Bill de Blasio will establish a new program requiring every public school in New York City to offer computer science.  As reported in the New York Times:

“To ensure that every child can learn the skills required to work in New York City’s fast-growing technology sector, Mayor Bill de Blasio will announce today that within 10 years all of the city’s public schools will be required to offer computer science to all students.

Meeting that goal will present major challenges, mostly in training enough teachers. There is no state teacher certification in computer science, and no pipeline of computer science teachers coming out of college. Fewer than 10 percent of city schools currently offer any form of computer science education, and only 1 percent of students receive it, according to estimates by the city’s Department of Education.

Computer science will not become a graduation requirement, and middle and high schools may choose to offer it only as an elective.

But the goal is for all students, even those in elementary school and those in the poorest neighborhoods, to have some exposure to computer science, whether building robots or learning to use basic programming languages like Scratch, which was devised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach young children the rudiments of coding.

At least two other American cities have recently made commitments to offering computer science to all their students. Chicago has gone the furthest, pledging to make a yearlong computer science course a high school graduation requirement by 2018, and to offer computer science to at least a quarter of elementary school children by then. The San Francisco Board of Education voted in June to offer it from prekindergarten through high school, and to make it mandatory through eighth grade.

Technology companies, which have been criticized for having very few female and minority employees, have supported these efforts, partly to expand and diversify the pool of qualified job applicants. Google and Microsoft have contributed to Chicago’s initiative, and San Francisco has received financing from Salesforce, Facebook and Zynga.”

This is a good policy on the part of the Mayor but as the article mentions finding and training teachers and also providing effective support facilities and staff at all the public schools will be a challenge.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article (subscription required) today citing a study by researchers at Dartmouth and the University of British Columbia calling into question Clayton Christensen’s innovative technology theories.  The article cites a new paper that may prove difficult to dismiss. Andrew A. King, a professor at the Dartmouth College business school, and Baljir Baatartogtokh, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, spent two years digging into disruption, interviewing scores of experts, trying to determine whether 77 of Christensen’s own examples conformed to his theory, studies involving big names like Ford, McDonald’s, and Google, along with lesser-known makers of blood-glucose meters and blended plastics. Only a tiny minority — 9 percent — fit Christensen’s criteria. Disruption is real but rare, King and Baatartogtokh conclude, which suggests that it’s at best a marginally useful explanation of how innovation happens. The article also comments:

“Disrupter” has become an accolade, and an industry has grown up around it. Fortune publishes a 40 under 40 list: “They’re all disrupting — and they’re all just getting started”; Inc. celebrates the “rising stars who are disrupting industries, making millions and building successful companies”; Forbes ranks “young disrupters, innovators, and entrepreneurs”; Vanity Fair has honored the “News Disrupters” shaping the future of media. When the University of Southern California unveiled a new undergraduate program in arts, technology, and innovation, the announcement declared: “The degree is in disruption.”

What happens when a theory is transformed into a globe-spanning explanation of nearly everything? Cue the backlash, which may have reached its apogee last October when The Atlantic announced the creation of an app that will replace “disrupt” with “bullshit” in your web browser.

Christensen has said that he regrets the name he gave his theory, telling the editor of the Harvard Business Review that he never thought people would “flexibly use an idea, twist it, and use it to justify whatever they wanted to do in the first place.”

Still, Christensen has made eccentric claims on his theory’s behalf. Among the areas he’s singled out as ripe for disruption: conflict resolution, the environment, politics, terrorism, and the military. In a co-authored article titled “Disrupting Hell,” he writes:

“It is time to introduce disruption into the domains of religion and ethics to restore Adam Smith’s notion of ‘moral sentiments.’ This requires a new tool kit of disruptive innovations initiated by fearless early moral adopters.”

The article was published by something called the Disruptor Foundation. Christensen is a co-founder. The foundation holds an annual event, the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards. Honorees include the former Fox News opinionator Glenn Beck and the Korean pop star Psy. (Remember “Gangnam Style”?)

In 2003, Christensen co-founded a consulting company, Innosight, now with about 100 employees. In 2007 he opened Rose Park Advisors, which applies the theory of disruption to investment opportunities. (His son Matthew is CEO.) There is also the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a think tank that, according to its website, is “dedicated to improving the world through disruptive innovation.” (His daughter Ann is president.) Christensen commands more than $40,000 per speech.

Kim Clark, the former Harvard Business School dean, is now president of Brigham Young University-Idaho. He first met Christensen, together with Mitt Romney, in an intro economics course at BYU in 1970. They remain close: Christensen is Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard, and Clark’s tenure at BYU-Idaho is singled out for praise in Christensen’s The Innovative University.

Asked if Christensen is at all to blame for how the theory has been distorted, his old friend thinks it over for a while. “Clay bears some responsibility for having lost control of his idea,” Clark finally says. “But it wasn’t like he sat down with a yellow pad and weighed the pros and cons of, say, going into health care. For him it was like, ‘We’ve got this problem, and I’ve got this idea that can illuminate this problem.’ ” After a brief pause, he adds: “Should Clay have stuck to business? There’s an argument for that. But it wouldn’t have been Clay.”

The entire article has much to offer.  Christensen’s disruption theory has indeed been twisted by many especially so-called education reformers who use it  to bash teachers and faculty.

Tony

Sacramento Library of Things – 3D Printing Lab – Jim Wilson NY Times

Dear Commons Community,

The Library of Things is a new service from the Sacramento Public Library System that offers “things” for checkout—such as sewing machines, musical instruments and video games—just like the library offers books. The New York Times has a featured article today reviewing Sacramento and other libraries around the country that are expanding their services beyond books. 

“Libraries aren’t just for books, or even e-books, anymore. They are for checking out cake pans (North Haven, Conn.), snowshoes (Biddeford, Me.), telescopes and microscopes (Ann Arbor, Mich.), American Girl dolls (Lewiston, Me.), fishing rods (Grand Rapids, Minn.), Frisbees and Wiffle balls (Mesa, Ariz.) and mobile hot spot devices (New York and Chicago).

Here in Sacramento, where people can check out sewing machines, ukuleles, GoPro cameras and board games, the new service is called the Library of Things.

“The move toward electronic content has given us an opportunity to re-evaluate our physical spaces and enhance our role as a community hub,” said Larry Neal, the president of the Public Library Association, a division of the American Library Association, which represents 9,000 public libraries. “The web is swell,” he added, “but it can feel impersonal.”

Libraries, arguably the original sharing economy, have long circulated art prints, music and movies, and more recently have added tools. But services like the Library of Things and the “Stuff-brary” in Mesa, outside Phoenix, are part of a broad cultural shift in which libraries increasingly view themselves as hands-on creative hubs, places where people can learn new crafts and experiment with technology like 3-D printers.

The Ann Arbor District Library has been adding to its voluminous collection of circulating science equipment. It offers telescopes, portable digital microscopes and backyard bird cameras, among other things — items that many patrons cannot afford to buy. Dave Menzo, a 28-year-old musician, created a whole album by borrowing electronic music equipment, including a photocell-controlled synthesizer called aThingamagoop.

Online experiences only go so far, said Josie Parker, Ann Arbor’s library director. “You can’t download a telescope to take on a family picnic in the country and watch the stars come up,” she said.

Public libraries in New York, Chicago and elsewhere offer devices that can connect borrowers’ phones, tablets and laptops to mobile Wi-Fi hot spots.

“This is the most convenient thing that has ever happened to me,” said Aida Rivera of the Bronx, a grandmother of nine who checked out what she called a “very cute, pocket-sized device” from the New York Public Library. It has allowed her to reconnect with childhood friends via Facebook, explore fitness and health sites, keep up with the news and talk with her grandchildren on Staten Island via Skype.”

Great idea!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, was given access to a new report to be released by the Gallup-Purdue Index Project which attempts to measure a college value based on a survey of graduates’ “professed engagement in their employment and their assessments of their own well-being, as determined by their reported satisfaction with five dimensions of life: their relationships, their physical health, their community, their economic situation and their sense of purpose”.  Bruni descibes the project as follows:

“A joint project of Gallup and Purdue University, it’s called the Gallup-Purdue Index, and its goal, as stated in the 2013 announcement of it, is “to conduct the largest representative study of college graduates in United States history.”

After surveying about 30,000 college graduates of all ages, the index released a first report in May of 2014. The number of graduates who have been surveyed is now up to 60,000, and a second report is due at the end of this month. The researchers gave me an advance look at its highlights, which amplify the initial conclusions, include some new discoveries and challenge conventional wisdom, especially about the power of an elite school to put its alumni on a guaranteed path to success.

The index measures success not in dollars and lofty job titles but in graduates’ professed engagement in their employment and, separately, their assessments of their own well-being, as determined by their reported satisfaction with five dimensions of life: their relationships, their physical health, their community, their economic situation and their sense of purpose.

The percentage of graduates who described themselves as thriving in all five of those areas varied little based on the kind of school they’d attended or the regard in which that school was conventionally (if disputably) held. It was 10 percent for all graduates, 11 percent for those who had gone to schools ranked among the top 50 national universities by U.S. News & World Report, and 13 percent for graduates of schools ranked among the top 50 liberal arts colleges.  It was 10 percent for those who had gone to public schools and 11 percent for those who had gone to private nonprofit ones: no significant divergence there. In fact the only category of school whose graduates reported lower levels of satisfaction was for-profit institutions, which, to judge by the index, aren’t serving their students nearly well enough.

As for graduates’ engagement in their employment, 39 percent of all respondents professed serious commitment to, and enthusiasm about, their jobs. The breakdown of this again suggested minimal advantage to a private school or an especially selective one. While 39 percent of public-school graduates were engaged in work, 40 percent of graduates of private nonprofit schools were. For graduates of national universities in the top 50, the figure was 41 percent. It did tick upward — but only to 47 percent — for graduates of top 50 liberal arts colleges.

Other questions in the index sought to determine how graduates felt about their alma maters, and these did reveal some distinctions, though never enormous ones.

While only 24 percent of all graduates strongly agreed with the statement that they could not imagine a world without the school they attended, 35 percent of graduates of top 50 liberal arts colleges and 34 percent of graduates of top 50 national universities said as much.

While only 29 percent of all graduates and 33 percent of graduates of top 50 national universities strongly agreed that their schools prepared them well for life, 40 percent of graduates of top 50 liberal arts colleges did. Highly ranked colleges outperformed highly ranked universities by a bit in several categories.

By asking graduates a wide variety of additional, smartly conceived questions about how they spent their time in college, the index gets at those facets of college that are relevant to graduates’ welfare in the decades after school.”

Bruni also mentions that the report indicates that important aspects of a college experience include the impact of mentors, semester projects and other positive influences. “The index didn’t merely find that certain kinds of people approached college in a fruitful way; it found that actual behaviors, independent of character type, had enduring benefits.”

He concludes that “The overarching takeaway from this ambitious canvas of the college experience is something that should be obvious but is too often overlooked, especially in these brand-fixated times:

What college gives you hinges almost entirely on what you give it.”

Yes!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Obama yesterday abandoned his two-year effort to have the government create a system that explicitly rates the quality of the nation’s colleges and universities, a plan that was bitterly opposed by presidents at many of those institutions.  As reported in the New York Times:

“Under the original idea, announced by Mr. Obama with fanfare in 2013, all of the nation’s 7,000 institutions of higher education would have been assigned a ranking by the government, with the aim of publicly shaming low-rated schools that saddle students with high debt and poor earning potential.

Instead, the White House on Saturday unveiled a website that does not attempt to rate schools with any kind of grade, but provides information to prospective students and their parents about annual costs, graduation rates and salaries after graduation.

Mr. Obama praised the new website in his weekly address, saying that by using the new College Scorecard, “Americans will now have access to reliable data on every institution of higher education.”

But the new website falls far short of what the president had hoped for. When he announced the plan at the University at Buffalo in 2013, Mr. Obama put colleges on notice that schools performing poorly on his rating system would eventually lose access to billions of dollars in federal student aid money.”

This was a correct move on the part of President Obama.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It was announced on September 8^th that Hunter College will receive a $9 million gift from Eva and Andrew Grove to assist immigrant students and the College’s Roosevelt House.  As reported in the Wall Street Journal:

“To celebrate her 80th birthday, Eva Kastan Grove’s family wanted to give a gift to Hunter College students.

The donation of $9 million to Hunter, part of the City University of New York, will honor Mrs. Grove’s lifelong interest in promoting the rights of immigrants. It follows several other smaller gifts to the school made from the family’s foundation. Mrs. Grove is the wife of Andrew Grove, the former chairman of Intel.

Mrs. Grove graduated from Hunter in 1958 with a degree in pre-social work. Born in Vienna, she was 3 years old when her family fled the Nazis. She was raised in Bolivia.

Mrs. Grove arrived in New York City at the age of 18 and found Hunter to be an enlightening, diverse place, she said. She was a member of the Spanish club and a sorority, Alpha Gamma Delta. She worked in the book room and relished the apples from the vending machine.

“Hunter opened the doors to America for me,” she said.

As Mrs. Grove’s daughters considered how to honor their mother, said daughter Robie Spector, they repeatedly came back to their mother’s commitments to advocacy and social service, as well as a commitment to immigrants’ rights and dignity. Both Mrs. Grove and her husband are immigrants; he emigrated to the U.S. from Hungary in 1957.

As for the size of the gift, the daughters thought they should give the college “a bit more” than usual for the milestone birthday, said Ms. Spector. “My father said, ‘Let’s give them a lot more.’ ”

Part of the grant, $4 million, will establish a scholars program at Hunter’s Roosevelt House and support a variety of student activities and programs in public policy and human rights. Roosevelt House is a place where Mrs. Grove spent many hours as an undergraduate, but now serves as a hub for students with an interest in social justice and human rights.

The remainder of the grant, $5 million, will go toward scholarships and funding internships. Preference will primarily go to students who are, among other things, immigrants or children of immigrants, or who are undocumented.

The internship grants to students are especially important because they allow for many students to take on an unpaid position at a nongovernmental organization or nonprofit, a critical step in getting a foot in the door to a career, said Hunter’s president, Jennifer J. Raab.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that the vast majority of Historically Black Colleges and Universities are being cautious about entering into contractual relationships with the University of Phoenix for online education services.  As reported:

“Nearly a year after the Thurgood Marshall College Fund announced an alliance to encourage historically black colleges to make use of the online courses and distance-education expertise of the University of Phoenix, few of the 100-plus eligible institutions seem to be taking the for-profit provider up on its offer.

To date, only Florida A&M University and Paul Quinn College appear close to creating any sort of partnership with Phoenix, and the Florida A&M project wouldn’t involve students directly. Two other HBCUs, Morgan State and Grambling State Universities, are considering more-limited deals.

A Phoenix spokesman says the university is also in discussions with Dillard, Elizabeth City State, and Hampton Universities. They are conducting a “preliminary review of our offering,” he says.

“It’s been slow coming,” says Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the fund, who has been working to develop the alliance. “I underestimated the inertia in this space,” but it’s understandable, he says: “This is change.”

As he and Phoenix officials conceived the alliance, Mr. Taylor says, the university would make its course platform available to the HBCUs, which could offer the Phoenix courses to students or just use the platform while providing their own course content and instruction. In effect, Phoenix would be their technology partner behind the scenes. (At one point Mr. Taylor proposed having the courses labeled “powered by the University of Phoenix,” but “our schools would have no part of that,” he says.)

HBCUs would pay Phoenix $395 for each student who completed a course using its platform.

When the alliance was announced, some observers questioned both Phoenix’s motives and the wisdom of HBCUs’ working with a provider whose academic reputation was under fire. Mr. Taylor says those concerns don’t worry him. Phoenix’s motivation “could be purely political,” he says, “but it doesn’t matter to me.”

This is difficult issue for those HBCUs that have not been able to develop online education programs on their own.  An alliance with the University of Phoenix looks attractive but given its reputation makes administrators rightfully cautious.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In 2013, the University of Florida contracted with Pearson Embanet to handle marketing, recruitment, and student services for its UF Online venture.  After two years and with modest students enrollments especially out-of-state students, the University is thinking about restructuring the contract.  As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“The University of Florida is discussing changes in its partnership with Pearson Embanet for running the university’s online bachelor’s-degree-granting arm, UF Online, including possible termination of the contract.

Pearson was brought on in the fall of 2013 to handle marketing, recruitment, and student support for UF Online, a $35-million effort spurred by the Florida Legislature. It was considered one of the most ambitious online-education projects to take shape in recent years. But because of low out-of-state enrollment, university administrators this summer began to evaluate the institution’s contract with Pearson — an 11-year agreement, with up to $186 million in revenue for the for-profit company.

The long-term target in UF Online’s business plan calls for about 24,000 enrolled students by 2024, with 43 percent of them coming from outside the state. While UF Online has met many of its goals so far, it has done so with more in-state students, who pay less than Florida residents attending classes on the campus and significantly less than out-of-state online students. UF Online has enrolled 1,647 students for this fall, and 9 percent of them are nonresidents.

Given that the nonresident benchmarks haven’t been met, the university has the right to review the contract and potentially terminate it, said W. Andrew (Andy) McCollough, associate provost for teaching and technology.

Florida administrators are exploring several possibilities for change, including taking at least some of the services that Pearson currently offers and handling them internally, Mr. McCollough said. He wouldn’t predict the likelihood that the contract would be canceled altogether.

If the contract is downsized or terminated, it would mark another blow for Pearson, which deepened its commitment to online education in 2012 with its $650-million purchase of EmbanetCompass, a support service for colleges moving degree programs online.

eCollege, which is also owned by Pearson, had contracted earlier that year with the California State University system to help run its fledgling online bachelor’s-degree program. But in 2013, with only a handful of majors on offer and low student enrollment, Cal State abandoned much of the program’s original design, and Pearson’s role was diminished. An advisory board called the company’s marketing services “not adequate.”

Some faculty members and other observers often question the role of for-profit “enablers,” like Pearson, in colleges’ online-education efforts, given that the companies tend to claim much of the resulting revenue. However, at both Cal State and Florida, there was pressure to get the programs up and running quickly, which increased the need for an outside company to handle administrative tasks while the colleges focused on developing course content.”

The University of Florida was late entering the online education business and sought to catch up by contracting out for essential services.  It is learning that quick is not always better and that sometimes it is more cost effective to do some of this development on your own.

Tony