February 12, 2013

Clifton B. Vann, IV
President,  Livingston & Haven

Have We Quit Dreaming?

In an era of global competition and ever-growing complexity, innovation and education are critical to success.  But just as important is our ability and willingness to dream big, as citizens, as business people, as educators, as parents, and as students.

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Source: nytimes.com | February 11, 2013

WHAT would it really take to give students a first-rate education? Some argue that our schools are irremediably broken and that charter schools offer the only solution. The striking achievement of Union City, N.J. — bringing poor, mostly immigrant kids into the educational mainstream — argues for reinventing the public schools we have.

Union City makes an unlikely poster child for education reform. It’s a poor community with an unemployment rate 60 percent higher than the national average. Three-quarters of the students live in homes where only Spanish is spoken. A quarter are thought to be undocumented, living in fear of deportation.

Public schools in such communities have often operated as factories for failure. This used to be true in Union City, where the schools were once so wretched that state officials almost seized control of them. How things have changed. From third grade through high school, students’ achievement scores now approximate the statewide average. What’s more, in 2011, Union City boasted a high school graduation rate of 89.5 percent — roughly 10 percentage points higher than the national average. Last year, 75 percent of Union City graduates enrolled in college, with top students winning scholarships to the Ivies.

As someone who has worked on education policy for four decades, I’ve never seen the likes of this. After spending a year in Union City working on a book, I believe its transformation offers a nationwide strategy.

Ask school officials to explain Union City’s success and they start with prekindergarten, which enrolls almost every 3- and 4-year-old. There’s abundant research showing the lifetime benefits of early education. Here, seeing is believing.

One December morning the lesson is making latkes, the potato pancakes that are a Hanukkah staple. Everything that transpires during these 90 minutes could be called a “teachable moment” — describing the smell of an onion (“Strong or light? Strong — duro. Will it smell differently when we cook it? We’ll have to find out.”); pronouncing the “p” in pepper and pimento; getting the hang of a food processor (“When I put all the ingredients in, what will happen?”).

Cognitive and noncognitive, thinking and feeling; here, this line vanishes. The good teacher is always on the lookout for both kinds of lessons, always aiming to reach both head and heart. “My goal is to do for these kids what I do with my own children,” the teacher, Susana Rojas, tells me. “It’s all about exposure to concepts — wide, narrow, long, short. I bring in breads from different countries. ‘Let’s do a pie chart showing which one you liked the best.’ I don’t ask them to memorize 1, 2, 3 — I could teach a monkey to count.”

From pre-K to high school, the make-or-break factor is what the Harvard education professor Richard Elmore calls the “instructional core” — the skills of the teacher, the engagement of the students and the rigor of the curriculum. To succeed, students must become thinkers, not just test-takers.

When Alina Bossbaly greets her third grade students, ethics are on her mind. “Room 210 is a pie — un pie — and each of us is a slice of that pie.” The pie offers a down-to-earth way of talking about a community where everyone has a place. Building character and getting students to think is her mission. From Day 1, her kids are writing in their journals, sifting out the meaning of stories and solving math problems. Every day, Ms. Bossbaly is figuring out what’s best for each child, rather than batch-processing them.

Though Ms. Bossbaly is a star, her philosophy pervades the district. Wherever I went, these schools felt less like impersonal institutions than the simulacrum of an extended family.

UNTIL recently, Union City High bore the scarlet-letter label, “school in need of improvement.” It has taken strong leadership from its principal, John Bennetti, to turn things around — to instill the belief that education can be a ticket out of poverty.

On Day 1, the principal lays out the house rules. Everything is tied to a single theme — pride and respect in “our house” — that resonates with the community culture of family, unity and respect. “Cursing doesn’t showcase our talents. Breaking the dress code means we’re setting a tone that unity isn’t important, coming in late means missing opportunities to learn.” Bullying is high on his list of nonnegotiables: “We are about caring and supporting.”

These students sometimes behave like college freshmen, as in a seminar where they’re parsing Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” They can be boisterously jokey with their teachers. But there’s none of the note-swapping, gum-chewing, wisecracking, talking-back rudeness you’d anticipate if your opinions about high school had been shaped by movies like “Dangerous Minds.”

And the principal is persuading teachers to raise their expectations. “There should be more courses that prepare students for college, not simply more work but higher-quality work,” he tells me. This approach is paying off big time: Last year, in a study of 22,000 American high schools, U.S. News & World Report and the American Institutes for Research ranked Union City High in the top 22 percent.

What makes Union City remarkable is, paradoxically, the absence of pizazz. It hasn’t followed the herd by closing “underperforming” schools or giving the boot to hordes of teachers. No Teach for America recruits toil in its classrooms, and there are no charter schools.

A quarter-century ago, fear of a state takeover catalyzed a transformation. The district’s best educators were asked to design a curriculum based on evidence, not hunch. Learning by doing replaced learning by rote. Kids who came to school speaking only Spanish became truly bilingual, taught how to read and write in their native tongue before tackling English. Parents were enlisted in the cause. Teachers were urged to work together, the superstars mentoring the stragglers and coaches recruited to add expertise. Principals were expected to become educational leaders, not just disciplinarians and paper-shufflers.

From a loose confederacy, the schools gradually morphed into a coherent system that marries high expectations with a “we can do it” attitude. “The real story of Union City is that it didn’t fall back,” says Fred Carrigg, a key architect of the reform. “It stabilized and has continued to improve.”

To any educator with a pulse, this game plan sounds so old-school obvious that it verges on platitude.  That these schools are generously financed clearly makes a difference — not every community will decide to pay for two years of prekindergarten — but too many districts squander their resources.

School officials flock to Union City and other districts that have beaten the odds, eager for a quick fix. But they’re on a fool’s errand. These places — and there are a host of them, largely unsung — didn’t become exemplars by behaving like magpies, taking shiny bits and pieces and gluing them together. Instead, each devised a long-term strategy reaching from preschool to high school. Each keeps learning from experience and tinkering with its model. Nationwide, there’s no reason school districts — big or small; predominantly white, Latino or black — cannot construct a system that, like the schools of Union City, bends the arc of children’s lives.

February 8, 2013

Amy Hawn Nelson
Director,  UNC -Charlotte Urban Institute, Institute for Social Capital

We Know What Works, So Why Aren’t We Doing It?

When it comes to transforming our schools, we’re not lacking for solutions. We actually know what works and what we should be doing. To be successful, however, we need to overcome some non-obvious barriers to how we gather data and insights that inform our policy decisions.

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Source: thecharlotteobserver.com | February 8, 2013

Charlotte Latin’s all-female seventh grade engineering class that found success with a $35 computer will be featured at TEDxCharlotteED 2013 Feb. 14, along with a number of Charlotte “creative thinkers and doers” to foster debate, according to an organizer.

TED, which stands for technology, entertainment and design, is a nonprofit organization that started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago.

In 2012, TEDxCharlotteED (adding ED for education) formed and had its first event.

“Charlotte’s group discussions are designed to highlight ideas worth spreading about transforming education,” said Lexee Zutz, co-organizer of TEDxCharlotteED. “How we educate our children and ourselves has a significant impact on everyone in our community, from individual quality of life to collective economic vitality.”

The Feb. 14 event will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. at Silver Hammer Studios at the NC Music Factory in Charlotte.

Zutz said that in addition to eight speakers that day, Charlotte Latin’s all-female engineering class will speak along with their advisor, Tom Dubick.

The group was selected to participate after a nomination from Barbara Caldwell, the executive director of Teaching Fellows Institute.

“This program was chosen because we feel there is a great need to let the community know how a relatively inexpensive technology could be used everywhere around the world,” said Zutz.

This past fall, Charlotte Latin added 14 credit-card sized computers to the middle school girl’s engineering class. Known as the Raspberry Pi, the inexpensive computers have been used in engineering community overseas but are new to the United States. The computer comes with Scratch and Python, languages used for beginner computer programming, and have been easy for the Charlotte Latin class to use, said Zutz.

According to the school, the female students are already programming and hope to learn the concept of physical computing through the use of robotics by the end of the course.

“These TEDx gatherings will focus on programs both inside and outside the classroom, and range from early childhood education to adult workforce development,” said Zutz. “TEDxCharlotteED is more than just a conference. It’s an event by creative thinkers, for creative thinkers, who embrace the spirit of ideas worth spreading. The audience will consist of people who believe in the power of learning and education to improve our community.“

The lineup of local educators, business owners, and nonprofit directors also include: Chef Ron Ahlert, Community Culinary School of Charlotte; Deborah Brown, Garinger High School; Amy Hawn Nelson, Institute for Social Capital; Mark Moore of Mother Administered Nutritive Aid; Dawn Peebles of Providence Preparatory School; Henry Rock of City Startup Labs; Cheryl Turner, Sugar Creek Charter School; and Clifton Vann IV, Livingston & Haven.

February 6, 2013

Chef Ron Ahlert
Executive Director,  Community Culinary School of Charlotte & Encore Catering

An Encore In The Kitchen

Community Culinary School of Charlotte (CSCC) combines culinary training, job readiness skills, and counseling to help adults find success in work and in life. This education provides a second chance while having
a positive economic impact on the city.

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Source: The New York Times | February 5, 2013

Can the school reform movement accept constructive criticism? Gary Rubinstein hopes so. Mr. Rubinstein joined Teach for America in 1991, the program’s second year, and has now been teaching math for 15 years, five of them in some of the nation’s neediest public schools and 10 more at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. He has a bachelor’s degree in math and a master’s in computer science, has written two books on classroom practice and at one point helped train new corps members for Teach for America. For years, he was a proponent of the program, albeit one with the occasional quibble.

Then, in 2010, Mr. Rubinstein underwent a sea change. As he grew suspicious of some of the data used to promote charter schools, be became critical of Teach for America and the broader reform movement. (The education scholar Diane Ravitch famously made a similar shift around this time.)

Mr. Rubinstein, who knows how to crunch numbers, noticed that, at many charter schools student test scores and graduation rates didn’t always add up to what the schools claimed. He was also alarmed by what he viewed as misguided reforms like an overreliance on crude standardized tests that measure students’ yearly academic “growth” and teacher performance. Mr. Rubinstein, who favors improving schools and evaluating teachers, says using standardized test scores might seem “like a good idea in theory.” But he also thinks the teacher ratings based on the scores are too imprecise and subject to random variation to be a reliable basis for high-stakes hiring and firing decisions.

Given his long alliance with Teach for America, Mr. Rubinstein knows many of the program’s alumni who have become marquee players in school reform. In Houston, he became friends with his fellow T.F.A. teachers Dave Levin and Michael Feinberg, who went on to startKIPP, the nationwide chain of charter schools. Mr. Rubinstein worked briefly under Michelle A. Rhee before she became the chancellor of the District of Columbia’s public schools. At another point, he met Michael Johnston, the former charter-school principal who is now the Colorado state senator who helped push through one of the nation’s most aggressive testing schemes for teacher evaluations. Along the way, Mr. Rubinstein got to know Wendy Kopp, Teach for America’s founder.

He’s now written a series of “Open Letters to Reformers I Know” on his blog, hosted by teachforus.org, in which he shares his unease about the direction of current school reforms. The letters are unusual, partly for their personal tone and evident admiration of some of the recipients, and partly because attempts at dialogue like this are increasingly rare as bitter debate rages among educators who support charters and testing and those who don’t.

Michael Petrilli, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a pro-charter education analyst with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, worries about this lack of exchange. He recently conducted an analysis of Twitter and the tens of thousands of followers of Ms. Rhee, who is pro-charter, and Ms. Ravitch, who is anti-charter, and discovered that only 10 percent overlapped. Just as conservatives gravitate to Fox News and liberals to MSNBC to hear their preconceived notions and biases confirmed, Mr. Petrilli speculates that those in education are now preaching solely to the converted, a phenomenon known in the media world as “narrowcasting.”

Worse, in Mr. Petrilli’s view, those who follow Ms. Rhee tend to describe themselves in their Twitter profiles as policy makers or otherwise removed from the immediate realities of the classroom, while Ms. Ravitch’s devotees are typically self-identified practitioners: principals and teachers on education’s front lines. Surely these folks should be talking to one another, but in Mr. Petrilli’s experience, they often aren’t.

“A lot of people in the reform community say, ‘We know what we need to do; we just need the political will to do it,’ and I think that’s wrong,” he says. “We need to be much more humble. We’re now in a position where a lot of reforms are being enacted; they’re playing out in the real world, and it’s crazy not to listen to teachers, to the problems that might need to be addressed.”

Mr. Petrilli’s wisdom derives from hard experience: “I went through this with No Child Left Behind,” he says. “We put so much effort into cheerleading and making the case for it, we didn’t address the inevitable problems.” Mr. Petrilli now recognizes that the law might have been stronger and worked better had its supporters been more open to input and constructive criticism from the start.

Perhaps proving Mr. Petrilli’s point, only two of the eight recipients of Mr. Rubinstein’s “Open Letters” — Mr. Johnston and Ms. Kopp — have replied so far (although a third, Jon Schnur, a former presidential education policy adviser and the executive chairman of America Achieves, had already promised to do so before being contacted for this article and says he still will). However, Mr. Johnston chose not to publicly answer some of Mr. Rubinstein’s more pointed criticisms. For example, Mr. Johnston has stated that the alternative school he helped establish and where he was a principal “made Colorado history by becoming the first public high school in which 100 percent of seniors were admitted to four-year colleges.”

As Mr. Rubinstein notes, the claim is technically accurate but misleading because the school also had very high attrition rates before its students graduated. This is the kind of data distortion Mr. Rubinstein disparages: “There were actually 73 10th graders,” Mr. Rubinstein writes, “who had dwindled to 44 seniors — a pretty relevant detail.” The school apparently couldn’t meet the needs of a good proportion of its original students. Many of those who left presumably ended up back in traditional public schools, which often become the dumping grounds for students whom charters can’t, or won’t, teach and then are solely blamed for these students’ failure.

Still, Mr. Rubinstein concedes that even 44 graduates out of 73, in many low-income communities, amounts to “a story about kids beating the odds.” But why the need to exaggerate the sales pitch instead of acknowledging the more complex, challenging picture?

At the heart of all Mr. Rubinstein’s “Open Letters” is a plea to his old friends and colleagues, many of whom long ago left the classroom, to remember just how hard teaching is and to remain honest and transparent about what they have and haven’t accomplished, not only to keep faith with those teachers and principals entrusted with the tough job of implementing reforms but also so we can know what truly works and doesn’t and why, in order to build on real, not imagined, gains.

For those who wish to be part of the solution, Mr. Petrilli advises more genuine dialogue: listening to those whose views one opposes and “staying open to the possibility,” he writes, “that they might, nevertheless, have a few smart things to say.”

February 4, 2013

Mark Moore
Founder / CEO,  MANA Nutrition

A Fire In Their Bellies

Sure we all teach for the sake of passing along information… but Google is almost always better at it than we humans. However, when we humans teach other humans we do much more than pass on information, we also inspire and equip them to act.  The crazy story of a rolling classroom called the MANAbago highlights how the act of learning can spark people’s imagination, resilience, and actions.

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Source: thecharlotteweekly.com | February 1, 2013

Inspiring young minds to take interest in science, technology, engineering and math has always been a top priority at Charlotte Latin School. Now they’re taking action to ensure students get the education they need at a young age – and they’re the first school in the United States to do it this way.

The school recently introduced 14 credit-card sized computers to the middle school girls’ engineering class. Known as the Raspberry Pi, the small computer is cutting edge in the Great Britain engineering community, allowing students to easily learn physical computing and programming. Since the computer comes with a $35 price tag and features an open source operating system, students are able to take apart and reassemble the small device without fear of destroying expensive technology.

“The benefit of the Raspberry Pi is that it allows our kids to go ahead and become creators of technology, not just consumers,” Tom Dubick, engineering teacher at the school, said.  “What I mean is being a $35 computer that is a productivity machine and does things like Word processing and PowerPoint, the computer also has the ability to connect with the physical world. We can do imbedded computing, also known as physical computing, like robotics.”

The computer debuted in British classrooms in 2011 and since spread to other European classrooms and in developing countries where its low power requirements and affordability are making computers accessible. Dubick, who is involved with Charlotte’s STEM and engineering community, is working with McClintock Middle School to become Charlotte Latin’s engineering partners. He found the Raspberry Pi while researching computer options for McClintock.

“McClintock didn’t have enough computers for their program, so I found the Raspberry Pi and I said, ‘I could use these at Latin,’” Dubick said. “This computer isn’t as powerful as an iPad or anything, but it doesn’t need to be. That’s not what we need it for. It’s giving people opportunities to use it to create things.”

Dubick said the computer comes with Scratch and Python, both programming languages used for beginner levels in computer programming. So far, he says his small class of seventh-grade girls is really catching on, since the computer is easy to explore and understand. The girls are already programming after only a few weeks, Dubick said, hoping by the end of the class they will know the concept of physical computing through their use of robotics.

“I want them to see the creativity that can be found in computing and technology. It’s a lot more creative than people realize,” Dubick said.

This year’s engineering Raspberry Pi class is a pilot program for Charlotte Latin, Dubick said. He hopes that in the future, all kids at the school will have access to the small computer – and at only $35, he thinks it’s possible.

“A college degree no longer guarantees you a job and it won’t for the foreseeable future,” he said. “What we want is for our kids to go a step deeper into technology and really understand how technology works. We are entering a new world where everything is hooked up to the Internet. If we are going into a world like that and it’s happening really, really fast, these kids need to understand it.”

Dubick’s students are loving their time with the small computers, mostly noting that since the computers are so cheap, they’re not afraid to really explore what they can do and how they work.

“We can program with them and mess with them, and we know it’s not a huge deal if we mess them up,” seventh-grader Breck Stenson said.

The Rasperry Pi connects to the Internet and television monitors to create a media center. Multiple units can be connected to create a supercomputer. For more information on the computer, visit www.raspberrypi.org.

January 31, 2013

Cheryl Turner
School Director / CEO,  Sugar Creek Charter School

What Are We Trying To Accomplish?

The premise that kids from generational poverty cannot learn is actually an excuse.  And it’s not good enough.  Taking a student-centered approach, the educators at Sugar Creek Charter have redefined their school around their students’ needs in order to help them learn the skills to be successful inside and outside the classroom.

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January 30, 2013

Dawn Peebles
Executive Director / Owner,  Providence Preparatory School

Why Not The Best For Our Children?

A growing body of scientific evidence clearly shows the impact that environment and early education have on the brain development of young children.  We know what works.  The challenge is whether we are willing to do whatever it takes to create the best environment we can for our children or if we will simply accept “”minimum standards.”

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