Over the next month however, the time it took to write the posts decreased, the length of the posts increased, and the originally skeptical and sour attitude I held toward the entire concept of instructional blogging softened to the point where I even admitted to myself that I was enjoying the process. I am a sucker for the acquisition of knowledge, and the process has forced me to set aside portions of my week for nothing but that purpose. In so doing, it has turned what can seem like a burdensome chore in the form of assigned textbook reading into a much more pleasurable experience by simply following a trail of links through related topics.

Throughout my brief foray into blogging, I have gained both knowledge and a stance on many of the hot-button topics facing public education today.

My position on the value of charter schools has been reaffirmed, and I am hopeful that states that currently restrict these innovative outlets for knowledge and learning under pressure from teachers unions see past the lobbyists and do the right thing for the children of their state.

Acknowledging that school vouchers have become a politically toxic issue, I now believe that school choice should be a fundamental right, and that competition between schools benefits everyone. While many would argue that this issue is a thing of the past, I would argue that it will re-emerge in the future under a new banner of educational rights and freedoms.

Web 2.0 has changed the the internet from a static information dissemination tool to a dynamic collaborative resource. After watching my adventures in instructional blogging, my fiancée has created a blog to use with her 5th grade class. As money continues to be appropriated for a flood of technology into our nation’s classrooms, our task as educators now becomes to learn how to utilize it to educate our children.

As America continues to become an increasingly diverse nation, we must embrace that diversity of language, culture, and heritage into our elementary curriculum by supporting bilingual education. If we are to truly prepare our children to succeed in a global marketplace where English may or may not continue to be the international language, we must be willing and able to give them an education that reflects our commitment to them.

As massive amounts of long-tenured baby-boomer teachers approach retirement, the massive teacher shortage we are facing can only be averted by embracing alternate-certification programs for teachers. In spite of the criticisms hurled at it from all sides, arguably the most successful of these programs, Teach For America, continues to succeed in inspire more and more of our nation’s most talented young leaders to help close the achievement gap.

I am thrilled with Race To The Top, the newly unveiled grant program that plans to reward states who have already embraced many of the aforementioned innovations in the face of political pressure to the contrary. And while many see Race To The Top as the death knell for No Child Left Behind, I see the two as mutually exclusive and believe that high-stakes testing will continue, rightly or wrongly, for the foreseeable future.

We have reached a turning point in the educational future of the Future of Education blog . With the conclusion of the class, my obligation to post has concluded. However, I would be dishonest if I said I had covered every topic of interest and relevance to the issue, and as such, I cannot stop yet. There is a wealth of information still to be examined on wide ranging issues such as online learning, merit-pay for teachers, schools run by for-profit enterprises, educational entrepeneuers, and much more. So while the posts may not be as regular or as frequent, my two devoted readers (thanks mom) can rest assured, the dialog will most certainly continue.

Watch the destruction here

Now seven years later, the reauthorization that passed with bipartisan support is now garnering bipartisan ridicule, with new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan even going so far as to say “No Child Left Behind has become toxic“. President Obama does not go that far in his critiques of the initiative, and while campaigning for the office he now holds, he even went so far as to say “the goals of this law were the right ones“. However, the goals did not meet up with the actions and in a recent interview he asserted that the standards were set too low and the federal government did not do it’s part to support the program it created.

So does No Child Left Behind have any role in the future of education? Many seem to think that in spite of its unpopularity, it’s not going away. After all, the original act was passed in 1965 as the “Elementary and Secondary Education Act” and comes up for reauthorization every five years. No Child Left Behind was the Bush administration’s twist on the old law, and now it appears the Obama administration is attempting to do some twisting of its own.

The Race To The Top grant program (outlined in my previous blog post) is the nation’s first look at what might be going on at the White House behind the curtain. Judging by the application standards put forth by the Wizard of Ob(ama) and his Education Secretary, it seems like the emphasis on standardized testing will be increased, much to the dismay of NCLB critics everywhere. President Obama said in the press conference announcing the program that it would be about “finally getting testing right”, as in developing assessments that better determine a child’s knowledge on a subject, rather than further exacerbating the problems of teaching to the test and assessing a student’s ability to bubble in an answer.

But how will this be accomplished? The original law from 1965 explicitly forbids the development of a national curriculum, something that many educators are calling for with increasing fervor. Without a nationalized curriculum, states will continue to measure different kinds of knowledge at different times in a student’s education with different benchmarks determining what students (and by implication, what teachers) were successful. But even with a nationalized curriculum, the emphasis on high-stakes testing remains.

A rose by any other name is still a rose. Likewise will be any law testing our children into the ground, no matter what color schoolhouse is erected to go with it.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have just unveiled a new program in education designed to attack the chronic problems facing our schools. Taking the approach that schools need both reform and more money, the Race to the Top program tackles the issue by providing grants to states who “have made significant progress in” nineteen specific criteria under four general areas: implementing standards and assessments, improving teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution, collecting and utilizing data more effectively, and effectively reforming the lowest-performing schools.

How can grants solve that? The Obama administration seems to believe that with $4.35 billion dollars you can solve just about anything. This does mark a major shift in education funding. The Department of Education has not traditionally been busting at the seams with dollars to burn, and Secretary Duncan has even stated that the amount now at his disposal “easily outstrips the combined sum of discretionary funds for reform that all of my predecessors as education secretary had.” Now, thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the $787 billion that it puts in the government’s hands, $100 billion is going to education. Yet this $4.35 billion, hardly a noteworthy amount in comparison, is getting all the attention. Why?

Quite simply, because it’s never been done before. The Department of Education has always been an agency that doles out monetary support to all based almost entirely on compliance. As long as your state didn’t do anything revolutionary, your local school would get their federal allotment. But now, in the spirit of the revolution, innovative and aggressive tactics are being embraced and even rewarded with sizable chunks of money! Finally, it seems, success and accomplishment are being recognized instead of ripped off.

Opponents have emerged, as they often do for education issues, with a startling immediacy. Teacher unions are already livid that no states will be eligible to receive grants unless they remove restrictions forbidding paying teachers based on their students’ test scores. The unions seem to be equally irritated that “states that limit alternative routes to certification for teachers and principals, or cap the number of charter schools” both issues that teacher unions strongly oppose, “will be at a competitive disadvantage” in receiving funding, as declared by Secretary Duncan. With less control over teacher pay, hiring, and certification practices, the administration’s new program is sure to draw harsh formal criticism from these unions in the days and weeks to come.

Another source of opposition is sure to arise when the grants are doled out in each of the two upcoming cycles. States that do not receive a grant in the first round may apply again, but states that are ultimately unsuccessful are sure to cry foul with a “rich get richer” mantra. With grants being awarded to states who have already found success in addressing the criteria, the money will go to those states already performing well, while the states languishing without success may be left without.

When this argument arises, I hope it is greeted with a swift and stern condemnation from the administration, something like this: “What of the other $95 billion in tax dollars distributed by the Department of Education to the states? How did you spend that? How have you spent your money allotted for education for the past decade? While your state was busy toeing the line, other states were visionary and implemented aggressive reforms for the sake of our children and future. We choose to reward them. Perhaps next time you will use your appropriation as wisely.”

If that is the reply that comes, as I hope it will, perhaps this $4.35 billion, a proverbial drop-in-the-bucket in the grand scheme, will have done something that previously seemed impossible: left behind the restrictions, mediocrities, and useless spending at the starting line, while it diligently runs the Race to the Top.

Last year over 35,000 college graduates, virtually none of whom graduated with an education degree, and many of whom came from the nation’s most prestigious universities, applied to a teaching program. Only approximately 4,000 were accepted. After being rejected, many of the others went onto elite graduate programs or top paying jobs, while those accepted committed two years of their life to early mornings, late nights, low pay and the steep learning curve that welcomes every first year teacher.

No, our nation’s college grads have not gone mad, they’ve just found Teach For America. Founded in 1990, Teach For America is on a mission to end educational inequity and bridge the achievement gap so visibly present between socio-economically disadvantaged students and their more affluent peers. It does so by doggedly pursuing both the most accomplished college graduates and wealthy contributors with equal zeal. Specifically targeting non-education majors with strong leadership experience, Teach For America believes that teaching is the utmost form of leadership, and that strong leaders can build on their intangible gifts with basic educational pedagogy to have tremendous success with their students.

Since this is a “Part II” article, interestingly enough Teach For America is NOT on a specific mission to lessen the teacher shortage; hence why their acceptance rate hovers just above 10%, the same as the Ivy League schools they draw heavily from. Their mission is not to put more teachers into the classroom, but instead to put only the most talented young leaders into the most difficult classroom situations. Since only the most select few are capable of surviving the challenges sure to face a first-year teacher in that situation, only those few are selected. Nearly all of those selected do share the common theme of not initially selecting teaching as a profession. In fact, Teach For America reports that only one out of ten of incoming corps members identifies education as one of their top career options.

Critics of Teach For America lob criticisms at it from all sides. Traditional education programs claim that it is sucking potential students out of their undergraduate classes. Some mockingly say TFA should stand for “Teach For Awhile” and that only their program makes long-term teachers. Teacher’s Unions claim that corps members are under trained, ill-equipped and unfairly taking jobs from experienced teachers. The President of the Detroit Federation of Teachers has called them “educational mercenaries” and complains that they are not committed to long term educational change. Nearly every critic asserts that Teach For America just isn’t effective at helping students.

However, the numbers don’t lie. The one out of ten incoming corps members choosing education as their career? After two years in the classroom, that number has changed to TWO-THIRDS as Teach For America alumni are bitten by the bug of educational reform and instead choose it as a life-long profession. Teach For America teachers don’t take positions away from experienced teachers, especially since many of the schools they are placed into have numerous vacancies. Lastly, a study conducted by the Urban Institute studying North Carolina high schools found that Teach For America teachers actually proved to be MORE effective than even EXPERIENCED teachers, particularly in science and math.

Nearly twenty years after its inception, Teach For America is going strong, and continuing to grow exponentially. With strong results and increasing acclaim, is there any doubt Teach For America will be a part of the Future of Education?

*NOTE: The author is a 2007 alumni of Teach For America and is now a graduate student in education.
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So what is a nation to do? Thankfully, some visionary educators and elected officials have started to combat the problem already by providing alternative certification programs. Currently in 47 states and Washington D.C., these programs enable college-educated people who did not receive their bachelors in education to begin teaching in their subject area while gaining the appropriate certification.

Since New Jersey pioneered the movement by approving the Provisional Teacher Program in 1984, nearly every other state has followed suit. However, every state has their own unique alternate certification routes (many have four or more unique to their own state) and no two routes are exactly alike. There has been a huge influx in these types of certification programs since 2000, with more than half of the over 130 routes created since that date. Most created this decade are administered by colleges and universities in collaboration with the state licencing agency.*

Regardless of their history, shape, or form, these alternate certification routes are creating more teachers and having a positive impact on the classroom. A study done by researchers from Stanford University shows that alternate certification programs overwhelmingly bring more minority teachers to the classroom. Minorities have been shown to be far less likely to choose education as an undergraduate major, and as a result are underrepresented in the classroom as teachers. A far greater percentage chooses to complete alternate certification programs, decreasing the degree to which they are underrepresented and increasing the achievement of their students of the same race.

The same study also found there to be no significant difference in the student achievement from traditionally certified teachers vs. alternatively certified teachers. While this may seem to be a mark against alternative certification, it actually disproves the primary objection raised by opponents. Who could possibly be opposed to programs that bring more teachers into the classrooms? The answer is simple: traditional undergraduate education programs and teachers unions. The traditional certification programs persist in claiming that they are the only way to ensure proper teacher education and generally oppose all programs that provide a different way to arrive at the certification they bestow. Teacher unions serve same purpose as other unions, namely attempting to keep the supply of teachers as low as possible in order to leverage higher demand for higher pay. Even with a potentially crippling teacher shortage imminent, these unions continually reiterate their opposition to alternate certification programs.

Thankfully, it appears as though these alternate programs are continuing to gain momentum, and are being seen as a viable option both for decreasing a teacher shortage and maintaining or increasing student achievement in the classroom. If this continues to be the case, teacher unions and traditional programs will have to step aside in order to get more passionate, capable, and alternately certified teachers into our nation’s classrooms.

Video: I AM A TEACHER!

*NOTE: At the time of writing, the author is enrolled in one of these alternate certification programs run by a university in collaboration with the state licencing agency.

Opponents to bilingual education believe that it is a subversive attempt to undermine American culture. They bemoan the fact that 30 states and 53 other nations have individually passed legislation to make English the official language, but the United States is unwilling to take that step. The issue’s supporters however see this as a war on their culture also; quashing the long held view of America as a “melting pot” and refusing to allow Hispanic language and culture to become more prevalent.

The only way to fund bilingual education in the schools is through tax revenues, and again, the two sides have very different views. Supporters argue that as taxpayers, they should have every right to choose what program to enroll their children in, regardless of race. Many of the most outspoken supporters of the issue are non-Hispanics. Remember that an ideal bilingual classroom would be an even mix of native and non-native speakers so that every child is confronted with a new language. Opponents however are equally quick to cite their tax dollars as being wasted without any regard for their opinions.

Every parent wants what is best for their child; it just so happens that opinions vary widely on what “best” really is. Opponents, some of whom are Hispanic, say they don’t want their children being handicapped in their learning of what is still the predominant language, English. They advocate for the traditional model of introduction of foreign language courses in the later grades and cite studies that show students do not transition out of the bilingual programs effectively. Supporters argue that the programs do work, both in preparing non-native speakers to communicate effectively in English, as well as preparing native speakers to be functionally bilingual at a very early age. The fundamental difference in educational philosophy has proved nearly impossible to reconcile.

So what? Why is this important? What does this have to do with the “Future of Education”? See for yourself:

The simple fact is that more and more non-English speakers are moving to the United States legally and are living here, with their children, as taxpaying Americans. The statistics are staggering. Hispanics have surpassed African-Americans as the largest minority group in the United States. America has the 4th largest Spanish speaking population in the world, ahead of 17 nations where Spanish is the official language. As of 2006, The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by the year 2050 there will be over 100 million Hispanics in the United States, comprising 25% of the population.

With numbers like this, it seems hard to argue that bilingualism will be a presence in our classrooms in the years to come regardless, so why not take a stand and put a stop to these numbers now:

Now in the age where cell phones have more computing power than the computers that helped create them and laptops are being given by some universities to their admitted students, it is clear that technology now has an integral role in education. I will not attempt to claim that bringing technology to the classroom is the “future of education”; that claim, as we have seen, would be at least 16 years too late. However, now that the influx of technology has finished permeating classrooms around the nation and world, a new sub-set of technology is looming as a new frontier: Web 2.0 and the sea of applications and uses it carries with it.

This second wave has been coming for quite some time. The primary focus for the last decade has been equipping classrooms with all sorts of technological advances, starting with desktop computers, then advancing to laptops, projectors, smart boards, wireless answering systems, and more. Now that virtually every classroom has been supplied with one or more pieces of this valuable technology, the collective attention has shifted to finding ways to utilize this technology.

Not so coincidentally, this movement has arrived simultaneously with the explosion of “Web 2.0″, which is loosely defined as: “The second generation of the World Wide Web, especially the movement away from static webpages to dynamic and shareable content and social networking”. Essentially, Web 2.0 is not a change in the internet itself, but rather how the internet is used.

Teachers at the forefront of this movement have already started implementing its ideas. Here are just a few of the many great examples:
-A math teacher creates a blog that he updates daily with homework assignments and useful links. Students can leave comments and questions to seek additional help.
-A history teacher creates a free wiki-page as a review tool for her U.S. History class. Each student is assigned a different major concept to comprehensively research then summarize for the class. Other students can add additional information or modify incorrect statements, and the teacher can moderate to ensure accuracy.
-An art teacher uploads images of famous works of art to her Flickr account for her students to see and comment on. As the class progresses, she also displays photographs of student art so they can share their work with others.
-A music teacher creates his own YouTube videos and podcasts highlighting different musical themes and styles with direct links to places where students can see and hear more.
-A geography teacher utilizes Skype to connect her students with her acquaintances from all around the world by video-conferencing with them during her class periods.
-A creative writing teacher creates a Google document and invites all of his students to collaborate, asking each of them to contribute one sentence at a time to a larger story, and following wherever her students lead her.
-A debate teacher creates a discussion board application so that her students can both pose and answer questions while having the time to collect their thoughts and reason their arguments.

There is only one drawback to this incredible opportunity. Teachers must remember to utilize these incredible tools to advance critical thinking among their students, and NOT just to use technology for the sake of using it. If utilized correctly, Web 2.0 can open doors to the future and open young minds to the possibilities it holds.

The first school voucher programs were initiated by Vermont and Maine in 1869 and 1873 respectively. Yes, you read that right, the concept was first put into practice in the 19th century. Since that time however, little progress has been made. In spite of the support of powerful politicians and Nobel laureates, only six states currently have a voucher program. Furthermore, eleven times legislation has been passed and enacted in various states since 1972, but all of the measures were defeated by public referendums, often by wide margins.

In spite of their passion for the issue, the school choice camp is grossly outnumbered and outvoted. In previous elections, Republicans had been the banner carriers for school vouchers because of their belief in smaller government and free-market competition among schools. However, now that the Democrats have swept into power and hold significant majorities in both houses of congress, the likelihood of school vouchers re-emerging as a hot issue in the near future is small.

However, I believe we have not seen the last of this debate, largely in part because of the growing prevalence of charter schools (see my previous post here) and other options that give parents choice within the public schools. School choice has ceased to be a “private vs. public” battle, with new and innovative methods of public education joining the fray and keeping the issue at the forefront of political issues. This interactive map by the Heritage Foundation highlights private, public, charter, and online school choice by state, and provides links to more detailed information.

The number of students wanting to attend public schools other than the ones they’ve been assigned to is growing significantly faster than the availability in those schools, thanks largely in part to state restrictions on the number of non-traditional schools. For example, by law, North Carolina can only have 100 charter schools in operation, a cap that was quickly reached and has since stifled many attempts to create new programs there. With these restrictions in place, and parents still desiring the best opportunity for their students, I believe school vouchers will re-emerge as a viable option in the years to come. The odds however, are against me.

harry wrote: “Would be curious to know if there are any ways that any public schools have already had to adapt to the presence of a rival or if public ed remains unmoved by charters.“

In my brief research for the post, I didn’t find any public schools that were forced to adapt in order to survive with the presence of charter schools. I think this is for two reasons. First, most traditional schools that feel “threatened” by charters are so peeved at their existence that they would rather do anything other than adopt their methods. They spend most of their time criticizing the charter model and saying how they do it just as well. Second, their position is certainly more secure because it is far more difficult to close a public school for underperforming than it is to close a charter school. Opponents of charters forget that the trade off is that charters are shut down with great haste if their model proves ineffective, whereas being a traditional school provides insulation against that fate.

Thank you for your comment!

-ACM

With the election of President Obama, the future of charter schools is at an important crossroads. On the one hand, charter schools have significant support based on the success stories and the press they have received, but there are also a growing number of detractors claiming that charter schools overall don’t increase student achievement. The outcome of this debate will likely determine the role of charters in the future of education.

Opponents of the charter school movement cite statistics like a study released this week by the Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes that more charter schools actually performed worse than traditional public schools (37%) than those that outperformed them (17%). Such statistics only fuel the criticism of the decreased regulation of hiring, salaries, and operations given to charter schools. National teacher unions are among the most outspoken opponents of allowing charter schools to hire non-union teachers and non-certified teachers and administrators, which they say, decreases the quality of instruction.

In spite of these criticisms, supporters say that the benefits of charter schools, such as school choice, innovation, and flexibility, far outweigh the disadvantages. Furthermore, the independence that stems from the relaxed regulations so often criticized by their opponents is seen in this camp as a fundamental part of their success. With these freedoms they are able to hire bright, motivated and talented teachers and administrators, and operate outside of the confines of the traditional school schedule. Perhaps most importantly, since minorities and economically disadvantaged students are tremendously over-represented in charter schools, supporters say that their effectiveness can only be judged against other schools serving similar populations, not the national school populations. When compared to those types of schools, they do show significant gains in academic achievement.

This week Secretary of Education Arne Duncan essentially issued a stern warning to states: embrace charters or risk losing your share of the over $100 billion in stimulus money set aside for education. With the support of the administration seemingly firmly behind the charter school movement, is the direction as certain as it seems? Tell us what you think in the poll below.
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