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Teaching is a profession of practitioners. Teachers are people who give themselves passionately to their craft. They scrutinize their practices. This is to be admired, but we must not overlook the need for the same scrutiny to be applied to educational policy, which has largely ignored findings in the field of psychology, sociology, and neuroscience.

We know that exercise improves thinking and brain functioning. Early humans walked as much as twelve miles a day. Neuroscientist, John Medina, argues in his book, Brain Rules, our brains developed while we were on the move. Despite this, we ask students to sit for hours on end and cut physical education and recess in the name of test scores.

Carol Dweck, has elaborated eloquently that the theories we have about the nature of intelligence can dramatically impact our ability to tackle new challenges that will expand our knowledge. Believing that intelligence is a malleable trait that can be improved over time significantly increases our likelyhood of taking on demanding projects that do, in fact, lead to increased skill and knowledge. Despite this, our school orthodoxy organizes our students into classes based on a few, often statistically-invalid assessments and promote a fixed, unalterable theory of intelligence that our students believe cannot be changed.

The rigor in educational research is missing. Best practices come and go as quickly as the political winds shift. The best example of our indiscipline when it comes to the way we approach education is in the infamous high-stakes testing that comes as a packaged deal with No Child Left Behind legislation. One data point is not enough to base any claims about a student’s performance. The lack of validity or reliability in the test as a research tool is beyond the scope of this post–as is the fact that it is statistically impossible for all students to be above the mean (average) in any time span.

I’m not saying we need to scrap schools completely. However, I am arguing that we need to dramatically rethink the ways we approach education. Teachers can–and should–continue to focus on improving their practice in the classroom setting, but the classroom setting is broken. The one-size-fits-all model doesn’t work. You know this as an adult; you ger to choose how you learn best.

If you function best in the late afternoon, then–as an adult–you are welcome to set up shop in a café at two in the afternoon. If you’re a night owl, so be it. If you work best in groups, you have that option. If you need background noise in order to focus, that’s fine too.

I am not arguing for a midnight to morning school day. I am trying illustrate that as adults, we shake the habits enforced on is in school and develop alternative means that are more effecrive for us. Some of us like to participate in lively discussion, others of us would like nothing more than to hole up with a book by ourselves. Some of us are mathematicians, others are writers, and still others are entreprenuers–all intelligent, none of us in the same way.

I think you get the idea. My point is that despite what we know about the brain and learning from scientific research and despite what we know from reflecting on our adult lives, we still insist that our current educational paradigm is even remotely acceptable.

P.S. Good Magazine recently devoted an issue to educational policy in America. Highly recommended.

Take 10 seconds today to fill up your karmic bank account. (photo: woodleywonderworks via flickr)

If you have an American Express card–or know anyone who has an American Express card, please click here and help some students in need.

Where you grow up shouldn’t determine the quality of the education you receive. Unfortunately, where I live, and in urban and rural communities around the country, family income often determines a child’s educational opportunities. To help level the playing field, I propose giving 100,000 children in low-income communities the books, art supplies, technology, and other materials that they need for a rigorous education.

The Problem

Each year, teachers spend $1 billion of their own money on pencils, paper, and other basics for their students. These teachers are forced to plan their lessons around a lack of classroom resources, and find it difficult to do projects that bring learning to life. My project will empower teachers to request the exact resources their students need to thrive in the classroom. Members Project funding would fulfill 4,000 classroom needs, benefiting 100,000 students!

The Impact

Analyzing water samples in the Hudson River, visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum, reading and responding to Othello – these are just 3 examples of 4,000 teacher requests that this project would bring to life. The result: teachers from New Orleans to Baltimore, from Camden to Houston, would be free to dream for their classrooms and to teach based on the needs of their students.

The Inspiration

As a first-generation college student born in the Bronx, and as a former teacher in Baltimore, I believe in the American dream. But I’ve also seen that the American dream rests on educational opportunities and experiences which many children in this country do not yet have. My project is to provide 100,000 of these children with the materials and experiences they need for a great education and a bright future!

So what does Google look for in recent graduates?

… analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know.

… communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn’t useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.

… a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a willingness to accept the evidence even if you don’t like it.

… team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team’s expectations.

… passion and leadership. This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you do.

For more, please visit Education Innovation and the Official Google Blog.

[...] when the criteria we use to prepare to assess someone’s ability to do a job is radically out of step with the actual demands of the job itself.

Gladwell begins with examples from the world of sports to illustrate the mismatch problem before moving into the world of education. According to Gladwell, the single biggest contributing factor in student achievement is teacher quality. This probably isn’t particularly surprising and actually quite relieving to people like you and me.

Studies show that a 28% reduction in class size (from about 22 to 16 students) will yield you a 5-percentile-point increase in student achievement. Mind you, that increase comes at a cost; the Department of Education would have to hire 38% more teachers and find an equal number of classrooms to place them in. They’d also have to get the number down to 22 to begin with.

5-percentile-points is nothing to scoff at, but what if I told you that I could get you a 10-percentile-point increase in student achieve and I could do it without the added cost–actually, it might even be cheaper? The trick, as I alluded to earlier is to find quality teachers.

Determining teacher quality and teacher effectiveness is easy on paper–I’ll get to the hair-splitting later. You take a look at student growth over the course of the year and average it out among all of the students in the class. The mean of the distribution will give you a reasonably accurate picture of the teacher’s effectiveness. You can get an even clearer picture if you take student’s academic histories into account.

Studies have shown that there is a 10-point spread between the top and bottom quartile of teachers using this methodology. Students of teachers in the bottom 25% actually regress 5-percentile-points over the course of the year.

Determining teacher effectiveness is the easy part. The bigger question is how do we recruit and retain quality teachers? That is where the mismatch problem lies.

According to No Child Left Behind, the dominating paradigm (for better or worse), you need to have credentials. You need to have a college degree; you need to have a certain number of credits in educational theory and practice and a certain number of credits in the area that you teach. You need to be certified by the state. You need to pass (in New York) a triad of standardized tests. According to No Child Left Behind, you can be just any regular guy off the street. You have to be qualified–unless, you’re a in an alternative certification program, then you just need a pulse.

So what’s the difference between certified teachers with master’s degrees in their specialty, backgrounds in educational theory, and a few sheets of paper saying they passed a myriad of standardized tests and a random sampling of people without these credentials? Nothing.

After two years of experience in the classroom, there is no difference in quality between the two groups. You’re just as likely to have a “highly-qualified” teacher in the lowest quartile and an “unqualified” pedagogue in the top 25% as you are to have the inverse.

What we have is a mismatch problem. Having a laundry list of requirements to get into the classroom actually hurts us because it limits the number of applicants. Since we have no idea what will make a good teacher during the hiring the process (remember, it has nothing to do with their certification or education), we would want the largest and most diverse pool possible in order to increase the likelihood of attracting quality teachers.

There is one caveat. I mentioned that teacher quality was determined based on student achievement. What do we use to measure student achievement? Oh yea, high-stakes standardized tests.

If this topic interests you, I encourage you to check out Gladwell’s upcoming book entitled Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t, which will be out in November.

Jonathan Fields brings it up in a business context:

How many rules do we follow that have outlasted their original intent?

They’re all around us. How many people work 9 to 5 (7 to 7 in NYC), when they know their most productive, creative hours are 4 to midnight? How many people pour the coffee first, then add milk and sugar second, when pouring the coffee last avoids the need to stir? How many scrub the dishes before putting them in a dishwasher that’s been good enough to clean them for decades? How many top off the gas tank to avoid waiting for change, even when paying by credit card?

In more of an educational context, some of the maxims that persisted during my education that I’ve had to rethink:

• Is a quiet and orderly classroom necessarily a productive classroom?
• Why must math be done in pencil at all times?
• Why should students produce a written draft before typing?

There are many more, but I think it is far more important that it be a personal quest to seek out these maxims and challenge them. If any come to mind, do not hesitate to share them in the comments section.

I teach in a middle school. Middle school students are not known for their eloquence when it comes to discussing the virtues and pitfalls of their teachers as evident by the writing in the bathroom – I’ve never been the topic of conversation on the bathroom walls, which may either be a good or bad thing.

During the final days of the school year, my co-teacher and I invited students to whip out a piece of paper and tell us what they think of us. We told them not to include their names, but they chose to anyway (or weren’t listening to the instructions – not uncommon). It wasn’t my idea and I was prepared for the worst, but I was blown away by the response. Our students responded with thoughtful and reflective responses, some of which may have been their best prose to date. They were open and honest in their appreciation for the work we had done and respectful in their criticism.

There was a lot that I glossed over in the introduction to this post. The moral of Aaron’s story was that controversy causes spikes in site in traffic – this isn’t the goal for most educators. My moral is slightly different. If we let go of the reigns and stop moderating with an iron fist, we may be surprised with the result. Integrating social media into the classroom is scary and requires a giant leap of faith (or reckless abandon, in my case) but it just might be worth it in the long run.

When students write for social media. They write for audience that isn’t just the teacher. As a result, they need to be more thoughtful in their writing. At the same time, in my experience, they tend to also be more thoughtful in the way they respond to each other’s work.

The result of the student surveys? I’m a caring, dedicated teacher who needs to lighten up on the sarcasm.

By the way, this post was inspired by a post over at Creating Knowledge with Technology as well as Guy Kawasaki, Aaron Mentele, and friends.

In the article, I talked about using wikis as a tool to empower students to collaborate on outlines and other documents. This time, let’s take a different approach: taking the general idea of Digg applying it in the classroom. If you’ve never been to Digg, I highly recommend that you stop on over (after you finish reading this post, of course). Digg is like a news website – albeit a bit more irreverent – with one major difference: There are no moderators or editors. Interesting stories are selected by the Digg community and appear on the front page of Digg. When a user comes across a story on Digg, they can choose to digg it. As a article earn more diggs, it ascends in the rankings until it finally reaches the front page.

Incredibly, this user interaction is what makes Digg so addictive for its users. Peers tend to pick stories that the mainstream press, but submitters to Digg also scour the internet looking for the most interesting content in order to increase their chances of being dugg. Allow me to rephrase, users – without any compensation whatsoever – are investing large amounts of time and effort seeking out content. Doesn’t this sound like something you should have in your classroom (hint: yes)?

There are a few caveats of course – you don’t want just any content; you want relevant content. Some teachers may scoff at the arduous task of training their students to use the internet responsibly. I argue that such skills are essential in the Internet Age (or the Information Age or the Ingenuity Age) and that it’s unfair to pass this responsibility off to someone else (or likely no one else). As teachers, we’ve accomplished much more difficult tasks in the past.

There are a few ways you can use a Digg model in your classroom. First, you can allow students to writing prompts and topic ideas. The class decide which subjects are the most interesting – this sure beats you giving yourself a headache on Sunday night trying to think of something. Students could share and comment on eachother’s drafts during writing process, eliciting instant feedback from their peers. In math and science, students could submit proposed answers and digg solutions that seem correct or comment on a peers approach.

All of these techniques remove you as the sole source of knowledge. They encourage students to collaborate, share, discuss, and critically think about ideas. This, in turn, increases their investment in whatever you’re teaching and makes the lesson more sticky. On top of that, you’re reinforcing accountable talk and the social skills necessary to succeed in today’s collaboration based workforce.

So, how do you incorporate your own home-grown version of Digg? Pligg is a free alternative (clever name, I know). It does take a hosting of some sort and a little bit of customization to get it up and running. I believe that it is well worth the investment. Someone should write a tutorial on how to implement Pligg (instead of just musing on its potential uses). My web host, Dreamhost, allows for one-click installation of Pligg – very convenient. Technology coordinators, check out Pligg at your earliest convenience.

Recently, Jott added a feature that allows it to work in the other direction. You can have your feeds read to you (or a special student in your life). If you can roll your own feed (I suggest Tumblr; it’s quick and deceptively simple), then you can create a Jott Feed.

Jott Feeds has a lot of potential uses: parent news for homes without computers, homework assignments for students who tend to forget to record their homework, and homework readings for students that might need the text read to them.

Jott Feeds makes it easy to create readings for students so that they can access the curriculum. Instead of slaving away for hours in front of Audacity, you can simply copy and past text into Tumblr. You can take it a step further and use an OCR scanner to scan in text from books.

Change, for better or for worse, has a tendency to come whether you want it to or not. The educational landscape is going to change a lot over the next few years; whether or not you consider this to be a good thing or not all depends on your perspective. How will you deal with change? Will you resist it? Or, will you embrace it and bring it into your classroom?

The burgeoning use of technology in the classroom is likely to have its growing pains. Early adopters will not have the luxury of tried and true teaching methods to consult when trying to implement Second Life into their classrooms. Things will break when you need them most; imagine how early adopters of the copy machine must have felt or how you feel now when your beloved Xerox machine kicks the bucket. There will be a number of awkward conversations about appropriateness on the web (remember, the web never forgets).

The return on investment will be worth the effort. DimensionM is already having a substantial impact on student achievement and teachers are finding exciting ways integrate Second Life in ways are academically rigorous. Be the change you want to see.

P.S. I resisted the urge to use a certain Bob Dylan song for the title of this post. You’re welcome. Also, the photo is courtesy of HVX Silverstar on Flickr.