Apace of Change

by Damian Bariexca, Ed.D.

Archive for the ‘Progress’ Category

Personalizing Learning in Public Education

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about New Jersey’s pilot program for Personalized Student Learning Plans, defined in the New Jersey Administrative Code as “a formalized plan and process that involved students setting learning goals based on personal, academic, and career interests, beginning in the middle school grades and continuing throughout high school with the support of adult mentors that include teachers, counselors, and parents” (NJAC 6A:8).

The original plan was for PSLPs to be piloted in sixteen school districts throughout NJ over 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, but I’ve since learned that the pilot program has been extended through the end of the 2011-2012 school year.  In August 2010, the state released its initial findings (PDF), which I’ll summarize here.

The 2009-2010 Evaluation Report (linked above) cites eleven major findings from last school year and six major lessons to take into the current one.  I’ll just highlight a few:

Findings

  • Buy-in and support are crucial: Findings 6, 7, and 9 all address the significance of not only teacher buy-in, but also demonstrable support beyond “lip service” from principals (or, I imagine, any school administrator) to the success of a local PSLP program.  The report noted that the schools that most effectively implemented the PSLP program all had strong training programs for staff and students, adequate resources, and regular opportunities to meet, voice concerns, and collectively problem-solve.  One example that pops up a few times in the findings is an aspect of personalized education to which I alluded in this post from February – the flexibility of the school schedule.  Principals who were perceived to be supportive were also those who allowed for flexibility in both the school schedule and staff scheduling.  It makes sense; if we are going to truly personalize learning experiences, it has to be in for a penny, in for a pound; no half-stepping here.
  • Technology is key: Hate to say “I told you so”, but Finding #2 noted that the vast majority of schools in the pilot program used some sort of web-based program as part of the PSLP process.  If this is the direction in which NJ schools are heading, for better or for worse, teachers and other school staff are going to need to get comfortable utilizing online tools.
  • We need a point man: Or woman!  From the report: “School representatives reported that PSLP programs require substantial coordination and planning, and agreed that without someone acting as the central coordinator in each school, PSLPs would be difficult to implement.”  The report stated that of the 16 pilot schools, only three used teachers as their PSLP coordinators (administrators and guidance counselors seemed to be the positions of choice for this job).  I’m of two minds about this: on one hand, it doesn’t make sense to me to burden the teachers – who are already adjusting to entirely new professional environment with trying to meet the individualized needs of all these students – with this additional paperwork.  On the other hand, as the ones with the most daily contact with the students, they’re the ones who know them, their goals, and their progress best.  Maybe the paperwork needs to be handled by an admin or support personnel with regular input from the teachers.  Which, of course, means building regular meeting times into the weekly schedule (see first bulletpoint above).
  • Despite challenges, initial reports are favorable: Findings 10 & 11 indicated that a significant majority of polled staff members felt that the first year of the PSLP pilot program had a positive impact on students, and that they would recommend the PSLP process to colleagues in other districts.  The Evaluation Report acknowledges that a single year is not enough time to gauge all the potential pros and cons of this program, but upwards of seventy percent of educators polled felt that the program had a positive impact on student-teacher interactions, help-seeking behaviors, motivation, and engagement, among other things.  Seventy-three percent of teachers and one hundred percent of program coordinators polled said they would recommend PSLPs to other schools in their districts.

Lessons

No need to bulletpoint here; I think it’s sufficient to say that the lessons primarily drive home the absolute necessity of staff training prior to the start of the PSLP implementation as well as having principals who walk the walk in terms of supporting the initiative by providing more than just verbal support for the program.  No big surprises here.

Looking Ahead

Despite this report being published in August 2010, I wasn’t aware of its existence until midway through the current school year.  Now that I know the state is publishing these, I’ll be keeping an eye on the PSLP site toward the end of summer to see what more the 2010-2011 Evaluation Report has to say.  I am concerned about the logistical headaches a poorly implemented PSLP could create, but I am more hopeful about the potential for good this could hold if done right.

If you’ve read the document (go do it; it’s only 5 1/2 pages), what about the findings/lessons stand out to you?  Has your school or state implemented something similar?  Is NJ on the right track with this project?

Administrivia

I’m making a bit of a change here on my blog – not a huge one; in fact, a miniscule one, but it’s one I think is important.

In the sidebar, I keep a list of the different categories of posts.  One of them – Reform – I feel has been hijacked by folks who attempt to advance political or business agendas at the expense of children and teachers under the guise of “Education Reform”.  When I first applied that label to one of my posts, it was done with a good heart – I intended for my writing to be reflective of my desire to reform what I see as detrimental or ineffective educational practices.  In light of recent events, however, I would hate for anything I’ve written to be aligned or connected in any way with those who see public education solely as a means to a political end.

You won’t see the “Reform” category in my sidebar if you look there now.  I’ve deleted it and replaced it with a word I hope more accurately reflects my intentions: Progress.

Like I said, I feel it’s a small but important change, because after all, words mean things.

The Purpose of Education

Today’s post is my contribution to an ongoing project organized by purpos/ed, “a non-partisan, location-independent organization aiming to kickstart a debate around the question: What’s the purpose of education?”  I am honored to have been invited to contribute my response to this question by purpos/ed co-founder Doug Belshaw.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION?

The short answer: to foster growth & independence.

The long answer: In the States, we have an acronym that appears in our federal law governing special education: FAPE, or Free & Appropriate Public Education.  According to federal law, FAPE is what every child who is eligible for special education & related services is guaranteed.  This means that for every student with an identified disability, the school must develop an Individualized Education Plan [IEP] that best meets that student’s needs based on his/her individual strengths and weaknesses.  For some students, this means they are educated in the same contexts as their non-disabled peers with minor accommodations, while others require instruction on basic facets of daily living.  For some students, the most appropriate educational placement for them involves leaving our traditional American high school in order to learn basic employment skills.  Yet other students spend a significant portion of their time in a polytechnic environment, developing industrial skills in an apprentice-like setting.  For all of these students, their formal educations look very different, yet are presumably appropriate to their individual goals.

If working in the world of special education has taught me anything, it is that education can – and probably should – look different for every student.  With this perspective, the question I constantly ask is: to what degree are we providing ALL students – not just those with identified disabilities – with FAPE?  This includes, but is not limited to, re-thinking:

  • physical presence at school – do we all need to be there at the same time, or for the same length of time?  Why?
  • how we structure our day – should we isolate subjects from one another in 40-80 minute chunks?
  • who provides instruction – can students only learn from certified teachers, or was Illich on to something forty years ago?
  • the increasing emphasis on standardized tests in the US that is driving curriculum to focus more on students’ areas of weaknesses instead of their areas of strength, interest, and passion?

My home state of New Jersey is in the midst of piloting a program called Personalized Student Learning Plans, which, roughly explained, applies the concept of the IEP to all students from middle grades (ages 12-13) through high school graduation (ages 17-18).  I will blog about the initial findings soon, but for now I’ll say they look promising in terms of student engagement, student-teacher interactions, and, perhaps most importantly, student ownership of learning and ability to think critically.  When we honor the individual differences inherent in our students, we reinforce the message that they are capable of learning, thus (hopefully) laying the foundation for a lifetime of self-directed learning, or at least problem-solving.

As an educator, but more importantly, as a father, this is the direction in which I want our education system to move.  Let us engage both our students and our children by structuring their formal educational experiences around their passions and strengths, and let us challenge them to become self-sufficient critical thinkers, not expert bubble-darkeners.

Deschooling Education

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

–Mark Twain

As I continue to try to wrap my head around the concept of formal education and why/how it needs to change, I’ve found it increasingly necessary to go back in history to read the arguments and proposals of the giants upon whose shoulders we stand.  Sizer and Postman & Weingartner have all put miles on my library card this year, and I’ve got Seymour Papert on deck sitting on my kitchen counter.

Several months ago I read Deschooling Society, written by Ivan Illich in 1971, in which Illich calls for a radical change in how education is delivered conducted.  I can’t do justice to his entire argument in a blogpost, but the gist of it is that the entire system needs to be completely destroyed (not as in, “everyone use computers now” destroyed; he means “raze it and salt the earth” destroyed) and re-built from the ground up.  I found one section oddly prescient in that it seems to predict the concept of online learning communities a good 30+ years in advance:

Educational resources are usually labeled according to educators’ curricular goals. I propose to do the contrary, to label four different approaches which enable the student to gain access to any educational resource which may help him to define and achieve his own goals:

1. Reference Services to Educational Objects–which facilitate access to things or processes used for formal learning. Some of these things can be reserved for this purpose, stored in libraries, rental agencies, laboratories, and showrooms like museums and theaters; others can be in daily use in factories, airports, or on farms, but made available to students as apprentices or on off hours.

2. Skill Exchanges–which permit persons to list their skills, the conditions under which they are willing to serve as models for others who want to learn these skills, and the addresses at which they can be reached.

3. Peer-Matching–a communications network which permits persons to describe the learning activity in which they wish to engage, in the hope of finding a partner for the inquiry.

4. Reference Services to Educators-at-Large–who can be listed in a directory giving the addresses and self-descriptions of professionals, paraprofessionals, and free-lancers, along with conditions of access to their services. Such educators, as we will see, could be chosen by polling or consulting their former clients.

(Illich, 1971, p. 56)

I see the potential for utilizing online tools to build these educational networks (dare I say Professional/Personal Learning Networks?) and databases such as Illich describes, and I would love to know the extent to which this has already started to happen in our schools (public, private, charter, home, or otherwise).  I don’t mean doing a long-distance wiki or blog project with a class in another state or country (not that those are without merit), but rather teaching kids to use these tools to pursue whatever it is they feel is worth knowing by connecting with other “real live” people around the neighborhood, state, or world, and then not only giving them license to do it, but encouraging it.

Reference

Illich, Ivan.  (1971).  Deschooling society. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

What’s Worth Knowing?

I just finished reading the classic Teaching as a Subversive Activity.  Much like my first time meeting Horace, I found myself energized and inspired by the authors’ commentary on the necessity for making significant changes in the way we educate young people in this country (and not a little incredulous that this book came out in 1969 and is still so relevant and applicable today).

In Chapter 5, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner pose the question, “What’s worth knowing?”  The gist is that instead of learning curriculum for curriculum’s sake, schools should focus their learning efforts around certain universal, essential questions.  Some of the sample questions they offer are:

What do you worry about most?
What are the cause of your worries?
Can any of your worries be eliminated?

What bothers you most about adults?
How do you want to be similar to or different from adults you know when you become an adult?

How can you tell ‘good guys’ from ‘bad guys’?
How can ‘good’ be distinguished from ‘evil’?

When you hear or read or observe something, how do you know what it means?
Where does meaning ‘come from’?
What does ‘meaning’ mean?

What’s a ‘good idea’?
Which of man’s ideas would we be better off forgetting?  How do you decide?

What is ‘progress’?

What’s worth knowing?  How do you decide?  What are some ways to go about getting to know what’s worth knowing?

(Postman & Weingartner, 1969, pp. 62-65)

This list is not meant to be conclusive; rather, the authors argue that these are just samples of types of questions we should be asking to promote learning instead of “trivia” questions such as “What year was the Magna Carta signed?” and “What is the average rainfall in the Amazon basin?”  (You’d think it’d be easy to find a Far Side comic to link to here, but no such luck)

Whatever questions you come up with to promote learning in your classroom, Postman & Weingartner suggest the following guiding principles as you develop them:

Will your questions increase the learner’s will as well as his capacity to learn?
Will they help to give him a sense of joy in learning?
Will they help to provide the learner with confidence in his ability to learn?
Does each question allow for alternative answers (which implies alternative modes of inquiry)?
Will the answers help the learner to sense and understand the universals in the human condition and so enhance his ability to draw closer to other people?

(Postman & Weingartner, 1969, p. 66)

With these in mind, what’s worth knowing in your classroom, and how do your students go about learning those worthwhile things?

Reference

Postman, N., & Weingartner, C.  (1969).  Teaching as a subversive activity. New York: Delacorte.