Can MOOCs and blended learning serve to shrink the achievement gap?

Can MOOCs and blended learning serve to shrink the achievement gap in American education?  This is a question I began to ask myself while listening to a podcast from Econ Talk from the Library of Economics and Liberty.  This is one of my favorite podcasts and one I listen to weekly.  This podcast featured Dr. Daphne Koller, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and one of the founders of Coursera along with Andrew Ng.  Click here for a link to the Econ Talk website or here for a link to the podcast via iTunes.

I am optimistic regarding the potential benefits of MOOCs and of blended learning.  I believe these modes of education do offer potential benefits that could assist us in shrinking the achievement gap in our country.  Daphne Koller argues that “MOOCs can be a significant factor in opening doors to opportunity” and I agree with her wholeheartedly.  MOOCs possess the power to reach the most marginalized student and to serve as a leveling mechanism in education.  I believe we will see more and more education providers begin to take advantage of the potential benefits of this mode of education as we move forward.  In addition, I believe blended learning may be utilized to overcome many of the challenges we encounter in urban education.  For example, increasingly we hear a great deal about the the flipped classroom and  how it assist in the completion of homework, maximizes class time, and how it is being used to increase academic outcomes.  Here is a link to a pdf file that discusses the basics of a flipped classroom in case you are interested.  

Three things charter schools do that the Detroit Free Press did not mention

The Detroit Free Press is running a series on charter schools in Michigan and you can click here to see what they have to say.  Thus far they are less than complimentary, but I am hoping they devote as much space to the positives associated with charter schools as they have so far to the negatives.  Whatever the case, I plan to beat them to the punch by discussing three things charters do that work together to increase the overall efficiency and effectiveness of primary and secondary education in Michigan.

            Charter schools drive experimentation.  Let’s face it, many, if not most, charters have a niche that attracts families to what they are offering.  Charter schools must offer something different or there would be no reason for families to move their students to charters.  But here is the great thing about charter schools, their very existence forced traditional public schools—as well as many private schools—to critically examine their practices and attempt to discover ways they can better serve the children under their care.  In this scenario the customer, Michigan’s families and their students, wins.

            Charter schools increase evaluation.  There is no doubt that more folks are “keeping score” since the advent of legislation that made charter schools possible.  Parents are more informed and more involved than ever before and this is a great thing as they subsequently become very informed consumers.  Thus, schools—charters, traditional public, and private—must consistently strive to achieve high results in order to attract more students to their respective buildings.  This is not a good thing, it is a great thing. 

            Charter schools spark evolution.  The experimentation and evaluation discussed earlier do not occur in a vacuum.  All schools are well aware of what their competitors are doing, or not doing, and they are analyzing, assessing, and critiquing their efforts and those of their competitors in an effort to become better tomorrow than they were today.    Charter schools played an integral role in making this happen and our students are better served as a result.

Absent charter schools I have little faith that much would have changed in education.  Monopolies do not change unless they are forced to and I suggest that traditional public schools were a very dominant monopoly prior to charter schools.  Charter schools changed the game, for the better.  Families now have choices and choices are among the best things in life to have at your disposal.  Previously only those families with significant financial means were able to consider options for their child’s education.  Thankfully, that option is now available to each and every family in our state.  

There are more important issues to discuss

Let me speak plainly, I believe the hullabaloo over the moronic owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, is stupid.  While I certainly do not agree with his apparent views on race and ethnicity and I, like so many others, believe they were uttered out of complete stupidity, I also do not find them particularly hurtful or surprising.

First, I believe it is important to consider the source.  This is an old man running around with a much, much younger gold digger: this guy is not exactly one we should look to for wisdom on any subject other than how to purchase an undervalued franchise and potentially make anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion off it when forced to sell said franchise.  By and large, Donald Sterling does not matter unless he does something stupid or makes a donation to the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP..  Second, this man has a history of incidents involving prejudice and bigotry.  Click here to listen to Bomani Jones give a brilliant take on this entire situation.  This is far from his first go-round with unacceptable comments or behavior.  Finally, I believe racism is far more prevalent in our society than what many people would care to admit.  Prejudice and bigotry plays a role in each of our lives every moment of every day.  It will continue to do so, and become more difficult to eliminate, due to our failure to properly and adequately address this issue.  Folks this issue is the elephant in the room that we all do our best to ignore.  Thus, I do not find what he said to be particularly surprising.

Our nation would be much better served by discussing the soft racism of low expectations our society holds for people of color.  This soft racism is prevalent in all segments of our nation and many people of color hold it just as strongly as others do.  Donald Sterling is an idiot, but he is an idiot that will go away.  The real danger is the racism that goes unnoticed and unaddressed and is allowed to permeate the very fabric of our culture.

"It is the leader's job!"

“Chris, it is the leader’s job.”  That is what the owner of the moving company we hired told me when we were discussing one of the challenges we experienced with moving day (it took much longer than a day, but that is a different story).  Moving, as I found out, can be quite a stressful event.  Even if all goes according to plan, the situation is stressful.  But when things go awry, it can really challenge those involved.  However, thanks to my experience moving, I learned a very valuable leadership lesson.

Our two movers were great guys.  They arrived early, worked hard, and did their absolute best to protect our items from any possible damage.  I even sent a text message to me wife during the process saying, “These guys are good.”  All seemed to be progressing nicely and we were able to get from the old house to the new house without any significant hiccups.

Arriving at the old house we began unloading, unpacking, and doing our best to put things in their proper place as quickly and as efficiently as possible.  This is when we experienced a setback.  While moving items into my daughter’s new room one of the movers, Will, noticed that he could not locate the hardware to put my daughter’s bed back together.  Now, this was going to present a problem.  My wife and I do are absolute best to keep our daughter on a strict schedule and we adhere to the established bedtimes.  This is a win-win for us as it results in a happy, cheerful child the next day along with two well-rested adults (we like our sleep).  Now we were facing a situation that would most likely push bedtime back or even result in Sloane sleeping in the ‘big girl bed' with mommy and daddy.  This was most definitely not a win-win situation.

Long story short, a day later the owner of the company was at our home--after purchasing the requisite parts--and we were discussing the moving experience.  This is when I learned a very valuable lesson in leadership.  It was readily apparent that Ben, the owner, was mildly upset with his crew, especially the crew leader, Mike.  I explained to Ben that Mike was, in fact, not the person who disassembled my daughter’s bed and was therefore not the person responsible for losing or misplacing the missing parts.  This is when the learning took place.  “Chris,” Ben replied, “it was Mike’s responsibility as the crew leader.  In fact, he should have been the one to disassemble the bed as he possesses the greater experience and that is a task you have to get right.”  He went on to state, “Disassembling the furniture is a task he does not like performing, but it is too critical to pass it off to a newer, much lesser experienced employee.”

I thought about our conversation a great deal over the course of the next week.  It made me reflect upon what I do on a daily basis and ask myself if there were any critical tasks I was handing off to my team that should remain my responsibility.  As leaders we need to delegate in order to get things accomplished in an efficient and effective manner, but we must be sure that the person we are handing the task to is ready and capable of completing the task.  Moreover, there are some tasks that must remain our responsibility because they are simply too critical to pass off.  It is the leader’s job to make the appropriate decision and to assume responsibility for the completion of those tasks that are critical to the success of the operation.

From the BBC: Is it good for people to fail occasionally?

This week the BBC had a great piece on their website--Is it good for people to fail occasionally?--and I thought it would be good to provide you with a link to the story.  I believe the more we work toward reframing our view of failure, the better off we will be.  Failure is not to be feared, but rather embraced as a learning opportunity.  Here are some tips on how to reframe failure so it does not appear so daunting:

1. Failure=practice
2. Failure makes us smarter and stronger
3. Failure makes us resilient
4. Failure equips us with leadership skills
5. Failure prepares us for success
6. Failure allows a deeper appreciation of success

Here is a link to my earlier post on failure in case you want to revisit it or you missed it the first time around.  Keep in mind that failure is often only fatal when it comes to parachutes and hand grenades, so get out there and give your best today.  Have a great week!

The Challenge for Charters

Currently there is a battle for students being waged across the state of Michigan.  With a declining population and a stagnant economy, competition for a dwindling number of students is sure to heat up in the days, months, and years to come.  Charter schools must differentiate themselves in the marketplace or they will lose this battle for students.  In fact, in the age of school of choice, traditional public schools located in our state's urban areas must also look for unique ways to position themselves in the marketplace or continue to see an exodus of students to the surrounding suburban schools.

Charters failing to differentiate themselves will lose the battle for students for three primary reasons.  First, more often than not, the buildings housing our state’s charter schools are inferior to the building housing our state’s traditional public schools.  Charter schools are often placed in school buildings that have been closed for years or in buildings that were not originally intended to be utilized as schools.  Moreover, many charters attempt to grow to include a middle or high school, but are in a building designed to house elementary students.  Thus, it is relatively easy to begin to understand the refrain “I want to go to a ‘real’ high school!”  Many of the charter schools I have had the pleasure of visiting often have no space or inadequate space for what they are attempting to do: the gymnasiums are often too small for students in grades 7-12: they do not have adequate outside recreation infrastructure, such as tennis courts, a track, baseball fields, etc.; and parking can prove to be an absolute nightmare as many buildings are simply not designed to accommodate hundreds of parents dropping-off and picking-up their children each and every day.  Second, there is simply a greater array of activities to choose from at most traditional public schools.  Charters are addressing this problem and quickly closing this gap in opportunity, but the fact remains that the traditional public schools often benefit from an economy of scale and this disparity in extracurricular offerings puts charters at a disadvantage when competing against traditional public schools for students.  Finally, charters are suffering from greater teacher turnover than traditional public schools.  This churn can result in a perception of instability and a lack of trust.  Subsequently, families may choose to stay with, or return to, that which they know—their traditional public school.  This often occurs even when the charter they left is far outperforming the traditional public school they are entering.  This point is paramount in that a stable school with low staff turnover can mitigate the negative effects of the first two points.  Parents will send their children to a school they trust despite an inferior building and a lack of extracurricular activities.

The challenge for charter schools is to differentiate and to uniquely position themselves in the marketplace in an effort to attract students.  The vast majority of charter schools are not restricted by collective bargaining agreements reached with the teachers’ union.  They are often only restricted by their lack of creativity.  Thus, even in the presence of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) I believe it is imperative that charter schools meet these standards, but do so in a setting that clearly separates them from traditional public schools.  In fact, I believe that the advent of CCSS increases the opportunity to do so.  In my opinion, charters should look and feel drastically different from traditional public schools.  The differences should not be just window dressing, such as the presence of a school uniform, but rather the differences should be profound--such as a new way of thinking about and addressing student learning.  It would be great to see more schools specialize in specific content areas (all while meeting the requirements associated with CCSS) such as business, entrepreneurship, health and human services, public service, etc.  In addition, we should, of course, see positive differences in student outcomes within a reasonable amount of time.  If we continue to view  education as a commodity then charter schools will struggle to compete against the better-funded, long-established traditional public schools.  However, if charters live up to the promise of providing a better education and work diligently to uniquely position themselves in the marketplace, then they have a chance.  I am hopeful that charters are able to do this because many of them are far outperforming the local districts with which they compete and have the capability of offering students an opportunity for a brighter future.

10 Things Extraordinary People Say Every Day

One of the websites I visit frequently is http://www.inc.com/, which I find to have some very useful articles regarding leadership, management, and personal and professional development.  A while back I signed up for updates from this site and I received an email with a link to this article.  I am passing this along because I believe it is a great reminder about the importance of the words we choose to use--or not use--on a daily basis.  There are a few of these that I am pretty good at using daily, but for the most part I need to pay more attention to using these on a regular basis.  Please let me know if you enjoyed the article and how well you are doing at being extraordinary!