Author: Winnie Hu

Published: New York Times  Date: November 14, 2009

Brief Summary: An increasing number of teachers are making a profit by selling their lesson plans online. This practice raises the question of whether teaching is being whittled down to a mere commodity that can be bought and sold like used furniture on eBay. Teachers, on the other hand, see this trend as a long-awaited validation of the value of their long hours, knowledge and expertise in crafting these fundamental tools that promote essential student understandings.  Teachers make anywhere from $3 per sale, to $750/month, to $31,000 over time for selling lesson plans developed from years of experience in the classroom.

Potent Quotables: “In Fairfax County, Va., officials had been studying the issue when they discovered this fall that a former football coach was selling his playbook and instructional DVDs online for $197; they investigated but let him keep selling.”

Personal Reflections: This feels like an idea whose time has come.  I’m only sad that I hadn’t heard about this sooner.  Now, I want to go into storage and dust off my unit plans and other creative learning masterpieces. 

Any skilled teacher knows that creating an effective lesson plan is nothing short of a work of art as well as a labor of love.  Even after the lesson plan has been rendered and delivered, the process of refining and tweaking the plan according to student feedback and student outcomes has just begun.  It may take months to years before a plan is of high quality and value.  Teachers should be compensated for their lesson plans so long as it is their original work. or work that has been sufficiently repurposed so that it has become something uniquely their own. In the case of co-created lessons, all parties involved in the planning should be included and the profits split equally, or as agreed.

There are many benefits to the sale and purchase of lesson plans, online or otherwise, just as their are aspects that consumers of any good need to be wary of.

PROS:

1. Expertise and insight can be shared across time and distance.
2. New teachers can build strong teaching approaches by learning what good teachers do in an hands-on way.
3. Giving a monetary value to the work of teachers acts as its own quality control mechanism.The consumer has the ability to vote with her mouse; If she doesn’t think a lesson is robust enough, she can choose not to purchase it.
4. By not having to reinvent the wheel, all teachers can save the most precious commodity any teacher has: Time.
5. Expert teachers can be rewarded to their hard work and dedication with something other than an apple or adorable coffee mug.
6. Teachers recognizing other teachers’ good work using the affordances of Web 2.0 are developing web-based learning communities, which can be powerful sites of knowledge construction and dissemination
7. Offering vetted lesson plans online responds to the needs of teacher-consumers seeking quality tools for instructing their students

CONS:

1. If there are not criteria for lessons sold, lesson plans can lack the research base or not be grounded in best practices
2. There exists the potential for individuals to expend time and effort on making a profit that is contracted to be invested in serving the students in their classrooms.
3. Disagreements over intellectual property will arise from time to time, particularly without clear regulatory policies in place.

When doctors, lawyers, and CEO’s develop products, programs and write books for tremendous profit, no one seems outraged. We invite them on talk shows, publicize their websites and praise them for their innovative and entrepreneurial spirits. Yet when a teacher using his expertise in the same way, his motives are seen as suspect. Surely teachers should not be using their money to go on vacation, pay off mortgages or get their kitchens updated.  The opinion of many seems to be that any money, if earned, should be returned to the classroom’s coffers for more books and materials for the students. Similar to the way that many people view clergy members, teachers are expected to be martyrs who have taken a vow of poverty and must live every aspect of their lives for the sake of the children. It’s hard to believe in the days of bailouts for the financial sector who are still reaping mammoth profits and bonuses and other perks, we have the nerve to cast aspersions at the integrity of educators for daring to offer something of substance and edification that benefits all of our children for $3.00 a pop.

In response to the comment that monetizing lesson plans will cheapen education, I respond with this: The best lesson plan in the world cannot substitute good teaching by one who has deep content knowledge, a wide range of instructional strategies, and responsive delivery in creating classroom conditions for students success. In classrooms where teachers have more challenges than support and more demands than time, the sharing of step-by-step documents outlining subject-specific instructional methods may be the saving grace for a good deal of the teaching population. And if it plays even a small role in reducing the burnout that continues to drive teachers from our neediest classrooms, then all the better.

Opportunity: In a software design course in Ed School, my team designed the All You Can Teach online social network.  Although this was just one short year ago, it never even entered our minds that the lessons offered on the site could be sold, rather than given away for free.  A similar online community where lesson-creaters receive eBay-like ratings and buyers comment on the utility and content of the lesson would be ideal. 

Consulting Tie-Ins: As a former teacher of more than 15 years, I am offended that critics would deny educators a right to share their expertise for a profit.  However, the consultant in me wonders if I will see the day when a professional development training I’ve delivered has been repurposed by some innovative middle school teacher and is being sold in direct competition with my product. Of course, that is part of the reality of operating in a market economy where competition is the driving force.

Author: William G. Ouchi

Published: Educators Weekly, November 4th(print) October 30 (online), 2009

Brief Summary: A study of decentralized and centralized districts, with the former producing greater student gains. Talks about two studies of exactly of what happens when principals are empowered to make the important instructional decisions on budget, staffing, curriculum, and schedule.

Potent Quotables:

Personal Reflections: Years of abuse by one regime of school’s administrators is a major contributor to the bent toward heavy-handed centralization. Principals who have not required staff to keep pace with initiatives and best practices in the field may have largely left the field, for the most part, yet some urban districts have responded with a paternalistic approach that reduces the role of principals from talented and capable visionaries with a vested interest in improving learning in their own school, to mere managers, discipinarians, and reluctant yes men to the districts mandates, which are often out of step with the real needs of its local schools. This is rather ironic, considering that political governance in the U.S. is built on exactly the opposite idea.  Imagine what would happen if those in inner city central offices saw the  ”>principals, as well as the staff, students and their parents as individuals with something meaningful and integral to contribute to the learning community rather than as autobots needing to be directed at every turn? Empowering principals is not just about giving them the right balance of autonomy and support, but extends to every member of the school community to reform their schema of shared responsibility and power, distributed across all stakeholders. The current model of doling out mandates from afar can be more than crippling to already struggling schools.

Work Tie-ins: Organizationally, we are coming in through the district, yet we are working to help the principal.  What happens when helping the principal improve learning at her school can only truly happen if the district works in partnership with the schools as opposed to a paternal approach of handing down myriad mandates.

Article link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/chi-school-closings-report-28-oct28,0,1860641.story

Author:  Azam Ahmed

PUBLISHED:  Where: Chicago Tribune; When: October 28, 2009

Brief Summary: In 2001, Chicago instituted a plan to close its worst performing schools to allow those students to have a shot to attend the higher performing school. The Consortium for Chicago School Research conducted a study of 5445 redistributed students, K-8, from 18 schools.  They found that  only 6% of those students attended higher performing schools. It’s unclear whether there was a limited number of slots at these schools, or whether parents did not want to send their kids to another neighborhood.

The students who landed at the top schools showed significant learning gains, based on their Iowa scores over 3 years.  , maintained the same achievement level they demonstrated at their original school. The study found that of the students whose performance increased, their classrooms reflected a higher level of student trust and personal attention.  In 2006, the school abandoned the closing schools strategy to firing and replacing staff.

Potent Quotables: At the same time, the handful of students that went to the top schools were scoring at a higher level just a year later. Those who attended schools with a high level of teacher-student trust and personal attention also showed higher gains.

Personal Reflections: The closing of the schools broke up local relationships and brought a decline to the students’ performance beginning with the closing announcement in January and continuing through the end of the school year in June. What research could the district point to for this move and why wasn’t there a concrete plan to move kids where they truly had a shot at being more successful, or in helping parents to understand how to navigate their children to the top schools, including the costs and benefits. It appears to me more like the district needed to save money and gave a weak promise of kids attending better schools as a political leverage. It frustrates me when how the district does business handicaps kids and schools more and saddles them with more redtape to fight instead of improving what’s happening in the classroom. 

I support replacement of habitually ineffective staff, only after teachers/ principals have had opportunities to see data on how their practice could improve and receive professional development and support – for perhaps a year.  If learning (not necessarily a narrow test of skills such as the Iowa alone) is not improved in their classroom, then those teachers would be laid off.  They could be eligible for return after they get more PD, possibly through summer institutes are which professional learning community with students. I could imagine having intensive PD for part of the summer, and then working directly with students on a specific set of outcomes for 2 – 3 weeks later in the summer could be one model. It would be like student teaching all over again.  But so that it’s not a dumping ground, any teacher could voluntarily take other courses there.  To be developed.

It’s also sad that there are top schools at all and that every school to which parents entrust their kids to prepare them for their future is not a top school. 

Connections to CE: This resonates strongly with the work of Tripod in looking at the classroom conditions that promote student achievement, with Trust and interest and teacher support being two that this study points to as factors in the students’ increased achievement.   It makes sense that Gates if focusing on teacher effectiveness instead of school effectiveness.

Brief Summary:  Researchers are torn on whether the tenets behind the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top is scientifically sound. Some applaud Race to the Top’s focus on measures geared at improving teacher effectiveness and an equitable distribution of quality teachers, while others like Diane Ravitch of NYU and former assistant secretary of research and educational improvement under the George W.H. Bush administrations posit that the regulations, “have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power.” Still others cite a lack of research in education as compared with “hard” sciences such as medicine, due to scant funding.

Critics site two school improvement initiatives in specific that lack credible evidence: evaluating teachers based on students’ standardized test scores and promoting the growth of charter schools. STudies on linking student scores with teacher evalation are lacking and studies on the achievement of charter school students show conflicting results.

The concerns reflect a larger trend in public policy in which , policymakers are reported to rely more on colleagues, political pressure, constituents and professional groups in their policiy decisions that on research.

Potent Quotables: Thomas Kane -Professor Harvard University; Deputy director of research and data for the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s education program. “We strongly support the focus of the Race to the Top program on teacher effectiveness and achieving equity in distribution of effective teachers.” (From a comment letter from 8 academics)

Personal Reflections: One of the drivers that contribute to putting policy ahead of research is the urgency to improve education, particularly for students attending underserved schools.  It is an urgency shared by school leaders, parents, school improvement managers, policy makers and anyone concerned with the economic viability of the US in the future.

Cambridge Tie-Ins: Thomas Kane and Gates work. Can I point to the research base of each of the programs I support?

What Next?: What evidence do we have that evaluates any of our programs?

 Author: Diane Ravitch

Published: Boston Globe, September 15, 2009

Summary: Comparison of drive for 21st Century Skills to initiatives to teach 20th century skills and the turn of and throught out 20th century.

Personal Reflections:

Potent Quotables:   But we have ignored what matters most. We have neglected to teach them that one cannot think critically without quite a lot of knowledge to think about. Thinking critically involves comparing and contrasting and synthesizing what one has learned. And a great deal of knowledge is necessary before one can begin to reflect on its meaning and look for alternative explanations.

Cambridge Ed Tie-Ins:

What Next?:

Author: Dakarai I. Aarons and Catherine Gewertz

Published by: Ed Week

Publication Date: September 16

Summary: The 60,000-student Aldine district, located in northern metropolitan Houston, won the Broad award for making notable achievement gains and closing gaps.  The district will receive $1 million in college-scholarship money for students. The four other finalist districts will receive $250,000 each. They are:  Socorro Independent School District, also in Texas; the Broward County, Fla., public schools; the Long Beach Unified School District in California; and the Gwinnett County, Ga., public schools.

 Key Strategies used were alignment, developing strong principals, managed approach due to transient student pop – curriculum is managed cross-district.

Potent Quotables: 

Of paramount importance, she said, has been the development of a “scope and sequence” guiding instruction in pre-K through 12th grades, and building knowledge about gathering and analyzing data, “so we know what teachers are teaching, how it’s being asessed, and that the data are being used to inform instruction.”

The district also placed a premium on developing strong principals, and supported its teachers in using one-on-one interventions to help struggling students,

Personal Reflections: While this is encouraging, it also concerns me that the limited assessment tools which render a child proficient are not measuring the kinds of skills students are likely to need in the not too distant future. “The top 10 jobs for 2010 did not exist until 2004. – Shift Happens.  Are we preparing students to run the printing press in a world of offset printig?  All warm weather states. No northern urban districts. Any pattern?

Cambridge Ed Tie Ins:  Would be valuable to know what kind of support this district had in improving the outcomes of the schools.  The article does not mention a focus on curriculum or content, but I imagine a closer look would reveal that these were given a great deal of attention. 

What Next?: Find out what the PD, training methods, firms that the district utilized. Does Cambridge yet have a school market we are particularly strong in? Rural, urban, large districts, northern states?

Link to Article:  http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/09/15/299908usharvardnewdoctorate_ap.html?tkn=PMNFSaeoWx%2BQNe5fAWJITO%2FMjt93W3zJH0ht

Author:   The Associated Press

Date: September 15, 2009

Summary: 

Harvard University is introducing  The Doctor of Education Leadership program aimed at attracting top talent to transform the U.S. education system by shaking up the status quo. Goal is to train upper-echelon people who would normally go into more lucrative fields and train them in large scale organizational development and change.  These admins would not merely look to sustain existing systems but to push badly needed reform in the nations failing schools.

Three Year Program: (Begins 2010-2011 school year with 25 students)

1. Year 1- a rigorous core curriculum.
2. Year 2 – , students chose from a slate of courses at the three schools — such as “Managing Human Capital” at the business school or “Marketing for Non-Profits and Public Agencies” at the Kennedy school.
3. Year 3 -  Dean Schwarts compares the final year to a medical residency. Students lead a “high priority” project at a school district, nonprofit organization or another program partner. Partners so far include the Atlanta and New York school districts and Teach for America, which recruits promising college graduates to teach in urban and rural areas

Personal Reflections:  A step toward professionalizing the field of education on par with fields like medicine, business.  To optimize the effectiveness of these leaders, administrators and teachers will need to be on board with the reform ideologies the leaders espouse and be equipped to carry them out at the building level.  You can’t change a district without changing what is happening in a classroom.  Teacher buy-in has always been a critical component to ed reform.   To that end, how are teacher education programs transforming their objectives, curricula and pedagogies to help teachers attain the aptitudes and attitudes for this kind of work?  Will this call for a more savvy teacher who understands both the content to teach and the context within which learnign takes place, as well as their role in inacting change.  Due to the custodial nature of schools, we can neither simply close them down while they get better, nor can we quarentine future citizens who have been impacted by poor design and delivery of instruction.  So, as usual, we have to fix the wing while still flying the plane.

Cambridge Education Tie-ins: Will this kind of leadership training become a trend?  This could create new opportunities in principal coaching, teacher PD, new metrics for school review?

What Next?: Dean Schwartz states that he doesn’t know of another ed leadership program like this in the country.  Are there other similar programs?

Sample Data Report: http://documents.nytimes.com/sample-teacher-data-report#p=1

Summary: 12,000 New York City Teachers received their evaluations.  During the last school year, education officials distributed some 12,000 reports that considered how well teachers did in educating students, producing a report for any teacher who taught fourth through eighth grade for the last two years. The reports put New York at the center of a national debate over ways to measure the effectiveness of individual teachers and the role that test scores should play in the evaluations.

Reports provide no recommendations for next steps for teachers.

Potent Quotables: New York chancellor, Joel I. Klein: “Nobody thinks you can boil down teacher effectiveness to a single criteria, and we also should not ignore student performance as an important criteria.”

“I think it was helpful just to know where you stand,” said Ms. Bazemore, a “middle” performer. “I do wish it would tell you where to go from there, but it is what it is.”

Personal Reflections: Imagine the doctor telling you that you had faulty vision, then sending you away to fumble about.  That would be absurd and unacceptable.  Yet, 12,000 teachers are faced with this exact situation. To put it in an educational context, imagine your airplane pilot or bus driver receiving a diagnosis of faulty vision and poor judgment of distance. This is not just unfortunate news for the operator of the vehicle, but for everyone on board who may be unwittingly be headed for their demise.  If only the doctor had provided a prescription, plan or plan of action to help the patient improve, what a difference it would make for so many.

Tie-ins to Cambridge Education: Cites Gates work and the need to use multiple metrics when assessing teacher effectiveness.  Tripod looks at the classroom conditions (feasible, relevant, interesting – stimulating – enjoyable, support and press, peer support) that produce the student engagement targets (trust,balance control/ autonomy,  ambitious goals, industriousnes/hardwork, satisfaction/mastery).  How are data such as on the NYC evaluation being factored in (teacher effectiveness as measured by how students are performing and making gains as a result of their teaching).  Will Ron’s work on the Gates survey include that.

So what?:

What Next?: Would be great to see a copy the proposal for the surveys Tripod will provide for Gates.  What is the charge and how are we meeting it?

Article can be found at:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-education-beats-the-classroom/

Publication date: August 19, 2009

Summary: Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile.

But the report does suggest that online education could be set to expand sharply over the next few years, as evidence mounts of its value.

Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has really changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools.

The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.

…

Mr. Regier sees things evolving fairly rapidly, accelerated by the increasing use of social networking technology. More and more, students will help and teach each other, he said. For example, it will be assumed that college students know the basics of calculus, and the classroom time will focus on applying the math to real-world problems — perhaps in exploring the physics of climate change or modeling trends in stock prices, he said.

“The technology will be used to create learning communities among students in new ways,” Mr. Regier said. “People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.”

My Personal Reflections: It’s striking how much this reflects back to Chris Dede, Christensen and others’ work.  Customization is key, modulization is key to be able to have schools adapt online learning according to their needs.  I would be curious to know what types of online learning was MOST successful; using videos, interactive, or just the teach, practice, assess method, which is very close to teaching done in the classroom.  Then, is it the way in which teaching really differs, or the fact that the learner can control the learning experience to fit his/her pace, interest, mode that makes online learning successful?

Cambridge Education Tie Ins:

Personalized learning element speaks to PbyP, students being more engaged and motivated ties into Tripod, Motivated Classroom programs.  Good for schools who need an alternative model according to the “no more school as usual mandate” (see Las Vegas Article)  by the stimulus reform $’s.

What Next?: Find and post Las Vegas Schools article.  What other studies corroborate this data?  Explore what KINDS of online learning is most effective.

Summary:

President Obama is addressing children K-12 on Tuesday, September 8, 2009.  The speech will be broadcast throughout schools nation-wide.  Some parents who feel the president in attempting to inculcate children with his brand of politics are keeping their children home today.

Personal Reflections: This president has the power to sway political opinion of adults, particularly due to his authorative, yet accessible style of speaking.  Will he be as effective with children as he has been on some of the issues with adults?  I’m particularly curious about how older students and those in underserved schools will respond.  With cynicism, or with hope and resolve to do their part in making the most out of the opportunities, no matter how limited, they have?  I wonder if a speech to students will be misinterpreted as a blame the students type of message, and if so, will any of his rhetoric be used to justify why schools fail children, “they just don’t want to learn.”

Tie-ins to Cambridge Education:

Much of his message supports student responsibility, which is the underlying messages in PbyP of student-directed learning. Empowering students.  Just the direction students who think critically deserve.  In other words, we are spending substantial resources of time and money in elevating our students’ thinking.  Giving students more choice over their learning is a natural next step in this evolution toward self- motivated, life-long learners.