What single reform would make the most significant positive change towards ensuring that every individual Wyoming student receives the best possible education?
Realizing that we are spending an enormous amount of money to provide a fair and equitable basket of goods for Wyoming students, and yet 1/3 of our students drop out before they ever get out of high school, and another 1/3, at least, graduate without the skills to complete any kind of post-secondary education without remedial courses, it seems to me that one of the conclusions that a thinking person has to come to, is the current system is not working for the majority of students.
Twenty five years ago the landmark report, “A Nation at Risk,” noted that “secondary school curricula have been homogenized, diluted, and diffused to the point that they no longer have a central purpose. In effect, we have a cafeteria style curriculum in which the appetizers and desserts can easily be mistaken for main courses.” It seems that not much has changed. Far too many of our high school graduates, some of them with high scores, and outstanding grade point averages–deluded by the idea that it is better to take easy courses and get high scores, then to take challenging classes and risk lower scores–are finding that they are incapable of post-secondary coursework without remedial classes. I purposely use “post-secondary” instead of “college” here because in today’s globally competitive environment, students need to be very technically competent to have any hope of succeeding–and that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are headed towards the traditional university experience. In fact, only 16% of Wyoming students ever complete a four-year degree.
The education behemoth, writ large, is a daunting, formidable, implacable entity–but it can change, and should. Rather than an antagonistic approach that just “pokes the bear,” I think a far more productive move might be to use our resources to fill the gaps, to provide choice where there is no choice, where the alternative is nothing.
Wyoming is not a place conducive to the kind of school choice that typically comes to mind. We do not have the population density to support numerous schools with different philosophies or disciplines to focus on. A few school districts have begun to experiment with ’schools within schools’ like Campbell County’s Energy Academy, but for the most part, most parents generally only have one choice–the school that is within practical bus distance of their home. Until we remove the archaic “Blaine Amendments” from our state constitution–which I beleive should be Job #1 for the good of our citizens–we will not be able to provide funding in anything except “schools under the absolute control of the State.” I’ll come back to the Blaine Amendments later, my purpose here is to acknowledge that in order to provide those choices where there is no choice, those solutions where the alternative is nothing, that we are going to have to think creatively, be innovative, and take a multi-faceted approach.
For the short term, I believe that the most benefit can be gained by enhancing and expanding our Distance Education capabilities from pre-K to post-grad. For the first time this Fall, if a K-12 student enrolled in a small town, or rural school is not being served well, their parents have a choice that was never available before. Students can enroll in a full-time program. They can enroll in a part-time program and only take a few courses. They are no longer held hostage by distance. Opportunities for Advanced Placement, Foreign Languages, or simply just another way of teaching that more closely matches the way each student learns, the possibilities are seemingly endless, and we have only just begun to recognize how significant of a change this all represents.
Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business Professor, has written a book that I believe may be the most influential book about education of this decade–Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. Christensen talks about the potential for customized learning in a student-centric classroom.
“How might schools start down this promising path? Computer-based learning, which is a step on the road toward student-centric technology, offers a way. …computer-based learning is emerging as a disruptive force and a promising opportunity. The proper use of technology as a platform for learning offers a chance to modularize the system and thereby customize learning. Student-centric learning is the escape hatch from the temporal, lateral, physical, and hierarchical cells of standardization. The hardware exists. The software is emerging. Student-centric learning opens the door for students to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in the places and at the paces they prefer by combining content in customized sequences. As modularity and customization reach a tipping point, there will be another change: …teachers can serve as professional learning coaches and content architects to help individual students progress–and they can be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage.”
I believe that we are teetering on the edge of that tipping point. According to Christensen, more than 43% of rural schools in the U.S. today offer some computer based learning opportunities. In fact, the data suggests that by 2019 fully 50% of all high school classes will be delivered online.
Four factors will be driving the acceleration of this change:
1. Computer based learning will keep improving. It will become more enjoyable and take full advantage of online medium by layering in enhanced video, audio, and interactive elements. Currently, computer-based learning works best with more motivated students; over time, it will become more engaging so as to reach different types of learners. Software developers must also take full advantage of the medium to customize it by layering in different learning paths for different students.
2. A second driver of this transition will be the ability for students, teachers, and parents to select a learning pathway through each body of material that fits each of the types of learners–the transition from computer-based to student-centric technology.
3. The third factor that will likely fuel the substitution is a looming teacher shortage. In the past, shortages have been in specific subjects or school types and mostly attributable to the revolving door of teacher turnover. And while many have forecast doom-and-gloom teacher shortages before, this is now more likely to happen. The baby-boomer generation of teachers will start retiring en masse soon, even as the student population, which is the highest it has ever been, will not decline in any proportional way. In 1999, 29 % of teachers were over 50 years of age. In 2007, it was 42%, which suggests that a decade hence there will be a wave of teacher shortages across the country. Unless computer-based learning has been honed in the foothold markets, it won’t be ready for the mainstream when school districts will need the accessibility that it brings.
4. The fourth factor is that costs will fall significantly as the market scales up. Developers keep trying to improve their products so that more people will buy them. Improving computer-based learning technologies to become student-centric is likely to be quite expensive. And the costs of managing an organization as its market scales up are significant. In addition, teachers will always remain in schools–increasingly functioning as one-on-one tutors rather than teaching monolithically–and computer-based and student-centric learning will enable a teacher to oversee the work of more students. All of this means that the cost per student will be one-third of today’s costs, and the courses will be much better.
Christensen summarizes the result of these four factors–technological improvements that make learning more engaging; research advances that enable the design of student-centric software appropriate to each type of learner; the looming teacher shortage; and inexorable cost pressures–by predicting that 10 years from the publication of his book (2008), computer-based, student-centric learning will account for 50 percent of the “seat miles” in U.S. secondary schools. Given the current trajectory of substitution, about 80 percent of courses taken in 2024 will have been taught online in a student-centric way.
In order to encourage this kind of innovation we need to focus on those courses that public school would be relieved not to have to teach, but do feel the need to offer–and absolutely on courses that school districts cannot currently deliver. We should not focus on those courses that public schools want to teach in-house.
As the monolithic system of instruction shifts to a classroom powered by student-centric technology, teachers’ roles will gradually shift over time, too. The shift might not be easy, but it will be rewarding. Instead of spending most of their time delivering one-size-fits-all lessons year after year, teachers can spend most of their time traveling from student to student to help individuals with individual problems. Teachers will act more as learning coaches and tutors to help students find the learning approach that makes the most sense to them. They will mentor and motivate them through the learning with the aid of real-time computer data on how the student is learning. Testing doesn’t have to be postponed until the end of the instructional module and then administered in a batch mode–mastery can be verified continually in tight, closed feedback loops. Since learning will no longer be as variable, we can compare students not by what percentage of the material they have mastered, but by comparing how far they have moved through a body of material. If we want to teach subjects to students in ways that correspond to how their minds are wired to learn, it means that the science of assessment will need to evolve significantly.
All of this means, however, that teachers will need very different skills to add value in this future when the skills with which education schools are equipping them today. Since customization will be a major driver and benefit of this shift to student-centric online technology, increasingly teachers will have to be able to understand differences in students and be able to provide individual assistance that is complementary to the learning model each student is using.
Educators, like the rest of us, tend to resist major change. But this shift in the learning platform, if managed correctly, is an opportunity, not a threat. Students will be able to work in a way that comes naturally to them. Teachers can be learning leaders with time to pay attention to each student. And school organizations can navigate the impending financial maelstrom without abdicating their mission.
In the short-term, it seems to me that the best tool we have to provide real choice is our full support of the Distance Education programs. These innovative programs are not for everyone; instead, they are for specific groups of children who have not succeeded in traditional schools. By submitting to rigorous standards of accountability and proving that the results for students in these schools are valid and better than they would be in a traditional school, these innovative computer-based programs can prove their worth and that they are in fact just as rigorous as the traditional model, just different.
As school districts around the State, and the Department of Education fully implement the Distance Education programs my hope and prayer is that we don’t place artificial limits on what students can take online or what teachers can build online either; if they need access to a class or want to create content and lessons, let them do what they need to do, what they want, and what works best for them. Remember that students, parents, and teachers are desperate to be able to diagnose and resolve their own learning problems and teaching deficiencies. These are highly motivated people who in the past have been trapped in interdependent systems that stymie custom solutions at every turn.
Besides the Distance Education programs, I believe that another short-term solution is to encourage the development of public charter schools. But that is a topic which I will leave to the person I tag…Representative Amy Edmonds who is also the Executive Director of the Wyoming Association for Public Charter Schools.
In the long-term, in order to truly energize the system, I believe that we need to offer real choice and competition, and real consequences for failure–and that means changing the Wyoming Constitution to allow dollars to follow students to any school that can provide the best possible education for each individual student. The infamous and archaic Blaine Amendments are a left-over relic of the late 19th century when all public schools were Protestant schools. Catholics wanted funding for their schools as well. In a wave of anti-Catholic activism led by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives in 1875, James G. Blaine, almost every State was saddled with prohibitions against any education funding going to “schools not under the absolute control of the State,” and “sectarian schools,” sectarian being a code word for Catholic. Wyoming still has them, and until that is changed, we will not have the ability to support students in options that would be beneficial to their education. With these amendments in place we cannot provide Hathaway Scholarships to private technical schools in the State where they would get the specific education they need to take high-paying jobs in Wyoming’s industries. We cannot encourage the kind of innovation and customization that would be best for students who learn differently. The wealthy have always been able to provide the best choices for their children. Even many middle-class parents provide choice simply by choosing where they live. But those without resources, or who are tied to the land, cannot.
Amy…Tag, you’re it!
