Even a 7 year old knows how to re-design first grade

I have been thinking about what we will do in our new Alternative Learning Places in first grade. I was talking with someone who may work with us on this and she in turn asked her 7 year old nephew what projects he would like to in school and what he thought he might learn from those projects. Here is some of what he suggested:

1. Model rocket
How far can we shoot it? How do we measure height? How do we measure distance? How fast is it going?

2. Rubberband Model airplane out of wood
How can we get it to fly more than 17 yards in the sky? What happens if we take off wings, wheels, back wings? Can the stick fly without wings?

3. How high can we build a building? With wheels so we can move it everywhere when we want to.

5. Model truck
How much can the truck carry? How far can it go with a lot of weight in it.

6. Money
How sell and buy things and count money.

7. Build robots that walk until they run out of battery. See how many miles they can go.

8. Make a remote control airplane or helicopter.

9. Build a catapult.

11. Make a model sail boat, remote control moves the flag to change directions in the wind.

12. Map & Compass to find a treasure inside and outside

So, I guess the message is that a bright seven year old has a better idea of what a good first grade curriculum would be than does any Education Department in any State.

A Test of Leadership

When the history of American higher education in the 21st century is written, I suspect the end of the first decade will be known for two resounding themes: the growing importance of community colleges, and a move from college access to a focus on college success. The vocabulary of this important time centers on words like efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness. These are terms that, thanks in no small part to the work of foundations like Lumina and Gates, finally have traction among both administrators and consumers of higher ed. In a very real sense, this is nothing less than astounding progress for an institution built primarily to enroll students privileged enough to attend college-- and not necessarily to graduate them.

For the latest--and greatest-- example of this sea change we can look to Indiana. Faced with ever-common declines in resources for higher education, leaders in that state are reportedly rethinking business as usual. Typically, budget cuts are distributed across the board, doled out as necessary, and intended to simply save money but not accomplish much else. Indiana's Commission of Higher Education is hoping to shake things up this time around by assigning cuts to colleges and universities based partly on performance. Specifically, the Commission recommends spurring statewide, system, academic, and operating efficiencies by allocating the $150 million in cuts based on per-student state funding, completion rates, and availability of federal stimulus funds.

This is an audacious move, and one that Governor Mitch Daniels should embrace. He should do so not because there's a robust body of evidence suggesting that the plan will work (such evidence doesn't exist, to my knowledge) but rather because we really need to know if it could. The "winners" would seem to be the state's community colleges-- they would take the small proportion of the cuts-- but that success should be measured not in terms of dollars gained or lost, but in terms of change incurred. Governor Daniels should lead the way not only by making this policy shift, but also by ensuring that its effects are evaluated. Do those colleges most affected by a distribution shift-- from enrollment to performance--see the greatest alterations in their outcomes? Are any negative consequences observed at those schools, versus others?

Indiana's providing a fantastic opportunity-- a chance for other states to learn both from its ambitious leadership, and from its policy innovations. I hope in 2010 we see more states making similarly bold moves.

Hana reminded me that Milo will have to go to school soon

Milo will enter first grade in September 2011.

I find this news so frightening I hardly know where to start. It is time for me to start building an alternative. This is the plan. We will construct an on line First Grade curriculum. What we will build is actually a teacher's guide on what to do and how to do it. We will not be building a school at all. It will be an Alternative Learning Place (ALP), housed wherever we can find the space. We will build many ALPs but the first one will be for MIlo so I have started to plan a curriculum for him. We plan on having 12 boys in each ALP with a teacher. The ALP day will focus around projects and activities and will, of course, all be learning by doing. Here are the activities I am thinking about right now:

First Grade Activities (all of which focus on reading, writing, speaking, arithmetic, and working with others, in context)

Robot building
Airplane building
Bridge Building
Kite Flying
City Planning
Food Preparation
Map Drawing
Football, Basketball, Soccer, and Baseball
Newsletter Writing
Computer Use
Diagnosis of Illness and Treatment
Orchestra
Spanish language
Movie Making
Trip Planning

We will build other activities for kids with other interests than these, including ones for girls. They will be located in places where the private school tuition is prohibitively expensive and the public schools are considered unusable. New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. and South Florida are my first thoughts. If you have a 4 or 5 year old and are thinking about 2011, write to me. We will have to charge tuition I am afraid but should be able to charge a lot less than the fancy private schools.

Updates on the Race: 12-21-2009

NATIONAL
Creative RttT Lawmaking (Politics K-12)

RttT Hopefuls: Clear The Week of March 15, 2010 (Politics K-12)

States Struggle With Pk-20 Data (Education Week)

CALIFORNIA
State senate passes RttT reform bill (AP)

Bill addresses failing schools (San Francisco Chronicle)

Final bill could be passed "before the holidays" (Los Angeles Times)

Assembly Speaker: Race is 'on track' (San Jose Mercury News)

FLORIDA
Teachers union says 'no' to state plan (Teacher Beat)

Unions balking on Race (Orlando Sentinel)

Florida Dems cry foul (St. Petersburg Times - The Gradebook blog)

63 of 67 school districts sign on (Miami Herald)

HAWAII
Failure to address teacher furlough could jeopardize RttT chances (Honolulu Star-Bulletin)

IDAHO
State supe stumps for RttT (Times-News)

Luna: Charter school cap to stay (Times-News)

ILLINOIS
RttT funds could target lowest performing schools (Chicago Daily Herald)

INDIANA
DoE rolls out RttT proposal summary (Journal & Courier)

LOUISIANA
Governor pushes performance pay (New Orleans Times-Picayune)

MARYLAND
Apply in Round 1? Governor: Yes! State Supe: No! (Baltimore Sun)

MASSACHUSETTS
Editorial: More reform needed (Boston Globe)

MICHIGAN
Education reform bill passes (Detroit News)

Reforms pass, including control of failing schools in Detroit (Detroit Free Press)

Editorial: Better than expected (Detroit News)

NEVADA
Governor will wait for second round (Nevada Appeal)

Bill draft would remove state data firewall (Las Vegas Sun)

NEW JERSEY
Expanded school choice could fuel state RttT effort (Philadelphia Inquirer)

NEW YORK
Move your ass, New York (New York Daily News)

OREGON
Two districts sign on (The Oregonian)

RHODE ISLAND
Gist pitches aggressive ed reforms (Providence Journal)

TENNESSEE
Governor's special session: a 'high-pressure gambit' (Nashville City Paper)

Special session will address teacher evaluation (The Tennessean)

WISCONSIN
School district sign-ups underway (Baraboo News Republic)

------------------------

Past Updates on the Race to the Top

First, Do Your Homework

There's growing concern with higher education's affordability problem, as well there should be. It's hard to see how college will promote social mobility if a kid's ability to access it is increasingly linked to whether or not his family has money.

So it's heartening to see college leaders attempting to provide solutions. But it'd be even better if we first saw them earnestly attempting to understand where the real sources of trouble lie. I'm afraid that step's being skipped a bit too often, running the risk of making things worse.

Here's a recent example. At this month's Regents Board Meeting, University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly was explicitly asked to name some solutions to promoting affordability at his institutions. There were many ways he could respond. To his credit, Reilly acknowledged the importance of growing the state's paltry support for need-based aid and he said that multiple solutions were needed--there's no one silver bullet. Fair enough. But then he took a bit of a flying leap, saying we also needed an informational campaign aimed at helping students and families understand that it's best to finish college in four years.

Huh? This one left me scratching my head.

More specifically, Reilly said that his administration needs to do a better job communicating with students and families about their educational "choices" and the financial implications of those choices. He suggested that students and families do not know that finishing in four saves money, and if they did, they'd make "better" decisons.

Based on what, exactly?

Was Reilly in possession of some new empirical evidence indicating that Wisconsin families don't perceive the returns to a college degree, or one earned on time? Had he or his staff done homework that showed students were taking longer to finish because they lacked a "focus on 4?" I wish this was the case, but I doubt it. The only data Reilly has publicly provided for his argument is this: he compared the completion rates of in-state students to out-of-state students and noted that the latter group pays more tuition and finishes degrees faster. Given the numerous differences between the two groups, this is an especially weak argument, and one that a decent analysis of the data could easily tear apart.

On the other hand, we have a new national report from the Gates Foundation about the most common reason for college dropout: students' overwhelming need to work. There's also a rigorous study from the National Bureau of Economic Research showing that declining resources for higher education (e.g. supply-side factors) contribute more to college completion rates than do student-side factors. In an earlier paper, the same authors pointed to how the overcrowding of non-top 50 public institutions (a category into which nearly all of Reilly's institutions fit) leads to increased time-to-degree. And within Wisconsin I am co-leading a team of researchers investigating precisely how and why affordability matters for college success. None of that work provides support for the idea that students don't know that finishing a degree faster will save them money. Instead, they have a hard time figuring out how to make that happen while juggling work, family, and school.

Of course, Reilly isn't alone in thinking that he needs to share this "money-saving advice" with students and families. The problem is that his assumption and his message aren't benign. In particular, both come across as out-of-touch and insensitive to the harsh realities of some students' lives. Just think about his words on the subject, which include these quotes: "You've got to realize how much more you're going to be paying unless you focus." "...Part of the problem clearly is students choosing to say, 'I don't want to take an 8 a.m. course' or 'I want to take my courses between 10 (a.m.) and 3 (p.m.) on Tuesday and Thursday.,," "We need to be clearer about results of choices that students and families make about college...There are ways that students and families, by planning ahead a bit and making some focused intentional choices, can hold the cost of an education down."

The assumption he's making-- that the choices made by low-income families are not "intentional" or even informed--rests on shaky, volatile ground. As I've argued elsewhere, the common sport of painting working-class students and families as irrational is off-base. In fact, taken in the context of significant constraints on their lives the decisions many students make about extending their time to degree are quite rational. As a former UW undergraduate told me, ‘It's not an issue of choosing to work when classes are available, but often an issue of you don't get to choose your schedule, especially as the number of hours you work increases."

I have a feeling that when making his suggestion, Reilly was referencing those picky students who want to sleep late and be choosy about their courses, a common rep given to the Madison undergrads (for example). The problem is, those aren't the same students not completing degrees in 4 years. In essence, he's drawing on impressions of an elite group of students to shape solutions to the problems of the non-elite. Not gonna work.

In the absence of any empirical support, one has to wonder-- why does this idea have any traction at all? I think its because it fits with American ideals-those who work the hardest and "focus" the most will get ahead. It places the blame squarely on individuals rather than institutions, even when purporting to share responsibility. Constraints be damned; if you "know" what's good for you, you'll do it. Plus, communicating to students what's good for them is far less expensive than providing the financial support they need to make their actual choices pay off.

Crafting solutions to policy problems without doing sufficient homework first can incur trouble. For one, you risk insulting and alienating the very folks you wanted to help. That's certainly what happened here. As the former UW student told me, "Very few people are oblivious to the fact that adding an extra year to your education costs more money... I'm disappointed that the UW-System seems absolutely unaware of the challenges faced by its students, and its president believes that it's due to personal choice or ignorance that a student would not graduate in four years...The system misunderstands the plight of students who have similar circumstances to the ones I experienced."

what college should I go to? (The concept of a “hot college.”)

The Daily Beast posted a list of “hot colleges” the other day which reminded me of exactly how insane this country has become about going to college. It is actually quite difficult to choose what college to attend. But, as a retired professor I find the concept of a “hot college” rather amusing. I can recall, when I was working at Yale, that every now and then, Brown was determined to be hotter than Yale. It was hard to fathom what this might mean. We had the same faculty we had the previous year, more or less, as did Brown. The quality of students was more or less the same at both schools. The campus hadn’t changed. How did Brown get hot, and then, later, get less hot?

When I was working at Northwestern, one year we were suddenly “hot.” This time I knew why. Our football team had played in the Rose Bowl the year before. This is, of course, a very clever way to choose a college – by examining the quality of its football team.

As a professor one is aware of other faculty in one’s field and in allied fields all across the world. Ask any professor about another university and he will judge the quality of that school by the quality of the faculty he knows or has heard of who teach there. This is not a bad measure, although it is an idiosyncratic one. Thus, I was surprised to find, on the Daily Beast’s top 15 list, some schools that I had either never heard of or certainly could not name a single faculty member there, namely: Elon University, University of Georgia, Washington and Lee, Ohio Wesleyan, University of St. Andrews.

Now, I have no ability to judge the quality of these schools, nor do I have any interest in disparaging them. I am concerned instead with the folly surrounding college entrance and college choice. So with that in mind what makes these schools “hot?”

According to the Daily Beast:

Elon is hot because: “Elon has gone out of its way to recruit applicants interested in the sciences by luring them with the possibility of undergraduate research,”

Ohio Wesleyan University is hot because: “Loren Pope’s called OW, “one of the best academic bargains in the country.”


University of St. Andrews is hot because: “More than a third of the students at St. Andrews’ come from abroad, and one academic year’s fees total less than $25,000.”

Washington and Lee is hot because: “funds went to establishing the merit-based Johnson Scholarships, which promise a full ride to about one-tenth of freshmen each year.”

University of Georgia is hot because: “$2.9 billion in aid has been meted out to students in the past 15 years.”

Clearly hotness has something to do with price, but that doesn’t explain why any state university isn’t considered hot in comparison to any private university since they are far cheaper and often quite good. And that certainly wouldn’t explain why Brown was hotter than Yale every now and again.

I found “being able to do undergraduate research” to be the funniest explanation of hotness. Why is that important exactly? And if it is important to a student, wouldn’t that be the kind of student who ought to attend a research university?

College counselors, the media, and the general paranoia about college that runs through the high schools these days, has made college selection a complex and frightening busyness. So here, without regard to “hotness” I will make a few points about how to choose a college.

1. Don’t put yourself in debt to go to college. Price does matter. If you can’t afford Yale, don’t attend Yale.
2. Know what a college actually offers. Attend a research university because you think you might want to do research in later life. A list of the top 50 research universities can be found in U.S. News and World Report. They are mostly the extended Ivies and the important state Universities. If you aren’t interested in research go somewhere else. I know that Yale is a nice brand name. If you want a brand name, go there, But there are plenty of places that will educate you as well.
3. Know what you want to be educated in. Do not go to college with no idea of what you want to learn about or are interested in doing later on. If you do that you will major in “sex and drugs and rock and roll” like everyone else and you will waste your time and your parent’s money. You can always put off college until you do know what you are interested in learning.
4. When you think you know what you want to learn find out if the people who are good at what you want to do actually teach that at the place you want to go. People say that schools are “good schools” without having a clue what the criteria might be. What is good for you may not be good for the next guy. You must know what the school is good at teaching. Find out.
5. Choose a place that looks like you. Visit. See what the students look like. They differ from place to place for many reasons. Find out where you feel comfortable.

Do not go to college because everyone you know is going to college. Go with a purpose. And -- avoid “hot schools.”

Let the parents vote for their favorite curriculum

There was article in the Huffington Post today headlined: "Merry Hyatt, Tea Party Patriot, Wants Mandatory Christmas Carols In Public Schools". Apparently she has proposed an initiative to the California Legislature that "would require schools to provide children the opportunity to listen to or perform Christmas carols, and would subject the schools to litigation if the rule isn't followed."

Now you might think I would be against this, but I love the concept. Let's determine the school curriculum by having the public suggest stuff that they like a lot and make all the kids do it. We could make all kids watch TV because the public likes doing that. We could have kids read magazines about movie star's lives because many parents like doing that. We could have a going to Burger King curriculum because lots of people like doing that.

Perhaps this is the way we can finally get rid of algebra, chemistry, history, and the other nonsense they teach in school. Let's let the public vote on their favorite activities and we can have kids do those all day.

Christmas Carols instead of algebra. It works for me.