Match Seed Money with Seed Knowledge

by guest blogger, Candice DePrang

Austin, among many other cities across the nation, will apply for the grants. The Obama administration is looking to fund Promise Neighborhoods, based on the premise (and the success) of the Harlem Children’s Zone. One concern specific to Texas’ capital, however, is that the federal government might see other larger urban areas as more in need of the money, or perhaps smaller rural areas. The city straddles an interesting line.

As mentioned in the Statesman, Austin hosts high poverty and low graduation rates associated with explicitly urban cities – like Chicago or New York, in addition to a highly transient population usually linked to rural communities.

Still, parents, teachers, and community leaders might let the thrill of the possibility excite them. Just think what injustices could be met head on with $500,000! But before we, as Austin citizens, get ahead of ourselves, we must reign in the romance and realize…the money alone won’t “fix” anything.

The high achievement of a promise neighborhood in Austin will lie in scaling up exactly what works, not the program in general. And I wonder – do we know what works? What specific strategies are used in the HCZ to invest the families and the children served? How exactly are the services organized, and what qualifications are needed for someone to fill that administrative role? What is ineffective at the HCZ, and which parts of that program are unique to New York? Who will interpret all of the tracking to ensure that knowledge emerges from the data, not just numbers? Austin will need knowledge from that quantitative research to use and then scale up if it expects the money to make an impact.

Perhaps all of these details sound overwhelming, impossible to corral. But the success of the HCZ, and any promise neighborhood, lies in the answers. Surely our elected officials, the foundations, and non-profits involved, will use the tracking and reports to uncover exactly how the Harlem Children’s Zone serves families effectively, and use the information that emerges from that evidence as seed knowledge, so Austin doesn’t just rely on seed money.

Easy there speed-readers….

by guest blogger, Candice DePrang

UVA professor and cognitive psychology researcher Daniel Willingham took on an occasional column in the Washington Post that fact-checks educational tools for scientific validity. He didn’t know fighting off speed-readers was a part of the job.

In his most recent post, Dr. Willingham challenged the science used to support eyeQ, a product that claims to double the rate of reading in one month! Whoa! He addresses the fact that eyeQ links brain activity to efficient thinking, and corrects the company’s dichotomy of thinking; eyeQ purports that tasks are linked to one side of the brain or the other, not both.

The comments posted at the end of the article are fierce against the author. Speed-readers everywhere defended eyeQ and wrote that the software improved their speed reading ability, going so far to let Willingham know exactly why that’s important and what exactly he’s missing.

A fight about science? How could that be? It tells the truth, right? Something is either scientifically proven to work or it’s not.

A heated debate via the WaPo online tells a larger story. It’s unfolding in Congress, throughout the policy arena, and it’s arguably education’s new buzz word: data. Decision makers and educators want to know – am I making a decision, supporting and idea, or implementing an innovation that works, that’s backed up by data, and proven by science to work? Teachers are held to this standard in districts across the nation because administrators are asking for numbers, spreadsheets, and want to know a student’s growth patterns quantitatively – not qualitatively.

Numbers must not be the final or only word. As eyeQ’s CEO and other users point out, any strong curriculum that’s misused will not bear the intended results, no matter how convincing. Moreover, companies and scientists alike bend results in preference of their desired outcome.

But the big – A Administration is looking for numbers as well. The i3 Fund, and to a lesser degree the Department of Education’s other initiatives, request numerical data as part of a state’s application process.

Cheers to Dr. Willingham, willing to look critically into programs trying to hop on an evidence bandwagon that we hope becomes a constant, rather than a fad. When scientists, policy makers, and practitioners can make decisions with confidence, our students will be better served because the adults around them are paying less attention to hype, and more attention to sustain alternatives that have worked with statistical success.

“And change is essential. Put bluntly, we believe our education system needs to be reinvented.”

“We think of educational innovation not as a fad but as the prerequisite for deep, systematic change, the kind of change that is necessary—and long overdue.” This is the premise for the latest edition of Leaders and Laggards, a State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation written by the Center for American Progress, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute.

The most recent publication pushes for an entire overhaul of the education system, instead of promoting one the new fads that has long characterized K-12 education pedagogy and curriculum. Sound familiar? It should. Secretary Duncan has pushed for an entirely new system, instead of just “tinkering around the edges.”

Leaders and Laggards graded a school’s innovation progress by considering the following categories: school management, finance, staffing, data, technology, pipeline to postsecondary education, and state reform environment. “More broadly, however, this effort must be complemented by giving new providers the freedom and encouragement they need to promote high-quality research and development, and to develop innovative “green shoot” reform ventures that pioneer more effective tools and strategies.”

We couldn’t agree more. Innovation stemming from research and development is the kind of purposeful improvement schools need and leaders are looking for to ensure an excellent education for every child. Critical to this research and development infrastructure, however, is the dissemination of this knowledge and information. Businesses and countries that survived the technology changes of the nineties and the struggling economy of today adapted and innovated by sharing information and democratizing decision-making.

Schools must imitate this change. Unlike businesses, the CAP report hopes that schools do not just survive, but rather undergo transformational change. But reform for reform’s sake cannot be the standard for this shift. Anchored by research, development, and dissemination of knowledge, “innovative educational practices are vital to laying the groundwork for continuous and transformational change.”

Find the report here: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/11/leaders_laggards/report.html and more thoughts here: http://www.americanprogress.org/

Amplified Policymaking

Amplified Policymaking --- Read this spot-on issue brief by McREL and KnowledgeWorks Fdn that "examines a series of cultural shifts and how we are developing new ways of organizing, constructing, and managing knowledge. They describe a world in which we will increasingly collaborate, improvise, and work together to assemble meaning from vast arrays of data, while also creating new learning experiences combining physical and digital realities." Heavy topic, great stuff tied to many of the issues at last summer's summit in New Mexico.

Shooting the Moon

This interesting article in this month's ED Innovator speaks to the essential role of philanthropies in promoting innovation and change. It beckons back to the Mott Foundation's early involvement in a small new federal program in 1997 called 21st Century Learning Communities that eventually was parlayed into a $1 billion funding stream. Can this happen again? We think so in even bigger ways.

Tony Blair on community schools

Blair, Duncan, Hoyer, Weingarten, Rodriquez, Podesta, etc were all in one room together at this great event at Center for American Progress on community schools this past week. Tony Blair was terrific. We were particularly impressed with his comments about transformational change and the importance of structure in sustaining an innovation. The supporting cast wasn't too shabby either. Watch the webcast here

A new era?

The Department is really trying to push the envelope for evidence-based innovation with today's release of its proposed priorities for the Investing in Innovation Fund. It is a bold step in the right direction in building from and on a knowledge base for reform. Might this be the real start of a new knowledge era in education reform?