Could a robot be grading your homework?

Artificial intelligence has become an increasingly big issue for education – not least because many tech companies and publishers are circling around the huge commercial opportunities. Especially with the possibility of the new chief at the USDOE coming on board soon.

One of those companies is Vantage Learning the industry leader in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing Technologies. They were the first company to reach human level accuracy in their scoring engine and have patents on the world’s best artificial intelligent engine (Intellimetric) that automatically scores essays and provides prescriptive feedback to students globally.

To date the engine has scored more than 125,000,000 essays including many large-scale essays such as the GMAT, MCAT, SAT and ACT to name a few.

When thinking about the bigger picture in education though, could students really get their answers from a robot rather than a teacher? They are already receiving prescriptive feedback, and having their papers scored more efficiently than teachers can currently score. This leaves more time for intervention, content acquisition and remediation.

Donald Clark said it was a mistake to think jobs in education would not be automated, and I agree although, if technology can replace the teacher, then it should as that teacher is not doing their job, because teaching is more than technology and scores. It is about passion, choice and shaping our future as a country. You can decide for yourself and read this article. (http://www.edudemic.com/education-technology-pros-cons/)

Dr Tarek Besold, speaking at an educational technology conference in Berlin, said a joke-writing computer showed how robots could be creative as well as carrying out repetitive, factory-floor tasks.

And he highlighted experiments already taking place in using artificial intelligence in teaching.

Digital teacher

This summer, Georgia Tech, a university in Atlanta in the US, deployed a teaching assistant called Jill Watson for one of its postgraduate courses.

Except that Jill Watson was really a robot, which helped students and answered their questions in an online forum, without revealing her cyber-identity.

The only thing that students noticed was that Jill Watson answered questions and provided feedback much more quickly than other teaching assistants.

Dr Besold, from Bremen University, said such robotic teachers were becoming increasingly sophisticated and had advantages over human teachers. I am still wary of this as a model, being a teacher I know the reality of what it takes to be a teacher and a pseudo-parent at times.

They were always ready to respond, they were never bored, tired or distracted.

But such clever computers could also be stupid.

While they could be trained to operate for a particular task or set of questions, they couldn’t easily adapt that knowledge to a different setting.

For example; Peter Murphy, the CEO of Vantage Labs said “a human who was good at chess would be likely to be able to play other games that required a complex thought process; while a chess computer would struggle, unless it had been specifically programmed. This also holds true for the computer that beat the Japanese strategy game “Go” as well”.

Will robotics and automation take more professional jobs?

There are also more subtle questions about online help from a robot. Would you feel the same about positive feedback if it came from a machine rather than a person?

What about the pastoral side of teaching? Could a robot offer empathy as well as factual insights?

And academic instruction is often not about “right” or “wrong” answers, but teaching how to think and investigate. It is about teaching critical thinking and empathy. Can a robot or cognitive computing engine actually perform these tasks of teaching or leading students to critically think and problem solve?

Destroying jobs

Donald Clark, a professor at Derby University and an education technology entrepreneur, said it was a mistake for anyone to think that education would be exempt from the impact of automation.

“Are we really saying that accountants, lawyers and managers can all be replaced by artificial intelligence – but not teachers?”

Can a robot truly appreciate a creative student’s answers?

Clark argued that artificial intelligence would change office jobs and professions in the way that automation had already transformed production lines.

“Artificial intelligence will destroy jobs – so why not use it for a social good such as learning?” he asked.

The acceleration of big data and more powerful computer systems meant that more and more sophisticated tasks could be automated, said Prof Clark.

It is already ebbing around the edges of education.

Online tutors

The name of Georgia Tech’s robot teacher – Jill Watson – is a reference to the underlying Watson computer system, developed by IBM to answer questions in ordinary language.

The Watson system is also being used in an experimental project from education companies. There has been AI used in education by Vantage Learning for the past 15 years and they developed the first automated scoring engine to reach human level accuracy. (http://www.vantagelearning.com)

The use of artificial intelligence is growing in the workplace.

It’s not going to replace a conventional teacher, but it’s an indication of how online courses and revision tutorials could develop, with testing and feedback all wrapped up together.

But there are skeptics who see this as another wave of technology over-promising.

“We’ve been here before – with radio, television, computers, the internet,” said Stavros Yiannouka, chief executive of the Wise project, run by the Qatar Foundation.

“Technology in itself doesn’t revolutionize anything,” he said. Change in education is driven by public policy decisions, he said, not computer software.

There are also questions about whether automation will create a social divide – with stripped down, low cost, semi-automated courses, for those who cannot afford a traditional taught course.

Entrepreneur Nell Watson said that despite describing herself as a “happy clappy evangelist” for artificial intelligence, the role of teacher would not be replicated by a robot.

Cultivating the whole person and helping them to “blossom” was not something that was going to be achieved by an algorithm, she said.

And she doubted whether a computer could appreciate the work of an innovative student who thought outside the conventional questions and answers.

But automation is advancing.

The Bank of England’s governor, Mark Carney, said this month that 15 million jobs in the UK could be automated, including middle-class professions.

Changes in technology would “mercilessly” destroy jobs, he said.

So could it be “Goodbye Mr. Chips” and “Hello Mr. Silicon Chips”?

For more information on Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Computing or Natural Language Understanding reach out to me, I am always looking to discuss the future of the world we live, play and work in.

Ka’Ching! 2016 US Edtech Funding Totals $1 Billion

This is a repost of an article that appeared on EdSurge

Santa proved a little more parsimonious to U.S. edtech companies, which altogether raised an estimated $1.03 billion across 138 venture deals in 2016. Those tallies dipped from 2015, which saw 198 deals that totalled $1.45 billion. (Or, from a different perspective, U.S. edtech companies raised roughly 57 percent of what Snapchat did in its $1.8 billion Series F round.)

In this annual analysis, EdSurge counts all investments in technology companies whose primary purpose is to improve learning outcomes for all learners, regardless of age. This year startups that serve primarily the K-12 market raised $434 million; those targeting the postsecondary and corporate learning sector raised $593 million.

Since 2010, venture funding dollars for U.S. edtech startups have increased every consecutive year. It’s worth noting that even though 2016 marked the end of this trend, the dollar total still surpasses the years before 2015.

The downturn isn’t specific to the education industry but rather reflects a broader slowdown across all technology sectors, says Tory Patterson, managing partner at Owl Ventures. “There’s a broader shift in venture capital where there’s less exuberance companies that haven’t really nailed the business model,” he tells EdSurge.

Dealflow dips has also been felt in the health, real estate, construction and financial technology sectors. Across the globe, venture deals returned to 2014 levels, according to CB Insights. The market uncertainty has led some high-profile companies to hit pause on bigger plans. SoFi, which offers loans and other student services, pushed back plans for its initial public offering this year. Pluralsight, an online learning company that was also expected to IPO, is also on hold.

Venture-backed startups tend to swing between two spectrums, says Amit Patel, a partner at Owl Ventures. On one end are businesses “that grow aggressively but have no revenue associated. The other are those laser focused on business model and revenue. The mood is swinging towards the latter.”

Commitments to “impact” or “mission” aside, all investors—even in education—want to see returns. Often that means converting users into dollars.

“We’ve noticed VCs becoming more selective about their education investments, asking more questions about revenue growth and the leading indicators of product adoption, implementation timelines and ultimately usage,” says Jason Palmer, a general partner at New Markets Venture Partners. Unlike Instagrams and other “5-year consumer internet hits,” more investors, according to Palmer, now realize “it can take 10 or 15 years to build a sustainable education business.”

Breaking Down the Numbers

As in previous years, companies offering tools in the postsecondary and “other” categories out-raised other products. (“Other” includes a mix of products that help business professionals develop skills, are aimed at parents, or are not used in K-12 or higher-ed institutions.)

Expect this trend to continue, says Palmer, as investors come to “a greater recognition that higher education institutions adopt and implement more rapidly than K-12 [schools].” Tuition dollars may be one reason why they have adopted technologies such as student retention and predictive analytics platform. “Colleges and universities are facing financial pressures to keep students who contribute to their revenues. In K-12, you don’t have the same urgency of students as revenue drivers,” he suspects.

This year saw no mega-rounds for startups in the postsecondary sector—unlike 2015, which saw HotChalk, Udacity, Udemy, Coursera and Civitas Learning account for more than $520 million of funding. (Udemy did lead this pack in 2016 with a $60 million round.)

In fact, the biggest funding round of 2016 for a U.S.-based startup went to Age of Learning, which raised $150 million and accounts for 55 percent of the funding total for K-12 curriculum products. The Glendale, Calif.-based company is the developer of ABCmouse, a collection of online learning activities aimed for young children. First developed for the consumer and parent market, the tool is attempting to make headway into schools and classrooms.

Choosier Angels

Angel and seed level funding rounds, which signal investors’ interest in promising but unproven ideas, saw a small decline as well. The 66 deals at this stage are the lowest since 2011, although they totaled $62.5 million—roughly on par with 2014 levels.

Over the past five years, the average value of seed rounds has been increasing, from around $600K in the early years of this decade to roughly $1 million in 2015 and 2016. Discounting edtech accelerators, which typically invest $20K to $150K in startups, the 2016 seed round average actually surpasses $2 million. (We counted 28 such publicly disclosed seed rounds totaling $60.2 million)

Fewer but bigger seed deals are “a sign of maturation in the industry,” says Shauntel Poulson, a general partner at Reach Capital. Unlike previous years, where upstarts and ideas popped up the market, she believes the market is currently in a “stage of consolidation where leaders and proven ideas are emerging.”

Aspiring entrepreneurs ought to pay heed. What this means is that “the bar for seed rounds is getting higher,” Poulson adds. “Before it was about a promising idea and a great team. Now you need to show more traction and even some revenue.” Over the past few years investors have learned that “it’s best to focus on business model sooner rather than later.”

Palmer believes the days where startups could raise money before making some may be over. Expect to get grilled over “revenue growth, product adoption, implementation timelines and ultimately usage,” he says. To round out the questions, “VCs are also starting to ask about product efficacy.”

Looking Ahead

Unsurprisingly, investors held a cheery outlook for 2017, expecting funding totals to hold steady or even increase. More companies will be able to demonstrate sustainable revenue, predicts Owl Ventures’ Tory Patterson, and in turn woo investors’ appetite. “We think a lot of companies will be able to hit the $10 million revenue milestone.”

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality could drive further investments as their applications to help improve learning outcomes become clearer. Also expect to see Chinese investors paying closer attention, says Poulson. “There’s a big after-school market [in China] and an opportunity to leverage a lot of the content that’s being developed in the U.S.”

There’s also word on the street that several education-focused venture firms have re-upped their coffers with new funds to support proven, maturing startups. Stay tuned for more details.

Disclosure: Owl Ventures and Reach Capital are investors in EdSurge

UPSTANDERS — ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change in their communities

This is a great example of people who truly care about and care for their communities.

Upstanders is an original collection of short stories, films and podcasts sharing the experiences of Upstanders – ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change in their communities. Produced by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Upstanders series helps inspire us to be better citizens.

SCHOLARSHIPS FOR EVERY STUDENT

A WARRIOR’S WORKOUT

THE HUNGER HACK

THE MOSQUE ACROSS THE STREET

BREAKING THE PRISON PIPELINE

EMPLOYING THE FULL SPECTRUM

THE KIDS WHO KILLED AN INCINERATOR

THE EMPATHETIC POLICE ACADEMY

HOMES FOR EVERYONE

BUILDING HOMES. BUILDING LIVES.

Christmas Trees

Christmas Trees

 

http://www.slideshare.net/jeff.piontek/merry-christmas-and-happy-holidays-56432301

 

 

 

 

 

 

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NCLB is now Every Student Succeeds Act

The newest proposed version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act—is almost over the congressional finish line, with votes in both chambers of Congress imminent.

So how would accountability work under the ESSA, if approved? And how does it compare to No Child Left Behind Act, Classic Edition, and the Obama administration’s waivers?

Your cheat sheet here. Top-line stuff on accountability first, then some early reaction. Scroll down further if you want the nitty-gritty details on accountability.

And scroll down even further if you want more details on other aspects of the deal (an update of past Politics K-12 cheat sheets, including some new information on which programs made it into the agreement and which are on the chopping block, thanks to this helpful fact sheet from the Committee for Education Funding).

The top-line stuff: The ESSA is in many ways a U-turn from the current, much-maligned version of the ESEA law, the No Child Left Behind Act.

•States would still have to test students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, and break out the data for whole schools, plus different “subgroups” of students (English-learners, students in special education, racial minorities, those in poverty.)

But beyond that, states get wide discretion in setting goals, figuring out just what to hold schools and districts accountable for, and deciding how to intervene in low-performing schools. And while tests still have to be a part of state accountability systems, states must incorporate other factors that get at students’ opportunity to learn, like school-climate and teacher engagement, or access to and success in advanced coursework.

And, in a big switch from the waivers, there would be no role for the feds whatsoever in teacher evaluation.

• States and districts will have to use locally-developed, evidence-based interventions though, in the bottom 5 percent of schools and in schools where less than two-thirds of students graduate. States must also flag for districts schools where subgroup students are chronically struggling. The School Improvement Grant program is gone, but there are resources in the bill states can use for turnarounds.

The deal goes further on accountability than either the House- or Senate-passed legislation. And, in a win for civil rights groups, it appears there are no more so-called supersubgroups. That’s a statistical technique in the waivers that allowed states to combine different categories of students for accountability purposes.

There are definitely some “guardrails” as one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., would say. (More on just what those are below.) But the education secretary’s authority is also very limited, especially when it comes to interfering with state decisionmaking on testing, standards, school turnarounds, and more.

So there’s some real ambiguity here. That will be something to watch going forward.

It’s still unclear just how the accountability or “guardrails” provisions of the bill vs. limits on secretarial authority dynamic will play out in regulation and implementation. But it’s possible lawyers and lobbyists may have walked away as big winners here. (Even Democratic and Republican aides see certain aspects of the bill differently.)

Put another way, there are definitely provisions in this deal that state and district leaders and civil rights advocates can cite to show that states and schools will have to continue to ensure equity. But, it will be hard for the U.S. Department of Education to implement those provisions with a very heavy hand, without at least the threat of lawsuits.

So what happens from here will be largely up to states. (More on the potential regulatory fights, and lawsuits, ahead in this story from Friday.)

“What can the secretary do and not do? I think that’s where the lawsuits will be,” said Chad Aldeman, an associate partner at Bellwether Education, who served in the U.S. Department of Education under President Barack Obama.

Early Reaction 

Civil rights groups say they’re waiting for real, live legislative language, not just a framework, before weighing in.

But, already, other accountability hawks are not happy campers.

“States are being given license to create systems that are significantly not based on student learning. That’s a problem,” said Sandy Kress, an original architect of the NCLB law. “This pretty much eliminates any kind of expectation for closing the achievement gap.” (Another take from Chad Aldeman at Bellwether Education Partner’s blog Ahead of the Heard.)

But some state chiefs say there’s no way that’s happening. After all, it didn’t under the NCLB waivers.

“I’m bothered when I hear people say that school chiefs won’t hold schools accountable,” said Brenda Cassellius, Minnesota’s education chief. “That’s not been evident with the waivers. … We’ve supported our schools and we’ve held them accountable. I hope America can see that.”

The nitty-gritty details on accountability, based on an analysis of a late-stage version of the framework:

Plans: States would still have to submit accountability plans to the education department. These new ESSA plans would start in the 2017-18 school year. And a state could get a hearing if the department turned down its plan.

Goals:

  • No more expectation that states get all students to proficiency by the 2013-14 school year, as under NCLB Classic. (That ship has sailed, anyway). And no more menu of goals, largely cooked up by the department, as under the waivers.
  • Instead, states can pick their own goals, both a big long-term goal, and smaller, interim goals. These goals must address: proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, and graduation rates.
  • Goals have to set an expectation that all groups that are furthest behind close gaps in achievement and graduation rates.

What kinds of schools will states have to focus on? 

  • States have to identify and intervene in the bottom 5 percent of performers, an idea borrowed from waivers. These schools have to be identified at least once every three years. (That’s something many states already do under waivers. And some, like Massachusetts, do it every single year.)
  • States have to identify and intervene in high schools where the graduation rate is 67 percent or less.
  • States, with districts, have to identify schools where subgroup students are struggling.

What do these accountability systems have to consider? The list of “indicators” is a little different for elementary and middle schools vs. high schools.

  • Systems for Elementary and Middle Schools:
  • States need to incorporate a jumble of five indicators into their accountability systems.
  • That includes three academic indicators: proficiency on state tests, English-language proficiency, plus some other academic factor that can be broken out by subgroup. (That could be growth on state tests, so that states would have a mix of both in their systems, as many already do under waivers.)
  • States also have to somehow figure in participation rates on state tests (schools with less than 95 percent participation are supposed to have that factored in, somehow.)
  • And, in a big new twist, states must add at least one, fifth indicator of a very different kind into the mix. Possibilities include: student engagement, educator engagement, access to and completion of advanced coursework, post-secondary readiness, school climate/safety, or whatever else the state thinks makes sense. Importantly, though, this indicator has to be disaggregated by subgroup. States are already experimenting with these kinds of indicators under the waivers, especially a cadre of districts in California (the CORE districts). Still, this is new territory when it comes to accountability.
  • Systems for high schools:
  • Basically the same set of indicators, except that graduation rates have to be part of the mix.
  • So to recap, that means for high schools: proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, graduation rates, plus some other indicator that focuses a little more on whether students have the opportunity to learn, or are ready for post-secondary work. And also, test participation has to be incorporated in some way.

How much do each of these indicators have to count? It depends on who you ask. Everyone agrees that those academic indicators (tests, grad rates, English-language proficiency) have to weigh more, as a group, than that non-traditional indicator that gets at a students’ opportunity to learn (school climate, etc.)

From there, Democratic and Republicans aides have different takes.  A Republican aide said the academic stuff just has to be at least 51 percent of the system, and the other factor, or factors, can be up to 49 percent. A Democratic aide said the regulations might turn out differently, when all’s said and done. (In this aide’s view, the department could set a range for each individual indicator, ultimately giving the academic factors as a group significantly greater weight than the other factors.) More here. It’s also unclear whether the test participation indicator, which states can weigh however they want, will throw a monkey wrench into all of this. More here.

How do interventions work? 

  • For the bottom 5 percent of schools and for high schools with really high dropout rates:
  • Districts work with teachers and school staff to come up with an evidence-based plan.
  • States monitor the turnaround effort.
  • If schools continue to founder for years (no more than four) the state is supposed to step in with its own plan. That means states could take over the school if they wanted, or fire the principal, or turn the school into a charter, just like they do under NCLB waivers now. (But, importantly, unlike under waivers, there aren’t any musts—states get to decide what kind of action to take.)
  • Districts could also allow for public school choice out of seriously low-performing schools, but they have to give priority to the students who need it most.
  • For schools where subgroups students are struggling:
  • These schools  have to come up with an evidence-based plan to help the particular group of kids who are falling behind. For example, a school that’s having trouble with students in special education could decide to try out a new curriculum with evidence to back it up and hire a very experienced coach to help train teachers on it.
  • Districts monitor these plans. If the school continues to fall short, the district steps in. The district decides just when that kind of action is necessary, though; there’s no specified timeline in the deal.
  • Importantly, there’s also a provision in the deal calling for a “comprehensive improvement plan.” States and districts to take more-aggressive action in schools where subgroups are chronically underperforming, despite local interventions. Their performance has to look really bad though, as bad as the performance of students in the bottom 5 percent of schools over time.

What kind of resources are there for these interventions? The School Improvement Grant program, which is funded at around $500 million currently, has been consolidated into the bigger Title I pot, which helps districts educate students in poverty. But states would be able to set aside up to 7 percent of all their Title I funds for school turnarounds, up from 4 percent in current law. (That would give states virtually the same amount of resources for school improvement as they get now, through SIG.) However, the bulk of those dollars would be sent out to districts for “innovation”, which could include turnarounds.  It would be up to states whether to send that money out by formula, to everyone, or competitively, as they do now with SIG dollars. (More in this cheat sheet from AASA, the School Administrator’s Association, which has been updated on this issue.) Bottom line: There are resources in the bill for school turnarounds. But some of the money could also be used for other purposes, if that’s what districts and states want. 

What about the tests? The testing schedule would be the same as under NCLB. But in a twist, a handful of states could apply to try out local tests, with the permission of the U.S. Department of Education. And importantly, these local tests aren’t supposed to be used forever—the point is for districts to experiment with new forms of assessment (as New Hampshire is doing with performance tasks) that could eventually go statewide and be used by everyone. That way states don’t get stuck with the same old assessment for years on end.

What’s more, the framework allows for the use of local, nationally-recognized tests at the high school level, with state permission. So a district could, in theory, use the SAT or ACT as its high school test, instead of the traditional state exam.

Also, computer adaptive testing would be easier. More here.

What about that supersubgroup thing mentioned higher up? Supersubgroups are a statistical technique used in the waivers that call for states to combine different groups of students (say, students in special education, English-language learners, and minorities) for accountability purposes. By my reading of the bill, it would seem that’s a no-no. States now have to consider accountability for each subgroup separately. States liked the flexibility of supersubgroups. But former Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and civil rights groups said they masked gaps. The deal appears to eliminate the use of supersubgroups.

What about the rest of the bill?
Scroll down for information on English-Language Learners, students in special education, school choice, teachers, and funding provisions.

English-Language Learners

Where does deal land when it comes to when newly arrived English-language learners must be tested? (Background on this issue here). States would have two choices.

  • Option A) Include English-language learners’ test scores after they have been in the country a year, just like under current law.
  • Option B) During the first year, test scores wouldn’t count towards a school’s rating, but ELLs would need to take both of the assessments, and publicly report the results. (That’s a switch from current law. Right now, they only need to take math in the first year). In the second year, the state would have to incorporate ELLs’ results for both reading and math, using some measure of growth. And in their third year in the country, the proficiency scores of newly arrived ELLs are treated just like any other students’. (Sound familiar? It’s very similar to the waiver Florida received.)

The compromise would shift accountability for English-language learners from Title III (the English-language acquistion section of the ESEA) to Title I (where everyone else’s accountability is). The idea is to make accountability for those students a priority.

Students in Special Education

The legislation mirrors a recent federal regulation when it comes to assessments for students in special education, saying, essentially, that only 1 percent of students overall can be given alternative tests. (That’s about 10 percent of students in special education.)

Opt-Outs

The bill largely sticks with the Senate language, which would allow states to create their own testing opt-out laws (as Oregon has). But it would maintain the federal requirement for 95 percent participation in tests. However, unlike under the NCLB law, in which schools with lower-than-95 percent participation rates were automatically seen as failures, local districts and states would get to decide what should happen in schools that miss targets. States would have to take low testing participation into consideration in their accountability systems. Just how to do that would be up to them.

For a deeper look at this particular topic, check out this blog post on opt-outs in the ESEA reauthorization deal.

On Programs

There’s more consolidation of federal education in the compromise than there was in the Senate bill.

  • The legislation creates a $1.6 billion block grant that consolidates a bunch of programs, including some involving physical education, Advanced Placement, school counseling, and education technology. (Some of these programs haven’t federal funding in years.)
  • Districts that get more than $30,000 will have to spend at least 20 percent of their funding on at least one activity that helps students become well-rounded, and another 20 percent on at least one activity that helps kids be safe and healthy. And part of the money could be spent on technology. (But no more than 15 percent can go to technology infastructure.)
  • Some programs would live on as separate line items, including the 21st Century Community schools program, which pays for after-school programs and has a lot support on both sides of the aisle in Congress.
  • Other survivors: Promise Neighborhoods, and a full-service community schools program. And there’s a standalone program for parent engagement. There are also reservations for Arts Education, gifted education, and Ready to Learn television.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. got the early-childhood investment she wanted—the bill enshrines an existing program “Preschool Development Grants” in law, and focuses it on program coordination, quality, and broadening access to early childhood education. But the program would be housed at the Department of Health and Human Services, not the Education Department as some Democrats had initially hoped. The Education Department would jointly administer the program, however. (The reason: HHS already has some early-education programs, like Head Start. Expanding the education department’s portfolio was a big no-no for conservatives.)

That new research and innovation program that some folks were describing as sort of a next-generation “Investing in Innovation” program made it into the bill. (Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., are big fans, as is the administration.)

On School Choice

No Title I portability: That means that federal funds won’t be able to follow the child to the school of their choice.

But the bill does include a pilot project allowing districts to try out a weighted student funding formula, which would also essentially function as a backpack of funds for kids. The program would allow 50 districts to combine state, local, and federal funds into a single pot that could follow a child to the school of their choice. It is said to be a more workable alternative to Title I portability, which looked more dramatic on paper, but which few states would likely have taken advantage of because of its complexity, experts said. Importantly with this pilot, participation would be entirely up to district officials. And the language would give them a chance to better target funds to individual school needs.

Teachers

The headline here is that states would no longer have to do teacher evaluation through student outcomes, as they did under waivers.And NCLB’s “highly qualified teacher” requirement would be officially a thing of the past.

There’s also language allowing for continued spending on the Teacher Incentive Fund—now called the Teacher and School Leader Innovation Program—which doles out grants to districts that want to try out performance pay and other teacher quality improvement measures. And there are resources for helping train teachers on literacy and STEM. Much more from Teacher Beat.

Funding and Other Issues

No changes to the Title I funding formula along the lines of what the Senate passed that would steer a greater share of the funds to districts with high concentrations of students in poverty. But there were some changes to the Title II formula (which funds teacher quality) that would be a boon to rural states.

The agreement would keep in place maintenance of effort, a wonky issue we wrote about recently, with some new flexibility added for states. (Quick tutorial: Maintenance of effort basically requires states to keep up their own spending at a particular level in order to tap federal funds.)

There was some chatter that the bill would also incorporate changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. That’s not part of the agreement.

The framework would only “authorize” ESEA for four more years, as opposed to the typical five. That gives lawmakers a chance to revisit the policy under the next president, should they choose to do so. And its overall authorization levels are largely consistent with the most recent budget deal. 

 

For a full read of the act…. Every Student Succeeds Act 2015

 

Educational Technology Isn’t Leveling the Playing Field

Library Kids.
Affluent kids receive more guidance in libraries—new computers or not—than poor kids do.

Courtesy of Shutterstock.

The local name for the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington is “the Badlands,” and with good reason. Pockmarked with empty lots and burned-out row houses, the area has an unemployment rate of 29 percent and a poverty rate of 90 percent. Just a few miles to the northwest, the genteel neighborhood of Chestnut Hill seems to belong to a different universe. Here, educated professionals shop the boutiques along Germantown Avenue and return home to gracious stone and brick houses, the average price of which hovers above $400,000.

Within these very different communities, however, are two places remarkably similar in the resources they provide: the local public libraries. Each has been retooled with banks of new computers, the latest software and speedy Internet access. Susan B. Neuman, a professor of early childhood and literacy education at NYU, and Donna C. Celano, an assistant professor of communication at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, spent hundreds of hours in the Chestnut Hill and Badlands libraries, watching how patrons used the books and computers on offer.

The two were especially interested in how the introduction of computers might “level the playing field” for the neighborhoods’ young people, children of “concentrated affluence” and “concentrated poverty.” They undertook their observations in a hopeful frame of mind: “Given the wizardry of these machines and their ability to support children’s self-teaching,” they wondered, “might we begin to see a closing of the opportunity gap?”

Many hours of observation and analysis later, Neuman and Celanano were forced to acknowledge a radically different outcome: “The very tool designed to level the playing field is, in fact, un-leveling it,” they wrote in a 2012 book based on their Philadelphia library study. With the spread of educational technology, they predicted, “the not-so-small disparities in skills for children of affluence and children of poverty are about to get even larger.”

Neuman and Celano are not the only researchers to reach this surprising and distressing conclusion. While technology has often been hailed as the great equalizer of educational opportunity, a growing body of evidence indicates that in many cases, tech is actually having the opposite effect: It is increasing the gap between rich and poor, between whites and minorities, and between the school-ready and the less-prepared.

This is not a story of the familiar “digital divide”—a lack of access to technology for poor and minority children. This has to do, rather, with a phenomenon Neuman and Celano observed again and again in the two libraries: Granted access to technology, affluent kids and poor kids use tech differently. They select different programs and features, engage in different types of mental activity, and come away with different kinds of knowledge and experience.

The unleveling impact of technology also has to do with a phenomenon known as the “Matthew Effect”: the tendency for early advantages to multiply over time. Sociologist Robert Merton coined the term in 1968, making reference to a line in the gospel of Matthew (“for whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath”).

In a paper published in 1986, psychologist Keith Stanovich applied the Matthew Effect to reading. He showed that children who get off to a strong early start with reading acquire more vocabulary words and more background knowledge, which in turn makes reading easier and more enjoyable, leading them to read still more: a virtuous cycle of achievement. Children who struggle early on with reading fail to acquire vocabulary and knowledge, find reading even more difficult as a result, and consequently do it less: a dispiriting downward spiral.

Now researchers are beginning to document a digital Matthew Effect, in which the already advantaged gain more from technology than do the less fortunate. As with books and reading, the most-knowledgeable, most-experienced, and most-supported students are those in the best position to use computers to leap further ahead. For example: In the Technology Immersion Pilot, a $20 million project carried out in Texas public schools beginning in 2003, laptops were randomly assigned to middle school students. The benefit of owning one of these computers, researchers later determined, was significantly greater for those students whose test scores were high to begin with.

Some studies of the introduction of technology have found an overall negative effect on academic achievement—and in these cases, poor students’ performance suffers more than that of their richer peers. In an article to be published next month in the journal Economic Inquiry, for example, Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor and co-authors Helen Ladd and Erika Martinez report their analysis of what happened when high-speed Internet service was rolled out across North Carolina: Math and reading test scores of the state’s public school students went down in each region as broadband was introduced, and this negative impact was greatest among economically disadvantaged students. Dousing the hope that spreading technology will engender growing equality, the authors write: “Reliable evidence points to the conclusion that broadening student access to home computers or home Internet service would widen, not narrow, achievement gaps.”

Why would improved access to the Internet harm the academic performance of poor students in particular? Vigdor and his colleagues speculate that “this may occur because student computer use is more effectively monitored and channeled toward productive ends in more affluent homes.” This is, in fact, exactly the dynamic Susan Neuman and Donna Celano saw playing out in the libraries they monitored. At the Chestnut Hill library, they found, young visitors to the computer area were almost always accompanied by a parent or grandparent. Adults positioned themselves close to the children and close to the screen, offering a stream of questions and suggestions. Kids were steered away from games and toward educational programs emphasizing letters, numbers, and shapes. When the children became confused or frustrated, the grown-ups guided them to a solution.

The Badlands library boasted computers and software identical to Chestnut Hill’s, but here, children manipulated the computers on their own, while accompanying adults watched silently or remained in other areas of the library altogether. Lacking the “scaffolding” provided by the Chestnut Hill parents, the Badlands kids clicked around frenetically, rarely staying with one program for long. Older children figured out how to use the programs as games; younger children became discouraged and banged on the keyboard or wandered away.

These different patterns of use had quantifiable effects on the children’s educational experiences, Neuman and Celano showed. Chestnut Hill preschoolers encountered twice as many written words on computer screens as did Badlands children; the more affluent toddlers received 17 times as much adult attention while using the library’s computers as did their less privileged counterparts. The researchers documented differences among older kids as well: Chestnut Hill “tweens,” or 10- to 13-year-olds, spent five times as long reading informational text on computers as did Badlands tweens, who tended to gravitate toward online games and entertainment. When Badlands tweens did seek out information on the Web, it was related to their homework only 9 percent of the time, while 39 percent of the Chestnut Hill tweens’ information searches were homework-related.

Research is finding other differences in how economically disadvantaged children use technology. Some evidence suggests, for example, that schools in low-income neighborhoods are more apt to employ computers for drill and practice sessions than for creative or innovative projects. Poor children also bring less knowledge to their encounters with computers. Crucially, the comparatively rich background knowledge possessed by high-income students is not only about technology itself, but about everything in the wide world beyond one’s neighborhood. Not only are affluent kids more likely to know how to Google; they’re more likely to know what to Google for.

Slogans like “one laptop per child” and “one-to-one computing” evoke an appealingly egalitarian vision: If every child has a computer, every child is starting off on equal footing. But though the sameness of the hardware may feel satisfyingly fair, it is superficial. A computer in the hands of a disadvantaged child is in an important sense not the same thing as a computer in the hands of a child of privilege.

The focus of educators, politicians, and philanthropists on differences in access to technology has obscured another problem: what some call “the second digital divide,” or differences in the use of technology. Access to adequate equipment and reliable high-speed connections remains a concern, of course. But improving the way that technology is employed in learning is an even bigger and more important issue. Addressing it would require a focus on people: training teachers, librarians, parents and children themselves to use computers effectively. It would require a focus on practices: what one researcher has called the dynamic “social envelope” that surrounds the hunks of plastic and silicon on our desks. And it would require a focus on knowledge: background knowledge that is both broad and deep. (The Common Core standards, with their focus on building broad background knowledge, may be education’s most significant contribution to true computer literacy.)

It would take all this to begin to “level the playing field” for America’s students—far more than a bank of computers in a library, or even one laptop per child.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

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Nov 2015
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The Tragedy of Student Loans

 

One of the big scams going around right now is student loans for individuals attending for-profit universities. It goes something like this: Heavy advertising for pain free, at-your leisure online or on-site degrees—encouraging students to take on a large debt load to pay for their studies—and then frequently little (if any) support for students, inadequate classes, and difficulty transferring credits to other institutions. The dropout rate is typically substantial. Personal student debt is growing at a staggering rate.

Here’s the thing though—students at for-profit institutions represent only 9% of all college students, but receive roughly 25% of all federal Pell Grants and loans, and are responsible for 44% of all student loan defaults.

study by The National Bureau of Economic Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggested that students who attend for-profit education institutions are more likely to be unemployed, earn less, have higher debt levels, and are more likely to default on their student loans than similar students at non-profit educational institutions. Although for-profits typically serve students who are poorer or more likely to be minorities, these differences do not explain the differences in employment, income, debt levels, and student loan defaults. The Government Accountability Office has also found that graduates of for-profits are less likely to pass licensing exams, and that poor student performance cannot be explained by different student demographics.

For-profits have higher completion rates for one- and two-year associate’s degree programs, but higher dropout rates for four-year bachelor’s degrees. However, studies have suggested that one- and two-year programs typically do not provide much economic benefit to students because the boost to wages is more than offset by increased debt. By contrast, four-year programs provide a large economic benefit.

An investigation by the New York Times suggested that for-profit higher education institutions typically have much higher student loan default rates than non-profits. Two documentaries by Frontline have focused on alleged abuses in for profit higher education.

The following infographic from Collegestats.org will give you a good visual of what’s going on with student debt. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always thought that the fundamental purpose of an educational institution should be to educate, not to turn a profit.

 

The Tragedy of Student Loans

What Did 2013 Hold for Educational Technology in Schools

Looking back at the article I was astounded to find that basically none of the information in the first chart was relevant and the proposal that “Apps” would be the prevalent part of the year actually was/is true. 
via Smartblogs/Katharine Haber

To connect with those working on the front lines of education technology, SmartBrief on EdTech editor Katharine Haber asked readers about their thoughts on what 2013 will bring for technology in schools.

According to our results, about one-third of respondents see classroom technology as the most significant issue on the horizon, while a slightly smaller group is concerned about online education, followed by computer-based testing and digital citizenship.

When asked how their schools and districts are using technology to enhance student learning, a majority of respondents reported that some teachers are employing tech tools in the classroom, while a significantly smaller proportion said technology is playing a broader role throughout the curriculum or being integrated through blended-learning programs or “bring your own technology” programs.

Readers reported that online applications and games are the most effective tools for engaging students, while digital textbooks and resources, along with mobile devices, are not far behind.

Interestingly, few respondents see social media as an effective tool. Given the ongoing buzz about Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, this response begs the question of whether many schools simply are not using social media as part of classroom instruction.

There are arguably numerous factors to consider when using social media with students, and many schools and districts might be blocking or otherwise prohibiting use of such websites on campus. However, given their popularity, is it possible there is an untapped resource here? What do you think?

What do you see as the most significant issue in education technology for 2013?

Technology in the classroom

33.88%

Online education

25.62%

Computer-based testing

21.49%

Digital citizenship

19.01%

Which statement best describes how your school or district is integrating technology into student learning?

Some teachers use tech tools as part of classroom lessons

63.78%

Technology is integrated throughout the curriculum

19.69%

Our school/district has a bring-your-own-device policy

8.66%

Our school/district employs blended learning

7.87%

Which tech tools most effectively engage students in your classroom, school or district?

Online apps and games

40%

Digital textbooks and resources

28.89%

Mobile devices

27.78%

Social media

3.33%

Katharine Haber is an associate editor for SmartBrief, writing and editing content about a variety of topics in education.

Great Post by David Warlick

via 2¢ Worth

Today’s infographic is simple and to the point. A big part of grade school and even college and onward, is writing papers. Some professions write more papers than others, but it is still an important skill in order to get your point across. This infographic uses venn diagrams to convey the importance of different parts of papers, and to show how they interact with one another. It also shows how much of your paper should include each part.

Of course every paper should begin with an introduction and end with a conclusion. It should also include several point in the middle, that are introduced and concluded in the introduction and conclusion. But how should the middle be laid out? That is up to the author, but it should there is a bit of a formula.

This infographic does a great job of showing that there should be pros and cons. You should always share how your paper may be argued against, and go ahead and prove some of these points wrong. In addition, a good paper should show why the information is important. Why should someone read your paper?

Show this to your students whenever a paper is assigned. Make sure your students are ready to write a good paper, and know what is involved in writing such a paper.

 

write-your-paper-right

http://visual.ly/write-your-paper-right