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May 15, 2013
Fly me to the moon
I’m a nervous person in general, and traveling is so stressful that I often have to go into a Benadryl-fueled, trancelike state to even begin packing. Luckily, most of my work is statistics lab kind of stuff that requires a stationary office and computer. Sometimes, though, even a data geek has to go out and mingle with other data geeks to get information and learn. This past week, I made such a journey to attend the Urban Teacher Residency United Data Literacy Symposium. The symposium is part of Project Inspire work for me—PEF’s awesome teacher residency program designed to get high-quality science, technology, engineering and math teachers into classrooms in which they are most needed. What follows is my journal from that trip.
Day 1
I left Sale Creek with bags packed and a little maple syrup handprint on my back and shoulder left over from a final, tearful hug from my 5-year-old. I was sad to leave them for a few days but excited to learn from UTRU and hear about how others are approaching the challenges associated with teaching educators to be efficient and effective data users.
This was my first flight out of the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport. I chose the long-term parking lot, also known as Hixson. It was raining kittens and puppies, so I only needed a light jacket and a quick jog to avoid being soaked. I took my place in the security line, unpacked all the stuff I had just packed and took most of my clothes off. Partially dressed and completely unpacked, I was told that my bottle of shaving gel exceeded the 3-ounce security threshold. The officer gave me two choices. He could throw it away, or I could get out of line and check the shaving gel as a separate bag. Not wanting to pay $25 to check a $1.98 bottle of shaving gel, I watched him throw it away. All else was smooth sailing, and I arrived at my departure gate with 40 minutes to get re-dressed and repack.
Planning my work and working my plan
The UTRU team sent out a packet of material to read pre-symposium, so that superseded my regular flying routine of reading Sky Mall and taking note of ways in which it symbolizes all that is not right in the world. The UTRU packet consisted of these articles:
—Ensuring Fair and Reliable Measures of Effective Teaching
—What Teacher Preparation Programs Teach About K-12 Assessment (with appendix)
You should definitely put them on your must-read list. My quick and dirty gestalt is this:
What’s this “symposed” to be about?
Over the past decade or so, our country has seen the convergence of technology and communication explosions AND accountability and effectiveness in education explosions. When the sound waves from those sonic booms met for drinks and dinner, they produced an offspring and named it Big Data. Almost all fields are dealing with their own Big Data children, but we are just going to talk about Big Education Data; we’ll call him Big Ed. Big Ed is great because he holds tremendous promise and potential. Like many children, however, his behavior is sometimes questionable, and it takes specialized parenting skills to help him realize his potential and promise. He has a tendency to be a sullen, scary, mean-spirited and eventually neglected child in the hands of an unprepared parent.
Managing Big Ed takes a unique set of skills, and those skills and opportunities are not common at present. Right now, as I write this, Big Ed is throwing a fall-to-the-floor, “I hate you mom!”, “Why did you even have me?” temper tantrum.
What to do when you’re expecting
To bring Big Ed in line is challenging but possible. Big Ed can be tamed if he’s in a system that proactively seeks a room for him to live. Managing Big Ed requires a clear strategy, and all of his caregivers need to be on the same page. Big Ed requires constant care and feeding, and if you are charged with babysitting him, you have to plan ahead for how much time he will take out of your day. Big Ed can be very high-maintenance if you are unprepared for him. He is, by nature, a “spirited” child and requires constant attention and reflection on what worked with him and what did not work. When did he color in his coloring book, and when did your brand new furniture become his coloring book? Also, as is almost always the case, it is helpful to have a source of support and guidance when dealing with Big Ed. A more experienced parent is a must when you are new at keeping Big Ed on his baby, monkey backpack leash.
What the gel?!?!?!
Having done my homework and landed safely, I settled in and prepared for a full day of symposium-ing.
I should mention that I was not on this trip alone. I was traveling with PEF’s Project Inspire program director. I made the mistake of mentioning to him that I planned to blog a travel journal about the trip and some of the things I learned, and he made me promise not to write anything about him. I confronted him with his presumptuousness in thinking that he would do anything worthy of blogging about and agreed to his request. Bless his heart.
Just remembered I don’t have any shaving gel. Luckily for me, the hotel gift shop had some in stock. Turns out it would have been cheaper to check the original shaving gel for $25.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when it looks like we will learn about what kind of environment is most fertile for growing a data literate educator, AKA someone who can manage Big Ed.
To be continued …
Director of Research and Effectiveness Keith White tells the stories behind the data in his “Geekly Weekly” updates. Keith’s columns will be featured on Nooga.com every other week.
May 2, 2013
Please mark Wednesday, May 22 from 12:00 – 1:00 pm on your calendar for the “How to Support Your Student in College” session, part of our College Knowledge lunch-and-learn workshop series. You can register online through May 20.
Understanding adolescent and young adult development is a must for effective parents and educators. As students prepare for college they will face challenges – some of which they are prepared for and some of which they’re not. This new way of looking at growing up will help parents understand the pressures students are feeling. The session will include a panel of college students for Q&A. Afterwards, parents will have a fresh perspective on their changing role as their emerging adults plan for and start college.
Please feel free to circulate this flier to others you think would be interested in learning more about this topic.
We hope to see you there!
- Janice Neal, Program Associate, College and Career Success
May 1, 2013
I’ve written before about my circuitous and often misinformed path through postsecondary education. I had some guidance from my folks, but it had been more than 20 years since their undergraduate days. I was in desperate need of a more experienced voice, someone who had been through the system and who could help me make informed decisions about what to do next. I had potential, but no plan. What I needed was a college and career adviser.
College Advisors: Focusing futures
PEF College Advisors, in partnership with the Hamilton County Department of Education, is a group of individuals who are trained and placed in every public high school in Hamilton County. The program works in tandem with the guidance program by serving as a resource for college and career preparation. Whether it is a one-on-one meeting with a parent or student or a seminar-style college application workshop, the College Advisors program strives to increase the number of graduates who continue their education after high school.
Having worked with advisers here in Hamilton County and in other parts of the country, I can tell you they do much more than help fill out financial aid forms and take kids on college visits. Those things are extremely important and also easy to track and count. The full impact of an adviser is immeasurable. PEF College Advisors are held in high regard not only for the group’s knowledge of the admissions process, but also for their unwavering support of their students.
There is more than a little psychology going on when you have an adviser physically present in a high school. A college adviser serves as a mental safety net, another adult who cares about you, a source of insight and inspiration, and an unconditional safe harbor for your questions and concerns. The insight and support of College Advisors give students the perfect combination of potential with a plan.
Where are they now?
We recently analyzed the data for Hamilton County graduates in the class of 2012 who went on to some form of education after high school. Overall, 65 percent of students who graduated in May 2012 with a regular high school diploma enrolled in a postsecondary institution in the fall of 2012—an increase from 1,685 in 2011 to 1,788 in 2012. Sixty percent of students went to four-year schools, and 40 percent enrolled in either a two-year school or career training program, and they attended a wide range of institutions: nearly 200 schools in more than 30 different states! They also earned $19 million in scholarships.
These numbers may vary slightly from other postsecondary data reports, and most of that difference has to do with the process of tracking and accounting for students after they leave high school. College-going data is assembled in several steps. First, the Hamilton County Department of Education sends a list of high school graduates to the National Student Clearinghouse, and NSC returns the list with information about whether a student went to college. Then, PEF College Advisors and guidance counselors add students that were missed, take away students who should not have been included and provide additional insight into whether students went into the military or took a full-time job, etc. Lastly, the cleaned-up lists come back to PEF and HCDE for a final report so that each high school ends up with the most comprehensive picture possible of what is happening to their graduates after the pomp and circumstance. As you can imagine, this process takes an enormous collaborative effort to pull off. HCDE, PEF, College Advisors and school guidance officers accomplish it year after year; and the effort is worth it.
Where to go from here
There is still work to do. No matter how in-depth our process is, there are still students for whom no postsecondary record exists. I’ve had advisers tell me that students would confess years later that they’d enrolled in a technical training program but didn’t report it because they feared disappointing their adviser. We have to remove that stigma and build on the potential with a plan idea for all students. Initiatives like Pathways to Prosperity and the region’s STEM work will (we hope) help de-stigmatize career training paths and bolster efforts to get good data on all college and career training options. As the options available to students increase, we need to get better at supporting all students in whatever college or career path they’ve chosen. All students have potential—we just need to help them plan.
Director of Research and Effectiveness Keith White tells the stories behind the data in his “Geekly Weekly” updates. Keith’s columns will be featured on Nooga.com every other week.
April 29, 2013
Applications for college admission and scholarships usually require one or more autobiographical essays or personal statements. Essay questions will vary from application to application, but all serve the purpose of having a deeper insight into a student’s life to measure their fitness as a candidate. Questions include: “Why do you want to attend our institution?”; “Why do you deserve to win this scholarship?”; “What or who is your most important life influence?”; and, “What are your academic and career goals?”
Students find writing essays a daunting task. Even really good writers find it difficult to write objectively about themselves. PEF College Advisors help students showcase their strengths in their essays and help students make a memorable, favorable impression. From proofing and editing student essays, to bringing in college experts to share with students the dos and don’ts of college/scholarship essay writing, PEF College Advisors make the journey to college a little bit easier. College Advisors understand the challenges their students face on a daily basis and give them the courage to share their stories with total strangers.
Below are excerpts from essays from Hamilton County students. We want to share these with you so that you too can have deeper insight into our students’ lives and understand why some essays are just hard to write for selection committees across the nation.
- Stacy Lightfoot, Vice President, College and Career Success
My family’s hardships caused me to become extremely independent and self-motivated at a young age. In fourth grade, I was in charge of making my younger sibling’s sack lunches, in sixth grade I registered myself into middle school, and by eighth grade I could get around on the public bus alone. Gaining independence as a young girl caused me to have the courage to fearlessly face all obstacles in my life today, even if that means facing them alone. My self-motivation really began to develop during second grade. My mother was always busy and seldom made it to my school functions; however, one day I decided to stop being disappointed in her. I made up my mind to always do the best for myself. I am the third oldest of six children, but I will be the first to attend college after high school—this I did for me. I needed more. I wanted more. I knew there had to be more; not more materialistically but more to life than I had seen. I promised myself that I would achieve more than I had been shown was the standard high for those in my family. Self-motivation and independence has brought me a long way.
Overall, I would not change my past because it has shaped who I am today. I have learned that life is not always fair, but it is solely up to me how I handle it. Yes, I have had to work harder than the average teen; and yes, I still do not have as much as my peers, but as a friend once told me, “Discomfort builds character.” I have reached the depths of the bottom of life and it is my decision to bring up jewels. My jewels are the type that can never be bought; such as independence, perseverance, dedication, determination, and self-motivation. One day I will proudly say that enduring all my hardships helped me impact the world.
- K. Jones
Ever since I was a little kid, I have had two dreams. My first dream is to become a psychiatrist. My second is to travel the world and distribute needs to third world countries. My family has a history of mental illness. Mental Illness was the cause of two deaths in my family. Due to this, I would love to spare people the pain and help them with their problems. Being a psychiatrist, I would be able to prescribe people the medicine that they need to cope. So, instead of people going without their medicine, which isn’t healthy, they can get help and support that they need.
My plan is to go to Covenant College to pursue a psychology major. Covenant also has a great science department as well as a Missions major that would give me the opportunity to travel overseas and learn about the disparities in third world countries. I plan to combine the academic offerings at Covenant to prepare me for medical school. However, my family does not have the financial means to put me through college. I am the oldest of six children and I desire to set a good example for my siblings by being the first to graduate from college. That’s why I would really be grateful if I received this scholarship. Through this scholarship you would be helping me so I could help others. Thanks for your time.
- S. Smith
Teachers today are in great need. I look at the world in which I live, and I am saddened by what is going on. My generation is shooting and killing one another because of the color kids are wearing or because of the street on which someone lives. To me, we are all human and it is hard for me to accept children taking other children’s lives. I ask myself, “What is this world coming to?” Between my eighth grade year and my ninth grade years, I was faced with many challenges. During that time I was at my lowest point, it was though there was no wind beneath my wings. I was doing any and everything just to feel better about myself. If someone told me to go jump off a cliff I probably would have. I knew I needed some help and I knew I could talk to my sister, Lisa about my thoughts and feelings. Lisa has been with me through my really turning times. I am lucky to have my sister, who is, next to my mother, the greatest thing in my life.
After going through so much, I now know my purpose in life, which is to become an elementary teacher and change children’s lives. Being an elementary school teacher, I can start working with students at an early age to prepare them to make better decisions. Once kids become teenagers, it is harder to impact their lives. I want to impact the lives of little children as they learn and grow and be shaped into better citizens.
- K. Ervin
April 25, 2013
I am so excited to announce that one of our volunteers, Alonzo Jarrett, won the Volunteer of the Year Award in Education on Tuesday at the Volunteer United Banquet!
L to R: Anne Choyce, Brainerd High advisor; Alonzo Jarrett, volunteer; Kate Skonberg, volunteer coordinator
Please take a moment to watch this very brief video below about his service at Brainerd High School (his portion begins at 2:06).
In a Times Free Press article on Wednesday, Alonzo spoke humbly about his work: “When I was volunteering, I never thought of winning,” he said. “Obviously it’s nice to know it doesn’t go unnoticed. But hopefully, [volunteering] will catch on to others. That’s what’s most important.”
We are so thankful for Alonzo’s service to our students!
- Kate Skonberg, Volunteer Coordinator
April 22, 2013
National Volunteer Week is about inspiring, recognizing, and encouraging people to engage in their communities. It’s about demonstrating to the nation that by working together, we have the fortitude to meet our challenges and accomplish our goals.
PEF works to connect community members to our public schools through volunteer opportunities. During the 2012-2013 school year, PEF recruited and trained 171 volunteers. These volunteers gave 1,433 hours of service to 28 Hamilton County schools. During National Volunteer Week, we want to share our appreciation for these outstanding community members who help to transform public education through volunteerism!
Seven volunteer groups helped improve East Side Elementary, Woodmore Elementary, East Lake Elementary, Ooltewah Middle, Dalewood Middle, Red Bank Elementary, and Soddy Daisy Middle schools. Their projects included painting, landscaping, and cleaning.
Preparing students for college and career is an important focus of our volunteer program. Both short- and long-term volunteers helped students with the college application process, FAFSA, mock interviews, senior presentations, college fairs, and so much more. Their one-on-one attention with students provides that additional support that students need to be successful during the sometimes complicated path to college and career.
Five community members took time out of their work day to share their careers with SOAR students during spring break this year. The SOAR students were able to job shadow and interview professionals in their career field.
An investment of time in our public school students is an incredible gift – thank you to our dedicated and remarkable volunteers for making an impact on public education! For more information about volunteering with PEF, email me or call 648.4444.
- Kate Skonberg, PEF Volunteer Coordinator
April 17, 2013
I subscribe to a blog called Eduwonk, a product of Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit with a mission to increase academic achievement and enhance policy improvement of and for students and communities faced with economic challenges. If you are interested in education data and policy, it would be worth your time to check it out. Yesterday, Eduwonk told me that the new Education Insider survey data was released.
Indulgences
The official title of the report constructed by Whiteboard Advisors is “Tracking Measures, Common Core Materials and Other Timely Topics in Education.” Although all of the results reported in the document are relevant and useful to different stakeholders in different ways and for different reasons, the takeaways I am most interested in for this post are the “market” themes.
A couple questions on the survey ask about how early adopters of the Common Core State Standards will shape the marketplace and whether the standards push will allow smaller test and curriculum materials publishers to break into the Common Core market. I think we sometimes lose sight of or forget the overall themes and assumptions in these questions. The field of education is a bit like the field of medicine; both require altruism and capitalism to tango in order for the systems to work.
Doing well is doing good
We don’t often think about the big business associated with all these new standards and related curricular and testing materials. Education leaders and educators agree that our students need more rigorous math standards, for example. Those experts came together to develop a new set of standards they thought students at different grade levels needed to know or be able to do in terms of math. These draft standards were then run through a variety of ringers and, finally, released as the final Common Core Standards in mathematics.
Some states adopted the new standards as soon as possible, some states waited a little while and some states did not adopt the standards at all. This is the education side of things. I had the benefit of being in the room as an observer on various occasions as math content experts from different grade levels discussed the new standards and how those standards would impact their instruction and approach to the subject. Their discussions focused almost completely on their students and the content. It was all about teaching. But teaching is just part of the landscape.
Time = $, and that’s OK
The new Common Core Standards are more rigorous and require a lot more of students at all grade levels. Standards for any given subject are typically organized in terms of difficulty. Standards that require students to identify a concrete fact are relatively easy to measure. Standards that require students to apply information are much more difficult to develop questions around, and standards that ask students to use information to create something new or evaluate a series of concepts are really hard to develop. The new standards require the development of harder-to-create questions, and those questions take more time. I would argue that a long development time is not a bad thing when it comes to test development.
Early birds
Test publishers are racing to develop “Common Core-aligned” products as fast as possible, and the two major testing consortia—groups of states working together to develop the actual tests based on the Common Core Standards—are working hard to have tests ready by the 2014-2015 school year. Some states, not wanting to wait for a final product before implementation, have moved forward with their own instruments, and that kind of custom test development can cost millions even before implementation.
Worth it … eventually?
The point of this discussion is not to put down testing companies. A valid and reliable test is priceless in the hands of strong educators, engaged education leaders, policymakers and researchers. It is, however, important to recognize and remember that we are dealing with a careful marriage between big business and social service, and marriages take work and attention.
Because Common Core-aligned tests will eventually be used as part of accountability models to varying degrees, educators and education leaders are supremely concerned with what they will look like. Right now, the big tests do not really exist, and this is causing major angst. Theoretically, the standards should be enough. A content expert would use the standards to validate and guide their instruction with an eye toward next-level transfer of knowledge and skills. Test development and the host of related components have the potential to cause a paradigm shift from “teaching content, then testing” to “teaching test content,” and that is a dangerous business. Ultimately, the success or failure of the Common Core testing initiative will be directly related to how much patience and persistence we can all exhibit.
Director of Research and Effectiveness Keith White tells the stories behind the data in his “Geekly Weekly” updates. Keith’s columns will be featured on Nooga.com every other week.
April 9, 2013
Share our College Knowledge flyer with friends, post at work, and ask a friend to join you! Don’t forget to register online by April 16.
April 5, 2013
One by one, students described their old playground: “The slides would burn your skin. The equipment was rusty and would cut you. There were wood chips everywhere and they got in your socks and shoes.”
In front of a beautiful, modern, and functional new space, students, funders, and faculty dedicated the new playground at Calvin Donaldson Environmental Science Academy this morning surrounded by parents and other invited guests.
With a gift of $100,000 from the Leonore Annenberg School Fund for Children and a match of $50,000 gift from the Benwood Foundation, Public Education Foundation, Hamilton County Department of Education and Calvin Donaldson Environmental Science Academy transformed the school’s playground and science lab into places for hands-on STEM learning.
“We wanted our outdoor area and the science lab to inspire our students,” states Becky Coleman, principal of Calvin Donaldson. “The playground and nature area is a shared space with the intent to bring students and community members together around a school of excellence. Additionally, the science lab is now an engaging space for STEM hands-on learning that connects directly to Calvin Donaldson’s environmental science focus.”
“Leonore Annenberg was committed to improving the lives of children, particularly those living in poverty,” says PEF president Dan Challener. “This grant certainly underscores the heart of her mission to provide students resources to help them shine brightly. We are thrilled to see this and Benwood’s investment launch two new facilities to encourage hands-on environmental science learning for students.”
After the ceremony, guests were invited to tour the new science lab with student docents. The lab features plant nurseries, new equipment such as microscopes, and a Promethean board, as well as new tables, chairs, and bright paint.
PEF is proud to partner with Calvin Donaldson, the Leonore Annenberg School Fund for Children, Benwood Foundation, and Hamilton County to provide these students with a place to work and play that they so richly deserve!
- Shannon Edmondson, Development & Communications Officer
April 3, 2013
I am a follower of Dan and Chip Heath, and I just got an email reminding me that their new book, “Decisive,” is coming out soon. The email contained a sneak peak of the content, and one of their ideas is the concept of “ooching” in order to make more informed decisions. They explain in their blog that “ooching” means to take things a little bit at a time in order to make a better decision. People of my age and rural Southern origin call it “toe dippin’.” The idea is also present in the experimentation phase of Design Thinking, and it is often not present in public education.
Everybody panic!
Historically, the American public education system is what I will kindly call “reactive.” A problem or challenge arises, and the education world starts to look like a grocery store when the forecast says it may snow—you know, bread hoarders stalking the aisles with a “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” look in their eyes, milk grabbers, people trading expendable children for cartons of unbroken eggs—lots of activity, but not particularly useful. In the name of fairness, we often try things out en masse before really knowing if the thing we are trying is effective.
Having talked to many educators and education leaders about this, I’ve found the common theme in their logic is that it would be unfair to provide a special program for one group and not the other. That is why pure, experimental data on education programs is so hard to come by: It doesn’t really exist. In a lab, you can identify a dependent variable, set up a treatment and control condition, introduce (or not) an independent variable and test your hypothesis. In education, the world is your lab, and there is no such thing as setting up treatment and control groups, and we seldom have time to stop and experiment. When I worked out east, the phrase was, “changing the tires on a bus as we are driving it.” In the Midwest, they said, “building the airplane as we are flying it.” In Tennessee, especially Chattanooga, I’ve heard, “laying the track just ahead of the train.” Imagining the implications of failure in these figurative examples, is ooching really a solution?
If at first you don’t succeed …
Ideally, if you think you’ve come across a better way to teach something, you would first develop a small-scale version of what you want to try. For example, if you wanted to start using video excerpts to highlight certain topics, you would pick one class, during one unit, and try one video on one topic. Then, the ooching theory indicates that you would get feedback on your new approach and incorporate the feedback into your next try. Maybe the video seemed like a perfect fit for the topic but was not well-received by your students. You would find out what kind of video could do a better job. You would retool and try again on a test group and scale up only after field-testing for a while and with different groups.
Though it is hard to stay objective when receiving (and giving) feedback, it is an essential part of the process. It’s also challenging to give useful feedback to others. If heavy accountability pressure looms large, even a small failure while experimenting may be too much to risk. Overall, however, I think we could do with more ooching and less wide-sweeping reforms and overhauls based on anecdotal or hypothetical evidence. If you want a more comprehensive and practical look at how to ooch, I suggest visiting the Design Thinking for Educators website and downloading their free toolkit. I don’t teach, but it has come in handy in designing learning enrichment activities for my kids (and cat).
I don’t know if I will buy the new Heath brothers book, but I do appreciate the idea of trying things out in a gradual way before making a big decision—and I think public education would do well to espouse ooching, even if it does so a little at a time.
Director of Research and Effectiveness Keith White tells the stories behind the data in his “Geekly Weekly” updates. Keith’s columns will be featured on Nooga.com every other week.
