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Darling-Hammond: U.S. vs highest-achieving nations in education

By Valerie Strauss

This post was written by Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun P rofessor of Education at Stanford University, where she was founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. She now directs the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. A former president of the American Educational Research Association, Darling-Hammond focuses her research, teaching, and policy work on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity.

Captura is a full-service consulting firm with expertise in Digital Marketing, Experience Design, and Information Technology.

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We are privately-held, debt-free, and headquartered in Dallas with additional offices in Fort Worth. We recruit and retain the best talent in our industry and our closely knit team of experts rely on a trimmed-down approach to delivering projects that engages our clients and maximizes business value.

cool dallas based outfit!

the debate rages on…good

Keep Austin “Bazaar”.

From the Editor

The K-12 Horizon Report

Anne Wujcik — Friday, May 20, 2011

First a piece of good news.  Not jump up and down good, but maybe we can all stop holding our breath, at least for the time being.  A small number of states are seeing unexpected revenue growth.  California expects revenues to be $6.6 billion higher than originally forecast, allowing it to allocate an additional $3 billion to K-12 schools.  But the state still faces a $10 billion budget gap.  New Jersey expects to see at least $269 million more in revenues for the fiscal year that starts on July 1. There the Governor is proposing using that “extra” revenue for property tax relief and pension fund payments.  (Last year, New Jersey decided to not fully fund its obligation for state aid to local school districts, a decision which is now under review by the state’s court system.) 

Michigan expects to carry a $429 million surplus into the next fiscal year, which starts Oct 1, 2011, due largely to the comeback of its auto industry.  The Governor wants to cut K-12 spending by at least $470 per student; universities are facing a 15% budget cut.  The legislature is less bullish about K-12 spending cuts, with Democrats wanting to see the surplus spent on schools and even Republicans doubtful about the need for such deep cuts.

This brief snapshot underlines the complexity of the state revenue pictures and especially of the K-12 funding outlook.  While there is no place where state revenues are back to pre-recession levels, things are beginning to move in the right direction. As that happens, the funding faceoff shifts to debating whether K-12 cuts are restored as much as possible, be reduced less drastically than originally proposed or be maintained as a measure of fiscal accountability.  Governors have a lot of competing claims to balance as they try to move forward.

This next tidbit is credited to the Empirical Education newsletter (http://www.empiricaleducation.com/index.php), which features a short piece on the new competition for the Regional Education Labs.  The new RFP calls for the labs to build capacity for research among practitioners, helping state and local educators begin to build a culture of experimentation. The Labs are also being directed to work through “alliances” of state and local agencies, working across state lines, at least within each of the ten regions.  To me this builds on and should help strengthen the type of multi-state cooperation that we saw in the effort to develop the Common Core State Standards and the Race to the Top Assessment consortia.  Potentially such cooperation is not just more cost effective, it’s more likely to be long lasting as well.   

The New Media Consortium (NMC) released The NMC Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition.  This is the third in the K-12 series of reports and is produced by the NMC in collaboration with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), with the support of HP’s Office of Global Social Innovation.

Hallmark of the Horizon Reports are the six emerging technologies or practices that are identified as likely to enter mainstream use in the educational community over the next five years.  On the near-term horizon – that is, within the next 12 months – are cloud computing and mobiles. Two to three years out, NCM predicts that there will begin to be widespread adoptions of game-based learning and open content. On the far-term horizon, four to five years away from widespread adoption, are learning analytics and personal learning environments. 

But each Horizon report also identifies critical challenges that schools face, especially those that are likely to continue to affect education over the five-year time period covered by the report.  The challenges ranked as most significant in terms of their impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry, in their order of importance, are:

Challenge 1: Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
The NCM board notes that we are far from seeing digital media literacy as a norm.  It attributes this to the fact that training in digital literacy skills is rare in teacher education and school district professional development programs. Perhaps most importantly, the reports states that “digital literacy is less about tools and more about thinking, and thus skills and standards based on tools and platforms have proven to be somewhat ephemeral.

Until we stop focusing on the technology and instead focus on teaching and learning, there will continue to be a lot of less than useful wheel spinning that continues to distract from real digital literacy.
 
Challenge 2: Economic pressures and new models of education are presenting unprecedented competition to traditional models of schools.
The issue here is finding ways to control costs while still providing a high quality of service.

We all are hearing the increased emphasis in the ongoing dialogue on technology as a way to save money.  We need to be sure that at the same time the technology is used to ensure that students reach deeper levels of understanding.

Challenge 3: The demand for personalized learning is not adequately supported by current technology or practices.
“It has become clear that one-size-fits-all teaching methods are neither effective nor acceptable for today’s diverse students. Technology can and should support individual choices about access to materials and expertise, amount and type of educational content, and methods of teaching.”

The missing link here is attitudinal.  If personalized learning is to become a reality, schools and educators have to really value and support learner choice and control.  It can be hard for teachers to shift control to their students in really meaningful ways.

Challenge 4: A key challenge is the fundamental structure of  the K-12 education establishment – aka “the system.”
“As long as maintaining the basic elements of the existing system remains the focus of efforts to support education, there will be resistance to any profound change in practice.”

If change at the level of teacher and classroom is difficult, systemic change is even harder. 

Challenge 5: Many activities related to learning and education take place outside the walls of the classroom and thus are not part of our learning metrics.
Here thde report authors focus on how hard it is to bring out-of-school experiences back to the classroom.

I’m not sure about how one would measure these experiences, but knowing even a little biit about studnets’ outside learning interests could help teachers take the first steps towards personalization.

Some ‘good-ish” news.

REPOSTED from the Times of Texas.

When Jeff Sandefer bought a small plane, he chose one of the few models equipped with a parachute designed to protect occupants by lowering the aircraft to the ground in an emergency.

That desire to avoid unnecessary risks has guided his investments as well. After graduating from the University of Texas and Harvard Business School in the 1980s, Sandefer formed an oil company but eschewed the wildcatting style of his father and grandfather.

Instead, armed with $1 million from an investment firm, he subleased from Exxon, Chevron and other major oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico. Sandefer figured that a small, nimble and cost-conscious independent could make a go of wells where the majors couldn’t.

He was right. In four years, Sandefer Offshore Co. turned $500 million in profits, cementing his reputation as a savvy entrepreneur and giving him time and money to devote to his passion for education. 

But in pursuing that passion, especially when it comes to public higher education, Sandefer has sometimes been more wildcatter than cautious player. And lately, the results haven’t been pretty.

Sandefer-flavored policies embraced by Republican Gov. Rick Perry and some members of the governing boards of the University of Texas and Texas A&M University figure prominently in a debate over the future of higher education in the state.

Critics of those policies, including some lawmakers, alumni and leaders in civic and business affairs, say philanthropic support, faculty recruiting and the national standing of the state’s universities are at risk. Even some GOP stalwarts, such as Peter O’Donnell Jr., a Perry contributor and major donor to UT-Austin, are crying foul.

At the root of the controversy are several “breakthrough solutions” outlined by Sandefer and endorsed by Perry at a summit of public university governing boards held by the governor three years ago. Among the recommendations: award bonus pay to teachers based strictly on student evaluations, put more emphasis on teaching productivity and less on research, split budgets into separate amounts for research and teaching, and treat students like customers.

The A&M System adopted Sandefer’s bonus-pay model and assigned red or black numbers to faculty members based on how much money they cost and how much they bring in. That drew an embarrassing rebuke in October from the Association of American Universities.

In recent months, Gene Powell, chairman of the UT regents, and Perry have drawn fire from the Longhorn faithful for actions and pronouncements that seemed to take pages from Sandefer’s lesson plan. The governor is pushing regents to freeze tuition for four years and to develop bachelor’s degree programs costing no more than $10,000 — a price point that would require a substantial online component, which Sandefer predicts is part of a coming “tsunami” of higher education reform.

Powell, elected chairman by fellow regents after the governor’s office signaled its wishes, hired an adviser to the regents, Rick O’Donnell (no relation to Peter O’Donnell Jr.), who previously was president of one of Sandefer’s charitable foundations, an adviser to another and, like Sandefer, a critic of much academic research. O’Donnell was later dismissed when he charged that officials were suppressing a list of costs and revenues for each teacher at the UT System’s nine academic campuses.

Another sign of Sandefer’s behind-the-scenes role: Emails, released under the Texas Public Information Act, indicate that he knew Alex Cranberg and Wallace Hall would be appointed to the UT board weeks before the governor’s office made a public announcement.

Last week , in a rare interview, Sandefer denied having a role in the governor’s selection of Cranberg, Hall and another UT regent, Brenda Pejovich, who, like Sandefer, is on the board of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a think tank that helped organize the governor’s May 2008 summit for regents.

“That’s the governor’s job,” Sandefer said of the appointments. “That’s not my job.”

Asked whether he provided advice on the appointments to Perry, to whom he has given more than $400,000 in campaign contributions since 2000, he demurred.

“I’m going to be careful about private conversations, whether they’re with a student, or a teacher, or with you,” he said. “So if somebody asks my opinion, I’m happy to offer it. But picking regents is not my job.”

He acknowledged knowing Cranberg through the oil business for more than 20 years, noting that Cranberg had worked for General Atlantic, the investment firm that put money into Sandefer Offshore. Sandefer and Hall were both students at UT 30 years ago, when Sandefer was studying petroleum engineering, but “weren’t close friends,” he said.

Sandefer said he planned to “tone down the provocative questions for a while” but also sent a letter to friends declaring that higher education needs an overhaul, that a defense of research “cannot be used to hide waste and inefficiency” and that higher education insiders cannot be allowed “to frighten donors and alumni as a way of avoiding tough questions about faculty productivity and costs.”

Harsh words on academia

That’s mild stuff compared with the remarks he delivered in April 2009 at a conference in Guatemala City, Guatemala, sponsored by the Washington-based Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

“Most of the rewards in the profession go to writing narrowly focused academic research articles that few read, the vast majority of which would never, and I want to stress never, be supported by the market,” he said.

“And the whole corrupt enterprise survives parasitically only by siphoning vast amounts of tuition and cross subsidization unbeknownst to parents, students and taxpayers.”

Sandefer predicted that the enterprise would collapse as for-profit institutions and online courses gain ground.

“Here’s a hint,” he said at the gathering. “If your subsidized costs are $30,000 and climbing and your competition’s costs are between $10,000 and $1,500 and declining for the same product, and your subsidies from endowments and from state government aid are flat at best or declining, you are doomed. Purely by the economics, you’re doomed.”

Asked about that speech, Sandefer said: “Maybe I was on a pessimistic bent on that day. I like the optimistic bent that you’re right on the cusp of a real revolution of changing things,” with the advent of sophisticated educational software, blended learning that includes classroom and online formats, and apprentice-based learning.

Sandefer wears multiple hats in the field of education: teacher, curriculum developer, philanthropist and co-founder of a graduate-level business school and a private elementary school, both in Austin. Three years ago, he sold all of his business interests, including a company that managed more than $1 billion in energy-related investments, to focus on education.

A passionate philanthropist

Jeff Davis Sandefer was born in Abilene, and education is in his DNA. His great-grandfather, Jefferson Davis Sandefer, was president for 31 years of Hardin-Simmons University, a private school in Abilene, and is buried on the campus. The grandfather was named after the president of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, but the grandson got a shortened first name to break ties to the Civil War past while preserving the family tradition.

Sandefer, who is trim and looks younger than his 50 years, is partial to button-down shirts and khakis. He speaks in a rapid-fire style, sometimes stumbling over words in his eagerness to make a point.

Although he says he’d be happy living in a 3,000-square-foot house, he actually lives in Woodlawn, an 8,154-square-foot mansion in West Austin that has been the home of two former governors and that he has spent millions to restore. He reads all or part of about 250 books a year, and his library, split between Woodlawn and his office in downtown Austin, holds about 6,000 volumes.

Sandefer once started a company in Russia that employed local people selling soap and shampoo door to door just to prove that the Russians weren’t serfs in the post-Soviet era. Internal Revenue Service filings show that he has contributed more than $100 million to his Ed Foundation. He has pledged to give away multiples of that to exhaust his holdings by the time he dies.

The Ed Foundation donates to a variety of civic, religious and educational organizations. Records for 2009, the most recent available, show that the largest gift that year, $4 million, went to the Acton School of Business, which Sandefer co-founded.

He describes himself as “a Bill Buckley libertarian,” a reference to the late William F. Buckley, a conservative commentator who founded the National Review magazine. Sandefer dined from time to time at Buckley’s home and has served on the board of the Constitutional Enterprises Corp., the company that owns the stock in National Review, since 2007, filling a seat once held by former President Ronald Reagan.

“The reason I so admired Mr. Buckley was that he could debate an issue with passion while still respecting someone with an opposite position,” Sandefer said.

John Lawson, who serves on the board of the Ed Foundation, said Sandefer doesn’t seek the philanthropic limelight. In fact, Sandefer changed the foundation’s name from the Jeff D. Sandefer Foundation a few years ago.

“He didn’t want any credit for his gifts,” said Lawson, who was a fraternity brother at UT and remembers Sandefer as “our straight and narrow guy” who knew when to socialize and when to study.

A passionate business educator

Sandefer is also, by all accounts, a gifted teacher.

“He was awesome,” said Scott Uhrig, an Austin-based executive recruiter who took Sandefer’s class in entrepreneurship in 1993 at UT’s McCombs School of Business. “I probably spent more time on his class than all my other classes combined that semester. I still got a B, but it was worth it.”

Sandefer had a bitter and public falling-out with UT in 2002 after helping to build the nationally ranked entrepreneurship program. He disagreed with UT’s hiring of tenure-track faculty members rather than part-time teachers with real-world experience. He quit and fired off an email to alumni charging that teaching had been sold out for research.

“My view,” UT President Larry Faulkner said at the time, “is there’s no way to have a leading business school without a strong research component.”

Sandefer taught at the University of Oklahoma for a time and then at St. Edward’s University in Austin before co-founding the Acton School of Business in Austin. Acton is affiliated with Hardin-Simmons, and all of its instructors are successful entrepreneurs who teach part time.

“The great joy of my life is finding that student with that amazing gift and that drive to be an entrepreneur,” Sandefer said in an online video about his pledge to give away all his money. “And so I both teach and give back to entrepreneurship because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s the fun thing to do.”

He thinks some of Acton’s strategies should be used far more widely, including faculty pay based largely on student evaluations, an emphasis on teaching over research and a classroom style heavy on Socratic-style discussions involving case histories of actual companies rather than lectures.

Sandefer doesn’t pretend that Acton is the perfect model that the rest of higher education should follow. After all, it occupies an unusual niche in higher education.

Its 27 students take all of their classes together in a one-year, 90 -hour-a-week program culminating in a Hardin-Simmons MBA in entrepreneurship. Tuition runs about $50,000 a year. Some students, but not all, get full-ride fellowships from donors.

Students are not eligible for federal financial aid because Acton operates through a contract with Hardin-Simmons under which Acton provides all of the instruction, said Lanny Hall, president of Hardin-Simmons. It is technically not a satellite or branch campus.

The name of the school reflects its philosophy. Lord Acton was a Victorian scholar and historian who fought the notion of papal infallibility and promoted the study and advancement of freedom. His most famous quote: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The importance of political, religious and economic liberty is a running theme at Acton, whose required curriculum includes a class called “Life of Meaning.”

Teaching with a purpose for all ages

A sense of larger purpose also infuses the Acton Academy, a private elementary school founded by Sandefer and his wife, Laura. It currently operates out of a converted law office in West Austin, but negotiations are under way to acquire a new site in East Austin.

The school’s 18 students range in age from 6 to 10 and learn together in the same classroom, with a mix of discussions in the round and computer-based study using such software as Rosetta Stone, a foreign language program. It’s the antithesis of what Sandefer calls the “assembly line approach to schooling” on his blog, http://transformingeducation.tumblr.com .

Graphics on the wall sum up Sandefer’s view of how education, and life, ought to be pursued: “I am on a hero’s journey.”

rhaurwitz@statesman.com; 445-3604

See story @ http://www.statesman.com/news/local/ex-oilmans-drive-for-market-based-education-has-1463323.html?viewAsSinglePage=true

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