Discovering and Enacting the “What's Next” in K-12 Education

Conclusion number 1 — an evidentiary base for education

I like to think that Dickson is on to something, and I am going to give it a name — evidence-based education — to add to the already crowded education alphabet soup. Evidence-based education (EBE) gives us a view into the evidentiary base of learning that we can compare with assessment data and a variety of other data from demographics to lunch menus and bus ride distances. Imagine if not only the virtual courses but also the normal classroom, whether by using the Blackboard Learning System as in the study or another course management system, could generate this kind of data in addition to what the teacher observes, what the tests report, and what student projects demonstrate. The course management system — whether used virtually or as a supplement to the classroom — provides the ability to gather learning use-data through the process of instrumenting the teaching and learning actions, all recorded by the system.

Chalk one up for Michigan, a good first act, a first step on the road to modernizing the learning process or, in other words, to collecting scientifically-based evidence about how learning occurs and how learning improvement can be fostered. The Michigan Virtual High School’s Algebra data and Michigan State’s researcher provided a new look at learning. Still, this research only created a new “camper” in the busy and blurry education campground. Evidence-based education can just take a number alongside all the other competing education movements, or we can look at it as the first step in the process of modernizing education to meet the demands of the twenty-first century, in line with other segments of the economy and society.

Enter Michigan’s online learning graduation requirement

Now, enter Michigan’s second act, which is the first historical crack in the hundred-year-old traditional landbased school machinery. Michigan, this last spring, voted into law its high school graduation requirements (it only had one requirement before). Included in the new requirements was an item, supported by Michigan Virtual and the Michigan Department of Education, now working in concert with the Michigan legislature and with the Governor’s blessing. The item was an online learning experience requirement. In order for a student to get a high school diploma in Michigan, he or she must have had an online experience — a course, or something similar to it (the exact definition is on its way).

This virtual crack in the physical armor of education is the first step into twenty-first century learning as law, an acknowledgement that what students and parents already routinely do — use the Web, send email, conduct research online — should also officially be part of schooling. But what separates this legal graduation requirement from the acquisition of computer or Internet skills, is that the learning experience has to be in a subject matter; it is not about the skill alone.

To stimulate more online activity and make this move the beginning of a trend, not an isolated case, Michigan Virtual, the Michigan Department of Education, Microsoft, and Blackboard, Inc. have pulled together to provide an online course (http://www.mivhs.org/careerforward) for all the State’s ninth graders, free of cost, to fulfill this particular and peculiar graduation requirement. The unique thing about this particular online course, developed with help from the University of Michigan, is that it is all about the competition and the careers in the global economy — for ninth graders!

All the parties in Michigan hope that online education will become more commonplace in schools, just as it is now almost ubiquitous in aspects of college and in the workforce nationally. Michigan students, unlike some of their parents who have been caught in the economic slowdown in the automotive industry, would be able to re-train quickly via the computer. “This course is an incredible two-fer,” Governor Jennifer Granholm said in March. “It will help our students understand how to thrive in a changing economy, and it will teach them how to learn on-line, something they will need to do throughout their work lives.” Governor Granholm has just returned to office for another four-year term, education having been an important part of her re-election platform.

The hope of Michigan Virtual is that the “two-fer,” and subsequent online learning experiences and courses, will provide a rich set of evidence-based education data that will allow researchers and instructors the opportunity to search for what works best for particular groups of students. Such knowledge in a feedback loop can provide one very powerful track for modernizing education. But how could this action lead to a systematic change?

Discovery number 2 — evidence based education aids individualized instruction

I hope that the education community will zero in on the two plus two equals ten equation that can occur when evidence-based education use-data collected through virtual education is combined, as a matter of routine, with AYP assessment data. Such a system can almost automatically generate the teacher training, remediation, and parent communication needed based on AYP deficiencies — at least for some students, some subjects, and some schools. It can also generate what stands between the hundred-year-old model of classroom drill and the future — a movement toward individualized education backed by technology. In other words, we can use instrumentation that generates individual evidence to individualize instruction on a semi-automatic basis, meaning that the Herculean chore of individualizing can be assisted with enterprise technology.

School today is still about classrooms, about classes of students; it is not yet about students individually, unless it is a special education case. The eventual shift to individualized instruction for all students can be facilitated by student use-data combined with student assessment data, which will lead to the ability to individualize education, to automate remedial responses, and to self-testing on routine matters. I hope that education can take the first steps in that twenty-first century direction soon. Nearly every other profession has already started on that journey, thanks to the Web.

I think with this enterprise technology-driven evidence-based equation, AYP + Virtual Ed = Individualization, we are close to the “next thing.” It is certainly lurking out there. We can sense the new species of education beast taking form. The education animal I am referring to has to do with correlating deficiency results in assessment data with use-data patterns of what students did to achieve their scores. The usedata yields provide the basis, not only for remediation of the student who stumbled, but also for determining the training necessary for their teachers and for correcting any inefficiencies in the assessment instruments or the course content. More importantly, we can get this done in a timely manner — hours and days, not months and years.

In the beginning, this process might not be available for every student in a state, but it could be used as a spot check mechanism with a statistically valid sample in a variety of settings and subjects throughout a state. This sampling mechanism alone could add immeasurably to the “what’s next.” By using an evidentiary base with AYP a state can zero in on not only what to correct but how and with whom.

The four barriers — getting from “here” to systematic modernization

Having an “aha” moment about the “next thing” does not automatically lead to being able to make it happen. That is the realm of policy, generally a long road to travel. Even armed with research and data, the path ahead is not clear and the obstacles are many. Foremost among those obstacles is the cultural resistance to change in education practice, to adding something new to the already beleaguering amount of actions and responsibilities with which teachers, administrators, and boards routinely deal.

Here’s what’s necessary to begin the process of changing thinking in order to grasp this particular “what’s next” concept. It is a form of thinking in four steps designed for the cultural shift necessary to create the receptivity for change. A small but dedicated band of reformers already pretty well subscribe to these steps. They see the interplay between enterprise technology as a system for delivery, assessment, analysis, and remediation that lives along side of normal schooling.

The force of the Web, common everywhere else in life today, and sound education practice yields a form of modernization. But it won’t occur unless we can get over the barriers separating “here” from “there.” The following four barriers can help frame the issue:

1. No significant reform or improvement is going to occur without the use of enterprise technology (the combination of assessment data analysis, online student remediation, and online teacher training).
2. No significant use of technology will occur without meaningful reorganization and reorientation in school districts and state offices (needed in order to use the enterprise technology well in an educationrich context).
3. No meaningful reorganization or reorientation is going to occur without solid research showing what really works (providing the justification and the safetyin-numbers protection for making such decisions).
4. No meaningful change will occur without strong political leaders, most likely governors, making education modernization the very top priority in their states (backing up their rhetoric and bureaucratic handwringing with real modernization plans and actions).

Enacting the “what’s next” requires a modernization strategy

The four barriers can be re-packaged as the four corners of a modernization strategy for education. Instead of speaking of reform or improvement, both implying an incremental set of changes to aspects of education, I am suggesting a modernization strategy by which I mean something that affects a much broader and all-encompassing change in education policy, practice, and processes.

The four propositions required to create the acceptance for evidence-based education are as follows:

1. Applied enterprise technology for education as the means of combining assessment data and usedata in order to systematically address teaching and learning deficiencies in a timely and efficient manner, and to create mechanisms to individualize instruction. In other words, provide the seeds of a new system, infrastructure, or education.
2. Re-engineered education organizations to move from the management of people, budgets, and dollars alone to the management of education inputs, the analysis of learning and training outputs, and the building of academic outcomes management focused on improvement of students, teachers, administrators, and parents.
3. The development of research programs to justify modernization of education as having a routine and well-understood research base in evidence gathering (instrumentation) that can guide practice and policy and build the processes necessary for modern education systems.
4. Leadership, planning, funding, and the courage to act are necessary to move forward any idea, research agenda, or findings into action for education modernization. This requires leaders who see their roles to modernize as a social, economic, and political necessity.

Bring in the researchers, please

Dickson, NCREL (Learning Point), the Michigan Department of Education, Michigan Virtual and the technology providers have demonstrated that the researchers need to come into the field full force to develop an evidentiary methodology for learning, adding to the already ingrained data collection mentality, in such a way that it will embolden governors, legislatures, and education leaders to act. This onetwo punch of instrumentation of the learning process as well as requiring AYP data could well be the “what” that is missing in twenty-first century education. We have instrumented forests, glaciers, space probes, intensive care suites, and the human body. Why can’t we do the same for learning? At least this is one system that, unlike the climate, we can address to the benefit of all of us.

While No Child Left Behind (NCLB) lined up the vectors for change in generally good ways — data, quality teachers, annual yearly progress, and researchbased reform — the law has only pointed the gun in the right direction, it did not provide the bullets (funds and knowledge) for the gun. When it turned out the gun wasn’t loaded, the reforms lost some of their credibility. The bullets to accomplish the NCLB agenda had been left in the stockroom without the funding to load the pistol and take action. What does this mean? In short, there’s no money to get the job done properly. Specifically:

• Limited funds to install high quality data software down to the school

• Limited funds to train teachers to be “highly qualified” in every locality

• Limited funds for content, instruction, or tutoring required to create AYP

• No funds for the kind of research that Dickson undertook

If the premise is correct, that “evidence based education” properly collected, analyzed, and applied can make a fundamental difference in how our students learn and progress, and in how they are taught, then a solid research and practice base is necessary to drive the policies, and funding, needed not just for change, but for systematic modernization of education.

Comments

Login or subscribe to comment