The Simpsons had a great episode Sunday night. Brian tells me that after a few rough seasons, The Simpsons are “back,” and after this episode I’m inclined to believe him.  You should watch the whole episode if you have the time, but if not here are a couple of my favorite scenes:

1. “21st Century” education – watch from about the 7:40 mark until 9:50
2. Skinner can’t just fire a teacher – watch from 18:20 until 20:30

The hip new teacher, Tufts degree in hand, who uses his iPhone to text the kids that their homework consists of twittering and friends them on Facebook got me thinking about 21st century education again.

What are some of the leading voices in education saying about 21st Century Skills? Last month NationalJournal.com had an interesting piece where they asked this very question. I find the responses of Diane Ravitch and Andy Rotherham particularly interesting. These two left leaning ed policy gurus, Ravitch worked in both the H.W. Bush and Clinton education departments and Rotherham was a domestic policy wonk for Clinton, downplay the importance of the bluster, hype, and corporate marketing that is the 21st century skills movement.

Both of these experts reach the same conclusion concerning the newness of 21st Century Skills.  Rotherham writes:

I’ve been among the skeptics of a lot of what masquerades as 21st Century Skills. The whole construct of “new” skills seems to me to reek of contemporary flattery and miss the point that none of these skills are actually new. What’s new today is the need for universality: In other words, in the past elites in society (our society and others throughout history) had these skills while the masses generally did not. Today, by contrast, our commitment to a more equitable society as well as the demands of our economy mean a deliberate effort must be made to ensure that all students learn how to think, analyze, problem-solve and so forth.

Rotherham goes on to point out that “Thinking that these skills are ‘new’ rather than thinking that they are simply ‘more necessary’ leads to different remedies.” That’s some crucial advice for districts that currently have the adoption of 21st century skills on their agendas. You can find the full text of Rotherham’s comments here.

Diane Ravitch’s take on the topic is especially scathing, especially when she notes that the movement has the potential to be a cash-cow for peddlers of products marketed to enhance 21st Century learning:

The notion of “21st century skills” is a fiction. There are no such skills. Every single skill listed as a “21st century skill” has been in demand long before the 21st century, in some cases for many centuries.  Most of what is now proposed–whether critical thinking skills or working in groups–has been an integral part of the progressive education movement since the early years of the twentieth century. Anyone knowledgeable about the history of American education would recognize most of these skills as another manifestation of progressivism (see Lawrence Cremin’s The Transformation of the Schools or my own Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform). In reality, the so-called 21st century skills are no more than an echo of the ideas that have dominated our colleges of education since the early twentieth century.  I have elsewhere (http://blog.commoncore.org/?p=88) suggested that the schools should emphasize such 19th century skills as love of learning, the ability to think for oneself (individualism) and to work alone (initiative), the ability to stand alone against the crowd (courage), and so on.  The board of P21, the organization that promotes this alleged movement, is top-heavy with representatives of the major technology companies, suggesting at least to me that the movement will end up noted as a lobbyist for selling more hardware and software to the schools. But even the idea of information literacy is not new. Schools have already spent billions on equipment from these same companies (and others that have since disappeared).  Our children are not deficient in skills or in computer literacy; they know better than their parents how to use computers to access information. Unfortunately what they lack is the knowledge with which to evaluate the information they so easily access.  They are deficient in knowledge; they are deficient in understanding of history, civics, science, geography, foreign languages, the arts, and literature. Anyone who has seen Jay Leno’s street interviews (his Jaywalking interviews) has observed the profound ignorance that Leno encounters when he meets young people and asks them questions about the most basic ideas and facts of history, civics, and geography. Those he interviews–who seem to be mainly in their early 20s–laugh about their ignorance; they think it is funny that they know so little of the world. They do not lack thinking skills or computer literacy. They lack knowledge.   The 21st century skills movement, like so much else that we are now doing in education, will plunge us even deeper into our present morass of happy ignorance.

I have been surprised that more liberals have not spoken out against the 21st century skills movement. One of the main goals of the movement is, as articulated by Tony Wagner, to make our kids more attractive drones so they will be employable by corporations. Liberals should be at least a little uncomfortable with the corporate backing the movement has gotten.

Tonight at 9 p.m. CST on PBS, viewers can catch the national debut of The Buffalo Flows.  The Buffalo Flows is a film about the Buffalo River written and produced by local UA professor Larry Foley, with photography by Trey Marley, editing by Dale Carpenter, and narration by Ray McKinnon.  It also features music by the UA’s James Greeson.  The film recently won 2 emmy awards.  Here is a clip that features some of the original music and some beautiful pictures of the Buffalo River.

The Arkansas Department of Education noted in a July press release that Arkansas students are improving their performance on state Benchmark tests:

For the first time, more than 60 percent of Arkansas students at each grade level scored at or above proficient on both the mathematics and literacy Arkansas Augmented Benchmark Exams. The exams, administered in April 2009 to 209,000 third- through eighth- graders, are recognized nationally as some of the most rigorous in the country. . . .

“It’s a great day when a state can report that more than two-thirds of its students are achieving proficiency, especially when those results reflect continued academic growth at each grade level,” said Diana Julian, Ed.D., interim commissioner for the Arkansas Department of Education.

But the Arkansas Benchmark tests have come in for some criticism for allegedly lowering the proficiency standards in recent years. In other words, what if Arkansas students seemed more proficient only because the proficiency bar were lower?

Here are the tables correlating raw scores to proficiency for 2009; here are the same tables for 2006. As you can see from the following comparison tables I created, the raw scores needed to be proficient or advanced have dropped considerably in Math, especially in grades 7 and 8.

But does this really mean that the Benchmark tests are being scored differently? The other possibility is that the Benchmark tests have somehow become harder — so much harder that a raw score of 28 out of 80 points is now enough to mark an 8th grader as “Proficient” (compared to a raw score of 39 points in 2006). As can be seen in this Word document from the Arkansas Department of Education, there may some sophisticated mathematical calculations that underlie any changes to the raw scoring methodology, and the ADE may simply be resetting the proficiency standards after they were raised in 2005.

Nonetheless, if we look at NAEP exams (National Assessment of Educational Progress), Arkansas students aren’t doing nearly as well as the state Benchmark exams would suggest. In 2007, NAEP showed that a mere 28% of Arkansas 8th graders (and 41% of 4th graders) were proficient or advanced in math. That same year, Arkansas Benchmark tests purported to rank 48% of 8th graders (and 65% of 4th graders) as proficient or advanced in math. In other words, Arkansas has been claiming that 20% of Arkansas 8th graders and 24% of Arkansas 4th graders were proficient or advanced in math, even though those students couldn’t make the cutoff on more reliable national tests. This is at least an indication that Arkansas’ cutoff scores may be set too low.

Thus, it would be very useful if the Arkansas Department of Education would put out a short document describing in plain English why the raw score cutoffs are so much lower today than they were in 2006, and why the Benchmark cutoffs for proficient or advanced are so much lower than the national standards. Such a document would allay the fears and rumors that can otherwise circulate.

Northwest Arkansas fans of guitars and good music will finally get a chance this weekend to see the new guitar-based documentary “It Might Get Loud.”  From Rotten Tomatoes:

Filmed through the eyes of three virtuosos from three different generations, audiences get up close and personal, discovering how a furniture upholsterer from Detroit, a studio musician and painter from London and a seventeen-year-old Dublin schoolboy, each used the electric guitar to develop their unique sound and rise to the pantheon of superstar. Rare discussions are provoked as we travel with Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White to influential locations of their pasts.

Alas, the movie is only playing at Fiesta Square in Northwest Arkansas, but I did call them and confirm that they are playing it on one of their larger screens.  And, sorry Stuart, as far as I know George Michael is not in this movie.

And, speaking of movies, anyone watching television last night was rocked off their couch by the newest trailer for 2012. While it doesn’t look like a great movie, the special effects promise that this one will be loud as well. Yikes!

Last week in this spot, we blogged our own disapproval of Little Rock Attorney Chris Heller’s outrageous bashing of Little Rock area charter schools for, of all things, fostering racial segregation in Little Rock schools.  In truth, that’d be some job, somehow making the Little Rock public schools even MORE segregated.  Sort of like, helping make Michael Jordan MORE of a basketball player, or Bill Clinton MORE of a politician, or the Beatles MORE of a great band, or…well, you get the picture. 
 
No reason for us to get any further into this, particularly when the UA’s OEP just got into this mess earlier in the week. 
 
But, this whole combative discussion reminds me of a more cordial meeting just last week at the UA, where Mike Feinberg of KIPP Houston and Scott Shirey of KIPP Helena AR spoke to a large audience of educators about their mission to serve underprivileged students.  KIPP has a remarkable track record of taking 100s and then 1000s of economically disadvantaged students and guiding them along the path toward college.  KIPP’s goal, according to Feinberg, is get his students (he often refers to them as his kids or his babies) “to and through college”.
 
Take a second to watch this clip of a 60 minutes special on KIPP … I promise it’s inspiring and worth the time.  Anyway, toward the end of the talk, Feinberg and Shirey began to refer to the work of educating disadvantaged and mostly minority students as a new “Civil Rights Movement”.   They weren’t kidding and weren’t exaggerating.  Since I am aware of the numbers on the racial achievement gaps in AR and throughout the country, I tend to agree.  Why shouldn’t we be providing all students (not just affluent students) with a high-quality education?  Is this not a civil right? Most state Constitutions already include language legislating an adequate and equitable education.  High quality for the “haves” and not for the “have-nots” hardly seems equitable.
 

And how do KIPPS live each day to serve students?  Well, in most cases, they do so as charter schools – the same charter schools demonized by Little Rock attorneys.  So, the question is – do the charters serve as opportunities for students in a new “Civil Rights Movement” or are they schools which encourage and foster segregation?  We have KIPP arguing on one side and Heller and his crew on the other.  When we listen to KIPP folks, it is always about the kids; when we listen the LR attorneys, well, not so much.
 
You take a look and make your own choice.

State Senator Sue Madison is at it again.  After news broke yesterday that Fayetteville’s Target store was applying for a license to sell retail beer, Madison was quick to signal that she would oppose it.  The Fayetteville Flyer posted the following statement by Madison:

“I want to make it clear that I am not opposed to someone having a beer or a glass of wine or even a cocktail,” Madison said. “My concern with this is that it’s another outlet for minors to buy alcohol. It just makes it harder on law enforcement to police it and ultimately, it’s our children who could be harmed by this.”

Madison’s latest reasoning is only slightly less ridiculous than her recent opposition to Macadoodles‘ application to open up a liquor store in Springdale. Back in May she argued that because the Macadoodles in Missouri had “lured people across the state line to purchase alcohol,” they should be denied a license “until they have repaid Arkansas all the tax dollars we’ve lost.”

Even if serious people could somehow get behind such reasoning (and let’s face it, they can’t), it would be more appropriate to hold Benton County responsible.  Macadoodles can’t be blamed for selling people a legal product.  But Benton County should consider how being dry is forcing tax dollars across the state line.  If Madison really wants those dollars to stay in Arkansas she should go after Benton County and convince them to allow retail liquor sales.  And she shouldn’t stop there.  Until the laws are changed, Macadoodles will continue to enjoy our tax dollars on Sundays.

Fortunately the Springdale Macadoodles was approved by the Alcoholic Beverage Commission and construction is underway.  This is good news for residents of Springdale who have long been held hostage by the Springdale Liquor Association.  Up until now they have held a monopoly of Springdale’s liquor outlets.

While not as crazy as the Macadoodles scenario, Madison’s opposition to Target on the grounds that more minors will have access to alcohol is still wrong.  Large chains like Target and Sam’s Club (whose license Madison also opposed) are in a much better position to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors than smaller liquor stores.  These large chains have more professionalized procedures for training their employees, there is always a manager on duty, and there are always security cameras recording the check-out lines.  In the long run, allowing larger, more professionalized stores to sell alcohol could actually reduce the amount of alcohol that gets into the hands of minors.

Still, given Madison’s constant opposition to all things related to alcohol, and her erratic reasoning, one has to wonder if something else is driving her decisions.  Maybe she just hates fun.  Reading that quote at the top of the post again, I get the sense that she’s really not too fond of those cocktails she grudgingly says she is not opposed to.  Maybe she isn’t so worried about minors, but actually wants to tell us grownups what we ought to be drinking.

Gee, thanks mom.

The Dem-Gaz has an article today about charter schools and their effect on the desegregation of the Little Rock School District. The article presents a summary of  a study done by the the Office for Education Policy at the U of A. We had a post about this very subject about a week ago.  Both the study and our post seek to debunk the assertion by LRSD attorney Chris Heller that charter schools are inhibiting desegregation efforts in Little Rock.

Attorney Chris Heller, while saying that the U of A should be embarassed by the OEP report, claims that the district’s six Magnet schools best exemplify desirable integration because they have an equally balanced (50/50) racial makeup.  Of course, the population of students in LRSD is NOT equally balanced, so any attempt to bring one school to 50/50 necessarily means some other schools will look less like the population of LRSD.  The proper test of integration should be whether or not a school’s racial makeup is similar to that of the community.  The OEP report estimates that a properly integrated school would have a minority enrollment of around 78.6 %, based upon the district average of the students’ racial makeup.  Therefore, every time an effort is made to bring any school up to a 50% level of white students, that necessarily means that other schools will suffer.  There simply aren’t enough white students to achieve the 50% goal at every school: Every white student that is added to one school is a white student lost by another school.  This is why the OEP report based its definition of integration on district-wide averages, not an arbitrary 50/50 ratio.

Max Brantley, on the Arkansas Times Blog, sides with Heller (surprise) in this debate.  There’s not much to say about Max’s post, primarily because we’re not exactly sure what his point is ( but we’ll give a free cookie to anyone who can explain it!).  He seems to argue that charter schools, by design, have “segregative effects.”  I suppose it’s not long before Max turns Glenn Beckian on us all and calls President Obama a racist because he unashamedly supports charter schools.

In truth, residentially assigning students to attend schools has become a modern form of legally imposed segregation.  All across this country, where a student attends school is dictated by where a student lives, and where a student lives is dictated by income and race.  Those who have the means to choose a good school can move in order to attend one, those without the means are left behind.

For full details refer to the OEP study.

Update: Jay P. Greene’s Blog has a guest post by Greg Forster about charter schools and segregation.

1. Barack Obama — possibly inspired by the 7:30 to 5 pm schedule at KIPP schools — wants to lengthen school days. Some telling quotes from the article:

“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.” . . .

Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents.

That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.

The subtext here is that smart kids like yours and mine don’t necessarily need more time in school, but we’ve got to think about all of those kids who are better off at school than at home.

2. In Arkansas news, the “fool poor people into forking over their money to handsomely-paid bureaucrats” program — i.e., the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery — started today. Note: you have a much higher chance of being struck by lightning than of winning anything significant in the lottery.  The Fayetteville Flyer has a tantalizing breakdown of what you can buy in order to help Ernie Passailaigue get a bigger house.

3. The New York Times magazine asked several folks, including Charles Murray, Diane Ravitch, and others, to opine on the purpose of education. Ravitch’s question — why do we educate at all? — is thought-provoking.

4. Dan Willingham cogently explains why if you want to understand what you read, you have to know something about the subject.

5. The results of the Fayetteville millage election appear to be more lopsided than originally reported. The certified results show the millage failed 64% to 37%, or 6,382 to 3,672. There is no indication why around 400 votes seem to have switched sides.

6. From the New York Times, a former test grader essentially makes a case that multiple choice tests are better than those that allow open-ended writing.

There has been some controversy over a video from a New Jersey school wherein third graders were led in chants of praise to Barack Obama. The New Jersey school is named B. Bernice Young Elementary, which is quite similar in name to Bernice Young Elementary in Springdale. Unfortunately, some people aren’t quite able to figure out the difference between New Jersey and Arkansas:

Officials at an elementary school in northwest Arkansas say they’re getting angry calls over a You Tube video by students at a New Jersey school with a similar name.

Bernice Young Elementary School in Springdale is getting calls from across the nation and Canada from people mad about students shown singing about President Barack Obama. Principal Debbie Flora says the callers claim the school is teaching political opinion and that some “did not use very kind language.”
. . .

Flora says that , so far , she has received no calls from Arkansas.

New Jersey ≠ Arkansas, people.
.

Anyone interested in social science should take a look at this article in the Wall Street Journal.