Flickr: umjanedoean

By Thom Markham

As Common Core State Standards are incorporated from school to school across the country, educators are discussing their value. It may seem that educators are arguing over whether the CCSS will roll out as a substitute No Child Left Behind curriculum or as an innovative guide to encourage inquiry rather than rote learning. In reality, as time will prove, we’re arguing over whether content standards are still appropriate.

Everyday there is less standardization of information, making it nearly impossible to decide what a tenth-grader should know. Beyond the core literacies of reading, writing, computation, and research, the world-wide culture of innovation, discovery, multi-polarity, interdisciplinary thinking, and rapid change depends on the explosive potential of the human mind, not entombed truths from the past. Increasingly, any standards-based curriculum is at odds with the outside world.

There is only one resolution to the debate. Sooner or later, inquiry-standards will take precedence over content-based standards. Education’s core task is to prepare young people to generate new ideas, filter them through a net of critical analysis and reflection, and move the ideas through a design process to create a quality product, either as an idea or a material object. Students need information, facts, and specific knowledge for a successful outcome. But that information must be gathered during the process of creation, in a usable, just-in-time format not found in “subjects.”

If you’re a teacher in tune with the needs of your students, you sense the disconnect between the curriculum and reality. You’d like the freedom to respond more directly to student needs, but standardized information and testing remains a barrier to innovative teaching.

So how can you, as a teacher, help move the dialogue forward? First, you can focus on becoming a highly-effective project based learning (PBL) teacher. When done well, PBL is the most effective method education has at the moment to introduce and practice inquiry-based education.

But PBL is the near-term solution. The ultimate destination is to align education with the requirements of a process-based world. This means we need to invent and agree on a set of clearly prescribed methods that promote inquiry, permeate the learning environment, and become as embedded in education as the current content standards. The move to integrate 21^st century skills into the curriculum is a start. But to really advance the cause, the following ideas will need to take root.

REDEFINE RIGOR. As the Google-age fully blossoms, the fundamental shift is from information to attitude. The instant, ubiquitous availability of knowledge puts enormous responsibility on the individual, as they try to sift through, discern, apply, and share information. This is not a simple cognitive exercise. Success in this environment requires a mix of self-awareness, empathy, and collaborative skills, as well as grit and self-direction. Eventually, the measure of student performance will be the demonstrated ability to use personal strengths to move gracefully through a connected world. We’ve started along this path, by the way. Portfolios measure personal growth and achievement; the best collaboration and teamwork rubrics assess empathy; many PBL teachers have found work ethic rubrics to be a great tool for measuring attitude and productivity.
BLEND CRITICAL THINKING, SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING, AND OTHER VALUABLE SKILLS. In the search for better inquiry methods, the gaming industry has much to teach education. A case in point is a recent article by Mark Prensky, a leading games and learning advocate, who suggests reorganizing the curriculum into four areas that blend inquiry and performance. Let’s call these the 4 E’s: Effective Accomplishment, including portfolios, content mastery, tests, and assessment; Effective Action, including goal setting, persistence, and work ethic; Effective Relationships, including communication, teamwork, and empathy; and Effective Thinking, including critical thinking, creativity, and content acquisition. There are several advantages to developing this framework, chief of which it recognizes that the foundation for today’s skills is emotional balance and self-awareness, and it integrates valuable skills into the curriculum core, rather than extending their current status as an add on to academic work.

TEACH INQUIRY SKILLS. Creativity, problem-solving, design thinking, and critical analysis are learnable skills that benefit from intentional instruction. The options are many, starting with exercises in creativity and brainstorming, regular use of protocols to practice sharing and giving feedback on divergent ideas; and consistent assessment of the inquiry process using high quality performance rubrics for problem solving, design or creativity. We’ve also made inroads here. The eight Mathematical Practices accompanying the CCSS math sequence is an impressive guide to inquiry skills. But so far it’s been difficult to locate a missing link: A performance rubric for students that defines their level of performance on each practice.

MAKE COHORTS AND TEAMS THE PRACTICE, NOT THE EXCEPTION. Probably the most deeply embedded norm of industrial education, originating from the 15^th century, is the ideal of the individual scholar. The default mode is to aim teaching at a single student, and assess and recognize accomplishments gained through individual performance. But we must shift this towards

team learning. The collaborative world succeeds through interaction and exchange, and it’s important to move towards deep, peer-driven learning and performance. A supportive team that meets regularly during the course of a unit will provide feedback and help each student produce a better individual product. In an inquiry-based classroom, this should be standard practice.

SEE THE BALANCE BETWEEN INQUIRY AND CONTENT AS A DYNAMIC. This dilemma—<Should I teach content or turn students loose to figure out things on their own?—is at the heart of the debate over teacher preparation for the CCSS. Knowing when to teach directly, or allow for problem solving, is a high art. But that is what inquiry-based education demands. For some content, the best choice is <just teach it. Other topics can’t be taught, but must be learned through discovery, trial and error, or prototyping—all of which require more time. In an inquiry-based world, lesson design allows for fluidity, mini-lessons, and ample time for process. Success relies on whether teachers have the ability—and give themselves permission—to move back and forth between content and process.

THE CIRCLE OF CONTROL. The chief obstacle to an inquiry-based system is us. To give up a content-based curriculum, with its deep traditions, proven techniques for controlling behavior and outcomes, and dominating, standardized regimen, feels like giving a 14-year old the keys to the car and a full tank of gas. It’s scary. The shift into the next, non-industrial phase of schooling is a psychological issue, not just a logistical one. The world that is opening up requires faith that something new, and better, is being born, but in the short term, it can feel like it’s falling apart. But I’ll leave you with two thoughts. First, it’s happening, whether we agree or not. Second, we’ll need good minds to figure it out, meaning more of those young people in your classroom who have been well trained in the art and skill of inquiry.

Thom Markham is a speaker, writer, psychologist, school redesign consultant, and the author of the Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators. To download the tools for inquiry, go to the PBL tools page on www.thommarkham.com.

Renato Ganoza/Flickr

In this era of global competition, test scores are used as the primary benchmark to call out which countries will produce “successful” students. Knowing that American students are competing against a global pool of the best and brightest has led education leaders to focus more on how they score on international tests compared to students from other countries.

But high test scores don’t provide a complete picture of students’ success, according to Yong Zhao, world-renown author, scholar, and professor of education at University of Oregon.

“Countries that score highly, have students with lower confidence,” Zhao said in his keynote address to educators gathered online for the 2013 Leadership Summit.

That seems counter-intuitive, and Zhao isn’t claiming a causal connection — he questions whether focusing on test scores might inadvertently lower confidence. Zhao has analyzed data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and discovered a negative correlation between high math scores and confidence.

Similarly, in his analysis of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test that analyzes how countries score in reading, math and science, Zhao found a negative correlation between attitude and attainment. In other words, the countries with lower scores had students who reported higher interest in the subjects. Zhao analyzed media stories from high scoring countries like Korea and Japan, where students don’t show enough confidence or enthusiasm for subjects in which they excel.

He found the same results when he looked at students’ belief in their entrepreneurial capacity, their ability to start businesses or be self-starters. “Everybody is trying to perfect this system and make a good bet about the knowledge and skills that our children might need,” he said. “All of this says that the measures we use to measure education outcomes, to view them as the best education systems in terms of test scores, do not result in the same kinds of things we might value otherwise — entrepreneurial capabilities, confidence, enjoyment.”

TESTING FOR THE WRONG QUALITIES

Zhao’s findings have led him to question the value of the tests altogether. If the stated goal is to get kids ready for careers, and careers demand confidence, creativity, and an entrepreneurial attitude, then why focus on test scores that seem to produce the opposite effect?

“A lot of times teachers have been asked to improve our schools, to make our schools more effective, but the question I’m raising is, effective at what?” Zhao said. “Some reading programs could improve your students’ reading scores, but cause your students to hate education.” He’s concerned that national initiatives like the Common Core State Standards could have unintended consequences.

In Zhao’s view, most education systems start out by defining the outcomes. They make a bet about which skills will be important and promise that if students master those skills, they will succeed. Zhao sees this as a flawed approach because it forces everyone into a homogenous group, a bit like making sausage out of all different kinds of meat. Defining outcomes allows systems to measure results, but it stamps out individuality.

Countries that score well on international exams, like Korea, have clearly defined outcomes, narrow curricula, and dictatorial systems with clear ranking and sorting systems. Students know exactly how they stack up in that system.

“Everybody is reminded everyday that they have to master the skills,” Zhao said. “But in the process you have people who are either kicked out of the system or put down into a different school and they will lose confidence.”  By valuing what’s prescribed and assessed, the system creates a uniform group with little confidence in the individual’s unique contributions.

Zhao pointed to the tremendous amount of local control in the U.S. educational system as both its savior and a contributing factor to its lower test scores. It allows for different types of schools and for students to demonstrate that they can be good at different things. There are arts schools, engineering schools and schools focused on bi-lingual education. That kind of choice allows students the chance to find what they are good at. The U.S. system also gives learners many second chances to keep learning and find their strengths.

[RELATED READING: Some Ask: What's the Value of Common Core State Standards?]

“The new education needs to start with the child. Not with the prescribed content,” Zhao said. “We start with individual differences; we start with their cultural strengths.” Beginning with the individual and building upwards from there allows each person to become uniquely great at something. And when students are passionate about anything, they can then be creative and entrepreneurial. For Zhao, the new model has to be about creating a new middle class based on creativity.

To do that, he suggests giving students more autonomy over their learning and emphasizing the importance of making authentic products that solve problems. He also emphasizes a global learning community that can collaborate to fill the gaps that each country, school or teacher experiences.

ZHAO’S INITIATIVES

Zhao is actively trying to create the learning experiences he has written and lectured about. He’s started an online education community called ObaWorld, which costs $1 per student per year and is a closed, private site. It’s a cloud-based learning platform, like Moodle, and includes similar features like the ability to make and evaluate portfolios. But Zhao is most excited that he’s recruiting students and teachers from all over the world to participate. So a teacher can create a tool or course and put it on ObaWorld to help an educator on the other side of the country.

His other big push is to create more entrepreneurial school leaders through the Global Education Leadership Master’s program, which is based online and accredited through University of Oregon. Students will have to create a product that will improve education and will be encouraged to think about schools as entrepreneurial global enterprises.

Flickr: Horia Varlan

By Claudio Sanchez, NPR

At 2 p.m., it’s crunchtime for students who write for the Harbinger Online, the award-winning, student news site at Shawnee Mission East High just outside Kansas City, Kan. They’ve been investigating an initiative to develop common curriculum and test guidelines for states.

The young reporters have pored over countless documents about the Common Core State Standards and talked to Kansas state legislators who pushed for their adoption, trying to understand why they’re necessary.

“I think it’s because we’ve known for years that there’s something wrong with our education system; that there’s better ways to be doing what we’re doing,” says Duncan MacLachlan, the 17-year-old co-editor of the site.

Although, that’s not readily apparent at his school. After all, 98 percent of Shawnee Mission East High graduates go on to college. But experts say high-achieving schools like this one are the exception, not the rule. Most students finish school without the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in college or the workplace.

The Common Core is an attempt to get all states to adopt the same, rigorous standards, beginning with English and math. But MacLachlan says its impact on learning in the classroom is unclear.

“Our coverage of that has been sparse because we don’t know,” he says.

Developing The Standards

David Coleman is considered to be the architect of the Common Core Standards.

“The most important thing to know is that it was actually teachers who had the most important

voice in the development of the Common Core standards,” he says.

He started working on the standards years ago, as one of the founders of the private consulting group Student Achievement Partners. Today, he’s president of the College Board, which administers the SAT. Coleman credits 45 governors thus far for putting their political differences aside and moving to adopt Common Core.

“So you had states bringing their best work to the table, the best of their work on their standards,” he says.

Coleman says the Common Core standards — for kindergarten to 12th grade — are tougher and go much deeper. He says their rigor is why states that have field-tested them, like Kentucky, have seen kids’ test scores plummet by as much as 30 percent.

“Those kids who scored 30 percent lower, that’s the number of kids who are on their way to remediation in college,” Coleman says. “So they may have been passing previous state tests, those tests were presenting kids as ready who were not.”

Lack Of Consensus

To hear Coleman tell it, the Common Core standards will provide a more accurate snapshot of what kids actually know and are able to do. Not everybody thinks that’s true.

Among them is Karl Krawitz, the principal at Shawnee Mission East.

“In fact, I think Common Core [is] going to set education back even further because you’re dictating curriculum,” he says, “what people are supposed to regurgitate on some kind of an assessment that’s supposed to gauge how well kids have learned the material and how well teachers have taught the material. The reality is tests don’t do either one of those things.”

Krawitz, who still teaches chemistry at his school, says Common Core proponents also assume that there’s a consensus about what should be taught.

“Kansas is struggling right now. I mean, my goodness, we’re still trying to figure out whether or not evolution should be taught,” he says.

To be clear, the Common Core standards are only a guide for states to follow as they write their curricula. Still, critics argue that the standards are too rigorous, too complex and developmentally inappropriate, especially in the early grades. Some dispute that teachers actually wrote the standards.

Is It Worth It?

Krawitz worries that Common Core will impose more testing.

“And there’s a big thing people need to understand: Testing in this country is big business,” he says.

He says the testing industry stands to make tons of money.

“To me, the real question is not who makes money. The question is, is it worth it?” Krawitz says.

Coleman says it is worth it because too many students, especially poor minority children, aren’t being challenged.

“These standards are the most serious attempt this country has yet made to come to grips with those early sources of inequality,” he says.

Many school reformers say that’s one big reason they support the Common Core standards. Convincing educators in the trenches, like Krawitz, is another matter.

“I would do everything I can to keep Common Core out of this school,” he says.

With the onset of the Common Core State Standards, which teachers are expected to implement next year, and the growth of blended learning, the role of digital resources both for instruction and assessment has come under close scrutiny. The quickly shifting landscape is leaving many Internet Technology directors worrying that they won’t be able to meet the demand for fast and reliable Internet service.

The Consortium for School Networking‘s (CoSN) recently surveyed IT leaders and found their top three priorities are Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies, assessment readiness, and broadband access. All of these priorities hinge upon one thing – lots of bandwidth.

Recognizing the substantial challenge facing many school districts, CoSN has launched the Designing Education Network (DEN) initiative to compile best practices for how to quickly and carefully build up IT infrastructure.

“One of the reasons we want to identify best practices and vendor neutral resources is because districts don’t have resources to hire consultants for research and development,” said Denise Atkinson-Shorey, project director for DEN. In fact, 80 percent of school districts predict they will have flat or declining IT budgets for the next school year.

Most school districts have only a few IT specialists who are often responsible for both the central office systems and local site networks. What’s more, CoSN’s survey found that a majority of Chief Technology Officers in schools earn about half of the going salary in the private sector. They’re faced with a huge task that will affect the learning of hundreds of children, but they’re understaffed, under-resourced and could make a lot more money elsewhere.

DEN is trying to relieve some of that load by compiling best practices and advice that will be housed on a website. The first tools should be available in June, and DEN hopes to expand its offerings to include a community forum so that IT leaders across the country can learn from each other as they go through the process.

[RELATED READING: What it Takes to Launch Mobile Learning Programs in Schools]

One of the biggest concerns for schools is the quality and security of the network. Another is accommodating the needs of various devices that students and teachers use to access the network, hoping to make all connections solid. “In the network, we have to think of how to get Internet access to a mobile device and how to do it securely,” Atkinson-Shorey said.

One thing they’re considering is more cloud based computing, but that can come with challenges too. “If we move resources into the cloud it’s easier for wireless devices to have access, but it may not meet the learning needs of students and staff,” Atkinson-Shorey said. Many schools are trying to move ahead on many technological fronts simultaneously and they don’t realize how much bandwidth they’ll need.

BYOD policies have been touted as money savers, but in informal surveys Atkinson-Shorey has found that most students bring more than one device to school at a time. Demands on the network might be far greater than anyone imagined.

Another big concern is making sure that everyone, no matter what device they’re using, gets the same speedy and reliable connection, which could hinder learning and affect the outcome of a student’s test. “If you’re first grader and you are learning to read and you’ve got a screen that takes 90 seconds to load, you may not be able to sit still that long,” Atkinson-Shorey said.

[RELATED READING: More School Districts Welcome Cell Phones in Class]

One of the main services DEN will try to provide is a spending resource so districts know just how much they can expect to pay to move online. The tool will compare and contrast different tech models, taking into account the tech requirements for BYOD, laptop carts, or computer labs.

“Early adopters went through all this the hard way, but there’s no reason for all of us to have to do that,” Atkinson-Shorey said.

The initiative is a boost for IT administrators at a time when social media networks are full of concerns that schools won’t be able to provide adequate broadband access in time for implementation goals of the Common Core. Some states are even seeking to delay implementation until they can get adequate tech support in place. As with all new launches, there will probably be glitches as schools role it out. The question will be whether schools are given a break if the technology doesn’t perform.

Flickr: Ganesha Isis

A consortium of science and education organizations has released the first set of science standards since the original set prepared by the National Research Council and the American Association for Advancement in Science 15 years ago. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) aim to incorporate the scientific community’s understanding of science as it has grown and changed.

The new NGSS standards represent the core scientific concepts that practicing scientists agree K-12 students should know by the time they graduate. The framework for the standards was developed by the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Achieve. Together they built compiled principals and solicited input from states about what pedagogy and curricular specifics to build in.

“Students need to understand how science works, the practices and the crosscutting concepts in order to be ready to assume their roles in a scientifically complex world,” said Frank Neipold, co-chair of the Climate Education Interagency Working Group at the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Neipold has worked on the standards in many capacities and sees them as vitally important to educating the next generation to think critically about how systems work together.

Twenty-six states helped write the standards, and while there is no obligation that states adopt them, many likely will. The standards focus on fewer core concepts, are meant to go deeper within each concept, and emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of science.

[RELATED READING: Five Amazing Videos That Show Why Science is Awesome]

The standards are organized in three dimensions: key concepts, crosscutting concepts, and practices. Key concepts are broadly important and teachable over a series of years, such as the subject of climate change, which can get more complex as students build upon their knowledge. The second dimension is crosscutting concepts, things that span the scientific disciplines like energy and matter, cause and effect or systems. Lastly, students will be expected to understand the practice of science, undertaking scientific inquiry and comparing the practices of science with those of engineers.

“The interesting and important part of the NGSS is that they really are about critical thinking in these cross cutting competencies,” said Don Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and leader of a project to implement the standards in Maryland and Delaware. “So I think teachers will really have the chance to help students think critically about these topics.”

While the NGSS are not part of the Common Core State Standards — those were developed under the auspices of federal government and focus only on math and literacy — there are some similarities. Proponents of both sets of standards say they’re meant to emphasize close reading of non-fiction tests, performance-based standards, and an integrated approach to learning across disciplines.

CLIMATE CHANGE INCLUDED

One of the more controversial aspects of the new science standards is the inclusion of climate change in the curriculum. “There was never a debate about whether climate change would be in there,” Heidi Schweingruber of the National Research Council told National Public Radio. “It is a fundamental part of science, and so that’s what our work is based on, the scientific consensus.”

Still, science teachers often find themselves pulled in to help bolster math and reading scores, leaving them with little time to teach science, let alone incorporate complicated new topics. Teaching climate change science can feel daunting to many teachers who don’t have a firm grasp of all the information, he said.

“We have not trained our teachers very well to work across disciplines,” Boesch said. Teaching climate change inherently requires integration of things like earth sciences, chemistry and systems. A changing climate will affect all parts of life. Teachers aren’t always comfortable teaching all the elements and will need to be trained.

[RELATED READING: Combining Robotics With Poetry? Art and Engineering Can Co-Exist]

The standards are meant to lead the student through a progression of concepts, providing building blocks early on that can scaffold more complicated concepts in higher grades.

“We as a nation have a real deep and multidimensional problem on our hands that has to involve education of our young people,” said Boesch on the subject of climate change. “We need to equip people to have the skills as well as the knowledge to deal with it.”

The new standards will also require a whole new emphasis on revamping science textbooks. “A lot of materials out there are sub-par,” Neipold said.

“Climate change is not a political issue and it’s not a debate,” said Mario Molina, deputy director for the Alliance for Climate Education. “It’s science, strongly researched and thoroughly vetted science. So our hope is that teachers will not see this as political debate.” He believes students have the right to study climate change as it unfolds, as well as solutions to the problem.

SimCity

As game-based learning gains momentum in education circles, teachers increasingly want substantive proof that games are helpful for learning. The game-makers at the non-profit GlassLab are hoping to do this with the popular video game SimCity.

GlassLab is working with commercial game companies, assessment experts, and those versed in digital classrooms to build SimCityEDU, a downloadable game designed for sixth graders. Scheduled to be be released in the fall of 2013, it builds on SimCity’s city management theme, but provides specific challenges to players in the subject of STEM.

“The big pain point we’ve heard from teachers is that they cannot entertain their kids to the level that they are being entertained outside of the classroom,” said Jessica Lindl, general manager of GlassLab. “They want to be able to create meaningful learning experiences and they just can’t compete with the digital tools their kids are accessing all the time.”

Teachers have been using the commercial version of SimCity as a classroom tool for a long time, but with the newest version recently released and the EDU version soon to follow, GlassLab is trying to convene an online community of educators already working in the space, asking them to think creatively about what the game could do, offering lesson plans, and helping teachers to collaborate and share ideas.

SimCityEDU grew out of research conducted by the MacArthur foundation on how gaming can mirror formative assessments [PDF] – measuring understanding regularly along the learning path, rather than occasionally or at the end of a unit, as is most common. Their research found that games gather data about the player as he or she makes choices within the game, affecting the outcome. In games, players “level-up,” moving on to higher levels when they’ve mastered the necessary skills; similarly teachers scaffold lessons to deepen understanding as a student grasps the easier concepts.

[RELATED READING: Money, Time and Tactics: Can Games Be Effective in School?]

SimCityEDU, funded by the Gates and Macarthur foundations, will provide assessments that are aligned with Common Core State Standards. The EDU version uses the same code as the commercial game, but with the addition of using students’ choices during challenges as a method of assessment. GlassLab is still working to develop all the challenges based on focus-group feedback on student interests, but the one challenge they know they’ll include focuses on the environment, based on positive feedback from the focus groups.

“These kids are fascinated by the environment,” Lindl said.

Students will be asked to conduct interviews and look at research to determine what kind of power plant to build in the town. As they play, taking photo documentation, interpreting the information they’ve gathered, drawing conclusions, graphing the data and finally making a decision, the game assesses each choice. Teachers will have a tool to see how each child’s play matches up against Common Core standards.

And game developers hope that the incremental data will help teachers know when to step in and offer more help. For example, if an interview contradicts scientific evidence, the student will have to discern bias, figure out how to weight the various pieces of evidence differently, and back up conclusions with data and text.

SimCityEDU will not go to market until third-party assessor, SRI International, has validated by testing students who’ve played the game using a completely different assessment tool to ensure the game works.

FOCUSED LEARNING VS. EXPLORATION

GlassLab plans to offer the downloadable game at little to no cost for schools and teachers, Lindl said. However, the clear narrative and objectives within SimCityEDU depart from other commercial games that have been appropriated by teachers — like Minecraft. That game offers a free-form experience that teachers can easily manipulate to serve their lessons, a quality many teachers like.

[RELATED READING: Teachers Transform Commercial Game for Class Use]

“We want teachers to be able to choose between a free exploration or something more focused,” Lindl said. But there’s a catch. If educators want to use the broader SimCity world for free-form exploration they’ll have to buy the commercial license – a cost of about $60. Getting both the focused and free-form experience could cost more than many educators are willing to pay.

Not all education experts agree that assessment should be built into games. “The game should be a place of play and experimentation,” said Henry Jenkins, a USC professor on the forefront of game-based learning. “Meta-gaming is where the learning could be without disrupting the ecology of the game.” The “meta-game” is the world outside the game often composed of fans who discuss what they are making in the game with one another, write fan fiction and in other ways continue to create material even when not playing.