The Role of Rigor

Earlier this month, the Huffington Post reported that "AP Exams Surge As Tools For High Schools Raising Standards." Having taught in a school where students were often placed in AP courses far beyond their demonstrated academic abilities, I am glad to see some reporting on the issue of who is, and should be, taking the AP.

Here is the familiar story of a disparity in AP achievement, in a nutshell:

Nationally, 56 percent of AP exams taken by the high school class of 2011 earned a 3 or higher, but there are wide disparities. The mean score is 3.01 for white students and 1.94 for blacks. In New Hampshire, almost three-quarters of exams earn a 3 or higher; in Mississippi, it's under a third. In the District of Columbia, more than half of exams score a 1. 

At Detroit's Mumford High School last year, none of 62 AP exams earned higher than a 1. But at the nearby Renaissance magnet high school, a quarter of the 113 AP exams earned a 3 or higher, and the school had the second most black students scoring 3 or higher in literature in the country.

The disparity in AP achievement is a reflection of the class disparities between rich and poor families, as well as rich and poor schools. Students in poor communities arrive in high school many years behind in basic academic skills. While every student should have access to rigorous courses, the rigor sought for struggling students should be growth, not a superman's leap.

I believe the AP serves as a useful tool for teachers to evaluate their local standards and align their courses to rigorous, relevant content and skills. I also believe that all students should face serious academic rigor (such as an AP class) during their high school years, even if they aren't ready for it. Having one or two extremely challenging classes, where students have to reach beyond what anyone thinks is possible, does help establish a clear benchmark for what college work looks like, and gives all students a chance to achieve an unlikely, but meaningful goal.

At the same time, disadvantaged students gain no advantage by suffering through multiple courses they are not prepared for, under high pressure conditions, only to score a failing grade on the exams. While failing can be a valuable learning experience, it should only happen when a reasonable chance at success is tied to the risk. Why isn't there more strategy playing out in high schools that bring AP tests to underprepared students? Doing this successfully requires investments in curriculum, remediation, innovative teaching methods, excellent teachers, excellent resources, student counseling and parent investment. Otherwise, we are leaving students to drown.

The Next Step for Edtech

A disruptive product has such a strong impact on an industry that it renders obsolete the current market offerings.  For example, the invention of the telephone disrupted the communications market and more recently the iPad disrupted the market for personal computers.  Introducing innovations like these represents the pinnacle of success for startup businesses. For social entrepreneurs, disruptive innovation typically involves disrupting cycles of poverty, disease, ignorance or violence.

I have been knee deep in the start-up “space” now for close to a year, and I’ve increasingly wondered why venture capital and media attention seem to flow so steadily to startups offering products that are so… pointless. Clearly investors see a potential handsome return in a neat 3-5 year time frame. Nevertheless, the long-term viability (more than ten years) of a company offering a digital product with limited social impact presents neither an opportunity for social impact nor economic sustainability.  The social entrepreneur, who focuses on these long term goals, has a particularly hard time gaining attention or capital because a disruptive innovation for profit is easier to find than disruptive innovation that advance the double (or triple) bottom line. 

There are countless companies in the education space, and many of them are very exciting. Friends of mine at Kickboard and Jumprope have created management systems that really do meet an important need. Companies like BetterLesson offer a revolutionary platform for teachers to share resources. However, there are far more companies that merely work around the edges. Whether or not an edtech startup is developing a disruptive innovation or not, the education market typically presents difficult challenges to the startup entrepreneur.

Despite regulatory and cultural obstacles to systemic change, some school systems have ushered in new frameworks for experimentation. The city of New Orleans has provided a unique testing ground for many new startups due to the large number of charter schools that sprung up in the aftermath of Katrina.  Charter schools have the independent authority to choose their own curricula and teaching methodologies, allowing startups to enter the market there with new teaching products that otherwise might not have had a chance to reach the classroom. The changes taking place in New Orleans may or may not ultimately prove better for that community, but the increased level of innovation is undeniable. 

In my last post I discussed the increasing importance of technology in our society.  Social entrepreneurs have recognized this trend and are leveraging technology to improve education.  My own venture, LLESS, aims to introduce a new model of learning that draws from lessons in game design.  While technology is a critical component of our approach, we also recognize the importance of a sophisticated pedagogy involving discussion, debate, deep literacy, research and critical analysis. That’s why we have written an original curriculum guide for using our products, so that technology and gamification, two hot trends in education, serve as a facilitator or catalyst, not a replacement, for learning.

The next generation of Edtech, if good teachers are empowered to drive the market, will feature innovations that enhance curriculum and praxis, not simply classroom management or data collection.

Computer Science, Coding and the Future Economy

I have grown fond of saying "every company is a technology company." While we may tend to characterize different companies by the products they sell, the manufacturing, marketing, logistics, finance, security and corporate governance of any institution are now intimately connected to, and dependent on, technology.

What does that mean for our education system, and how we raise our kids? For starters, I think it means that a core requirement in middle and high school, along with English, history, math and science, needs to be computer science. We can't afford for the next generation to be dependent on technology, but to have no idea how it works. Not only that, but knowing how computers works can be enormously empowering--economically, politically, socially and intellectually. Given that native English speakers have a distinct advantage in learning computer science, because so much of the computer language is based on English vocabulary and syntax, it seems like a no-brainer investment to make in our core curriculum.

Secondly, the rapid technology revolution means we need to leverage new tools like cloud computing, tablets, smart phones, broadband wireless, web applications and wikipedia to make our schools more efficient, education more engaging and personalized, and the objectives of education more directly relevant to student lives. How should this look, managerially? As a staff composition? Schools should not only have designated "tech people" to maintain the network, or computer teachers teaching to type. Schools should have on site programmers building new applications, side-by-side with teachers, so that the "edtech" of the next generation is tech that is specified and customized to real needs of teacher from all subjects.

I have had the great experience of just completing the first version of my own web-based software application for world history classrooms. I worked with a designer, a UI/UX expert, a back-end engineer, and a programmer. We started with about a month of conversation about the requirements for the database schema and the front-end user interface. After building the database using PostgresQL and drawing mockups for the main user pages, our programmer got to coding the program using Django, a Python web framework.

This was my first experience managing a software development project, and I feel I grew more professionally and intellectually doing this than doing many other tasks over the past few years. Moreover, the product we created, because of careful planning and fluid communication, is a reflection of over five years of my work teaching and seeking solutions to easily assess students for the purpose of differentiation. Now anyone using this app can have an incredibly powerful set of data to inform instruction. I suspect, and our research will soon reveal, that it will transform the learning in classrooms that use it.

It's time to take the technology revolution to our schools; not to make money (though that will obviously happen), but to make a difference in students' lives.

Fate of Civilizations: Glory is Now Available for Pre-Order!

The game-based learning program I have been working on since July, Fate of Civilizations, now has a project on Kickstarter. We are looking to crowd fund the first publication of the game Glory, which we will be ready to ship in September.

Gamers, teachers, parents and students: please pledge to help make Glory a reality for kids and gamers across the globe. Glory is fun and you learn while you play. It is based on AP, NYS Regents, and Common Core standards; it has mechanisms for continuous game play, so players can unlock new powers, track their progress and shape the game itself. We have developed a curriculum guide and online web application that accompany the game, making this a complete offering for a teacher looking to drive achievement and improve efficiency and engagement in the classroom.

Here is a link to the project:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/970345467/fate-of-civilizations-presents-glory-a-history-boa

We'd love to have you as a backer!

Thinking about the Future

Where do you think the United States, and the world, will be in 5 years? 20 years? 50 years? 2,000 years?

Thinking about the future is such an interesting, and yes, important exercise.

Yet while students often take some 8 years of required history courses, why don't we mandate the study of the future? Is it because we don't have concrete "material" as the focus of examination? Is it because we don't have a "theory" of the future?

I think a history course provides an excellent platform to engage students in a conversation about the future. Unfortunately, the future is not part of the standards, and students only learn about the future through disorganized and shallow attempts at application and relevance. 


It is time that social studies in K-12 education develop a more robust discipline of futurism. At the core of such a course, the following enduring understandings might be a useful starting place:

• Nothing about the future is certain.
• Projections about the future can influence present action; in part for this reason, they are almost always wrong. 
• Patterns, trends, and data can point to likely scenarios in the future. 
• When the future arrives, it becomes the present. It is thus always out of reach. 

A discipline of futurism would help students determine what kind of careers they might assume; how long term planning can be personally beneficial; how to evaluate hysterical and cynical claims about fate; and how individuals shape their own destinies. 

A study of the future would serve as a valuable interdisciplinary experience. History provides a sense of possibility and limitation of change and continuity; literature and art expand the imagination and show how people in the past imagined their future; math and science teach how to evaluate the past and present to predict and shape the future. 

Students need to dialogue to form the narrative of their personal concerns and ambitions. Talking about and studying the future might offer a very interesting way to accomplish this.