Let's Hack Schools

For those in need of initiation. AERA is the American Educational Research Association, which oversees the hordes of educational researchers (and their work) nation wide and internationally. It is a prominent institution of research, and publishes a number of journals on the science and practice of education. 

This announcement, then is a big deal - one of the major research associations in the country will add an open-access journal. I could not be more excited! 

One of the nuances that often gets lost in discussions about student debt is that the biggest borrowers aren't necessarily the riskiest borrowers. There are many people who take out modest loans but have trouble paying them back, either because they fail to graduate or because their degree doesn't open many doors in the job market. 

A statistical case-in-point: According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 17 percent of all student borrowers are 90 days delinquent on their payments, yet only 11.2 percent of all loan balances are that far behind. That gap suggests there are lots of small-time debtors in trouble these days.

Looking at the geography of student borrowing teaches us a similar lesson. As part of its most recent report on household credit, the NY Fed has produced a neat pair of maps detailing which states have the highest education debt burdens and which have highest delinquency rates. The two pictures overlap less than you might expect.

I think a continued conversation on the topic of colleges is important. Does every student need to go to college? Is it a worthwhile investment? Are we saddling college students with the wrong information? Wrong skills? too much debt?

I think Starting a $30,000 / year job with $22,000 in debt with 11% API, is quite challenging. I do not have answers at the moment, so this is jsut a food for through.

As federal and state focus on early childhood education heats up, researchers like Stephanie Carlson of the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development are trying to measure the skills that form the foundation of young students' academic success.

Skills teachers report students need to be successful in the school transition, Carlson said, aren't related to knowing the alphabet or counting to 100, but to executive functions: the ability to concentrate and ignore distractions, remember and follow rules, transition from one activity to another, suppress aggression and get along with other students, and wait for turns or rewards.

"Executive function skills are critical for predicting, even in high-risk kids, which ones are going to go on and do well." Carlson said. "Even within a high-risk group, like homeless kindergarteners,resilient kidshave high executive function. This is independent of IQ."

Carlson is directing a project by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to develop a test of executive function for children from the ages of 2 to 5. In older children, executive functions tend to be measured individually—attention, reasoning skills, and self-control, for example—but Carlson saidexecutive function in preschoolerscan be more unified.

"There are marked changes in the preschool years," she explained at a research forum on the project earlier this month. "We become more reflective and less reflexive as we get older."

A fantastic blog post on Inside School Research about the best practices we can glean from the best research on preschool. As you may be aware, high quality early education offers by far the best bang for the buck - returning between $5 and $12 of public benefit (depending who you ask) for every $1 spent (over the life of the child that received the early education benefit.  That is some generous reward.

See also: Deviney and Bobbitt's editorial I wrote about previously 

The best specialists are those who see the bigger picture.

Let me change the tune a little, and focus on the science part of science of education.

Phillip Cohen, a Sociology Faculty at University of Maryland, posted a lovely editorial intended as a letter of advice for graduate students. In it, Cohen highlights the important of moving beyond specialization. This argument is especially important in intervention / evaluation work. When the goal is changing something "out there" there is inevitable outside influence that impacts the core model of interest. Here are two more poignant paragraphs:

It seems obvious, but bears repeating, that the best specialists are those who see their specialization as part of the bigger picture. The very act of identifying a narrow interest, and placing it in the proper context – if it is to be successful, and useful – requires broad understanding of the social context surrounding the substantive subject of the work. So breadth itself is an important value. Beyond breath, knowledge diversity is vital as well. That is, it is valuable not just to know about your own subject and the surrounding research, but also to dive deeply into other more narrow areas as well. To choose an analogy, athletes who specialize in tennis benefit from broadly conditioning their entire bodies. But they may also benefit – in tennis and in their other pursuits – from developing a high level of skill in a specific other sport, such as swimming or ping-pong. The insights gaining deep understanding in an area removed from one’s own primary research are not easy to identify in advance, but when such understanding is pursued with an open mind they are inevitable.

Briony Chown’s fourth graders at Explorer Elementary in San Diego use woodworking to build a welcoming room for an immigrant from a different time period, using primary interview research with recent immigrants.

Teachers love Maker Faire because they see how much it means to engage their students as makers. For Teacher Appreciation Week, we want to salute educators who bring the maker movement to kids in schools and in after-school programs. We believe making has the power to transform education and develop the potential of every child to create and innovate. Getting making into schools can be difficult so we’re particularly happy to applaud the efforts of pioneering educators who are leading the way. It’s important that these pioneers realize that they’re not alone.

.. then here is a map of each state's highest paid employee. We seem very content paying for employees that may generate revenue on the backs of unpaid student-workers, but deliver very little in terms of government services or education. Why is that? 

Poor Little Tiger Cub The first major study of tiger moms is out. The kids have worse grades, and they are more depressed and more alienated from their parents.

When Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mothercame out in 2011, it sparked controversyamong many people but especially psychologists and experts in  child development. The book, they felt, had lodged in the culture certain stereotypes about an Asian parenting style that was not well-studied or well-understood and certainly not ready to be held up as some kind of model.

Chua’s book was a somewhat tongue-in-cheekmemoirof her experiences raising her two daughters with her (non-Asian) husband, which involved hours of forced music practice every day, severe restrictions on extracurriculars, outright bans on social activities like sleepovers, and punishment and shaming on the rare occasions her children failed to attain their mother’s high expectations. Chua eased off as her kids grew older, and she admitted that she might have been wrong in some instances. (Mainstream media coverage portrayals were somewhatless nuanced). Nonetheless, the story of a Yale-professor mother who had pushed her child until she landed at Carnegie Hall seemed to confirm that Asian-American parents are tough, demanding—and they consistently producewhizzes. 

When Chua’s book first hit the transom, Su Yeong Kim thought, “Oh my God! I actually have data for this!” An associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, Kim had been following more than 300 Asian-American families for a decade when the book came out. In March, she published herresults; they will no doubt surprise Chua and her admirers. Children of parents whom Kim classified as “tiger” had lower academic achievement and attainment—and greater psychological maladjustment—and family alienation, than the kids of parents characterized as “supportive” or "easygoing.”

Source: Slate

When the Tiger Mom craze came about a lot of it sounded hollow and wrong to developmentalists.. Scaring kids into achievement, simply never worked in any other settings, could it really be that the science missed something? For decades a caring approach with firm limits nd open communication - Authoritative parenting - has been advocated as the best approach to parenting - could we have missed something as glaring as tiger moms?

Well, a new study by one of the faculty in my department shows that no, indeed, us developmentalists did not miss anymething - tiger parenting falls in line with what we already knew and falls short of other parenting styles. 

(Photo credit: Wikipedia) We're all talking about the "jobs of the future" and "winning the future" and transitioning to a "knowledge economy." Since predictions are hard, especially about the future, it's a good idea to look at some data. 

[...]

A key point here: The jobs of the future are only “low skilled” if you define “low skilled” as not requiring college. Being a good carpenter (56% growth, Jesus is still with us) or, for that matter, a good medical secretary (41% growth), takes smarts (actual smarts, not just book smarts), hard work, and dedication. 

Relatedly, the jobs of the future will be high-paying. It’s simply not true that all high-paying jobs require a college degree. It’s very very possible to make a very good living as a tradesman, because good tradesmen are–and always will be, unlike Fortran programmers and data entry clerks–in high demand. 

[...]

Center for Public Policy Priorities

Sarah and Matt Campsey of Austin recently faced some tough economic times. Sarah had to quit her job as a nurse to care for their son, who was born with a disability, while Matt was working hard to earn a promotion to become a full-time truck driver. Money was so tight after they had used up their small savings that Sarah said they had to choose between paying for food or rent. If they had the money, they never would have been forced to make impossible choices about equally important priorities.

When it comes to funding priorities for Texas children, legislators appear to be facing similar tough choices as they work to finalize the state budget. The Senate and House have proposed 2014-15 budgets that, at first glance, seem to highlight different priorities for Texas kids. For example, the House proposes more state money, about $1 billion more, for public education. And the Senate wants approximately $840 million more state dollars for Medicaid, the primary source of children’s public health insurance in Texas.

Traditionally, the House and Senate budget conference committee would start from this point, focusing on how much each side wins or loses, resulting in each chamber having only some, but not all, of their priorities funded — impossible choices about equally important priorities.

Fortunately, that does not have to be the starting point. Successful negotiation begins not by focusing on differences but rather on finding commonalities in the goals of each side.

Given the funding priorities they’ve identified, the two chambers would appear to have the same underlying priority — to improve the overall well-being of Texas’ children. The content of the conference committee’s negotiations should focus on this shared goal, not fighting over the differences.

Sure there is craft to science, one spends years in training about how to conduct a study that is valid, reliable, and relevant. But craft alone is not enough - there is art to elegant innovative ideas. Science, after all, is a creative endeavor, venturing places no one else has gone before.

Thus, quotes from important designers are very, very relevant. Co.Design has assembled a number of brilliant quotes, some of which I will use an an excuse to extol the virtues of new, risky science.

"The nature of process, to one degree or another, involves failure. You have at it. It doesn’t work. You keep pushing. It gets better. But it’s not good. It gets worse. You got at it again. Then you desperately stab at it, believing “this isn’t going to work.” And it does!" --Saul Bass

I think in recent years we, the scientists and the science-funding public, have become extremely risk aversive, expecting every research project to work, provide tangible benefits to the society, and be heralded as a great success story. However science is not simple or easy. This comic illustrates this point well:

However, risk aversive science is boring. It leads to mere refinements of old thoughts and slows progress down to a crawl. After all, we science cannot ever fail, we really are simply engineers, applying what is known in iteratively better ways. we are building iPhone6 .. not the original iPhone. 

"You approach each project searching for a dozen great ideas, not just one or two. After about seven designs, you realize there really are infinite ways to look at a problem. I now completely enjoy the process, though I’m keenly aware that all but one of those dozen great ideas will eventually be killed. It’s strangely liberating." --Gail Anderson

I think another analogy is apt here. Every new science idea, every new stab at solving a solution that is yet unsolved, can be viewed as a start-up. One slowly talks to potential partners and clients, refining her understanding of what is the problem and how to solve it ,refining the solution budding in the scientist's brain. Then, the idea is pitched, seeking support in the form of money and endorsements. Then the idea is actually implemented and tested. Refine, refine, refine and then see what happens. A great number of start-ups fail; a great number of science projects come back with disappointing results.

But would one argue that start-ups should stop taking risks, that start-ups should play it safe? Neither should science

"My work is play. And I play when I design. I even looked it up in the dictionary, to make sure that I actually do that, and the definition of “play,” number one, was “engaging in a childlike activity or endeavor,” and number two was “gambling.” And I realize I do both when I’m designing." --Paula Scher

A fantastic piece was published by a renowned Stanford Economist Sean Reardon detailing just how much of the inequality in school outcomes (e.g., achievement, test scores, college attendance) is due to factors way out of the schools' control, and more importantly how much of it lies in the the wealthy families running away from the middle-class families. 

Here is a poignant section: 

In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

Read the article at full HERE

One of the points made by Reardon is that the racial gap is now about half of the  family-income gap. Because of the economic climb of many non-White families, the gap in school outcomes is not driven by children of one race (children that also happen to be also poor) lagging behind well-off White children. 

This is true, but another way to look at family inequality spans beyond annual income. We can tally up all of the family's possessions, investments and other "assets" to calculate the family's wealth. Wealth is a tricky subject, because it accumulates over generations - children do not inherit their parents' pay cheks, but they can inherit the beach house, trust fund, and investments in stocks. A kid that "made it" out of a poor background can have income on par with her peers from better off families, but her wealth will lag. 

The Urban Institute today reported that the Wealth gap between races is five times the income gap. That is, over generations of living and working in U.S., the White families have accumulated incredible amounts of wealth - the role of this wealth is understood only in the most basic sketches, but this is what Urban Institute had to say: 

In 2010, white families averaged six times the wealth of black and Hispanic households ($632,000 versus $98,000 and $110,000, respectively), up from a 5-to-1 ratio in 1983. Wealth is total assets, such as bank and retirement accounts and home value, minus debts, including mortgages, student loans, and credit-card balances.

The income gap, by comparison, is much smaller. In 2010, the average household income for whites was $89,000, about twice the $46,000 average for black and Hispanic families and roughly the same ratio as in 1983.

As whites, blacks, and Hispanics age, their wealth trajectories—in absolute and relative terms—diverge sharply. Early in their wealth-building years (ages 32–40), white families in 1983 had an average net worth of $184,000. In 2010, near their peak wealth-building period (ages 59–67), their net worth was up to $1.1 million. In contrast, average black wealth rose from $54,000 to $161,000, while Hispanic wealth increased from $46,000 to $226,000.

Propelling this growing wealth wedge is the lower likelihood that blacks and Hispanics own homes and retirement accounts. For instance, in 2010, fewer than half of black and Hispanic families owned homes, while three-quarters of white families did.

Between 2007 and 2010, Hispanic families’ wealth plummeted 44 percent, due largely to falling home prices. Black wealth dropped 31 percent, a product of hits to their retirement assets and high rates of unemployment during the Great Recession (2007–09). White wealth skidded 11 percent.

“Wealth isn’t just money in the bank, it’s insurance against tough times, tuition to get a better education and a better job, savings to retire on, and a springboard into the middle class. In short, wealth translates into opportunity,” Signe-Mary McKernan, Caroline Ratcliffe, Eugene Steuerle, and Sisi Zhang wrote in “Less than Equal: Racial Disparities in Wealth Accumulation.”

Full report can be downloaded HERE

On test day for my Behavioral Ecology class at UCLA, I walked into the classroom bearing an impossibly difficult exam. Rather than being neatly arranged in alternate rows with pen or pencil in hand, my students sat in one tight group, with notes and books and laptops open and available. They were poised to share each other’s thoughts and to copy the best answers. As I distributed the tests, the students began to talk and write. All of this would normally be called cheating. But it was completely OK by me.

Here is an example of "hacking" mindset in instruction. The risks in trying something new are certainly high, and may things can go wrong. But without trying new things, well how would we ever make any progress.