The Early Bird Gets the Worm

“Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week” - Jay-Z 

As some have heard me say, I’m not a big fan of “impossible.”  I do not believe anything is impossible.  OK, maybe at 46 it might be impossible for me to ever dunk a basketball, but few things fall into that category.  When we discuss the achievement gap, I sense impossibility in what I read more than I sense what may be possible.  I hear experts talking about how it’s impossible to close the achievement gap.  I understand.  It seems daunting.  However, I have great disrespect for impossible and know for certain that closing the achievement gap is possible.  We just have to decide to do it.  Things aren’t going to get better on their own.  In fact, through inaction, they will continue to get worse.

A few months ago I read a intriguing article in the New York Times by David Brooks (The Opportunity Gap) about some major differences between how rich kids and poor kids are being raised.  At one point in the not so distant past, the differences weren’t as stark as they are today.  What I took away from the article is if we are serious about providing opportunities to children growing up in poverty, we are going to need a surge of early education solutions for both pre and after school programs in disadvantaged communities.  It is possible.

Just a few decades ago, there wasn’t a significant difference between how parents with college degrees and parents with high school degrees raised their children.  Today however, college educated parents are investing a lot more in their children’s education, especially in the early years, and of course, parents with high school degrees haven’t been able to keep up.  

I’m old enough to remember the concept that working class parents were more “fortunate” than white-collar parents when it came to family life because they were able to spend more time with their children.  I remember the notion that parents who were “blue collar” or “working class” had a family advantage.  In other words, they might not be rich, but they were able to spend more time with their kids. On the other hand, “white-collar” jobs came with a widely understood assumption that the responsibilities of those roles meant you would be sacrificing family time.  In fact, the data shows working class parents spent more time with their kids than those white-collar parents. 

Today, this concept is not only no longer true, it’s been dramatically reversed.  Today, college educated parents spend an hour more with their children than working class parents do, especially in the first three years of life, when it counts the most. 

Rich parents are not only spending more time with their kids, they are spending more money.  According to the Times article, over the last 40 years high income parents have increased the amount they spend on their kids’ enrichment activities, like tutoring and extra curricular activities, by $5,300 a year (adjusted for inflation.)  Low income parents, who obviously have a problem investing at the same level in their children, have been only been able to increase their extra expenditures by just $480 a year and if my own personal experience is an example, even that $480 is a immense sacrifice.  It usually means something else isn’t being purchased or paid for.

There is also evidence that in the early 70’s, kids from the bottom income bracket participated in almost the same number of activities as kids from the upper income bracket.  Today, it’s not even in the same ball park.  Rich kids are twice as likely to play sports after school.  They are much more likely to participate in non sport activities like theater, social clubs, yearbook team, volunteer programs, etc.  They are also more likely to attend religious services and participate in religious programs. 

The disadvantage can literally be heard.  Children in middle and upper class families hear an average of 15 million more words than children in working class families.  Children of families on welfare hear 30 million less words.  By the time a child is 4 years old, there is an 18-month to two year academic gap between a poor kid and a rich kid.

What we invest in early education will say a lot about how serious we are in trying to close the achievement gap.  I believe in education’s power to provide opportunities to our children living in poverty.  However, it gets a lot harder to make this a reality if children are coming into our schools so far behind.  

In order to make sure education disrupts poverty, we need a surge of services and programs to unlevel the playing field when and where it counts the most.  We need to start early in a child’s life.  We need to make sure kids aren’t coming to school already at a disadvantage.  This is a solvable problem, one which we must and can take action against.  It is possible to close the achievement gap.  We just have to decide if we are going to close it or not, and then own up to the decision we make.  Impossible is just justification for not taking the right action.

Well hello 21st Century, how long have you been standing there?

“21st century breakdown
I once was lost but never was found
I think I am losing what's left of my mind 
To the 20th century deadline…” 
- Green Day

I’m not a big fan of the phrase, “21^st Century skills” and it’s used quite often in the education world.  For example, you might hear someone say, “We need to teach kids 21^st century skills.”  You will also find, “We will need students to graduate with 21^st century skills.” 

One reason why I don’t like the phrase is because I’m not really sure what century we’re in right now and that’s a little embarrassing.  I also don’t like it because it implies some set of skills students will need in the future.  I contend that students need these skills right now and they need to start building them as soon as they get to school.

You find variations of this list of skills in numerous places.  The Partnership for 21st Century Skills uses names like “learning and innovation” skills or “life and career” skills.  My friend Tony Wagner calls them “survival skills” in The Global Achievement Gap and includes elements like “critical thinking and problem solving,” and “effective oral and written communication” skills.  There isn’t just one correct list, they are all appropriate.  In my talks, I break them down into four themes (which of course include elements of all types of skills).  I call them communication, collaboration, problem solving, and analyzing and assessing information.  I’m not going to cover all four here (that would be a very long post) but I’ll start with the first one, communication.  I will follow up with the other topics in future posts, maybe in the 21^st century!

Communication

How we communicate has evolved over time and in the last 20 years, it has dramatically changed.  In the last five years, it’s just been transformed.  When she started college, my daughter and I had to have a communication meeting.  We were having so many misunderstandings and communication fails that we had to come up with a system to deal with the expectations we had for each other.  This wasn’t an issue when I was in college.   When I had to communicate with my mother, I had one choice with three potential outcomes.  I walked over to the hallway payphone to place a long distance phone call.  The first potential outcome was that she picked up the phone and I talked to her.  The second one was a busy signal, and I just hung up.  The third option was pretty much like the second one.  If she wasn’t home, the phone rang and rang, and eventually I hang up (she didn’t have a máquina). 

My daughter and I had a much more complex system to work through.  If it’s information she thinks I need but does not require immediate attention, she emails me (i.e., here are my classes and tuition is due next month.)  If it’s information she wants to share, wants feedback on, or needs my attention that day, she texts me (i.e., hey when you get a chance, let me know if we are going shopping this weekend, I need stuff.)  If she needs my immediate attention, she calls me and if I don’t answer, she follows up with a text (i.e., I need money in my account, I’m starving!)  And how does she find out where I am in the world at any given moment?  Yes, she checks my Google+, Facebook, or Twitter status.  By the way, for those of you who are “friends” with your kids, have you talked about expectations?  I am sure your daughter has given you the, “mom, please do not post any comments to my status updates” plea.  Have you set your communication expectations with your kid?  Are you going to wait until she posts a status like, “have to take my mother to her doctor’s appointment.  She is getting warts removed from her feet and I have to drive her.”  How we communicate matters and it will continue to be even more important.

I remember thinking about how communication was changing during my senior year in college.  You see, I was from the WordPerfect 5.1 generation.  I saw the new Windows 3.1 being adopted by the underclassmen and I was so thankful to be getting out of there!  I didn’t think I would be capable of managing the new communication expectations that were going to come with those new capabilities.  I was a dot matrix printer communicator, with lots of words and maybe a few tables.  I was an overhead projector presenter, where I would type big WordPerfect words and copy them onto overhead transparency paper.  I would hand draw pie charts with my trusty Sharpie marker.  I didn’t think that would be acceptable in the new Windows 3.1 world.

I assumed students would be required to have professional looking presentations with pictures and sound and other elements I didn’t have the skill set for.  They would be colorful and vibrant.  As this capability grew, I believed the expectations would grow more intense.  By the time my daughter was in high school, I thought she would be expected to have a live interview with the researcher she was writing about in the middle of her presentation.

The truth is we haven’t really raised the bar on communication and haven’t taken in all the technological and social changes that have taken place in.  Every semester, I am asked by a fellow professor (yes, I teach classes at ASU every couple of semesters) who teaches an MBA class at ASU.  Each semester, a group of students are assigned the Google business case and they are required to do a class presentation on it.  I sit in as their guest and help review their presentation and answer questions.  What happens during the presentation stopped surprising me many semesters ago because it happens every time.  This class of MBAs who are supposed to be the future leaders of industry takes the business case, regurgitates it point by point in 20 slides, each with six bullet points.  In other words, they present their WordPerfect made transparency paper on an overhead projector.  Talk about automating bad communication.

Our students need to effectively express themselves.  They need to learn how to write complete complex sentences.  They need to create original thought and learn how to share it in everything from full blown white papers through 140 character tweets.  They need to learn how to get effective feedback in various formats.  They need to learn how to take complex ideas and communicate them to multiple audiences, including considerations for global meaning and cultural differences.  They need to learn to communicate using varies media and develop strategies for how to send out effective targeted communication. 

These skills have to be built into the new learning models we are creating.  We don’t have to teach them as separate lessons.  It is about time that we raise the communication expectations of our students.

District Administration Interview

I haven't been able to post a new blog post in a few weeks due to all the traveling I've been doing and the fact that I was writing posts for other publications.  Here is one of them.  It is a follow up interview to a presentation I did at a District Administration Leadership Summit here in Phoenix.  There is a link to the video of the presentation at the end of this post.  I don't know if the word "invigorating" has ever been used to describe me.  Load mouth yes...invigorating not so much...

Q&A: With Jaime Casap, Senior Education Evangelist, Google

A follow-up to Casap's invigorating September DALI Summit keynote

Publication Date: 

November, 2012

 At the September District Administration Leadership Institute Summit in Phoenix, Ariz., Jaime Casap, chief education evangelist, Google, Inc., in his presentation, got the audience thinking about educational vision and where we need to be with regard to creating a learning environment that brings out the best in every child. We wanted to continue this critical conversation, so we followed up with Casap to find out how districts can jump-start their shift to a technology-pervasive learning environment.

What are three priorities K12 administrators need to make when it comes to technology?

The first would be broadband access. Our education system is preparing students for a world where the internet is ingrained into higher education, business practices, and our daily lives in general. Broadband access lets teachers take advantage of those tools and exposes students to the type of learning and working environment they will encounter in the future.

The second is learning to leverage the power and prevalence of the web to create a learning platform. As educators, we are starting to understand the impact the web can have. Videos, applications, interactive content, and knowledge bases make the world’s information accessible from multiple devices 24/7.  

And the third priority is putting equipment in the hands of teachers and students so they can access the rich content of an ever-expanding web. School administrators need to choose devices that not only give students and faculty access to that content, but that are nearly invisible so that the focus remains on the teaching and learning, not on the technology.

Of all the technologies available for K12, which category do you like the best for schools?

I always look for opportunities to emphasize the potential of the web as a common learning platform. Although some wouldn’t call the web “technology,” I certainly do. There used to be clear lines between technologies. You had hardware, software, applications. More and more, all technology is web-based.

What is one way superintendents and teachers can begin to think differently about facilitating education through technology that would be quick and easy and helpful right out of the gate?

School leaders have to look at technology not just in terms of how it can help transform educational practices and models in the future, but also in how it can help us today. If you can look for just two ways technology can help you do your job better, you will create a pattern of looking for more. Eventually, you will start to see how technology can be a catalyst to transforming education. There are hundreds of way teachers and administrators can quickly use technology and the web to improve their day-to-day work.

Other than DALI and District Administration, which magazines/websites/conferences would you recommend for superintendents and administrators to regularly review/attend?

I think the most important conferences that superintendents and administrators can attend are the local ones in their own backyards. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with superintendents and principals who ask me for case studies of schools that are doing great things with technology. More often than not, I’m able to introduce them to schools across the street! Getting together with their peers in the same state and talking with each other about what they are doing with technology in education and the web as a learning platform can go a long way!

Watch a video of Jaime Casap's presentation here.

Ghettosuperstar

“Ghetto superstar, that is what you are

Comin' from afar, reachin' for the stars

Run away with me, to another place…”
- Mya

I recently participated in a Google Hangout interview for a podcast from my home office in Phoenix.  On my wall behind my desk, and in clear view of any video call I’m on, hangs big wooden hand made letters.  They spell “GHETTOSUPERSTAR.”  I was asked about it during the interview and I thought the explanation needed a little more context.  The letters were a Father’s Day gift from my creative daughter who lovingly carved them with a table saw.  The project took her weeks to complete and I’m actually surprised, and very thankful, she still has all her fingers. 

I acquired the nickname while I was at Accenture (when it was still called Andersen Consulting).  On many Fridays, I used to write “Jaime rant” emails (before we called them blogs) that I shared with my friends at the firm.  A particular one I wrote, “why I was staying at Andersen,” was a reaction to the number of ‘goodbye’ emails we were all getting from fellow consultants leaving and joining the thousands of start-ups that were booming in the middle of the tech bubble.  I wrote a ‘fake’ email about my decision to stay at the firm and included all the reasons why I decided to stay.  Those I sent it to must have liked it because they forwarded it to their friends and networks.  Before I knew what was happening, it was being read and forwarded by thousands of consultants all over the world.  By Wednesday, the CEO had read it and he decided to forward it to all 70,000 employees with his thoughts on it.  It was a stunning “Jerry Maguire” experience and something I will never forget!  I had to respond to thousands of emails from consultants all over the world.

One of those first email forwards that was passed around and ended up in the inbox of many employees, was from a close friend who added to the forward, “from my friend Jaime Casap, the Ghetto Superstar,” referring to my background and to a song that was hot and all over the radio that summer.  Before I knew it, I started seeing it in emails and hearing it in meetings.

Nicknames come and go (and I had several in my life) but I still use the Ghettosuperstar one because for me,  it has come to symbolize that I should always remember where I came from and how I should always be proud of it.  For the longest time I hid where I came from or how I grew up.  I didn’t lie, I just never talked about it.  I felt people would look at me differently or think of me less if they knew my story.  Speaking to lots of other professionals who grew up like I did, I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

Whenever I get the chance to talk to a class or a school of students, especially kids growing up in poor urban areas, I take it!  I will always try and make it work (even if we have to do it via video).  Students in these schools get to hear from guest speakers every once in a while at occasions like career days, or parent events.  They get to hear what it takes to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a firefighter.  They get to listen to how important education is and how hard they have to work if they want to succeed.  I like to talk to them because I am someone who knows exactly what they are going through.  I lived exactly as they live and it’s important for them to hear from "one of their own," to think, "if he made it, then I can also make it!"  

Of course I start with the “what it’s like to work at Google” story.  Students love to hear these stories.  I get a chance to convince them all to go into computer science, engineering, or any of the sciences.  I tell them that if they work hard and get a great education, the payoff in the end will be well worth it.  I do this while I show them slides of people playing volleyball, playing pool, or writing scooters in the office (not something I would recommend by the way – ask me why if you see me).  I get them pretty excited about the possibility of developing a set of skills that create useful applications millions use or solve problems.  Before I start, I always ask them, “how many of you want to be engineers?” It never fails.  Maybe one hand go up, if I’m lucky.  When I’m done, I ask again and all the hands shoot straight up.  One of my favorite memories is of a seven grader who added, “I want to be one RIGHT NOW!”  We need to continue to beat the science drum any chance we get!  We all know the high paying careers of the future will require skills in the sciences.  More importantly, we want to create the entrepreneurs who will create the next 100 million jobs!  These science skills are critical to all our students.

The other reason I talk to students directly is to give them a pep talk.  I believe there are some critical messages they need to hear.  From my own experience, I know they don’t get to hear these messages enough.  I tell them that they should be proud of who they are and where they are from.  I tell them that some folks have low expectations on whether they will succeed and that their motivation should be to prove them wrong.  I tell them that their experiences, what they see in their neighborhood, and the lessons they learn on the street, will all be competitive advantage when they get older.  I tell them that their cultural background will be unique in whatever field they chose to go into.  I tell them that they will have a different perspective, that they will look at problem solving and creativity from a unique point of view.  I tell them to work hard, get a great education, and be successful.  I tell them to go out in the world and be ghetto super stars.

Desks shown to harm student education

“So no matter what you been through, no matter what you into

No matter what you see when you look outside your window

Brown grass or green grass, picket fence or barbed wire

Never ever put them down, you just lift your arms higher

Raise 'em 'til your arms tired let 'em know you here

That you struggling, survivin', that you gon' persevere

Yeah, ain't nobody leavin', nobody goin' home

Even if they turn the lights out, the show is goin' on”  

- Lupe Fiasco 

It seems like there is no shortage of articles that talk about how technology doesn’t improve education.  The focus is usually around the impact of the technology on test scores.  The question these articles answer is this: does the use of technology in the classroom improve test scores?  The methodology they use to answer this question is simple.  They look at any school who has put “technology” into some of their classrooms, they wait a school year, and then they compare last year’s test scores with this year’s test scores.  They look at the scores and conclude that the use of “technology” doesn’t improve test scores, therefore the impact of the technology on education at best is flat.

For some reason I still really can’t understand, the New York Times used this simple erroneous methodology and argument in a bunch of education technology articles last year.  This surprised me.  As a long time subscriber (I’ve been getting the hard copy of the Sunday Times dropped on my doorstep since I can remember…I would shut off cable before I stopped my NYTs if I had to choose), I expect so much more from the nation’s standard of journalism.  I asked myself on more than one occasion, why would the New York Times simply ask the wrong questions? 

Everyone I regard in the education and the education technology space knows that technology doesn’t improve education outcomes.  They all recognize that great education improves education, not technology, or anything else for that matter.

Last year, the New York Times wrote no articles about how school lighting doesn’t improve test scores.  They wrote no articles on how the use of text books, a $8 billion dollar annual expenditure by the way, does not improve test scores.  Can you imagine the New York Times blaming the textbook industry for our nation’s appalling dropout rate?  Without even having to search, I am confident the New York Times did not write a single article on how the use of desks in the classroom do not improve student test scores.   Why is that?  It’s pretty simple actually.  It is clear all these things are just tools we use to enable education.  The use of a computer in a classroom is as powerless as a desk in improving test scores unless it is used in support of a great educational model. 

We don’t talk about desks the way we talk about computers.  We don’t go to desk conferences or develop desk implementation plans.  We don’t have desk professional development plans.  We don’t think about the question of equity when it comes to desks.  We would never say, “we only have budget for 90 desks but have 300 students.  We’re going to have to figure out which students stand all day.”  We don’t question the need of desks in the classroom and I would argue they are more detrimental to education than other tools we use.  For example, we now have enough evidence that shows sitting all day is bad for you.  This is why you are seeing an explosion of stand up desks in offices across the country.  Desks also create this individualized island, designed to fit in rows and face forward, which creates what I call “peer barriers” and limits collaboration with other students.  Finally, the way they are designed, they are perfectly made to fall asleep on.  Where’s the New York Times article on that story?

The reason why you don’t find articles about the impact of desks on test scores is because it’s a ridiculous correlation.  The use of laptops in the classroom, like the desks, have nothing to do with test scores.  Only great education directly effects test scores (let’s leave the argument as to why we shouldn’t even be talking about test scores for another post).  When used as an enabling tool, laptops, the web, smart boards, tablets, and anything else we call “technology” has an enormous impact on education. 

There is plenty of data that supports the use of technology as an enabling tool.  For example, In a study called, “Intertwining Digital Content and One-on-One Laptop Environment in Teaching and Learning: Lessons from the Time to Know Program” (I appreciate how they like to keep the names of these studies as short as possible), (2012 Journal of Research on Technology in Education), the correlation between good education and technology is clear.  The study looked at how one-to-one computing programs effected teaching and learning practices as well as student learning achievements.  The study found consistent and highly positive outcomes in student math and reading achievement.  They also found higher student attendance, and decreased disciplinary actions.

As in other studies, this one showed that a technology enabled learning environment can more effectively promote “social-constructivist educational goals, such as higher-order thinking skills, learning motivation, and teamwork.”  To me, the highlight of this study wasn’t the increase in scores or how the technology helped engage students.  To many of us, that just makes sense.  The highlight of this study is how they emphasized the following: “to achieve this change, a school system must go through major processes.  It requires setting new educational objectives, preparing new curricula, developing digital instructional material aligned with new learning standards, designing a new teaching and learning environment, training teachers, creating a school climate that is conducive to educational technology, and so on.”  In other words, it’s like we used to say in the consulting world I spent six year in, “whatever you do, don’t help your clients automate bad processes, you’re just helping make bad things happen faster.” 

The other key component you find in good education technology studies is the duration of the study.  Researchers are starting to recognize that the real benefits and any significant change start to appear over a length of time.  In other words, even when you fix everything in the education model, it takes a few years to start seeing dramatic shifts in improvement.  A six month study isn’t good enough.   

We shouldn’t be teaching technology, we should be using technology to teach.  If we are using technology correctly, it should be invisible.  When I talk about my work and the projects I’m involved in, I never talk about how I used my tools.  The tools are just there.  Just like it is for us, the technology should be part of the support structure.  The potential benefits are tremendous.   Lots of studies like the one quoted above show that technology is ideal in supporting and enabling a learner-centric environment.  In these environments, students feel critical things like autonomy, engagement, and purpose.  They feel ownership over what they learn and how they learn it.  This type of environment clearly leads to students who are involved in their learning and more importantly, are willing and able to learn.  With this autonomy, students learn at their pace and teachers serve as facilitators and not as knowledge towers.  Technology can help these environments by giving students the opportunity to work and learn collaboratively with other students to solve problems and create and share new ideas.   We can produce and implement new creative assessment tools that promote learning, making sure students are involved in constructing their own self and peer driven assessments. 

These are just some of the possibilities with using technology in education.   Until we stop seeing technology as a nice to have, or as the line item in the budget that gets cut because it is “outside of learning goals,” we will not be able to fully realize it’s potential value.  We would never dream of building a new school with air-conditioning on only two floors or electricity in only three of the four buildings.  Until we start seeing broadband as electricity, and computing capabilities as desks, we are a long way from that realization.