Our guests includeDr. William Harner, superintendent of the Cumberland Valley School District, and Charles Zogby, senior vice president of k12 Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online curricula, programs and services. Zogby is a former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Education who oversaw the state takeover of the Philadelphia School District during the Ridge/Schweiker administrations. In an email he explained K12’s mission, “At its core, K12 Inc. is an education curriculum company that has built an Internet-, research-, and standards-based curriculum for grades K-12. Our curriculum is a blend of both traditional materials (textbooks, novels, science equipment, art supplies - all traditional materials and learning approaches) as well as online lessons delivered through an Online School that is supported by a robust learning management system." Two online charter schools in Pennsylvania - The Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School and Agora Cyber Charter School - use k12's curricula.
While k12 is a pioneer in melding technology and interactivity in learning, Zogby added, “Teacher supported and directed instruction is still at the core of our delivery model, but the technology allows for a much more individualized approach to student learning and educational attainment. K12 also manages innovative educational delivery models, from full-time virtual schools where students largely work from home, to hybrid or blended learning models that provide both virtual learning and place-based instruction, to classroom delivery models that deliver our curriculum directly into traditional classrooms using interactive whiteboards, the Internet, and projectors. Our hybrid models, including "second chance academies" that allow high school dropouts to come back into school and get their diplomas have attracted the greatest interest of late.”
Dr. Harner’s been getting national awards and headlines for bold initiatives at CV to boost gifted, and accelerated learning programs throughout the district. He's also been the target both of heated criticism by some parents and community members displeased with the pace and structure of the changes, and praise by parents and educators who argue the focus on high achievers has been too slow and too modest. (Full disclosure: I have three children in CV schools, some of whom are enrolled in the gifted/clustered courses.) Dr. Harner traveled last summer to China to observe that country's approach to elementary and secondary education. "I view education as critical to our national security," Dr. Harner told me. "Our kids must have a solid foundation in world languages and high-level STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses. It's simply vital if we are to ensure the security and prosperity of this country." Dr. Harner, a West Point grad, served in military leadership positions in Europe and Seoul, South Korea before transitioning to education. He has expanded world languages including Chinese to the middle school, noting that, "All Chinese students take English starting in elementary school." (A second delegation of CV personnel made a December visit to China.)
A major impetus for change at the CV district was a 2007 report, “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” by the National Center on Education and the Economy. The report stated fairly starkly the challenges facing American students and what it could mean for America's economic growth. “While our international counterparts are increasingly getting more education, their young people are getting a better education as well. American students and young adults place anywhere from the middle to the bottom of the pack in all three continuing comparative studies of achievement in mathematics, science, and general literacy in the advanced industrial nations.” Thirty years ago, the report explained, the U.S. claimed 30% of the world’s population of college students. In 2007, we were down to 14% and still falling.
More cause for concern, as the author Thomas Friedman wrote, technology has rendered the Earth “flat” when it comes to global competition. The 2007 NCEE study noted, “… a swiftly rising number of American workers at every skill level are in direct competition with workers in every corner of the globe. So, it matters very much that, increasingly, it is easier and easier for employers everywhere to get workers who are better skilled at lower cost than American workers.”
Even closer to home and just as alarming, statistics show that Pennsylvania’s students aren’t making the grade. One-third of all students are below standard in reading and math. As we pointed out in a Smart Talk program last year, PA Partnerships for Children did a study showing 45% - nearly half – of the students who graduate from Pennsylvania public high schools and receive diplomas cannot read and write at a proficient level. It became a source of contention in Harrisburg's mayoral race last fall.
Charles Zogby pointed out, “The PSSAs (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment) for 2007 show 90% of 4th grade students proficient in reading and 78% proficient in math, but results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP, known as the Nation's Report Card, shows only 40% of 4th graders proficient in reading and 47% proficient in math, a huge gap that is also reflected in 8th grade math and reading scores. So not only is the US picture rather discouraging but PA's place in a national context is worrisome for the long-term competitiveness and health of our Commonwealth.”
The Rendell administration takes exception to citing those figures. As the governor likes to point out, the Center for Education Policy, a national education research organization, recognized Pennsylvania as the only state to see increases in student achievement in elementary, middle and high school from 2002 to 2008. The PSSA results for 2009 showed more progress and Pennsylvania now has more than three-fourths of its students scoring at grade level in math and reading. Over the last seven years of the Rendell administration, spending on public education has jumped while the percent of students getting the lowest grade in math dropped by 63 percent in grade 5 and by 54 percent in grade 8. And, the Rendell team points out, the percent of students scoring on grade level in 8th grade has increased by almost 40 percent in math and reading since 2002.
Rather than panic or surrender over lackluster performance and bureaucratic inertia, the National Center on Education and the Economy outlines a series of steps the U.S. educational system can take to ensure that children are given a strong foundation for advancement and achievement. The key concept is that technology alone will not ensure American success. “It depends on a deep vein of creativity that is constantly renewing itself, and on a myriad of people who can imagine how people can use things that have never been available before, create ingenious marketing and sales campaigns, write books, build furniture, make movies and imagine new kinds of software that will capture people’s imagination and become indispensable to millions.”
It’s a sentiment echoed in a report from the Alliance for Excellent Education, headed by former West Virginia governor Bob Wise. “If you think about how much the world around us has changed just in the last twenty years, it becomes clear that the education sector is like a massive mainframe computer trying to fit itself into a smartphone world. The entrenched practices, governance structures, and low expectations are just not compatible with today’s world,” Wise wrote in a February report. “ … schools have been slow to embrace the transformative power of technology. Although computers are pervasive in schools, they tend to be used more like electronic textbooks—high-tech tools in a nineteenth-century system. Students know this: young people talk all the time about “powering down” when they enter the classroom.”
Wise argues that the bricks-and-mortar approach must be upended with technology no longer just an add-on but integrated into the core of students' educational environment. He claims America faces three looming crises in education: global skill demands versus educational attainment; a funding cliff; and a looming teacher shortage. And he believes online learning could ease all three. “The use of such technology will require a shift in the teacher’s role; he or she will no longer be the sole or major source of the knowledge imparted to students. Rather, students will take more responsibility for their own learning, and teachers will serve as facilitators and guides to the high-quality educational content that is now coming into the classroom from many sources," Wise wrote.
Charles Zogby, whose company stands to profit considerly by adopting such an approach, added, “The biggest change today is the demands of a globally competitive economy has shifted the mandate of public education from one of universal educational access to universal educational attainment, where the system is called on to ensure that every child, no matter their zip code, their ethnicity, the color of their skin, has access to a high quality public education that will enable them to succeed academically and acquire the skills that will allow them to achieve their full potential. That means an educational system that not only sets high expectations for all students, but one that is much more personalized to individual student needs, that offers more high quality choices and options to students and families, and is accountable for student learning. There is today a need to focus much more individually on the individual child's success and giving them what they need to succeed.”
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