Thoughts from the Stair Stepper

The Ohio Grantmakers collaboration continues with the hope that a document with a list of practical recommendations to improve schools in Ohio will soon be ready. I am hopeful that the efforts of this task force of varied professionals will produce anything of consequence. It is a very difficult task to gather people whose vision for a public education system that will meet the needs of students in the next 20 years (forget the notion of 21^st century – that is an absurdly long period of time to envision educational change). To many are wedded to “fixing” a system that is not producing results and as a result, there is a palpable anxiety about market forces that are changing the landscape of teaching and learning. Not using or understanding technological tools, these professionals (and too many teachers for that matter) fear what is coming and hunker down to what they know as safe. At a recent conference of Philanthropy Roundtable, Chester “Checker” Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation hosted a panel discussion called “Rebooting the Education System with Technology.” Mr. Finn mentioned his conversation with Clayton Christensen about his book Disrupting Class. Although Mr. Finn praises the book vision, scope and very realistic assessment of where the demands for learning are moving, he considers Mr. Christensen to be remarkably naive to think this vision will be implemented by any State Department of Education. The bureaucracy is just too ossified.

One hope for our set of recommendations lies on legislation called the Innovative Schools Act 2008 in Colorado calling for the establishment of school innovation zones. In short, the legislation is intended to create and foster zones (districts?) that will be relieved of typical State imposed restrictions on access to technology, hiring and firing policies and the like. It looks a little like a charter school but I have learned that in Ohio Charter remains a blasphemous concept. Whatever one calls them, these zones have the potential to become the focus of creativity in learning within a public school system.

Although I think the idea of innovation zones is worthy of pursuit, I would suggest the State would have to put into place a sophisticated support network that would connect these zones of innovation with the purpose of sharing ideas, strategies and programs that work with the effort to bring them to scale. Philanthropy has funded “innovative” projects and schools that have proven effective in remediation and getting children from underachieving districts to succeed in high school and college. Typically, these are schools outside the standard public school structure. The problem is that without and adequate infrastructure to connect and support these systems, there has remained an obstacle to seeing these programs brought into the structure of public schooling.

The Harvard Business Review November 2008 issue includes an article entitled, “Teaming Up to Crack Innovation and Enterprise Integration. The audience is presumable large businesses with many divisions. It provides a map for establishing viable working innovation teams and centers within the company so as to foster innovation without disrupting too much of the core business. In some ways it respects the standard 70—20—10 model i.e. 70% revenue for core business; 10% administrative and costs and 20% earmarked for innovation related to the core business. Innovation is difficult enough for businesses. Without bold and brave leadership, innovation in the public sector will be virtually impossible, which is why I think Checker Finn makes a serious point.

The article by Messers Cash, Earl and Morison states that, “…business innovation and integration have two things in common – both are still ‘unnatural acts’

Businesses are better at stifling innovation than at capitalizing on it, better at optimizing local operations than at integrating them for the good of the enterprise and its customers. The larger and more complex the organizations, the stronger the status quo can be in repelling both innovation and integration.

Herein marks an interesting parallel to philanthropy and public schools. Philanthropy as a sector is great at setting up “pockets” of innovative projects and in many cases supporting successful schools that work. When reporting these successes to the public sector, public school leaders repel those concepts, often fueled with activist organizations like teachers unions to tell people why things like successful charter schools or faith-based enterprises rob the system of monies. Try introducing innovative technological solutions in schools and many will not participate in the training that is inevitable required unless stipends are provided. Then there is the force of the “tech guys” who will provide a million reasons why school-based servers cannot and should not be open to the internet. Leaders, like governors and State Superintendents of schools who do not understand the technology and/or innovations will act similarly to the CEO’s described in the article. They allow the status quo to repel both innovation and integration.

But here comes the hopeful news. The point of the article is to provide businesses with a model to address the challenge. Fostering innovation within a large system requires “active technology-enabled agencies – to overcome obstacles, focus effort and let the unnatural acts become more natural. Without such agencies, innovation and integration won’t spread far enough or fast enough throughout a large company (read state-wide school system) to keep pace with smaller, younger more technology-based competitors to whom innovation and integration come much more naturally. (read the online learning centers, successful charters schools such as those in Dayton, Ohio, open source curricular tools like Curwiki, and open source e-portfolios, blogging tools and the like all of which are happening outside the system as I write and which are seen as threats to the system).

The authors suggest formation of two agencies within the business: A Distributive Innovation Group (DIG) – which does not ‘do’ innovation but rather fosters and channels it. The DIG serves as the center for expertise for innovation techniques, scouts for new developments outside the company and provides experts for internal innovation initiatives. And it deploys technologies and methods that facilitate and collaboration and innovation.

The other is the Enterprise Innovation Group (EIG) dedicated to the horizontal integration of the corporation. It picks from among competing integration projects and provides resources that enable them to succeed. It develops the architecture and management practices that make business integration easier over time.

I propose that philanthropy and the State can develop a successful partnership if the Governor’s of States were to take the innovative districts model and support it with the creation of two similar agencies. This could be done on a budget-neutral basis by reforming the structures of the Departments of Education as well as the Professional Development Dollars that will be needed to foster these efforts.

Taking the 70-20-10 model lets assume the ODE earmarks 20% of its future spending on innovation in schools. A ten per cent (10%) commitment from the state and a (10%) commitment from philanthropy could get a system of this type up and going. It would probably be fair to assume an additional 5 -10 % of total dollars would be required in the first year to set up a state-wide technology infrastructure to help support both the DIG and EIG’s. If successful, these could link to other state-wide efforts to contribute to a national effort to foster innovation in all American Schools. Professional Development dollars would be focused on enabling teachers in the innovative zones to serve as those who generate the ideas, and share their concepts with each other. Imagine a school system that finally treats teachers as professionals and validates their input and rewards successful innovation brought to scale!

Philanthropy has contributed to problems facing governors and state officials who sincerely want to save schools. Philanthropy is great at funding “projects.” Funding projects and schools is fun and rewarding, but for a system of education that poses problems. The authors explain, “Large corporations generate plenty of ideas. Too many, in fact. They well up everywhere – in interactions with customers, working with business partners, fixing operational glitches. The problem is harvesting the, allocating the company’s vast resources to them, and managing their development in a coordinated and efficient way. “

So I think a great solution for the State of Ohio would be to compliment innovation districts and zones – along with charters, faith-based and voucher schools with a robust technical backbone that supports two offices that look like The Distributive Innovation Group and the Enterprise Innovation Group. It’s worth considering.

The foundation has considered the importance of strategic grantmaking and the idea of having high impact. What does it mean to have impact when the average grant in education is around $25,000 to $50,000.

What do we know?

Private/faith-based schools have remarkable success with inner city kids. Remediation takes place within the first year; reading seems to be easier to remediate than math and science. In most cases adherence to one particular faith is not mandatory. Most schools welcome families of all faiths. Students thrive in an atmosphere that is safe, and has rules. This seems to be the case across geographic funding areas.

Public Schools pose a more formidable challenge when looking for impact, but the foundation has made significant inroads in shifting the direction of some of these large ships. The work of CAST in schools in Lorain County has generated enthusiasm, contributed to a change in discussion about delivery of curriculum to divergent learners. It has added to conversation in schools about brain function and development and its impact on curriculum. It is exciting to see small pockets emerging where teachers are eager to shift the focus from assessment of learning to a concept of assessment for learning.

There are promising programs in isolated public schools that will address assessment of student performance such as the assessment for learning programs as well as programs that develop co-teaching. We see in these programs an attempt to bring to large public schools methods that have worked well in smaller, private school environments.

Structure of the school day

For inner city schools, a traditional public school day of 8-2:30 is not in place. In the Denver Street School, students are taught in blocks of 90-100 minutes as opposed to the typical 45 min schedule. This, teachers say, allows more time for challenged students to talk and reflect on the matter at hand rather than the typical - here’s the lesson, take it in, and report back to me on a standardized test and we will see how we do.

An environment that incorporates individual attention

In the National Association of Street Schools (NASS), each student has a faculty advocate who watches out for that youngster throughout the year. At Nativity Prep, Epiphany, Arrupe Prep and even the Urban Community School of Cleveland , the school days provide structured environments for students from early morning until the evening. All schools agreed that the after-school hours are when youngsters are most vulnerable.

Each of the schools incorporate into their behavior the reality that educational needs are not divorced from the social needs. For most of these schools the average teacher student ratio is 10/1. In the Cristo Rey model schools, young people who are teachers in training also serve the students by being available for them after the school day is over, for mentoring, coaching. The students live modestly and have little cost impact on the administration.

Respect for individual learning styles and adaptation

We have learned that whether it be in a small nurturing environment that a small private/faith-based school creates, or in larger public school classrooms, teachers know they teach better and students actually learn when the curriculum is adapted to the individual learning styles CAST has been phenomenal in helping teachers understand the link between brain research, and translating that into excited learning.

What we see on the horizon.

Using web-technologies students will develop electronic portfolios for their work which is open to each other (peers) for critique and discussion as well as with teachers. These educational portfolios contain the work that a learner has collected, reflected, selected and presented to show growth and change over time, representing an individual or organization’s human capital. The portfolios are not so much an instructional strategy to be researched, but more of a means to an end: to support reflection that can help students understand their own learning and to provide a richer picture of student work that documents growth over time.”

The Governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland has called for something like this in his very impressive set of Conversations on Education which include an appeal to “personalized learning.” People have yet to figure out what that means. As of 2008, there were no plans in place for the State of Ohio to implement electroinc-portfolios that could follow students throughout their careers (and also be used as a solid record should students transfer to another district or out of the State).

Islands of excellence

In a conversation with Mr. Geoff Andrews, Superintendent of the Oberlin City Schools, I talked about the wealth of learning the foundation has gained by funding a diversified portrolio of schools. After listening he said, “Wouldn’t it be great if the foundation could figure out a way to bring all this learning and leverage it in one district somewhere and create an “island of excellence” that could serve as a model. I said, yes it would be great.

Two months later, my estimed colleague Helen Williams, Education Program Director of The Cleveland Foundation informed me of legislation in the State of Colorado that would create just that. The Innovation Schools Act of 2008

The Innovation Schools Act is intended to improve student outcomes by supporting greater school autonomy and flexibility in academic and operational decision-making. The Act provides a means for schools and districts to gain waivers from state laws and collective bargaining agreements.

The suggestion could not have come at a better time. It is my hope that philanthropy can suggest the Ohio legislature examine this act and seek advice from experts to do the same in Ohio.

I would like to share a reference to an article I distributed to several Nord Family Foundation trustees a few years ago when it first appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in 2005. The article is by Adrie Kusserow and Professor in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at St. Michael’s College in Vermont.

It is I suggest a must-read for anyone in philanthropy or private institution that is involved with improving schools. We must be mindful of the values we bring to the table when hoping to improve schools. We must be careful to recognize the sources when our efforts are met with suspicion and even derision.

Professor Kusserow’s research focuses on the role of class in schools. The study is conducted around one simple word, “Individualism.” Members of three very different economic neighborhoods throughout the greater New York City area were asked to define that word in relation to their own identifications with that concept, and how that concept is reflected in how their children should be reared and educated.

Through my fieldwork in Manhattan and Queens, I identified two styles of individuals: a “soft” upper-middle-class individualism, which focuses on the cultivation and expression of unique feelings, thoughts, ideas and preferences and a “hard” working-class individualism which focuses on the cultivation of self-reliance, perseverance, determination, protectiveness and toughness. These two styles of individualism aren’t rigid boxes; people of all social classes can and do fluidly use each style. However the working-class Queens residents in my research learned more toward a hard individualistic style, just as the upper-middle-class Manhattan residents tended more toward soft individualism.

“Class,” she describes,

“…penetrate(s) the core of our being, down to the way we hold our forks, tell our stories, console or discipline our children, talk to our neighbors, remember our pasts, or view our futures. Social class is not simply shown and taken off in the manner of a Harvard degree or a gold wristwatch, but lived in the flesh, held in the cells of one’s own self-image and one’s visions of life’s possibilities.”

But as Harvard assistant professor of sociology Prudence Carter points out, “School is predicated on the values and practices of the middle class and so lower and working-class kids are automatically at a disadvantage.”6 Included in the middle-class values and practices of school are those of soft individualism. In a few of the Head Start programs

I observed, for example, the clash of working-class hard individualism with the more softly individualistic middle-class educational culture often manifested itself with the lower-working-class children simply being silent, as if mystified by the fairylike teacher who moved around the classroom with a constant glow and smile, showering praise upon them. When these children scuffled with each other, I saw how confused they were when their middle-class teachers took them aside and asked them to explain why they wanted to hit each other and how it made them feel. Coming from families where they were used to being spanked, shamed, or simply ignored for fighting, they seemed bewildered by this new, therapeutic way of dealing with conflicts. Working-class children may also be flummoxed by some of their more softly individualistic academic requirements. “I tell these kids to use their imagination, and they say: ‘What do you mean? I don’t have an imagination,’” says O’Neil. “It’s so strange. I can see some stony old man not having an imagination, but a 12-year-old?”

When I read this article two years ago, I was part of a community discussion on the topic of improving the quality of the public schools in the City of Oberlin, Ohio where I live. A brief word on the town would help. Although it is a City by charter, Oberlin is a small town of about 8,000 people almost of half of whom are students at the famous Oberlin College. The town divides into three broad-stroke classes – there is the professional class mainly professors and college administrators, health care professionals, lawyers and a small gathering of business people. There is a large rural/farming and trades community, and there is an interesting community of poorer families many of whom are housed in public housing projects built in the 1960’s primarily for the African-American population at the time. The African-American community in Oberlin is by no means heterogeneous, although in the schools, reference to African-American children is (mistakenly)  understood to mean, “poor”.

The catalyst for the topic was a proposed tax levy to introduce laptop computers to the public schools which, for years has struggled with low outcomes on the State Achievement Tests. The blog post called “Community Diaries” allowed people to post with real names or anonymously. Most, from what I read, chose anonymity claiming that if you used your real name, “What” you post would be tainted or less important than “Who” posted.

As I watched the conversation emerge, it was clear to me that there were distinct groups of interest reflecting their concepts of what schools are for, and how children should be taught. Laptops were clearly not appealing to those from lower economic classes. These people felt there was too little discipline in the schools and children needed to be more obedient. These were primarily from people who I would assume struggle from one pay-check to the next. Their seemed to be support for the laptop initiative from the professional educated community who felt this initiative would push the community forward to much higher quality education. There was one person whose posts reflected an eagerness to find out as much as possible and she later revealed that she was running for the school board. This woman self-identified as a person from “the townships” which are located outside the city in the farmlands.

The entries validate the study that Dr. Kusserow conducted but curiously, study was conducted in three neighborhoods in New York City which is a real City! Oberlin represents the collision of several conceptual approaches to education that are shaped and determined by class and which can account for radical differences we see in schools across the country. When schools are run by school boards comprised of local community members, the more homogeneous the community, the more likely it will reflect the cultural values and biases of its members. I share it with you for your information. It leads me to believe that trying to conduct a legislative fix to create schools that will prepare students for 21^st Century skills; we may be at a point where local control of schools might be a thing of the past. The role of the web and social software will add increased pressures to communities that when threatened with change, will make efforts to shut it down.

I continue to refer to Clayton Christensen’s book, “Disrupting Class” He states at the outset of his book, “

“Further, we say disrupting class with some intent. For some, class will mean social class…for too long and in far too many ways, our system of schooling has best served those who hail from homes where parents were themselves well-schooled and who support their children with adequate resources and experiences. Class is also the venue in which most of our attempts at education take place. In many ways, what goes on in these classes profoundly affects social class for good or for ill. Our nation has embarked on a commitment to education every child. No nation has ever sought to do that. The societal stakes in improving our schools are high” p. v-vi Acknowledgments.

I think there is evidence in pockets of educational innovation that appropriate use of technology to support curriculum will possibly address how class is currently influencing the way learning and understanding is conducted in classrooms in towns across the country where local control can mean more than just governance.

My work with the Ohio Grantmakers Education Task Force continues and I am privileged to be part of this interesting process. The anticipated outcome will be a list of specific policy recommendations to the Governor of the State of Ohio on how to structure Ohio schools so they will prepare students for the Global Economy and 21^st Century Skills. I have posted reflections from those efforts previously.

There seems to be growing interest in how to incorporate technology into curriculum much of which has been stimulated by Clayton Christensen’s book. I think people realize that they way learning takes place is about to change very soon and that the Standards and Assessment tools must be structured to meet those new challenges.

In our discussions some of the expert educators brought up the very important issue of research on assessment of instructional technology in classrooms. I found this site which is interesting. It is the work of people at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. http://escholarship.bc.edu/jtla/

The early research confirms Clayton Christensen’s thesis in Disrupting Class, i.e. you can’t drop computers in classrooms without addressing how teachers might make best use of those technologies; otherwise, you have an electronic version of paper and pencil.

More interesting to some is the research on Universal Design for Learning (UDL)which was developed at the Center for Applied Special Technologies in Wakefield MA. The Nord Family Foundation as well as Martha Holden Jennings has supported UDL in many Ohio school districts. Speaking from this foundation’s experience, UDL and accompanying training supports the student-centered learning that the Governor calls for. I recall Dr. Suzan Tave Zelman then Ohio State Superintendent of Schools praising CAST and UDL in Ohio Schools and in a burst of enthusiasm suggesting it be mandated in every school in Ohio. This call was made on the occasion of a UDL Summit co-sponsored by both The Nord Family Foundation and the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation. Several superintendents spoke very highly of UDL and the transformational impact it was having on many teachers in schools.

The Nord Family Foundation provided support to test CAST’s ScienceWriter project in Lorain Schools. Our purpose in support for that project was to address the fact that,

…middle and high school students have the increasing expectation that they not only access information by reading grade-level materials, but that they demonstrate their knowledge of complex content in academic courses such as science through writing. The primary focus of the content specialist in the middle schools and high schools is the subject area (science, social studies, health, history, etc.) rather than literacy instruction. Most schools are not able to devote the necessary time, resources and staff development to ensure that literacy instruction takes place within the content areas. This issue is particularly urgent because many high stakes assessments of achievement now measure students’ competency in writing and via writing.”

CAST writes,

“To ensure that students success in the current climate of standards-based education and high-stakes testing, we need new instructional techniques that enable them to demonstrate their content-area knowledge through written language. Tchnology-supported writing can extend the reach of teachers facing minimal time and resources helping struggling learners to overcome the barriers to content-area success. The inherent flexibility offered by digital media, individualizing the learning experience becomes more easily attained. The provide more plentiful opportunities for practice and personalized feedback – crucial elements to successful reading or writing strategy instruction. With tools that can help them individualize instruction, teachers can provide learning experiences that are appropriate for their students’ diversity.”

One immediate recommendation for the Governor would be to find funding through the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Board of Regents to fund one or more centers for instructional research as it relates to K-12 curriculum. Kent State has a very fine program in Instructional Technology, and could be one option, and perhaps Ohio State. This type of funding would take the UDL pilots, supported by philanthropy and help bring it to scale. This recommendation would provide a unique voice to standards and assessment debate. Attached is a copy of CAST’s David Rose’s speech to the Aspen Institute but it is relevant to our discussion.

On a certain level, the UDL/CAST experience exemplifies the idea of innovation coming from outside the box (in this case UDL started with the disabilities community but very quickly had application to the “mainstream” curriculum.) The Foundations support and testing of UDL in many schools throughout Ohio, and its impact on reform the way students are assessed provides the foundation community and Ohio Grantmakers Forum in particular with a unique voice to the statewide effort at reform.

Stat tuned for more conversation on the matter.

For two years, Ohio Grantmakers Forum has taken on the issue of education in the State of Ohio. In 2006 Education for Ohio’s Future framed the motivation for the undertaking stating,

“As the new century unfolds, Ohio stands at a crossroads. Over the past 20 years, our state and local leaders have worked to improve student, school and system performance. We have seen progress in some areas, but our education system falls far short of preparing all students for the challenges and opportunities of the 21^st Century. Consider how far we still must go.”

Ohio was not alone in addressing the critical issue facing education in the United States. In March 2008, The New York Times Magazine published a conversation with philanthropists from large foundations that have invested heavily in education reform. The article, “How Many Billionaires Does it Take to Fix a School System” captured the reflections of people who, with abundance of money, “can-do,” and (to quote from the article) “armed with controversial ideas about education and some very different approaches to giving their money away.” decided to take on education reform in cities including New York. Their conversations reveal the complexity of such an undertaking and, at times the frustration in trying to reform a system where change can appear elusive and at times obscured. They discussed two camps, the “fix-the-system side” and the “replace the system side.”

Philanthropy can easily be co-opted into funding programs that fit into either of these camps. At the Nord Family Foundation our funding in education is relatively small but our goal is to fund a variety of projects – some in public education, some in private, some faith-based schools and diversity our portfolio in a manner that would reflect our financial investment strategy. Our purpose is to support projects, find out what seems to work and find out why. Our responsibility is to share that information with other Grantmakers and policy makers with a hope that our learning can be brought to scale.

As the Trustees and members try to consider where its funding should be directed in the future one area to consider is what you consider to be effective grantmaking. The shared knowledge is an opportunity to learn what from grantees and benchmark what can be considered areas for successful grantmaking. Research is showing us that the one-size-fits-all model can no longer work to address new knowledge in brain research on learning. Innovation in technology is producing disruptive technologies that are changing the way people learn. Clayton Christensen’s new book Disrupting Class will challenge the huge system called education in ways the current system cannot sustain.

As trustees your job is to share thoughts about where the foundation has been in defining education and perhaps glimpse into the future as to where we as a sector might have a role in shaping an educational system that will truly prepare students to be life-long learners able to meet the challenges we have not even imagined for the 21^st Century.

I referenced Clayton Christensen’s book Disrupting Class. I recommended this book to the OGF Working Group which is focused on the issue Preparing Students for a Global Economy. The book has been a huge success and changed the way we are making recommendations to the governor’s task force. Of particular interest is Dr. Christensen’s discussion of the role disruptive technologies are having in the way people learn in ways that were unimaginable before innovations in social networking. It is a challenge for public schools to adopt a bureaucratic flexibility to be able to incorporate these changes into their business. How did IBM adopt (too late) to the laptop computer? Dr. Christensen makes an appeal to philanthropies and foundations in the last chapter.

“Help fund this disruption. Generous people and institutions have wasted enormous resources on innovations that well-tested theories of innovation could predict would have little impact. Computers in conventional classrooms; dominant-intelligence software that assumes that all students learn similarly; pay-for-performance schemes for teachers and descriptive research that correlates the attributes of schools or teachers with their average performance all will do little to improve schools. Similarly, the very raison d’etre for chartered schools is architecturally innovation. If the vision of their founders is to try harder to make conventional curricular architecture succeed, don’t fund it.

Instead fund research that helps us learn how different people learn; how to identify those differences; and how different students can best educate themselves and each other. Such investments will create inestimable and enduring value because this is the only that learning will become intrinsically motivating to all those who need to learn. Prosperity remember is stripping schools of extrinsic motivation that has driven so much of our learning in the past.”

I recently had the opportunity to talk with the Superintendent of an economically distressed and subsequently dysfunctional school district in an urban center in NE Ohio. We were talking about the Report on the State of Mental Health in Public Schools published in 2006 by Dr. Howard Adlemen and Dr.  Linda Taylor from the University of California, Los Angeles’ Department of Psychology

The article certainly resonated with this superintendent, but it addresses the issues I have found in many schools across the country. My conversations with teachers, superintendents and nonprofit leaders all agree that in urban, suburban and rural schools, undiagnosed mental and emotional maladies are not adequately addressed. In the absence of integrated approach to mental – or even family health, the Carnegie Task Force on Education stresses,

“School systems are not responsible for meeting every need of their students. But when the need directly affects learning, the school must meet the challenge.” The writers are careful to make distinctions between external factors and individual disorders.

External factors are things such as neighborhood, family, school and/or peer factors such as extreme deprivation, community disorganization, high levels of mobility, drugs, violence, poor quality or abusive caretaking, poor quality schools, negative encounters with peers, inappropriate peer models, immigration status, etc.”

Individual disorders often are not diagnosed or screened and are attributed to developmental and motivational differences (e.g. medical problems, low birthweight/neurodevelopmental delay, psychophysiological problems, difficult temperament, adjustment problems etc.)”

Too often, discussion about improving the quality of challenged schools addresses the external factors but I think districts might need help with the latter. There needs to be a closer collaboration between the central offices of the departments of education and the public and mental health agencies. Philanthropy can have an important role facilitating those conversations.

A related article by the Children’s Defense Fund titled, “Cradle to Prison Pipeline: an American Crisis.”  addresses the social consequences of public health officials and school leaders lacking creative solutions to the challenge of external and internal health problems in schools.

I encourage everyone in this blog and perhaps the community to read it.

“Suppose that during the next decade, a quarter of all the children born in New York, North Carolina, Texas, Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were infected by a virulent new strain of polio or tuberculosis sometime during their youth. Clearly, our response to a health crisis affecting that many children would be to mobilize the nation’s vast public health resources. Medical laboratories would operate around the clock to develop new vaccines.

Unfortunately, an infection akin to this hypothetical tragedy is actually coursing through African American and Latino communities across the nation. I’m not referring to a virus such as HIV/AIDS or a hazardous bacterium. I’m talking about the criminalization of poor children and children from minority races who enter what the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) identified as America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline. Together, African Americans and Latinos comprise a segment of the U.S. population equal to that of the six states I mentioned earlier. Like the victims of a crippling or wasting disease, once drawn into the prison pipeline, massive numbers of young people lose their opportunity to live happy, productive lives, not because of festering microbes but because of years spent behind bars.”

I am finding that county and state bureaucracies function like large companies. Their ability to innovate and address new challenges are as formidable as those mentioned discussed by Clayton Christensen in the Innovators Dilemma and more recently in his book co-authored by Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson “Disrupting Class.” Philanthropy must look for pockets of innovation and bring it to scale. One of the best models is The Harlem Children’s Zone spearheaded by the visionary leader Jeffrey Canada. Philanthropy has a critical role in providing dollars to support innovative programs, but it can capitalize on its money, power and social recognition, but convening conversations with leadership that will help citizens not only ask the right questions about problems they face, but nudge state bureaucracies and political leaders to make bold moves to create new environments in schools where the child and his/her family is the focus for health and success. Why not have primary health care offices along with mental health services located directly in poor schools? Families that might be eligible for Medicaid benefits could sign up and, perhaps at some point families will be able to figure out health insurance. At this point, these would be confounding proposals for huge bureaucracies. Be interesting to see Mr. Christensen and Mr. Horn research why state mental and public health institutions are failing to meet the needs of children and families in schools. In my experience, much of the problem can be traced to a lack of innovative thinking in these large bureaucracies. Healthy families and healthy children are likely to help improve successful outcomes in schools.

When I first began at the Nord Family Foundation, I agreed to serve as program officer for education.  I had experience teaching high school for a few semesters and teaching at the college level.  Realizing my limitations, decided it was essential for me to learn more about what  teachers go through every day.  The best way to do this, I thought, was to form a book club which I did with the help of colleauges at Center for Leadership in Education which the foundation funded.  Seven school professionals participated and consisted of middle, high school and elemetary teachers as well as a first-year school principal from a rural school district.  Our book was Victory in Our Schools - We CAN Give Our Children Excellent Public Education by Major General John Stanford. Gen. Stanford was elected Superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools in 1995 and initiated a quality reform effort with lasting postive results.  Gen. Stanford died of lukemia in 1998 and was mourned deeply by the Seattle community.

Our book club met faithfully and teachers found it a safe environment to share their experiences of being in classrooms.  They loved the intellectual challenge and everyone kept their assignments faithfully.   What I found was an alarmingly bright gathering of people who felt as though the “system” treated them as children.   The felt as though their creativity as professionals was not really respected by supervisors and they yearned for more communication with supervisors.  I will remember one passage toward the end of the book that resulted in lengthy discussion for two sessions.

General Stanford writes, “As the CEO of this ailing business, I had high aspirations. I wanted to be in the Fortune 500 of educational institutions.  …We’d have to act as if every one of our customers had a choice about whether or not to use us, and we’d have to do everything we could to become every customers first choice.”

This was another philosophical shift in public education.  The schools were accustomed to operating as if they were part of a command economy like the one in the former Soviety Union.  Money and students were alloted by the central administration; the survival of individual schools was guaranteed regardless of customer satisfaction and customers had to accept the prudcut whether they liked it or not.”

This section of the book on page 186 resonated with the teachers.  This was shortly after the reforms of t he No Child Left Behind Act resulted in a frenzy of high-stakes testing in the schools.  The teachers I spoke with lamented the fact that their school principals and superintendents focused now on producing schools that would make the Officials at the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) happy.  Superintendents began competing for report card scores in the same way they compete for football or baseball standings.  The tests were the game and the goal was to win no matter what.  Teachers felt as if a punative system was in place in which the Centeral Offices were now positioned to threaten teaching that did not align with their rapidly developed assessment tools.

Ten years after General Stanford’s death, schools have made efforts to change the philosphy toward better customer service.  That is, I find, a slow process.  In Oberlin where I live I have heard several teachers say that parents are a nuisance and should leave the teachers to do what the do best.  There is little sense of customer service.  In my time visiting schools and talking with teachers throughout Ohio, Colorado and South Carolina few would disagree with General Stanford’s original comment.  Public Schools in this country continue to function as the last bastion of the Soviet style command economy.  Until recently, charter schools and alternative schools were seen as diabolical. Even today, education reporters from The Cleveland Plain dealer write as if charter schools “take” money from the public system.  Few take the time to help the reader understand that Charter Schools ARE Public Schools - they simply have a little more freedom to do what needs to be done to run a school like a business that is locally owned.

The parallels between the old Soviet system are helpful when one tries to understand why it is so difficult to encourage innovation within the system.   At the Centeral Offices, the focus is on a standardized system that fits all. The assesment tools are created in ways that make it easy for a teacher to gather data quickly so that the people at Data Central can churnc that data out.  The assessments are summative - i.e. a snapshot that serve to determine a minimal level of competency for a student.  I found this summative assessment to be embedded in the teachers vocabulary.  I attended a local meeting of teachers and superintendents from Lorain County at the local community college.  The topic of conversations was, “How we can achieve ADEQUATE schools for the children of the county.”  I was depressed and lost patience with the group and challenged them as to why they would not be talking about how to achieve EXCELLENT schools in the county?

The challenge for most states is to determine how schools can have the freedom to develop formative assessment tools that work.  To do this, one needs to change the way we allow students to learn.  Proper use of techonology can facilitate this process.  There are teachers who are using technology in very innovative ways and finding remarkable results.  Too often, this innovation happens outside the system and often without the approval of the principal or superintendent.

For really interesting discussion on this topic listen to archived recordings from the website EdTechTalk - Teacher on Teaching.

I have just finished reading Clayton Christensen’s book called Disrupting Class This book is a must read for every educator and/or education policymaker in this country.  Not only does Dr. Christensen explain how and why innovation can and cannot take place within public schools, but he challenges us to view public education as an old bureucratic system that is being challenged by innovation and activities that are happening with success outside its reach.  In many ways, Mr. Christensen is a Yeltsin to our public school leaders.  Depending on which part of the country you reside, we have local and state leaders who are devout “party” members who are like Gorbechev’s trying desperatly to reform the system from within.  In philanthropy, I think we have a growing number of people who see the writing on the wall and realize we must look for pockets of innovation in education and help bring it to scale.

I have often said that when trustees of private foundations gather for their meetings, the exercise is akin to what happens in the halls of the U.S. Congress. Representatives from a variety of communities gather to make decisions about distributing funds to support nonprofits often lead by “community organizers” (a term recently ridiculed at the 2008 Republican convention more than once!). The trustees come to the meetings prepared with a board book, prepared by staff that includes written information on each grantee as well as web-based links to the organizations in question. They come to the meeting from their own perspectives and experiences which created an atmosphere charged with intellectual curiosity and a strong desire to be the best citizens with the funds the government allows them to steward.

Not too long ago, the trustees had a lengthy discussion about funding faith-based schools. It began with a question about the overt christo-centric language of one of the schools applying for a grant. As the discussion ensued, questions were raised as to whether the Foundation or (any other private foundation for that matter) should provide support to faith-based schools. The conversation then led to questions as to whether the foundation should fund any faith-based organization. The primary concern was whether these faith-based institutions force youngsters to adopt the religious faith of the teachers and/or administration. The trustees feared that requiring students to adopt the religion of the institutions takes away the freedom of a young person to question religion and ultimately to takes away their freedom to dissent. The questions are legitimate and clearly mirror conversations that take place nationally on some level. News reports from forced religious compliance in the Muslim world and narratives about the abuse of the Taliban in countries contributed to what all agreed was a legitimate intellectual concern.

This debate was critically import for in that any decision on the matter could not only affect decisions on grant requests from faith-based schools on the docket, but could potentially affect allocations of foundation dollars in other program areas. There was strong diversity of opinion on the matter, based primarily on the personal religious (or agnostic) experiences of the individuals on the board. I have found that issues of religion have the greatest potential of alienating some trustees from others because the positions are so deep. Any misstep had the potential to result in some trustees forfeiting their future involvement with the foundation.

Despite the dangers, one of the great opportunities for a foundation is that it really is a place for members to engage in these intellectual challenges. It is a place where informed discussion can lead to shared learning from each other and, in the end, a more focused sense of mission for the foundation itself. As executive director, I feel it part of my job to provide them with the best sources of information to make sure the conversations is based in solid research and good data on the subject. I wrote the following thought piece in an effort to deepen the discussion and make sure that all members felt an opportunity to express their own thoughts. I share this as a lesson to other foundations and even legislators who may want added insight into the subject. These are my opinions and I therefore welcome public scrutiny, rebuttal or debate on the topic from those who may have different information.

With regard to the first question about whether a foundation can/or should give to any religious organization, I would like to suggest several books on the history of philanthropy in the United States. The first is Charity, Philanthropy and Civility in American History, published by Cambridge University Press in 2003. This is an excellent overview on the subject. The book points out the ambiguous nature of private philanthropy funding religiously based organizations.

It traces American philanthropy to its colonial origins stating that its roots are grounded in the British sense of philanthropy as “charity.” Throughout American history, charities were conducted by organizations of one religious organization or another. Some of the leading U.S. universities were established as religious institutions.

One chapter of the book traces the evolution of Roman Catholic schools in the United States. Late in the 19^th century there was a dramatic increase in the number of parochial (parish-based) schools which were established to meet the crushing needs of the poor and working class immigrants. Communities of religious sisters were recruited to teach in these schools which marked a significant shift from what had been their primary focus – The Charity Hospitals. (Many of the leading hospitals in the United States were founded by orders of religious women). Today, an impressive number of foundations were established when the hospitals were sold to private health care companies, e.g. Sisters of Charity Foundation, St. Ann Foundation, St. Luke’s Foundation and many others across the U.S.  The religious women’s vocation in hospitals and schools was grounded in Vatican Encyclicals issued throughout the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The encyclicals were strong denunciations against the abuses of human labor under early industrialized capitalism. These encyclicals called for a “preferential options for the poor” described as:

“Coming from Catholic social teaching, this concept expresses a special concern in distributive justice for poor and vulnerable persons. The “poor” includes but is not limited to those who are economically deprived. The principle is rooted in the biblical notion of justice, where God calls us to be advocates for the voiceless and the powerless among us (e.g., “the widows and the orphans”), and where right relationships are restored. Regardless of the reasons, those who are in any way deprived or who are particularly vulnerable have a special moral claim on the community (including its institutions and organizations, but particularly Catholic health care institutions, see Ethical and Religious Directives, n. 3). As a matter of both justice and charity, structures and systems must be in place to address and meet their special needs, so that they might participate more fully in the common good and thereby flourish more fully as human persons.”

The preferential option for the poor does not discriminate for or against an individual’s religious belief, but instead address the philosophical all embracing concept of “humanity.” These documents were the founding documents for the labor movement in the early to mid 20^th Century as well as United Nations Charter.

The authors trace the demographic shift in Catholic populations from the mid and late 20^th century. As Catholics became wealthy and moved from the inner cities, more parochial schools were started in suburbs and religious orders of sisters were expected to continue providing their services for free. Starting in the mid-century more and more sisters questioned why they were expected to educate the children of wealthy Catholics in suburban communities and not opt to return to inner-city parishes where the preferential option for the poor could and should be practiced. In the late 20^th century vocations to women’s religious communities dropped dramatically and the number of Catholic children in parochial schools diminished,

“Now, with rising costs and declining parish memberships, inner-city schools - in much higher proportions than suburban parish schools – had to close their doors. Ironically, in this period, applications for admission to inner-city schools from minority populations (most of them non-catholic) expanded greatly. Minority enrollments in parochial schools averaged about 20 percent nationally in 1984, but urban schools were reporting far higher proportions for example, 74 percent in Newark, 65 percent in Los Angeles, 58 percent in Detroit and 55 percent in New York.”

Much like formerly catholic charity hospitals, the schools our foundation has funded follow a similar evolution in staffing. Most of the schools we support have a religiously diverse teaching corps as well as a religiously diverse student body. Just as catholic charity hospitals do not admit patients based on religious preference, so too these inner-city faith schools do not admit students based on religious preference. The Roman-Catholic and Episcopal linked institutions state emphatically they are not in the business of converting people but instead, are focused on healing – one with physical, and the other in terms of the more complex issues of societal ills that poverty carries with it.

Undoubtedly, the Cristo Rey and Nativity modeled schools are grounded in Roman Catholic tradition. This tradition is the “preferential option for the poor” which is distinct from its evangelical mission. My research has shown this to be true of the Cristo Rey schools (Arrupe Prep, St. Martin de Porres, Nativity School, and Don Bosco) and the Epiphany School which is rooted in the Episcopal tradition. Each school not only respects the faith of the families that attend the school but invites students to explore the faiths of other religions even among students who attend the schools. (All the schools invite leaders of the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and other faiths to the schools as part of the curriculum). My interviews with the school heads and the teachers indicate their philosophy is less an exercise in forming faith than it is to introduce students to diversity of thinking and the cultural reality religion plays in the civic life of this United States. In short, these schools are Catholic in mission only, and that mission is the preferential option for the poor

Other faith-based schools in the foundation’s portfolio include the National Association of Street Schools and these are aligned with a fundamentalist tradition of evangelical Christians. NASS has a mission to work with the most challenged young people in society. Their students include former drug dealers, gang members, prostitutes, and youngsters that have been crushed by all dire poverty has dealt them. Their schools transform lives. The evidence is their in the increasing number of successful alumni. Their work has been validated with recognition from the White House and subsequent support from the likes of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. NASS has a more overtly religious curriculum than do the schools from more other traditions. A grant we made to support their accreditation process revealed a section requiring teaches to sign a pact whereby they agree to espouse the precepts of Jesus as one true savior. Without question these schools have a more focused message of “salvation” through a religious framework. Adopting Jesus as your personal savior is a key component to reforming a young person’s life. In some cases, the requirements for prayer are explicit but not found in the other schools discussed. As trustees discussed the grant request to NASS and one of its affiliated schools - the Denver Street School, they made the grant understanding that these schools provided hope to individuals and families which in turn, gave them incentive to pursue academics and strive for a better life. In the cloying economic and social oppression these people live, hope is a critical element for survival. It provides a horizon to the future that otherwise is not there. .

Staff has recommend support for all the schools I described with the understanding that they met the three core goals of the Nord Family Foundation’s mission – to build community – to support projects that bring opportunity to the disadvantaged – strengthen the bond of families – and improve the qualities of people’s lives. After lengthy debate that covered issues of hope, economic despair, and a genuine attempt at putting themselves in the mindset of those the funds were meant to support, the trustees approved the grants in question.

The discussion lead to the larger issue as to whether this foundation should follow the Constitutional separation of church and state when making grants to nonprofit organizations. Staff was put in the position of arguing that foundations were created to be a conduit of a different form of public monies to ensure that faith-based along with a variety of other organizations would be able to thrive with public support.

Federal and State laws governing foundations have never made that requirement of private foundations or charities. The founding documents of The Nord Family Foundation dated 1997 stated that the foundation dollars would not go to support churches. There was no mention of a prohibition against funding faith-based organizations.

A great book on this issue (and my second recommendation) is called,

Governing Nonprofit Organizations – Federal and State Law Regulation

By Marion R. Friemont-Smith

Belknap Press – Harvard University Press Cambridge, MA 2004

“Philanthropy in the United States has been claimed by one writer to be ‘our freest enterprise,’ and this phrase does emphasize what the dominant policy of the federal government and individual states toward charitable activities has been since colonial times.  With the exception of the restrictive legislation regarding charitable trusts that has been described, the enactment of legislation in a few states designed to protect heirs against complete or unreasoned disinheritance in favor of charity, and minor restrictions on the holdings of charitable corporations, the great body of legislation and court decisions has been directed toward the removal of restrictions on charitable funds and toward the grant of almost complete freedom of action to the managers and directors of these funds.”

In a recent interview in Philanthropy Magazine, Carl Schramm, President of the Ewing Marion Kauffmann Foundation in St. Louis and a respected leader in the field of philanthropy provided his thoughts on the role of foundations in a fee society. The following comment, is of particular relevance to the discussion any board might undertake relative to funding faith-based entities,” Because of its financial structure, and because it is above and apart from politics, it (a foundation) can go to places that aren’t necessarily popular. The record is very clear about what has been achieved historically. Foundations can explore the new frontiers and take risks that government can’t and private industry won’t.

With regard to use of deferred tax dollars, Schramm comments, “It is deceptively easy to think of “wealth reconstitution” and “institutional entrepreneurship” as strictly economic concepts. But democratic capitalism is a social, political, cultural and economic system – we can’t speak of “civil society” as something apart from this system.”

After more than four hours of debate and discussion, the trustees agreed to support the faith-based schools.  They also agreed that it made sense to continue support of faith-based entities but that staff should be mindful of any nonprofit that would coerce children or the vulnerable into belief in order to received assistance from a nonprofit.  So agencies were funded, people were served and the trustees adjourned leaving for their homes a little more enlightened having gone through the exericse.

As lawmakers in state and federal houses continue debate how much influence they feel need to legislate on private charities, it is my hope they make the time to sit in board meetings of any private foundation and watch the incredible exercise on civic debate that takes place. I would argue they have much to learn about the stewardship or public trust. Trustees who are often uncompensated for their service contribute valuable service to this country. That privilege should not be truncated or taken away.

I have had the enormous privilege to interact with highly talented and profound thinkers. That spectrum of people includes classroom teachers, after-school program directors, college professors and yes, even program officers at foundations. One of my most delightful professional affiliations has been with the Ohio Grantmakers Forum (OGF) which is a regional association of Grantmakers from across the State of Ohio. Over the past year, my colleagues have taken on the challenge of improving the quality of public schools in the State of Ohio. Governor Ted Strickland began his tenure with a pledge to develop a new vision and program to improve education in the State and has appointed several civic committees to gather, provide their insights and filter that information to his offices. Presumably that information will be used to roll out a final plan that will transform Ohio schools to prepare all students with “21^st Century Skills.” OGF assembled its membership to gather their collective knowledge and provide insight. Taking on a task that will gather information from across the state is an enormous task and OGF is doing a heroic job. Two years into the effort, a document was produced that captured the first phase of the undertaking and included voices from across the State. The Cleveland Plain Dealer review of the document claimed it contained nothing new. Undeterred by tepid reviews, OGF has agreed to take on a second round. I agreed to serve on two of three committees focused on Standards and Assessment and Evaluation of Grantmaking.

It has always been my conviction that philanthropy has an important role to play in public policy. It has a great power in convening people from public (government), private and nonprofit sectors to explore areas of common interest. Foundations not only have the power that comes with money, but they have a vast knowledge resource from evaluations of nonprofit organizations they have funded. Done properly, the foundation will have a relationship with the nonprofit and gather evidence of success and impact by way of site visits and evaluation reports. Unfortunately, too many evaluation reports go unread. I am finding that program officers with power and knowledge, can sometimes go with their personal agendas and be timorous about seeking out innovative things that might happening “outside the box” in the social sector. This is most eviden, i think, When it comes to public education. it is my observation that too many program officers find change to the public system threatening. In watching the coreography, their anxiety reverts people to entrench in what they believe to and resist the absolute need to think critically. I have heard the phenomenon referred to as those who sit in pews of the religion of public schooling. I am not convinced that my colleagues are indoctrinated, but a notion of belief in the ideal of American public schools is a strong because the model worked well for many years. Unfortunately, as too many inner city schools now attest, the model has flaws.

An important task for philanthropy is to find programs that are slightly outside the box. There are ample texts from business schools that describe how innovation in business takes place. One of the best is Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma which describes how so-called disruptive technologies can be both a threat and a potenial for businesses. More ofen than not, it occurs on the fringes or outside the companies which gives managers some trepidation, especially if it poses new challenges. Think of IBM and managements resistance to accepting personalized computers as something people would need. The challenge for new manaters is to create envionments that stimulate new thought and out of the box thinking but one that can easily meet new demands from the public.

The same can be said for philanthropy. One important task is to find social innovation that with private money can be tested and, if successful, brought to scale. This is no truer than in education. I just finished reading, Relentless Pursuit - A Year in the Trenches Teach of America. This successful program began with determined, organized and focused Wendy Kopp. Her program was the result of her thesis at the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School entitled, “A Plan and Arguement for the Creation of a National Teacher Corps.” With the assistance of a development officer at Princeton Ms. Kopp got her start with a $26,000 seed grant from Mobile and donated office space from Morgan Stanley. Later, Doris and Donald Fisher founders of GAP provided the financial support to truely launch this sophisticated non-profit. Two companies and a family foundation took a risk but the result has become a national program that, in the words of Pursuit’s author Donna Foote, “…an operation to accomplish what no government program has yet managed - to overcome one of the most basic and vexing of social inequities, a problem we can no longer afford to ignore.”

Teach for America has been slammed by the “establishment” most notably by Stanford University School of Education professor, Linda Darling Hammond at Stanford School of Education. Dr. Hammond’s who skoffed that TFA is argument against teach for America is that it smacked of “missionary program,” calling it a quick fix, “that was harmful to students most in need of qualified teachers.” Dr. Darling Hammond called TFA a revolving door trip into and out of teaching where it was an elitist “pit-stop” on the road to students “real” jobs in law, medicine and business. Dr. Darling Hammond’s suggested the answer to the problem was improving the quality of teacher training, whereas, Mr. Kopp blieives the answer is to be foind in improving the quality of the teacher. In my experience, I have found that Ohio Department of Education dollars used for teacher training is an appalling mess and accounts for unspeakable waste of public dollars.

Similarly, the highly successful KIPP schools were launched with private funding, once again with significant input from the Fishers. The Nord Family Foundation provides support to the KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy in Denver which sits literally between a pubic elementary and public high school. KIPP schools reports on student success shame the performances of the two public schools. So what is the secret to their success?

These institutions which are having positive impact on schools could not have easily happened within the government bureaucracy of the public school system. As I mentioned in an earlier post, any public school teacher I have met introduces an innovative idea despite the system, not because of it. The high-stakes testing standards are just too high for a principle of superintendent to tolerate risk.

Now, when we gathered foundations from across Ohio, it is clear that within philanthropy, there is a divide about the role philanthropy can and should take when assuming the role of advising a Governor as to how to improve the quality of education. On one side is the eternal belief that the public schools can be fixed and other side believes that the system should be scrapped and begun anew using schools like KIPP, teach of America and another highly successful faith-based model known as the Cristo Rey network.

When it comes to addressing standard and assessment, there is equal division. Our task with OGF is to advise the Governor on what role the standards should take on in the future. We have assembled a group of people who have read material provided to us much of which is published by the American Federation of Teachers Union. The theme is how the standards help focus the teachers. Most disconcerting to me is the utter lack of understanding of how technology and sophisticated computing is likely to render the way students learn and teachers teach utterly useless. I highly recommend a book by, David Weinberger, fellow at the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society. His book, Everything is Miscellaneous – the Power of the New Digital Disorder provides a glimpse into how computer technology has revolutionized the way we do categorization and assemble knowledge. The book is so popular, he has his own blog inviting comments on this thoughts.

Weinberger draws comparisons to the way we used to assemble photos in albums and coded them by weddings, vacations or other special events and put them in boxes to be retrieved at dates. Compare that to the online photo album Flickr and its ability not only to upload photos, but through tagging, assemble them into various cross-referenced platforms and repackaged and/or referenced in ways unimaginable with a box. Similarly, how Itunes revolutionized the way we pick our music, a far cry from the days of albums and even CD’s. The music industry has spent millions to try and get a hold on this randomness. Play lists are now assembled by millions of users and tagged and shared with themes like, “Loneliness,” “NASCAR,” “breast-cancer” and of course “Love” Weinstein points out that these play lists are a means of self expression. They use explicit (a song) and add to it to make evoke and disclose that which is “implicit.” And there is a power in their being shared with others.

One of the most powerful examples of the impact that recent computer technology has had on knowledge is the emergence of Wikipedia. This tool has challenged the Encyclopedia Britannica for its place in determining and categorizing bits of information which is turned into knowledge. How many schools today prohibit youngsters from using Wikipedia based on the fact that it is somehow unreliable?

Britannica enables us to be passive knowers: You merely have to look a topic up to find out about it. But Wikipedia provides the metadata surrounding the article – edits, discussions, warnings, links to other edits by the contributors- because it expects the reader to be actively involved, alert to the signs. This burden comes straight from the miscellaneous itself.”

Weinberger makes only passing reference to schools and their utter lack of understanding of how these tools can improve learning. Wallowing in ignorance, schools and even their supporters try in vain to tinker with ways to improve the way Standards are set and children assessed. His argument for standards and standardized tests is that they capture that which is “explicit” and perhaps merely a snapshot in a child’s knowledge. They cannot by their nature capture the “implicit” which is really the process of learning the child undergoes as they progress. To make the point, Weinberg says,

“Social knowing changes who does the knowing and how, more than it changes the what of knowledge.

Now poke your head into a classroom toward the end of the school year. …you are likely to see students with their heads bowed, using No. 2 pencils to fill in examinations mandated by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. Fulfilling the mandate of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the MCAS measures how well schools are teaching the standardized curricula the state has formulated and whether students are qualified for high school degrees. …The implicit lesion is unmistakable: Knowing is something done by individuals. It is something that happens inside your brain. The mark of knowing is to be able to fill in a paper with the right answers. Knowledge could not get any less social. In face, in those circumstances when knowledge it social we call it cheating.

Nor could the disconnect get much wider between the official state view of education and how our children are learning. In most American households, the computer on which students do their homework is likely to be connected to the Net. Even if their teachers let them use only approved sources of the Web, the chances are good that any particular student, including your son or daughter, has four of five instant-messaging sessions open as he or she does homework. The have their friends with them as they learn. In between chitchat about the latest alliances and factions among their social set, they are comparing answer, asking for help on tough questions and complaining. Our children are doing their homework socially, even though they’re being graded and tested as if they’re doing their work in isolation booths. But in the digital order, their approach is appropriate. Memorizing facts is often now a skill more relevant to quiz shows than life.”

The point is reinforced by the field research of Dr. Sugata Mitra presented at the TED Conferences. Click on the site to see his findings on how computers help children form communities of learning. “What”, he asks, “is the role of the teacher.”

Mr. Strickland has called for a system that will personalilze learning in public schools. He is on the right track. Teachers I have spoken with at places like KIPP and Cristo Rey would happily bring these new technologies into their schools which would likely further personalize their already successful programs. Unfortunately, these schools get minimal to no government assistance and must continue to rely on foundation support to just keep the doors open. Despite their obvious remarkable success, they cannot secure the funding they need to educate children. There are many public school officials and advocates that would like nothing more than to see these alternative schools go under.

The challenge for philanthropy is to find pockets of innovation where that idea of personalized education is actually taking place in either a public or priavte school. If the technology does not yet exist in a charter setting such as KIPP funds could be directed to test it there. Similarly we would do well to target one or two successful public schoolls and work with teachers to test the technology and bring it to scale.

The goal should be to exempt these schools from the current Standards and Assessment models and allow teachers, student and designated mentors use the technology to explore how these tools can best support learning. One concrete example is the use of electronic portfolios or (e-portfolios). One of the more promising applications of e-portfolios is found at Florida State University which is the world leader in electronic portfolio development for demonstrating student achievement.

I believe the only authority by which philanthropy can speak is from its relations with the incredible people who are demonstrating programs and methods that are making a difference in a child’s learning experience. Of course standards are needed but the technology challenges us to thing through how these standards which currently operate as a one-size-fits-all program, can be transformed to refocus on what a child learns not what a child can memorize. New starndardization and assessment tools make it possible to bring to light the implicit learning that takes place with a child and helps to make it more visible, i.e. explicit to teachers who more often than not, recognize the bright child who, “just doesn’t test well.” These innovations can and will occur. Robert Stephenson from the Global Education & Learning Community has focused reasearch on in this area, focusing on the need to have bottom-up solutions rather than top-down solutions to personalize education. Philanthropy can provide funding to allow teachers to figure this out. We need to moved beyond the hubris that straddles Encylopidia Britannica that assembles the keepers of knowledge. We can and should be looking at a wikipedia type model that will invite teachers from public schools and private schools, from universities and from businesses - people from inside and outside the box - to become communities of learners who, together will make best use of these tools to make students into life-long learners.

This week, residents of Northeast Ohio were made aware of the fact that the Cleveland schools have slipped back a notch in the Ohio Department of Education’s ratings from Effective to Academic Watch. The supposed good news is that graduation rates have improved slightly over last year’s rank, which was third worst in the nation among large cities in the United States.

What a painful indictment to Cleveland’s alleged creative class; an indictment made more poignant by the fact that the greater Cleveland area boasts one of the richest concentrations of world-class arts and science museums and institutions in the country, if not the world. Each of these institutions – The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Museum of Natural History, and the Great Lakes Science Center, to name only a few - have well developed educational outreach programs. Each hires staff of impressive academic background and expertise in their respective fields. Although they are not formal schools they are by any measure educational institutions that, though underutilized, have the potential to revolutionize the way learning can take place in the “formal” setting of public schools. There is an increasing body of research that confirms the most effective teachers are those who have degrees in the disciplines they teach. Too many teachers, especially those in the natural sciences, do not have the appropriate academic preparation to teach their classes. Across town, however, most of the “non-formal” educational institutions have staff with advanced degrees in the appropriate subject areas. These superbly trained personnel develop sophisticated and up-to-date curriculum that complements the science or art exhibits in their institutions. These educators have made sure that this curriculum also complements the Ohio State Standards and grade-level tests. Despite these tremendous curricular programs, these educators experience deep frustration due to their inability to create sustainable curricular linkages that are fully integrated with the public schools. Despite significant funds from foundations, non-formal educators rely on the one teacher or the one school building that bothers to make the effort to figure out how to make the best use of the resource in the classroom. A better use of technology – much of which is open source and therefore quite affordable - can break this cycle of educational inertia. Educational technology has created a shift from the old “teacher-centric” system to one that must be refocused on learning. Policymakers must embrace this change.

Barbara Ganley, an educator formerly at Middlebury College, writes:

The world has changed: the classroom has not. Our students, as native inhabitants o