The Best Platform for School Portfolios

Over the last few weeks I've been working with several clients focused on Career and Technical Education. One of the projects involved helping State Directors of CTE craft a vision and a set of principles to guide development of CTE into the future.

The other project focused on helping one state understand and define for themselves what it means to be 'college and career ready' (a new jargon that is getting more and more focus and will possibly be made into policy nationwide.

During these sessions, as has been the case for more than 10 years now, there was considerable conversation about the need for, and value of, digital learning portfolios.

As I listened to these conversations it became clearer and clearer to me that the perfect platform for wide spread adoption of a digital online portfolio for schools and learning already exists and is used by more than 300 million people. It's called Facebook.

It's so obvious to me that every person that has a profile is already used to creating and sharing some part of themselves with other people - mostly friends - but that this platform can easily be morphed into one that will support digital files and media of all types - allowing people of all ages to share and show-off what they have produced in the context of learning.

Facebook was originally conceived as a tool for people involved in a school to stay in touch with other people they knew from that school. As it has morphed into a social media platform for people of all walks of life the concept is very well accepted and well used (people spend more time on Facebook than they do on just about any other web site).

It makes perfect sense to me that every profile can have an option to add a section specifically designed to 'show-off' all forms of self-expression and learning.

If I was an app developer I'd develop that app immediately!

Response from David Langford about Paying Students to Learn

On December 11, 2008 I posted an article written by David Langford about paying students to learn.

An anonymous person commented that there is research that says there are positive effects of incentive based programs. I forwarded that response to David and asked him if he was interested in responded. He sent me the following:

Thanks for passing along my article to those who might listen. Unfortunately we are fighting a losing battle with extrinsic manipulation. It is so easy to implement these programs it is hard to stop politians and administrators. The new pick for Education Secretary Arne Duncan is also an advocate of pay-for-grades and implemented such a program in Chicago. I am fearful we may see an escalation of this thinking during the Obama administration.

I read through each of the studies the person who responded offered. None were credible comparisons of the blatant manipulation offered in the Chicago Public Schools or in Washington D.C.

Offering girls in Kenya scholarships to continue to go to school if they work hard does not compare to throwing money at kids who get A's, in a fabricated rating system, when they are already guarenteed a free education: Apples and Oranges comparisons. The study from Texas cited on paying students to take AP courses I believe lacks credibility since in order to get the predicted results they wanted they changed systemic factors such as opening AP courses to anyone interested instead of doing what they had always done by limiting class size to class rank. This is only one of a multitude of problems in this study.

The real problem is not how to make a better buggy whip, but should we be making them to begin with. I know I could produce the same positive correlation to improved work by beating children if they do not work hard. But, should we adopt that as a program and then start improving it? Automating or improving a bad process just means you can do something very bad quickly and to a larger number of people. Maybe Harvard would like to promote that study since they seem to be the source of promoting these pay-for-performance programs. I like the line in the movie Jurassic park that goes something like this, "You were so busy trying to see if you could you forgot to think about if you should!"

All of these types of programs and studies take time away from studying and fixing the real problems. No child will say I don't work hard at school because they do not pay me enough, but they will say it's boring or my teacher dosn't care. Who will work on these problems? Let's work on the real problems preventing high quality work and effort instead manufacturing new problems.

I'm interested in hearing from others about this very important topic.

Quality Learning: Paying students to learn?

David Langford is one of the smartest and best consultants I know working in the schooling world. His knowledge and experience of quality and it's application to schooling is beyond par. The following article came in a recent email newsletter from him. I couldn't say it any better! I've copied the newsletter in its entirety. Enjoy.

Quality Learning: Paying students to learn?
By David P. Langford

In the past, I believed most educators understood the inherent differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and valued the latter over the former. However, this does not seem to be the case. Pay-for-grades, gold stars, student-of-the-month programs and attendance rewards are all too prevalent extrinsic motivators used to push students to do a better job. I've found an overwhelming amount of evidence that these schemes do not work in the long term, and can even dangerously affect attitudes toward learning. (Alfie Kohn does an excellent job of compiling the evidence against extrinsic motivators in his books No Contest and Punishment by Reward.) There is no lack of evidence that pay-for-grades programs do not work, so why do schools continue to use them? The short answer is: because they appear to work.

Extrinsic rewards and punishments always seem to work if you do not count the costs. Studies have shown that you can get people to do almost anything if you make the motivator—payment or punishment--strong enough. For example, would you sabotage a colleague for ten dollars? Most people would answer “no.” But what if I upped the stakes? Would you do it for one thousand dollars? Ten thousand? One million? If I continued to increase the reward, most people would agree sooner or later--especially if they got to pick the colleague.

The same principle is true with students. If you pay students to get good grades, more students will get good grades for a while. Very quickly students who were only working to get the reward will discover that it is hard work to maintain good grades, and they will decide it isn't worth the effort unless the reward is increased, because the motivation for getting good grades is not to learn, but to be rewarded. The concept of "learning" to improve one's self never comes into play with the reward system. Just as teacher unions negotiate for higher pay, so student “unions” will eventually want to negotiate for a higher reward.

Extrinsic Theory: Improved Grades = Reward

Most always these reward schemes are touted as a “new trial program,” as if the idea of extrinsic motivation is a new one. In Washington D.C., Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who is making a valiant effort to improve a failing system, was asked why they implemented a "new" program that pays students to get good grades and attendance and she responded, "When critics say that it's sad to pay students, I say it's sad that only 8% of D.C. eighth-graders are proficient in math. People in the suburbs use incentives for their kids all the time, like giving them $10.00 for an 'A.' Kids in our program can save money for college or get a bank account." (Parade Magazine, November 16, 2008, p. 26.) It's unfortunate that we have such huge education gaps in this country and I am certain Chancellor Rhee feels the need to do something about it, but the bottom line is that two wrongs don't make a right. Just because some parents bribe their children to get better grades does not mean we should apply the same principle to all students. We can easily sabotage motivation through the best efforts of well meaning people.

If the pay-for-grades theory is correct, there should not exist a single example of students succeeding on their own. Yet there are thousands--if not millions-- of students who work hard because of a love of learning. Dr. W. Edwards Deming often stated that it only takes a single example to invalidate a theory. Having only 8% of students proficient in math is a dismal statistic to face, but the problem is in the system--not the students. Manipulating students with money will improve some students' performance for a short period of time, but what happens to students when you can no longer afford to pay them and their attachment to learning is for money? Smothering intrinsic motivation is a cost too great for even one student.

Intrinsic Motivation: Acquired Knowledge = Joy in Learning

When learning rewards and punishments are eliminated, systemic performance results will always return to what they were before extrinsic manipulation. Remember, 98% of the problem comes from the system, and students have little or no control over systemic factors. Manipulating student extrinsic motivators does not address the basic cause(s) of the problem. Try asking students with a Force Field Analysis to identify driving and preventing forces of learning, then prioritize the preventing forces with an NGT. You might be shocked to realize that existing factors preventing learning have nothing to do with lack of pay-for-grades. One of the most misguided efforts of quality improvement is trying to improve something that should be eliminated, such as automating grading systems, increasing training for behavior modification or improving the pay-for-grades program. I can guarantee you, in low performing schools there are fundamental problems with:

Teacher training and support
Leadership and management
Process Management
Communication
The way schools are built and maintained
The way technology is being used or not used
Funding for classroom books and materials
Vision and purpose


One of the reasons many extrinsic motivation programs have stayed around for so long and are continually resurrected and improved is because they are convenient for the people managing the system. They keep the focus off leadership and mistakenly place it on the people working in the system. In every education system I have consulted--from the U.S. Naval Academy to primary and secondary schools in the U.S. and Australia to pre-schools in Argentina--the story is the same: we blame students for poor performance without first considering the systemic causes. In psychology this is known as the fundamental attribution error.

If you want a significantly different result, you must first change the system. I applaud Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C. for trying to improve a broken system, and I offer my help. She has made many excellent systemic changes in D.C. such as closing 23 under-populated schools and paying for librarians, art, music and P.E. teachers at remaining schools. These systemic efforts will help to improve student motivation for learning.

Systemic problems are normally out of the circle of influence of students and none of these systemic problems will go away simply by bribing students to work harder within a failing system. Leaders must learn to, as Dr. Deming once said, "work smarter, not harder." If you want a different result, try changing the system and watch what happens to behavior, instead of continually doing what we have always done by leaving the system alone and trying to change the behavior of the people in it.


©2008 Langford International Inc. All rights reserved.
e-Mail: office@langfordlearning.com
12742 Canyon Creek Road, Molt, MT 59057
Phone: 406-628-2227 Fax: 406-628-2228

External vs Internal Motivation and the Theory of Knowledge

More and school states and school districts are developing programs designed to 'motivate' students to improve on standardized tests. Combine that with incentive programs for teachers to improve test scores and we have a train wreck in the making.

I still marvel at the fact that good, well meaning people, have a limited understanding of how people (and the brain) actually work. Unless of course these aren't well meaning people (which I refuse to think about). 

Everyone acts from theory - whether they are aware of it or not. The brain develops 'models' of the world and how it works and we behave consistent with those models (even abhorrent behavior is consistent with some mental model in the brain). 

So what are the theories in use by the people that develop policies for the public schooling system? It appears, from where I sit, the theory employed in school policy and practice includes:

• people need extrinsic motivation
  
• incentives motivate people
• memory is learning
  
• control and compliance are highly valued
  
• learning is teacher and testing centric
• memory and tests demonstrate 'knowledge' 
  
• order and discipline are requirements for learning
• school can be disconnected from life
• curriculum determines what is learned
• schooling develops good people
• emotions have no place at school
• people aren't people when they are at school
• school is disconnected from the rest of life

The public schooling system is the one institution that touches just about every single person in the country. There is tremendous 'potential' there. But what happens when we use extrinsic motivation and incentives to 'produce' an outcome?

Extrinsic motivation slowly destroys self esteem, dignity, cooperation and a yearning for learning - all of which are innate and high early in life. They are diminished throughout our life by what Dr. Deming calls the forces of destruction - of which extrinsic motivation is one of these destructive forces.

To paraphrase Mary Walton's presentation on Dr. Deming's teaching on performance appraisals, such an approach will "encourage short-term performance...discourage risk-taking, build fear, undermine teamwork, and pit people working against each other for the same rewards." ("The Deming Management Method," chapter 19, page 91). As Dr. Deming noted in "The New Economics," Ch. 4, p. 113, "When children are given rewards, such as toys and money, for doing well in school...they learn to expect rewards for good performance." This leaves the child, and then the adult, extrinsically motivated, relying on "things to make them feel good." And that destroys essential self-esteem. Dr. Deming expanded on this in pages 147-153.

So what should schools do? Here's a quote from a review of Dr. Deming's book, The New Economics.

To achieve notable improvement, the education system should abolish grades, merit ratings for teachers, comparison of schools on the basis of scores, and gold stars for athletics. Joy in learning comes more from learning than from what is learned. A grade is a permanent label for opening doors or closing doors, a way to achieve quality by inspection, rather than building in quality, a way to produce competition between people, rather than cooperation, a way to label people as winners or losers, a way to humiliate those at the bottom, rather than to promote their desire to learn and future achievement.

The California legislature has passed a law (awaiting the governor's signature) authorizing and encouraging school districts to provide non monetary "incentives to middle ad and high school students for achievement or improvement on standardized tests."

Here's an article about this.

Do Schools Kill Creativity

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

To me, this is a rhetorical question but I believe there are people in the world that might not think so. There are many people in the world that have no desire or see no need to change the public school system - except maybe to 'get back to the basics' (which are reading, writing, and arithmetic). 

Human beings have a natural capacity to learn, to change, to grow, to improve and to create. These natural tendencies are systematically drummed out of people that attend public school. 

Why? Because the school system wasn't set up to encourage creativity or encourage growth and improvement. The school system was set up to support the industrial revolution and produce people that could follow rules and stay within the lines.

The hierarchy of subjects taught in schools is designed to put the creative elements at the bottom (or not at all). The schooling process values 'academics' and much of the natural capacities that people have.

Here's a short video that makes an argument for the reinvention of schools and for rethinking the fundamental principles we have for school and schooling. He says our task is to educate the whole being of children. 

Schooling vs Education

I've been remembering - and thinking about - the fact that words and language have a lot of power. There are studies and entire bodies of knowledge about the power of words and the connection between words and mental images and mental models. 

For many years I have considered the system of public schools in this country to be an 'education system.' It wasn't until recently when I really understood the roots of the free public school system that I understood that the network of teachers and schools in this country was not intended to be an education system - but a schooling system. 

Does it matter? What's the difference between schooling and education? 

In many dictionary definitions for school and schooling the use of the word education finds its way into the text. In the following definitions from the web I have purposefully chosen a number of the sentences that do not refer to education. This may shed some light on this subject - or it may tend to annoy people. But let's look anyway.

Form the Free Dictionary: 

school·ing (skooling) n.

1. Instruction or training given at school.
   
2. Education obtained through experience or exposure: Her tumultuous childhood was a unique schooling.
   
3. The training of a horse or a horse and rider in equitation.
   

From Webster:

Schooling \School"ing\, n.

Discipline; reproof; reprimand; as, he gave his son a good schooling. --Sir W. Scott.

School \School\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Schooled}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Schooling}.]
To tutor; to chide and admonish; to reprove; to subject to systematic discipline; to train.

 

From Wikipedia:

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation (see socialization). Education means 'to draw out', facilitating realization of self-potential and latent talents of an individual. It is an application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research relating to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology —often more profound than they realize—though family teaching may function very informally.

In my mind understanding the difference between schooling and educating is important. One reason this is important is because the system of schooling uses discipline and extrinsic motivation as a modality and a methodology - to "motivate" young people to learn. The formation of the free public school system in the United States was intended to provide the bare minimum for the poor to become good citizens.

A system of education uses intrinsic motivation and the natural desire of humans to learn and improve. A system based on internal motivation will support a person to achieve their full potential (move towards achieving their full potential) while a system of schooling will be satisfied with a minimum standard.

A system of schooling will intend to control and use discipline when students become noisy or out of control. A system of education will be based on relationships and respect. Discipline will be something one does because it is in their best interest and not because it is enforced from outside.

From Wikipedia on Schooling: 

Schools and their teachers have always been under pressure — for instance, pressure to cover the curriculum, to perform well in comparison to other schools, and to avoid the stigma of being "soft" or "spoiling" toward students. Forms of discipline, such as control over when students will and will not speak, and normalized behaviour, such as raising one's hand to speak, are imposed in the name of greater efficiency. Practitoners of critical pedagogy point out that such disciplinary measures have no positive effect on student learning; indeed, some would argue that disciplinary practices actually detract from learning since they undermine students' individual dignity and sense of self-worth, the latter occupying a more primary role in students' hierarchy of needs.

I think one of the reasons people involved in the public schooling system experience frustration when they attempt to make changes or improve is because there is confusion between what is schooling and what is education. I believe some of this confusion is caused because there is often overlapping and contradictory goals and objectives in each 'system.' 

Anyone engaged in a process of improvements would do themselves well by understanding these distinctions and clarifying their own goals and objectives relative to each system.

Unschooling

It's an interesting name for something so simple - letting a young person's interests drive their learning. But that's what the movement is being called. Unschooling, to some degree, is simply an extension of homeschooling. The difference is that the young person is 'driving' the learning by what they find interesting or want to know more about.

The name, first used in 1970 by someone called John Holt, but in a recent article in Teacher Magazine it says the movement is growing. There are no hard numbers on how many young people are being unschooled but there are an estimated 1.1million young people being home schooled.

The worry expressed by educators is that young people will lose their way. I wonder. It's probably true that some people using this approach may lack some content knowledge but isn't curiosity and a desire to learn (and the ability to learn) more important?

Here's a link to Unschooling - a web site with resources for and about unschooling.

Here's Google's results when searching for unschooling.

Penalties for Truancy Don't Work

Here's a recent article in British News that tells about a study of British School Districts that used truancy notices for parents as well as other punitive measures such as jailing and fining the parents of students who missed school. They have discovered that these measure don't work! It says that irresponsible parents may not be the main cause of truancy! The report calls for empowering parents rather than punishing them. What a concept...

Study: Parent fines fail to curb truancy
Penalizing parents for student truancy doesn't work, a study finds. While the report's author noted short-term improvement in some cases, he said there were no long-term beneficial effects on attendance observed in the 150 British districts that were studied over a three-year period. BBC (4/17)

The Beginning of the End

Well, not really. The beginning of the end already started - but this is more of the kind of thing that will ultimately end in the ruin of Public Schooling. Can you imagine if incentives - paying students to go to school, paying them to get good grades, paying them to pass tests, paying them to graduate, etc. - continues?

I've already written about teacher incentives and charging parents if their children don't come to school or if they miss a parent teacher meeting.

I've also written about the different incentives being used on young people: enticing them with iPods, breakfast, paying third graders and paying $5 per A, $4 per B, etc. and offering the enticement of a car for graduating.

Here's another article along these lines:

A $250 incentive for passing an AP exam
A group of educators and business executives will offer some D.C.-area Advanced Placement students and teachers $250 for each passing score on science, English and math tests. In Dallas, where a similar program launched more than a decade ago, the number of passing AP scores in 10 targeted high schools increased from 71 in 1995 to 877 in 2006. The Washington Post (3/9)

The reason I was saying this is the beginning of the end is because if this continues and one school finds out about some incentive another school has; or schools in one state find out about something going on in another state; the only logical outcome of all this is an escalation of this kind of thinking with the need for greater and greater rewards being offered.

This is NOT SUSTAINABLE!

W. Edwards Deming on the Future of Capitalism

Extrinsic motivation slowly destroys self esteem, dignity, cooperation and a yearning for learning - all of which are innate and high early in life. They are diminished throughout our life by what Dr. Deming calls the forces of destruction - of which extrinsic motivation is one of these destructive forces.