The Future of Teaching

There is a very important article on teaching by Rick Hess in EducationNext this month. He has some outstanding facts and great suggestions on what has to happen in teaching in order to maximize talent and increase student learning.

First the background – he uses one of my favorite stats about our society of career changers: by 30, most people have held 4 different jobs. So assuming that every kid in college going into teaching is going to stay in teaching through retirement is ludicrous.

Career-changers are the problem and the solution. Taking at look at the huge shift in talent in grades 9-12 based on when people entered the teaching profession:

1990: 75% entered by age 25 and 6% entered by age 35
2004: 56% entered by age 25 and 16% entered by age 35

A study in Mississippi found that people entering the profession later stayed longer. Here at ABCTE where the average age of our teachers is 39, we have an 85% retention rate after three years. That is much higher than any other route.

Rick’s conclusion: more alt cert, more specialization and more technology so that we can get the talent we need and fully leverage that talent for better results.

We could not agree more.

100 years of tradition unhindered by progress

We used to have a similar tongue in cheek motto at the Naval Academy where traditions could not be undone by progress. And now I see first hand how education continues to struggle with modernizing the classroom in spite of amazing technological gains in the last 20 years.

Tom Vander Ark looks ahead to the next 20 years and feels like we are finally, reluctantly, going to change – but only if we get some for-profits in the mix with the non-profits to drive that change. The working paper has been released by AEI with a forward by Rick Hess who continues to champion entrepreneurship in education.

Vander Ark is formerly of the Gates Foundation and now runs a venture capital group for education companies. So he has seen the issue up close and personal. He puts forth a pretty great picture of where education has to go and his paper deserves a quick read.

In the recent Metlife survey of teachers, the issue: “More teachers (43%) agree that their classes have become so mixed in terms of students’ learning abilities that they can’t teach effectively, compared to 39% in 1988.” His fix is World of Warcraft. Not really but it does give me an excuse to try the game. His actual fix is to use a World of Warcraft like software system to completely customize education delivery that adapts to the level of the student.

If you know any good homeschoolers, you know that most of them can educate their children in half the time. Our schools are rapidly inefficient because time is lost on bussing, meals, announcements, paperwork etc. Every day we are lose incredibly valuable time on task to things that don’t further our student’s education. Yet there is technology available today that could deliver the content more efficiently and at the level of each individual student helping them grasp the knowledge they need to succeed.

Our teachers are right in identifying one of the main problems in education today. The wide variation in knowledge and skill level of their students makes it nearly impossible to teach without the use of technology. Yet the only way we currently use technology in our schools is to have students do some research on the web and to create some great powerpoints in their group projects (usually completed by half the students in the group). We are teaching to the middle and losing more and more kids on the ends.

Vander Ark is correct - One hundred years of tradition unhindered by progress has to change - - it is just a matter of how fast and how many student lives are wasted while we wait.

School Choice Event at AEI

I went to the AEI event on School Choice on Monday – and it was a great event. It had promise with Sol Stern, Joe Williams, Robert Enlow, Howard Fuller and Rick Hess on the panel and it lived up to that promise. For once in DC we got an honest discussion on a major issue and it seemed that there was even some agreement on what needed to happen in the future.

The first agreement is that our urban schools are a disaster. Howard Fuller was emphatic that making kids go to these schools is the social justice issue of our time. As many bloggers are quick to highlight, President-elect Obama is currently exercising his school choice by selecting the best school for his daughters. Howard correctly points out that every parent should be able to do that for their children.

Right here in DC, we have a middle school disaster- - shouldn’t those children have the right to immediately go to a better school. They are not safe and they are not learning. Obviously that school is not going to be fixed in the near future. I will paraphrase Howard again that it is a “grinding hypocrisy” that we won’t let some kids chose a better school but we would never send our kids to that school. It is criminal what is happening to poor kids today.

The point of contention seems to be whether you support school choice for systemic change for all schools or for social justice for kids in disaster schools. Sol Stern and Rick Hess believe we won’t achieve systemic change because there is no real penalty for losing students in our system. Sol goes on to say that we will not improve if we continue to use whole language and other poor curriculum and get teachers from ed schools who cannot teach.

My take away is that all of the speakers had some great points that can combine into a comprehensive education policy to improve our schools. Howard Fuller is an amazing and passionate speaker and he is dead on that it is criminal that we send kids to disaaster schools when other kids get to go to better schools. Enlow is right as well – we need to put more pressure on public schools to improve by creating competition but that pressure has to come in the form of better programs for competition. Sol Stern is right that the classroom is where it all happens and we all need to ensure we have better teachers and better curriculum.

I leave you with Howard Fullers great wrap up – I am paraphrasing again as I couldn’t write fast enough to get the direct quote: “I am not a supporter of choice or charter schools – I am supporter of educating kids”. That is truly the bottom line.

For more on school choice – the Alliance for School Choice has launched a great a new website: http://www.letparentschoose.org/

NOTE: AEI is 2 for 2 in my book right now for holding the actual meaningful panel discussions. It seems like most DC panel discussion are mindless drivel because we could have read the paper or they are an endless tribute to KIPP, TFA and Michelle Rhee. The last two events at AEI were actual debates about significant issues affecting education!! If only all more panels could have actual discussions – the world would be a better place.

Education Debates

Tomorrow night there is an education debate between Lisa Graham-Keegan (McCain) and Linda Darling-Hammond (Obama). There have been a few debates between Lisa and various Obama representatives. The funny thing about these debates it that some of the Obama reps support and believe very different things.

At the October 10th debate at AEI between and Lisa (McCain) and Michael Johnston (Obama) – it was an ed reform love fest. Johnston helped start New Leaders for New Schools (alternative certification) and now runs a charter school in Denver. Can’t get more reform minded than that. He supports most education reforms (vouchers was not mentioned at this debate) and it was hard to tell the difference in education platforms between the two. The only difference seems to be that Johnson would spend more new dollars and Graham-Keegan is advocating smarter spending of current dollars.

But tomorrow night Linda Darling-Hammond will present a different agenda for Obama. She does not support alternative teacher certification and does not seem to support charters. She has been a champion of maintaining the status quo and she is representing Obama tonight.
So which education platform is the real Obama platform? Graham-Keegan scored with that thought at the October 10th debate making it look like he is indecisive on the issue or pandering to the status quo by riding the fence.

We know from his speeches that he is more reform minded on education. But anyone who has worked in the states knows that speeches don’t really count - - - it is who is in charge of doing the actual work that dictates which direction things move and right now we just don’t know what that would mean for an Obama administration.

The Business of Education

A few weeks ago, AEI held their annual education entrepreneurship presentation where they have the usual suspects (TFA, KIPP, TNTP, Edison, New Leaders etc – it seems they are required for every education panel) present and talk about how difficult it is for entrepreneurs in education. Attending this annual event, you would feel that these are the only companies working in education and that there is no hope for business in education.

You would be wrong. I do some investing in the markets and the conventional wisdom is to invest in what you know. So six months ago I started researching education companies starting mostly in the postsecondary arena. I started following Apollo, Capella, Corinthian and DeVry. They are doing extremely well and I learned some interesting things.

Apollo – which owns Phoenix University now has over 300,000 students. The are now leveraging that knowledge and success and venturing into the K-12 space through the purchase of Insight Schools – an online high school.

DeVry now has close to $1B in revenue and owns a Medical School in the Caribbean. Caribbean med schools attract many US students who can’t get into schools here. As long as they pass their med boards – they become physicians in the US. (hmmm – do some preparation, pass rigorous exams and enter the profession through an alternative route to help solve shortages – seems like a good idea).

American Public Education recently went public – it was supposed to come out at $18 per share the first week of November 2007. It came out at $30 and is now at $42 (disclosure – I did buy some at $30 and still have those shares). And the owners are not even using the proceeds of the offering for expansion – they are using it to pay themselves!!

Kaplan Education is now a $2B company and continues to expand.

The point is that business follows the money – and education is rapidly becoming the place for big money. The owners of the companies listed above are now making huge bucks and took away millions in their stock offerings.

Digging further – check out Knowledge Universe. The Milken brothers have put together a dream team of business management and are creating a PreK through Post Secondary super-company. They own a large slice of K12, KinderCare and a pretty solid mix of other education companies. K12 is going public in the next few weeks which should provide some pretty hefty capital for Knowledge Universe and K12.

Digging even further – Sterling Partners bought out Educate Inc (Sylvan and others) back in June and now have an impressive portfolio of education companies. They have committed to investing even more in education.

The point: when business makes money, more money will flow. Business is starting to make big money in education and that will create the opportunity for more money to flow into education. This will change provide incredible changes in education over the next few years.

Hopefully – AEI will break from the usual suspects and get some of these companies that are taking education entrepreneurship to the absolute highest level.