Getting to Know: Congressional Committees

Committees play an integral role in the function of Congress overall and in the legislative process, certainly. Committee work is where bills are shaped and where members of Congress make decisions about a bill's future in that process. Especially now that Democrats are in the majority in the House for the 116th Congress, we're seeing how that function is changing from the previous one.

The introduction of bills, speeches, and votes are important and a fundamental understanding of committees is crucial for any successful advocate. For monitoring work in education at the federal level, I try to stay abreast of the work of the following committees:

• House Committee on Education & Labor (@HELPCmteDems on twitter)

• House Committee on the Budget (@HouseBudgetDems)

• House Committee on Appropriations (@AppropsDems)

• Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (no Committee twitter account that I know of)

• Senate Committee on the Budget (@BudgetGOP: Official Twitter account for the (majority) Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee)

• Senate Committee on Appropriations (no Committee twitter account, so far as I know)

If you're on twitter, you may be interested in subscribing to my ED & DC list, as individuals and groups included on it follow the work of the above Committees closely, as well as to provide context for the greater, holistic picture; their work can aid to improve our understanding and advocacy efforts. Are there additional Committees you think I should consider adding to the above? What groups and individuals could be added to the ED & DC list?
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Image credit: View from Senate Park of U.S. Capitol Dome (amid restoration), April 2016

How can being bilingual be an asset for white students and a deficit for immigrants?*

With one tweet, I was linked to perhaps the most on-point question of our time and to information about a dual-language program right here in Massachusetts, in the Mendon-Upton Regional School District:

Attn: @marcela_elisa @SoniaChangDiaz @MAStewartMA #MAEdu https://t.co/iHYdrFxmJ5

— Tracy Novick (@TracyNovick) November 14, 2016

The link embedded above in Tracy's tweet will still take you to The Hechinger Report article. The Mendon-Upton program (and another one highlighted, from Texas) aims to make all students in the class fully bilingual. The article points out that the Texas program would be illegal in Massachusetts. And, while bilingual education programs aren't part of the ELL construct in the Commonwealth, such strength-based approaches guarantee students who are Limited English Proficient (LEP) access to educational opportunities. These programs allow students to acquire a full command of the English language and employ their native languages to help them master challenging academic standards in all subject areas.

Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, as I did until age 10, I noted many wonderful accents in the parents and grandparents of friends, including my own grandparents, who were immigrants from Turkish Armenia, Italy, Poland, or Germany. All of the children I knew spoke English, though I now realize it may not have been their first language.

More than 35% of people whose first language is not English live in my Town today — true in varying degrees of many cities and Towns across the Commonwealth — and many are limited English proficient. It's extremely difficult for children to do well in school who do not understand what their teachers are explaining. Language instructional programs, especially in public schools, should also involve parents in planning, implementation, and evaluation.

It's time to amend the law that came about as the result of an initiative petition that passed in 2002, so that we can do better for our multi-lingual students. Strengthening this area is one key to closing gaps in proficiency.

*Title of an article in The Hechinger Report, and subject of this post.

What's Behind Door #3? [PARCC::Part II]

We've been reading (for example, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE, among other places, like HERE, HERE, and HERE) that a recommendation is pending from Commissioner Chester to the Board of ESE about how to move forward with statewide assessments in ELA and maths. He's been floating around his idea for a third way since October 19th's Board meeting, sharing his change of view and describing his process for how he will inform the Board of his recommendation. We assume said recommendation will be similar to what we've been reading and hearing about. Time will tell.

At October's meetings, the Board learned that tech upgrades to infrastructure were estimated to be $3.1 million; another $12.3 million estimated for additional technology in schools. Many schools may be ready for computer-based testing but very many more are not at all equipped with equitable, effective digital learning environments.

Acknowledging our tech deficit across the Commonwealth in this regard, I'm concerned that technology for learning is being driven with an eye to test-taking instead of blending future focused, student-centered, content-rich interactive curricula. What's the plan to align and effectively integrate those environments, while ensuring great teaching and learning?

• How are we supporting practitioner-led professional development that's framework-aligned and tech-integrated? 

• Are all educators in regular and frequent conversations with the rest of the team? Is the instructional technology team part of grade-, course- and/or department-level PLCs?

• How are school staff collaborating with families and community partners to connect students and families to expanded learning opportunities and community services in order to support achievement and civic participation? 

• Is the organization developed sufficiently with integrated tools and resources, including non-cognitive supports for all learners, no matter the language he speaks or where she lives?

• Do educators have what they need when they need it to support all students, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds?

To live in a media-rich, technology-driven environment, the entire educational enterprise must have command of the essential skills of collaboration, communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and reflection through the integration and effective use of technology.

The point is this: no test ensures great teaching and learning. Teachers in the learning environment are the true catalysts for change. A more effective statewide assessment system in 2015 might be focused on seamless integration with its complementary parts, not on the sturm und drang over the standardized assessment tool.

Educators are skilled professionals - practitioners working to inform their practice so they can nimbly respond to a learner's needs, modify curriculum, and improve instruction. The urgency isn't about getting everyone in a 1:1 relationship with a device for test-taking. It's about remaining focused on great teaching and learning for our digital age, providing opportunities and time for reflection and collaboration, aligned with a vision that holds student-learning at the center of all decisions.

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Resources, quotes, tweets
See HERE, HERE, and HERE for the Department's vision and support for digital learning in MA K-12 schools.

Great read on the Obama administration's changing views on standardized testing.

Those bills in the Massachusetts Legislature calling for a moratorium on testing and on other accountability measures.

Read and heard elsewhere: recent references to "door number three thinking":

• An article about the Lawrence receivership that ran in CommonWealth Magazine on October 12, 2015

• The Secret History of Thoughts - Dark Thoughts that aired on The Invisibilia Podcast on January 9, 2015, rebroadcast on WGBH-FM, November 2, 2015, which is when I heard it

PARCC::Part I

Note: The Board will hold a final public comment session on PARCC -->Door #3 (?) Monday, November 16, 4:00-7:00 PM at Malden High School auditorium (in lieu of Public Comments at Tuesday morning's regular BESE meeting, 8:30 AM).

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
~ Albert Einstein

A great obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.
~ Daniel Boorstin

Our best measures of educational performance are cognitive because that's what's easiest to test. If the things that are harder to test matter more, that presents something of a conundrum for people trying to formulate educational policy.
~ Megan McArdle in Bloomberg View (Note that Ms. McArdle's article describes key takeaways of an experiment in parent engagement undertaken by Roland Fryer, Stephen Levitt, and John List; Roland Fryer is now a member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education).

Great ed leaders inspire others with vision and hope not pressure and fear.

— Pedro Noguera (@PedroANoguera) September 1, 2015

American schools are modeled after factories and treat students like widgets. Right? Wrong. http://t.co/A1FyhOL6Yl

— Jack Schneider (@Edu_Historian) October 10, 2015

NASBE Session :: What Do We Now Know About Preparing School Leaders - and How are We Doing?

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Panel Presenters
Paul Manna, College of William & Mary, Wallace Foundation
Jonathan Supovitz and Bobbi Newman, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania
William "Bill" White, Chair of School Leader Study Group, West Virginia State Board of Education


NASBE: State BOD chose two study groups: one on career readiness & the other took a look at the adequate number of school leaders - - lead to this report, partially funded by Wallace Foundation. At the same time that the study group was working on this, Paul Manna published his report for the Wallace Foundation: Developing Excellent School Principals to Advance Teaching and Learning


Paul Manna

• A Tale of Two Reports: The Wallace Foundation's Developing Excellent School Principals to Advance Teaching and Learning: Considerations for State Policy AND NASBE's: Successful Leaders for Successful Schools: Building and Maintaining a Quality Workforce

• The need for high-quality leaders -->not high priority on state policy agenda - currently, more attention to teacher-related issues than principal-related

• A focus on "school leadership" conflates the principal's role with the roles of other school leaders

State Policy Levers Examined:
- Setting principal standards;
- Recruiting aspiring principals;
- Overseeing principal preparation programs;
- Licensing principals; supporting professional development of principals; evaluating principals

• ON Recruitment: Wallace FDN has a big focus on Urban Emphasis --> have to also talk about rural settings

Examples:

• North Carolina: NELA (Northeast Leadership Academy), mission to recruit, train, then place in rural locations in North Carolina. There are some common needs in both rural and urban; explicit training for rurals, like how to find resources for their particular settings; recruits also learn to write a grant

• Illinois and Kentucky: they have had principal preparation programs for over 10 years

• Massachusetts: on Licensing, Performance Assessment for Leaders ("PALS") - -> emphasis is on practice; with a focus on training

Local Contexts
- Educational governance
- Diversity of locales
- Capacity of state agencies and local districts and schools to implement policy
- Policies and practices

"... perhaps a principal's job is to go to work and decide which law to break because there are so many conflicting rules and policies..."

State boards of ed have The Power of Collective Voice to affect change:

1. The Power of Policy - authority to officially adopt and enact rules and regs to govern an area of the education system (often referred to as "rule-making")
2. The Power of the Question - as a body, has authority to ask agencies individuals, or organizations for information updates, and assistance on nay matter regarding the education system
3. The Power to Convene - for the purpose of discussing issues and collaboratively working toward solutions involving the education system in areas were the Board retains policy authority, as well as where it does not

With this in mind, SBEs could do some kind of systematic audit that bear on the Principals' job every day - - with an eye to removing 4 or 5 things...!


Dr. Jonathan Supovitz & Dr. Bobbi Newman

• How do we look holistically at the system of support for capacity for school leaders?

• Framework: Leadership Standards - Individual Supports

• Data: used for monitoring and informing continuous improvement (Distributed model for review of data - -Organizational Supports and Individual Supports)

• Hoping the study group report will help you

Organizational Supports
In the course of contacting all 50 states about their programs, spoke to lots of SEA folks

Program Approval & Licensure --> go hand in glove
Licensure:
- requirements for leaders
- leadership exam

Partnerships:
- partnerships provide the conduit through which candidates can better access these pathways
- findings

Sponsorships
Financial support for:
- recruitment programs
- induction programs
- mentoring
- recognition

Emerging TRENDS:

• IL: sunsetting programs and asking folks to reapply

• AZ & MA: high standards for leaders

• DE: new report cards focus on a cycle of continuous improvement

• many states have "grow your own" programs for leadership

• developing "teacher leaders": many states have the requirement that prospective principals have teaching experience, but no evidence of leadership is required - - this needs to change

Going forward: guiding questions for policymakers (begins on p. 22 of the NASBE report)


Bill White

• in addition to the guiding questions, check out  REFERENCES, beginning on p. 28

• need to look at the way we do leadership development, beginning on p. 17

The take-away: There are bright spots, but no exemplary states

There's more in the Storify
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Note:
There's an excellent twitterchat for aspiring administrators called #Admin2B. Drop in Monday nights, 8:00-9:00 PM (EST). Check out archived convos HERE and HERE

Time to Bring Public Policy and Social Media Together for Progress

I've had a great summer, much of it spent off the grid unplugged from email, tapping into social media for fun. It's been great connecting on a more personal level with family and friends in real time talking, laughing, crying, sharing, hugging.

Thinking back to when Facebook arrived on the scene in February 2004: I was slow to adopt. I signed up eventually and connected to family and local friends. When Twitter followed in March 2006, I decided I was not going to try to keep up with yet another platform. Not so for businesses, corporations, institutions, and the like. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook opened up a whole new world of marketing strategy for them.

"We don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it." ~ Erik Qualman

After being accepted in 2011 into a 6-month program for women interested in pursuing political office, I was introduced to Twitter and quickly grew to enjoy it. I set myself up on LinkedIn later that same year and leaned into the idea of using Facebook as a way to connect with folks on a range of issues, too. This video gives a snapshot of social media at the time:



Gone are the questions asking if social media is here to stay. Clearly they are, though how kids and adults are using social media today has changed dramatically.

Consider a PEW study published earlier this year that provides an overview on American teens and their use of technology and social media. One finding showed that 92% of teens were online everyday, with 24% online "almost constantly".

So much has changed - and is changing - across our media-saturated landscape. Schools and individual teachers are working to bring media literacy to students, but media literacy is not broadly implemented in our public schools and media literacy is rarely part of the public debate on education. Still, more and more politicians and policymakers are getting on twitter and facebook to connect to their stakeholders and constituents.

I'm a member of the national advisory council for Media Literacy Now. We want our elected representatives and policymakers to engage with us on social media. As more and more elected people are engaging stakeholders and constituents through Twitter and Facebook, we can connect with them in meaningful ways to impact awareness of the urgent need for media literacy education and other key public policy issues of our time.

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Posts, Podcasts, tweets

• Educational Software Gets Attention from State Politicians
• ISTE: Standardized curriculum for teaching tech skills
• 9 things we learned about phones from a teenager
• Growing up Digital: 3 truths for the adults
• A Parent's Guide to All that "EdTech" in Your Kid's Classroom

Should apps be part of a library’s story time? Ask @mediatrician: http://t.co/qpvRT2r27a #BackToSchool

— CtrMediaChildHealth (@cmch_boston) September 2, 2015

Tips for an online age: What not to share http://t.co/JYnTEtDlso @MBrodeur via @BostonGlobe

— MediaLiteracyNow.org (@MediaLitNow) September 1, 2015

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Addendum: cross-posted September 9 on Media Literacy Now blog

Media Literacy Now

Twenty years ago, when my eldest of three was in elementary school, I became an outspoken advocate for commercial-free schools and classrooms. I learned about efforts in Massachusetts and across the country to limit the impact of commercialism in our schools and I carried the issue forward with PTAs at local, state, and national levels. I met good folks then with whom I now interact on the broader issue of media literacy and I am a proud member of Media Literacy Now.

Today, literacy means

media literacy.

The need for media literacy in our schools is more important than ever because we live in a 24/7 media environment. Children's future well-being depends not only on their literacy, but that they have the media literacy skills necessary to navigate, analyze, and respond to all forms of media.

Whereas my eldest is in that first generation of digitally socialized people who entered school at the dawn of the internet age and adopted computerized technologies in elementary school and facebook and twitter while still in high school, my rising high school senior is a digital native who has been accessing online curriculum content since elementary school, came through facebook and twitter and beyond, with access to personalized on-screen edu-tainment.

Classrooms today are learning labs where students prepare for the world beyond school walls, equipped with the skills necessary: Communication, empathy, critical-thinking, and global citizenship. Schools continue to add and improve technological access to curricula across all grades yet there is little coordination to ensure media literacy skills acquisition. We must empower our children to be critical thinkers who analyze content in print and can navigate media in all of its forms to become informed digital citizens.

The internet is not going away. Our children must move beyond being media consumers to become media creators. Their future - and our democracy - depends on it.

#Storify: 9Cs

Our state budget reflects the choices we make to strengthen communities, support vulnerable populations, and build a thriving economy.

This past Tuesday, February 3, 2015, Governor Charlie Baker announced a series of reductions to the FY15 Budget in an effort to close a $768M projected budget deficit.

I created a storify story by pulling together some tweets and other resources related to the recent 9Cs - view my storify story embedded below.

Remembering Summer Learning

This year, and summer especially, will remain in my memory as one where I explored new methods of learning.

I had already discovered the power of twitter as a personal and professional learning tool, what with various twitter chats in which I began participating in 2011.

Last Spring, I signed up for my first MOOC with coursera. I logged in for the first few days, then, never again. Failure to continue the course was a combination of being somewhat disoriented there, not being as interested in the course as I thought I would be, and a general lack of time.

Undaunted, in July I signed up for an EDx course: The Future of Learning with Professor Richard Elmore. Happily, I found this one to be a topic in which I was not only interested, but engaged in right from the start.

Professor Richard Elmore,
June 2014 (Photo credit: mas)

I had been fortunate to attend an introduction to the MOOC on the Harvard campus with Prof Elmore in June. In the course we explored modes of individual and distributed learning and leading through exploration and understanding of our own theories of learning and leadership. This course provided me with tools to imagine and contribute to the future of learning. More on this to come in future posts!

So, I've experienced two MOOCs to date. Both were designed with participatory interaction occurring primarily through the course website, with expanded conversation happening on discussion platforms within the site (which I found to be extremely chaotic in both cases...), as well as through social media (a facebook page and twitter). Connections to others for both were based on platforms for writing and reading.

Another summer learning experience was reading "Beyond the Bake Sale" as a #PTcamp bookchat with over 100 educators and parents spanning 10 time zones. We used digital tools including Voxer, twitter (#ptcamp), ApprenNet, and blogs to discuss a couple of chapters each week.

Most striking about this experience were the visual (ApprenNet) and aural (Voxer) aspects of connecting and sharing. The group was certainly much smaller than a MOOC but much bigger than a typical book group. The digital tools enabled us to connect and challenge each other through voice and video.

Bake Sale was a stand out experience that continues to have ripples! Out of that bookchat experience came material for an MTA ED Talk to be given at their summer conference in Williamstown last August. Unfortunately, I was unable to give my ED Talk due to illness, but no good work is ever wasted! Themes and examples from my Talk have been used in various ways since, including on this blog. The bookchat had also enabled the ability to establish relationships - connecting through voice and video makes quick colleagues! I maintain a personal and professional learning network with members of the #ptcamp group who inspire me daily.

For those interested: Here's a Harvard Graduate School of Education video of Dr. Karen Mapp (one of the Bake Sale authors) describing her work on the Dual Capacity-Building Framework recently released by the US Department of Education: http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/14/11/building-capacity-family-engagement

Intro to What I Learned at #PTcamp

Sometimes we forget. We don't mean to, but we forget that our children are whole children who come to and from school from families and communities.

But what if we didn't forget? And what if we engaged parents as partners, allies, and advocates in children's education at home and at school?

Because more than 40 years of research shows that when families are engaged in their child's learning, that child does better. And this holds true regardless of a parent's level of education, country of origin, or socio-economic status.

So, why do so many schools struggle to engage families? And does it really matter how family-friendly your schools are?

These were some of the questions I had in mind this summer when I participated in #PTcamp: a free and open, virtual bookchat spanning 10 time zones and involving more than 100 educators and parents. Together we read Beyond the Bake Sale: the essential guide to family-school partnerships. Each week we read a couple of chapters, then using some digital tools (including blogs, Twitter, Voxer, and ApprenNet), we engaged, reflected, challenged, and provoked each other's thinking - for learning.

Bake Sale not only connected all of us globally, it got us thinking about the best ways to authentically engage families for student success. By placing family engagement at the heart of school partnerships, the authors promote these 4 Core Beliefs:

1. All parents have dreams for their children and want the best for them;
2. All parents have the capacity for supporting their children's learning;
3. Parents and schools should be equal partners;
4. Responsibility for building these partnerships rests primarily with school staff, especially school leaders.

Then, the authors point the way through an analysis of four partnership models, using five essential metrics by which to gauge how well schools:

• Build Relationships
• Link to Learning
• Address Differences
• Support Advocacy
• and Share Power

My next blog posts will outline the four partnership models discussed in the book - I am so curious to know what will look familiar to you!

School Leaders @Social Media

More and more people are using platforms like twitter, facebook, and LinkedIn to engage, inform, educate, and network.

• I set up my facebook page early in October 2011 in anticipation of my 2012 re-election to the Lexington School Committee (feel free to visit and "Like"...)

• I joined twitter in February 2011 (tweets at right...). If one thinks of twitter as a microblog, then this blog elaborates on thoughts, ideas, and scenes I have tweeted about.

• I beefed up my LinkedIn profile after attending a women's leadership conference - I've tried to maintain and build connections ever since.

So, it was with interest that I responded to a query sent to American School Board Journal subscribers last year about using social media - and would I be interested in talking to someone from ASBJ about it?

A small part of my conversation with ASBJ senior editor Lawrence Hardy is featured in the February edition of ASBJ and may be accessed HERE. I was pleased to contribute to the topic and agree that there is a tremendous opportunity to positively promote the work of schools and districts - and to engage with the international community on important education and humanitarian issues of our time.