00802 Finland

Every other nation is jealous of Finland with its 1^st place K12 education rating among developed nations. There are few preschools in Finland. Their kids have a pre-primary year at age 6 and enter formal (basic) education at the age of 7. Finnish basic education is nine years followed by 3 years of upper secondary education. The upper secondary splits into preparation for vocational or university. The school year is 190 days for the estimated 800,000 students in a stable population of 5,600,000.

Their four level system is national, municipalities, school and classroom. They give only one national standardized test – much like the SAT or ACT. It is at the end of the upper-school studies which entitles the students to go to university or polytechnics. They have shifted from a national curriculum to depend on the local ingenuity of the schools and teachers. Finland has focused on individualized education base on teacher freedom to provide direction and inspire.

Finnish students learn four languages including English, Finnish and Swedish. The country is bilingual with homes with Finnish and Swedish spoken. Schools are highly stable with low growth rates. They have three teachers in a classroom where one is full time to help struggling students. Teaching is one of the most honored professions with only the top 10% of applicants admitted into the teacher colleges. Their homogeneous population spends about 7% of their gross domestic product on youth education. The Finnish citizens, communities and leadership are highly committed to education.

Our Arizona education ranks below average in the U.S. which has a 19^th rating world wide. Preschools are abundant. We have 10 fewer days per academic year and one more year of education. We put one teacher in a classroom with maybe an aid and parent volunteers. Arizona has career technical education and academic options, but do not split the schools. Our population of 6.5 million includes about 1.1 million students.

Our five level system is national, state, district, school and classroom. With No Child Left Behind and multiple other standardized tests, including AIMS, the curriculum decisions are spread through out the system. Schools and teachers are assumed to need more guidance and control, and have less freedom to use their own ingenuity. Arizona has worked for decades to standardize education to control what is taught in the classroom.

Arizona students learn one study one language English and maybe another. Many students learn Spanish in the home. We have continually evolving schools with one of the highest growth rates in the US and some with 30% turnover each year. Teaching is not rated in the top rank of professions. Most students entering teaching colleges are in the lower quartile of college entrants. Arizona spends a bit under 5% of gross domestic product ($10 billion/$210 billion) on youth education.

The differences in expectations and results are obvious. Teachers are the powerhouse which drives their success. Their system and culture is totally focused on getting education right and keeping it right. The other major foundations Arizona contends with like competitive workforce, university education, enterprise, and economy can take care of themselves.

00719 eSATS 3 Scenario Redesign

From the date above, you can see that I am a couple of months behind on my weekly blog. I will be catching up over the next few months. The main reason is a combination of vacation activities and hours a day committed to the redesign of the 2004 eLearning System for Arizona’s Teachers and Students (eSATS) design document.

For the past 6 years, we have attended hundreds of community organization and legislative gatherings, collected their ideas, studied the experts and research, and synthesized this information into the redraft. The 2010 eSATS draft recasts the K12 transformation effort into Grand Challenge mode. The heart of the challenge is for eLearning adoption to transform education which in turn reverses the downward spiral of workforce capability and employment, and economic development and prosperity. The 60 pages include new graphics and a revised 10 year time line based on three scenarios:

Freeze eSATS: holds eLearning at the existing 5% of learning but builds data decision support systems, broadband telecommunications to all communities, and increases legacy teacher professional development by a factor of ten. This low probability scenario maintains the current 68% graduation rate and is the baseline for the next two scenarios.

Current eSATS: forecasts a continuation of low growth of eLearning from 5% to a 30% level. There is State support, but most progress is by District/School initiatives. This scenario aligns with the current national trend. Graduation rate is increases to 80% due to significantly higher but fragmented motivation to learn and academic achievement.

Full eSATS: has Arizona doing a carpe diem with adoption of the eSATS Grand Challenge design. The State builds out 21^st century class intellectual infrastructure and physical infrastructure to support adoption at the District/School level. Finance, laws and regulations are changed, costs savings due to accelerated learning pay most of the bill, and eLearning savvy teachers get a 15% raise over normal inflation. Districts and Schools refocus the teacher professional development to produce eLearning savvy teachers, install 1:1 computing interfaces for students and effective digital curriculum and content for every class. The individualized, competency based education for all students results in not only a graduation rate of 95% but students are prepared for post-secondary careers and education. Arizona becomes the vision, poster child, and center of the vortex for eLearning transformation of the Nation’s education system.

eSATS task team had a fruitful meeting on Friday, September 17^th. We addressed how we can use this design to influence dozens of community organizations and hundreds of Arizona leaders to embrace K12 eLearning as the main dish on their plate to “fix” education.

We are redoing our web site and it will be up shortly. If you want a copy of the 2010 “Grand Challenge, Transforming Arizona’s K12 Education by Adopting an eLearning Systems Design” August 2010, send me an email.

00511 Learning Path Keeps Widening

Arizona’s demand for both quantity and quality of K-12 educated graduates has been increasing for decades. But only once, about 40 years ago, was there a significant response by the K-12 education system. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the federal government enacted Public Law 94-142 a major increase in school service for special education. I served on the Special Ed Advisory Committee to the Arizona Board of Education as the representative for gifted education, one of the ten categories. Due to massive support of Arizona parent advocates and new federal and state funding, learning support was brought to this ignored population (10% to15%). The increased investment in school funding was about 10% and has been maintained to this day.

During this most recent legislative session, Florida was used as a model for legislation that would improve Arizona education. Over the past decade Florida has moved out of the middle of the pack to the top quartile of math academic performing states. Arizona has remained at, or near, the bottom, usually bracketed by Mississippi and Louisiana. And both of these hurricane battered states have a reason.

Many Arizona bills changed rules and regulations. What has not been publicly addressed is the fact that Florida invests 15% more per-pupil adjusted for regional cost differences. Of equal importance is that Florida committed to eLearning in the mid-1990’s with major investments in digital content and curriculum. More currently, their state-wide Florida Virtual School is now serving the nation. There was little movement in these areas in this year’s Arizona legislative session.

Arizona has the right focus in place with STEM, 21^st century knowledge and skills, career and/or college ready graduates, etc. We have a host of advocacy organizations massing to influence the election of a education supporting legislature and new Department of Education leadership.

The tulips and daffodils have bloomed this spring and hope is in the air. I spent the day yesterday at ASU – my grandson and another 100 entering freshmen went through an orientation, advising and registration process that was light-years beyond my 1956 experience of just getting onto the train in Akron and walking onto the MIT campus to fend for myself.

Ride along with us this next month as we redesign and then plan for implementation of Arizona’s Grand Challenge => Transformation of K-12 education into the 21^st century.

00308 National Educational Technolgy Plan

The 2010 National Educational Technology Plan from the U.S. Department of Education has just been released in draft form. A blue ribbon higher education committee had been working since last spring to develop the plan. They took input at the 2009 NECC meetings and solicited input from the education community. The Obama administration has set the goal of raising college completion rates to 60 percent by 2020. One of the means is to have a computing device in the hands of every K-12 student. The committee addressed this goal by focusing on five strategic areas: classroom learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity.

NETP Executive Summary 14pp: http://tinyurl.com/yeljk8a

NETP pdf 114pp: http://tinyurl.com/yzcvwr4

Note: I called US Dept. of Ed Publications, and this plan has not yet been published in printed form for public access.

Education Week article 1pp: http://tinyurl.com/ylgljkr

SRI International’s site for NETP including community comments: https://edtechfuture.org

My comments from last fall are in their “Statements” section, about half way down the slider’s bar, starting with:

Innovation funding

and ending 20 comments later with:

14. eLearning research community of practice portal.

Last fall I wrote a seven page blog on the NETP planning process. I expressed concerns about the lack grand challenges and forward looking innovation. But my main concern was on the process itself.

After reading through the 90 text pages of this draft plan, most of my foundational concerns are covered. Much more important this work has reached a depth of detail and intellectual focus not often seen in this type of work. Many plans are at 40,000 feet. They are chuck full of situational assessments, imperatives and wishful but unrealistic thinking. This draft plan lays a solid and comprehensive foundation for the immense effort that faces all of us. Gone are is the word reform. In its place is the word that applies to our turning point – transformation.

I recommend that each of you take two to three hours out of you busy schedule for a bit of life-span learning.  Read and ponder the paragraphs this National Educational Technology Plan. Think about the role you can play in pulling it off.

I like the fact that this is a draft plan. Effective plans for implementation must be flexible and continuously evolving. So let’s keep it in draft form with continuous additions and updates as we get busy in the field, making it happen.

00125 Digital Curriculum Redoubt

In colonial times the military term redoubt was used to discuss one of a series of little forts outside of a main fortress that, together, created a fortification system. With less than 5% of education supported by digital curriculum we have K-12 education’s first redoubt. The other redoubts including professional level teacher education, professional development, broadband connectivity, formative and summative data systems, and a personal computing interface for each teacher and student.

To move out of colonial times, we must transform our K-12 redoubts and main fort into a modern integrated system. A critical barrier is not the lack of motivation but the lack of knowledge on how to integrate effective digital curriculum with the books, white board, and classroom of lecture, recitation and seatwork.

Curriculum is unique for each grade level and each course within that grade level. Let’s assume detailed course standards are adequate for the approximately 150 different half and full semester K-12 courses (Career, Technical Education, core, ELL, special ed, remedial, elective, and physical education (the Wii Fit/Sport is upon us.) The decision support needed for selection and full operation of digital curriculum is not available in most schools and districts.

What is needed is a new “corps of army research and field engineers” only this time they will be digital curriculum experts and extension agents. They need to be centered in a new non-profit public sector “Digital Curriculum Institute.”

This Arizona institute will integrate three unique operations.

Expert staff to assess all significant offerings of K-12 digital curriculum from any source and match the most effective to their respective Arizona course(s);

A portal with a knowledgebase used for accessibility by educators to support their decisions on adopting and implementing digital curriculum;

An extension service to deliver advice and training within the school by mentor-master experts in digital curriculum.

The digital curriculum assessment will go far beyond the typical “Amazon” user ratings to instructional software. It will include scope from supplement to full course, flexibility, student academic performance effect factor (points increase), total cost of ownership, use of real-time formative assessment, data delivery to State Longitudinal Data System, and teacher and computer interface capabilities needed.

With decision knowledge and mentors afoot in the field, the fortress system transforms into a mobile system serving the individual needs of all our students.

00118 Research Based Legislation

Greater Arizona eLearning Association (GAZEL) annual CEO breakfast speaker last week was Arizona Senator John Huppenthal, Chairman of the Senate Education Accountability and Reform Committee

His talk was based on his decade of study to determine what will improve academic performance of Arizona’s K-12 students. His reading of a host of comprehensive research reports and visits to many schools though out Arizona supported his remarks.

Senator Huppenthal recommended four actions:

1. Hold not just schools but districts accountable for academic performance.
2. Rank districts on the Arizona Department of Education web site.
3. Conduct holistic and scientific assessment of reform measures that show significant effects that are over 25% (points) in learning. (This amounts to about ¾’s of a letter grade, for example C to B-).
4. Check highest districts for reform models and lowest districts for intervention within their 1600 schools.

He referenced a number of very high performing models.  Florida made a significant investment in technology, and their NEAP scores made the largest increase of any state. Vail high schools rejected books in favor of a laptop for every student. Carpe Diem charter school in Yuma has double the 25% learning effect target with digital curriculum and coaches.

Studies are showing only 25% of students do homework in traditional low motivation classrooms. Motivation is rooted in our primitive instincts. Senator Huppenthal believes a critical part of a motivational learning model is the student must a member of a team and maximizing individual status is important. He is working on a program with ASU researchers where the team scores are used as a primary motivational factor.

A critical reason why eLearning works is that the child can stay with his or her social cohort while learning at his or her best pace. Motivation stays high while to learn individual learning needs are satisfied. In Lancaster Monitorial schools, small teams from a variety of grades operate with high degrees of effectiveness in one large classroom.

Senator Huppenthal believes that a “killer application” will emerge. The audience thought that it would be more like a set of killer applications. He also set a vision for the group. The current best application, out of the many dozens he has reviewed, increases learning from 16 to 32 points. He sees 50 points as the target norm. But out there in the future, he expects that we will see the 90 points killer app.

Senator Huppenthal said he could now announcement he will be running as candidate for Superintendent of Education. He suggested that Arizona Department of Education needs an educational “center” to mingle, mix and integrate all of what Arizona knows about technology and education. From a Rand study, he believes that as a middle performing state we are better positioned than others to ramp up to #1.  Many kids start out early with motivation to reach an adult goal but only 3% complete college and enter that profession. With more coordination within Arizona’s multiple-domain pathways that result should be 20%.

Senator Huppenthal is typical of the rapidly increasing number of state leaders that are engaging eLearning to in their efforts to improve K-12 education. Their understanding of critical protocols within this eLearning decade is the reason for optimism in the years to come.

91013 P20 Great Teachers – Great Leaders

Subject: Suggestions for Addressing the Critical Issue of K-12 Teachers and Leaders

Proposed Requirements by RTTT:

• Confirm the number and percentage of core academic courses taught in highest- and lowest-poverty schools by highly qualified teachers;
• Describe the systems used to evaluate the performance of teachers and principals by LEA;
• Indicate whether systems that evaluate performance of teachers and principals include student achievement outcomes by LEA;
• Provide the number and percentage of teachers and principals rated at each performance rating or level by LEA;
• Indicate whether the number and percentage of teacher performance ratings are easily accessible to the public by LEA.

My Response

Actually I am a bit bum-fuzzled!  P20 Coordinating Council is tasked by Executive Order to focus on reforms to increase academic achievement. Based on decades of studies and planning initiatives, and our individual experience the teacher, time and again, has been recognized as the greatest single factor in student academic success. The scope of this issue is wide and deep. This task force has been named Great Teachers Great Leaders.

Why are the proposed requirements limited to a small component of the overall problem?  The five bullet items from Race To The Top cover only a situation assessment dealing with LEA data on performance ratings of teachers and principals. A quality assurance system is a necessary but insufficient part of the most critical human resource problems in Arizona. Most of this data challenge will be addressed by the State Longitudinal Data System Task Team.

I suggest that the P20 coordinating council develop requirements that address the statewide needs of teachers and leaders over the next decade:

• Educating, hiring, professional development, rewarding, retention;
• The emergence of eLearning in the classroom, online and at home;
• Develop a multilevel system to assess teacher skills and practice mastery;
• Design and implement the next generation of teacher instructional tools;
• Transforming teacher practice from legacy education to hybrid eLearning;
• Integrating the formative assessment data driven decision support system into teacher practice.
• Aid Arizona’s universities in transforming their colleges of education to produce eLearning savvy teachers.

91013 P20 Data Task Force (3b) Research

Suggestions for Addressing the Research Requirements

Race to the Top (RTTT) Data System Proposal

(3b) Plan to support researchers with data from longitudinal and instructional improvement systems so they can evaluate what works

A suggestion: There is a requirement from the U.S. Department of Education that “schools adopt strategies that have been proven through rigorous research.”  (Education Week, October 7, 2009 pp18)

This is impossible because there are over 150 courses that populate the typical P-12 curriculum and there is almost no rigorous research available. The reason is fundamental. Complex systems that are in the same size and class as P-20 education include medicine and defense. The federal and industry funded rigorous research and development for medicine and defense is in the $60-$100 billion level… (each). On a good year the funding of rigorous research and development for P-12 education is at the $100+ million range, will behind the VA, Interior, EPA and DOT. Both medicine and defense has had 70 years of rigorous research based technology and procedures adoption. Education has yet to leave the starting gate.

There is a glimmer of hope and the Arizona RTTT proposal should reflect this new opportunity. A Washington based advocacy organization, “Digital Promise,” was successful summer of 2008 in having Congress pass legislation: Sec. 802. National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies. The 2010 funding is expected to be $50 million. It is modeled after the National Science Foundation. They will focus on using information and digital technologies to advance education, both formal and informal.

Arizona has an opportunity to collaborate with NCRAIDT. Through ADE, AZ eLearning Task Force, ASSET, IDEAL and research arms of our colleges of education and field testing system could be developed in Arizona. With Arizona’s wide range of populations we could develop networks of schools where innovative practices and technologies could be rigorously tested. Edwards AF Test Facility has spun off aircraft research base innovation into southern Californian aerospace industries for decades. An Arizona virtual statewide test facility integrated with our leading statewide data system would position Arizona as a first adopter of rigorous researched innovation.

91012 USDOE National Education Technology Plan

Preface Note: I am a proponent of the use of cross-industry innovation systems and transformation models. When my aeronautical engineering domain stopped talking about “flying machines” in the early 1900’s and started using the system descriptor of “aviation” the industry took off (horseless carriages => automobile, etc.). It is time to put aside “educational technology” and consider the system descriptor that has been emerging for a decade: “elearning”.

Introduction:

The U.S. Department of Education is developing a new National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) to provide a vision for how information and communication technologies can help transform American education. The plan will provide a set of concrete goals that can inform state and local educational technology plans as well as inspire research, development, and innovation. A draft plan is expected in early 2010.

This web site is hosted for the U.S. Department of Education by SRI International.

https://edtechfuture.org/

Planning Working Group

This group of 18 leading educators, researchers, state and district ed-tech leaders and policymakers has been selected from the Central-East part of the nation, except for Roy Pea and John Seely Brown from the Stanford/ USC communities. I know, or know of, a number of these pioneers from our work with eSATS (eLearning System for Arizona Teachers and Students) that started in the late 1980’s. These experts have provided the “shoulders of giants” that have, since the early 1990’s, guided and inspired a generation of advocates who have driven the early progress of eLearning adoption. The problem is that half of this working group should have been the bright new minds of eLearning like Susan Patrick and Clayton Chistensen. Also the US DOE Education Technology Director slot is vacant.

Barbara Means of SRI International’s Center for Technology in Learning is engaged as the leader of the working group. We first met at a large ed-tech conference at in Stanford/Palo Alto in early 1990’s.

My concern is that the working group’s challenge is to be a driving force behind innovation driven transformation of a legacy system based on human labor. This is a huge task to achieve. Our K-12 education system has a history of innovation cycles that require a half century from start to finish. In the latter 20^th century technology driven transformations of other industries were in the 20 year range. The economic, energy, resource and ecological transformation of our global 21^st century demands an even shorter innovation cycle.

The foundation for the solution to these challenges is a successful mastery of the K-12 curriculum of – not just 50 to 65 percent of our student population – but 95 percent. A brief glance at our bell shaped performance curve shows a minimum of a one sigma increase for all students, and a pulling in of the tails. The failing student is performing at the C level and gifted student does not drop out. eLearning is the only means supported by meta-studies that show an effect factor in the 0.40 range.

Without a history of innovation driven transformation within K-12 education, the task of the NETP working group seems to be insurmountable. But innovation is always driven by a small group and fired by genius, so the probability is not zero. In business, science and engineering it is well known that the invention and innovation in a narrow sector of an industry is by the young with passion and creative ideas. If an industry transformation is to take place, it will happen with the collaboration of two forces.

One is the disruptive innovation (like microcomputers invented in the 1970’s destroying the minicomputer industry by the early 1990’s). The other is the few – then many – enlightened and seasoned leaders of the mature industry removing barriers and making the strategic planning, organizational design and financial change decisions that will accelerate a transformation. The 2010 NETP is positioned to support this transformational challenge with a innovation based strategic redesign of the K-12 system.

My Response

Over the past 20+ years hundreds of Federal and State technology plans have been written and rewritten every few years. However, they have had little effect on adoption of elearning.

A major exception is the NETP 2004 published from the U.S. DoE’s Office of Educational Technology under the leadership of Susan Patrick. The 68 page publication was titled “Toward A New Golden Age in American Education”, How the Internet, the Law and Today’s Students are Revolutionizing Expectation.” I distributed over a 1000 copies of this “little blue booklet” to Arizona legislators, governance, councils, businesses and educators. I believe it had a material effect on Arizona’s progress. Our legislature formed the Arizona eLearning Task Force that has 8 years remaining to transform our K-12 education system. Other legislative and governance successes were $3 million for a middle school math pilot, P20 council with data and teacher task forces, and all 1500+ Arizona schools enabled as virtual schools.

I recommend that this 2010 National Education Technology Plan reach beyond the 2004 success with a powerful new prescriptive design for innovation driven transformation. It must be more than just a visionary model on paper to be used as an instrument of advocacy. Create this plan with the expectation that it will be fully implemented. Transformation to K-12 elearning will be reaching its tipping point within the life of the plan. The quality, equity and effectiveness of the drive to that tipping point depends on this design.

The most recent data on eLearning adoption are from the 2008 iNACOL annual conference on online learning and Project RED  http://projectred.org/news/ => click on “click here to see the chart”. iNACOL reported 3% of elearning in K-12 education takes place online. The Project RED study had 4% of students in schools with computing devices for (almost) all students. With the hybrid mode online elearning being a significant contributor to classroom elearning. Let’s assume for the situation assessment that 5% of K-12 student learning is elearning based.

The semi-log plot from disruptive innovation theory predicts that 3%-5% will reach 10% by 2012. At 10% we are at the tipping point where elearning will begin its rapid transformation of legacy education.

Our federal NETP 2010 plan has two major roles. It will guide federal policy to drive this innovation and it will point to where significant funds must be invested. I am limited by the SRI web site for the working group, so I can only assess the current stage of their work in four focus areas.

Four focus areas of learning, teaching, assessment and productivity may be a reasonable first cut as system processes. But, historical processes are weak foundations on which to redesign a plan of this scope and magnitude. From both the NECC input and this outreach for public comment, I have to assume that the working group is still in the situation assessment phase. Members/staff of our AZ eLearning Task Force are concerned that a number of critical issues raised during the NECC focus groups were not included by the consultants/working group.

Possibly these four elements of legacy education theory are the conventional wisdom of the working group, and that is why they gravitated to them. In the science and engineering fields we advance rapidly because we understand how conventional wisdom can retard advancement. Inventive and transformational advancements and innovation are not based on best past practices or group processes. They are based on inventive genius and entrepreneurial skills of emerging leaders of the discipline. I wonder why this same old ground is being plowed many months into the process when the plan draft has to be written within a few months. I question the wisdom of not having representatives of the current cadre of K-12 innovation leaders in the working group. I also question the apparent lack of specialized expertise of strategic planning, inter-organizational design, elearning industry entrepreneurship, and school finance on the working group.

Some of this expertise may be provided by the SRI support staff, but to maximize effectiveness, it should also be built into the NETP working group.

The most difficult aspect of the NETP design is the inter-organizational design that will produce the systematic transformation of our entire national education system. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s I had the pleasure of initiating –and being in the leadership of –Arizona’s Strategic Plan for Economic Development. We raised $500,000 and engaged SRI International. Critical economic industry clusters and supporting infrastructure were identified. Changes were made in how Arizona’s economy was supported in our government agencies, and new Arizona industry associations were formed. This system-wide effort addressed both our physical and intellectual infrastructures. Based on SRI’s initial engagement with Arizona, they developed a global practice that applied lessons learned on transformational strategic planning to other states and countries.

Since SRI International is the lead consultant for the National Education Technology Plan working group, I suggest that Barbara Means engage their global strategic planning team. They could provide the support needed for the complexity and scope of the elearning transformation of K-12 education in the United States.

The following are a number of elements that might be addressed with a system design process:

• A vision of the transformed U.S. K-12 system in 2019;
• The five to ten goals set by the working group to effect the K-12 system transformation, including P-20 goals where linkage is vital.
• A set of quantitative objectives with time lines;
• A short set of strategies for each objective;
• A meta-strategy that addresses the entire system transformation.
• A system design model presented on the learning ecology dimension with aspects of micro, meso, exo, macro and chrono ecologies* at each of the five functional levels from teacher-student engagement to federal.
• A system design model based on the major implementation components: teacher practice development, student personal learning plans; digital curriculum, formative and summative data systems, broadband Internet access, student computing devices, technical support, metamorphosis of funding system from “seat-time” to mastery-based, leadership, elearning centered schools and spaces, federally sponsored research, emerging solutions based elearning industry, and “Innovation Centrals” to champion the transformation at all levels.
• A detailed ten year financial model of the system transformation based on a roll up along the five functional levels of classroom, school, district, state, and federal. It would include a one-time investment spread over that ten year period, new costs, cost avoidance, cost savings and use of net savings either to meet needs like teacher salaries or to decrease tax burdens on communities.
• An implementation plan with costs and benefits to guide the national efforts. It would deliver models for the state, district, school and classroom levels to support their efforts. Implementation will address changes in systems, governance, funding, facilities, transportation, people, types of positions and student learning pace/calendar.

Summary:

Let’s look at an example. One of several system components being actively pursued under the current Race To The Top initiative is data driven decision support. Three of the requirements (1, 2, 3b) address Longitudinal Summative Administrative Data. The other (3a) addresses Real Time Formative Instructional Data. The administrative data systems are well defined, and have been under development for many years by many states. They are relatively easy to address since only 1 million administrators will be active users. The instruction learning systems are still in the research and development, and must serve the needs of 3.5 million teachers and 60 million students. These systems must be integrated with teacher professional development, digital curriculum, and computing interfaces and systems for all students and individualize learning plans.

Each component of the system transformation must be phased with an appropriate time line and with full consideration of the leads and lags of the other components. There are many other challenges within the five level system, from the teacher-student relationship to national physical, financial and intellectual infrastructure support.

I recommend that your planning working group might take a step back. You might want to reconsider developing a plan and process the is based on a redesign. Then generate a strategic eLearning plan that has both implementation and financial plans as major sections.

* Microsystem—the student’s family, school, peers; Mesosystem—two or more linked microsystems such as home and school; Exosystem—indirect outside forces: districts, states; boards, state standards, federal support and mandates, parents work conditions; Macrosystem—cultural beliefs, values, customs; Chronosystem—student is influenced by different systems at different times.

91005 Comments on Dr. Krugman’s Three Problems

pkrugman@princeton.edu

The NY Times  opinion columnist, Paul Krugman had a recent subject for comment on solving three major U.S. problems. I read few of the comments and they addressed all the current issues: Obama, financial industry, politics etc. I felt that they totally miss the mark. My response:

In the long run, there is only one way for the U.S. to have full employment in the highly competitive global economy, transform manufacturing to serve 21st century needs and opportunity, and shrink the deficits with a sustained economic boom. To do this, we must transform P-20 education to individual paced learning where average academic performance will increase by 50% and graduation rates will soar to 90%. The legacy (Prussian based) model that has served us well into the 1970’s is mature and cannot respond to these current expectations and challenges. Only by accelerating the adoption of individualized elearning with its online, classroom and 24/7 access will these three crushing problems be resolved.

A strategic system analysis and redesign of the P-20 system including financial modeling shows elearning adoption can be implemented for a net cost of $300 per student per year for ten years (essentially, a one time capital investment spread over a ten year period). This one time net investment is for teacher practice transformation of $1500 per teacher per year, digital curriculum, real time formative assessment, data driven decisions support throughout the learning ecosystem, a computer interface for every student, school funding for competency-mastery learning instead of the existing seat time funding, and research to support emerging practices. Cost savings from construction avoidance, transportation, books, and each student moving thought the education system at a rate of 15% faster will not only pay for most of the elearning implementation but have enough left over to provide a 20% salary increase for teachers.

The major design attribute of elearning is individualizing of the engagement between the teacher and student. The driving transformative model is disruptive innovation which is at this time centered in online learning. With about 5% of education currently being delivered online, Our semi-log plot tells us that this will grow to about 50% by 2019. With political will and purposeful investment, our laws and funding models can be changed over the next few years to accelerate this adoption of this elearning transformation. Elearning supported individual paced and motivated learning is the only driving force that can transform the U.S. smartly into a new era of global competitive prowess, manufacturing leadership, and bulging coffers.

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