Tag: educhat

Posted on

Should sex ed include fertility information?

Exactly what sort of safe sex should be taught to our young students is always a topic of debate. As we recently saw in Texas, abstinence-only programs don’t seem to work and can even lead to higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases. Telling kids too much about how to have sex bothers many parents, educators and lawmakers, though. It seems that the jury is still out on the best way to empower students with sex-ed knowledge. One topic that is never debated, or even discussed, as it relates to sex education is fertility itself and that needs to change, according to some experts.

In a story that ran in The Guardian, reproductive specialist Dr. Geeta Nargund says that schools are spending so much time trying to prevent pregnancy that young people are missing out on important knowledge about their own fertility. In her own practice Nargund counsels many women who did not have the facts about their own ability to conceive children until it was too late for it to happen naturally.

That, argues Nargund, is grounded in the misconception that women who wait to have children until they are financially and emotionally ready can do so later in life. The real science is much starker and fertility drops dramatically after women hit their 30s, and continues to fall with each passing year.

I think Nargund has a valid point. If we want students to have all the facts about sex, then let’s not just present one side of the story. Women who want to wait to have children should certainly be able to make that choice but should have all of the information in front of them.

What’s your stance on sex education as it relates to fertility?

Posted on

Four Keys to Successfully Adopting New Instructional Materials

Leading change can be quite a challenge, especially when you’re asking teachers to let go of materials and techniques they have used for most of their careers. Here’s how we approached this successfully in our district.

By Cristina Charney and Janeal Maxfield

As math instructional specialists for the North Thurston Public Schools in Washington State, we were tasked with helping elementary teachers adopt a new math program for teaching to the Common Core standards several years ago.

Initially, we thought this would be easy. Our district had chosen Stepping Stones from ORIGO Education to be our new program for core math instruction in grades K-5, because it had been written to address the new standards and does a good job of developing a deep conceptual understanding of math using powerful visual models and students’ natural language.

We assumed that teachers would be excited to use this new resource, because it covered all of the new math standards within a single, unified program. Teachers wouldn’t have to spend their time hunting for additional materials; instead, they could focus on planning how best to use their instructional time within one resource.

These assumptions were our first mistake.

Contrary to what we had anticipated, we encountered a brand of reluctance that, ultimately, had little to do with the quality of the program itself. Rather, we had underestimated how hard it is for people to embrace significant change.

As we tried to make sense of this phenomenon, we noticed a few patterns:

Our teachers who were new to the profession had perhaps the easiest transition. They had no prior schema for teaching math, and they seemed to appreciate the clarity and support that Stepping Stones provided.

Our veteran teachers fell into two categories. The easiest group to support were those who did not self-identify as “math” teachers. The ambiguity of the prior curriculum, which had been deconstructed and repurposed for every change in standards for the past 15 years, was stressful for them. Without interest and confidence in math or a deep conceptual understanding, they found that making the fragmented curriculum work for students was challenging. These teachers breathed a sigh of relief that now all of the materials they needed to teach math were in one place.

While both of these groups still needed support in learning how to navigate all the resources and structure their math learning time, adopting the program did not seem to be an issue for them.

The other group of veteran teachers posed more of a challenge for us. These were the teachers who already had developed an effective math instructional program—often at considerable personal time and effort. They took great pride in how well their students performed in math. We were asking them to abandon what they had done before and adopt this new, as yet unproven, program.

 

We gathered these teachers together by grade-level on a monthly basis, but by November of our first year, we were starting to sink. Emotions were so running so high that we would leave exhausted, and we couldn’t figure out what we were doing wrong. Then we discovered the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath (2010). It became our playbook and helped us understand all the intricacies of how to lead people through change effectively.

Consequently, here are four key strategies we developed for how to get teachers on board.

Build clarity.

Uncertainty makes people anxious, and what seems like resistance often can be chalked up to a lack of clarity.

To build our teachers’ capacity to use these new instructional tools, we communicated about the materials constantly through frequent trainings and meetings. Aside from an initial six-hour training, we held monthly grade-level meetings, as well as building-wide meetings four times per year. In addition, a building-level math leader checked in with and supported new users at each school.

Adding to our challenge was that teachers were learning the new standards along with a new instructional program. We realized that much of the discomfort was with the standards themselves, so we spent a lot of our meeting time looking closely at the Common Core standards, what they called for, and how they were reflected within the Stepping Stones program.

Acknowledge teachers’ frustrations.

The Heath brothers use the metaphor of riding an elephant to describe change. When you’re moving along the path toward change, you have to account for the rider, the elephant, and the path itself. You have to direct the rider by appealing to teachers’ logic, motivate the elephant by appealing to teachers’ emotions, and shape the path by creating an environment for success.

We were directing the rider by making the connections between the standards and Stepping Stones explicit, and we were shaping the path with our meetings and support system. But we realized that we weren’t doing enough to address the third critical component of change: the emotional aspect. We didn’t understand that the elephant was getting unruly beneath us. For instance, veteran teachers who had identified with being “math teachers” and felt like they had their math instruction already well in hand displayed strong feelings about using a program that was not of their making.

When we started authentically listening to their concerns and acknowledging their frustrations, things began to turn around. We also tried to make the transition less daunting by having them concentrate on certain pieces at a time, such as just using the program for whole group instruction to begin with and then building from there.

Look for the bright spots.

The Heath brothers emphasize that one of the simplest things we can do to facilitate change is to ask people to find the bright spots: in other words, be explicit about what is going well. People are conditioned to focus on the negative and identify the problems, instead of focusing on what they are doing well. Teachers as a group can be particularly hard on themselves, because they care about their craft and they want to do it well. So, we were very intentional about finding the bright spots during the transition.

We would begin every meeting by acknowledging that change is hard, then discussing what aspects were going well. And it was amazing to see how the affect in the room would shift, because our teachers were doing well. More importantly, we asked what they saw their students doing in math that pleased and surprised them. As the success stories were shared, the buzz in the room warmed with smiles and joyous laughter.

As teachers talked about the successes they were seeing in their classrooms, support for the program grew. What’s more, our teachers were getting the chance to learn from their colleagues and hear good ideas that they could try out in their own classrooms. Making the time for this collegial sharing and collaboration was extremely important.

Rely on teacher leaders.

Ultimately, we gleaned a leadership team out of our teacher population. We gathered these teacher leaders about five times over the course of the school year, listened to their feedback, and provided all the tools to support a 90-minute professional learning opportunity with teachers in their building.  The purpose was twofold: (1) We built leadership capacity in the district, and (2) teachers really appreciated the collaborative feel of learning from their peers within their own school building.

Our teacher leaders helped spread the initiative by working with their colleagues and elevating important aspects of the materials, thus promoting the buy-in that is essential in any move towards change.

Fortunately, we had the opportunity to roll out Stepping Stones several times at various grade levels, and we became confident that these elements of change were constant within a developmental process. We could not sidestep the discomfort, but we could become more metacognitive about it.

The IDEO Corporation, a company that uses the design thinking methodology to design products, services, and environments, uses a U-shaped model to describe what people go through when they approach any significant project that constitutes a change. At the beginning of the initiative, people feel hopeful. Then, as they start to encounter challenges, they become overwhelmed and often feel disheartened. Toward the end of the process, they begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel—and their confidence returns along with all the learning they have done. But you have to experience that dip before reaching the end.

We rolled out Stepping Stones in our 13 elementary schools over a three-year period. In the first year, we implemented the program in most of our K-2 classrooms. The next year, we adopted it within the rest of our K-2 classrooms and in third grade, and we started a small pilot project in fourth and fifth grade. In our third year, the rest of fourth and fifth grade began using the program.

After the first year, we’d had enough experience that were able to show teachers the U curve and tell them: “You might be feeling down right now, but we promise that by March you’re going to be coming out of it—and by June you’re going to be back at the top of the curve. This is how it goes, and it’s perfectly normal to be feeling as you are.” It was comforting for teachers to see that they were exactly where they were supposed to be—and by spring, they did feel more confident and excited for what the second year would bring for themselves and their students.

We just completed our fifth year of using the program, and we are looking at rolling out version 2.0 next year. Not only are our students more confident in math and have a deeper understanding of key math concepts, but our teachers are more confident as well.

Transitioning to a new instructional program successfully took a lot of time and attention that many districts don’t provide. We held a lot of intentionally-facilitated meetings; accepted people’s frustrations as normal; encouraged them to see what was going right; and gave them opportunities to talk to each other and share good ideas. The results speak for themselves, as enthusiasm for math is at an all-time high among our elementary students and teachers alike.

Cristina Charney and Janeal Maxfield are Elementary Instructional Specialists for the North Thurston Public Schools in Washington State.

Posted on

How companies learn what children secretly want

Faith Boninger, University of Colorado and Alex Molnar, University of Colorado

If you have children, you are likely to worry about their safety – you show them safe places in your neighborhood and you teach them to watch out for lurking dangers.

But you may not be aware of some online dangers to which they are exposed through their schools.

There is a good chance that people and organizations you don’t know are collecting information about them while they are doing their schoolwork. And they may be using this information for purposes that you know nothing about.

In the U.S. and around the world, millions of digital data points are collected daily from children by private companies that provide educational technologies to teachers and schools. Once data are collected, there is little in law or policy that prevents companies from using the information for almost any purpose they wish.

Our research explores how corporate entities use their involvement with schools to gather and use data about students. We find that often these companies use the data they collect to market products, such as junk food, to children.

Here’s how student data are being collected

Almost all U.S. middle and high school students use mobile devices. A third of such devices are issued by their schools. Even when using their own devices for their schoolwork, students are being encouraged to use applications and software, such as those with which they can create multimedia presentations, do research, learn to type or communicate with each other and with their teachers.

When children work on their assignments, unknown to them, the software and sites they use are busy collecting data.

Ads target children as they do their homework. Girl image via www.shutterstock.com

For example, “Adaptive learning” technologies record students’ keystrokes, answers and response times. On-line surveys collect information about students’ personalities. Communication software stores the communications between students, parents and teachers; and presentation software stores students’ work and their communications about it.

In addition, teachers and schools may direct children to work on branded apps or websites that may collect, or allow third parties to collect, IP addresses and other information from students. This could include the ads children click on, what they download, what games they play, and so on.

How student data are used

When “screen time” is required for school, parents cannot limit or control it. Companies use this time to find out more about children’s preferences, so they they can target children with advertising and other content with a personalized appeal.

Children might see ads while they are working in educational apps. In other cases, data might be collected while students complete their assignments. Information might also be stored and used to better target them later.

For instance, a website might allow a third party to collect information, including the type of browser used, the time and date, and the subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over by a child. The third party could then use that information to target the child with advertisements later.

We have found that companies use the data to serve ads (for food, clothing, games, etc.) to the children via their computers. This repeated, personalized advertising is designed specifically to manipulate children to want and buy more things.

Indeed, over time this kind of advertising can threaten children’s physical and psychological well-being.

Consequences of targeted advertising

Food is the most heavily advertised class of products to children. The heavy digital promotion of “junk” food is associated with negative health outcomes such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Additionally, advertising, regardless of the particular product it may sell, also “sells” to children the idea that products can make them happy.

Research shows that children who buy into this materialist worldview are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and other psychological distress.

Teenagers who adopt this worldview are more likely to smoke, drink and skip school. One set of studies showed that advertising makes children feel far from their ideals for themselves in terms of how good a life they lead and what their bodies look like.

The insecurity and dissatisfaction may lead to negative behaviors such as compulsive buying and disordered eating.

Aren’t there laws to protect children’s privacy?

Many bills bearing on student privacy have been introduced in the past several years in Congress and state legislatures. Several of them have been enacted into laws.

Additionally, nearly 300 software companies signed a self-regulatory Student Privacy Pledge to safeguard student privacy regarding the collection, maintenance and use of student personal information.

However, they aren’t sufficient. And here’s why:

Student privacy laws are not adequate.Mary Woodard, CC BY-NC-ND

First of all, most laws, including the Student Privacy Pledge, focus on Personally Identifiable Information (PII). PII includes information that can be used to determine a person’s identity, such as that person’s name, social security number or biometric information.

Companies can address privacy concerns by making digital data anonymous (i.e., not including PII in the data that are collected, stored or shared). However, data can easily be “de-anonymized.” And, children don’t need to be identified with PII in order for their online behavior to be tracked.

Second, bills designed to protect student privacy sometimes expressly preserve the ability of an operator to use student information for adaptive or personalized learning purposes. In order to personalize the assignments that a program gives a student, it must by necessity track that student’s behavior.

This weakens the privacy protections the bills otherwise offer. Although it protects companies that collect data for adaptive learning purposes only, it also provides a loophole that enables data collection.

Finally, the Student Privacy Pledge has no real enforcement mechanism. As it is a voluntary pledge, many companies may scrupulously abide by the promises in the pledge, but many others may not.

What to do?

While education technologies show promise in some areas, they also hold the potential to harm students profoundly if they are not properly understood, thoughtfully managed and carefully controlled.

Parents, teachers and administrators, who serve as the closest protectors of children’s privacy at their schools, and legislators responsible for enacting relevant policy, need to recognize the threats of such data tracking.

The first step toward protecting children is to know that that such targeted marketing is going on while children do their schoolwork. And that it is powerful.

The Conversation

Faith Boninger, Research Associate in Education Policy, University of Colorado and Alex Molnar, Research Professor, University of Colorado

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Posted on

Why it’s hard for adults to learn a second language

Brianna Yamasaki, University of Washington

As a young adult in college, I decided to learn Japanese. My father’s family is from Japan, and I wanted to travel there someday.

However, many of my classmates and I found it difficult to learn a language in adulthood. We struggled to connect new sounds and a dramatically different writing system to the familiar objects around us.

It wasn’t so for everyone. There were some students in our class who were able to acquire the new language much more easily than others.

So, what makes some individuals “good language learners?” And do such individuals have a “second language aptitude?”

What we know about second language aptitude

Past research on second language aptitude has focused on how people perceive sounds in a particular language and on more general cognitive processes such as memory and learning abilities. Most of this work has used paper-and-pencil and computerized tests to determine language-learning abilities and predict future learning.

Researchers have also studied brain activity as a way of measuring linguistic and cognitive abilities. However, much less is known about how brain activity predicts second language learning.

Is there a way to predict the aptitude of second language learning?

How does brain activity change while learning languages? Brain image via www.shutterstock.com

In a recently published study, Chantel Prat, associate professor of psychology at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, and I explored how brain activity recorded at rest – while a person is relaxed with their eyes closed – could predict the rate at which a second language is learned among adults who spoke only one language.

Studying the resting brain

Resting brain activity is thought to reflect the organization of the brain and it has been linked to intelligence, or the general ability used to reason and problem-solve.

We measured brain activity obtained from a “resting state” to predict individual differences in the ability to learn a second language in adulthood.

To do that, we recorded five minutes of eyes-closed resting-state electroencephalography, a method that detects electrical activity in the brain, in young adults. We also collected two hours of paper-and-pencil and computerized tasks.

We then had 19 participants complete eight weeks of French language training using a computer program. This software was developed by the U.S. armed forces with the goal of getting military personnel functionally proficient in a language as quickly as possible.

The software combined reading, listening and speaking practice with game-like virtual reality scenarios. Participants moved through the content in levels organized around different goals, such as being able to communicate with a virtual cab driver by finding out if the driver was available, telling the driver where their bags were and thanking the driver.

Here’s a video demonstration:

Nineteen adult participants (18-31 years of age) completed two 30-minute training sessions per week for a total of 16 sessions. After each training session, we recorded the level that each participant had reached. At the end of the experiment, we used that level information to calculate each individual’s learning rate across the eight-week training.

As expected, there was large variability in the learning rate, with the best learner moving through the program more than twice as quickly as the slowest learner. Our goal was to figure out which (if any) of the measures recorded initially predicted those differences.

A new brain measure for language aptitude

When we correlated our measures with learning rate, we found that patterns of brain activity that have been linked to linguistic processes predicted how easily people could learn a second language.

Patterns of activity over the right side of the brain predicted upwards of 60 percent of the differences in second language learning across individuals. This finding is consistent with previous research showing that the right half of the brain is more frequently used with a second language.

Our results suggest that the majority of the language learning differences between participants could be explained by the way their brain was organized before they even started learning.

Implications for learning a new language

Does this mean that if you, like me, don’t have a “quick second language learning” brain you should forget about learning a second language?

Not quite.

Language learning can depend on many factors. Child image via www.shutterstock.com

First, it is important to remember that 40 percent of the difference in language learning rate still remains unexplained. Some of this is certainly related to factors like attention and motivation, which are known to be reliable predictors of learning in general, and of second language learning in particular.

Second, we know that people can change their resting-state brain activity. So training may help to shape the brain into a state in which it is more ready to learn. This could be an exciting future research direction.

Second language learning in adulthood is difficult, but the benefits are large for those who, like myself, are motivated by the desire to communicate with others who do not speak their native tongue.

The Conversation

Brianna Yamasaki, Ph.D. Student, University of Washington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Posted on

Why science and engineering need to remind students of forgotten lessons from history

Muhammad H. Zaman, Boston University

Lately, there has been a lot of discussion highlighting the need for incorporating social sciences in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines in order to foster creativity, increase empathy and create a better understanding of the human condition among scientists.

Unfortunately, however, all this talk hasn’t changed the reality on the ground.

As a researcher and teacher in biomedical engineering, looking at the fundamental functions of the human body, I feel that we in engineering (as well as other sciences) have done a disservice to our students. We have failed to connect them to the history of science through stories of scientists.

Our students, these days, have little knowledge about the giants on whose shoulders we all stand.

And yet there is strong evidence that students are more likely to develop an interest in science and pursue science education when engaged through narratives that tell a story.

Research also shows that such stories enable students in STEM disciplines to better understand and apply their classroom knowledge in real-world settings.

Missing piece in science learning

In one of my engineering classes, I discuss how fluids, such as air and blood, flow in the human body. These processes are critical to our health and well-being.

As I do that, I also discuss the associated discoveries made by many leading scientists. The seminal work of scientists such as Joseph Fourier, Daniel Bernoulli and Isaac Newton has transformed our world and tremendously improved our quality of life.

What do students know about Newton? cea +, CC BY

However, beyond the most famous anecdote about the falling apple leading to the discovery of gravity, I find that students in my class know little about Newton’s contributions. While students in my class may have a rich understanding of the Fourier transform (a fundamental mathematical relationship that forms the basis of modern electrical engineering), they literally know nothing about who Fourier was.

Research suggests that context and history play a strong role in connecting science and engineering theory with practice.

But despite studies highlighting the importance of storytelling and historical case study approaches, impersonal PowerPoint presentations dominate classrooms. Historical perspectives and rich stories are missing in such presentations.

Why it matters

As educators, we face tremendous pressures to pack technical materials into our courses. So why should we include history in our lesson plans?

First, history provides a compelling perspective on the process of scientific discovery. We have known through research that historical references can help students clear up common misconceptions about scientific topics, ranging from planetary motion to evolution.

Looking at the story of science over centuries enables students to understand that research and discovery are continuous processes. They can then see that the laws and the equations that they use to solve problems were discovered through long and sometimes painful processes.

The findings they arrive at today, in other words, are the fruits of the hard work of real people who lived in real societies and had complex lives, just like the rest of us.

Second, a sense of history teaches students the all-important value of failure in science. It also highlights the persistence of the scientists who continued to push against the odds.

Recent research suggests that by discussing the struggles and failures of scientists, teachers are able to motivate students. Indeed, the discussion of struggles, obstacles, failures and persistence can lead to significant academic improvement of students, particularly for those who may be facing personal or financial difficulties or feeling discouraged by previous instructors and mentors.

Learning from history

This dose of inspiration is particularly valuable for STEM students who face barriers in their academic work, either due to lack of financial resources or due to their gender or race.

The stories of past scientists are a reminder to them that history is an opportunity. Not all great discoveries were made by people who were at the very top of the socioeconomic pyramid.

Connected to the process of discovery and innovation is the fundamental notion of the multidisciplinary approach.

Students need to understand that this approach is not a creation of the 21st century. People have used the multidisciplinary tools of their time for hundreds of years. Johannes Gutenberg, for example, combined the flexibility of a coin punch with the mechanical strength of the wine press to invent the printing press, which created a profound global impact in disseminating knowledge.

The Gutenberg Press replica.Casey Picker, CC BY-NC-ND

Finally, a fundamental goal of modern engineering education is to create socially conscious engineering practitioners who have a strong sense of ethics.

Following an engineering education, individuals could go on to develop medical technology for resource-constrained settings, or work on stem cells or genetic engineering. The importance of ethics in any of these areas cannot be underestimated.

Case studies and history could be immensely valuable in teaching ethics. History provides strong evidence of how the environment around scientists was equally important in shaping their lives and discoveries. Lessons from history could provide insights into how to make ethical choices related to technology or engineering principles.

History, heritage and a holistic view of learning

The goal, in the end, is not to compromise on the rigor, or to focus exclusively on history and personalities, but to make the material more accessible through story-telling and connection with our common heritage.

By making students realize that they are part of a grand tradition of learning, success and failure, we might find that the goals of retention, inspiration, access and rich engagement with the material are closer than we realize.

The Conversation

Muhammad H. Zaman, HHMI Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health, Boston University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Posted on

Who’s in Favor of Early Childhood Education?

Early childhood education is something that most Americans can agree is needed. A poll conducted by the bipartisan team of Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies found that 70 percent of respondents were in full support of a universal preschool plan as long as it did not contribute to the national deficit. Sixty percent of the Republicans polled supported the plan, despite its close ties with the Democratic Chief. Want to see who’s pushing to make preschool more accessible and of better quality, and where the movement is taking place? Keep reading.

President Obama has been vocal about his belief that a publicly-funded universal preschool initiative is necessary to give American children an academic advantage before ever setting foot in a Kindergarten classroom—and he has backed up his beliefs, big time.

At a White House summit, President Obama announced that he was fulfilling his promise to expand early education for thousands of children with a $1 billion investment in programs for the country’s littlest students.

Last year, 28 percent of America’s four-year-olds were enrolled in state-funded preschool programs. The new $1 billion investment in learning programs is for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in lower-income communities.

The education summit also highlighted a series of 60-second public service announcements that focus on various aspects of early childhood education. Actors Jennifer Garner and Julianne Moore and singers Shakira and John Legend all narrated a part and conclude with the tagline, “When we invest in them, we invest in us.”

Speaking at the White House Summit on Early Education, the President laid out the details for Invest in US, a public awareness campaign meant to bring attention to the great need for high quality early childhood education throughout the country. The campaign would run in partnership with the First Five Years initiative and its participating philanthropic organizations.

The President said that $333 million had already been committed by private partners, and another $750 million in federal funding will go towards programs like Early Head Start and the Preschool Development Grants.

The President has been a staunch supporter of stronger early childhood education programs with federal backing since he first took office. This move represents more than just rhetoric, however. It shows the President’s commitment to putting plans in motion to give American children, regardless of income, a chance to reap the proven benefits of early childhood endeavors.

“There’s still too many children in America that enter school not ready to learn, including more than half of disadvantaged children. That’s why government at all levels, business leaders, philanthropy and the early childhood community must come together and continue to make investments that give all kids a strong start,” said Kris Perry, the director of the First Five Years Fund.

The first step to having K-12 students who are able to meet the academic demands of the contemporary classroom is to enroll those students first in strong preschool programs — and that starts with making it affordable for all families.

Now when it comes to support for universal preschool, is Obama alone? How much traction is the idea of universal preschool getting, anyway?

Right now, more than 40 states plus the District of Columbia have voluntary universal preschool programs in place (mainly for 4 year olds) but how far off are we from a federal mandate?

Hillary Clinton, the first big-ticket Presidential candidate, supports universal Pre-K completely. Like President Obama, she believes that families should have no-cost access to early learning initiatives and that putting this necessary building block in place is not something that should be reserved for those who can afford it.

According to Bloomberg.com, Clinton visited a YMCA in New Hampshire to talk about her desire to increase funding for head start and other early childhood programs.

During her speech, Clinton took the opportunity to chide Republicans on their lack of interest in improving early childhood education.

“Republicans took care of those at the top and went after the kids. Republicans aren’t just missing the boat on early childhood education, they’re trying to sink it,” Clinton said according to Bloomberg.com.

In addition to fully funding early childhood programs, she wants extra tax breaks for “people who are taking care of kids” and wants to ensure that “every 4-year old has access to high-quality preschool” within 10 years.

Clinton has a little more oomph when it comes to this push, though, as she also sees universal pre-K as an affordable way for more women to be in the workplace.

Taking away the financial barrier of preschool means less money going out to daycare and less of an internal debate for women who want to work outside the home, but can’t afford it because of daycare costs. Unfortunately, it is this “babysitting” mindset that turns many people, conservatives mainly, off to the idea of universal preschool. In the minds of some, if women want to work then finding affordable childcare is an individual family problem – not something that the government needs to step in and handle.

For that reason, I do hope that Clinton stays on message about the proven beneficial effects of early childhood education on the children (not on the parents who are then able to work more) and also how the road to long-term equality starts with equal access to education.

Aside from presidents and aspiring presidents, an increased emphasis on early childhood education is happening all over the country.

Where’s the movement happening?

Members of the White House recently visited California for “Children: The Bay Area’s Greatest Investment,” a Town Hall in San Francisco that celebrated the state’s recent education successes. The event encouraged participants to recommit to doing more for California’s littlest learners.

The San Francisco gathering was one of six held across the United States by the White House aimed to highlight and support President Obama’s early education agenda, including enrolling 6 million low-income kids in preschool by 2020. The event was co-hosted by Early Edge California.

The Obama administration has played a significant role in building momentum for early childhood education by placing it at the top of President Obama’s list of domestic priorities, including Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships, and Preschool Development Grants–  to name a few.

San Francisco was chosen to host the event because of First 5 San Francisco’s innovative Preschool for All program and its model of what is possible for early childhood education.

U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan, the Town Hall’s keynote speaker declared, “Early education is an idea whose time has come.”

Under California’s leadership of State Senator Darrell Steinberg, former Assembly Speaker John Perez and the Legislative Women’s Caucus, early learning is a major focus of the Legislature this session and the largest investment in over a decade was dedicated to early education and development: $273 million.

In September 2014, 500 preschool-aged kids joined the Philadelphia school district at Franklin Square to call for more funding for early childhood education in the city, and the state. Right now fewer than 20 percent of the children in Pennsylvania are able to access state-funded preschool programs — and that’s a number the school districts, and the advocacy group Pre-K for PA, believe must change.

Philadelphia schools superintendent William R. Hite stood before the kids and their parents and called for an increase in the amount of resources and educational opportunities for the kids in his school system, particularly the ones who are Pre-K age. Hite said that the difference between children who are able to take advantage of early childhood education opportunities and those who do not really does show up later in the schooling process.

“Quite frankly, it’s the difference between reading at a third-grade level and not. That’s a big indicator for us for future success of a child,” Hite said.

He added that “every single student” should have access to early childhood programs in the state — not just a handful.

The rally is certainly a step in the right direction, not just for Philadelphia schools, but for all urban K-12 ones that often suffer lower achievement rates, lower graduation rates and higher behavioral problems than suburban or rural settings. Giving kids an early start in academics and the structure of a school setting is important to boosting the success of K-12 students and also to the overall communities impacted by these students.

In New York, there’s a similar emphasis on giving low-income students access to education from a young age. In 2014, during the pilot year of the prekindergarten programs in New York City, the wealthy are the ones with less access to New York City’s state-funded preschools.

The de Blasio administration revealed that 53,230 children were successfully enrolled in the city’s pre-K centers, passing the Mayor’s goal to enroll 53,000 students.

The pre-K system is meant to serve all students, not just those below a specific household income – however most new seats in 2014 serve ZIP codes where the median household income is low.

NYC representatives said this trend might not continue, that they planned on focusing on wealthier communities the next year.

De Blasio highlighted the urgency to fight income inequality in the city during his 2013 campaign, and made the expansion of full-day early childhood education a chief focus of his plan. Upon scoring $300 million in funding from New York in March for universal preschool, his administration prepared a plan to have prekindergarten centers open there doors to thousands of students in September.

Deputy Mayor for strategic policy initiatives Richard Buery says that the goal is to offer preschool to all 4-year-olds in New York City, not just those from the most disadvantaged families.

“We know that every 4-year-old benefits from a high-quality educational experience. Frankly whether you’re from a poor family or a working-class family or wealthy family, that statement is true,” said Buery.

While I agree with the emphasis to urge all 4-year-olds to attend preschool, I think the public dollars should focus on those who cannot afford early childhood education.  And this early-education initiative could decrease the achievement gap between those growing up in Brooklyn, and those in the world of West End Avenue.

Under Carmen Farina, the schools chancellor, more underprivileged children would theoretically be taught in the same ways the city’s affluent children are: according to the fundamentals of immersive, play-based, and often self-directed learning.

Nearly, if not all, private preschools in New York City align itself with the philosophies of Reggio Emilia, an education model that gained prominence in the 1990s. His belief was that children need some control over the course of their learning and the ability to express their various languages. Art, music and imaginative play take on substantial roles.

The new prekindergarten classrooms will have different areas devoted to diverse kinds of play. Certain subjects will be the focus for one to three weeks, and dramatic play will be incorporated.

The city’s educators plan to promote an environment of exciting and digressive learning with the intent to reduce the enormous word deficits many children come to school with.

Over 4,000 teachers received training for the education expansion over the course of three days. The Education Department plans to continue coaching the teachers and offering professional development as the year proceeds.

The type of classrooms New York City administration is aiming to build is exactly what the city needs. The incorporation of and focus on guided play in the prekindergarten classrooms will create an environment that encourages learning. This form of teaching, especially in combination with parental involvement, can help students reach Kindergarten readiness and take on elementary school with their best foot forward.

Meanwhile, over in Indiana, a $22.5 million Lilly Endowment grant for early education would build a stronger system and hopefully bring more donations and government investment in preschool learning.

Ted Maple, President and CEO of Early Learning Indiana said, “This is about building a system in different critical areas capable of using and making the most of public investment. This is not about paying a child’s tuition.”

Early Learning Indiana received a $20 million award from the endowment. The money would be used to improve education centers the organization runs and help improve affiliated organizations’ programs over the next five years, Maple said.

In 2014, Indiana funded a $10 million pilot program for low-income 4-year-olds in Allen, Jackson, Lake, Marion and Vanderburgh counties. Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard proposed a $50 million plan to expand access to preschool for low-income 4-year-olds in Marion County using $25 million in city funds and donations.

Lilly Endowment also gave $2.5 million to the United Way of Central Indiana that will be put towards new facilities and used to help improve child-learning opportunities at day cares.

The United Way is in the midst of a decade-long plan to achieve top quality standards at 80 percent of the state’s day cares. When it began, 14 percent were at that level and now, 26 percent of day cares are there, we learn from Ann Murtlow, president and CEO of the United Way of Central Indiana.

I am glad to see Indiana’s dedication and plans to better early education and preschool learning. The Lilly Endowment grant should be a great start to the improvements the state is working to reach. Also, I’d like to give props to Mayor Ballard for his efforts towards expanding preschool access to low-income children around the state.

Finally, in Rochester, New York, Mayor Lovely Warren focused on what tends to happen in summers for young students.

She announced the city of Rochester’s new plan to fund summer programs for young children, support widespread early screening for developmental disabilities and make it easier for parents to register their 4-and 5-year-olds for school.

Mayor Warren’s plan, the 3-to-3 Initiative aimed to help children from age 3 to third grade, the time research shows it’s vital for children to stay on top of reading and mathematics skills. This is based on recommendations from the Early Learning Council she organized in 2014.

The council learned that while there are effective pre-K programs for city families, but prior to prekindergarten and after they leave, especially in the summer months, programming is inadequate.

“We have children growing up in our city every day,” Warren said. “We can’t wait to build a better future for them.”

Warren’s plan promises city funding for programs that stop learning loss in the summer and boost literacy throughout the school year. The cost is about $1,100 per child for the summer programming. Warren stated that this can be done without any additional public money; instead, existing funds will just need to be reallocated.

The city would also support a subgroup of ROC The Future to screen 3-year-olds for developmental delays and provide help as needed.

Parents would have the ability to register for pre-K and kindergarten at city recreation centers and libraries. An online school selection tool will include public, charter, private and parochial schools.

I am happy with Warren’s education plan and excited to see what it can do in the Rochester community. Early education is key, and that she has found ways to make summer programs available to children and support early developmental disability screenings is something remarkable. I hope other Mayors follow suit and that similar education plans sweep the nation.

Is there a trend in favor of universal preschool?

Mandatory Kindergarten in the state of Mississippi is getting a push from legislators who believe it is a step in the right direction of improving the state’s entire K-12 system. Representative Sonya Williams-Barnes, a democrat from Gulfport, is the author of “KIDS Act” that would change the mandatory school age for children in the state from 6 to 5 years old, in essence making Kindergarten mandatory for children in the state.

So how does Mississippi stack up against other states when it comes to the Kindergarten issue? As it stands, there are only 15 states and the District of Columbia that require Kindergarten by law, and there are actually six states that do not even require public schools to offer Kindergarten. Despite the bad rap Mississippi often gets when it comes to student achievement numbers, the state does pretty well on Kindergarten access and has nationally high numbers for attendance. So adding in a Kindergarten requirement would not make a huge difference in the amount of kids who attended, but will just be more of a formality.

But that’s still not enough. In my opinion, the age of 5 is too old to start a formal education.  Where Mississippi, and much of America, could really use the legislative boost is when it comes to pre-K education. The Mississippi Department of Education reports that two-thirds of all the kids who entered Mississippi public Kindergarten in the fall of 2014 did not have the base-level skills required for adequate learning.

It may be a few decades before Mississippi, or any other state, requires school for children any younger than 5 years old. However, as a nation, we are inching towards universal preschool. Here is the evidence:

Childcare costs too much for many parents

If you’re a parent, you know how debilitating the cost of child care can be on your wallet. From weekly tuition costs that may rise with little notice to other expenses like gas, food, and doctor visits that add to the weekly expenditure, paying for your child’s care while you’re working may seem like more trouble than its worth at times.

A study by the Committee for Economic Development underscores the point of how burdensome child care costs are for American families. According to the study, “childcare costs consume an average of 7.2% of household income for those with children in paid care” and “parents with children in paid child care pay an average of $143 per week ($7,436 per 52-week year) for child care services.”

That’s just the national average. In other states, the costs are higher

In Florida, “the average annual cost of care for an infant is $8,376 in a child care center and $7,449 in a family child care home.”

Dependent upon the family’s income, if the home includes two parents, and work schedules, those costs may differ significantly.

But the crux of the study lies between the economy and how it links with the cost of child care. As a continued example, Florida’s economic growth and labor participation rate would increase if more families had “access to the organized child care market.”

Simply put: if more families had a better connection to healthy, organized child care centers with potential aid from the state, we would see production increase at work and a bump to our economy.

Does this situation make the case for having universal preschool? Yes. Granted, the federal government would foot the bill to create the program, but doing this is an investment in the nation’s economy.

Federally subsidized daycare programs are changing

President Obama signed for modifications to the Child Care and Development Block Grant program, which call for yearly inspections of daycare centers, and safeguards to ensure that every employee is trained in first aid and has had a thorough background check. Parents would also be given more time to find alternative daycare for children if their incomes rose above the qualifying amount. Before the changes, children could be kicked out of their programs or disqualified from assistance within a month; the legislation would extend that to at least one year.

The percentage of federal funds that daycare centers allocate to improving their programs would rise gradually over time.

This initiative gained bipartisan support, which is unusual, but the changes to federal grant program for child care are a long time coming. We have stringent standards for the teachers in our K-12 schools when it comes to the people we allow on campus – with many schools now requiring state ID from all visitors to check for sexual predators — yet there is not much federally to protect our youngest early childhood students. Even this legislation is certainly not sweeping. It only applies the mandatory checks to child care programs that apply for and accept federal funds. It’s a step in the right direction though.

As the merits of universal preschool continue to gain steam, the rules surrounding how these institutions are run will (and should) get stricter in order to keep students safe and stable in the vital early years before Kindergarten starts.

Childcare centers are leaning towards more educational experiences

Kindergarten readiness is about more than the preschool experience. It starts even earlier during childhood through guided play and learning activities that all build on the collective knowledge Kindergartners will need at the door.

Which is why Learning Care Group, one of the largest early childcare providers in the country, has implemented a new customized path to Kindergarten curriculum for students. The School Readiness Pathway begins in infancy and transitions from age to age, building on gradually on what will need to be learned by Kindergarten. The Learning Care Group is affiliated with Childtime, La Petite Academy, Tutor Time and Children’s Courtyard schools — all 900+ of which will be now use this Kindergarten readiness curriculum.

Access to early childhood education for all students is really important, but it takes more than just access – that education has to be quality.

It is also important that we differentiate between the learning that actually takes place in Kindergarten, and the building blocks that lead to it. Putting a Kindergarten readiness program in place is not the same as making young children hit an academic path before they are ready; it simply means that the developmentally appropriate programs put in place have a structure that places Kindergarten at the end of the journey.  I think it makes sense to chart out the learning process from a very young age and not wait to start doing that when Kindergarten begins. For our kids to maximize their learning potential in the K-12 years, we need to get that ball rolling as early as possible.

So with all that said…

Who can benefit most from universal preschool?

Everyone

A recent study has found that children who attend all-day preschool are much better prepared for Kindergarten than children who go to half-day programs.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs studied 1,000 3-and 4-year-olds enrolled in 11 Chicago schools. Students who attended preschool seven hours a day were compared to those who attended three hour programs, then tested at the commencement of preschool to see if they were socially and academically prepared to begin kindergarten.

The study found 59 percent of the students enrolled in the half-day program to be ready compared to 81 percent of the all-day preschool attendees.

In the fall of 2012, 78 percent of white students were prepared to enter kindergarten compared to 74 percent of black children and 62 percent of Native American and Hispanic students.

Early childhood education advocates say the results show that Minnesota should invest in more preschool programs, and believe this move could help minimize the achievement gap between white students and minority students.

The study’s lead author Arthur Reynolds feels that the state should consider funding all-day preschool programs so all students are ready to learn when they enter school.

Last year, $40 million in funding for pre-K scholarships was approved for low- income families. Thanks to those dollars 5,800 students were able to attend preschool, but as many as 15,000 more students still need access to pre-K scholarships.

Students from disadvantaged backgrounds

By putting more money into early childhood education in Detroit, the crime rate would go down, according to a recent study.

Jose Diaz of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation conducted the study “Cost Savings of School Readiness Per Additional At-Risk Child in Detroit and Michigan” where the findings appear.  The research was commissioned by the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation and it suggests that investing in early childhood education could cut Detroit’s crime rate and save taxpayers in the state millions of dollars, according to a story on the study by The Detroit News. The story says that Detroit taxpayers would save around $96,000 for each child who was enrolled in a quality early education program and Michigan taxpayers would save $47,000 for each child.

The figure was derived from adding cost savings to special education, public assistance, childcare subsidies, the victims of crime and the criminal justice system. The majority of the savings would come from the criminal justice system.

These findings prompted Diaz and law enforcement officials to call on the Legislature to invest more dollars in early childhood education to help halt the alarmingly high crime rate in Detroit.

At the present time, only 4 percent of prisoners in Michigan under the age of 20 years old graduated from high school.

Learning begins at birth, which is why early education programs are so important. These programs provide an integral foundation for young minds and prepare children for success at school and in life. At-risk children who don’t receive high quality early education are more likely to drop out of school and more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.

I think investing in early childhood education programs is a cost-effective way to promote positive development of children and get to the root causes of high crime in the city. I hope that Detroit can see early childhood education as an initiative that could finally pay off and cut crime.

In other news, the Ké’ Early Childhood Initiative brought together 45 representatives from four American Indian tribal colleges to discuss strategies for better early childhood education and family involvement in the community.

The meeting, sponsored by the American Indian College Fund’s Early Childhood Education program, attempted to “strengthen the role of Native families in early learning opportunities, building culturally-responsive programming with families and tribal partners.” Specifically, the representatives looked at ways the American Indian community could better prepare children for long-term academic success, targeting learning opportunities from birth to 8 years of age.

In education circles, we talk a lot about the way black and Latino students struggle in K-12 classrooms through a combination of cultural circumstances and inequality. The reality is that American Indian K-12 students are the most at-risk of any minority group for either dropping out of high school or never making it to college. The American Indian Fund reports that American Indians who earn a bachelor’s degree represent less than 1 percent of all of these degree earners. It is not shocking then to realize that 28 percent of American Indians lived in poverty compared to 15 percent of the general population, according to 2010 U.S. Census figures. A college education opens doors for a higher quality of life.

The path to college starts long before the application process, of course

Early childhood education has such an enormous impact on how students fare throughout their school careers. It’s the reason why President Obama has called on more states to implement universal preschool programs and has ushered more funding to Head Start and other early childhood education initiatives. There is a reason why an organization with “college” in the title is going back to early childhood to strengthen the potential of future students in the American Indian community. Better quality early childhood education, and families that are on board with supporting kids through the K-12 process, will lead to an uptick of interest in college degrees and a higher percentage of college graduates too.

Why universal preschool isn’t a done deal

As great as universal preschool sounds for kindergarten readiness and for underprivileged populations, there are still objections against making preschool available and mandatory for ALL students.

In Minnesota, Governor Mark Dayton vetoed a number of bills that may preclude to a partial shutdown of the state’s government.

Sounds crazy for a state with a budget surplus of nearly $2 billion is on the brink of a government shutdown is ludicrous, right? Yet, Dayton’s efforts are noble, and they include vetoing the education bill because it didn’t include a plan for universal pre-K.

Speaking to reporters, Dayton slammed lawmakers, saying that some of the Republican politicians “hate the public schools.”

Dayton believes that providing pre-K to young students will contribute to a child’s overall success. But the research is mixed on what pre-K actually affords for students.

Brookings provides information on two studies that produce varied results. One shows that pre-K in New Jersey works extremely well while another conducted in by the National Head Start Impact Study “found no differences in elementary school outcomes between children who had vs. had not attended Head Start as four-year olds.”

Furthermore, universal Pre-K programs tend to benefit disadvantaged and at-risk students the most. Children from middle-to-high class socioeconomic backgrounds do not feel the positive effects of preschool as strongly as their low-income and minority peers. In families where at least one parent can be home with children in the early years, and able to do basic learning activities with them, the impact of Pre-K programs are virtually non-existent by the time the child is in mid-elementary school. Children that participate in play-oriented preschool programs but have attentive parents that expose them to minimal learning fare just as well, or better than, peers who attend regimented Pre-K programs.

And when you add in the results of a study that demonstrates that Sesame Street teaches children just as well as preschool, the argument for the necessity of universal preschool weakens a bit.

Take a look at this: The Washington Post reports that “kids can learn as much from ‘Sesame Street’ as from preschool” because of the show’s focus on “academic curriculum.”

Levine and Kearney’s study found that kids received the same benefits from Sesame Street as they did with Head Start. While other studies have explored the notion of if preschool was needed at all, this one adds another layer to that argument by maybe proving that educational television may be just as vital to a child’s development.

Kearney told the Post that due to the benefits of the study that it may open more doors to alternative forms of education down the road. With the cost of college rising, student loan debt exploding, and educators searching for new and innovative ways to educate students, having something similar to Sesame Street on TV or via the internet may serve a new population of students.

The objections go beyond its effectiveness. For example, some parents are astonished at the difficulty of the material their young children bring home from school.

Critics say it is just a way to add more education jobs, particularly since proponents want to insist that states accepting federal preschool dollars pay preschool teachers at the same rate as elementary ones.

The plan has also been accused of being a federally-funded childcare angle meant to help alleviate the cost woes of working parents along with giving kids a jump on academics. Predictably, this ruffles the feathers of constituents who are already leery of Obama’s so-called “socialist agenda” and the government having too much control over family affairs.

But these arguments are a stretch, and they miss the point when it comes to addressing the worthiness of universal preschool.

In the context of the current demands of our society, it’s worth considering that the U.S. lags behind other developed nations when it comes to academics, particularly in areas like science and math. To compete as a nation on a global scale, this generation of K-12 (or P-12) students simply need to know more than their parents did as children.

In this context, socialization and an idea of what to expect when the school years come along are an integral part of the Pre-K process. Kindergarten used to be an adjustment year for children, but now kids who arrive in these classrooms are expected to know much more. Common Core standards exist at the Kindergarten level, with the expectation that these students will know how to read simple sentences competently, do basic addition and subtraction problems and understand basic time concepts. States that already have tax-funded Pre-K programs test Kindergartners and give the preschool provider the results. In some cases, future funding rests on whether or not the Pre-K program adequately prepared enough students for the academic rigors of Kindergarten.

But let’s look at the big picture for a moment. Here’s what should be considered: would starting kids earlier, across the board, have a measurable impact on the success of American students throughout their careers? This answer comes with a host of complications though. What specific gains will constitute “success” in a universal preschool initiative? Higher standardized test scores? Better graduation rates? More graduates who go on to earn math and science degrees?

Laying out a preschool plan that does not spell out any goals, or steps for achievement, is like sowing seeds haphazardly in a field and hoping something comes to fruition.

The second question should be: If implemented, how long will it take to see potential improvements? At what grade level will universal preschool benefits materialize – or at what age do educators stop hoping to see any positive impact?

Take a closer look

The push for universal preschool is spreading across the nation. However, we’re in an era where most states don’t even have mandatory kindergarten laws. We are not quite there yet.

It’s becoming more obvious that early childhood education is an opportunity for students from low-income backgrounds, and quite possibly an investment in America’s future and economy. It’s great that Obama and other leaders have made a push toward universal preschool over the past few years. I hope to see more early childhood education initiatives pop up even after he leaves office.

Education is a right for all children but the how and when of that learning is muddy. Universal preschool may be the boost American children need to regain some academic ground on the world stage – or it may prove to be a better idea in theory than practice. But despite the shaky evidence for the effectiveness for preschool for all students (especially middle and high income students), I do believe that an emphasis on early childhood education is key to educational equity in America.

 

 

Posted on

Music training speeds up brain development in children

Assal Habibi, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Observing a pianist at a recital – converting musical notations into precisely timed finger movements on a piano – can be a powerful emotional experience.

As a researcher of neuroscience and a pianist myself, I understand that the mastering of this skill not only takes practice, but also requires complex coordination of many different brain regions.

Brain regions – that are responsible for our hearing, sight and movement abilities – engage in an amazing symphony to produce music. It takes coordinating both hands and communicating emotionally with other players and listeners to produce the magical effect. The combination of such demands is likely to influence brain structures and their functions.

In our lab, we want to understand whether music training during childhood
improves brain functions for processing sound more generally. These functions
are important for the development of language and reading skills.

Music training and brain

Over the past two decades, several investigators have reported differences in the brain and behavior of musicians compared to nonmusicians.

Music training has been found to be related to better language and mathematical skills, higher IQ and overall greater academic achievement. Also, differences between musicians and nonmusicians have been found in areas of the brain related to hearing and movement, among others.

Music training helps develop many other skills.woodleywonderworks, CC BY

However, the interpretation of the findings remains unclear. For example, the differences reported between adult musicians and nonmusicians might be due to long-term intensive training or might result primarily from inherent biological factors, such as genetic makeup.

Or, as with many aspects of the nature-versus-nurture debate, the differences may well result from contributions of both environmental and biological factors.

One way to better understand the effects of music training on child development would be to study children before they start any music training and follow them systematically after, to see how their brain and behavior change in relation to their training.

It would involve including a comparison group, as all children change with age. The ideal comparison group would be children who participate in equally socially interactive but nonmusical training, such as sports. Follow-up assessments after their training would reveal how each group changes over time.

Impact of music training on child development

In 2012, our research group at the Brain and Creativity Institute at University of Southern California began a five-year study that did just that.

We began to investigate the effects of group-based music training in 80 children between ages six and seven. We have continued to follow them, to explore the effects of such training on their brain, cognitive, social and emotional development.

We started the study when one group of children were about to begin music training through the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program. This free community-based music program was inspired by El Sistema, a music program that was started in Venezuela and proved to be “tranformative” in changing the lives of underprivileged children.

What is the impact of group-based music training? GSK, CC BY-NC-ND

The second group of children were about to begin a sports training program with a community-based soccer program. They were not engaged in music training.

A third group of children were from public schools and community centers in the same areas of Los Angeles. All three groups of children were from equally underprivileged and ethnic minority communities of Los Angeles.

Each year, we meet every participant and their families at our institute for a testing period over the course of two to three days. During this visit, we measure language and memory abilities, capacity to process music and speech, and brain development of each child. We also conduct a detailed interview with their families.

At the beginning of the study, when children did not have any music or sports training, we found that the children in the music training group were not different from the children in the other two groups. Specifically, there were no differences in the brain’s intellectual, motor, musical and social measures between groups.

How our brain processes sound

The “auditory pathway” connects our ear to our brain to process sound. When we hear something, our eardrums receive it in the form of vibrations of air molecules. That is converted into a brain signal through a series of elegant mechanisms in the inner ear. That signal is then sent to the hearing area of the brain referred to as the “auditory cortex,” located near the sides of the brain.

Using different tasks, we measured how children’s brains register and process sound before taking part in their training and each year thereafter with a brain imaging technique called electroencephalography (EEG). This systematic investigation allowed us to track the maturation of the auditory pathway.

In one task, for example, we presented pairs of unfamiliar musical melodies to children while recording the signal from their brain, through EEG. The pairs of melodies were either identical or occasionally had tonal or rhythmic irregularities. We asked the children to identify whether the pairs were similar or different.

We checked how successfully children could detect whether the melody pairs were different and the corresponding brain responses to these occasional differences. That allowed us to measure how well the children’s brains were attuned to melody and rhythm. In general, the brain produces a specific response when detecting an unexpected change in a pattern of sound.

How music training develops the brain

After two years, the group of children who had undergone music training were more accurate at detecting changes in pitch when the melodies were different. All three groups of children were able to identify easily when the melodies were the same.

Children in the music group show a stronger brain response.A Health Blog, CC BY-SA

That indicated that children undergoing musical training were more attentive to the melodies. Children in the music group also had stronger brain response to differences in pitch compared to the children in the other groups. We also observed that musically trained children had faster development of the brain pathway responsible for encoding and processing sound.

Three years of this study remain. But these interim results are promising. They support previous findings on the positive impact of music training on brain development.

Our findings suggest that music training during childhood, even for a period as brief as two years, can accelerate brain development and sound processing. We believe that this may benefit language acquisition in children given that developing language and reading skills engage similar brain areas. This can particularly benefit at-risk children in low socioeconomic status neighborhoods who experience more difficulties with language development.

We hope that the findings from this study will not only lead to a better understanding of the benefits of musical training but also provide further insights into the social and psychological merits of music education for children in underserved communities.

The Conversation

Assal Habibi, Senior Research Associate, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Posted on

How to Revolutionize the US Educational System

Right now, free public education in America comes at a price.

Whenever the country hits turbulent financial times, as it did during the Great Recession, it takes its toll on the quality of education available in our K-12 schools—and it can take decades for the resulting deficiencies to rear their ugly heads.

When town and city administrators curtail the hiring of new teachers, or force the retirement of older teachers, class sizes increase.  The teacher-to-student ratio expands accordingly, meaning less face time per student, reducing the overall effectiveness of educational institutions.

An economic crisis does not just affect school budgets.  Financial difficulties within students’ families also play a huge role in the educational problems of the United States.  With more parents scrambling to make ends meet, there is less parental involvement with their children.  As a result, students may become unmotivated and slack off on assignments.  They may become problematic at school, meaning more time and effort from school administrators, leaving less time to improve their various systems.

Most American homes are dual-income, with both parents working one or more jobs to try to meet their financial obligations. There are also many single parent families, where the time for work and domestic tasks takes away from one-on-one educational work with children. In nearly every family situation, the time parents have to give their children any type of grounding in basic knowledge is severely limited.  The result is children starting school without much of the very basic knowledge children had in generations past.  Without that early foundation on which to build, children find themselves forever running at a deficit.

Furthermore, testing regimens for our children are anything but uniform. Some children are over-tested to an extreme. States like Massachusetts may be acclaimed for their stringent policies and standardized testing, but that level of stringency does not necessarily carry over to other states. In fact, many other states are not nearly as rigorous in their own testing procedures. Instead, they would rather do only what they have to do to receive federal education funds, and nothing more.

This level of inconsistency then becomes yet another problem for students.  Given the economic climate of the nation, many students may find themselves moving from state-to-state as their parents pursue employment or better jobs.  Inconsistency among state standardized testing procedures may result in students who have relocated suddenly finding themselves under a lot of pressure to do better than what was required in their previous school.

The Difference between Then and Now

In generations past, children starting school came into the system with far more knowledge already in hand.  They knew their letters, they knew how to count, and some of them already knew the fundamentals of reading.  This, of course, stems from the fact that most families had a parent who stayed home during the day and was therefore able to spend more time with the child. There were also fewer electronic distractions from the basics of reading.

Teacher retention is difficult now, and this also stems from economic factors. A number of the accelerated teacher certification programs, such as weekend and online programs, have good intentions but are turning out teachers that are unprepared to the meet the challenges that they soon will face in troubled classrooms.

Although these teachers are inexpensive since they are brand new and have not worked their way up to better pay scales and benefits, they are more likely to jump ship and leave the school system instead of staying to nurture their profession. Of course, the next group of teachers to replace them is new and inexperienced, too, but provides fresh bodies in the classrooms at an inexpensive level – so the cycle repeats itself. This is good for the budget, but not so good for long-term performance, morale, and achievement.

Certainly, the economic situation affects the task of balancing budgets, by the school system, government entities, and parents. Conversely, more money does not necessarily mean more improvement – but not enough causes a host of its own problems too.

America spends more per student than any other nation in the world, and yet we see mediocre results. With this kind of money being pumped into the system, why are our school systems in the state that they are? There’s no arguing that our schools need to be well funded in order for our children to succeed, but clearly our schools need to do a better job utilizing the funds that they already receive.

When it comes to school reform, something’s got to give. What is it?

Education Reform 101

Is there a winning mindset for successful school reform?

When considering school reform, many administrators may be at a loss for how to think of their schools.

It may sound cold and clinical, but it’s advantageous for administrators to think of their schools as businesses. Think of how it would be if the structure of the school reflected the business model. We would work from the assumption that students in the school system are customers, schools are the businesses, teachers are the employees/supervisors, and the administrators are the CEOs.

In any business, the customers’ needs always come first. The reputation for customer service is the best advertising a business can receive. Keeping this savvy business strategy in mind, the business of the school should be to create learning opportunities that lead to greater academic achievement. If educators make lessons fun while adhering to the curriculum, the graduation rate will increase dramatically. If children feel safe and entertained, they will want to come to school. It is the educator’s task to make sure students learn to love to learn, while it is the administration’s task to support their efforts.

The most critical question administrators must confront is: where do we begin?

Well, let’s get this out of the way: tackling several goals at once is not a good idea. It seems noble, but when trying to start reform in a complex environment such as a school, administrators need to focus on one task at a time. When making decisions, the administration needs to complete all steps of the reform in a sequential order, using a strategic way of thinking.

In some cases goals can be independently accomplished. Departments will be able to achieve short-term goals while accomplishing the larger goals. In education, the improvements that matter the most are those that directly concern children. In order to create the necessary improvements, school districts must be reformed in ways that will sustain change. The ability of a school district to sustain reform should be the highest priority for the superintendent and the board of education.

How can schools sustain reform?  First, administrators must come to an agreement regarding issues that have made it necessary for school reform to take place. They need to be open and honest, and avoid blaming others for the issues that exist. All individuals directly and indirectly involved in the school reform must share a common vision.

Administrators should try to come to a consensus regarding the purpose of education and the roles of the faculty and staff.  They also need to agree on the rules and guidelines that will support the implementation of the reform, while respecting cultural beliefs of the faculty, staff, and students. Finally, administrators must communicate the current issues of the school and the vision for the future to stakeholders. Those who support and participate in reform need a clear vision of the common goal. Administrators must paint a reform picture that alleviates fears, and entice all to buy into the vision.

Communication is the key to running and sustaining a successful school when creating concrete reform. All participants and key administrators must agree to communicate with each other their understanding of the school reform, including their concerns. The administrators and participants must have a shared understanding of the issues the district faces, as they must learn to articulate, analyze, and explain the issues in a similar way.

There needs to be a common vision concerning students, schools, and the allocation of resources. Administrators must also anticipate new trends and issues preventing reform. Once the obstacles have been identified, it is the duty of the administrator to articulate these trends and issues to the powers that be, i.e., superintendents and school board members. Finally, the most important communication between administrators and staff is how to create reform that provides a quality education for all students.

Communication must also take place among the school district, superintendents, and the board of education in an intentional and ongoing manner. They must continuously reflect in an open and honest way on the effectiveness of the reform, and successfully communicate between departments in the case of promotions, retirements, or sudden resignation.

When creating school reform, administrators should consider working with community members. Community members and parents have a lot to contribute when it comes to school reform and they should be encouraged and allowed to do so. Parents and educators undoubtedly have a genuine concern for the needs of students. Why not place the important decisions concerning our students in the hands of the people that have the children’s best interests at heart?

Administrators should also consider teachers as a major part of school reform. Reform is considered a success or a failure based on the students’ performance, but teacher performance is inextricably linked to student performance. Through positive teacher-student relationships, genuine learning can take place in the classroom. Teachers know their students and the educational practices that work best in their classroom.

In schools across the nation, the people in the best positions to create positive outcomes have little to no control over the changes that are made and how they are implemented. Too often, the most critical decisions concerning the educational system are made by people without the capacity to understand the inner workings of the individual school and what it takes to ensure no child is left behind. So the challenge here is for those who the most power to make changes connect with those who are in the trenches with the students.

Will the “slow and steady” approach work for education reform?

Speaking of mindsets, the Japanese have a philosophy of continuous quality improvement.

This philosophy is called “kaizen,” which they apply to many areas of their life. Kaizen is the idea that one does not need to wait for something to be broken in order to fix it. Rather, one should always look for opportunities to improve upon current processes, making things incrementally better as time passes. This drive for continuous improvement should apply to our educational system; we need to constantly be striving to make things better, reevaluating how we do things, looking at the results we are achieving, and taking steps to improve things incrementally.

In the same way that kaizen theory speaks to improving life in general, we should apply the same principles to U.S. K-12 education. We must consider ways in which our educational system can and should grow, change, and continuously improve in ways to best serve our children. In order for the United States to continue to progress toward a knowledge-based society, it is necessary to reform and streamline our education system to enable the development and assimilation of information as knowledge. Our schools are the primary institutions to facilitate transference and conversion of information into students’ knowledge base. It is our duty to keep a watchful eye on the schooling processes, and to change educational policies and practices to ensure improvement.

That said, over the past century, many reforms have taken place throughout the U.S., and on a continuing basis. Despite the constant need for change, very few, if any, of these reforms really made their way to the school level. Most of the initiatives that led to reform originated from dynamic leaders who were capable of implementing these changes in an extraordinary fashion, despite the presence of various radicals in strong opposition to these changes. However, as soon as the leaders moved on to their next challenge, these radical individuals returned to their old ways. The reform was diminished, and eventually there remained no trace of it.

Study after study has shown that the American educational system is not just in need of regular, continuous quality improvement. Something very different is needed since the system is in a state of fundamental disrepair. Our children are performing poorly compared to other developed countries. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are performing even worse.

Continuous improvement on its own may not be the all-encompassing solution for our educational system, but we definitely need to take a long-term approach to school reform instead of looking for a quick fix.

Why education reform should not have an end date

The word “reform” comes with the connotation of something with a start and end date. There are reformation eras in history, and policies, and initiatives. The problem with thinking of reform, particularly school reform, on a timeline is that the most successful reform attempts are ongoing.

People involved in the piloting stage of school reform often see what they are doing as something limited by time. Other stakeholders likely share this view, or are of the opinion that the work will stop when the reform money runs out, or that, the new reforms won’t take hold. This generally leads to fragmentation, or a lack of a coherent approach to reform, and as a result, reform efforts often end up sidelined. Unfortunately, this circumstance runs contrary to the realization of in-depth, sustained school reforms.

The cyclical turnover of superintendents and school board members makes it difficult to ensure that others will continue effective systemic reforms begun by one board and superintendent. New superintendents and new school boards often want to make their marks by initiating changes rather than sustaining the strategies created by their predecessors.

This is often the case even when evidence suggests that existing programs are the ones that need to be sustained to meet long-term goals, such as closing the achievement gap or getting all students to proficiency. The new leadership appears to forget that there are no quick fixes or short term reforms that guarantee continuous improvement in student achievement, as they jump to exchange existing efforts for improvement with new ones.

The process of school reform can become very lengthy and on the whole it is expected to stretch across a period of several years. Ironically, school districts are placed under tremendous pressure to turn a new page each year, allowing for only a fraction of the time required for any reform plan to produce results. This is sometimes part of a government ploy when budget cuts are enforced with little notice, or a result of resentful parents streaming to the authorities in opposition to some aspect of the an existing plan.

The process of annual makeovers comes at substantial costs to the states that are likely already operating on limited funds. Cost is not the only issue however. By reinventing the system each year, educators, teachers, and principals alike, have no chance to come to terms with the details of any particular plan before it’s time to implement the next one. As a result, educators are never fully versed on any plan, in effect making the process of reform fruitless.

The role of the school district is to take a long-term approach, define, and articulate the school reform agenda for the district, as they are a crucial source of leadership in implementing and sustaining reform. Their role should be to develop a framework by which sustainable reforms can be measured even if there is a turnover of staff.

A school reform framework should include four key points:

  • improving student achievement
  • fiscal accountability
  • increasing organizational effectiveness
  • building and improving relationships with staff and the broader community.

This framework provides an agenda that the school board and staff can work from and use as a checklist to measure the success of reforms. It also means that when recruiting new staff you should look to hire people whose vision matches the already defined vision of the district, an important factor when it comes to sustaining change over time. Reform then should become a permanent goal of every school system, not something that can be plotted out nicely on a calendar.

How much does money matter?

Often, we worry over how much money our public schools are receiving, right? Are these funds enough to serve the schools? And if they are, why are governments/districts/schools mismanaging the money?

One glaring issue is that we run into a lot of problems with tracking expenditures for schools.

We’re at the point where many investigators have requested new methods to determine expenditures for schools.

The good news is that manufacturing theorists have pioneered completely new expenditure models that include costs that are activity and program-based. These models also help form fiscal data so that strategic decision-making becomes easier for schools that need to use the data.

In several reports, researchers have demanded new methods of expenditure recordkeeping as a means to modify district strategy.  This is to identify the real expenditures involved in individual schools, programs, or services.

The models that have been created are different in terms of which categories they’ve used, but all of them propose assigning a larger percentage of costs to specific types of students and schools.

Reforms relating to accountability have focused not only on performance inequalities between white students and students from minority group backgrounds, but also between students having different needs that result from disability, poverty, or limitation in English proficiency. Many policymakers stress that the first stage in tackling these achievement gaps is to align fiscal policy with student needs. But currently, when policymakers refine their established funding formulas to fulfill the needs of different students, they don’t have any evidence to back up their hunches.

A state policymaker who wants a particular demographic of student to receive funds is going to have a lot of trouble because no baseline data exist on current expenditure in regard to each type of student within their own districts or other schools within other districts. School districts in most states do not fully track costs by student type or to the school level. Even where these data are tracked, they are not accessible from published works for policymakers attempting to pin answers down.

Just as challenging is the difficulty comparing states when it comes to funding. There aren’t any accurate ways of defining or reporting expenditures influenced by student needs. Because of this, it is impossible to compare data between states.  Furthermore, policymakers have not yet figured out how to flow funds from one level of government to the next. For example, funds may be designated by the federal government for students living in poverty, with the goal of enhancing expenditures at schools having high concentrations of poverty. However, by the time funds are dispersed through state and local allocation streams, they may not reach their intended target.

Finally, no much documentation exists regarding different decisions for structuring assigned allocations and the way those decisions relate to policy aims. Put in other terms, allocations meant for students having limited English proficiency (LEP) might be realized as a fixed dollar amount per LEP student, reimbursements for the spending on bilingual education services, apportionment of staff full-time equivalents (FTEs) to high-needs schools, or as funds for other areas. Research has not yet figured out how these different decisions influence either what is finally spent per pupil or how efficiently that funding reaches the intended students.

The bottom line? When it comes to knowing how to spend money, the government, states, and schools are lost.

School Reform on a Budget

On a smaller scale, reform efforts can run into other problems as well.

A major mistake many reform groups make is to table educational reform efforts because the expenditure does not fit into the school budget. If children are America’s most precious commodity and the focal point of the nation’s educational system, then the lack of funding is no excuse to skip reform efforts. If we can’t commit money to our K-12 students, how can we expect them to rise above their circumstances?

The old business adage is that you have to spend money to make money – and that should be the mentality when looking at struggling schools or districts that need, sometimes costly, reform. By smartly investing the money, even just in a few key areas, schools will see a return on that reform investment in the way of more successful, higher achieving students. And really – school reform does not need to cost a fortune to make a difference.

In truth, many school reform efforts are cost-effective and can be implemented by resourceful educators. When there is a lack of money, reform is contingent upon the faith and commitment level of the faculty and staff.  No need to waste money on model programs and unsubstantiated trends. Instead, reform groups will have to work diligently and efficiently to implement the chosen reform efforts properly and effectively.

So where should the money go?

When school reform is needed and schools have limited resources, spending money on curriculum can be intimidating, but it is a vital place to put money because it makes a huge impact on student outcomes. The curriculum chosen will need to be a good fit for both teachers and students. Math and reading should be the first concern, because they are the building blocks for other subject areas, as well the most frequent measure of future success. Success in these two areas bode well for success in other subjects at all grade levels.

Teachers’ professional development is a key factor for successful school reform as well. When analyzing reform budgets, it is important to set aside money to hire teachers with the ability to create and teach in-service professional development programs. Training staff and educators internally will save the school money, and will give the teacher/expert a feeling of usefulness. For instance, a teacher with 30 years of experience and a demonstrated ability to obtain amazing results from her specific teaching strategies might create a professional development seminar to share her expertise. This saves the school an enormous amount of money, and saves the administrator the trouble and cost of hiring a consultant. Another low-cost/no-cost option is to hire professors from neighboring colleges and universities to provide professional development services to your district as a form of community service or to fulfill requirements to obtain or maintain tenure.

In the end, schools operating with limited funds to support reform efforts will need to be both resourceful and creative in order to effect positive change. Forward thinking leaders, committed and imaginative teachers, and a supportive community can contribute to change that improves the educational experiences of our children.

Pay teachers right: why you shouldn’t leave them in the dust

School reform is never easy. When sweeping changes are decided upon and implemented, everyone must fully participate in order for students to benefit from the changes and certainly not to suffer during the transition. Part of providing that stability for students is through a strong front of teachers that remain at the school during the sometimes turbulent reform process.

Here are some useful tips that will help you preserve teaching jobs while reforming schools:

  1. Remember – a high teacher turnover is expensive. It is a simple fact of life that high staff turnover can create instability and have a negative impact on efforts to establish a consistent learning environment for students. High staff turnover is also quite costly, particularly when the recruitment of teachers, and then the training of new teachers in the intricacies of the reform effort are considered.
  2. Pay attention to who you hire so that you can reduce teacher attrition. Give more effort and support to the recruitment process for teachers at the outset as schools and districts initiate reform efforts. Hiring teachers who “fit” reform goals will likely reduce teacher attrition.  Still, new teachers need more support. Even teachers who ostensibly have the skills and attitudes that align with reform goals will need mentoring and other supports as they begin their jobs. Make every attempt to reduce the debilitating rate of turnover.
  3. Become creative with spending on new resources. Inevitably, a major factor for sustaining reform is having the money to do so. Most efforts now are centered on how to make the most of current funding and utilizing money effectively in order to maximize the positive impact of reforms, rather than how to access untapped resources. Despite the dearth of new money, it is possible to free up cash through alternative means of spending.

An extreme proposal to accomplish this is to reduce staffing to the absolute minimum. For example, a school with 500 students would have 20 teachers and 1 principal. Approximately $1 million could become available, depending on how many education specialists (regular and categorical) and instructional aides worked within the school. This is radical option, and there are other, less extreme ways to change the way money is spent, to include increasing class sizes, spending less on upgrading technology, and eliminating some programs.

The key, however, is to look in detail at all financial outlays, measure them according to the extent to which they contribute to the goals of the school reform, and rank them according to how well they do this. This will enable schools to break down spending into its core components and work out what is necessary and what can be cut during the process of change in order to better implement their improvement strategy. This is particularly important in times of austerity, when elements that are not essential may have to be reduced or cut in order to help drive reform, no matter how popular or long-standing they may be.

Spending money on non-essential areas does support school reform efforts. Prioritizing what money is spent on does not automatically mean cutting all non-academic projects. What gets cut will depend on the goals of individual schools. This should be a workable situation, as long as the school is still accountable to the state and the district for shifts in expenditures. An understanding that cutting teaching jobs can actually be detrimental to reform is important though, instead of just looking at the numbers on a piece of paper.

Optimizing Education Reform

Here’s a tip: give the reform a vision.

Instructional leadership offers administrators the opportunity to create a shared vision of learning for the entire school environment – allowing both educators and support staff to get behind a common goal. That common goal is most often articulated in the form of a school mission statement, which must be built effectively in order to be compelling.

What are the characteristics of a good school mission statement?

  1. Academically Focused

A school’s mission must be academically focused, as after all that is the primary function of the school environment. While there are other functions that a school serves, other roles that it plays, the academic growth of the students is where it all starts and where it should ultimately lead. The mission statement serves as a reminder to all members of the school community that strong academics are the prize.

  1. Objectives are Clearly Expressed

In order for all stakeholders to have the opportunity to participate in the school’s model, express the objectives clearly and in writing. The language has to be clear and something that everyone can understand, from teachers and administrators to parents and support staff. Students should also be able to access the mission statement so that they can become participants in their own education.

  1. Clearly Displayed

A mission statement does no one any good if it’s kept locked up in the office or just posted on a web page. In order for a school’s mission statement to be of any use, display it proudly all over the school. In hallways and on distributed materials, discussed in classrooms and assemblies. If a school wishes for its mission statement to drive the school culture, then make it part of the school environment and conversation.

  1. Present in the Classroom

Besides being displayed and talked about in the school, the mission statement should be the primary driving force for teachers when they are planning and implementing lessons. This is something that can take some acclimation for teachers, who might be reticent to change their focus when planning lessons. However using the school’s mission as a focus and a trigger point will help students to have a unified educational experience, which will help them to solidify their learning across the school setting.

  1. Actively Modeled

In addition to all of this, the schools’ top administrators must expertly articulate the mission. If the mission has an academic focus, then the administration needs to actively back that up. Stakeholders will have a hard time pushing the mission of the school if they believe that there is a lack of integrity in the execution of it, for example if the mission pushes academics, but the school more actively focuses on sports or societal concerns. Of course even with that academic heartbeat that’s driving the school’s mission, there will continue to be ancillary projects and activities going in in the school, but with that the pulse must still be academic, and that pulse is derived from the actions of administrators.

Applying Research to Mission Building

Instructional leaders should apply research to their mission building strategies. One key way to do this is to ask questions about the mission statement as it is in development and then later as it is implemented.

  • Are the goals clearly articulated and easy to understand?
  • Are the goals visible throughout the school environment?
  • Are they familiar with all of the stakeholders in the school?
  • Do the goals apply in the day-to-day activities at the school?
  • Do instructional leaders consistently and actively reinforce the misson’s goals?
  • Do all stakeholders in the school support the mission?

The Importance of the Mission Statement

Direction-setting in the school environment is an essential aspect of instructional leadership. Framing and communicating the school’s goals through a mission statement is the perfect way to communicate the direction and focus of the school environment. Clear, measurable and time based goals are at the heart of the school experience. When these goals are communicated and achieve buy in from stakeholders within the school environment, then the school’s mission becomes attainable. Too often goals are not active drivers in the school community, but rather are sidebar considerations that don’t get much attention from school personnel. The mission is a wonderful tool to help create an effective school environment.

Nearly every school has a mission statement, and it can be a powerful tool that helps to codify and give direction to the enthusiasm, passion and expertise that educators bring to the classroom. Or it can be a jumble of letters that are posted on the wall of the office and left unnoticed. The choice is up to the leadership of the school environment. One thing that administrators must realize is that good goals, good mission statements that are well articulated and actively communicated, offer the possibility for radical change and success.

Why even bother?

None of these considerations are easy. So is it worth trying?

Schools have an interesting history in this country. Historically, they have played a significant role in helping communities evaluate issues concerning child welfare and eliminating situations that impede children’s progress. During the Great Migration of 1880–1924, a huge number of impoverished children moved into the schools of American cities. The majority of immigrants were poor and undereducated.

Social reformers and policy makers pressured public schools to work toward improving children’s lives. Many schools devoted themselves not only to educating poor children, but also to providing them with proper nutrition and other amenities required for healthy living. Teachers devoted their time to teaching English to immigrant students. Many schools offered non-academic services, including school nurses, gyms, playgrounds, and mid-time meals or lunches for poor students.

Some schools also started offering night classes for parents to help them learn English and other important parental skills that could assist them in caring for their children. Many schools encouraged teachers to improve school-parental ties by visiting students’ homes and instructing parents on how to offer a better learning environment for children at home. However, such initiatives faced a certain degree of opposition from parents who were not ready to leave their ethnic and racial identities.

A major hurdle was the economic impracticability of sustaining such child welfare activities. Most of these initiatives were criticized as “socialistic,” but many children enjoyed the benefits of programs intended to improve the overall situations of children and their families. Children not only experienced better living conditions; they also gained many opportunities to rise out of poverty. As a result, more immigrant children started coming to school regularly.

Ever-increasing fiscal burdens on schools created by child well-being initiatives caused political opposition and social criticism. In order to reduce costs, many state governments withdrew funding for social services offered by public schools. As a result, the upsurge of underprivileged children in the late 1980s and early 1990s was met with reduced and nonexistent services emanating from schools.

The depressed socioeconomic conditions of underprivileged families were responsible for undermining the learning process and academic achievement of many children.

We’re in different times these days. Nowadays, when it’s critical to have great schools and involved parents, both are overloaded and unable to help students reach their full potential.

As educators, we cannot do much about parental involvement—except encourage it. (For those of us who have children, of course, we can also be active parents ourselves.) However, we do have more impact over the reform efforts of our schools, even though we often think we don’t.  At the very least, we can begin with awareness and taking an active role in our schools’ reform efforts.

 

 

 

Posted on

Help your children play out a story and watch them become more creative

Sandra Russ, Case Western Reserve University

Just about every institution these days is looking for creative individuals. Adults who can innovate in high-quality ways and contribute to the progress of science, engineering and the arts.

Creative expressions start from an early age. Children express creativity through “pretend play” – an activity that involves using imagination and make-believe. They make up stories and ideas “from scratch” and use props like blocks or sticks to represent different ideas and objects – for example, a block becomes a telephone or monster.

The question is, does playing in such a way help children become more creative? And importantly, can parents and educators use play to boost creativity?

Measuring creative play

In order to study the link between pretend play and creativity, first we need to be able to measure pretend play.

So, in 1990, my research program developed a measure of pretend play. This program uses a scale, the “Affect in Play Scale,” that measures imagination and “emotional expression” in pretend play stories.

Emotional expression is a term used to convey, for example, when a child pretends that a puppet is having fun while going down a pretend slide. Or when a child pretends that a doll is scared while running from a monster. Children express a wide range of emotions in that way – happiness, fear, sadness, anger, affection or even frustration.

The children we work with are mostly between six and 10 years of age. We videotape them – when they are playing individually with puppets and blocks – for five minutes. We then score their play for imagination, quality of the story and amount of emotion expressed in the narrative. When working with preschool children – between four and five years – we modify the program to provide more toys and more instructions.

Play and creativity

Our research shows that the amount and quality of imagination, story-telling skills and emotion expression that children show in pretend play is associated with creative thinking abilities.

Children with better story-telling abilities are better creative thinkers. Child image via www.shutterstock.com

Children who demonstrate better story-telling abilities in pretend play also show better “divergent thinking.” What this means is that when children are asked to think of different uses for many different objects, such as a button or a newspaper, they are able to come up with multiple uses for each.

Our research has shown that children who showed more imagination and emotion in their play are, in general, better divergent thinkers. Divergent thinking is associated with higher creative thinking abilities.

Not only that, when children show creativity in pretend play, it is highly likely they are creative in other ways as well. For example, when we went back to the same children four years later, we found those children had overall superior creative abilities.

Usually, none of these associations is linked with intelligence. Existing intelligence tests cannot measure the ability to engage in pretend play.

Running an intervention

So, then the next question is, can we increase pretend play skills that, in turn, increase performance on creativity and other important tasks in child development?

A small body of research has found that when adults played with children in a way that could help with the pretend play, even for a brief time, it increased children’s imagination and creativity.

Theoretically, engaging in pretend play involves practice with abilities important in creative production such as making up a story from scratch, generating many and different ideas, recombining ideas into new combinations, expressing and recombining memories with emotional content, and problem-solving in new ways.

Research on children with developmental disabilities has shown how interventions can help increase imagination. For example, in a study with children on the autism spectrum (problems relating, imagining and expressing emotion) and children with Prader-Willi Syndrome (developmentally delayed with a strong focus on food), the support of an adult play partner increased imagination in play.

What studies show

We observed similar results in my research with normally developing children as well. In 2003 and 2004, we carried out a pilot study with first- and second-grade children in a high-poverty neighborhood inner-city school.

Facilitated by an adult, children played with a variety of toys and made up stories with different content themes in five 20-30 minute sessions. They could make up a story about a boy going to the zoo, going to the moon, feeling sad because he lost his dog or feeling happy at a birthday party.

What changes when adults help children with their story-telling skills? Child image via www.shutterstock.com

The adult played with the child and showed the child how to pretend. For example, the adult would say that the Lego could be a milk bottle, or that the red block could be a fire engine. The adult would suggest what could happen next in the story.

The adult modeled different expression of feelings, praised the children, encouraged different endings and prompted with questions.

Each child received the same story beginning and had the same interactions with the adult. But the intervention also had enough flexibility so adults could tailor their involvement to the individual child’s level of play skills.

We had a control group as well, where an adult was involved in helping children only with coloring and puzzles. There was no imaginative play in the control group.

Boost in creativity

After five weeks of the play and control sessions, the children were assessed again. Children in the play groups increased their play skills and also increased creativity and coping skills when compared to the control group. It was important to make sure that children had fun at the play sessions.

Two additional studies with this play intervention at a private girls’ school showed similar boost in creativity.

Children five to eight years of age were studied in groups of four. The prompts by adults were similar to the individual play session. The play facilitators were careful to stress turn-taking in developing the stories, so that one child would not dominate the play.

Children were tested before and after the intervention.

Children in the play group made up stories and played with toys. The control group played with crafts and puzzles. After six weeks, children in the play group were found to have better imagination. What is interesting is that creativity increased on a “divergent thinking” task for children who had lower than average imagination in play when pretested.

Adult intervention can help boost creativity in children. Child image via www.shutterstock.com

This study is important because it demonstrated that a small group of children (four per group) who met weekly for six weeks, in a school setting, became more imaginative. And even children who were initially low in imagination in play improved on a creativity measure, compared to a control group.

The implication for school settings is that creativity can be enhanced in the classroom with group play that can be easily carried out.

What parents/teachers can do

These studies hold promise as they demonstrate that a brief play intervention can help children increase imagination and creativity through play. This intervention is easy to carry out and could be used in school settings by teacher aides or volunteers.

A large-scale study is needed to refine the intervention and gather information about how and which children can best benefit.

In my view, from what we currently know, parents and teachers can help children improve their creativity by playing with the child, enjoying play, demonstrating pretend and starting a story.

So the next time you are set to spend time with young children, come up with the beginning of a story and then let the children do as much as they can. When they get stuck, or get repetitive, engage with them and suggest what can happen next. Most important – have fun.

The Conversation

Sandra Russ, Distinguished University Professor and Louis D. Beaumont University Professor, Case Western Reserve University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Posted on

Zero tolerance laws increase suspension rates for black students

F. Chris Curran, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The State Senate of Michigan is currently considering legislation that would scale back “zero tolerance” discipline policies in the state’s public schools.

Zero tolerance discipline laws require automatic and generally severe punishment for specified offenses that could range from possessing weapons to physical assault. They leave little leeway for consideration of the circumstances of the offense.

The bill, already approved by the State House, proposes to add provisions that would consider the contextual factors around an incident, such as the student’s disciplinary history, and would ask whether lesser forms of punishment would suffice.

In other words, suspension and expulsion would no longer be as “mandatory” and there would be a little more “tolerance” in these state discipline laws.

As a researcher of education policy and school discipline, I would highlight that these revisions, some of which have been passed in other states, represent a significant change of course for state school discipline law.

In fact, my recent work and that of others suggests that the shift away from zero tolerance approaches is for the better.

Why zero tolerance policies were introduced

Throughout the 1990s, the number of states with zero tolerance laws, those requiring suspension or expulsion for specified offenses, increased significantly.

The rapid adoption of such laws was spurred in part by the passage of the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act, federal legislation that required states to adopt mandatory expulsion laws for possessing a firearm in school.

These safety concerns were further heightened by the shooting that took place at Columbine High School, a public high school in Littleton, Colorado.

Following Columbine, by the early 2000s, nearly every state had a zero tolerance law in place. Many of these laws expanded beyond firearms to include other weapons, physical assaults and drug offenses.

Push back against zero tolerance

Clearly, such zero tolerance laws were meant to improve the safety and order of the school environment. However, in recent years, they have been seen as being overly prescriptive and as contributing to racial disparities in school discipline.

For instance, there are cases of students being suspended for accidentally bringing a pocketknife to school. In one high-profile case, a student was suspended for chewing a pastry into the shape of a gun.

Black kids are suspended at a higher rate. Children image via www.shutterstock.com

Additionally, federal data show that black students are suspended at rates two to three times higher than their white peers.

As a result, in 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education issued a joint “Dear Colleague” letter directed to public school districts. The letter was a call for reductions in the use of suspensions and expulsions and, instead, for a focus on ensuring the fair use of school discipline for students of all backgrounds.

Here’s what new research shows

In a newly published study, I explored the implications of state zero tolerance laws – laws that require school districts to adopt zero tolerance policies.

In particular, I sought to find out if they contributed to increased use of suspensions and if they led to racial disparities. Given claims by proponents of such laws that they increase the safety and order of the school overall, I also wanted to see if these laws contributed to decreases in perceptions of problem behaviors in the school as a whole.

I used national data collected by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Civil Rights Data Collection and the Schools and Staffing Survey. The sample included thousands of school districts and principals spanning the late 1980s to the mid-2000s.

The study revealed three important findings.

First, the study showed that state laws requiring schools to have zero tolerance policies increased suspension rates for all students. Second, suspension rates increased at a higher rate for African-American students, potentially contributing to racial disparities in discipline. Finally, principals reported few decreases in problem behaviors in schools, suggesting that the laws did not improve the safety and order of schools.

The findings, in context

The findings show that the adoption of state zero tolerance laws result in increases in district suspension rates. For the average-sized district, such laws resulted in approximately 35 more suspensions per year.

Though this number may seem small, the potential impact is quite large.

A recent study by researchers at UCLA, for example, suggests that a one percentage point reduction in the suspension rate nationally would result in societal gains of over US$2 billion through reduced dropout and increased economic productivity. In short, state zero tolerance laws may be imposing significant financial costs on society.

Burden of zero tolerance laws is not shared equally. Boy image via www.shutterstock.com

Furthermore, the burden of these costs are not equally shared across all groups.

The results of my study suggest that the increase in suspension rates for black students as a result of these laws is approximately three times the size of that for white students.

Coupled with other research that finds links between zero tolerance policies and racial disparities, this finding demonstrates that these laws, though supposedly neutral with regard to race, are disproportionately impacting students of color.

Recent data released by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights also point to persistent disparities by race in the use of school discipline.

No reduction in misbehavior

Proponents of zero tolerance discipline have argued that the use of suspensions and expulsions increases the safety and order of the learning environment as a whole. My study found evidence to refute the claim.

In my data set, principals rated the degree to which various behavior problems (i.e., fighting, disrespect, use of drugs, weapons) were problems in their schools.

I found that, in the view of principals, the presence of a state zero tolerance law did not decrease their rating of the degree to which these various behaviors are problems. In other words, state zero tolerance laws did not appear to be contributing to improved levels of safety and order overall.

What the results mean for policy and practice

Students, parents and other stakeholders have an expectation that schools should be safe and orderly environments that treat all students equitably. While it is imperative that schools take active steps to achieve these goals, the findings of my work call into question whether state zero tolerance discipline laws are the most effective way to do so.

While suspension and expulsion may still be appropriate tools in some circumstances, it is important for schools to consider context, and states to allow such discretion, in the administration of school discipline. Furthermore, it is important to have safeguards in place to ensure that such discretion is utilized equitably for students of color, who too often experience disproportionate disciplinary exclusion.

The revised disciplinary laws under consideration in Michigan and similar revisions to school disciplinary policies in other states represent more promising steps to ensuring effective and fair school discipline.

The Conversation

F. Chris Curran, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.