Educating the Next Steve Jobs

From the Wall Street Journal:

How can schools teach students to be more innovative? Offer hands-on classes and don't penalize failure
By Tony Wagner

Most of our high schools and colleges are not preparing students to become innovators. To succeed in the 21st-century economy, students must learn to analyze and solve problems, collaborate, persevere, take calculated risks and learn from failure. To find out how to encourage these skills, I interviewed scores of innovators and their parents, teachers and employers. What I learned is that young Americans learn how to innovate most often despite their schooling—not because of it.

Though few young people will become brilliant innovators like Steve Jobs, most can be taught the skills needed to become more innovative in whatever they do. A handful of high schools, colleges and graduate schools are teaching young people these skills—places like High Tech High in San Diego, the New Tech high schools (a network of 86 schools in 16 states), Olin College in Massachusetts, the Institute of Design (d.school) at Stanford and the MIT Media Lab. The culture of learning in these programs is radically at odds with the culture of schooling in most classrooms.

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States Fail to Raise Bar in Reading, Math Tests

From The Wall Street Journal:

By STEPHANIE BANCHERO

Eight states have raised their standards for passing elementary-school math and reading tests in recent years, but these states and most others still fall below national benchmarks, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

The data help explain the disconnect between the relatively high pass rates on many state tests and the low scores on the national exams, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

In fourth-grade reading, for example, 35 states set passing bars that are below the "basic" level on the national NAEP exam. "Basic" means students have a satisfactory understanding of material, as opposed to "proficient," which means they have a solid grasp of it. Massachusetts is the only state to set its bar at "proficient"—and that was only in fourth- and eighth-grade math.

The report from the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, is certain to reinvigorate calls to overhaul No Child Left Behind. Critics of the federal education law, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, contend states watered down their exams to meet the law's requirement that 100% of students taking state math and reading exams are passing by 2014.

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Sudden Bridgeport School Switch Months in the Making

From the Wall Street Journal:

By Shelly Banjo

Behind what seemed to be an emergency takeover of Bridgeport, Conn.’s public school system in July turns out to have involved six months of back-channel negotiations among state education officials and a hedge fund manager’s charitable foundation, new documents show.

Last month, Bridgeport’s board of education voted to dissolve itself amid an $18 million budget shortfall and infighting among members. The state board approved the measure in an emergency vote. Within days, the acting city schools commissioner began holding meetings in the area, looking for five new members to join a reconstituted board in Connecticut’s second largest school district.

The rapid actions taken by the boards of education–made just ahead of a new school year and an approaching school-board election–surprised many in Bridgeport. Parents held protests, sent angry letters to acting Commissioner George Coleman and filed suit to slow the process.

Now, email correspondence compiled by the State Department of Education and first reported in the Connecticut Post show that the process may have been influenced by private interests looking to bankroll education reform efforts in Bridgeport, secure mayoral control of the school district and oust the current board.

Dating back as far as January, emails referencing a state takeover of the Bridgeport public school system were exchanged between the Bridgeport Schools Superintendent John Ramos, the state board of education head Allan Taylor, Coleman, and Meghan Lowney, who according to tax forms was an independent contractor for the $134 million family foundation of Sue and Steve Mandel, the founder of Lone Pine Capital in Greenwich. The emails also mention Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch’s involvement in the matter, though he was not included on any of the emails reviewed.

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