Jason Glass was recently selected as the new direc­tor of the Iowa Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.  This change is occur­ring at a crit­i­cal time in a very hos­tile polit­i­cal cli­mate.  His lead­er­ship and that of the “new” gov­er­nor (he pre­vi­ously served for 16 years), and leg­is­la­ture will cer­tainly have a big impact on the future direc­tion of edu­ca­tion in the state of Iowa.  I real­ize that many read­ers of this blog aren’t from Iowa, but I hope my thoughts below may still be of inter­est to you.

On Mon­day Jason posted three ques­tions on his blog.  My responses are below, but you may be inter­ested to read the responses from oth­ers around the state.  I must say that I am excited to know that our new direc­tor uses his blog and Twit­ter as com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools!

1. What should we stop doing?

We need to stop rely­ing so heav­ily on the stan­dard­ized tests cur­rently used in Iowa today.  Those assess­ments do not eval­u­ate higher level think­ing skills.  The tests, which have become the strongest indi­ca­tor of a district’s suc­cess, have been a dri­ving force behind instruc­tion tak­ing place in our schools.  The empha­sis of “teach­ing to the test” has greatly crip­pled edu­ca­tion in Iowa.  Assess­ment cer­tainly has the abil­ity to trans­form edu­ca­tion.  With your lead­er­ship and the help of other Iowa edu­ca­tors, it could be pos­si­ble to embrace an assess­ment tool that pos­i­tively trans­forms both teach­ing and learn­ing in Iowa.

2. What should we keep doing?
We need to keep mov­ing for­ward and not accept the sta­tus quo.  Although Iowa has per­formed fairly well nation­ally, there cur­rently seems to be a fairly promi­nent move­ment in Iowa to truly trans­form learn­ing in our schools.  Many schools have imple­mented ini­tia­tives such as Authen­tic Intel­lec­tual Work (AIW) and/or the one-to-one ini­tia­tive in an attempt to reform their schools.  These ini­tia­tives have seen mixed results.  It is no secret that I am a huge pro­po­nent of one-to-one, yet I agree with some of the points Jer­rid made in an ear­lier response.  If we sim­ply imple­ment any ini­tia­tive with­out focus­ing on how teach­ing and learn­ing need to look dif­fer­ently, the ini­tia­tive will not pro­duce any results dif­fer­ent than what we cur­rently have.  The state has also focused on reform with the Iowa Core.  I first heard about the Core while serv­ing as a prin­ci­pal, and I was very excited about its poten­tial.  It seemed like some­thing that could truly trans­form our schools.  I do worry that that focus has changed.  I’ve heard edu­ca­tors talk about how they are going to align what they are cur­rently doing with the Iowa Core.  That will not pro­duce the changes that we need!  We cer­tainly should not drop the Iowa Core, but a renewed and ener­gized vision may be appropriate.

3. What should we start doing?

I have pro­vided 3 points encom­pass­ing tech­nol­ogy as areas we need to improve.  Iowa’s best one-to-one schools may serve as mod­els for the rest of the state if the state embraces tech­nol­ogy as a way to enhance education.

1. We need to stop act­ing like tech­nol­ogy is some­thing “extra”.  Teach­ing tech­nol­ogy as a class and not inte­grat­ing it through­out the cur­ricu­lum is a big mis­take.   As schools, our job is to pre­pare respon­si­ble skilled cit­i­zens for our soci­ety.  Can stu­dents truly be con­tribut­ing mem­bers of the future in which they will live (not the world we live in) with­out a firm grasp on tech­nol­ogy use?  Almost all of the jobs our stu­dents have will involve some sort of new tech­nol­ogy.  Most will also be heav­ily involved with tech­nol­ogy in their per­sonal lives.  We can’t expect them to gain these skills with­out the help of our schools.
2. We need to embrace tech­nol­ogy as a way to teach 21st Cen­tury Skills.  Tony Wagner’s lists the fol­low­ing seven things as 21st Cen­tury Skills:

1. Crit­i­cal Think­ing and Prob­lem Solving
2. Col­lab­o­ra­tion across Net­works and Lead­ing by Influence
3. Agility and Adaptability
4. Ini­tia­tive and Entrepreneurialism
5. Effec­tive Oral and Writ­ten Communication
6. Access­ing and Ana­lyz­ing Information
7. Curios­ity and Imagination

I will argue until I am blue in the face that the work stu­dents are pro­duc­ing in our tech­nol­ogy rich schools in these seven areas is almost unimag­in­able with­out the tech­nol­ogy.  The Iowa Core also has a focus on the 21st Cen­tury skills.  By embrac­ing tech­nol­ogy, our stu­dents will be much more equipped with these skills.

3.  EQUITY!  This is an issue that I am very pas­sion­ate about, but very rarely get a chance to speak about.  Our poor­est stu­dents are at a huge dis­ad­van­tage because of their lack of access to tech­nol­ogy.  Unlike their wealth­ier class­mates, they are unable to get online and con­tinue their learn­ing at home.  A long time ago, schools fig­ured this out in the area of read­ing.  Ele­men­tary teach­ers would make sure that their young lit­tle read­ers always went home with plenty of books.  Schools and com­mu­ni­ties also arranged book give­aways to help pro­vide a bet­ter home envi­ron­ment for stu­dents.   Most schools have done noth­ing to close the tech­nol­ogy gap between our stu­dents.  I have strong feel­ings about all three of my points, but the equity issue is the one that really makes my blood boil.  As a teacher and then prin­ci­pal, I worked with many stu­dents from very poor fam­i­lies.  Those stu­dents were at a dis­ad­van­tage from their peers for many rea­sons, but lack of access to tech­nol­ogy does not have to be one of them.  Give them the oppor­tu­nity to learn, play, and con­nect with their peers by pro­vid­ing them with access to tech­nol­ogy.  Obvi­ously, some will not take advan­tage, but many will.  ALL of our stu­dents deserve that opportunity!

Thanks for reading!

Nick Sauers