Dr. Lynch, an education professor at Widener University, holds out hope for educational entrepreneurship’s role in improving traditional education — if the two can manage to work together.

The Impact of Educational Entrepreneurship on Traditional Public Education

by Matthew Lynch / Education News opinion / 19 April 2011

What if there were total free markets in education in the United States, and traditional public education systems as we know them today did not exist? Education would be a product for sale, just like any other product on the U.S. market.

The idea may be mindboggling, but many education entrepreneurs would likely see an opportunity that fits with their vision of how education systems ought to work. With such an opportunity unavailable, they must be content to effect change in education by working within the current system.

Education entrepreneurs are driven by the belief that public education organizations are agricultural- and industrialization-era bureaucratic entities, far too enmeshed in familiar operational customs and habits to lead the innovation and transformation needed for schools today. They see themselves as change agents who are able to visualize possibilities. They want to serve as catalysts for change that will deliver current public educational systems from a status quo that results in unacceptable educational outcomes for too many children.

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Image Source: Widener University faculty directory

Standardized intelligence tests have long been criticized for, among other things, testing only one type of intelligence, and specifically the sort that correlates to academic success. A new study soon to be published by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania suggests that this controversial measure of intelligence is impacted significantly by one’s personality, and specifically one’s motivation to perform well on such a test.

IQ tests measure motivation – not just intelligence

Intelligence tests are as much a measure of motivation as they are of mental ability, says research from the US.

BBC News Health / 25 April 2011

Researchers from Pennsylvania found that a high IQ score required both high intelligence and high motivation but a low IQ score could be the result of a lack of either factor.

Incentives were also found to increase IQ scores by a noticeable margin.

The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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The press release describes research on how accurately learners predict their own learning results to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science. The research was conducted by David B. Miele of Columbia University, Bridgid Finn of Washington University in St. Louis, and Daniel C. Molden of Northwestern University.

How Beliefs Shape Effort and Learning

by Divya Menon / Association for Psychological Science press release / 15 April 2011

If it was easy to learn, it will be easy to remember. Psychological scientists have maintained that nearly everyone uses this simple rule to assess their own learning.

Now a study published in an upcoming issue Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests otherwise: “Individuals with different theories about the nature of intelligence tend to evaluate their learning in different ways,” says David B. Miele of Columbia University, who conducted the study with Bridgid Finn of Washington University in St. Louis and Daniel C. Molden of Northwestern University.

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Education Week has just posted online a week-long blog series on the futures of school reform, curated by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Invited writers are “leading thinkers from the academic, business, philanthropic, government, and public-policy sectors.” Many of the blogs, like Howard Gardner and David Perkins, call for re-envisioning educational policy and practice in order to more actively and successful form people, workers, and citizens for the complex information societies and economies of the 21st century.

Excerpt from Gardner:

In considering education in the United States today, what’s wrong with the picture? In a word, we’ve focused so exclusively on one figure–performance on a certain kind of standardized test instrument–that all other considerations are obscure or absent. I recommend a dramatic reversal of figure and ground. At the center of the image called American Education, I propose three dominant figures: the kinds of Persons we value; the kinds of Workers we cherish; the kinds of local, national, and global Citizens that we need.

Excerpt from Perkins:

Today’s educators face a small world paradox: the smaller our common world gets, the larger and more complicated our personal worlds become. Globalization, digital technologies, and cheap and fast modern transportation make the common world we and our children occupy ‘smaller’, thereby putting more places and jobs and products and channels and websites and cultures and friends, and, yes, responsibilities at everyone’s fingertips. An average person in 14th century France inhabited a relatively simple personal world with maybe three sides: farm, village, and the church. Today ordinary individuals construct amazingly complex personal worlds with many facets. The game has truly changed.

Posts are:

Barriers to Improvement by Paul Hill, 19 April 2011

Market Forces Strengthen Public Education by Paul Hill, 18 April 2011

Needed: A Reversal of Figure / Ground by Howard Gardner, 15 April 2011

The Elephant in the Room of 21st Century Learning by David Perkins, 14 April 2011

System Transformation, Whole Child Focus, and Community Design by Julie Wilson, 13 April 2011

21st Century Education Requires Lifewide Learning by Chris Dede, 12 April 2011

The Future of Learning by Jenny Thomson, 11 April 2011

To read more…

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The u-author literacy learning environment is being fieldtested this spring in three East Central Illinois schools. Hear what teachers and students have to say about their experiences with the project.

The New Way to Write

by Cynthia Schweigert / WCIA / 14 April 2011

New software developed by the U of I is being tested in area schools[.]
It’s a new way for students to work on their writing skills.
U of I developers created it in hopes of eliminating standardized testing.
They think teachers are putting too much class time into the test. The new software would put the spotlight back on the students.

To read more and watch the news video…

For more on the project…

Image Source: school website

Is there an economic formula that can help us to make sense of what teachers contribute to the national bottom line? You’ll be surprised by how much interesting evidence the author of this article brings to bear on the question.

Valuing Teachers

by Eric A. Hanushek / Education Next / Summer 2011 11.3

For some time, we have recognized that the academic achievement of schoolchildren in this country threatens, to borrow President Barack Obama’s words, “the U.S.’s role as an engine of scientific discovery” and ultimately its success in the global economy. The low achievement of American students, as reflected in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (see “Teaching Math to the Talented,” features, Winter 2011), will prevent them from accessing good, high-paying jobs [...] the achievement gap between the U.S. and the world’s top-performing countries can be said to be causing the equivalent of a permanent recession.

To read more…

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This article reviews past and current research on whether extrinsic rewards for performance have a positive net effect within and across contexts, such as education. The clear result: no, not in the case of complex tasks and intellectual performance. In fact, it can have some surprisingly negative consequences.

The bonus myth: How paying for results can backfire

by Nic Fleming / New Scientist / 12 April 2011

If you want to boost people’s performance, don’t bank on bonuses

Bonus culture has come under intense scrutiny since the ongoing financial crisis began in 2007. Many people have been outraged by the way some bankers and top executives seem to have been rewarded for failure. Others find the idea of multimillion-dollar bonuses morally abhorrent. Even US President Barack Obama has gone as far as to call large bonuses “obscene”.

But few have asked whether performance-related bonuses really do boost performance. The answer seems so obvious that even to ask the question can appear absurd. Indeed, despite all the fuss about them, financial incentives continue to be introduced in more and more areas, from healthcare and public services to teaching and academia.

To read more… (free registration required)

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by Trip Gabriel / New York Times / 6 April 2011

Does President Obama believe standardized testing has gone too far?

Mr. Obama criticized “high-stakes” tests last week at a town-hall-style meeting, contrasting them with less-pressured tests his daughters took in their Washington private school. Those remarks, which did not receive wide coverage at the time, have since prompted close followers of education policy to wonder whether the president opposes his own Education Department.

In the public forum, hosted by the Spanish broadcaster Univision on March 28, a high school student, Luis Zeyala, asked the president if there could be less testing in schools.

Mr. Obama agreed that “we have piled on a lot of standardized tests” under federal education law, meaning the annual proficiency tests in reading and math given to Grades 3 through 8 as well as once in high school.

To read more…

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Alex Hiam is a writer and artist whose work on the impact of creativity and social skills within organizations has broad appeal, from business to education to government.

An Interview with Alex Hiam

by Michael F. Shaughnessy / Education News / 2 April 2011

1) Alex, as you know, these politicians are looking at cutting art, music, P.E., theatre- a number of programs that, at least in my view, contribute to the education of the total person. In your mind, what are your concerns?

First, it’s a good thing to have artists in our society; they contribute to the quality of our thinking and our culture, so the idea that we should boost our economy by training only little business-people is horrible. However, that said, there is also a lack of understanding among politicians as to how one would best go about the process of creating a new generation of successful business-people. We seem at least to all agree that we need innovators and entrepreneurs in our society, so that’s a starting point at least. Now, where do they come from? First, they are probably going to be in the middle to the high end of the creativity range, so these are today’s curious, creative, expressive children, not necessarily the ones who ace multiple-choice tests or top out on IQ scales.

To read more…

Image Source: alexhiam.com