Are traditional report cards “vanity metrics?”

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Are traditional report cards “vanity metrics?”

In the business world, we talk about the difference between vanity metrics and meaningful metrics. Vanity metrics are like dandelions – they might look pretty, but to most of us, they’re weeds, using up resources, and doing nothing for your property value.

from “Know the Difference Between Your Data and Your Metrics” by Jeff Bladt and Bob Filbin, Harvard Business Review  |  11:00 AM March 4, 2013

English – 92
Math – 89
Science – 91
History – 88
PE – 93
Art – 90

Such a report card might make the refrigerator. But does it really say very much about the student’s growing capacities in writing (ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, voice)? And did you assume from that last sentence that I was referring to English, or did you assume that such metrics could cut across the departmentalized curricular landscape and comprise parts of all the subject grades? Do we know if the student asks probing questions and demonstrates curiosity for understanding more deeply? What do those dandelions tell us about the student’s application of such thinking skills as divergent, emergent, and convergent explorations? What do we know of the student’s perseverance, resilience, risk taking, and grit? Can we make any deductions about the student’s observation and experimentation capabilities? Do we know how the student has demonstrated integrity and empathy from those pretty flowers on the refrigerator door?

From that data set, the one that will live indefinitely in the fireproof cabinets and ethernets of schools, what do we know about the student’s growth and emergence in the 4, 5, or 7Cs of 21st century skills? What do we see on that report card about mindset?

What are we grading? What are we measuring? What are we commenting on? What are we collecting and recording and archiving data on? What do we say matters most about our children? Do our report cards shed light on what we say we value most?

Is your school asking these questions? Why or why not? Are these questions among more systemic considerations that you are examining?

#QuestionsAreTheWaypointsOnThePathOfWisdom

#PedagogicalMasterPlanning

Schools: Would you score 50% on critical thinking allowance?

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As a school, if you declare that you teach “critical thinking,” if you claim to develop this one of the 7 C’s of 21st C learning, then how much time and attention do you devote to divergent thinking? How much space and freedom do you allow for this 50% of meta-cognition? For faculty? For parents? For students? For administration?

Measuring Creativity: We Have the Technology

Or would you likely get a “50” on your report card for creative critical thinking allowance?

#HowDoWeCreateWhatWeFailToCulture?

Multi-disciplinary curiosity: 2 resources and the most important 21C “C”

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In about 10-12 minutes, you can explore two intriguing examples of how teachers orchestrate integrated, multi-disciplinary curriculum.

From @SteveG_TLC: “Multi-disciplinary News” on What I Learned Today

Here’s a great example of how a news article we might read in the morning at TLC Middle School can be used as a springboard to learn in a truly multi-disciplinary way.

And from @BIEPBL: “Designing Integrated Curriculum” on YouTube

—

And I might just start putting this @ASCD article at the conclusion of every post:

The Case for Curiosity

The irony is that children are born with an overpowering need to know. They want to know what every object feels and looks like and what will happen when they attempt to do different things with that object. They want to know why people behave the way they do. This voracious appetite for knowledge defines us as a species. And it doesn’t evaporate when babies become toddlers. Every preschool teacher knows that children between the ages of 18 months and 5 years are insatiable for information. Their curiosity drives much of their learning—through asking questions, watching what others do, listening to what adults say, and tinkering with the world around them. But somehow the incessant curiosity that leads to so much knowledge during the first five years of life dwindles as children go to school.

Why place this article here? For me, curiosity is at the heart of both multi-disciplinary examples!

Real-life learning lessons from an article about the Intel Science Talent Contest #WhatIfWeekly

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First, a few quotes:

  • “The program, said Valerie Holmes, one of its teachers, encourages students to find a subject with which they have a personal connection.”
  • “At Stuyvesant she continued to explore what she describes as “how interdisciplinary science can be.””
  • “Part of what the research program teaches students, Ms. Holmes said, is tenacity; Dan and his advisers approached 30 to 40 potential mentors before finding one who would take him on.”
  • “From there she taught herself cellphone software coding and electrical engineering techniques, using “breadboards” and a soldering iron. “Engineering is the field that worships impact,” she said of her choice to enter it, “and to have the greatest impact, it has to be in the developing world.””

[All emphasis mine.]

From “A Laboratory Grows Young Scientists,” By ETHAN HAUSER, NYTimes.com, Published: March 11, 2013.

When students are encouraged and empowered to engage in real-life learning, for which they can see the relevance now, strong progress and achievement is made. And not just for the students, but for the larger world of which they are a part.

From the quotes above, one can see five key components of “real-life learning,” something I write about often here. These traits make for some great education. Schooling could be enhanced to facilitate more of this kind of learning.

  • personal connection
  • interdisciplinary
  • tenacity
  • taught herself
  • to have the greatest impact

What if school possessed more of the characteristics of scientific research, investigation, and exploration? And I don’t just mean that school should “do more science.” I mean that the very culture and foundation of school could look more like the culture and foundations of science – observing, questioning, hypothesizing, experimenting, reflecting, repeating with additional insights from testing, etc. Sounds a lot like innovating, too.

I’ve rarely (never) been to a lab where the scientists spent most of their time in rows and columns of desks receiving content for much of the day, day after day.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

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  • To Place Graduates, Law Schools Are Opening Firms – NYTimes.com

    A great example of the intersection of corporate practice, social entrepreneurship, and education. Law schools are opening law firms to serve graduates and low- and moderate-income clients. Also a great example of “outside perspective” – law schools borrowing catalyst from teaching hospitals.

    tags: #MustRead Education3pt0 law schools

  • At South-by-Southwest Education Event, Tensions Divide Entrepreneurs and Educators – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education

    “Who should lead innovation in education—teachers or entrepreneurs? That key question was in the air here at this year’s South by Southwest Edu conference, which brought together a mix of entrepreneurs and educators for four days of panels and a competition for education start-ups.”

    ME: What if we stopped seeing school change and ed transformation as a competition and we worked together? Education should be everybody’s business, and ALL efforts should begin with inviting in the voices and expertise of educators. But if we started by thinking of business, social entrepreneurship, and education as parts of the same team, we would do better for our learners – from cradle to grave.

    tags: SXSWedu #MustRead

  • How Leaders Mistake Execution for Strategy (and Why That Damages Both)

    “When discussing strategy, executives often invoke some version of a vision, a mission, a purpose, a plan, or a set of goals. I call these “the corporate five” (see exhibit, below). Each is important in driving execution, no doubt, but none should be mistaken for a strategy. The corporate five may help bring your strategy to life, but they do not give you a strategy to begin with.

    Nevertheless, they are often mistaken for strategy—and when that happens, real damage can ensue. If the corporate five are the cart and strategy is the horse, leaders who put the cart first often end up with no horse at all.

    Before they get to the corporate five, companies need to address five much more fundamental, and difficult, questions. Let’s call them the “the strategic five”:

    1. What business or businesses should you be in?
    2. How do you add value to your businesses?
    3. Who are the target customers for your businesses?
    4. What are your value propositions to those target customers?
    5. What capabilities are essential to adding value to your businesses and differentiating their value propositions?”

    tags: strategy vision purpose goals mission plan #MustRead

  • The Open Classroom : Education Next

    Since children differ in their motivations, interests, and backgrounds, and learn at different speeds in different subjects, there will never be a victory for either traditional or progressive teaching and learning. The fact is that no single best way for teachers to teach and for children to learn can fit all situations. Both traditional and progressive ways of teaching and learning need to be part of a school’s approach to children. Smart teachers and principals have carefully constructed hybrid classrooms and schools that reflect the diversities of children. Alas, that lesson remains to be learned by the policymakers, educators, and parents of each generation.

    tags: open-classroom progressive education student centered #MustRead

  • Our 1% Problem

    “The subject of independent schools and inequality is rife with contradictions. In some ways, independent schools work to ameliorate inequities. In other ways, they reinforce and exacerbate them. Those in independent schools who work on social justice, equity, and diversity issues deal with these contradictions every day. Most believe, most of the time, that the good done by independent schools outweighs the bad, but sometimes it is not clear this is the case.”

    tags: income gap 1% problem equity #MustRead finland

  • ParkDayTom: The Children’s School – Chicago

    “I lunched with the faculty of The Children’s School and they stressed the importance of emergent curriculum that is developmentally appropriate for students. Three years ago I visited the school and observed an extraordinary unit on Shakespeare in Kate Miller’s fourth grade classroom. When I returned, I was hoping to go back to Kate’s class and learn more about the unit. But, when I asked Pam if the Shakespeare unit had begun yet, she answered, “No, the kids have not yet decided what they want to study.” Instead of repeating a successful unit year after year as so many teachers do, TCS faculty listen, wait patiently, and develop units arising out of the current interests and passions of their students. It is teaching at its most challenging and, in my view, very progressive.”

    tags: progressive education emergent curriculum PBL Kohn #MustRead

  • ParkDayTom: Toward a Definition of Progressive Education

    tags: progressive education #MustRead

  • Collective Impact | Stanford Social Innovation Review

    “large-scale social change comes from better cross-sector coordination rather than from the isolated intervention of individual organizations. Evidence of the effectiveness of this approach is still limited, but these examples suggest that substantially greater progress could be made in alleviating many of our most serious and complex social problems if nonprofits, governments, businesses, and the public were brought together around a common agenda to create collective impact. It doesn’t happen often, not because it is impossible, but because it is so rarely attempted. Funders and nonprofits alike overlook the potential for collective impact because they are used to focusing on independent action as the primary vehicle for social change.”

    tags: collaboration education impact #MustRead social_change

  • Future Forecast

    “This forecast previews five disruptions that will reshape learning over the next decade. Responding to them with creativity rather than fear will be critical to preparing all learners for an uncertain future.”

    HT to Mark Hale for sharing this KnowledgeWorks Forecast 3.0 and the work of Andrea Saveri

    tags: future forecast Knowledgeworks #MustRead

  • 8 talks about learning from failure

    tags: learning failure TED #MustRead #MustSee

  • Tara Subramaniam: Everybody Truly Wants to Learn

    tags: Independent Project PBL #MustRead

  • Should Designers Fear Design-Thinking MBAs? | Co.Design: business + innovation + design

    “It is not about a world where designers do their thing and MBAs do theirs, but rather where both recognize and value the power of a successful collaboration, built on solid communication, that brings the strengths of business and design thinking together to drive business innovation by design.”

    tags: design business innovation #MustRead

  • Guest Post: @braddo on Digital Footprints and the Brand of Me – The Tempered Radical

    “Instead, we talk about the “Brand of Me” and coach our kids on proactively managing their online identity and on becoming good digital citizens, for the reasons Will Richardson talks about.”

    tags: brand digital citizenship digital_citizenship Online_learning #MustRead

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.