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PCC Energy Technology Certificate program

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PCC Energy Technology Certificate program

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TEP has partnered with Southwest Gas to create a new program for Pima Community College, or PCC, that prepares students for a variety of utility careers.

The new Energy Technology Certificate program is part of our company's longstanding support of education and job creation. The certificate will be offered starting this fall. The two-semester program builds on a previous collaboration among TEP, Pima Community College and four other Arizona colleges on a grant to develop an energy industry training program called Get Into Energy.

After grant funding ended, TEP and PCC decided to revamp the classes to give students broader exposure to utility jobs. Southwest Gas approached Pima about joining the group to add gas-related courses. The change will expand students' employment opportunities.

"Part of Pima Community College's mission focuses on meeting the needs of the community, including engaging industry to increase the skilled workforce within Pima County," said Greg Wilson, PCC's Dean of Applied Technology. "This is a stronger program due to input from industry partners."

Students learn the fundamentals of the energy industry and technical math, along with gas and electrical techniques, while earning nationally recognized credentials. Upon completion, students will be qualified to apply for jobs with TEP and Southwest Gas as well as with utility contractors and related employers.

"This opens up doors for students. Through the certificate program, students will have a platform to build on for their futures," said JoLee Bracamonte, a TEP Talent Acquisition Specialist in Human Resources.

Brittney Schmidt, Southwest Gas' Supervisor in Engineering, said the program will help fill a need for entry-level workers, especially for Southwest Gas's contractors that have difficulty retaining employees.

"Southwest Gas is excited about the direction we're heading with this partnership with TEP," Schmidt said. "Through the classes, students can evaluate if they have a knack for the jobs. Students who come out of classes are much more likely to stay with those jobs."

While Pima has yet to offer the new certificate, utility classes have been ongoing, including sessions at TEP's Irvington campus and H. Wilson Sundt Generating Station.

"This gives us an opportunity to see how the students work, and it gives the students a chance to figure out their passions," said Dylan Bearce, Director of Tucson Power Production.

Two of the TEP instructors are David Wagner, Director of Transmission & Distribution Line Construction and Metering, who has taught for 12 years, and Tom Kaminski, a T&D Supervisor, who recently began his third semester heading the Electric Utility Technology class.

Kaminski teaches at the Ken Saville Training Center and invites colleagues from other departments as guest speakers so students are exposed to other avenues at TEP. Most students start the semester wanting to be Linemen, but many end up interested in other jobs.

Pima plans to enroll more than 50 students a year in the revamped program, which may expand if there is higher demand. More than 300 students have taken previous classes, Wilson said.

"The new program gives us a lot of opportunities to attract more students and provide pipelines for our companies and our contractors," Schmidt said. "The key is that everyone is finding value in this - the utilities, the college and specifically, the students."

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TEP has partnered with Southwest Gas to create a new program for Pima Community College, or PCC, that prepares students for a variety of utility careers. The new Energy Technology Certificate program is part of our company's longstanding support of education and job creation. The certificate will be offered starting this fall.

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An interesting documentary I watched for a class

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An interesting documentary I watched for a class

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Broken Education System of America - Full Documentary #Advexon

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Here's Why The U.S. School System Is Broken

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When a miscommunication about paperwork or a parent's slight rise in income leads to a reduction in financial aid, however small, that can be enough for a student to consider withdrawing. If you don't have $700, it might as well be a million.

Kids at the most selective colleges often struggle academically, but they are capable of doing the work. The real key is whether they feel comfortable going to professors to ask for help or teaming up with other students in study groups and to manage the workload. At that school in Brooklyn, I taught history, leading students through writing 10-page position papers with proper citations, as well as presenting and defending their work to a panel of adults. Other teachers did the same in their subjects. Through the college application process, these students had help with every step - including convincing their parents that going away to school would be a good thing.

But once those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds arrive on campus, it's often the subtler things, the signifiers of who they are and where they come from, that cause the most trouble, challenging their very identity, comfort and right to be on that campus. The more elite the school, the wider that gap. I remember struggling with references to things I'd never heard of, from Homer to the Social Register. I couldn't read The New York Times - not because the words were too hard, but because I didn't have enough knowledge of the world to follow the articles. Hardest was the awareness that my own experiences were not only undervalued but often mocked, used to indicate when someone was stupid or low-class: No one at Barnard ate Velveeta or had ever butchered a deer.

Urban students face different slights but ones with a more dangerous edge. One former student was told by multiple people in his small Pennsylvania college town not to wear a hoodie at night, because it made him look "sketchy." Standing out like that - being himself - could put him at risk.

To stay four years and graduate, students have to come to terms with the unspoken transaction: exchanging your old world for a new world, one that doesn't seem to value where you came from. The transition is not just about getting a degree and making more money. If that was all socioeconomics signified, it would not be such a strong predictor of everything from SAT scores and parenting practices to health and longevity.

Perhaps because I came from generations of people who had left their families behind and pushed west from Ireland, West Virginia and Montana, I suffered few pangs at the idea of setting out for a new land with better opportunities. I wanted the libraries, summer houses and good wine more than anything that I then valued about my own history.

In college, I read Richard Rodriguez's memoir, "Hunger of Memory," in which he depicts his alienation from his family because of his education, painting a picture of the scholarship boy returned home to face his parents and finding only silence. Being young, I didn't understand, believing myself immune to the idea that any gain might entail a corresponding loss. I was keen to exchange my Western hardscrabble life for the chance to be a New York City middle-class museumgoer. I've paid a price in estrangement from my own people, but I was willing. Not every 18-year-old will make that same choice, especially when race is factored in as well as class.

As the income gap widens and hardens, changing class means a bigger difference between where you came from and where you are going. Teachers like me can help prepare students academically for college work. College counselors can help with the choices, the federal financial aid application and all the bureaucratic details. But how can we help our students prepare for the tug of war in their souls?

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When a miscommunication about paperwork or a parent's slight rise in income leads to a reduction in financial aid, however small, that can be enough for a student to consider withdrawing. If you don't have $700, it might as well be a million.

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Sex education in the US is somewhat lacking. Since the mid-1990s, over $2 billion has been spent on abstinence-only sex education programs in the US. Trump has indicated that he would like to increase spending in this area, at the expense of sex education that informs teens about contraception and protective sex.

Safe sex isn't the only thing you're not being taught in school, it appears, as a mega-viral thread has shown. In a thread that's been shared well over 100,000 times, sexual health advisor Kelly Grove explains a few things about sex people don't appear to know yet, using some interesting props you'd probably never see in school.

"I went to a private school and all they taught [was] abstinence," one user wrote on Twitter, in praise of the videos. "I never even learned parts of the body like this I had to teach myself. We weren't allowed to talk about sex and I feel like that's dangerous because it opens people up to STDs and teen pregnancy because they're not educated."

Kelly started by explaining some basic anatomy that a lot of men might have missed out on if they didn't even learn about condoms at school.

She moved on to explaining how orgasms work.

And the importance of foreplay.

Some of it is stuff that we feel people should definitely know, and yet, judging by the replies and amount of retweets it's getting, they just... don't.

She then went into some myths about penis size and virility, and racist marketing of larger condoms.

The thread has a ridiculous number of shares, with men saying they've never been taught this stuff and women saying they wish they had been.

Many people expressed annoyance that they hadn't been taught any of this in school already, but were thankful to Kelly for sharing the sex education they felt they shouldn't be finding out this late.

Grove works as a Sexual Health Coordinator in the Center for Health Advocacy and Wellness at Florida State University, working to improve education and health at the university.

"Sexual education in the United States is severely lacking and the vast majority of our students have not had comprehensive sex education," she said in an interview with Her Campus at Florida State, explaining why she does what she does.

"Not educating individuals about sexuality leads to grave results... 1 out of 5 college women will be sexually assaulted by the time they graduate. 90 percent of people with disabilities will be raped in their lifetime. And suicide rates among LGBTQIA+ youth are higher than any other demographic. We can bring these statistics down by teaching students about safer sex, consent and sexual diversity. Education is the key to healthier and safer sexual lives."

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This Thread On The Things Sex Education Failed To Teach You Has Gone Mega-Viral

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Sex education in the US is somewhat lacking. Since the mid-1990s, over $2 billion has been spent on abstinence-only sex education programs in the US. Trump has indicated that he would like to increase spending in this area, at the expense of sex education that informs teens about contraception and protective sex.

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Quizzes! How much do you know about the current state of the education system?

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Quizzes! How much do you know about the current state of the education system?

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Education Week Quizzes offer readers the opportunity to test their knowledge on the hot topics in education.

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Vote for your favorite idea for innovative ed!

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Vote for your favorite idea for innovative ed!

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Upvote the video, or videos, you want to win.

As you vote, keep in mind that we are looking for a winner with the most engaging social venture pitch - an idea you would want to invest in. And note: We'll only count upvotes (not downvotes).
Lumina Foundation and Big Think have partnered to bring this entrepreneurial competition to life, and we hope you'll participate! We have narrowed down the competition to four finalists and will be announcing an audience's choice award and a judges' choice award in May.

The creator of the winning video - chosen by Big Think's audience, the Lumina Foundation, and an independent panel of experts (bios below) - will be flown to New York for a taping in the Big Think studio as a way to further promote their vision for a new, disruptive idea in post-secondary education.

Thank you to all of the contestants who spent time submitting applications, and best of luck to our final four competitors.

Thank you to our judges!

Our expert judges are Lorna Davis, Dan Rosensweig, and Stuart Yasgur.

Lorna Davis is the Senior Advisor to Danone CEO and is a Global Ambassador for the B Corp movement. Lorna has now joined B-Lab, the non-for-profit that supports the B Corporation movement on an assignment to support the journey of large multi nationals on the path to using business as a force of good.

Dan Rosensweig joined Chegg in 2010 with a vision for transforming the popular textbook rental service into a leading provider of digital learning services for high school and college students. As Chairman and CEO of Chegg, Dan commits the company to fulfilling its mission of putting students first and helping them save time, save money and get smarter.

Stuart Yasgur leads Ashoka's Social Financial Services globally. At Ashoka, Stuart works with others to initiate efforts that have mobilized more than $500 million in funding for social entrepreneurs, engaged the G20 through the Toronto, Seoul and Los Cabos summits and helped form partnerships with leading financial institutions and corporations.

Again, thank you to our incredible expert judges.

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Your vote matters - help decide the future of education innovation

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Upvote the video, or videos, you want to win.As you vote, keep in mind that we are looking for a winner with the most engaging social venture pitch - an idea you would want to invest in. And note: We'll only count upvotes (not downvotes). Lumina Foundation and Big Think have partnered to bring this...

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Auditory

If you are an auditory learner, you learn by hearing and listening. You understand and remember things you have heard. You store information by the way it sounds, and you have an easier time understanding spoken instructions than written ones. You often learn by reading out loud because you have to hear it or speak it in order to know it.

As an auditory learner, you probably hum or talk to yourself or others if you become bored. People may think you are not paying attention, even though you may be hearing and understanding everything being said.

Here are some things that auditory learners like you can do to learn better.

Sit where you can hear.

Have your hearing checked on a regular basis.

Use flashcards to learn new words; read them out loud.

Read stories, assignments, or directions out loud.

Record yourself spelling words and then listen to the recording.

Have test questions read to you out loud.

Study new material by reading it out loud.

Remember that you need to hear things, not just see things, in order to learn well.

Visual

If you are a visual learner, you learn by reading or seeing pictures. You understand and remember things by sight. You can picture what you are learning in your head, and you learn best by using methods that are primarily visual. You like to see what you are learning.

As a visual learner, you are usually neat and clean. You often close your eyes to visualize or remember something, and you will find something to watch if you become bored. You may have difficulty with spoken directions and may be easily distracted by sounds. You are attracted to color and to spoken language (like stories) that is rich in imagery.

Here are some things that visual learners like you can do to learn better:

Sit near the front of the classroom. (It won't mean you're the teacher's pet!)

Have your eyesight checked on a regular basis.

Use flashcards to learn new words.

Try to visualize things that you hear or things that are read to you.

Write down key words, ideas, or instructions.

Draw pictures to help explain new concepts and then explain the pictures.

Color code things.

Avoid distractions during study times.

Remember that you need to see things, not just hear things, to learn well.

Tactile

If you are a tactile learner, you learn by touching and doing. You understand and remember things through physical movement. You are a "hands-on" learner who prefers to touch, move, build, or draw what you learn, and you tend to learn better when some type of physical activity is involved. You need to be active and take frequent breaks, you often speak with your hands and with gestures, and you may have difficulty sitting still.

As a tactile learner, you like to take things apart and put things together, and you tend to find reasons to tinker or move around when you become bored. You may be very well coordinated and have good athletic ability. You can easily remember things that were done but may have difficulty remembering what you saw or heard in the process. You often communicate by touching, and you appreciate physically expressed forms of encouragement, such as a pat on the back.

Here are some things that tactile learners like you can do to learn better:

Participate in activities that involve touching, building, moving, or drawing.

Do lots of hands-on activities like completing art projects, taking walks, or acting out stories.

It's OK to chew gum, walk around, or rock in a chair while reading or studying.

Use flashcards and arrange them in groups to show relationships between ideas.

Trace words with your finger to learn spelling (finger spelling).

Take frequent breaks during reading or studying periods (frequent, but not long).

It's OK to tap a pencil, shake your foot, or hold on to something while learning.

Use a computer to reinforce learning through the sense of touch.

Remember that you learn best by doing, not just by reading, seeing, or hearing.

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What's Your Learning Style? 20 Questions

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Auditory If you are an auditory learner, you learn by hearing and listening. You understand and remember things you have heard. You store information by the way it sounds, and you have an easier time understanding spoken instructions than written ones.

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As parents, we understand the important role that math plays in our children's education and the impact it has on their lives and our own. Despite this, we don't always recognize the opportunities we have each day to encourage our children's interest in and knowledge of math.

Research has shown that children develop a better understanding of math when mathematical principles are presented to them as part of real-world scenarios.

Kasey Bratcher, a former mathematics teacher who develops K-12 math teacher workshops for Carnegie Learning, a publisher of research-based mathematics software and textbooks for middle and high school students, provides the following tips to keep math relevant in your child's life outside the classroom.

1. Ask questions ... and answer questions with questions. When a child asks a question, it is an opportunity to expand his or her learning beyond just a simple response. If your child asks how many minutes it will take to drive to the grocery store, it is perfectly okay to respond with your own question, such as "How many minutes do you think it will take to drive to the store?"

This can lead to a broader discussion about the number of minutes in one hour, one half-hour or one quarter-hour. You can also discuss the length of time required to travel from home to other places, like school or Grandma's house. In all mathematical conversations, do not be too quick to give your child the answer. Allow him or her the time needed to process the information given and formulate the answer on his or her own.

2. Look for mathematics all around you. Relating math to everyday life situations has a direct effect on how well children learn and utilize mathematical principles. Carnegie Learning, collaborating with researchers at Southern Methodist University, found that tailoring word problems to student interests results in as much as a 40 percent improvement in performance, particularly for more difficult problems. "Children are more enthusiastic about learning when the topic presented is specific to their personal interests," Bratcher said. "For example, questions related to gaming, sports, food or friends will generate more attention from students than asking them to calculate the square footage of a room."

Parents should also take advantage of everyday events that can incorporate mathematics. For example, helping Mom or Dad in the kitchen provides a great opportunity to practice fractions and measurements, including calculating weights and amounts.

3. Make math a family affair. Everyone in the family can play a role in keeping math an ever-present part of a child's day. Bratcher often engages her kids through friendly competitions at one of their favorite restaurants. She encourages her kids to figure out the sale price of their favorite beverage by finding half, starting with questions like "What's half of $2?" and moving to more difficult questions, like "What's half of $1.80?"

Math is all around us, and opportunities to deepen a child's understanding of math principles abound. By employing mathematics to the world around them, kids can sharpen their basic math skills and even teach parents a thing or two. - (Napsnet)

Contact staff writer Chanel Hill at (215) 893-5716 or at chill@phillytrib.com.

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Easy tips for parents: Making math fun outside the classroom

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As parents, we understand the important role that math plays in our children's education and the impact it has on their lives and our own. Despite this, we don't always recognize the opportunities we have each day to encourage our children's interest in and knowledge of math.

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The first outdoor preschool in Moscow and the second to be established in Idaho will wrap up its first year with an eye on expanding from two days a week to four.

The so-called "nature preschool," Palouse Roots, was established at the beginning of the year by teacher and founder Darci Deaton in a partnership with the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute. For three hours a day, two days a week, a class of 12 children ages 4 to 7 attended preschool classes at PCEI's Nature Center almost exclusively in an outdoor setting.

Deaton said she first encountered the concept of nature-centric schooling held outside when she saw a documentary called "School's Out: Lessons From a Forest Kindergarten." After the idea took root in her mind, Deaton said she visited forest kindergartens on the East Coast and another in Washington called Cedar Song where she received specialized teacher training to start a program herself.

"The philosophical underpinning of this nature preschool highly aligns with developmental milestones of these young children," said PCEI Program Manager Heather Bell, who oversees the institute's education programming. "It's promoting pro-social behaviors, it's promoting awareness, interest, concern for oneself, one's neighbor and the environment - the heart of what environmental education is all about."

Deaton said there are a number of advantages associated with outdoor learning spaces. She described the curriculum as place- and play-based with the dimensions of instruction directed by the interests of the child. While her degree, obtained at the University of Idaho, is in international studies and graphic design, Deaton said virtually all of her work experience has dealt directly with children. In her experience, she said, children are much more engaged and receptive to instruction when they're being taught in an outdoor space.

"These kids have really developed a deep curiosity for the world around them, they're really interested in what's happening," Deaton said. "... There's a quote by the woman who I trained under - she says, 'kids can't bounce off the walls if there are no walls.' "

Deaton said being outside also lends her endless teaching tools. With a little guidance, children learn about the weather, the seasons and local flora and fauna through direct contact with nature. Deaton said classes are held outside year round, and when the weather does not cooperate, the children learn to play in the rain.

"If the kids are dressed well, and they stay dry, and they have good insulation, and they're moving and they have a lot of calories to keep them warm, then they do great outside," Deaton said. "In the winter, they just put a lot more layers underneath that rain gear and that just keeps them dry."

In their second year, Palouse Roots will offer classes four days a week for four hours a day instead of three, and Deaton said she hopes to focus more on their toddler program. She said once the school is more established, she would also like to investigate offering summer programming.

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The first outdoor preschool in Moscow and the second to be established in Idaho will wrap up its first year with an eye on expanding from two days a week to four. The so-called "nature preschool," Palouse Roots, was established at the beginning of the year by teacher and founder Darci Deaton in a partnership with the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute.

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What Do Americans Really Think About Education Policy?

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What Do Americans Really Think About Education Policy?

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Given that caveat, how accurate or useful is polling data? Education polls often ask unprepared people to make "finely nuanced distinctions" without the requisite background, said Andrew Rotherham, the co-founder and a partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit in Washington, in an interview last year. "You get a result, but you also get a lot of noise."

The Common Core's popularity has waned as more Americans have become familiar with the standards, which are opposed by an animated contingent of liberal and conservative voters, though for different reasons. Liberal critics charge the standards were written without sufficient input from parents and teachers, while conservatives see the standards as a federal intrusion on states' rights. (The U.S. Department of Education created incentives for states to adopt the standards, but did not require their adoption.)

Two years ago, 65 percent of Americans in an Education Next poll supported the standards. That year a PDK/Gallup poll noted that nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults have never heard of the Common Core. Fast-forward to this month and nearly every adult is in some way familiar with the standards, PDK/Gallup says, and support for the standards is considerably lower.

For the Common Core, the "proof will be in the pudding," said Paul Peterson, a Harvard professor who oversaw the Education Next poll. "If the standards do end up being fully implemented and students start learning more, then the public opinion might change."

When the PDK/Gallup questions on standards are put next to the Education Next findings on the Common Core, the responses are not out of alignment, Peterson said: People are generally in favor of setting higher expectations for students across states but they also want local teachers to have leeway in how those goals are met. (In an essay analyzing the two polls, he and his colleague Martin R. West wrote that the "two surveys are complementary, because they ask about different topics.")

Indeed, in a call with reporters, Joshua Starr, the former superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools in suburban Maryland and the newly named chief executive officer of PDK, made points similar to Peterson's:

The divide between the percentage of parents who believe those standards should be higher and then the percentage of parents who don't support the Common Core, that's very interesting to me in signaling the potential for a lack of understanding of what the Common Core is.

The furor over allowing parents to pull their students from taking state tests is a newer phenomenon, but can affect the legitimacy and even funding of high-stakes tests. With too many students foregoing taking the assessments, the results may be limited in what they can tell the public about how much students know in math and reading. And according to the federal No Child Left Behind law, states technically risk losing some federal funding if less than 95 percent of students take the high-stakes exams.

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Two Polls, Two Very Different Stories: A Paradox in Education Policy

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Given that caveat, how accurate or useful is polling data? Education polls often ask unprepared people to make "finely nuanced distinctions" without the requisite background, said Andrew Rotherham, the co-founder and a partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit in Washington, in an interview last year.

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The PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools

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The PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools

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The 2017 PDK Poll of the public's attitudes toward the public schools

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The PDK Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools is the most trusted source of public opinion about K-12 education. The 2018 PDK poll asked more than 1,000 Americans to answer questions about teacher pay, teacher strikes, spending for schools, college tuition, and opportunities & expectations for all children.

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"Look forward to self-actualization instead of  trying to live up to other people’s expectations.”

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"Look forward to self-actualization instead of  trying to live up to other people’s expectations.”

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Artspace's Heidi Blozan traces her love of alternative early childhood education to her teenage years in Kensington, Maryland. She was well aware of the standard race to the finish line, gold star status as others were deemed more or less average or relegated to remedial programs. But she was naturally drawn to a more compassionate approach.

Heidi Blozan at Artspace Charter School (Photo: Courtesy)

"As it happens," she said, "in the '70s when I was growing up, there was a movement advocating children's rights. My family therefore wanted us all to participate and ask questions and encouraged my curiosity. Because I was given a lot of one-on-one quality time, when I babysat I respected the little kids as people, paid attention and interacted with them."

At the same time, there was a movement at called Reevaluation Co-counseling -gatherings and workshops where liberal minded people openly shared experiences and empathized with one another.

"They even had classes for young people," Blozan said, "where you could reevaluate your life and look forward to self-actualization instead of trying to live up to other people's expectations."

Heidi Blozan at Artspace Charter School (Photo: Courtesy)

Eventually, whole families became involved. She was especially taken by the fact that both adults and her peers truly listened to her and validated her feelings during trying times. Once trust was established, the springboard evolved to such matters as the impact Blozan's parents' divorce had on her life. Counseling deepened as peers became adept at offering positive, empowering feedback. Debilitating thoughts were reevaluated enabling people to go on and change course.

Needless to say, this was all made possible by psychologist Carl Rogers' humanist theories. Many by now believed that in order for a child to grow and flourish, he or she needed unconditional love and positive regard from others and a feeling of self-worth. As a result, youngsters like Heidi could face whatever ups and downs life had to offer.

It was no wonder that kindred spirits like Blozan's Aunt Nancy prompted her to go to Celo, a summer camp nestled in the natural environs of Burnsville and go on to steep herself in elementary education courses in the experiential atmosphere of Warren Wilson College.

"I loved the smell of the woods," she said, "which I got from being at camp. And, of course, I absolutely loved the work-study program. And I naturally loved being part of the small community. Hand-in-hand, we all worked together every day."

Armed with a teaching certificate, and feeling completely at home in this uniquely open and liberal corner of the world, she found employment at a Montessori preschool in Asheville. Due to the children's sense of wonder, once again she was delighted to "just be with them."

All told, she went on to experience marriage, rearing her own children in this ideal way, carrying out her love of hands-on exploration at the Learning School on the grounds of Camp Rockmont, and fostered a Montessori school so that children in Black Mountain could be exposed to the world-renown progressive methods and materials. Presently she can be found on any school day morning at Artspace Charter School in Swannanoa assisting second graders, encouraging and, as always, "just being with them" as a guide.

Heidi Blozan at Artspace Charter School (Photo: Courtesy)

Just the other day, seated in a semicircle, self-directed, working at their own pace, without being inundated with abstract words like photosynthesis, the children could be found coloring and working with imagery of plants and their growth process. Motivated by the promise it was all going to come to something. They were actually going to plant and nurture a herbal garden.

During one telling moment, a boy looked up and confided to Miss Heidi that he was using his favorite color - vermillion. In turn, Miss Heidi broke into the most winning smile. She told him his favorite color was special. As special as every child given the right environment and a sense of self-worth.

Read or Share this story: https://www.blackmountainnews.com/story/life/2019/04/24/heidi-blozan-pioneers-alternative-education-swannanoa-valley/3507849002/

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Heidi Blozan pioneers alternative education in Swannanoa Valley

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Artspace's Heidi Blozan traces her love of alternative early childhood education to her teenage years in Kensington, Maryland. She was well aware of the standard race to the finish line, gold star status as others were deemed more or less average or relegated to remedial programs. But she was naturally drawn to a more compassionate approach.

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Companies recruiting for trade school as early as middle school.

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So some companies are starting early to fill the talent gap, creating programs that not only target college students, but also high school and even middle school students. The goal is to build relationships early in the hope that these relationships will result in a long-term pipeline of prospective employees. Here are some creative ways organizations are reaching out to the next generations of workers.

Make work fun

Hyland Software is one company that starts early in developing the next generation of employees. Members of the software development team thought it would be fun to host a "camp" for middle and high school students interested in software development and technology, says Caitlin Nowlin, Hyland's technical outreach programs manager.

The feedback from the first few camps in 2014 was so positive that the company launched weekly Hy-Tech Clubs for students in grades 9 through 12 who wanted to learn to code. Hy-Tech Camps introduce students to a wide range of technology topics. From 2014 to 2018, the Hy-Tech camps grew more than 900% from 18 students participating in 2014 to 182 in 2018. The Hyland Hackathon program grew 93% from 55 students competing in 2015 to 106 in 2019. The company has also created a weekend Hackathon, which teaches new skills to high school and college students, and a team competition that challenges students to use technology to solve a real-world problem.

The first cohorts of campers are now in college, and Hyland is beginning to see many of its campers apply for internships with the company, Nowlin says. "There's that loyalty there to come work for Hyland instead of going to move to the West Coast, Silicon Valley. They want to stay and work in Cleveland for Hyland," she adds.

Give them a glimpse

As head of Illinois Technology Association (ITA), CEO Julia Kanouse worries about the shortage of technology workers entering the labor force. As part of the effort to foster interest in STEM jobs, especially among young women, last year ITA began hosting a citywide shadow day at member organizations with Chicago Public Schools. High school students visit area technology companies and learn about a wide range of jobs instead of just shadowing one person and learning a little about one aspect of STEM opportunities. But Kanouse says her goal is to reach out to students as young as 10 years old to get them interested in STEM education.

Last week, we hosted our second annual City-Wide Shadow Day in commemoration of #internationalwomensday. One hundred young women from 14 area high-schools came together with 20 Chicago tech companies for a day of learning and inspiration about STEM-based careers. City-Wide Shadow Day provides an opportunity for these young women to gain hands-on experience and witness "a day in the life" of experienced professionals. One of the goals of Shadow Day, aside from mentorship and hands-on experience, was for the young women to gain insight into the variety of careers available at technology companies - marketing, design, engineering, product management, customer support and many others. Through programs like Shadow Day, ITA is focused on enabling and supporting getting more women into technology through mentorship, education and STEM. Swipe through to see some of our favorite highlights from the event! Thank you to @avionos_llc, Backstop Solutions, @cdwcareers, @centro_inc, @insideenova, HighGround, @realhomechef, @imctrading, @jellyvisionlab, @microsoft, @morningstar, @narrativesci, @onenorth, @relativity.hq, ShopperTrak, @solsticegrams, @trading_tech, @transunion, @trunkclub, and @vibesmobile for participating in this lovely event! An extra special thank you to the following school for send their female students to attend this year's Shadow Day! We hope to see you again next year! Thanks again! @chitechacademy, Chicago Vocational, @collinsacademyhs, @corlissstemhs, @curiemetrohs, @delasalleinstitute, Kennedy High School, @lake_viewhs, @matherhsofficial, @mclarkeagles, @ogdenchicago, Social Justice High School, @westinghousegwcp, and @vonsteubenmsc!

A post shared by ITA (@ita_access) on

"Around age 10, 75% of girls show interest in STEM, and by age 14, it drops to 11%," Kanouse says. "So it's really critical to capture them even younger. But in terms of actually understanding and seeing what a career looks like, in that space, I think high school's a really great time to start to do that," she says.

Create an app

For high school students studying to work in trade, technical, and skilled service careers, finding a job beyond the local network can be challenging. "There's no real way for them to connect with the workforce outside of the traditional channels, which is, your dad's in construction, go and talk to his buddies. You work on a job on the weekend. You get into the union because your uncle went there. It's very old school," says David Broomhead, CEO and founder of TradeHounds, a new entrant to the mobile app marketplace that allows tradespeople to connect with jobs all over the country.

TradeHounds recently partnered with SkillsUSA Massachusetts, a state association of SkillsUSA, which serves more than 395,000 trade school students. The goal is to help these students find work anywhere in the country, as well as network, showcase their work, and discuss career options. It's early, but the app had more than 50,000 users within a few months of launch, Broomhead says. And it opens up a new world of opportunities for young tradespeople. "It's like going from fishing in a pond to fishing in the ocean," he says.

Look beyond the obvious

As other technology companies compete for graduates in technology fields, Infosys is taking a different track: Hiring students with liberal arts and other majors and reskilling them. President and COO Ravi Kumar calls the re-skilling process "finishing school," which teaches students the digital skills the company needs. And it opens a new world of job opportunities to students who have not majored in STEM fields.

The idea is that the focus on big data has created the need for broader thinking. The humanities teach people how to learn and think critically, prioritizing data and providing context to clarify its meaning. The company is now working with various schools, such as Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Purdue University, Community College of Rhode Island, and others, to train students with backgrounds in design, liberal arts, and other areas to fill key roles the company needs.

So far, Infosys has hired more than 8,000 of the candidates who have participated in the finishing school curriculum, with the goal of hiring more than 10,000. The varied viewpoints, skills, and knowledge that the program brings to the company is a key strength, Kumar says. "That made this whole initiative much more compelling because it had the cognitive diversity needed in a [digital world]," he says.

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Companies are getting creative to recruit-as early as middle school

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So some companies are starting early to fill the talent gap, creating programs that not only target college students, but also high school and even middle school students. The goal is to build relationships early in the hope that these relationships will result in a long-term pipeline of prospective employees.

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San Francisco's attempt (and failure) to desegregate schools

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San Francisco's attempt (and failure) to desegregate schools

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Rooftop Elementary School in San Francisco. The city allows parents to apply to any school in the district, having done away with traditional school zoning in an effort to desegregate its classrooms Credit Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - Like many parents in San Francisco, Melvin Canas and Delfina Ramirez described applying to public kindergarten as a part-time job. They researched schools all over the city for their daughter, Cinthya; took unpaid hours off their jobs as cooks to tour over a dozen; and ultimately ranked 15 of them on her application.

San Francisco allows parents to apply to any elementary school in the district, having done away with traditional school zoning 18 years ago in an effort to desegregate its classrooms. Give parents more choices, the thinking was, and low-income and working-class students of color like Cinthya would fill more seats at the city's most coveted schools.

But last month, Cinthya's parents, who are Hispanic, found out she had been admitted to their second-to-last choice, a school where less than a third of students met standards on state reading and math tests last year. Only 3 percent were white.

Results like these have soured many on the city's school enrollment plan, which is known here as "the lottery" and was once considered a national model.

"Our current system is broken," said Stevon Cook, president of the district Board of Education, which, late last year, passed a resolution to overhaul the process. "We've inadvertently made the schools more segregated."

For decades, the education mantra from presidential campaign trails to local school board elections has been the same: Your ZIP code should not determine the quality of your school. Few cities have gone further in trying to make that ideal a reality than San Francisco.

But as education leaders from New York to Dallas to San Antonio vow to integrate schools, and as presidential candidates like Joseph R. Biden Jr. are being asked to answer for their records on school segregation, San Francisco's ambitious plan offers a cautionary tale.

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Melvin Canas, with his daughter, Cinthya, described applying to public-school kindergarten as a part-time job. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Parental choice has not been the leveler of educational opportunity it was made out to be. Affluent parents are able to take advantage of the system in ways low-income parents cannot, or they opt out of public schools altogether. What happened in San Francisco suggests that without remedies like wide-scale busing, or school zones drawn deliberately to integrate, school desegregation will remain out of reach.

After families submit their kindergarten applications, ranking as many school choices as they like across the city, a computer algorithm makes assignments. Those from neighborhoods where students have scored low on state tests get first dibs at their top-ranked programs. Each child gets an address-based priority at one school, but it is considered only after those with test-score priority are offered seats.

The district had previously used busing to try to desegregate schools, under a 1983 agreement with the N.A.A.C.P. But a group of Chinese-American families sued in the 1990s, saying their children were being denied seats at elite campuses. The city settled the case by devising a choice-based enrollment process meant to be race-neutral but still achieve integration.

Research shows that desegregation can drive learning gains for students of all races. And on paper, San Francisco's system showed promise. In recent years, it succeeded in breaking up racial concentrations at a handful of schools.

But over all, many parents and city leaders consider it a disappointment. The district's schools were more racially segregated in 2015 than they were in 1990, even though the city's neighborhoods have become more integrated, research shows. That pattern holds true in many of the nation's largest cities, according to an analysis by Ryan W. Coughlan, an assistant professor of sociology at Guttman Community College in New York.

Segregation looks different in San Francisco than in other parts of the country. The district is one of the most diverse in the nation: 35 percent of students are Asian, 27 percent are Hispanic, 15 percent are white and 7 percent are African-American. Schools here are not racially monolithic. But over the past several decades, white, Asian and Hispanic students, on average, have been clustered in schools with more children of their own races.

While black children were slightly less racially isolated in 2015 than in 1990, that was largely a result of their lower enrollment in the district, Professor Coughlan said - a change driven by astronomical housing costs.

At a tour of Rooftop Elementary, Sofia and Jonathan Perel said they had visited 18 schools. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Even the school district has acknowledged that a system of geographically zoned schools would most likely create more racial integration than the current, choice-driven approach.

There are several reasons the system has not worked as intended. One is a lack of transportation. Fewer than 4,000 of the district's 54,000 students ride a bus to school. The city's busing program was reduced in 2010, during the last recession, and has not been restored.

Shurrin Zeng, vice chairwoman of the district's English Learners Advisory Committee, said location had been the No. 1 factor in her decision to enroll her 10-year-old daughter in the school closest to their home, which is overwhelmingly Hispanic and Asian, and largely low-income. She is not completely happy with the school, but choice, she said, was not meaningful without "more convenient transportation" to ensure access.

And some parents may not have heard about better, far-flung schools. Not everyone has the time to navigate the complex process of researching, touring and ranking campuses. Families who want a different school from the one they are given can try their luck in three more lottery rounds, filing paperwork and managing waiting lists even past the start of the school year, in some cases.

School tours typically take place between 8 and 10 a.m. - prime commuting and work hours - and some of the most desired schools require parents to sign up weeks in advance.

At Rooftop Elementary in the Twin Peaks neighborhood - Mr. Canas and Ms. Ramirez's first choice for Cinthya - a tour in December was dominated by professional-class parents with flexible schedules. They took in breathtaking views of the San Francisco Bay and strolled past a climbing wall and gardening plots. Jonathan and Sofia Perel, an IT director and a consultant to nonprofits, said they had visited 18 schools.

In contrast, Kenika Eison, a medical assistant, had to show up at schools unannounced during off hours, hoping a principal would come out to talk to her. She ended up enrolling her son Aaden in a charter school close to the clinic where she works, partly because of the school's good reputation, but also because she would not need to arrange child care in the mornings.

Kenika Eison picked up her son Aaden from his preschool program. For kindergarten, Ms. Eison enrolled Aaden in a charter school close to her work. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Since the district uses neighborhood test scores to determine admissions preferences, some students from low-income and working-class families in San Francisco, like Cinthya, do not get an advantage, while a handful of wealthier students, whose parents happen to live in areas with historically lower test scores, do.

The system benefits gentrifiers, in a city where public housing can be tucked beneath hills studded with multimillion-dollar Victorians.

Anne Zimmerman, a stay-at-home parent and writer, had what others call, sometimes derisively, the "golden ticket." She and her husband, who works in advertising, moved into their two-bedroom rental in the Potrero Hill neighborhood a decade ago, without realizing their address granted them priority in the school lottery.

This year, their daughter, Vera, was offered admission to their first-choice kindergarten, one of the most requested in the city. The school is 37 percent white and 21 percent low-income. Districtwide, 15 percent of students are white and 55 percent are low-income.

"I feel so very conflicted" about getting an advantage, Ms. Zimmerman said. Both she and her husband are white. "The system was developed to equalize the playing field, and I don't think it really has done it."

Those who defend the current system point out that 79 percent of black parents, 79 percent of Filipino parents and 61 percent of Hispanic parents received their first-choice kindergarten for next fall, compared with 48 percent of white parents.

Rionda Batiste is a member of the district's African-American Parent Advisory Council and a resident of the Bayview, a neighborhood with test-score priority in the lottery. She has been thrilled with the system, which allowed her to enroll two of her children in a school of her choice outside the neighborhood.

While San Francisco's school enrollment system was intended to desegregate the district, research shows that schools have become more segregated. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

"Until our schools are being made to have the same resources and quality as the other schools in the other areas, I'm not going to disadvantage her," Ms. Batiste said of her daughter, Victoria.

But the voices of parents who feel hurt by the lottery hold powerful political sway here. One family of two doctors whose child - like 12 percent of kindergarten applicants - was not admitted to any of the 15 schools they listed, said they would not send their child to the school they were ultimately assigned, which is across the city from their home. The school has struggled with underenrollment and low test scores, and is predominantly black and low-income.

The parents, who are Hispanic and asked not to be named, ended up putting down a deposit for a private school.

About a quarter of the city's children are enrolled in private school, a higher percentage than in some other major cities, like New York, where it is around 20 percent. The lottery system is thought to be a major reason wealthy parents here opt out of public schools, further worsening segregation.

At the request of the Board of Education, the district is considering how expanded busing could help integrate schools. It is also looking at models in Berkeley, Calif., and Boston, where parents can rank choices from a small group of schools determined by address. San Francisco has already limited choices at the middle-school level, with some success.

Stevon Cook, the board president, said one of the biggest problems with the lottery was "the implicit message that we send" to low-income parents: that schools in their own communities are "inadequate," and that they should seek to escape them. "We should pour more into those schools to make them attractive," he said.

The strengths of predominantly black schools, in particular, were often overlooked, said Rachel Norton, a longtime member of the board.

"I don't want to suggest that every school is of equal quality across the district, but they are closer in quality to each other than people think," she said.

Mr. Canas, the chef, spoke to teachers at the school where his daughter was admitted, and heard some things he liked about it. But he still hoped Cinthya would be chosen off a waiting list to attend one of the higher-ranked schools on her application, and was bracing for more rounds in the lottery.

Even if the chances of a dream placement remained low, Mr. Canas said, he would exhaust all options. "I can't really put a price on my daughter's education."

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San Francisco Had an Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation. It Made It Worse.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Like many parents in San Francisco, Melvin Canas and Delfina Ramirez described applying to public kindergarten as a part-time job. They researched schools all over the city for their daughter, Cinthya; took unpaid hours off their jobs as cooks to tour over a dozen; and ultimately ranked 15 of them on her application.

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Interactive map of recent school shootings.

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Interactive map of recent school shootings.

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Almost two dozen school shootings have already occurred so far in 2018.

According to non-profit organization Everytown for Gun Safety, a total of 19 shootings have occurred on school campuses across the United States as of March 2.

The tragic suicide of a 7th-grader inside a middle school and the shooting death of two at Central Michigan University marked the 20th and 21st incidents, respectively.
Take a look at the map for details on each of the shooting incidents so far this year.
The organization defines a school shooting as "any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds."

In other words, this count also includes attempted or completed suicides and accidental discharges.
RELATED: Mass shootings in the U.S.: When, where they have occurred in 2018
A total of 65 shootings were reported on school campuses in 2017.

These incidents, according to Everytown, are collected from media reports and further inquiries.

Everytown for Gun Safety on its website lists itself as "an independent, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to understanding and reducing gun violence in America."

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School shootings in U.S.: When, where each shooting has occurred in 2018

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Almost two dozen school shootings have already occurred so far in 2018. According to non-profit organization Everytown for Gun Safety, a total of 19 shootings have occurred on school campuses across the United States as of March 2.

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The uncomfortable topic: America's failing school system.

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The uncomfortable topic: America's failing school system.

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It's About to Get Uncomfortable: Education in America | Matt Beaudreau | TEDxSantaCruz

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What would it look like to truly collaborate on the future of our schools with all stakeholders, from kindergartners to administrators? Educator Matt Beaudreau argues that alternative and democratic schools are successfully challenging existing educational paradigms, and embracing a radically collaborative approach that could change the face of education for America's children.

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A potential solution that doesn't involve additional money.

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A potential solution that doesn't involve additional money.

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How to fix a broken education system ... without any more money | Seema Bansal

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Seema Bansal forged a path to public education reform for 15,000 schools in Haryana, India, by setting an ambitious goal: by 2020, 80 percent of children should have grade-level knowledge. She's looking to meet this goal by seeking reforms that will work in every school without additional resources.

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International teens reflect on US schools

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International teens reflect on US schools

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What international teens think about school in America

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How home life influences student performance.

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How home life influences student performance.

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Yo Azama - Understanding how a student’s home life can affect learning

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Observing the real world can give students direction with their education.

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Observing the real world can give students direction with their education.

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How Looking Outside the Classroom Can Transform Education | Ignacio Jayo | TEDxUpperDublinED

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Why School Lunches Need To Be Resolved | Cheyenne Buckingham | TEDxWorthingtonED

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Can Vocational High Schools Be a Viable Alternative to College?

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Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders

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Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders

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Reimagining Classrooms: Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders | Kayla Delzer | TEDxFargo

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Opinion | Why Other Countries Teach Better (Published 2013)

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The United States has much to learn from other countries, especially in preparing teachers and paying for schools.

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Why High School Students Need More Than College Prep

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Why High School Students Need More Than College Prep

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I step up to the counter at Willy's Cafe at Willamette High School in Eugene, Ore., and order a latte.

There's a powerful scent of fresh coffee in the air, and a group of juniors and seniors hover over a large espresso machine.

Carrie Gilbert, 17, shows how it's done: "You're going to want to steam the milk first," she explains. "Then once you have the coffee, dump it in and use the rest of the milk to fill the cup."

She hands over my order. Not bad.

Yes, this is a class, and these students are earning credit. But I can almost hear parents and students, for whom college is the only option, saying: Credit towards what? Isn't this just training for the dead-end, low-wage jobs of the future?'

Gilbert, who helps manage the cafe and train other students, doesn't think so. "Just the overall experience with the cash register and all the different kinds of food preparation and working with money and all that stuff, it prepares you for all kinds of things."

Training as a barista may not seem like a big deal, but Gilbert - and educators here and around the country - say she's learning those all-important "soft skills" that employers expect.

Roughly seven out of 10 high school grads are headed to college every year - but that leaves hundreds of thousands who aren't. And survey after survey shows that employers are demanding - even of college-bound students - some level of job skills and professionalism: punctuality, customer service, managing people and teamwork.

That's the message students at Willamette High hear just about every day over the PA system: You need job skills with real market value. The school's career and technical education program offers courses and training in all kinds of fields; culinary arts, health careers, robotics and welding. Students train as bank tellers with a local credit union, or learn food service and restaurants at Willy's Cafe.

The school is affiliated with DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) program, which focuses on merchandizing, retail sales, marketing and entrepeneurship.

The nearly 70-year-old program once seemed a relic of the "vocational education" era - a time when a much larger percentage of high school graduates went right into the workforce. But today, DECA is all about giving kids a taste of the real world and getting your foot in the door, says Dawn Delorfis, an assistant principal at Willamette High.

DECA teachers and administrators don't discourage students from going to college, she says, but they do try to let every student know that, with the right skills and training, there are good entry-level jobs for them out there.

Many of those jobs, "provide a good living for someone coming out of high school," Delorfis adds. "But the thing I think does still exist is the stigma attached: 'Oh, you're not going to college?' "

Luis Sanchez, 18, says college and Starbucks are definitely not for him. But he likes the training at Willy's because it's like running a small business: "My parents own a restaurant, and I want to help run it."

Which brings me back to parents, and that pressure of college as the only option. What happens when your kid comes home from school one day and says she's training as a barista?

"If it were my kid, I wouldn't let it happen," says Anthony Carnevale. He's the head of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. "You don't tell middle-class Americans, 'I'm going to send your kid to trade school.' "

Carnevale and others acknowledge that even good programs like DECA, and career and technical education programs in general, are often viewed as second-rate - a pipeline to low-wage, dead-end jobs.

"These are not dead-end jobs," says John Fistolera, with DECA's corporate office. Fistolera says DECA teaches specific skills that business and industry require for employees to be successful. That's been DECA's mission since the mid-1940s, thanks to its partnerships with local employers and some of the nation's biggest businesses.

It's a message that has broad and growing support, even from the White House. "You can make a really good living and have a great career without getting a four year college education as long as you get the skills and the training that you need," President Obama said in 2014.

But what high school students usually hear is another message the president touts just as often: " College for all."

Carnevale says that's a message that kids and parents need to take with a grain of salt.

"Every year more than 400,000 young people in the top half of their high school class go to college, and at least eight years later, they have not gained either a two- or four-year degree or a certificate," he notes. So, he adds, at some point those people need job skills and a path into the workforce.

Carnevale warns that the high school curriculum has moved to higher and higher levels of abstraction, away from practical and applied learning.

At Willamette High, though, the message to students is simple: Prepare for both work and college. It kind of makes sense, says 18-year-old Kareena Montalvo. The DECA course she fell in love with is graphic design.

"I can't tell you how many posters we've done for upcoming plays, musicals," she says. "It lets me understand how artists need to meet clients' needs."

Montalvo says she's already getting paid for several projects in the community. She sees herself as an entrepeneur and, down the road, a college student.

"I want to get my major in graphic design and a minor in marketing."

But right now, says Kareena, the idea of going into debt at such a young age to pay for college is crazy. So, she says, it's great having marketable skills and pretty good job prospects right out of high school.

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Why High School Students Need More Than College Prep

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I step up to the counter at Willy's Cafe at Willamette High School in Eugene, Ore., and order a latte. There's a powerful scent of fresh coffee in the air, and a group of juniors and seniors hover over a large espresso machine.

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Which Countries Have The Best Education?

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The worst things parents can say to teenagers taking exams

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The worst things parents can say to teenagers taking exams

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The exam season is here. For families living in the exam zone, it's a tricky time. Emotions are running high. Nerves are frayed. Parents try to be encouraging and supportive - and that's usually a sure-fire way of starting an argument. There is nothing that says it's the exam season better than the sound of a teenager's door being slammed.

So what are the worst things you can say?

1. There are only two things that parents can ever say to teenagers taking their exams. The wrong thing. And the wrong thing. Whatever you say is going to irritate them. Accept it. Even accepting it, that's irritating too.

2. "Don't worry, it's not a big deal, it's only a bit of paper, and whatever happens we still..." Wherever you're going with that, it's not working. Think hole, stop digging. If you say, "Don't worry," this is interpreted as really meaning, "Relax, you're in a ship heading at full speed towards a colossal iceberg." But if you say it "really matters", that translates as: "Why are you piling all this pressure on me now, like I really need any more?" Wrong and wrong. Again.

3. "Remember how well your sister did." Few things could be as provocative. It sets off a series of explosions all over the house like in a Sunday afternoon war film. Never mention siblings, dubiously-gifted cousins, unbearable child-prodigy neighbours.

4. "How can you do any work with all those screens running at once?" The generation gap is now measured by the number of screens being used simultaneously. It's safe to write this because no teenager will ever read this far down an article. They are too busy playing with YouTube, WhatsApp, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat and something really retro like Facebook.

5. "At least the exams are much easier now." This little gem could dig you into a corner tighter than a Hatton Garden deposit box. Allude vaguely to "proper" exams like O-levels and then say: "It's great that these days they more or less give out the answers as well as the question papers."

6. "It's lucky you've only chosen easy subjects." Whooosh! So inflammatory that entire postcodes are laid waste.

7. "You can only do your best." Patronising, with subtle shades of disappointment. It sounds like: "You can only do your best... for someone who would lose an argument with an earthworm. But well done you."

8. Stupid 'brain food' ideas. Like it's going to make a difference, eating fish pie the night before an exam. Or a bunch of bananas or gallons of water to rehydrate the brain. Advice on sleep can also be annoying, oscillating between "Make sure you keep revising" and "Don't stay up all night revising." Maybe the last two years of not reading anything longer than a party invitation might have a bigger impact. And anyway what's the connection with fishes and intelligence? A lot of them are no better than sea grade.

9. "Do you want me to test you on a few things?" This begins with good intentions, in the same the way that wars and major humanitarian disasters probably begin with good intentions. But you've stepped inside the dragon's cave. You've offered to help. What could go wrong? Apart from everything? You're going to ask the wrong questions, or give the wrong answers. And you'll ask them in the wrong way. Then you'll get annoyed and say: "Can we turn off the music so I can hear myself think?" or "Why are you watching Game of Thrones on the laptop?" or "Are you having another break?" Hope the door frame is more robust than their speaking-and-listening skills. Bang.

10. "You'll kick yourself if you've only missed out by one mark." Really, really irritating. Guaranteed to leave them angry until August. Infuriated teenagers will add it to the bulging file marked "I've tried my hardest but nothing is ever good enough for you." Best of luck everyone. Sorry, was that the wrong thing to say?

"Success only comes before work in the dictionary". Joe, Derby

Don't worry dear, we can always go for a re-mark. Martin, Stansted

"Fail to prepare, prepare to fail". This is the one phrase that both my parents used that I just couldn't stand hearing. Rachel, Reading

Would you like me to look after your phone so you can concentrate on your revision? Paul, Salisbury

"Just do your best that's all we ask of you".... Lynn, Hull

The worst is definitely "Are you nervous?" Of course I am, these exams will dictate my life, and whether or not I get into university... Gemma, Bangor

'If you don't know it by now...' Peter, London

I hate 'Good luck' Megan, Cheshire

What's the worst that can happen... Mohammed, Newcastle

We won't be angry if you don't get the grades, just disappointed... Kate, Stockport

I don't know why I bother... It was easier when you were babies! Pete, Cambridge

As my boss used to say to me for professional exams "Failure is not an option!". Except it was... Paul, Brighton

An actual comment made by a GCSE Maths student some years ago: "How stupid is that, they've put the GCSE exam the day after Call Of Duty comes out, how am I supposed to do an exam when I've been up staring at a screen all night and had no sleep?" Jim, Ascot

Make sure you eat a proper slow release big breakfast at 6am consisting of porridge with banana honey cinnamon and almonds, free range bio scrambled eggs with organic salmon on dark rye bread and fresh orange juice Christina, Hong Kong

As someone sitting my A levels next week, I prefer for my parents not to talk to me at all but for them to just keep feeding me. Alison, Newcastle

How about the old chestnut, "Well, you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink" Gerry, Edinburgh

You know all those people who say they are doing no revision are actually doing loads and that's why they will do well (when actually ' those people' are the three blonde triplets who really do no work at all and get 13 A*s) Aciddia, Tonbridge

What to say: "Let's have a family film night before the start of your exams", then let them sit morosely/anxiously/irritably glancing through textbooks/laptops throughout, and pretend not to notice. Fee, Hastings

Exams aren't really a test of how intelligent you are Paul, Bushey

'I understand how hard it is' - my parent say this all the time (I'm finishing A Levels), but they both failed GCSE and worked in McDonalds. Helena

Your cousins are in independent or grammar schools whilst you merely in a state school so you have more to prove as life really is a competition. You need to win this rat race! Rajni, Nottingham

I use the one thing not to irritate teenagers, I tell them I failed ALL my O Levels at 16. I then say well the next year I retook the majority of them and I got 4 passes including a B in Religious Education where the previous year I got an Unclassified. Then I explain that not being academic hasn't held me back from a full and successful 24 year career in helping unemployed people into work. Carl, Harrow

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Worst things parents can say to exam teens

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The exam season is here. For families living in the exam zone, it's a tricky time. Emotions are running high. Nerves are frayed. Parents try to be encouraging and supportive - and that's usually a sure-fire way of starting an argument.

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What can we learn from the great German school turnaround?

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What can we learn from the great German school turnaround?

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In 2000, Germany experienced an uncomfortable reality check when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) revealed disappointing results for performance and equality in its schools.

The country tested below average in maths, reading and science in the Programme for International Assessment (Pisa) report - and received the unwanted accolade of having the most unequal education performance among the 43 countries examined.

The results were a blow to a country that prides itself on its strong literary tradition and belief in social equality. "Germany's school system - and indeed the whole nation - was shocked by the first Pisa results of 2000," says Christian Füeller, German author and commentator on education. "It revealed a broad group of 'at risk' students that could not properly read and were termed 'functional illiterates'. This seemed to destroy any notions of being Goethe's and Thomas Mann's 'kulturnation' of thinkers and poets."

Just over a decade later, Germany was celebrated in the same research. In 2012, it was one of just three countries surveyed by the OECD that reduced inequality while improving its math scores. The great "Pisa shock" led to what has now been called the "great turnaround" in German education. So, does Germany, with its complex and fragmented education system, and school days that have traditionally stopped at lunchtime, have a lesson or two to teach other countries?

A change of structure

While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact recipe for success, Miyako Ikeda, senior analyst on the Pisa team at the OECD, argues one of the most significant changes was structural reform of the secondary school system. The findings of 2000, which laid bare how far socio-economic background was tied to educational performance, added fuel to the argument that streaming children at the age of 10 didn't work. The old system- where children moved into either a Gymnasium (for academic students), Realschule (for intermediary students), or Hauptschule (for the less academic) - was felt to be perpetuating inequality.

Several measures were taken to relax the system. These reforms included delaying the age when children are assigned to different secondary schools, combining Realschulen and Hauptschule, and introducing more comprehensive schools. "These measures have broken down the segregation between children set on academic paths and those on a vocational path. It has allowed children more flexibility in their learning and taken away a lot of stigma," says Sascha Stollhans, tutor at the University of Nottingham and representative of the German Academic Exchange Service.

States closed Hauptschules, which were characterised as places for children with poor prospects, and created an alternative with a more positive learning environment, says Maria Lujan, department head of romance languages at the International School of Düsseldorf. "Merging with Realschulen also improves the employment prospects of those students," she adds.

Offering more support to migrants

One of the most important lessons has also been to prioritise support for the lowest achievers, argues Ikeda. He says improvements in reading and maths were largely due to changes in this group.

A significant proportion of low performers in the Pisa report were migrants, and central to turning things around was improving their language skills. "Due to their poor German, foreign students are usually assigned to Hauptschulen," says Lujan. The introduction of subsidised all-day schools and comprehensives that don't segregate by ability provides more language support and scope for integration, she argues.

There has also been more encouragement for migrant families to send their children to kindergarten, Lujan adds. "In Germany kindergarten used to be a place in which children just played, but the Pisa results made us see that it's an important link in the chain of education."

Lujan says that the Pisa shock led to kindergarten pedagogy reforms and more development opportunities for teachers. "Language difficulties among students were also diagnosed as early as possible through the introduction of new tests," she adds.

Unifying a fragmented system

"It is difficult to talk about the German education system because every state has its own," says secondary teacher Julia Döller, describing the patchwork of policies and reforms in Germany's decentralised structure. One of the key reforms post-Pisa was to standardise curricula and introduce national tests. "School books, the curriculum and teaching have all changed since the Pisa shock. Students are now preparing for standard tests," says Döller, explaining how reforms have made lessons and teaching more focused.

She also believes it has become more interactive - classes are a far cry from the lessons of rote learning that Döller remembers as a pupil in 1990s Bavaria. "Since 2000 [and the Pisa report] there is more focus on communication and teamwork," she says. "Schooling is fresher, more orientated around students and their lives, influences and media consumption habits." Ikeda also argues that teaching quality has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been key to Germany's turnaround.

A little bit of monitoring, but not too much

A little bit of monitoring can go a long way. "One of the most striking differences between schooling in the UK and Germany is the level of monitoring," says Stollhans. "While national curriculums and tests have been introduced since 2000, results are not published, there are no league tables, and so schools are not constantly worried about their reputation. It is less target driven," he explains.

One of the key lessons of the German experience has been to ensure that monitoring is not excessive and does not inhibit the teachers' creativity. "In Germany there is less pressure on teachers and pupils to perform. They can focus on the process of education rather than the result," says Stollhans.

A different philosophy

At its heart, many see the turnaround in German education as being successful because it has negotiated change while maintaining its commitment to free, quality education. "You don't have tuition fees in Germany and therefore students are not seen as customers," argues Stollhans. "You can see that business attitude in UK schools when you look at the results-driven approach of things like Ofsted and the league tables."

German educated Anja Abney, now researching education in the US, agrees there is something other countries can learn from the philosophy underpinning the German attitude to learning. "In Germany there is an awareness of letting children be children while they learn," said Abney. "Teaching the whole person is much more what we do in Germany."

And yet for some, the great "turnaround" still has some way to go. While the progress made since 2000 has been significant, Lujan believes that tackling what still remains of the "highly discriminatory and unfair" tracking system, is the final hurdle. "The educational system has gone from average to good. Now Germany needs to move from good to great. We still need to create a system in which every pupil is encouraged to try hard and succeed."

The international lessons in education series is sponsored by eTwinning, which is managed by the British Council in the UK. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.

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What can we learn from the great German school turnaround?

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It took Germany just over a decade to improve test scores and reduce inequality. Their education overhaul is a lesson in structure, monitoring and philosophy

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How the education system is making kids stressed and sick

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How the education system is making kids stressed and sick

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Alternative Education: Stories of Change

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Today, Kids Need To Learn More Than Facts, But To Solve Problems And Innovate

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Today, Kids Need To Learn More Than Facts, But To Solve Problems And Innovate

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Traditionally, we went to school to attain knowledge. The smart kids knew that Columbus discovered America in 1492 and that the square root of 64 is eight. They studied diligently at home so that when the teacher asked a question they could shoot their hand up and be praised for their good work.

Today, however, teenagers carry far more information and computing power in their pockets than would ever fit in their heads. So the ability to retain knowledge and manipulate numbers with facility have become, to a large extent, outdated skills. Kids today need to learn how to understand systems and solve problems.

Fortunately, there are an increasing number of programs that are designed to do just that. At the college level, programs like Stanford's d.school teach design thinking and entrepreneurship classes have become standard in business school curriculums. More recently, a wide variety of secondary school level programs have begun to take hold and are giving students a leg up.

A Nascent Ecosystem

While innovation programs at secondary schools are relatively new, they seem to be metastasizing across the education system and are increasingly popular among educators, parents and students. The problem is that there are so many different programs, with myriad approaches, it's hard to know where to start.

Sam Seidel, Director at the Business Innovation Factory Student Experience Lab has worked with a number of these programs and believes that it is crucial to cater to each school's educational environment. For example, it might be easier for a school in an urban environment to develop internship programs with local firms, but a rural school, with a disperse community, might need to have a more integrated program on school grounds.

In the programs I researched for this article, the most important factor seemed to be support within the school community. It's also crucial element to have a few passionate teachers who have the drive to get things started.

Designing Real Solutions For Real Problems

Melissa Hecht and Ignacio Jayo's journey began when they met Joe Kim, a former educator who now works at Eli Lilly innovating clinical trials. As high school teachers themselves, they were interested in what he had to say about how poorly the educational system prepare students for jobs like his.

"We saw a gap between the skills being taught in schools and those that are needed for life," Hecht told me. In school, every question has a right answer and students are supposed to study to know what that answer is. But in the workplace, the important problems don't have clear answers. We wanted to design a program that would help kids learn the skills needed to do problems like that."

So the three started CentennialX, a program where teams of students are given real-world challenges provided by actual companies and given instruction in the basics of design thinking. Throughout the course of a summer, the teams work with a faculty advisor as well as a corporate partner to come up with a viable solution.

"The response has been far more then we ever imagined," Hecht told me excitedly. "Kids and parents say that the program changed their lives. We never need to motivate kids to do this stuff. In fact we find them so engaged that we try rein them in a little bit and let them enjoy themselves."

Creating A New Generation Of Entrepreneurs

The Dwight School has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. It considers its mission to "ignite the spark of genius in every child" and emphasizes a project-based program centered around the International Baccalaureate curriculum. At Dwight, students are encouraged to find their passion rather than just learn facts.

One of the major facets of the curriculum at Dwight is a full year project that all 10th grade students must complete. A few years ago, one student pursued an especially ambitious project to create an "Our Dwight" mobile app for the school. It performed so well that it got the faculty and parents thinking that they could take the concept much further.

The result is the school's Spark of Innovation program in which students are encouraged to not only create projects, but attract funding for them. Each student has to complete five stages, from creating an idea and making a plan to building a prototype and launching an actual product. Each one of these stages is judged by a "Spark Tank" that is made up of parents and alumni.

Started in 2015, the program has already had some impressive results. One student built a portable particle accelerator for use in scientific experiments that was acquired by an investor. Another created a personal security device specifically designed for college campuses. A third, designed a pen or pencil grip that could be 3D printed for students with bad handwriting.

"We've found that in just the first year Spark tank program has had a profound effect on the school community," Matt Moran, Director of Technology and Innovation at the school told me, "especially in how it has helped foster connections between students and parents that have the real world experience to help them achieve them."

Reinventing Education

Clearly, the world has changed. Unlike previous generations, kids today can't expect to train for a career that will last them a lifetime. In fact, a study at Oxford estimates that nearly half of today's jobs will be automated in 20 years. We need to replace our regimented education system with one that prepares students for the future they will face.

"I think that what parents and educators most need to understand is that school is not just to attain knowledge," Thomas Both, Fellowships Director at Stanford's d.school told me, "but learn how to learn and solve problems when there is no clear "right answer" as there would be in a traditional lecture and test environment."

Innovation programs can help, but there also need to be changes inside of regular classrooms. How can design thinking be used in science and math programs? How can a project based curriculum be applied to subjects like English and Social Studies? These are questions that we need to come up with answers for.

Most of all, we need to shift from an educational system that values what you can answer to one that values what you can ask and that fosters skills like teamwork, communication and exploration. A 20th century educational system will not prepare our kids for a 21st century world.

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Today, Kids Need To Learn More Than Facts, But To Solve Problems And Innovate

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Traditionally, we went to school to attain knowledge. The smart kids knew that Columbus discovered America in 1492 and that the square root of 64 is eight. They studied diligently at home so that when the teacher asked a question they could shoot their hand up and be praised for their good work.

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A New Kind of Classroom: No Grades, No Failing, No Hurry

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A New Kind of Classroom: No Grades, No Failing, No Hurry

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A New Kind of Classroom: No Grades, No Failing, No Hurry (Published 2017)

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Mastery-based learning allows students to learn at their own pace.

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Public schools contribute to the child poverty problem.

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Public schools contribute to the child poverty problem.

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How America's public schools keep kids in poverty | Kandice Sumner

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Technology is transforming what happens when a child goes to school

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Technology is transforming what happens when a child goes to school

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FOR a ten-year-old, Amartya is a thoughtful chap. One Monday morning at the Khan Lab School (KLS) in Mountain View, California, he explains that his maths is "pretty strong" but he needs to work on his writing. Not to worry, though; Amartya has a plan. He will practise grammar online, book a slot with an English teacher and consult his mentor. Later he will e-mail your correspondent to ask for help, too.

This is the sort of pluck KLS produces. Its pupils do not have homework or report cards or spend all day in classrooms. They are not stratified by age; they share common spaces as they pursue individual goals and schedules, using software built by in-house developers to take tests and watch video lessons from the school's sister organisation, Khan Academy, which makes online tutorials. Half the teachers act like tutors, helping with academic work. The rest mentor pupils in character traits such as curiosity and self-awareness.
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The idea of using technology to revamp education is not new. In 1928, Sidney Pressey, a psychologist, invented a "teaching machine" which he imagined "freeing ...teacher and pupil from educational drudgery". The automaton had a paper drum displaying multiple-choice questions. Pressing the right key moved the drum on, yielding sweets for smarty-pants.

Despite its sugar-coated bait, Pressey's teaching machine went the way of most such technology. It did not live up to the hype. Since then a succession of inventions promising to overhaul schools has done no such thing. Information technology has reshaped other sectors; it has had little impact on education.

This has not been for want of hardware. In 1984, the year the first Macintosh was launched, American schools averaged one computer for every 125 pupils. By 2012 there were five for every nine. But this big bang in access to IT had "little or no positive effect" on outcomes such as test scores, according to an analysis of trials from around the world published last year by George Bulman and Robert Fairlie of the University of California. In 2015 the OECD found no link between what countries spend on IT in schools and their 15-year-olds' abilities in maths, science and reading.

Now, though, the stasis is finally starting to shift, for two reasons. The first is that "edtech" is increasingly able to interact with students in sophisticated ways. Recent studies show that software which imitates the responsive role of a tutor rather than just cranking out questions and answers can indeed accelerate children's learning. The second reason is the experience of a growing number of schools, like KLS, which are not just bolting edtech onto the existing way of doing things but using the new software to change how pupils and teachers spend their time. Both, it seems, get more productive. For many decades educational innovators have happily anticipated the end of "factory model", whereby children of the same age learn from the same teacher in broadly the same way, yet the model endures. Now, at least in some places, its days seem numbered.

Investors, both philanthropic and otherwise, are excited. Edtech is one of the priorities of the investment fund set up by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). He wants most American schools to adopt the new sorts of education it promises within a decade-and then help spread it worldwide. The combined value of the North American and European edtech markets (including further and higher education as well as schools) is set to grow from $75bn in 2014 to $120bn in 2019, according to Technavio, a research firm.

Research in two fields is shaping the new technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) is letting machines learn about the pupils using them by studying the data produced in the process. And research drawing on psychology, cognitive science and other disciplines is providing practical insight into the "science of learning".

The late American psychologist Benjamin Bloom convinced many educationalists that overcoming the failings of the factory model required making group instruction more like personal tuition-which his studies showed to be the most effective form of teaching. "Adaptive learning" software, first developed by computer scientists in the 1970s, aspires to mimic tuition's one-on-one strengths. Such programs use pupils' answers to inform their choice of subsequent questions, adjusting the difficulty as they go along.

Machine learning, a branch of AI that allows computers to pick up on patterns they were not explicitly programmed to perceive, lends itself well to this approach. But it is not essential. Mindspark, developed by Educational Initiatives, an Indian company, simply draws on a bank of 45,000 questions and the 2m answers generated every day. Its developers have anticipated common mistakes, using more than a decade's worth of pupil data and written code to diagnose the errors. For example, children often say that 3.27 is greater than 3.3, or 4.56 is greater than 4.9; the reason is that they are seeing the "27" and the "56" after the decimal points as being larger than the "3" and the "9", an error known as "whole number thinking". Mindspark will pick up on this pattern of error and recommend specific remedial exercises.

Newer programmes being developed around the world use machine learning to find pupil-specific patterns of error and strength. Leading American brands include ALEKS, Knewton and DreamBox Learning. Siyavula Practice, a South African product, is used by more than 32,000 pupils in 388 schools to teach maths and science. Geekie has been used by 415,000 pupils in São Paulo's public schools, and by many more at home. Byju's, another Indian education company, received $50m in an investment round led by CZI in 2016. In China 17zuoye ("homework together") uses voice-recognition software to help students learn English. If a child says "seven potato", or "nine apple", 17zuoye will offer help with plural nouns.

Rapid progress in speech recognition and generation may take such ideas further. Researchers at the ArticuLab at Carnegie Mellon University have used voice-recognition technology to develop Alex, a "virtual peer", who talks to children in a vernacular that makes them feel more comfortable in class. Their findings suggest that some black children learn science quicker when they interact with a virtual peer using African-American vernacular than one speaking with a standard dialect.

Some of these companies pay close attention to the science of learning. Siyavula's algorithms adjust its questioning so that users get the right answer about 70% of the time. That is roughly the success rate, it says, that neither bores nor deflates learners. ALEKS, meanwhile, eschews multiple-choice questions. Instead it requires users to type responses-a more taxing method. Both products periodically return to topics; studies suggest "interleaved" practice helps facts stick.

A forthcoming paper by Philip Oreopoulos and Andre Nickow for J-PAL, a group at MIT which looks for evidence about what actually works when it comes to alleviating poverty, reviews dozens of randomised controlled trials involving edtech. In nearly all the 41 studies which compared pupils using adaptive software with peers who were taught by conventional means the software-assisted branch got higher scores. In most studies, language scores were higher, too. "There are not many other interventions with credible evidence showing these kinds of effects," says Mr Oreopoulos (see chart).

One study in the J-PAL review is a paper by Karthik Muralidharan, Alejandro Ganimian and Abhijeet Singh, which looks at an Indian after-school scheme where children used Mindspark for 4.5 months. They found that the progress made in language and maths by those pupils was greater than in almost any study of education in poor countries-and for a fraction of the cost of attending a government-run school.

In part this is a function of a low baseline. Indian curriculums are far too ambitious, artefacts of an era when schools were the preserve of the elite, and at any given time a quarter of the teachers will be absent. About half of India's ten-year-olds cannot read a paragraph meant for seven-year-olds. One particularly encouraging aspect of the study was that it seemed to show those least-well-served by the current dispensation benefiting most-the poorest performers saw larger improvements than those who had previously been getting by.

Analysing published studies may not give a full picture of the field's progress: as in many areas of research, studies with ambiguous or negative results may never make it to publication. It is also much harder to judge the technology in softer subjects-fields where mimicking a tutor is undoubtedly harder. How to improve the argument of a history essay is not something edtech easily grasps, any more than it could advise on the use of humour in a drama class. But it can still help teachers' assessments in these fields. No More Marking, a British company, shows teachers paired excerpts from pupils' essays and asks them to decide which is better; with enough such comparisons its "comparative judgment" algorithms can then rank the pupils. The method saves teachers' time and helps pupils, too. They are less likely to suffer because a teacher is hungry, or tired, by the time of the last essay.

No dark sarcasm

It is also worth noting that the same system can show different effects in different trials. A study published in 2014 found that pupils using Teach to One: Math learned faster than the national average, according to a standardised test. But research that came out a year later could reach no conclusions as to its impact. A study of another system, DreamBox Learning software, found that its impact differed from school to school. When it was used for 60 to 90 minutes a week, as its producers intended, and their suggestions as to how to get the most out of it were followed, it had much better effects.

Seeing Teach to One: Math in action underlines how much change is needed to make it work-which may explain why it does less well in some studies than others. When pupils at the Ascend School in Oakland arrive for their daily hour and a half of maths, they look up at monitors resembling airport information screens which tell them what and how they will learn today. One child is to work on geometry in a group; another will take algebra questions on his laptop. Three teachers walk around the open space, checking on pupils' progress. At the end of the session pupils take a short test, which is used by developers at New Classrooms, the charity behind Teach to One, to set children's schedules for the next day. Wendy Baty, the school's head of maths, is an enthusiast; she says that pupils receive feedback that "even the best teacher could not provide to all of the class". Several pupils say they like that they can learn at their own pace. But others admit to finding the experience confusing.

Rather than working for a few hours in a conventional school, other reformers are opening their own. AltSchool is one of various comprehensive attempts to use edtech to provide a form of "personalised learning"-thus slotting it into a tradition that reaches back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Maria Montessori. Founded by Max Ventilla, a former Google engineer, it is backed by, among others, CZI and the Omidyar Network, set up by Pierre Omidyar, the eBay founder. At each of AltSchool's seven "lab schools" in California and New York, pupils consult two pieces of software on their tablets. The first is the "portrait": a record of a child's progress in academic subjects and social skills. (One measure is whether children can "respond with wonderment and awe".) The second is the "playlist", which is where pupils gain access to material and complete work.

Perhaps surprisingly, and reassuringly, for a school so dependent on software, screen time is limited to no more than 20-30% of the day. The emphasis on project work means pupils collaborate with each other. At the Yerba Buena AltSchool, in San Francisco, Hugo, 12, explains that he learns more from his peers here than at his old school. Teachers at AltSchool say they save time by not marking or planning lessons. Instead they analyse data on pupils' portraits and tutor them on individual problems. Hugo says "I feel like the teachers here really know me."

Giving children such attention is not cheap. Hugo's parents pay $27,000 per year, more than twice the average spending per pupil in OECD countries. That does not mean that the software AltSchool is developing will be particularly expensive. But overall cost is definitely an issue. Many of the public schools trying to combine edtech and personalised learning are supported by philanthropic organisations such as the Gates Foundation. A study last year of early adopters by the Centre on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, also partly funded by the Gates Foundation, concluded that those schools' "long-term financial stability is still unclear".

Arguably the most influential attempt to find out whether high-tech personalised learning can both work and be afforded at scale is that of Summit Public Schools, a publicly funded network of 11 schools in California and Washington which serve mostly poor, often Latino students; 130 more "partner schools" across 27 states use Summit's software and get training from Summit staff. Its platform was built pro bono by Facebook engineers.

Andrew Goldin, Summit's chief of schools, argues that the Summit Learning Platform lets pupils learn more efficiently than they do when led through every lesson by a teacher: "Children don't need to be walked through every step." That gives them more time to spend on projects, which take up half of the school day, and to be mentored by teachers.

Some information first

This sort of personalised learning has its critics. Putting students in charge of how fast they learn worries some cognitive scientists. "Our minds are not built to think," argues Benjamin Riley of Deans for Impact, a charity championing the science of learning. Thinking hard about things does not come naturally, and if schools make it easy to avoid thinking, some children will do so. Another criticism is that people need a ready store of facts if they are to develop many forms of creativity and critical thinking (an insight championed by one of the early giants of AI, Herbert Simon). As Daniel Willingham of the University of Virginia puts it: "knowledge is cumulative". In the always Googleable world of tablet and phone, it could be tempting for children not to fill that store, and for their teachers not to worry too much.

Giving children more control over their learning, Mr Goldin argues, motivates them; if pupils do not grasp the basics they cannot participate in projects. He also points to Summit's results. About two-thirds of pupils score as well as or better than demography would predict in a nationwide maths test. In 2015, 93% of pupils who entered Summit went on to graduate, ten percentage points more than in comparable neighbouring schools. Of those graduates 99% got to university.

Achievement First, a group of 34 schools on America's east coast which is famed for tough discipline, is testing a similar model. So too are schools in cities like Chicago, New York and Boston. More than 3,000 superintendents (the officials who run America's school districts), representing about one-third of pupils at public schools, have signed a pledge to "transition" to "personalised, digital learning".

How well the model will work when it spreads is unclear. In 2015, the RAND Corporation, a think-tank, published the most thorough study yet of schools using high-tech personalised learning. It compared test results of pupils at 62 such schools with those of similar pupils at ordinary schools. The former made greater progress, especially those who started near the bottom of the class.

The report is widely cited by advocates of personalised learning. Mr Zuckerberg uses it to claim that: "We know that personalised learning is way better." That is a stretch of yogic proportions. The results are from early adopters of the model, with highly motivated teachers. And the RAND researchers were not able to work out what it was schools were doing to gain their results. Without that understanding expanding the model will be tricky. A further RAND report, released on July 11th, reiterated these concerns.

Teachers may be more sceptical away from Silicon Valley. And parents may be more concerned about privacy. Machine-learning software has an incentive to accrue data; they make predictions more accurate. New platforms contain accounts of a child's abilities far more detailed than any report card.

Supporters and sceptics of the new model will continue to argue. But both sides are guilty of caricaturing the other. Techies can make it seem as if teachers in ordinary schools talk to every pupil in the exact same way. They do not; studies repeatedly show that teachers use "differentiated instruction" among pupils of different abilities, even if they cannot offer one-on-one attention.

But schools using personalised learning are not anarchic playgrounds. Pupils may have more power but they do not have complete control. "Unadulterated choice is not good," says Aylon Samouha of Transcend Education, a charity. "You need standards and structure."

If schools can combine personalisation and rigour it is hard to imagine pupils failing to benefit. Education software is not making teaching obsolete. If anything it is making the craft of teaching more important. That would be good news for the staffroom and the classroom. For as 12-year-old Hugo observes, "too many teachers are just trying to get to the end of the day".

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Technology is transforming what happens when a child goes to school

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FOR a ten-year-old, Amartya is a thoughtful chap. One Monday morning at the Khan Lab School (KLS) in Mountain View, California, he explains that his maths is "pretty strong" but he needs to work on his writing. Not to worry, though; Amartya has a plan.

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A free, teacher-less university in France is schooling thousands of future-proof programmers

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A free, teacher-less university in France is schooling thousands of future-proof programmers

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Paris

When you walk into École 42, a teacher-less coding school in Paris, a few things leap out at you: a killer collection of provocative street art, including an illustrated condom machine at the front desk; iMacs as far as the eye can see; and a palpable buzz from the roughly 1,000 students bustling around the building.

It is week two of la piscine (the "swimming pool"), a one-month, Hunger Games-like test students must endure to get a place at the school. No degrees or special skills are required to apply, and those who are accepted attend for free for three to five years. Around 80% of students get jobs before they finish the course; 100% are employed by the end.

The school is the brainchild of Xavier Niel, a French billionaire who has so far spent about €48 million ($57 million) on the Paris campus and an additional $46 million on a school in Silicon Valley. Niel founded Free, France's second-largest internet service provider, among other ventures. He is a serial entrepreneur who is always looking for the best and brightest talent. In 2013, struggling to find it, he declared that France's education system was broken and set out to fix one part of it.

The result is something unlike any other school in France, or elsewhere.

"We don't teach anything," says Nicolas Sadirac, head of École 42. "The students create what they need all the time."

At 8:42 every morning, students get digital projects to complete. They have 48 hours to complete them, so they are always juggling various projects, sort of like in real life. (The name comes from the "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" in the comedic novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The answer is 42.)

Since there are no teachers, it is up to students to figure things out. Everything is graded by peers. Students "manage their time how they want," says Sadirac. "It's totally self organized." In education-speak, École 42 is both project-based learning and peer-to-peer learning, on steroids.

The school is 100% merit based: In the most recent batch of students, 64,000 took a basic online logic test to qualify for entry. More than 20,000 passed, but the school only accepted the top 3,000 due to space constraints. Those 3,000 compete in pools of 1,000 for a month to see who best completes the digital projects; the top third of performers are then admitted. Of those, 5-15% drop out.

While the school used to require that students master a set of skills before leaving, it has now ditched that requirement. It used to have year-long groups: it tossed aside that idea too, because students work at different paces.

The curriculum is gamified: Sadirac describes it as World of Warcraft, but where dungeons have been replaced it with digital projects. There are modules (tech integration, algorithms, AI) and languages (Python, C, Java, Docker-tech). According to Wired:

...to get projects corrected, students must spend "correction points" - which they earn by correcting someone else's project. If there's a disciplinary breach, they have to spin a wheel to learn their punishment: "Take orders at the coffee machine", or "Clean the windows with a toothbrush". Good behaviour earns "wallet points" which can be spent.

And in a twist on the assumption that all great innovations start in Silicon Valley, École 42 launched in France before California-its campus in Fremont opened last year, three years after the Paris flagship.

A day in the life

On a recent Tuesday, the ground floor of École 42 on Boulevard Bessières in the north of Paris is bustling with students-alone, with headphones, in pairs and groups-hovering around iMacs. Many have colds; it is freezing inside and few have slept properly in the past week.

Downstairs, students are strewn about on air mattresses with sleeping bags, trying to catch a nap; dozens of towels hang on railings along the walls.

Nicolas, 22, has been working for up to 12 hours a day. "The first week I went fast and tried to do too much," he says, sitting at his computer alongside Celeste, 25, who used to work in infographics. "The second week I slowed down and tried to think more about what I was doing," he adds, coughing.

This self-directed approach is the point of the school. I ask Celeste if she wouldn't prefer a teacher, or at least some guidance. "Sometimes I want a teacher so I can get to the solution faster," she says. "But when I get the answer myself its more self-gratifying."

There's a food truck out back, where students gather and smoke cigarettes. Like everything else at the school, this was organized by the students themselves (orders are placed electronically), along with activities like Game of Thrones screenings and more mundane things, like sleeping arrangements. Even the elevator has not escaped the attention of the assembled hackers; it is like a very cramped nightclub, with hip-hop blaring from the speakers and blue and green lights piercing the darkness. "They hacked it last year so you couldn't get to any floor," Sadirac says. "We just fixed it."

Visitors to the school have included everyone from former French president François Hollande ( who walked amidst sleeping students) to PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Evan Spiegel of Snapchat.

Who cares about another coding school?

Schools around the world, from kindergarten up, are scrambling to figure out what skills kids need to thrive in the future. Disagreement abounds about which skills should be prioritized, and how they should be taught, but opinions coalesce around some mix of collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, communication, and initiative (or agency). While many schools incorporate this into legacy teaching systems, few are built with them in mind from the start.

Niel wanted to address two problems: the lack of coding talent in France and the country's entrenched inequality, which precludes poor kids who do not attend the country's Grandes Écoles -elite universities-from the best job opportunities. In addressing those issues, he ended up creating a school built around collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, communication, and agency. In other words, a school for the future.

"Whether you have a criminal record, suck at math, say dumb shit, we don't give a damn," Niel told Venture Beat. "We don't take that into account, we only care about two objective criteria." Those criteria are logic and motivation.

This school is different

When Sadirac describes École 42, it is easy to forget it is a school he is talking about.

"I would mainly say it's not about learning."

"We think we are an art school."

"Knowledge is un-useful, dangerous, and removes your freedom."

All of this must be put in the context of programming, and how information technology has changed. École 42 is not about learning because learning has traditionally been about mastering a body of content, or set of skills.

"We should not try to learn and memorize stuff," Sadirac says. "It's dangerous, it makes you less agile."

Getting information to stick in your brain is complicated and hard. Getting it out, to make way for new way things, can be even harder. Sadirac's previous job, as it happens, involved retraining adults. The biggest impediment to them learning new things was often unlearning what they already knew. Case in point: around 30% of the students in the swimming pool come with coding experience. After one month, those with experience perform no better than those without it.

Around 30% of the students come with coding experience. After one month, they perform no better than those without it.

He considers École 42 an art school because programming is more art than science, he says. Two myths that persist about coding is that you have to be good at math and that it is a solitary endeavor. These myths, he argues, are part of what keeps women away from programming. Only 10% of students at École 42 are women; it has started a program to bring in female high-school students during holidays to teach them coding and dispel these ideas.

Knowledge is "dangerous," Sadirac says, because of the way technology has changed. Companies first applied digital technology to transform existing processes, which required high levels of organization and knowledge, but not a lot of creativity. Today, as companies reinvent themselves around everything digital, it is programming that reinvents processes. That requires people to work together and think broadly about how to solve real-world problems.

How it all began

Before École 42, Sadirac founded Epitech, one of France's leading programming schools. A foundation approached the school and asked if it would teach coding in some poor areas of Paris.

One of the students from the coding program ended up at Free, Niel's internet service provider, which Sadirac says is known for being extremely intellectually demanding. The woman wowed everyone and Niel asked her where she went to school. "I was selling hamsters two years ago," she said. He recognized that too many people were kept from programming because they weren't born into the right families. Indeed, according to the OECD, French students report some of the lowest levels of belonging in the developed world, thanks to a highly stratified education system.

He teamed up with Sadirac to build École 42.

École 42 is one of many innovative institutions cropping up around the world. In the US, there's Coursera, Udacity, and Udemy; China has 17zuoye; and the Minerva Project, a highly selective university, educates kids around the world.

One question, of course, is whether these new models can scale.

If Niel he can make the École 42 model work in the US-his goal is for the Silicon Valley campus to take in 10,000 students-he will consider opening a branch in China. He told Quartz it's scalable because it's a non-profit; he also said starting a school was less stressful than a business, because it is a non-profit.

Other outposts of 42 have cropped up around the world independently, in Romania, South Africa, Ukraine, and Bulgaria (with two more coming soon in Tunisia and the Netherlands). These schools have to ascribe to the philosophy of free tuition and no prior academic requirements, raising enough money to educate more than 150 kids. If they do that, they get access to the school's curriculum.

Running costs for École 42 in Paris are about €7 million a year, and a bit less than that in the US. Niel says he'll foot the bill in Paris for a decade; after that, he's hoping a Mark Zuckerberg-type graduate from the school will take over and pay for things.

So the model is scalable, if someone very rich is behind it.

Kyle Peck, a professor of education and co-director of the Center for Online Innovation in Learning at Penn State, admires École 42, but questions its scope: "They want to compete at the top rather than offering something for everyone." Peck also wonders whether the model would benefit from more coaching or expert input. "It is novices helping novices," he says about the peer-to-peer system. "There's wisdom from experts, and sharing that at appropriate moments" could help optimize learning.

"There is no issue at all for our students to find a job. We could have 10 times more students."

That École 42 is free for those accepted is clearly a plus. But three years is a long time to forego a salary, even if students get internships along the way. In the US, there are around 95 coding boot camps, according to Course Report, where the curriculum is typically much shorter-about 14 weeks-but the cost much higher, at about $14,000. This more traditional model also has its flaws: the report notes that eight coding bootcamps closed this year, including Iron Yard and Dev Bootcamp, both of which had significant financial support. New York Code and Design Academy recently hiked its tuition, but graduates of two of its campuses who don't get jobs after graduation don't have to repay the school; those who get jobs pay 8% of their earnings until they settled the $15,000 tuition bill.

The ultimate gauge of success, of course, is jobs. Niel has been described as a cross between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg à la française. In Paris, he is a household name; École 42 is also well known. As a result, companies know to come looking for talent at the school. "There is no issue at all for our students to find a job," Niel said. "We could have 10 times more students." In fact, employers submit digital projects for the students to complete: the French culture ministry wants ideas about how to build a digital museum; the French government wants advanced thinking around cybersecurity; and PSA, the parent company of Peugeot, has asked students to imagine how self-driving cars will change our lives.

Coming to America

Last year, Niel opened School 42 in Fremont, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. A video on the school's website features a who's who of Silicon Valley saying it is just what's needed, including Spiegel of Snapchat, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square, and Stuart Butterfield of Slack. "It takes away the walls," raved Peter Fenton, a partner at Benchmark Capital. "It allows for mobility for people with aptitude and potential and motivation."

In an interview with Bloomberg's Decrypted, Niel said a major challenge in the US has been that people distrust anything that is free. "When it's free they think there's something behind it; there's a trick," he noted. When École 42 opened, 70,000 kids between the ages of 18 and 30 applied; in the US, it was just a few thousand, Brittany Bir, School 42's COO, told Ars Technica. When I asked Niel how he planned to make deeper inroads, his response was "help us," a plan which somewhat lacks detail.

There are a few factors, beyond a suspicion of free stuff, that is working against School 42 in the US. It is not accredited and can't help students with visas. Students tend to be older and already have university degrees, so the lack of accreditation means they can't put student loans on hold while they're at School 42. (And American graduates carry staggering debt loads.)

The biggest challenge, though, will come when School 42's first crop of graduates try to get jobs. Competition in Silicon Valley is fierce, and Niel does not have the clout he does in France, where he is singlehandedly putting Paris on the map as a global tech hub.

But for thousands of young people who have limited options, School 42 offers a wealth of opportunity: an education, a community, and real-life skills that are in high demand among employers.

Back in France, Sébastien Faucher, 25, dropped out of high school and worked in factories around Limoges, earning about €1,100 a month. "My life status was not that good," he said, smoking a Camel, draped in an oversized parka in Paris in July. He came to the swimming pool in hopes of gaining a place at École 42 as a springboard to his dream career: video-game designer.

It has not been easy. "I wanted to surrender two days ago," he said. "I cried and cried and cried." He even went to the train station with a friend, and bought a ticket. But then he realized, "When will I have this chance again?" He went back, and got to work.

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A free, teacher-less university in France is schooling thousands of future-proof programmers

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Paris When you walk into École 42, a teacher-less coding school in Paris, a few things leap out at you: a killer collection of provocative street art, including an illustrated condom machine at the front desk; iMacs as far as the eye can see; and a palpable buzz from the roughly 1,000 students bustling around the building.

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High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University

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High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University

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Like most other American high school students, Garret Morgan had it drummed into him constantly: Go to college. Get a bachelor's degree.

"All through my life it was, 'if you don't go to college you're going to end up on the streets,' " Morgan said. "Everybody's so gung-ho about going to college."

So he tried it for a while. Then he quit and started training as an ironworker, which is what he is doing on a weekday morning in a nondescript high-ceilinged building with a concrete floor in an industrial park near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Email us at npred@npr.org.

Morgan and several other men and women are dressed in work boots, hard hats and Carhartt's, clipped to safety harnesses with heavy wrenches hanging from their belts. They're being timed as they wrestle 600-pound I-beams into place.

Seattle is a forest of construction cranes, and employers are clamoring for skilled ironworkers. Morgan, who is 20, is already working on a job site when he isn't at the Pacific Northwest Ironworkers shop. He gets benefits, including a pension, from employers at the job sites where he is training. And he is earning $28.36 an hour, or more than $50,000 a year, which is almost certain to steadily increase.

Some 30 million jobs in the United States that pay an average of $55,000 per year don't require bachelor's degrees.

As for his friends from high school, "they're still in college," he said with a wry grin. "Someday maybe they'll make as much as me."
Raising alarms
While a shortage of workers is pushing wages higher in the skilled trades, the financial return from a bachelor's degree is softening, even as the price - and the average debt into which it plunges students - keeps going up.

But high school graduates have been so effectively encouraged to get a bachelor's that high-paid jobs requiring shorter and less expensive training are going unfilled. This affects those students and also poses a real threat to the economy.

"Parents want success for their kids," said Mike Clifton, who teaches machining at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, about 20 miles from Seattle. "They get stuck on [four-year bachelor's degrees], and they're not seeing the shortage there is in tradespeople until they hire a plumber and have to write a check."

In a new report, the Washington State Auditor found that good jobs in the skilled trades are going begging because students are being almost universally steered to bachelor's degrees.

Among other things, the Washington auditor recommended that career guidance - including choices that require less than four years in college - start as early as the seventh grade.

"There is an emphasis on the four-year university track" in high schools, said Chris Cortines, who co-authored the report. Yet, nationwide, three out of 10 high school grads who go to four-year public universities haven't earned degrees within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. At four-year private colleges, that number is more than 1 in 5.

"Being more aware of other types of options may be exactly what they need," Cortines said. In spite of a perception "that college is the sole path for everybody," he said, "when you look at the types of wages that apprenticeships and other career areas pay and the fact that you do not pay four years of tuition and you're paid while you learn, these other paths really need some additional consideration."

And it's not just in Washington state.

"Parents want success for their kids. They get stuck on [four-year bachelor's degrees], and they're not seeing the shortage there is in tradespeople until they hire a plumber and have to write a check.

Seventy-percent of construction companies nationwide are having trouble finding qualified workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of America; in Washington, the proportion is 80 percent.

There are already more trade jobs like carpentry, electrical, plumbing, sheet-metal work and pipe-fitting than Washingtonians to fill them, the state auditor reports. Many pay more than the state's average annual wage of $54,000.

Construction, along with health care and personal care, will account for one-third of all new jobs through 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There will also be a need for new plumbers and new electricians. And, as politicians debate a massive overhaul of the nation's roads, bridges and airports, the U.S. Department of Education reports that there will be 68 percent more job openings in infrastructure-related fields in the next five years than there are people training to fill them.

"The economy is definitely pushing this issue to the forefront," said Amy Morrison Goings, president of the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, which educates students in these fields. "There isn't a day that goes by that a business doesn't contact the college and ask the faculty who's ready to go to work."

In all, some 30 million jobs in the United States that pay an average of $55,000 per year don't require bachelor's degrees, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.

Yet the march to bachelor's degrees continues. And while people who get them are more likely to be employed and make more money than those who don't, that premium appears to be softening; their median earnings were lower in 2015, when adjusted for inflation, than in 2010.

"There's that perception of the bachelor's degree being the American dream, the best bang for your buck," said Kate Blosveren Kreamer, deputy executive director of Advance CTE, an association of state officials who work in career and technical education. "The challenge is that in many cases it's become the fallback. People are going to college without a plan, without a career in mind, because the mindset in high school is just, 'Go to college.' "

It's not that finding a job in the trades, or even manufacturing, means needing no education after high school. Most regulators and employers require certificates, certifications or associate degrees. But those cost less and take less time than earning a bachelor's degree. Tuition and fees for in-state students to attend a community or technical college in Washington State, for example, come to less than half the cost of a four-year public university, the state auditor points out, and less than a tenth of the price of attending a private four-year college.

People with career and technical educations are also more likely to be employed than their counterparts with academic credentials, the U.S. Department of Education reports, and significantly more likely to be working in their fields of study.

Young people don't seem to be getting that message. The proportion of high school students who earned three or more credits in occupational education - typically an indication that they're interested in careers in the skilled trades - has fallen from 1 in 4 in 1990 to 1 in 5 now, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Washington is not the only state devoting attention to this. California is spending $200 million to improve the delivery of career and technical education. Iowa community colleges and businesses are collaborating to increase the number of "work-related learning opportunities," including apprenticeships, job shadowing and internships. Tennessee has made its technical colleges free.

So severe are looming shortages of workers in the skilled trades in Michigan that Gov. Rick Snyder in February announced a $100 million proposal he likens to the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II.

At the federal level, there is bipartisan support for making Pell grants available for short-term job-training courses and not just university tuition. The Trump administration supports the idea.

For all the promises to improve vocational education, however, a principal federal source of money for it, called Tech-Prep, hasn't been funded since 2011. A quarter of states last year reduced their own funding for postsecondary career and technical education, according to the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education.
The branding issue
Money isn't the only issue, advocates for career and technical education say. An even bigger challenge is convincing parents that it leads to good jobs.

"They remember 'voc-ed' from when they were in high school, which is not necessarily what they aspire to for their own kids," Kreamer said.

The parents "are definitely harder to convince because there is that stigma of the six-pack-totin' ironworker," said Greg Christiansen, who runs the ironworkers training program. Added Kairie Pierce, apprenticeship and college director for the Washington State Labor Council of the AFL-CIO: "It sort of has this connotation of being a dirty job. 'It's hard work - I want something better for my son or daughter.' "

Of the $200 million that California is spending on vocational education, $6 million is going into a campaign to improve the way people regard it. The Lake Washington Institute of Technology changed its name from Lake Washington Technical College, said Goings, its president, to avoid being stereotyped as a vocational school.

These perceptions fuel the worry that, if students are urged as early as the seventh grade to consider the trades, then low-income, first-generation and ethnic and racial minority high school students will be channeled into blue-collar jobs while wealthier and white classmates are pushed by their parents to get bachelor's degrees.

"When CTE was vocational education, part of the reason we had a real disinvestment from the system was because we were tracking low-income and minority kids into these pathways," Kreamer said. "There is this tension between, do you want to focus on the people who would get the most benefit from these programs, and - is that tracking?"

In a quest for prestige and rankings, and to bolster real-estate values, high schools also like to emphasize the number of their graduates who go on to four-year colleges and universities.

Jessica Bruce followed that path, enrolling in community college after high school for one main reason: because she was recruited to play fast-pitch softball. "I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life," she said.

Now, she's an apprentice ironworker, making $32.42 an hour, or more than $60,000 a year, while continuing her training. At 5-foot-2, "I can run with the big boys," she said, laughing.

As for whether anyone looks down on her for not having a bachelor's degree, Bruce doesn't particularly care.

"The misconception," she said, "is that we don't make as much money."

And then she laughed again.

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High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University

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Huge shortages loom in the skilled trades, which require less - and cheaper - training. Should that make students rethink the four-year degree?

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Facing Segregated Schools, Parents Took Integration Into Their Own Hands. It’s Working.

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Facing Segregated Schools, Parents Took Integration Into Their Own Hands. It’s Working.

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Changes to middle school enrollment in parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan could force City Hall to take action on school segregation.

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A seventh grade social studies class at M.S. 51 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, last year. The popular school will become more economically and academically diverse this fall. Credit Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times

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For months, in two of New York City's most politically progressive neighborhoods, parents debated what to do about their deeply segregated schools. Now, after adopting a series of initiatives last year following many spirited and emotionally charged discussions, these neighborhoods are starting to see swift changes in enrollment, according to city data released on Monday.

Several schools in districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn will be more racially and socioeconomically diverse on the first day of school this fall than they are today as a result of these new measures. And the apparent success these districts are seeing could prompt other neighborhoods to consider their own diversity initiatives.

Also, the strategies parents implemented, which included setting new enrollment rules and eliminating using academic screens to sort students for admission, could compel City Hall to take more forceful action to integrate one of the nation's most segregated school systems.

"Part of why we did this is we felt very strongly that you couldn't improve just one school," said Kristen Berger, who helped create the plan for Manhattan's District 3, which includes the Upper West Side and Harlem. "That's not very useful. It's really a system. We really wanted to see movement at high- and low-demand schools."

Parents who were frustrated with the segregated state of their local schools - and with the city's reluctance to adopt measures to integrate the system as a whole - took matters into their own hands last year by drafting proposals that City Hall eventually approved.

As a result, in District 3 and District 15, most of the popular, high-performing, and largely white, middle schools will take on more vulnerable and diverse students. Also, more high-achieving children will enroll at low-performing schools that have typically been shunned by some middle class parents.

Though the new enrollment figures generally meet projections set by the city, much is still unknown about how the new system will work once in place. The mostly white parents who have been critical of the plans have said they are concerned about how struggling students will fare in the same classes as students with higher test scores and grades.

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Families last year attended a meeting about school integration plans in District 3. Hearings about the plan were often highly emotional. Credit Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

At M.S. 51 in Park Slope, the popular middle school where Mayor Bill de Blasio sent his two children, the percentage of students who are poor, learning English or homeless will jump from 33 percent to 57 percent this fall.

In some ways, M.S. 51 is a test case for the neighborhood's entire integration plan, which has been heralded by supporters of integration as one of the most substantial changes any district has made recently to encourage diversity.

District 15 includes mostly white and middle class schools in Park Slope, as well as schools with large Hispanic populations in Sunset Park and schools with mostly black students in Red Hook. Students will now be admitted into middle schools according to a lottery, and each school has to set aside about half of its seats for students who are low-income, homeless or learning English.

"Children thrive in classroom environments that are filled with the rich diversity that is the hallmark of our city," said Anita Skop, District 15's superintendent.

For years, the district used a competitive admissions process that ranked students based on test scores and attendance rates, giving rise to segregated schools even in a racially and socioeconomically mixed district.

Some local middle schools that have consistently shouldered the largest number of vulnerable students will have more diverse student populations starting this fall: 91 percent of students admitted to I.S. 136 in Sunset Park last year were poor, homeless or learning English. This year, that number will drop to 67 percent.

Mr. de Blasio and schools chancellor Richard A. Carranza have said they consider District 15 a model for grass-roots integration efforts. The city had relatively little involvement in the design of the plan, and the mayor's role was limited to approving the final proposal during a celebratory news conference last September.

Mr. de Blasio's administration has faced criticism from advocates who believe the city has been too timid - and too reliant on parents in a handful of the city's 32 school districts - in creating citywide integration policy. The mayor has said he wants families to lead the way, while the chancellor has vowed to create broader policy, but has not yet followed through on that promise.

"Districts 3 and 15 are showing how we can have the important conversations and take bold action on this issue," Mr. Carranza said on Monday.

Across the city from Park Slope, middle schools in northern Manhattan will also see significant change in the new school year.

At Booker T. Washington - a high-performing, mostly white middle school on the Upper West Side that feeds a large share of it students into the city's specialized high schools - the percentage of students who are both low-income and struggling academically will nearly double from 10 percent to 18 percent.

Under District 3's new plan, middle schools must reserve a quarter of their seats for low-income students who have low grades and low test scores. Previously, many of the highest-performing students were concentrated in the most popular middle schools, which were also attended largely by middle class and white children.

As in District 15, some of the middle schools in District 3 that have long educated the highest share of low-income and academically struggling students will be soon to home to more economically and academically diverse classrooms.

At P.S. 180 in Harlem, for example, the current student body is nearly 70 percent poor and low-performing; that percentage will drop to 40 percent when school opens this fall.

Still, Ms. Berger said, "the work is not done. We know it's not just about admissions, it's about the students' experience in the schools."

Eliza Shapiro is a reporter covering New York City education. She joined The Times in 2018. Eliza grew up in New York City and attended public and private schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn. @elizashapiro

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Parents' Plan Hits Goal Of Integrating Schools. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Facing Segregated Schools, Parents Took Integration Into Their Own Hands. It's Working.

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Changes to middle school enrollment in parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan could force City Hall to take action on school segregation. [What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox .] For months, in two of New York City's most politically progressive neighborhoods, parents debated what to do about their deeply segregated schools.

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This Is What a Student-Designed School Looks Like

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This Is What a Student-Designed School Looks Like

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As the adviser, Powell checked in with the group every morning; he also offered logistical support and helped the students locate resources. Three other faculty members - a science teacher, a math teacher and a social science teacher - served as an advisory committee, meeting with the students for one period a day to help them in whatever way was needed, such as to talk through some of the more complex ideas presented in a research book. The students also consulted other teachers and outside experts as needed. When members of the community were asked to share their knowledge, "the vast majority of the time, they came running," Powell says.
CHALLENGES ALONG THE WAY
The program encountered some bumps. "We struggled with how to do peer-to-peer constructive criticism," Powell says. "It's a bit different in a classroom, where there's a teacher setting boundaries and helping create structure. They found doing that with peers challenging. But that was a big part of the program-they had to be accountable for what they were doing. ... They're teens, so to think that at that age they will always make good choices and manage their time well is not realistic. Even adults aren't like that."

It was also difficult for some other faculty members to accept that students were earning credit for such an amorphous undertaking. So the group tried to be transparent and made their final presentations - which ran the gamut from performances to cooking a large meal - open to the public.

At the end of the semester, "everyone was satisfied - the parents, the students, and the school," Powell says. The project's " White Paper " notes that parents "were very aware of what was going on in the program because the kids were talking about school at home much more than they ever had in the past."

"There were so many moments where you could see students being inspired," Powell says. "And they learned that with that much control comes a great deal of responsibility, to manage time and be accountable."

The school chose to continue the program, which runs for one semester each year and involves nine to 12 students who receive credit and a pass/fail. "It was really risky, because we didn't know how colleges would interpret this on a transcript," Powell says. "But so far we've had only an overwhelmingly positive response," including from highly selective colleges, such as Oxford and Williams, that have accepted graduates.

Nevertheless, not a lot of students apply to participate in the project. "They know it involves more work [than taking regular classes] and that they have to push themselves to do it," says science teacher Daniel Gray, who served as the group's primary adviser this year. (He also had prior experience with this type of model-he had studied democratic education and then helped introduce some of those principles to a public middle school.)

Most high school students are neither interested nor ready for such an experience, he says. But he adds: "I think that if they had been given progressively more responsibility over the years, they would be ready. My seventh- and eighth-graders, after a year or two, they got it, and they were more mature than you would expect them to be at that age."
APPLYING LESSONS LEARNED
Although some teachers at Monument Mountain remain skeptical, the majority of them now support the program. Some have even copied elements of it, for example letting English students choose which books to read. It has also spawned "positive" discussions about the most appropriate role for teachers, Powell says.

There have been a number of refinements over the years. One has been to hold the program in the spring, to avoid a sudden and tough transition back to taking regular classes where students can no longer control what they're learning. And the number of faculty assigned to the project was reduced to three and then (for scheduling reasons) two. Each group has also introduced its own twist - this year the students had even more leeway and no subject-area requirements. The constants have been the weekly research question, the books component, and the individual endeavor, which has ranged from vocational pursuits such as building a kayak, to artistic tasks such as writing a novel, to scientific explorations such as examining how Western and Eastern medicine deal differently with Lyme disease.

Securing assistance from teachers sometimes proved challenging. "It's something most students aren't used to doing," says Logan Malik, a just-graduated senior who organized the program this year. "Instead of a teacher telling you what to do, you're telling the teacher what you're learning, what you want information on, and when you want to meet. And then they would have to do some prep." Nevertheless, "teachers were very willing to help us, even if it was on their own time." (The students also served as "a first-grade support group for each other," Gray says.)

Although he's heading to college to study pre-med, Logan's individual endeavor this spring was to learn classical guitar. He watched a YouTube tutorial to learn the proper fingering and then practiced about four hours a day. He says he would never have been able to dive into the activity like this if he'd continued with his rigorous course load, and learning it over a summer wouldn't have been as productive without a group and some structure. The Independent Project work kept him busy, he says, "but the busy-ness was easier to get through, compared to slaving through something you don't want to be doing and don't value as much."

The stress was also less, because the evaluations (other than the final pass/fail) were formative rather than summative - intended not to judge, but to help students improve their work.

It was challenging sometimes to stay on task to meet deadlines that were not enforced by authorities, Malik says, "but we did well overall." The students tried to be flexible and fair, and to account for the natural ebb and flow in people's attention and motivation levels, as well as unexpected complications. Extensions were granted to students who asked for more time to research a question. "Once the person was given an extra week, they felt they needed to do more, and they worked hard," Malik notes. Other times individuals were given a pass to give them a chance to get back on track. In the past, when tensions have arisen or the group's energy has seemed particularly low, the group has literally taken a hike, while discussing their goals and potential improvements to the program.

Malik enjoyed many of his regular classes and sees this program as a complement rather than a complete replacement for them. "For a lot of subjects, like chemistry, it's good to be taught by someone, so the structure of the class helps. And in social science, it's good to be introduced to ideas by someone who understands those ideas really well." But The Independent Project offers benefits that aren't available in an adult-led classroom, he adds. "It really establishes an idea of what self-motivation is. There is critiquing, but it all comes back to you. That's really valuable."
CHANGES IN STUDENTS
Students who have gone through the program ask more questions and have a greater awareness of how to answer them; construct their questions more carefully; became more thoughtful in the way they consider ideas and evaluate sources; and became better at managing their time.

The "White Paper" also notes that the project instills a "sense of ownership of their education has stayed with the students long after the program ended. Although some students have continued to struggle academically, feedback from parents has suggested that they are pursuing more interests outside of school than they were before The Independent Project."

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It continues: "That is not to say no one will fail; any program or system will contain failure. In fact, in the pilot of the Independent Project one student struggled to complete the work, and did not receive full credit for the program ... The goal, then, is to not make The Independent Project so that no one fails, but to make it so fewer people fail than in the current system, and to make success in The Independent Project carry more intellectual meaning than success often does in the current system."

The program doesn't require a lot of additional resources, and other public schools have visited Monument Valley to find out how to replicate it. (A professional filmmaker has also produced a video about it.) Powell says it requires administrators who are open to focusing education on students, rather than teachers or a curriculum. But he offers a caution: "Because the focus is on the student, that's where you need to start. This came from a student and was pushed by him, through all the red tape. A program like this probably won't be terribly successful if it's teacher-driven. If a group of adults want to replicate this, ... I would have conversations with the students about it, and see how they respond and where they take it. If students are interested in the concept, it will guide itself."

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This Is What a Student-Designed School Looks Like

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As the adviser, Powell checked in with the group every morning; he also offered logistical support and helped the students locate resources. Three other faculty members - a science teacher, a math teacher and a social science teacher - served as an advisory committee, meeting with the students for one period a day to help them in whatever way was needed, such as to talk through some of the more complex ideas presented in a research book.

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Helping the Poor in Education: The Power of a Simple Nudge

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Helping the Poor in Education: The Power of a Simple Nudge

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Economic View

Image

Credit Credit Sam Kalda

There are enormous inequalities in education in the United States. A child born into a poor family has only a 9 percent chance of getting a college degree, but the odds are 54 percent for a child in a high-income family. These gaps open early, with poor children less prepared than their kindergarten classmates.

How can we close these gaps? Contentious, ambitious reforms of the education system crowd the headlines: the Common Core, the elimination of teacher tenure, charter schools. The debate is heated and sometimes impolite (a recent book about education is called " The Teacher Wars ").

Yet as these debates rage, researchers have been quietly finding small, effective ways to improve education. They have identified behavioral " nudges " that prod students and their families to take small steps that can make big differences in learning. These measures are cheap, so schools or nonprofits could use them immediately.

Let's start with college. At every step of the way, low-income students are more likely to stumble on the path to higher education. Even the summer after high school is a perilous time, with 20 percent of those who plan to attend college not actually enrolling - a phenomenon known as " summer melt." Bureaucratic barriers, like the labyrinthine process of applying for financial aid, explain some of the drop-off.

While they were graduate students at Harvard, two young professors designed and tested a program to help students stick to their college plans. Benjamin L. Castleman, now at the University of Virginia, and Lindsay C. Page, at the University of Pittsburgh, set up a system of automatic, personalized text messages that reminded high school students about their college deadlines. The texts included links to required forms and live counselors.

The result? Students who received the texts were more likely to enroll in college: 70 percent, compared with 63 percent of those who did not get them. Seven percentage points is a big increase in this field, similar to the gains produced by scholarships that cost thousands of dollars. Yet this program cost only $7 per student.

The same researchers also tested a texting program to keep students from dropping out of college. The problem is important because the graduation rate of low-income college students is dismally low; two-thirds leave without a degree. Community college students received texts reminding them to complete their re-enrollment forms, particularly aid applications. Among freshmen who received the texts, 68 percent went on to complete their sophomore year, compared with 54 percent of those who got no nudges. This, too, is a big impact - especially for a program that cost only $5 per student.

We know these programs worked because they were evaluated, like all the innovations cited in this column, using a randomized, controlled trial. Randomized trials, once rare in education research, are increasingly common. The What Works Clearinghouse, which reviews and rates the quality of education research, lists 242 randomized trials.

Students were randomly assigned to receive texts or not receive them. Because the two groups were randomly defined, they were basically indistinguishable at the start of the study. They diverged as the texts altered the behavior of those who got them compared with those who did not.

Text messaging won't help everyone get through college, and cheap interventions won't solve every problem. But they solve some problems for some students, freeing up time and financial resources for those who need other kinds of help.

Some students need personal counseling to help them balance the demands of school, family and work. Unfortunately, counselors are stretched thin, often carrying caseloads of thousands of students.

Two researchers at Stanford University, Eric P. Bettinger and Rachel Baker, analyzed an innovative counseling program in which a professional academic coach calls at-risk students to talk about time management and study skills. The coach might help a student plan how much time to spend on each class in the days approaching finals, for example. The results are impressive, with coached students more likely to stay in college and graduate. This program is more expensive than texting - $500 per student, per semester - but the effects persist for years after the coaching has ended.

Can nudges help younger children? Susanna Loeb and Benjamin N. York, both also at Stanford, developed a literacy program for preschool children in San Francisco. They sent parents texts describing simple activities that develop literacy skills, such as pointing out words that rhyme or start with the same sound. The parents receiving the texts spent more time with their children on these activities and their children were more likely to know the alphabet and the sounds of letters. It cost just a few dollars per family.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and University of Toronto are also working on methods to develop literacy. Ariel Kalil, Susan E. Mayer and Philip Oreopoulos sent families texts with tips about how to read with their preschoolers. The result was that parents spent substantially more time reading with their children.

Researchers are also testing the effect of giving parents more information about their children's efforts in school. A school in Los Angeles, in collaboration with Peter Bergman of Columbia University, sent personalized text messages to parents of middle and high school students. The texts told parents when their children did not hand in homework assignments, listing page numbers and specific problems for students to complete. The parents and students responded: Completed homework went up 25 percent and grades and test scores rose. Other forms of communication between the school and parents improved, too, with parents twice as likely to reach out to their children's teachers.

These light nudges can't solve every problem, by a long shot. But at a low cost, they can help many students.

Why aren't schools, districts and states rushing to set up these measures? Maybe because the programs have no natural constituency. They are not labor- or capital-intensive, so they don't create lots of jobs or lucrative contracts. They don't create a big, expensive initiative that a politician can point to in a stump speech. They just do their job, effectively and cheaply.

SUSAN DYNARSKI is a professor of economics, education and public policy at the University of Michigan. She has advised the Obama administration on the findings of her student-aid policy research.

The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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Helping the Poor in Education: The Power of a Simple Nudge

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Economic View There are enormous inequalities in education in the United States. A child born into a poor family has only a 9 percent chance of getting a college degree, but the odds are 54 percent for a child in a high-income family. These gaps open early, with poor children less prepared than their kindergarten classmates.

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America desperately needs to redefine ‘college and career ready’

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America desperately needs to redefine ‘college and career ready’

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Well-intentioned national K-12 education goals are jeopardizing the futures of millions of kids. Our stated goal is making all kids "college and career ready." The reality, though, is that we've turned schools into college prep factories, leaving the vast majority of kids ill-prepared for career or life.

Our society views college as the gateway to the American Dream - something all kids should aspire to. From the words of our presidents to our T-shirts and hats, we equate college attainment with success. The better the college, the better the person. No college degree, and you're a second-class citizen. Reflecting these biases, college readiness now dominates high-school curriculum, K-12 standards, and standard-of- learning assessments.

But here's the problem. The content our kids study to become "college ready" is largely useless in careers, or life. We push them to perform tasks in the curriculum to make it easy to rank order them for college placement.

This all-consuming focus leaves little time for learning the competencies needed for career or citizenship. Even worse, the majority of kids who trust our advice to pursue college are getting disappointing outcomes.

In our science classes, core concepts get lost in a sea of definitions and formulas. Kids study electricity by memorizing Ohm's Law (a staple of AP Physics) without understanding the science. Consider the hapless MIT students who, at their college graduation, couldn't take a lightbulb, wire, and battery and light up the bulb. Huh? What if all kids - not just those in Career/Technical Education - learned electricity by taking apart fuse boxes, helping a master electrician wire a house, and building a wind turbine to produce electricity for the local grid? This learning is valuable to everyone, whether they become master electricians, Ph.D. research scientists, or normal adults coping with home electrical issues.

But hands-on learning doesn't lend itself to standardized testing, and is viewed by academic elites as a grubby, blue-collar distraction. So Ohm's Law it is.

High school math revolves around drilling on the low-level procedures (think factoring polynomials, trig identities, integrals by hand) that permeate the SAT and ACT tests. If we relegated these tasks to a smartphone app, students could learn math with real career value, like statistics, data analytics, estimation, math modeling, algorithm development, financial literacy, social media optimization, and computer programming. Our priorities have consequential career opportunity costs for all kids. And it's tragic when algebra (something few adults ever use) keeps someone from getting their high-school diploma and they end up homeless or in jail.

In English classes, far too much time is spent memorizing the parts of speech, grammar rules, and the terms and techniques for the kinds of "literary analysis" done in college. None of these activities help students to learn to organize their thoughts, write well in a variety of genres, and deliver effective oral presentations. Yet these are the skills that employers tell us are most lacking among young adults.

For much of the last century, college was an affordable path to a good job.

But today's world is different. For every 100 kids who start college, just 25 get degrees and attractive jobs. Some 45 drop out, and another 30 graduate but end up under- or unemployed, reaching the end of the college rainbow only to find a pot of rejection letters and debt. But our unquestioned embrace of colleges has given them carte blanche to jack up tuition for courses stuck in the Dark Ages. Meanwhile, millions of high-quality jobs in our country go unfilled, as our schools churn out "college ready" kids with no employable skills.

Look at Google

Employers are recognizing the disconnect between college and career readiness. Google, for instance, changed its hiring strategies after Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations, analyzed their data and found no correlation between job performance and an employee's GPA, SAT's, or college pedigree. Google now considers an applicant's ability to collaborate and to perform authentic job-related challenges. Now, they hire many new employees who never went to college.

Our education goals have lost touch with what matters most - helping students develop essential skills, competencies, and character traits. It's time to reimagine the goals for U.S. education, and hold all schools - from kindergarten through college - accountable for teaching the skills and nurturing the dispositions most needed for learning, work, and citizenship.

Let's set our overarching goal as producing students who are "life-ready," and treat colleges as one potential means to this end.

Ted Dintersmith has a Ph.D in engineering from Stanford, was a top-ranked venture capitalist, executive produced the acclaimed film "Most Likely To Succeed," and went to all 50 states in the last year advocating for education change. Tony Wagner is an Expert In Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute. They are co-authors of "Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era."

More on college and career:

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America desperately needs to redefine 'college and career ready'

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Well-intentioned national K-12 education goals are jeopardizing the futures of millions of kids. Our stated goal is making all kids "college and career ready." The reality, though, is that we've turned schools into college prep factories, leaving the vast majority of kids ill-prepared for career or life.

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Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap, researchers say

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Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap, researchers say

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Image Source | Getty Images

Additional trade schools, and not four-year college degrees, may be a better bet for U.S. workers, according to new economic research.

The amount of vocational training available relative to the size of a country's manufacturing sector may reduce income inequality, and improve the fortunes of workers earning below the top 10 percent of household incomes, the data show.

"Pushing more students to B.A. granting colleges may no longer be the most efficient way to deal with the challenges caused by the decline in manufacturing employment," wrote Joshua Aizenman, the economics chair at University of Southern California. He did the research with academics at New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington.

And declined it certainly has.

In September 1977, about 18.3 million people, or more than 18 percent of the U.S. labor force, worked in U.S. manufacturing. Forty years later, that number has since slipped to 12.4 million, or less than 8 percent, even as the general U.S. population has surged to 326 million, U.S. Census figures show.
US workers in manufacturing (in thousands) Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
But while one might suspect that fewer workers would mean decreased output, real gross domestic product (GDP) manufacturing has actually risen over the past two decades, leading to a popular conclusion that machines have simply replaced labor in the workplace.
Real GDP: Manufacturing (millions of dollars [chained to 2009]) Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, retrieved from FRED
Also of note: Manufacturing's share of GDP trickled downward, as automation spread and the economy shifted toward service.
Manufacturing share of total GDP *The value added of an industry, also referred to as gross domestic product (GDP)-by-industry, is the contribution of a private industry or government sector to overall GDP. Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, retrieved from FRED
No more 'College Premium'?

It has long been assumed that a college degree leads to higher average income, what some might call the college premium. But even with this hypothetical edge, some students will earn less than average. And they might even lose money if the burden of college debt undermines the income boost that comes with a bachelor's degree.

"There are serious questions about the future trends of the college premium," Aizenman told CNBC in an email. "Providing cheaper and better vocational education and re-training will provide the marginal workers with useful options."

After studying data from the World Wealth and Income Database, OECD and Eurostat, the researchers concluded: "As manufacturing sector becomes more important in a country's income, relatively unskilled laborers benefit from access to vocational education, thereby narrowing the income gap with skilled labor."

To answer how that conclusion can be applied in the U.S. given manufacturing's decline as a percentage of the labor force and share of GDP, the researchers did a case study of manufacturing industries in the U.S. and Germany.
Source: OECD, Aizenman et al.
Manufacturing employment has fallen in both countries, yet in Germany, manufacturing's value added has stayed around 22 percent in the last 20 years.

Of note: The share of workers with upper secondary education in Germany exceeds that of the U.S. by about 15 percent. However, the share of workers with post-high school education in the United States exceeds that of Germany by about 17 percent.

Germany's education system, the researchers said, better fits the needs of modern manufacturing, which requires more upper-secondary and vocationally trained labor.

In the U.S., on the other hand, "there are too many four-year colleges serving too many students, and too few institutions with greater focus on vocational education and training," Aizenman said.

"Chances are that better vocational education access and its quality in the U.S. would increase the income of the workers that are in manufacturing, and probably would reduce the overall income inequality in the US," he added.
Note: Working papers have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

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Researchers explain why trade school, not 4-year college, is a better way to solve the US income gap

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Image Source | Getty Images Additional trade schools, and not four-year college degrees, may be a better bet for U.S. workers, according to new economic research. The amount of vocational training available relative to the size of a country's manufacturing sector may reduce income inequality, and improve the fortunes of workers earning below the top 10 percent of household incomes, the data show.