The looming adoption of the Common Core State Standards in 2014 is creating confusion, fear and uncertainty in the educational community. But people in the know are saying, “Relax.” The CCSS are about process — listening, speaking, reading and writing with clarity and knowledge. It is not about covering, ever so lightly, a wide breadth of content. It’s about depth. It is a way of avoiding “The Shallows” as Nicholas Carr so aptly described the dangers of exposure to an infinite amount of content available through the Web without the critical thinking skills needed to discriminate the wheat from the overwhelming chaff. It’s about exposing students to coherent thought.
One of the bright lights illuminating pathways (or “avenues”) through this gloom is Dr. Myra Zarnowski, of the School of Education at Queens College, CUNY. Myra is an expert on children’s nonfiction literature and teaches both undergraduate and graduate students on the value of using high-quality reading material as mentor texts in the classroom. Fiction by great writers has long been required reading in English classes so that students are exposed to the thinking and writing of masters. Myra has the same attitude towards children’s nonfiction. Why should children read banal, watered-down “informational texts” by people who use the topics listed in curriculum guidelines as a book outline when there is rich nonfiction literature out there that communicates the same content in imaginative ways?
The CCSS stress process over content, but since you can’t teach process without content, content is taught along with the thinking about it. Traditionally, high-stakes testing has measured knowledge of content, so it is understandable that educators are on tenterhooks about the new assessment tests that purport to measure the CCSS. I have just sold one of the major test-creating companies three paragraphs from one of my books that will be the text students will have to read and answer questions about. All I can say is that if students have lots of opportunities to read for meaning on many subjects, they will ace the test that has my words in it even if the subject is new to them. Children’s nonfiction literature is written so that the content is, above all, accessible. The more kids read it the better they will do on the tests. Myra contributes her insights in The Uncommon Corps, a group blog written by notable champions of using nonfiction in instruction for children and young adults.
Myra has been supported in her efforts at Queens by the generosity of The Henry and Lottie Burger Children’s Literature Program to benefit children’s learning in a dramatic and groundbreaking way. In the interest of full disclosure, I personally benefitted from their largess last spring when I presented a program to six classes wearing my author’s hat. But the dramatic effects of the program were brought home to me when I recently witnessed the presentation of the distinguished author/illustrator, Rosalyn Schanzer to an audience of 4th and 5th graders from three Queens public schools. Here’s how the program worked:
Several weeks before the author presentation, Myra personally delivered enough copies of Roz’s book “George vs. George: The American Revolution as Seen from Both Sides” for each child in the invited classes with the request that the books be read before meeting the author/illustrator. The children would get to keep the books. Aside from the lively kid-friendly illustrations, this is a history book that humanizes the two protagonists of the American Revolution as men who had a lot in common (both were farmers and hunters who cared about their people) yet were put in positions of leadership with conflicting agendas. In other words, there is some complexity to the issues the led to the American Revolution, and the book unpatronizingly assumes that children can appreciate these complexities.
On the day of the event, Roz told the story of her book with her art brilliantly displayed as a slide show. Her spoken words were different from the words she had written but that only enthralled her audience more because they already knew the story. Roz is a practiced and entertaining storyteller and, at many of her talks, the audience is hearing a story for the first time. But the attention of an audience is always enhanced if it is not coming cold to the subject.
The questions Roz was asked at the end of the program reflected much deeper thinking on the part of the students. Since much of the book includes the real words of participants from diaries and other original source material, one kid wondered how she found this material. Another student asked a question about the art, which gave Roz the opportunity to describe all the travels she did to historic sites to make sure that the art was accurate, even to the buttons on the uniforms of the soldiers. The students were impressed with the amount of work she had put into the book, and asked how long it had taken her (“Two years, working every single day. But it was sooo much fun!”) The subtext of Roz’s presentation was that she loved doing such “cool stuff” every day. This was not lost on the students.
Kathleen Fallon, another Queens education professor had her students attend the program. Their responses to what they witnessed: “Unexpected.” “Very exciting.” “ A revelation.” And they immediately saw the possibilities for themselves as teachers for using such wonderful books in their classrooms. And the engagement of the students with the author is something the Burgers travel from California twice a year to enjoy the students involvement.
The take-away is simple for those of you who are confounded by the prospects of meeting the CCSS: if you want children to think critically, speak well, write with clarity and know how to read to learn, expose them to people who do the same, namely award-winning children’s nonfiction authors. That’s the only way the bar will be raised, which, despite NCLB, the Race to the Top, and now the CCSS, has always been the goal of education.
I recently attended a conference that was a huge culture shock for me. It was the BMO Capital 12th Annual Back to School Education Conference at the Grand Hyatt on 42nd St in NYC. Let me explain: This was my first conference with Wall Street types. I have gone to many education, children’s literature, and library conferences where the dress code is eclectic if not casual and the population is predominately, if not equally, female. I immediately noticed that this conference was overwhelmingly male (maybe 20 percent female) and about 95 percent of the men wore jackets and ties. It brought to mind something a businessman once told me in regard to my college-aged son who was then sporting an anti-tie button. “When he’s invited into the room where the money changes hands, he’ll put on a tie.” The attendees were primarily private equity people, investors looking for opportunities to park their money in the for-profit sector of the education market.
If the dress code was my first and most obvious clue that I was in foreign territory, I soon discerned other differences from my familiar literary and education worlds. People were silent, polite and seemingly attentive at all sessions. There were no rustling of papers, no up-tempo ringtone interruptions, hardly anyone getting up and leaving for a bathroom break. No one, who asked a question, got up on a soapbox; they asked short and intelligent questions, probing for more information. Conversation among attendees had a buttoned-up quality without gesticulating passions surfacing. It was almost as if revealed emotion signaled vulnerability and everyone had his game face on. It reminded me of how I felt when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and made his historic comment about the moment with the same vocal inflections as when he chatted with Mission Control about the readings on his instrument panel. Something momentous was going on under the surface and people were engaged yet dispassionate. And, although I arrived with a slight prejudice that “for-profit” and “education” were antithetical to each other, I decided to stay quiet and really listen. After all, I had come to observe and to learn.
First, I had to get my arms around the notion that education is not a small market. It’s estimated to be worth $1.3 trillion, 7 percent of the GDP, second only to the healthcare market! No wonder it attracted a crowd of money people! It is also highly competitive. Most of the sessions were presented by entrepreneurs who had succeeded in doing well by doing good. Some examples: Renaissance Learning is a resource of data on best practices, taking the guesswork out of finding and using instructional materials, Catapult Learning provides consulting services to close the achievement gap, Educational Services of America is a leading provider of K-12 alternative and special education schools and programs for at-risk students, Achieve3000 is a resource for differentiated instruction. These were just a few of the companies showcased and every one of them, without exception, stressed the importance of providing an excellent product. Their CEOs believe that if schools are going to outsource services like professional development, or if they are independent schools charging parents a hefty tuition, they must deliver what they promise. (Hey, I understand this. After all, I’ve been out there in the freelance world most of my professional life.) In other words, if you want to make money, you must deliver excellence.
The problem, for budding entrepreneurs, is the question, “Assuming I produce excellence — how do I make money with it?” The solution to this problem is not a gimme and it’s not the reverse of the last sentence in the previous paragraph. Just because you’re good, it’s not a given you’ll be rich. (We authors know this better than anyone.) And behind it all is the lurking suspicion that if you are producing something for the public good, like education, connecting money to it somehow makes one’s motives less pure.
No one has grappled with this issue more than Chris Whittle, whose pioneering efforts with Edison Schools spearheaded the charter school movement. And the lesson learned through the proliferation of charter schools is that there is no magic formula for a good school. It takes savvy administrators, talented teachers, best practices support and money. Edison Learning continues as a company with solutions for rescuing failing schools and students. Chris Whittle has most recently set his sights on developing an international company of high-end prep schools called Avenues, designed to be a gold standard in education for the 21st Century. The flagship school opened in NYC this fall.
In my confusion about the good vs. evil of profit in education, I asked Mr. Whittle: Is there antipathy towards entrepreneurs who are looking to make education a for-profit enterprise? If so, how would you address these skeptics? His response was tantamount to, “I’m so glad you asked.” He emailed me a recent document he had written for the American Enterprise Institute entitled “Would Steve Jobs Be a Hero If He Had Built an Education Company Every Bit As Good As Apple?” His arguments are very persuasive: Yes, good companies are in it to make money, but that is not their only raison d’etre. (Look at Apple.) He points out that good companies make money for their share holders by building up the equity of the company, not necessarily by siphoning off profits to pay dividends. No, non-profits are not so pure when it comes to money; not all their resources are channeled into educating their students. (Some of it is used for fund-raising extravaganzas; some goes into pensions plans for faculty.) Given the magnitude of the challenges that face us in educating the world’s children, Whittle is adamant that there is no single solution, no single financing option, and he welcomes all innovative comers.
So I spent a day immersed in another culture and found a lot that resonated with me. Here’s my take-away from my encounter with capitalists and for-profit education: Good ideas attract investors, which brings in capital to develop ideas for the market that might never otherwise see the light of day. Then the consumer gets to choose; some investors will get returns and some will take a loss. That’s the game for the money people and entrepreneurs. And the results will be uncounted contributions to the success of our children and some talented people will be able to earn a living. (This is undoubtedly the initial lesson of econ 101, which I probably took in college but it didn’t sink in.) The business of education is not so different from the publishing industry, the source of my livelihood. The competition is a winnowing process. It is definitely not a get-rich-quick scheme and not for the faint of heart.
