I just read about an interesting new type of education reform legislation. It is called a trigger law. Trigger laws, implemented in several states, including California, allow parents to force schools to reform. In California, they can even be used to take over the school entirely, turning it into a charter school. Typically, it requires a petition signed by more than half of the parents with children in a specific school to activate trigger laws. The goal of these laws is to provide parents with a tool to improve poor schools, even when the government or school board refuses to. In California, there have been several instances where trigger laws were activated, in one case turning the school into a charter school, and in other cases making significant changes to school leadership. There have also been a few cases where trigger laws were not actually activated, but the thread of activation caused the school board to take badly needed action. Of course, not everyone believes these laws to be a good thing. In one case, trigger laws were used to fire a principal, but some critics have claimed that the principal was not at fault for the problems. I want to respond to some of the critical remarks targeted at trigger laws, and I also want to look at some of the implications of trigger laws.
In one of the California cases, a mother involved in intimidating the school district into action said that her child was subject to regular bullying, and school officials ignored her requests for action. In another California case, a school with very poor academic performance was taken over and turned into a charter school. The idea behind these trigger laws is that parents should have some control over the quality of education received by their children. Much of the action taken based on trigger laws has taken places in low income neighborhoods, where parents are often accused of having little involvement with the education of their children. Ironically many critics are attacking these people for their sudden interest in the education of their children (now that they actually have some control over it). A great deal of good has been done with trigger laws, but not everyone agrees that all of the results have been good.
Critics believe that trigger laws will hurt innocent educators who get caught in the crossfire. Some say that the principal who was fired as part of the activation of trigger laws was not responsible for the problem, and was harmed entirely unjustly by trigger laws. Several critics are bothered by how one school district responded to threats of takeover, by funneling funding from other schools in the district to appease the parents. None of these cases are so clear cut that the claims of the critics can be verified, but they certainly do raise concerns about the potential for abuse. Of course, the biggest critic of trigger laws is teacher's unions, and because they have a strong monetary interest in the outcome, it is hard to imagine that they have a stronger interest in the education of the children than parents do.
Here is my take on the problem: The U.S. education system is currently pretty awful. Even our highest performing public schools cannot compete with schools in many other countries. We are so poor at effective teaching that many U.S. high school students would rather drop out than suffer through courses even half as rigorous as found in countries with decent education systems. This is a huge problem, and it is leading the U.S. to being one of the least competitive developed nations in cutting edge technology and science. Something needs to be done. Trigger laws allow parents to have more control over how their children are educated. Clearly, without practically any parental control, our education system is failing. At least trigger laws are allowing us to try something new. Given how bad our education system currently is, it is not likely to make it much worse. Now, I admit that there are concerns with trigger laws, and they may turn out to be a disaster. If they do, then I am all for removing them and trying something else. I am certainly not for removing them as a reaction to one or two situations where their propriety is a little ambiguous. I say let them run their course, then evaluate them and make revisions based on the results.
Perhaps the biggest argument teacher's unions have against trigger laws is that they can be used to fire union members without proving just cause. In the case where the principal was fired, some critics claimed that this person's life was ruined, when there was no evidence she was responsible for the problems the school had. This has led to some less than civil condemnations of trigger laws and parent oversight organizations that may activate them. This is certainly a concern, but is it really justification for cutting parents out of the education of their children? In my opinion, it is not. While educators have a contractual obligation to care about the education of their students, and many do care beyond this obligation, parents have the biggest interest in the education of their children. It is true that parents do not typically know as much about education as trained educators, but most parents can tell if their child's school is doing a poor job. It is a valid concern that parents may use trigger laws to do things that may not help, and this may result in harm to innocent educators. This is certainly a shame, but the cost of not reforming the education system will be far higher than just the occasional unlucky teacher loosing a job unfairly. Teacher's unions have managed to keep even some of the worst teachers in teaching positions, doing untold amounts of harm to innocent students; there needs to be some way of combating this, even if it does occasionally backfire. Every law has its costs. Giving control of education back to parents is worth the cost of occasional harm to a teacher. I see this as a check to the power of school districts and teacher's unions in deciding how to educate children.
One of the cases resulted in what could turn out to be a complete misappropriation of funds. The parents did not actually activate trigger laws, but they threatened to do so. The school in question was failing academically, but it was also allowing bullying to go unchecked. One mother said the school administration was consistently ignoring her complaints about the bullying of her daughter. Along with many other parents, she threatened the school district to activate trigger laws to take over the school and convert it into a charter school. The threat got the attention of the school district, who forced the school to communicate with the parents and address the bullying problem. The district also allocated $300,000 to hire new staff, in an effort to raise the academic performance of the school. Many critics saw the money as a bribe, and even some of the officials involved in creating the trigger laws were disconcerted with the results. The problem with the money is that it has to come from somewhere, and this means that some other schools in the district are being forced to run on lower funding to appease some parents of students at one particular school. This is certainly a concern, and it could even ultimately lead to competition between parent groups for different schools. This may lead to a need for legislation limiting the power of school districts to redistribute finances, but I do not think we need to jump the gun on this. The worst case scenario is that parents from all schools in a district demand additional funding for their schools, with threats to activate trigger laws. This would leave a school district in an impossible situation, where almost no one can be satisfied. I see two solutions to this problem. This first is, let the parents activate trigger laws, turn the schools into charters, and deal with the funding issues directly. Putting the funding issues into the hands of the parents would be an effective teaching opportunity. The second is, the state could provide more funding for the school district. The first is the natural consequence of the problem, and I suspect it would be very rare. Also, I suspect that after the first few instances, it would never happen again, because parents would quickly learn that the funding problem cannot be solved by wresting control of the schools. The second deals with the root of the problem. If all of the schools in a district are performing poorly due to lack of funding, then maybe the district is just not getting enough funding to provide a good education. Yes, it will probably require a tax increase, but if the state cannot provide a sufficient education at the current tax levels, it is probably time to raise taxes (consider this an investment; better educated graduates will generate more tax revenue, potentially allowing tax reductions in the future). While poor financial practices as a response to threats of trigger law activation is a valid concern, it is also likely a problem that will eventually go away as parents involved see the consequences of it.
The last concern I want to discuss is the fear that "parent unions" will pass around petitions for the activation of trigger laws without and discussion of the issues involved. Parent unions are groups of parents that organize, typically without involvement of school officials (in contrast with PTAs), with the goal of encouraging or enforcing reform by leveraging trigger laws. Without the involvement of school officials, it is feared that parents will make and enforce decisions for schools without understanding the issues well. This is also a very valid concern. People have become very complacent about political issues over the last few decades, and will often join movements or sign petitions based on uninformed emotional responses. This is not a problem exclusive to trigger laws. This is a general problem of self obsession in the U.S. Getting rid of good, useful laws that could be accidentally misused is not going to fix the problem. The problem is the people, not the laws. Now, that aside, I suspect that this problem will resolve itself with respect to trigger laws. Right now, trigger laws are very young, and good use of them is not well understood. It is highly likely that over the next few years, we will see some misuses as well as their consequences. As people become more familiar with appropriate and inappropriate uses of trigger laws, instances of misuse will become less and less common. It is very likely that this will evolve into deep dialog on the propriety of any activation of trigger laws long before anyone even starts passing around the petitions. It is also very likely that parent unions will learn to involve school officials in these discussions, to avoid making uninformed decisions that could cause harm.
There are many valid concerns with trigger laws, but none of them seem to be critical. Some may turn out to be too problematic or costly to tolerate. Others will probably go away as we learn from experience. Overall, the goals of trigger law are very good, and trigger laws have the potential to increase freedom and save our failing education system. I believe we need to keep them and deal with the consequences. As we begin to understand them better, we can refine them to reduce potential for abuses and increase the potential for good. While the initial uses of trigger laws will probably involve some poor choices, I think giving parents more control over how their children are educated will ultimately result in more cooperation between educators and parents in the long term. It will probably take some time for this new power balance to stabilize, but I believe it eventually will, for the good of the students and the U.S. education system.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Monday, June 30, 2014
Funding for food?
I do not usually write on policy not directly related to education, but this blog is about education reform, and I have just become aware of some rather absurd funding restrictions that may be harming education.
This article discusses new Federal guidelines on how schools handle food. According to the article, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has started restricting food related school funding for schools that are not regulating not just food offered by the school but also food prepared for students by parents. Now, I do not want to focus on the rather blatant privacy and freedom concerns this brings up, but seriously, what free government thinks they have the right to force schools to regulate food that they have no control over?
There are still three concerns I want to discuss. The first, which has already had some press coverage, is that many students are either getting off of the school lunch program or refusing to eat the healthy food included in compliance with Federal mandate. According to a U.S.A. Today article, $3.8 million in produce is being thrown away annually by students who choose not to eat the mandatory fruit and vegetable servings. They say you can bring the horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Well, the Federal government is forcing schools to waste $3.8 million bringing the metaphorical horses to water, when they know they are not going to drink it (or at least they could ask). No wonder our schools are having funding issues.
That brings up the second concern: Since when is it ethical to base school funding on nutrition? I thought the primary responsibility of schools was education. Admittedly, most of the funding that is restricted by this is funding paying for school lunch programs, but this is still absurd. Instead of wasting government time, effort, and money trying to force schools to worry about things that they really have no business worrying about, maybe the money could be spent teaching children about nutrition better. This makes far better sense, since teaching is what schools are supposed to be spending their effort on anyway.
The third is directly related to the first. Many of the students getting off of the school lunch program in response to this were participants in free lunch programs. These are students that have a difficult time getting sufficient nutrition in the first place. Likewise, students that are staying, but throwing away the less desirable but healthier foods are getting less to eat, because the healthy foods are displacing some of the other foods. This might just sound cruel, but it gets worse. Poorly fed students do not learn as well as students who are getting enough to eat. This Federal mandate is not only interfering with funding, it is interfering with students' ability to learn. I want to stress again, the primary responsibility of schools is education. Now schools are being manipulated into giving nutrition a higher priority than education. No wonder our education system is doing so poorly. Our government has given it so many extra responsibilities that it is surprising it functions at all.
In my opinion, the best way to solve this problem is to increase welfare benefits for families that qualify for free lunch programs, and then do away with school provided lunches altogether. Providing good nutrition is not the responsibility of the education system. Let parents deal with their own responsibilities, but make sure they have the funding to do it. The only role schools should play in nutrition is teaching it. Education is, after all, the reason they were created in this first place.
This article discusses new Federal guidelines on how schools handle food. According to the article, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has started restricting food related school funding for schools that are not regulating not just food offered by the school but also food prepared for students by parents. Now, I do not want to focus on the rather blatant privacy and freedom concerns this brings up, but seriously, what free government thinks they have the right to force schools to regulate food that they have no control over?
There are still three concerns I want to discuss. The first, which has already had some press coverage, is that many students are either getting off of the school lunch program or refusing to eat the healthy food included in compliance with Federal mandate. According to a U.S.A. Today article, $3.8 million in produce is being thrown away annually by students who choose not to eat the mandatory fruit and vegetable servings. They say you can bring the horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Well, the Federal government is forcing schools to waste $3.8 million bringing the metaphorical horses to water, when they know they are not going to drink it (or at least they could ask). No wonder our schools are having funding issues.
That brings up the second concern: Since when is it ethical to base school funding on nutrition? I thought the primary responsibility of schools was education. Admittedly, most of the funding that is restricted by this is funding paying for school lunch programs, but this is still absurd. Instead of wasting government time, effort, and money trying to force schools to worry about things that they really have no business worrying about, maybe the money could be spent teaching children about nutrition better. This makes far better sense, since teaching is what schools are supposed to be spending their effort on anyway.
The third is directly related to the first. Many of the students getting off of the school lunch program in response to this were participants in free lunch programs. These are students that have a difficult time getting sufficient nutrition in the first place. Likewise, students that are staying, but throwing away the less desirable but healthier foods are getting less to eat, because the healthy foods are displacing some of the other foods. This might just sound cruel, but it gets worse. Poorly fed students do not learn as well as students who are getting enough to eat. This Federal mandate is not only interfering with funding, it is interfering with students' ability to learn. I want to stress again, the primary responsibility of schools is education. Now schools are being manipulated into giving nutrition a higher priority than education. No wonder our education system is doing so poorly. Our government has given it so many extra responsibilities that it is surprising it functions at all.
In my opinion, the best way to solve this problem is to increase welfare benefits for families that qualify for free lunch programs, and then do away with school provided lunches altogether. Providing good nutrition is not the responsibility of the education system. Let parents deal with their own responsibilities, but make sure they have the funding to do it. The only role schools should play in nutrition is teaching it. Education is, after all, the reason they were created in this first place.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Active Learning
According to this article, education researcher Scott Freeman and others have found in a major study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, strong evidence that lecture based learning is far less effective than "active learning." Active learning is a learning model where students do most of the work to learn, instead of just listening to lectures and memorizing stuff. In Freeman's classroom, students spend their class time working in small groups, while TAs roam, answering questions as needed. The study found substantial reductions in failure and dropout rates in classes using active learning, compared to similar classes using lecture based learning. According to Carl Wieman, the statistics from the study are probably watered down by classes included in the study that spend most of the time lecturing, with occasional active learning, and the real effect of full active learning is likely far greater.
Looking through all of this stuff, what I see is further evidence supporting a milestone based system where a majority of learning occurs outside of the traditional classroom setting. I still hold to my claim that occasional lectures are a good thing. For instance, a student who does not know where to start or who may have gotten lost in a complex process may benefit dramatically by attending a lecture. In a forum setting it is easy to answer a very specific question that will help some students, without going over the details of a process that other students may find difficult to understand. In a forum setting, some students may feel embarrassed to ask a followup question that the original questioner clearly already understood. A step-by-step lecture will help those students more than an open forum. On the other side, an open forum may give students the opportunity to ask a question then leave, giving students an answer more quickly and giving them more time to learn outside the classroom. Forums also give students the opportunity to ask questions about topics that may not have been covered sufficiently in a lecture. Now, these are both still classroom settings, but the lack of mandatory attendance and separating the more formal lecture style learning from the less formal forum style learning give students far more flexibility in learning. This is important because different people learn better in different settings. The last setting is outside the formal classroom, but is equally important to effective learning.
The "active learning" taking place in Freeman's classroom is the third setting. This can happen inside or outside of the classroom. In my opinion, college age students should be taking responsibility for their own educations, and as such, active learning should not have to take place in a classroom to be effective. That aside, there are several benefits to Freeman's active learning. The first is group collaboration. While I learn extremely well solo, this is a rare gift (maybe sometimes a curse...). Group collaboration, which is not so common in U.S. schools, has been touted as one of the reasons oriental countries have such strong education systems. Students solve problems together, and at the same time teach each other. Also, weaker students can learn problem solving skills from stronger students. The result is students with better understanding of course material, better problem solving skills, and better team work skills (which may not be as important in school, but are essential in most workplaces). The second is working things out for themselves. Again, this is common in oriental schools, where students are often first asked to find the solution to a problem, then presented with the correct solution after struggling through the problem. Now, these are not problems that they have already learned the tools to solve. Imagine a class where the teacher broke the class into groups, then asked each group to figure out the solution to whatever the class was scheduled to learn that day. In Japanese schools, this is common. Students often spend half the class period trying to derive the solution themselves, in small groups. Then, each group shares its works, and the teacher points out mistakes where they exist. After all of the groups have shared, the teacher explains the correct solution and why it works. One major result of this approach is that students have spent enough time on the problem that they have a vested interest in the correct answer by the time it is provided. When the teacher finally provides the answer, the students are ready to learn it and have struggled enough with the problem that they are ready to understand it as well. This improves long term retention and helps students care more about learning. (Psychologically, there is probably also some work/reward chemistry going on in the brain that improves retention.) Third, the less structured approach tends to work better for students that may be slower learners.
The article also mentions several students that were about ready to drop out of their majors when they first took an active learning based class. One biology major even mentioned a time when a teacher asked him to stop asking questions, because they were confusing the other students. Evidently, many STEM classes (this category contains disciplines focused strongly on science, including technology) encourage memorization but discourage questions. They also tend to offer little explanation for the material students are required to memorize. The article points out that that this memorization only attitude that discourages questions seems to be rather anti-science and fits better into the teaching styles of oppressive religions (ok, I added the oppressive part...). It also mentioned that this teaching style pushes curious people, the people who would do best in those disciplines, away. Otherwise stated, the teaching style of most science and tech classes seems to exclude and push away the brightest and most well suited to working in those fields. Active learning might be part of the solution to increasing the labor pool of the industries with the highest demand for labor (these also happen to be the industries with the greatest potential for solving many or our worst problems).
Now, this active learning does not solve all of the problems by itself. The reduced classroom structure may help slower learners have a better chance to keep up, but it does not solve the problem. Some students just cannot gain sufficient understanding in some subjects in a single semester. A C might be a good enough grade to pass, but it does not bode well for the student if the subject becomes an important part of a career. Students that learn slowly need more time to learn. Note that being a slow learner in a subject does not mean the student will be inferior to faster learners once the subject is learned. In fact, slow learners sometimes learn more slowly because they have a higher comprehension, and it takes more time to understand the small details (I am a slower reader than many others I know, but I notice and remember details that very few others do). Likewise, Freeman's active learning approach does nothing for students that are faster learners in some subjects or students that are already proficient in a subject. Several semesters wasted taking classes that are not teaching anything new or that could have easily been completed in a month or two are a travesty. A student with a good grasp on a subject should not be forced to suffer through a semester long recap, just to prove he or she is proficient in that subject. School is for learning, and a school that forces a student to sit through and participate in a class where that student is not learning anything new is not doing its job (and further, if it is charging the student or the government money for the "privilege," it is cheating the student). Active learning is a major improvement on the current system, and it should definitely be part of the replacement, but it is not the final solution to the ideal education system.
Freeman hopes that the study will cause a similar reaction as the 1964 surgeon general's report stating that tobacco use causes cancer. Despite the overwhelming evidence, there are still many teachers and college professors that swear by the lecture teaching method. This study can almost be regarded as proof that lectures are not the idea way to learn. More research needs to be done, to determine the best way to apply active learning techniques, but it seems that the verdict is in for lecture based teaching, and it certainly does not look good. Like tobacco, lecture centered learning needs to be discarded in favor of something better.
Looking through all of this stuff, what I see is further evidence supporting a milestone based system where a majority of learning occurs outside of the traditional classroom setting. I still hold to my claim that occasional lectures are a good thing. For instance, a student who does not know where to start or who may have gotten lost in a complex process may benefit dramatically by attending a lecture. In a forum setting it is easy to answer a very specific question that will help some students, without going over the details of a process that other students may find difficult to understand. In a forum setting, some students may feel embarrassed to ask a followup question that the original questioner clearly already understood. A step-by-step lecture will help those students more than an open forum. On the other side, an open forum may give students the opportunity to ask a question then leave, giving students an answer more quickly and giving them more time to learn outside the classroom. Forums also give students the opportunity to ask questions about topics that may not have been covered sufficiently in a lecture. Now, these are both still classroom settings, but the lack of mandatory attendance and separating the more formal lecture style learning from the less formal forum style learning give students far more flexibility in learning. This is important because different people learn better in different settings. The last setting is outside the formal classroom, but is equally important to effective learning.
The "active learning" taking place in Freeman's classroom is the third setting. This can happen inside or outside of the classroom. In my opinion, college age students should be taking responsibility for their own educations, and as such, active learning should not have to take place in a classroom to be effective. That aside, there are several benefits to Freeman's active learning. The first is group collaboration. While I learn extremely well solo, this is a rare gift (maybe sometimes a curse...). Group collaboration, which is not so common in U.S. schools, has been touted as one of the reasons oriental countries have such strong education systems. Students solve problems together, and at the same time teach each other. Also, weaker students can learn problem solving skills from stronger students. The result is students with better understanding of course material, better problem solving skills, and better team work skills (which may not be as important in school, but are essential in most workplaces). The second is working things out for themselves. Again, this is common in oriental schools, where students are often first asked to find the solution to a problem, then presented with the correct solution after struggling through the problem. Now, these are not problems that they have already learned the tools to solve. Imagine a class where the teacher broke the class into groups, then asked each group to figure out the solution to whatever the class was scheduled to learn that day. In Japanese schools, this is common. Students often spend half the class period trying to derive the solution themselves, in small groups. Then, each group shares its works, and the teacher points out mistakes where they exist. After all of the groups have shared, the teacher explains the correct solution and why it works. One major result of this approach is that students have spent enough time on the problem that they have a vested interest in the correct answer by the time it is provided. When the teacher finally provides the answer, the students are ready to learn it and have struggled enough with the problem that they are ready to understand it as well. This improves long term retention and helps students care more about learning. (Psychologically, there is probably also some work/reward chemistry going on in the brain that improves retention.) Third, the less structured approach tends to work better for students that may be slower learners.
The article also mentions several students that were about ready to drop out of their majors when they first took an active learning based class. One biology major even mentioned a time when a teacher asked him to stop asking questions, because they were confusing the other students. Evidently, many STEM classes (this category contains disciplines focused strongly on science, including technology) encourage memorization but discourage questions. They also tend to offer little explanation for the material students are required to memorize. The article points out that that this memorization only attitude that discourages questions seems to be rather anti-science and fits better into the teaching styles of oppressive religions (ok, I added the oppressive part...). It also mentioned that this teaching style pushes curious people, the people who would do best in those disciplines, away. Otherwise stated, the teaching style of most science and tech classes seems to exclude and push away the brightest and most well suited to working in those fields. Active learning might be part of the solution to increasing the labor pool of the industries with the highest demand for labor (these also happen to be the industries with the greatest potential for solving many or our worst problems).
Now, this active learning does not solve all of the problems by itself. The reduced classroom structure may help slower learners have a better chance to keep up, but it does not solve the problem. Some students just cannot gain sufficient understanding in some subjects in a single semester. A C might be a good enough grade to pass, but it does not bode well for the student if the subject becomes an important part of a career. Students that learn slowly need more time to learn. Note that being a slow learner in a subject does not mean the student will be inferior to faster learners once the subject is learned. In fact, slow learners sometimes learn more slowly because they have a higher comprehension, and it takes more time to understand the small details (I am a slower reader than many others I know, but I notice and remember details that very few others do). Likewise, Freeman's active learning approach does nothing for students that are faster learners in some subjects or students that are already proficient in a subject. Several semesters wasted taking classes that are not teaching anything new or that could have easily been completed in a month or two are a travesty. A student with a good grasp on a subject should not be forced to suffer through a semester long recap, just to prove he or she is proficient in that subject. School is for learning, and a school that forces a student to sit through and participate in a class where that student is not learning anything new is not doing its job (and further, if it is charging the student or the government money for the "privilege," it is cheating the student). Active learning is a major improvement on the current system, and it should definitely be part of the replacement, but it is not the final solution to the ideal education system.
Freeman hopes that the study will cause a similar reaction as the 1964 surgeon general's report stating that tobacco use causes cancer. Despite the overwhelming evidence, there are still many teachers and college professors that swear by the lecture teaching method. This study can almost be regarded as proof that lectures are not the idea way to learn. More research needs to be done, to determine the best way to apply active learning techniques, but it seems that the verdict is in for lecture based teaching, and it certainly does not look good. Like tobacco, lecture centered learning needs to be discarded in favor of something better.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Compentency vs Compliance
This morning I was thinking about the single significant problem with milestone based education. The problem is that milestone based education allows students to work at their own pace and to do things in the order they want to. This is great for effective learning, but in the work place, it works very differently. Now, no one is going to convince me that the current education system is an accurate analog to the work place. Its scheduling system seems to be a lot closer though. (In fact, the workplace is more harsh: Most bosses will not accept late work, and one major mistake can result in being fired.) I can see that people might argue that traditional classroom learning will teach scheduling and responsibility better because of this. That is a lie! Formal classroom learning teaches students to prioritize their time, deciding which classes they should work harder on and which ones they can either afford poor grades in or retake. They also teach that you can just retake hard classes, with a load of easy classes to compensate. This is not any more like the work place than milestone based education, and it certainly does not teach students good time management skills.
So, here is the problem with either approach: In many industries (especially the highest paying ones, like engineering) tasks are handed out on short notice, with short deadlines, and little information. These are typically small tasks that are expected to take from a day to a week. The first problem is prioritization. How much are your current tasks worth, and how are you going to decide how to allocate your time between the tasks? This is exactly as far as classroom learning goes. The second part is, how are you going to get the new task done on time? Now, this is not taught by modern classroom learning, though some students force themselves to learn it. Most students, however, prioritize time over quality, because they can handle getting a B or even a C. In the work place, B level work may be acceptable (you won't be getting the big promotion though), but C level work is not usually acceptable. Milestone based education takes care of this problem. Instead of grading with letter grades, where knowing a measly 70% of the material is acceptable (most majors seem to require C- or better for major related classes), milestones grade pass or fail. The bar can be set at 90%, and because students can try again, all students can try as many times as necessary until they prove proficiency, without the high risk of classroom learning (instead of wasting an entire semester retaking the class, they can spend a week studying the part they missed). This teaches students that low quality work is not acceptable, instead of teaching that meeting deadlines is paramount even if the quality is horrible.
So, the problem is, how do we teach compliance (with deadlines and such) without undermining quality? We could use the oriental approach. In Japan, a C grade is equivalent to our A. To get better than a C, students have to go beyond what is taught. There are a few schools in the U.S. that use this system, but ultimately, it harms the students. Most scholarships are based on average grade. If I was getting a B average at one of these schools, I would be less eligible for scholarships than someone getting an A at another school (an A that is equivalent to a C at my school). This would have to be a global change of all schools in the U.S., and good luck getting even a small portion of U.S. schools to change their grading system. Ironically, a milestone based system can handle this problem quite gracefully.
A milestone based system allows students to study at their own pace. It also allows them to choose when they do milestone evaluations. Each milestone evaluation should be a fairly small assignment, designed to test the student's proficiency in one part of a subject. One milestone for basic math might be addition of one digit numbers. Another might be addition of multi-digit numbers. A milestone for English might be identification of simple word types, where a student would identify if a word is a noun, verb, or adjective. Another might be identifying tense of phrases. The catch is, if this is only as far as educators can see, they will miss one of the most important parts of milestone based education. Milestone tests should be designed to test a small element of the subject, but they do not have to be designed to be short. The smallness of a milestone test should reflect the element it is testing. If a milestone test is testing a student's ability to write an article in a journalism workplace setting, it should be designed to take several hours. Imagine the situation where a writer for a popular news outlet is asked to write an article about some breaking news. The assignment is given at 5 in the evening, it is required to be two pages (on normal paper, single spaced), and it must be done by midnight, so it is ready for the next morning's news. This is a fairly small assignment in the news world. This is not an assignment that is scheduled a month before it is due. It is given several hours before it is due. This is common in the work place. How can we teach students proficiency in this skill? A similar problem related to my major (computer science) is where the boss gives a small assignment that is expected to be finished in a week. Right, is that really small? Yes, in the work place, especially for computer science, a large assignment is one that takes 40 hours a week for at least three people and still takes over a year to complete. Small assignments are ones that take a few months or less, at 40 hours a week, for one person. Similarly, work place assignments are never scheduled so far in advance that it does not take significant work to get them finished on time.
The trick is recognizing the flexibility of milestone based education. While most milestone evaluations will take no more than a few hours, this is not a solid requirement. If a small assignment in journalism is a two page article on breaking news with only 6 hours notice, then this is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Similarly, if writing a six page proposal for using a new technology in one week is a small assignment in industry for computer science, it is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Now, the problem is that these assignments do not come when the employee requests them. They come when they are necessary. They also come when the student has had significant training in the field. Giving serious real life assignments in school in not appropriate when the students do not have significant training. In fact, in traditional education, they do not typically come at all until the student has graduated and found a job. This is something that cannot realistically be taught in a classroom setting, because no teacher can assume that students have the time to complete real work place assignments in the same time expected in the work place. The typical college student spends 60 to 80 hours a week on course work, and this is often lower than acceptable quality work for the work place. Assigning an activity that is as intense as a real work place assignment would be unethical. With a milestone based system, however, the student is not penalized for changing priorities on the fly. This means that a student can do a very intense evaluation, and put off study until the higher priority assignment is finished.
Here is how I suggest this be done: First, workplace simulation milestone evaluations should require that most of the major milestones for that evaluation be completed. So, the journalism one above should require that all English milestones for the major are complete, as well as most of the journalism reporting milestones. Second, the student should be able to schedule a range of time to do the evaluation but should not be able to schedule an exact time. Again, in the work place, the employee does not choose when a project will be assigned. So, the journalism assignment that is given only 6 or 8 hours to complete should be scheduled for a period of two weeks or more. Sometime during this period, a professor should contact the student, notifying them of the exact assignment and the deadline. On the side of the professor, it might look like this: The professor is notified when the student registers for the evaluation. The professor decides when the assignment will be given (this should be unpredictable). The timing should be realistic to what happens in industry. As the time approaches, the professor does a little research to find an appropriate event for the student to report on. When the time comes, the professor contacts the student via an appropriate medium (for this, probably email; some industries might assign something at unusual times, in which case, an employee might be sleeping, so phone would be more appropriate; think about med students). The student is given the topic to report on as well as the deadline. If the student misses the deadline, the evaluation is a failure, and it must be repeated. If the student meets the deadline and the work quality is acceptable, the milestone is completed. For the computer science evaluation mentioned above, the student might be required to schedule a month for the evaluation, since it is a week long assignment. When the time for the assignment comes, the professor would email the student with a very short email (as is common in industry) asking the student to research a technology and write up a proposal for implementing it in a specific application. For instance, the student might be asked to research an automated testing system for web sites and write a proposal for implementing such a system (this is an actual assignment I was given once). The student would be given a week to do the research and finish the proposal. Note that again, the professor would be responsible for finding an appropriate technology for the student to write the proposal on.
So, it turns out that milestone based education can be used to teach things like time management, quality assurance, and quick response to assignments. In fact, it could even be used to teach good estimation skills. In computer science, it is very common for developers to underestimate cost and schedule for a project. Imagine a milestone evaluation deliberately designed to be difficult or impossible to complete in the time given. The student might be expected to notify the professor of the scheduling difficulty before a certain amount of time has elapsed in the project. This could be worked into one of the other longer milestone evaluations, randomly. Another common event in industry is for the requirements of an assignment to change partway through. An evaluation could easily simulate that, without requiring the professor to spend much extra time. It turns out that milestone based education is not just incredibly flexible for the students, but it is also extremely flexible for professors and for education in general. We can teach students things that traditional classroom methods are not capable of teaching and in fact typically teach wrong.
In engineering fields, most employers expect new graduates to take about two years of work experience to become profitable. The reason is that the students learn tons of theory, but almost no practical skills. The theory is very helpful in learning the practical skills, but it still takes about two years in the work place to become truly valuable. One reason for this is that most colleges focus on preparing students for graduate school. Graduate school does not require practical experience. The obvious problem is that new graduates often cost more money than they produce for their first two years. Is it possible to prepare students for industry and graduate school at the same time? At BYU-I, we are actually doing this. All of the computer science and electrical engineering professors have significant industry experience, so they know exactly how things work in industry and what students need to learn to be useful right off the bat. It turns out that application of knowledge really helps with understanding theory, so teaching applications in addition to theory helps the students understand theory at least as good as students from other colleges that teach theory exclusively. It is indeed possible to teach both theory and application in the same time most colleges teach only theory. For bonus points, BYU-I CS and EE graduates have a very easy time getting jobs, because they have portfolios of work done for class projects. Milestone based education can do one step better than this. Even BYU-I students have to learn what is expected in the work place. CS and EE professors frequently mention common expectations in industry, but students do not get to actually learn how to manage those expectations. Some of those can be taught to a limited degree, but with a milestone based education system, we can teach most, if not all, work place skills. Imagine how industry would view a school where the graduates came out capable of being profitable right off the bat. In fact, imagine what other schools would think of a school where graduates coming in for graduate school could produce high quality work on time, every time.
In theory, a well implemented milestone based education system can dramatically reduce the time most students require to become well educated. A well implemented milestone system will also put the burden of learning on the students, which in today's technology driven society is a very important skill for students to learn (the BYU-I CS program puts a lot of emphasis on learning to learn and even includes a mandatory senior project designed to evaluate this skill). These are two major benefits of a milestone based approach. It turns out even the apparent weaknesses of a milestone based approach are not actually weaknesses at all. While a formal classroom based system might appear to teach prioritization, it teaches incorrect prioritization for almost all professions. A milestone based system is flexible enough to allow it to teach any prioritization scheme. Not only is this not a weakness, it is a very valuable strength, because different industries expect different prioritization schemes, and a general milestone based system is flexible enough to teach the appropriate prioritization scheme for each major.
So what this comes down to is, are we trying to teach competency or compliance? The formal classroom education system used in the U.S. seems to be focusing almost entirely on compliance. The system teaches students that the most important skill is getting things done on time, not getting things done to a high degree of quality. In fact, even to get an A, it is permissible to have 7% of answers wrong. If McDonald's found this acceptable, they would have more than 1 in 15 orders incorrect. A 70% success rate (a C-) would result in more than 1 in 4 orders being incorrect. The typical idea people see when they hear of a milestone based education system is that it is totally focused on competency. The idea of a milestone based education system is indeed to focus on competency, but if we treat compliance as just another skill, we can use milestone based education to actually teach compliance. Not only that, but we can teach compliance based on what industry it is needed for. We cannot teach compliance in competency, but we can teach competency in compliance.
It is clear that classroom based learning does not teach compliance well, and by trying, it undermines the teaching of competence. Milestone based learning is a higher system of learning. Instead of trying to do the impossible, at the cost of the necessary, it puts things in the right roles and allows the teaching of skills that most educators do not even realize are skills. I believe it is possible for students to become sufficiently competent in their area of study before they graduate. I think that our schools have a moral obligation to provide education of the necessary quality to accomplish this (given what they charge). Unfortunately, the traditional formal classroom approach to learning is no longer sufficient. We need to switch to a learning model that can keep up with changing society and technology, and milestone based education seems to show more promise than any other option.
So, here is the problem with either approach: In many industries (especially the highest paying ones, like engineering) tasks are handed out on short notice, with short deadlines, and little information. These are typically small tasks that are expected to take from a day to a week. The first problem is prioritization. How much are your current tasks worth, and how are you going to decide how to allocate your time between the tasks? This is exactly as far as classroom learning goes. The second part is, how are you going to get the new task done on time? Now, this is not taught by modern classroom learning, though some students force themselves to learn it. Most students, however, prioritize time over quality, because they can handle getting a B or even a C. In the work place, B level work may be acceptable (you won't be getting the big promotion though), but C level work is not usually acceptable. Milestone based education takes care of this problem. Instead of grading with letter grades, where knowing a measly 70% of the material is acceptable (most majors seem to require C- or better for major related classes), milestones grade pass or fail. The bar can be set at 90%, and because students can try again, all students can try as many times as necessary until they prove proficiency, without the high risk of classroom learning (instead of wasting an entire semester retaking the class, they can spend a week studying the part they missed). This teaches students that low quality work is not acceptable, instead of teaching that meeting deadlines is paramount even if the quality is horrible.
So, the problem is, how do we teach compliance (with deadlines and such) without undermining quality? We could use the oriental approach. In Japan, a C grade is equivalent to our A. To get better than a C, students have to go beyond what is taught. There are a few schools in the U.S. that use this system, but ultimately, it harms the students. Most scholarships are based on average grade. If I was getting a B average at one of these schools, I would be less eligible for scholarships than someone getting an A at another school (an A that is equivalent to a C at my school). This would have to be a global change of all schools in the U.S., and good luck getting even a small portion of U.S. schools to change their grading system. Ironically, a milestone based system can handle this problem quite gracefully.
A milestone based system allows students to study at their own pace. It also allows them to choose when they do milestone evaluations. Each milestone evaluation should be a fairly small assignment, designed to test the student's proficiency in one part of a subject. One milestone for basic math might be addition of one digit numbers. Another might be addition of multi-digit numbers. A milestone for English might be identification of simple word types, where a student would identify if a word is a noun, verb, or adjective. Another might be identifying tense of phrases. The catch is, if this is only as far as educators can see, they will miss one of the most important parts of milestone based education. Milestone tests should be designed to test a small element of the subject, but they do not have to be designed to be short. The smallness of a milestone test should reflect the element it is testing. If a milestone test is testing a student's ability to write an article in a journalism workplace setting, it should be designed to take several hours. Imagine the situation where a writer for a popular news outlet is asked to write an article about some breaking news. The assignment is given at 5 in the evening, it is required to be two pages (on normal paper, single spaced), and it must be done by midnight, so it is ready for the next morning's news. This is a fairly small assignment in the news world. This is not an assignment that is scheduled a month before it is due. It is given several hours before it is due. This is common in the work place. How can we teach students proficiency in this skill? A similar problem related to my major (computer science) is where the boss gives a small assignment that is expected to be finished in a week. Right, is that really small? Yes, in the work place, especially for computer science, a large assignment is one that takes 40 hours a week for at least three people and still takes over a year to complete. Small assignments are ones that take a few months or less, at 40 hours a week, for one person. Similarly, work place assignments are never scheduled so far in advance that it does not take significant work to get them finished on time.
The trick is recognizing the flexibility of milestone based education. While most milestone evaluations will take no more than a few hours, this is not a solid requirement. If a small assignment in journalism is a two page article on breaking news with only 6 hours notice, then this is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Similarly, if writing a six page proposal for using a new technology in one week is a small assignment in industry for computer science, it is reasonable for a milestone evaluation. Now, the problem is that these assignments do not come when the employee requests them. They come when they are necessary. They also come when the student has had significant training in the field. Giving serious real life assignments in school in not appropriate when the students do not have significant training. In fact, in traditional education, they do not typically come at all until the student has graduated and found a job. This is something that cannot realistically be taught in a classroom setting, because no teacher can assume that students have the time to complete real work place assignments in the same time expected in the work place. The typical college student spends 60 to 80 hours a week on course work, and this is often lower than acceptable quality work for the work place. Assigning an activity that is as intense as a real work place assignment would be unethical. With a milestone based system, however, the student is not penalized for changing priorities on the fly. This means that a student can do a very intense evaluation, and put off study until the higher priority assignment is finished.
Here is how I suggest this be done: First, workplace simulation milestone evaluations should require that most of the major milestones for that evaluation be completed. So, the journalism one above should require that all English milestones for the major are complete, as well as most of the journalism reporting milestones. Second, the student should be able to schedule a range of time to do the evaluation but should not be able to schedule an exact time. Again, in the work place, the employee does not choose when a project will be assigned. So, the journalism assignment that is given only 6 or 8 hours to complete should be scheduled for a period of two weeks or more. Sometime during this period, a professor should contact the student, notifying them of the exact assignment and the deadline. On the side of the professor, it might look like this: The professor is notified when the student registers for the evaluation. The professor decides when the assignment will be given (this should be unpredictable). The timing should be realistic to what happens in industry. As the time approaches, the professor does a little research to find an appropriate event for the student to report on. When the time comes, the professor contacts the student via an appropriate medium (for this, probably email; some industries might assign something at unusual times, in which case, an employee might be sleeping, so phone would be more appropriate; think about med students). The student is given the topic to report on as well as the deadline. If the student misses the deadline, the evaluation is a failure, and it must be repeated. If the student meets the deadline and the work quality is acceptable, the milestone is completed. For the computer science evaluation mentioned above, the student might be required to schedule a month for the evaluation, since it is a week long assignment. When the time for the assignment comes, the professor would email the student with a very short email (as is common in industry) asking the student to research a technology and write up a proposal for implementing it in a specific application. For instance, the student might be asked to research an automated testing system for web sites and write a proposal for implementing such a system (this is an actual assignment I was given once). The student would be given a week to do the research and finish the proposal. Note that again, the professor would be responsible for finding an appropriate technology for the student to write the proposal on.
So, it turns out that milestone based education can be used to teach things like time management, quality assurance, and quick response to assignments. In fact, it could even be used to teach good estimation skills. In computer science, it is very common for developers to underestimate cost and schedule for a project. Imagine a milestone evaluation deliberately designed to be difficult or impossible to complete in the time given. The student might be expected to notify the professor of the scheduling difficulty before a certain amount of time has elapsed in the project. This could be worked into one of the other longer milestone evaluations, randomly. Another common event in industry is for the requirements of an assignment to change partway through. An evaluation could easily simulate that, without requiring the professor to spend much extra time. It turns out that milestone based education is not just incredibly flexible for the students, but it is also extremely flexible for professors and for education in general. We can teach students things that traditional classroom methods are not capable of teaching and in fact typically teach wrong.
In engineering fields, most employers expect new graduates to take about two years of work experience to become profitable. The reason is that the students learn tons of theory, but almost no practical skills. The theory is very helpful in learning the practical skills, but it still takes about two years in the work place to become truly valuable. One reason for this is that most colleges focus on preparing students for graduate school. Graduate school does not require practical experience. The obvious problem is that new graduates often cost more money than they produce for their first two years. Is it possible to prepare students for industry and graduate school at the same time? At BYU-I, we are actually doing this. All of the computer science and electrical engineering professors have significant industry experience, so they know exactly how things work in industry and what students need to learn to be useful right off the bat. It turns out that application of knowledge really helps with understanding theory, so teaching applications in addition to theory helps the students understand theory at least as good as students from other colleges that teach theory exclusively. It is indeed possible to teach both theory and application in the same time most colleges teach only theory. For bonus points, BYU-I CS and EE graduates have a very easy time getting jobs, because they have portfolios of work done for class projects. Milestone based education can do one step better than this. Even BYU-I students have to learn what is expected in the work place. CS and EE professors frequently mention common expectations in industry, but students do not get to actually learn how to manage those expectations. Some of those can be taught to a limited degree, but with a milestone based education system, we can teach most, if not all, work place skills. Imagine how industry would view a school where the graduates came out capable of being profitable right off the bat. In fact, imagine what other schools would think of a school where graduates coming in for graduate school could produce high quality work on time, every time.
In theory, a well implemented milestone based education system can dramatically reduce the time most students require to become well educated. A well implemented milestone system will also put the burden of learning on the students, which in today's technology driven society is a very important skill for students to learn (the BYU-I CS program puts a lot of emphasis on learning to learn and even includes a mandatory senior project designed to evaluate this skill). These are two major benefits of a milestone based approach. It turns out even the apparent weaknesses of a milestone based approach are not actually weaknesses at all. While a formal classroom based system might appear to teach prioritization, it teaches incorrect prioritization for almost all professions. A milestone based system is flexible enough to allow it to teach any prioritization scheme. Not only is this not a weakness, it is a very valuable strength, because different industries expect different prioritization schemes, and a general milestone based system is flexible enough to teach the appropriate prioritization scheme for each major.
So what this comes down to is, are we trying to teach competency or compliance? The formal classroom education system used in the U.S. seems to be focusing almost entirely on compliance. The system teaches students that the most important skill is getting things done on time, not getting things done to a high degree of quality. In fact, even to get an A, it is permissible to have 7% of answers wrong. If McDonald's found this acceptable, they would have more than 1 in 15 orders incorrect. A 70% success rate (a C-) would result in more than 1 in 4 orders being incorrect. The typical idea people see when they hear of a milestone based education system is that it is totally focused on competency. The idea of a milestone based education system is indeed to focus on competency, but if we treat compliance as just another skill, we can use milestone based education to actually teach compliance. Not only that, but we can teach compliance based on what industry it is needed for. We cannot teach compliance in competency, but we can teach competency in compliance.
It is clear that classroom based learning does not teach compliance well, and by trying, it undermines the teaching of competence. Milestone based learning is a higher system of learning. Instead of trying to do the impossible, at the cost of the necessary, it puts things in the right roles and allows the teaching of skills that most educators do not even realize are skills. I believe it is possible for students to become sufficiently competent in their area of study before they graduate. I think that our schools have a moral obligation to provide education of the necessary quality to accomplish this (given what they charge). Unfortunately, the traditional formal classroom approach to learning is no longer sufficient. We need to switch to a learning model that can keep up with changing society and technology, and milestone based education seems to show more promise than any other option.
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