Bailout frenzy--The REAL capital crisis

I wrote this several weeks ago, after the Wall Street bailout, but thought I'd post it anyway. Guess we know how this turned out....

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Something about this bailout frenzy is beginning to grate.

$700 Billion to bailout Wall Street? I certainly understand the importance of saving jobs and homes. I’m all for that. People are really suffering out there. But when I see articles like this, I wonder, what have we done?

George White writes:

Wall Street banks won't use bailout money for bonuses

After weeks of pressure from politicians about using bailout money to pay out year-end bonuses, Wall Street banks are preparing to tell Congress that they won't use the recent $125 billion government cash infusion for compensation, but only for shoring up their balance sheets and acquisitions. That, however, doesn't mean the estimated $108 billion set aside for bonuses and compensation in 2008 won't be going out though.

According to a Financial Times report the largest nine U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman, Sachs & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley, State Street Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. -- will pay bonuses from company earnings and their existing cash resources, as in prior years.

Whether legislators will see the distinction remains to be seen.

Banks are slowly being put under siege over the issue of their bonus pools, with the leaders from both the House of Representatives and the Senate critical of the banks' intention to hand out billions in bonus money following the passage of the $700 billion bailout package. The FT said that lawyers from the nine banks that received the initial $125 billion of government funds are holding meeting to gameplan a response to the criticism of the bonus pool. Expect to see the financial services sector start to vigorously present its case in coming weeks as a relatively unpopular bailout package and the end of the hotly contested presidential election threatens to turn political pressure into a full-blown PR nightmare for the banks as Congress and the cable networks find themselves with plenty of free time.

Um……WHY ARE WE EVEN DEBATING THIS? If you lose BILLIONS of dollars, so much so that you require a taxpayer financed BAILOUT, why would you even THINK about a bonus?!

But here’s what really grates. Right now the biggest crisis in our country isn’t the financial capital crisis. It is the HUMAN capital crisis. It’s simmering just below the surface; hidden because we are still the wealthiest nation on the planet, but it is a crisis, if left unchecked, that could make the current crisis look relatively mild by comparison.

We have approximately 50 Million students in our schools today. It is the largest and most diverse student population in the history of our nation. But here are some statistics to consider:

For every 100 ninth grader…
68 graduate on time.

Of those, 40 enroll in college…
27 are still in college the following year.

Of those, 18 earn an Associate’s degree within 3 years…
or a Bachelor’s degree within six years.

What this means is that 8 out of 10 of our nation’s ninth grade students will NOT earn an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree.

There numbers are staggering. And just what exactly are we going to do with the 80% who do not obtain college diplomas in a value-driven, knowledge-based global economy? Who is going to hire them? GM, Chrysler or Ford? Don’t think so. They may not even be around next year, and if they are, the workforce will be very different and far more specialized.

Think Bank of America would take some of that bailout money and hire them?

We’ve got to wake up and realize that we are on the verge of creating a functionally illiterate, virtually unemployable permanent underclass. This is not speculation, this is happening right now while we focus on banks and brokerage firms.

But think about all the good we could do if we funneled $700 Billion into our schools instead? Our schools should be models of innovation and 21st century learning, not poorly funded, ill-equipped, barely functioning institutional and instructional relics. A quality education should be the right of every child in this country. But right now, that “right” is largely determined by a child’s zip code. An investment in education is an investment in our future—our collective future. It is something that could yield benefits, from Wall Street to Main Street, for generations.

So while we’re busy throwing around billions of dollars, maybe we could throw a few to our struggling public schools. I mean, God-forbid our bankers have to forego a bonus this year.

How ever would they survive?

From Corporate Counsel to Education Evangelist--One Man's Journey (Part II)

Almost three years ago to the day, I was given a charge.

Do not focus on technology.

Research how children learn. Start there. Understand that. Then talk about how technology can be used to support the unique learning preferences of today’s students, if at all.

So I did that. I spent almost a year doing only that. I started with a question and pushed forward to find an answer. (Please note, I didn't say the answer). I had no guides, no limits, no ideological predispositions. I just wanted to understand how we could break through and meaningfully connect to our kids. I thought if we better understood how to reach our children, then we could better understand how to teach our children and to how build instructional practices around that understanding; instructional practices that could, in theory, impact every child in every school, irrespective of background, race, culture or socioeconomic status.

This much I knew. I knew we had to do something. Because we’re losing so many of our kids. Children who, as so poignantly noted by Jonathan Kazol, "have done nothing wrong" and "have committed no crime." These are children after all. We shouldn’t be losing children. We should be preparing them to take the reins, to carry the torch, to lead, and to participate fully in the promise of the American Dream.

So the first and most important fact to understand about our Department of Education Technology is that it really is an education department. Our guiding vision, then and now, is that we can only meaningfully impact the quality of education in our schools, close achievement gaps and improve educational outcomes by focusing on student learning, not on pushing products. IT firms have been notoriously guilty of foisting hardware and software onto schools and school districts for decades, usually accompanied by grandiose promises of “reform” and “change,” but what has really changed? Are our schools any better? Computers have been physically present in our schools for some time. The student-to-computer ratio has dropped from approximately 19-to-1 in 1992 to a nationwide average of less than 5-to-1 now. e-Rate has made it possible for most schools, even in the poorest districts, to enjoy some Internet connectivity. Despite this, the drop out rate in our 50 largest urban centers hovers around 50%.

What does all of this mean?

It means that it’s not about the technology. Technology is just a tool, and if our teachers don’t know why the tool is there (assuming the tool is actually in the classroom at all) or how the tool can be used to impact student learning, then the tool becomes a toy; yet another expensive distraction that does very little to improve student outcomes or the change quality of education available to our students.

So even though I work for an IT firm, I choose to do something a bit unusual. I do not make a case for more computers.

I make the case for constructivist education.

I make a case for change.

Our White Paper

I make the case in our white paper, “1-to-1, The Smart Technology Services Education Initiative” (1-to-1). 1-to-1 provides a detailed outline of how schools can prepare students today to compete and succeed in the global economy of the 21st century. 1-to-1 challenges schools and policymakers to think beyond the same model of education we’ve employed for decades—quiet, teacher-driven, lecture-based classrooms—and consider a more active, constructivist, student-driven approach. Today’s students need to know how to think critically, apply knowledge in real world contexts, analyze information, comprehend new ideas, communicate, collaborate, solve problems and make decisions. 1-to-1 stresses the need to fully integrate technology into our K-12 and to then use this technology to engage our students in deeper, more meaningful and authentic thinking and learning. To support our case, 1-to-1 provides case studies detailing how a school, schools within a district, a district and a state successfully launched and maintained 1-to-1 initiatives and the educational outcomes from those initiatives.

Our case…

There was a time in this country, romanticized in the novels of Horatio Alger, when vision, thrift, hard work, and not necessarily a formal education or cognitive skills, were considered the keys to success. However, in the age of information technology, the “Digital Age,” dedication, desire and even the best of intentions absent education are simply not enough. In the 21st century, children who cannot read, write, reason or communicate effectively will be virtually unemployable. Children without the critical thinking and cognitive skills required in knowledge-based global economy will be lost.

So what’s the problem?

I think a large part of the problem is that we have the problem all wrong.

As a nation, we want to blame someone, anyone, for the failure of our schools. Bad teachers. Lazy students. Uninvolved parents. The one seeming constant is that we tend to view the education problem as a people problem.

But the education problem is not a people problem.

It is, first and foremost, a pedagogy problem.

ped.da.go.gy:

The art or science of teaching; instructional methods; principles of education; the activity of educating; activities that impart knowledge or skill.

Our current method of teaching—our pedagogy—is based on the 3 R's. Not reading, writing and arithmetic, but RAM, REMEMBER and REGURGITATE. This method of instruction is fine for standardized tests which assess students’ ability to repeat discreet bits of information, but does very little to promote actual comprehension, the deep processing of ideas, higher-order thinking, creativity and actual learning.

What does?

Whether a student’s learning preference is visual or auditory, verbal or physical, social or solitary, we now know that the more a student actually gets to experience, the more that student gets to “connect and experiment” with what they’re trying to understand, the more they actually learn.

This is a fundamental tenant of constructivist learning—that we learn by doing, not through the rote repetition of facts. The word “constructivist” derives from the Latin “con struere,” which means “to arrange or give structure.” In a constructivist classroom, knowledge is not taught, but is "created, discovered and experienced." Teacher “push” gives way to learner “pull” as students are encouraged to communicate, collaborate, ask questions, carry out their own experiments, make their own analogies and come to their own conclusions. The teacher, in turn, no longer acts as the “sage on the stage” but as the “guide on the side”—a mediator—who does not control or direct the learning but facilitates the student’s efforts to construct meaning for themselves.

You see elements of constructivist learning at work in many Pre-K through 3rd grade classrooms. These are generally noisy and active classrooms. Children often sit in groups, collaborate and are generally given the freedom to move around and experiment. And there are two things that are truly noteworthy about school during these Pre-K through 3rd grade years. The first is that you simply don’t see the enormous achievement gaps that exist during later years. Yes, there are some exceptional students and there are some students who fall behind. But the overwhelming majority of students, irrespective of race, background or socioeconomic status, fall within a reasonable median range. The other thing that is truly remarkable about school during these years is that most children actually refer to school as “fun.”

But all that changes in the 4th grade. That’s usually when “real” school begins. That’s when we tell these same active and curious minds to sit down. Go slow. Be quiet. Turn the same page at the same time. Speak when spoken to and repeat exactly what you’ve been told in order to succeed on the test.

And what happens? What are the educational outcomes we see as a result of this shift away from active, hands-on classrooms to classrooms dominated by a stick of chalk, a piece of slate and teacher lectures? We get what educators commonly refer to as the “4th grade slump.” We start to see enormous achieve gaps. We start to see frightening numbers of children being left behind.

So what do we do then? How do we respond?

With more of the same.

Walk into almost any middle school in the country and what will you see? You will see classrooms where students are sitting in single file rows while a teacher lectures from the front of the room. No talking in class, no talking in the halls, no talking except at lunch. You will see students that are not allowed to socialize, get together in groups or just talk. You will see young people being ushered from one place to the next, unsmiling, always under constant visual supervision. You will see places that look and feel more like prisons than places of learning. The most notable characteristic about school at this point is the seeming absence of joy.

And the results are truly devastating.

According to the 2004 U.S. Department of Education national technology report:

By the 4th grade…

• Only 36% of our nation’s students are proficient in math;
• Only 31% are proficient in reading; and
• Only 29% are proficient in science.

By the 8th grade…

• Only 31% of our nation’s students are proficient in reading;
• Only 30% are proficient in math; and
• Only 29% are proficient in science.

By the 12th grade…

• Only 10% of our nation’s Native American students;
• Only 4% of our Hispanic students; and
• Only 3% of our African American students are proficient in math.

So why is a shift to student-driven, constructivist learning so important now? Because results like this suggest that our educational system is not getting better, it is getting worse. Because, to quote Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat,” our world has changed and there is no going back. Because we no longer live in a world that rewards the ability to remember, repeat or perform the same function over and over again (e.g., think of the millions of manufacturing jobs that have been eliminated, automated or shipped overseas). Employers’ do not need a workforce whose collective ability is defined by the ability to do what they’re told or rattle off discreet bits of information. Who cares if our students can recite the capital of every state in the union? Employers need something they can’t get on Google. Today’s students need “21st century skills” for a 21st century world and these skills are simply not developed in lecture-based “ram, remember and regurgitate” classrooms.

What we have right now is a generation of students who are simply checking out, dropping out or just going through the motions. Many “play” school. They do enough to get by; they remember what they need for the test, and they move on. Then we wonder why our educational outcomes at almost every level are so dismal.

So what do we do?

Keep doing what we’re doing?

If we do that, then we’ll keep getting what we’ve got.

And what we’ve got, in one man's humble opinion, is not good enough.

From Corporate Counsel to Education Evangelist--One Man's Journey

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
—Frederick Buechner

I was a corporate lawyer for almost fifteen years. After graduating from Northwestern University School of Law in 1990, I was recruited by a large insurance defense firm in Los Angeles. I had a lovely corner office with a big mahogany desk in a new high rise building on Figueroa Avenue. My office was right down the hall from the managing partner who liked to tell me with genuine enthusiasm, “Mike, you’re going to be a partner at this firm!” That was gratifying.

But I felt strangely disconnected. Every day I drove by a stunning number of poor, addicted and homeless people (one of the unfortunate realities of life in Los Angeles), people who looked like me, people who but for the vagrancies of fate could have been me, and I thought—What am I doing? Making the world safe for insurance companies? It was a strange, surreal existence.

So I returned to Chicago and began working with small to mid-sized, privately-held corporate clients. While the work was intellectually stimulating, what truly motivated me was the sense (or at least the hope) that I was a part of building and sustaining something meaningful; something good. At our core, I think we all want the same thing—to feel relevant—and I hoped I was at least a small part of maintaining and protecting something that created jobs, opportunity, revenue and, yes, relevance.

I felt good about that.

One of the unexpected benefits of serving as corporate counsel for a small to mid-sized company is that I often worked directly with business owners. This was an extraordinary opportunity. Although working in this capacity is not always easy (business owners are often on the razor’s edge; they have to be), the one constant shared by these business owners, and the trait I most admired about all of them (at least when I wasn’t getting yelled at), was the fact that they were, to a person, visionaries and creators. They were the “big picture thinkers” and “meaning makers” referred to by Dan Pink is his ground-breaking book “A Whole New Mind.” (If you haven’t read this book, you should). What inspired me is that these were people who made something. That takes no small amount of moxie and genius.

As I approached my 40th birthday in December of 2005, this kept gnawing at me. I would lie awake at night, stare at the ceiling and think—what have I created? What have I built? How have I, through my industry and hard work, made an impact on the world? Is this world a better place because of me?

I could only say this—I had tried, as best I could, to be a good son, a good student, a good lawyer and a good father. But the question kept coming around—what have I created? I thought, if called to task for my life, if asked to account for how I spent my time and used the gifts I was given, how would I answer? What would I say?

And the more I thought about this, the more I realized that I didn’t like the answer.

At this point, I knew something had to change. I couldn’t do what I had done anymore. I couldn’t just be a guy who “crafted contracts” (another Dan Pink reference). I had to do more. I had to create something; to build something.

I just didn’t know what.

I didn't know how.

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Soon after my 40th birthday, I requested a meeting with Steve Baker, the president of my company, Smart Technology Services. Steve and I have known each other and worked closely together for years so I felt fairly comfortable approaching him with what I suspected would sound like a fairly odd proposal.

I remember sitting in Steve’s office, clearing my throat, and saying something like: “Steve, I don’t want to be just the lawyer anymore.” I told Steve about my desire to build something. To create. I told him about my idea.

Smart Technology Services is an IT support firm. One of our biggest clients is Chicago Public Schools. We provide a host of IT support services for CPS, all of which are critically important, but do not necessarily improve the quality of education itself.

My idea, loose and ill-defined, was that we could help bridge some of the educational and digital divides that existed in our city and our schools if we did a better job of integrating more computers into the classroom. I didn’t really know why this would help bridge anything, I just thought—I use a computer everyday, so does everybody else I know, and maybe if our classrooms looked more like the real world that our schools are trying to prepare these kids for, it might make a difference.

I remember getting about halfway through what must have sounded like a disjointed mess of a proposal before Steve held up his hand and said “Stop Mike.” He looked me in the eye…paused….and said…..

“You’re fired.”

Just kidding.

No, Steve said something that really surprised me. He said, “I don’t want you to worry about putting computers in the classroom.“ He continued: “I want you to start with this—start by understanding how children learn. Start there. Understand that.”

He told me to take as much time as I needed and to write a white paper that focused on how children learn and how we could better engage this generation of students in the process of learning. He told me once I understood that—how children learn—we could then talk about how computers supported those educational needs, if at all.

He ended with this. He told me if we were serious about improving education, and not just pushing hardware and software, we had to begin and end by focusing on education. If we focused on anything other than that, we were no more than “empty vessels” and “product pushers.”

The only guide he gave me was this—he told me about some fascinating research on the benefits of “constructivist education.” But that was it. The scope of the white paper would be mine. The conclusions of the white paper would be mine. The product would be mine. My task, my charge, was to create this white paper that focused on how children learn. Then Steve politely kicked me out of his office. He didn’t want me worrying about the technical stuff. He didn’t want me worrying about computers, cables and connectivity. He didn’t want me to worry about how the company made money or would make money with this. He wanted my singular focus on unlocking one door—how do children learn?

I walked out of Steve’s office and clearly remember looking at my hands.

What have you created?

I would create this. This white paper. I would try and understand how children learn. By starting there, by understanding that, I would the better understand how we could help our children, impact our schools and truly make a difference.

And so began my journey. The most important journey of my life.

A journey that continues to this day.

A journey I intend to share with you.

About this blog

“If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.”
—Booker T. Washington

Dedicated in 1922, the Booker T. Washington Monument,“Lifting the Veil” (pictured above), is located in the center of the institution of higher learning that he helped to found--Tuskegee University. The inscription at the base of the monument reads: “He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry.”

One of Washington’s guiding beliefs was that economic independence was earned through self-help, hard work and access to a quality education. I believe that this belief is as true now as it was then--perhaps more so. As noted by former Harvard University president and now Obama economic advisor Lawrence H. Summers when giving a commencement speech about the importance of education, “A fair chance and an unfettered start in the race of life is at the heart of the American Dream.”

And so it is.

But what does it mean to “lift the veil” of ignorance today?

What does it mean to “progress through education” today?

These are the essential questions that I intend to explore in this blog.

Along the way, I hope to facilitate thought, ideas and discussion. I do not promise answers (in fact, I will probably ask far more questions), but I do have a point of view, a point of view that I look forward to sharing with all of you, wherever you are and whomever you are, as I explore what we must do, individually and institutionally, to lift the veil of ignorance and to prepare this and future generations of students to compete and succeed in the global economy 21st century.