70724State of Arizona Education

In itsi July 6th, 2007 edition, the The Business Journal (Phoenix) presented the results of a roundtable of Arizona education industry experts. The Advanced Strategies Center facilitated the roundtable in Scottsdale. Over the past 15 years ASC has become one of Arizona’s best kept secret (www.advancedstrategycenter.com).

The participants were leaders in their organizations and in Arizona: Susan Carlson, Arizona Business and Education Council; George Dean, Urban League; Gypsy Denzine, College of Education NAU; Fred Duval, Arizona Board of Regents; David Garcia, Arizona Education Policy Institute, ASU; Tom Horne, Arizona Department of Education; Charles Jirauch, Arizona Business and Education Council; and Carol Peck, the Rodel Foundation.

With this star power in place, I was surprised that the questions were limited to a situation assessment and the immediate future. I expected that the focus would be on the evolving future with a grand vision developed for Arizona. I know most of the participants and each has a rich vision that leads the work of their organization.

But being a strategic planning professional, I never miss a change to sharpen the situation assessment of the “industry” I hold dear, K-12 education. Here is summary of the questions and answers.

Q: What’s at stake? Quality of life, economy, children’s future, civic, civilized, arts enjoying and demographic society, high paying (quality) jobs, homegrown educated work force, attracting industry, global competition, working smarter in the international value chain, optimism about educating our children and future generations.

Fred Duval, David Garcia and Carol Peck articulated “everything”, “the future of Arizona,” and “can’t afford not to.”

Q. State of education? Top 10% OK, percentage of faltering students growing, atrocious drop out rate, per student funding fluctuates between 47th to 49th, teacher education and leadership needs to improve, quick fixes do not apply, changing a human intensive operation takes a long time, major gaps in between school in funding, quality and student achievement, we do it on the cheap, must have infusion of resources that other states provide, many reforms underway, numbers of poverty and English language Learners (ELL) continue to grow, teacher pay lags,

Q. The positives? Awareness is raising, business and educators are working together, people are asking how they can help, some are making commitments, Governor is focused on education demanding improvement, accountability is growing, partnerships between communityi colleges and universities, excellent leadership in legislative education committees, business is forcing workforce requirements, focus on academic rigor and standards in the classroom, value of education and lifelong learning is being recognized, foundations are funding innovation.

Q. Issues and barriers? Building great new schools but do not fund maintenance and operations, immigrants cannot go to college, a simplistic and wrong view that delays services to ELL student, economic visions cannot be realized without a well funded pipeline to the workforce, our next governor might not focus on education, extreme accountability impedes educators, lack of urgency (Midwest had the rust bowl), not growing higher education fast enough, lack of discussion of the purpose of schools, math, science and many other teacher shortages not being addressed, legislature focused on cutting taxes, new comers and families not concerned with education, and high student mobility.

Q. Attracting Qualified Teachers? Competitive and performance based pay, quality mentors, highly qualified and supporting leaders including school board members, more funding and more access to focused, demanding and high quality professional development, serious incentive packages including higher salaries and housing assistance that matchers their value. Other ideas included flexible schedule with more reflective time and celebrate their worth. The ability to hire outstanding teacher educators in our colleges of education. Higher compensation for high need areas like math and science and lower performing schools. Open up teaching to more than just to the test score.

Q. Skills for Workforce of the Future? Know about technology, literacyi, technical writing, team work, work place ethics and willingness to retrain and embrace life-span learning. Apply learning and thinking skills in work experiences. Self manage, leadership, creativity, critical thinking, communication and to learn and collaborate with others. Write, read and compute is basic but higher skills may be difficult to teach. Academic core subjects in all areas including arts, and large quantities of knowledge to support critical thinking.

Q. Changes in schools to produce work force of tomorrow? Career and Technical Education (CTE) should be more rigorous. Strong classroom-workplace connection with applications in real world situations. Every child reading at grade level. Nurture, celebrate higher math and science expectations. Global issues, international experiences, other cultures and languages.

Q. Technology acumen and readiness of students? Must have high speed internet and computers in schools. Every student must have a computer in the classroom. Teachers need to use technology to deliver instruction. Much more training and professional development of teachers. Colleges must model use of technology for student teachers. Adult guides for students and assure there is technology in the home. Rural and poor schools must not fall behind. A statewide initiative is in place to improve student technology skills. Math, science and reading skills are the biggest challenge. Students must not just learn to use technology but use it to learn.

Q. Needs of vocational careers, technicians of the future? Vocational education and work force requirements is the best articulation in the state. National model in community college-university articulation. More vocational schools statewide with CTE coursework in every high school. Focus on reading and comprehension. Must have core curriculum and hands on learning under expert guidance. Motivate parents to support students and communicate workplace opportunitiesi. Thirty-five CTE areas have Arizona standards and next year assessments will provide certification for job readiness in all areas. Arizona leads in health care fields but not universal technology skills. Must have expectation of skills plus advance education.

Q. AIMS testing support 21st century jobs? AIMS tests mastery of academic standards on reading, writing and math. Need to add science, social studies and the arts. It only tests at the 10th grade level. Political football (passing is almost a given), high time-cost to develop, questions of its value, and its disruption of other needed educational processes. 21st century jobs are not its purpose. Motivation for learning basic skills. Not the right test for work force needs and higher education performance skills. Future is flexibility, AIMS is not flexible. Knowledge tested by a multiple choice format does not prepare a student for the future. It is a better predictor of college success than SAT or ACT. It helps guide teachers in grade level subject areas. Education should teach how to solve problems, not memorize and regurgitate facts.

Q. Education learn from business on data about learning, performance, skills and goals? The type of data collected and used is very different. Learn of importance make decisions with data. Need strong P20 database to track learning and achievement. Business tools that assess employee and unit performance and reasons for failures are not in education. Data standardization could benefit schools. Status quo groups fight data reform, not a problem in business.

Q. English-only law and helping English Language Learners? Immersion is the best way to teach English. ELL has a challenge of narrowing teaching strategies and needs improvement. Provide necessary funding now to help struggling ELL students. Need a child based not political interpretation. English-only law is stupid.

Ted the eD: A good job of raising a broad set of strengths, weaknesses, conflicts and imperatives on the current state of Arizona K-12 education. On the eLearningi dimension there was an acceptance of technology is moving from learning technology to use technology in the workplace to using technology to increase performance in subject areas. Issues of broadbandi internet, computers at home and computers in the classroom were expressed.

I believe we have once more shown that Arizona leadership has a firm understanding of educational issues. Now it is our task to show them how to deal with all of them rapidly and cost effectively with accelerated eLearning adoption.