A double whammy for schools: the result of our financial crisis

Around the country school budgets at the state level are under the knife.  In CA, the budget shortfall has put at jeopardy CTAP (an entire statewide network of professional development) and in one district alone (LAUSD) has caused 3000 education staff members to be released.  If I’m a public school teacher/student in urban CA I’m shakin’ in my booties.

In my home state of Vermont there is all sorts of pressure to cut the biggest slice of the budget pie (education) though nothing better than taking shots at the teacher’s union and administrators whose salaries/benefits account for roughly 70% of the entire budget.  These are all necessary pieces of the conversation, unfortunately there’s another side of the story.  

While pay was taking up a large amount of costs of total school budgets, it was not translating into more $$ for technology/professional development/classroom budgets.  In lieu of more money, some teachers found ways to augment their classrooms with free web-based technology provided by the countless start-ups around the world catering to the education/business world with fancy, easy-t0-use web-based applications.  Teachers, it seems, always are looking for ways to do more with less, unfortunately, it’s looking like some of the freebies so highly touted by bloggers and technologists nationwide are going the way of the dinosaurs.  

The financial crisis is already causing companies providing free services to cut offerings.  The “if you build it they will pay” mentality has hit the brick wall that is financial reality.  Many companies who staked their claim at offering something for free were actually trying to establish their market place through a large virtual land grab: take this free stuff and they hope 1. that they’ll sign up more people than the next guy doing the same thing, 2. that they’ll be able to figure out to make money from you without pissing you off and forcing you to go to the next guy and 3. that if they do offer a paid service it’ll be good enough that you’ll want to (voluntarily) pay them.  The reality is that the real costs of business are growing more and more apparent.  The financial crisis, specifically for these educational service companies, is making the market smaller in some cases (as teachers are forced to re-evaluate paid services) and is forcing them to evaluate the business plan that once incorporated a free version of their service.  What I think is currently happening is that these services are slowly changing their businessdeadcomputerjpg1plans to focus on revenues rather than total userbase (after all 5 paying customers is better for the balance sheet than 1000 free customers which are all liabilities i.e. cost of servers, support, etc.).

Now, you’re probably thinking, but what services have gone away?  Well, the first was as high profile as they get.  Google, at the end of 08 discontinued one of it’s services called Lively (which at least one teacher found valuable to their classroom).  Another service, co.comments ended.  And some other bloggers have picked up on this as well: end of Innocence, death of web2.0.

What’s funny is that this whole scenario is cyclical (talk about deja vu).  Pundits believed the exact same was happening in 2001 after the bubble burst.

what's the point of public education

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, mainly because I see so much inefficiency in education in general.  I work for an online education company (hosting and PD) which makes me privy to a perspective that a lot of people are never forced to have.  

Now, you might be saying “how is it inefficient?” so here are a few ways (off the top of my head).  

  • localism pervades and disrupts otherwise efficient plans – just look at professional development (PD). It’s not just every state that has different standards and bureaucracy–it’s EVERY district!
  • there’s no consistency across districts or states – if you’re a student your educational opportunities are a crap shoot.  They shouldn’t be but they are.  I went to X school with 4 AP courses while my cousins went to Y school with over a dozen.  Is that really fair?
  • The goal of education is not clear cut – the goal of education resides in a crazy grey area, depending on your perspective/position it might be retention, graduation rates, good grades, college acceptance, a job, or simply being able to read.  While encompassing every one of those goals (and more) the purpose of education, and those working to steer it are aligning education through-puts to achieve a specific goal which is not always or consistently aligned with the goals of the student, community, etc.

Which, taking all into account, is both discouraging and frustrating.  

I’m going to work on getting a handle on this.  To do so, I’m going to start by reading this book with a too long URL: Common Sense – A new conversation about public education.  I’ll post/vent again shortly.

Seeing yourself on the web

I’m not that old and I’m not famous.  So to see a video or post I did on the web on someone else’s site is a new sensation.  I stumbled across the Moodle-Experts.com today and found one of my posts quoted and a video I created on youtube when I first started working with Moodle embedded on the home page (I’m not a huge fan of the video as it was also my first experience making a video…I literally turned on CamStudio and some music and then clicked through the slides of the PPT I created.  My video editing/creating skills are much improved).  

Anywho, check out the site, looks like they have lots of questions but there were some good finds in their archives of posts.

25 free Moodle quiz questions (GIFT Format)

Every few posts I’ll be providing information about Moodle.  Today find some (25) free questions all focused on Moodle.  The questions are written in GIFT format andthe zip includes the pictures that correspond to a few of the questions.  All the files you need to post this to your own Moodle site or classroom are included.  

samplequestionClick here to download the file.

I heart education

There are those things in life that just give you that feeling.  Butterflies brought on by the excitement of envisioning change.  I can see the change that needs to happen in education.  I just want to help it happen faster.

I’m not even sure if many teachers have this feeling.  I hope they do, but I imagine it gets “beat” out of some over a few short months of adhering to standards or getting pushed aside for the core competencies that states and governments continue to push.

Give me a few and I’ll do my best to contribute.

Charter Schools Make Gains On Tests – washingtonpost.com

I really enjoyed this article about charter schools, which helps to point out a few things: funding and teacher motivation can have huge impacts on the success of students, and that the rest of the public school system can probably learn a few bits from the successful charter schools around.  For example:

At Friendship’s Blow Pierce middle school in Northeast, parents are asked to sign a statement promising that they will get their children to school on time each day, make sure they wear the uniform, complete homework on time, and attend classes on Saturdays and in the summer if their grades fall below a C average. The parents also agree to attend conferences and school events.

via Charter Schools Make Gains On Tests – washingtonpost.com.

The use of technology in the classroom (even at the preschool and kindergarten level) is pretty astounding, but it certainly helps that some of the schools are getting sizable grants from major foundations.  It will be interesting to see what funding, staffing and pedagogical innovations these schools can come up with in the near future. Certainly mainstream education can learn a thing or two from KIPP and it’s peers.