The 15 Great Education Reads of 2013
The Antidote for 2013’s Turbulence
The cascading consequences of the federal government shutdown. The halt in life-saving cures research during sequestration. The hall-of-mirrors “debate” over the most important advance in K-12 education — Common Core Standards. A failed healthcare.gov website. There are plenty of disappointments to go around. But as you head off for holiday vacations, consider these fifteen tidings of good cheer brought to us in 2013 by some very smart thinkers and writers.
For HCM Strategists, this compilation of our favorite reads offers the gift of insight, inspiration and a sense that we really are all in this together. With a collective sense of purpose and creative cooperation, we can and will get to a better place.
Inspired Vistas of Progress
These reads open our eyes and minds with an expansive view of our problems and how to solve them:
1. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character. Paul Tough’s book sparked a fascinating discussion in 2013 about a new generation of researchers and educators using the tools of science to reveal how children build character and succeed beyond test scores. The book’s unexpected conclusions offer new insights into how to help children growing up in poverty. The reality Tough paints kicks education policy experts in the gut, much like Jonathon Kozol’s “Savage Inequalities” did over a decade ago. We are humbled about the limits of policy and even well-designed incentives and school supports for changing children’s outcomes.
2. Net Effects: The Past, Present and Future Impacts of our Networks. History is a great teacher, especially when we pay attention to trend lines (and not just headlines). This short e-book by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler examines how the network revolutions of the printing press, the railroad, and the telegraph and telephone are informing current digital communications. It reinforces our belief that we can no longer think of technology as a separate major or an add-on to “traditional” education.
3. Slow Ideas. Atul Gawande reminds us that students — and patients — are key to spreading the innovations in health and education. Technology and incentives are not enough. People follow other people.
4. The Future of Children. Authored by some of the nation’s leading thinkers in higher education, Princeton-Brookings Spring 2013 issue is a go-to source for understanding how higher education got to its current state and delves into how the nation can encourage college access, help students succeed and keep college affordable.
5. Cultivating Wonder. David Coleman’s essay soars over the top of political arguments about Common Core and makes a compelling case for why this generation of students needs to read and understand complex, beautiful texts. David Coleman’s emphasis on the value of literature helps balance a public policy conversation increasingly focused on the labor market value of education.
Instigators of Collective Action
Research, research everywhere, but… data and evidence that instigate collective action — that’s HCM gold. These reads are uncomfortable, but are just what we need to break the bonds of inertia that constrain progress.
6. American Dream 2.0. This ground-breaking report coalesced the leadership of civil rights, student, business, philanthropy, higher education and political leaders around low completion rates. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s signature report this month shows completion data are not budging. Notably, the report shows that degree completion for full-time students is significantly better than for part-time students, which bolsters our work to get more non-traditional students to go “full time” with the right incentives and supports and with more competency-based degree programs.
7. Time for the US to Reskill? This OECD study includes a series of policy prescriptions that the US must consider to address the significant skills gap faced by its adult population. We know that other countries are surging past the US in student test scores and college graduation rates, but OECD’s report reveals troubling consequences for our skills gap that extends long after students leave school. This is why employers are increasingly focusing on the skills gap and, more dangerously, their inability to find people to fill the jobs they have available.
8. The Moody’s outlooks for higher education, January 2013 and November 2013 offers inescapable evidence from a neutral fiscal expert that all sectors of US higher education must grapple with very different solutions in order to increase college affordability, protect excellence and increase equity and completion rates. For all of us, retrenchment and diminished capacity to educate are unacceptable options.
9. Separate and Unequal. Georgetown’s report reveals chronic and democratically unsustainable gaps in opportunity for minority and low-income students. While unintentional, current policies are having a very disparate, negative impact on educational and career prospects for African-American, Latino and low-income students. Coupled with Moody’s and OECD data, this reality compels HCM’s commitment to exploring new models, better financing incentives and reliable metrics.
10. College Unbound. Jeff Selingo, a former Chronicle of Higher Education editor, provides a critical (and sometimes brutal) assessment of the state of higher education. Selingo’s conclusions mirror HCM’s views on higher education in two ways: our outlook is not completely fatalistic and we strive for innovative, feasible solutions to help move higher education in this nation into the 21st century.
11. Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course. FastCompany tells the story of Udacity’s Sebastian Thrun, a true innovator in higher education who is willing to take risks, look at evidence, admit when things aren’t working, and redirect energy and resources to something that does work. It also provides us with a cautionary tale — there is a great hunger to make higher education more responsive to the needs of more, diverse students, but we must ensure we gather the evidence needed to promote the best changes to the system.
Proof We Can Do Better
It’s easy to get discouraged by the research that shows how far we’ve fallen. These reads prove a better way is possible — and they show us how.
12. Mathematica Policy Research’s study of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) middle schools found significant and substantial positive impacts on student achievement in four core academic subjects: reading, math, science, and social studies. The evaluation applies the lens of Tough’s How Children Succeed and Atul Gawande’s Slow Ideas. This methodologically rigorous, independent evaluation shows how replication with measurable success is feasible across multiple academic subjects and settings.
13. The SEA of the Future: Prioritizing Productivity report by the sharp education research team at the University of Washington delivers a thought-provoking application of data to the daily work of running schools and districts. This research series calls on state education agencies to make education productivity a top priority. The authors offer a smart treatment of accountability, data use and improved outcomes, which is timely as states grapple with Common Core implementation.
14. Are You Competent? Prove It. Degrees Based on What You Can Do, Not How Long You Went. After the New York Times declared 2012 “The Year of the MOOC” (Massive Open Online Course), it was encouraging to see long-standing, learning-centered institutions like Charter Oak and Alverno rise in the national conversation with newer models offered by Capella University and Southern New Hampshire University, Western Governors University and the University of Wisonsin. The Association of American Colleges & Universities, Public Agenda, the Lumina and Gates Foundations, the New America Foundation and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning are among those helping to facilitate the careful and thoughtful expansion of competency-based education.
15. The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy, by Brookings’s Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley, describes how cities and suburbs are effectively taking on the nation’s biggest challenges. No surprise to us, higher education is playing a vital and active role in the Revolution the authors describe, helping to grow jobs and human capital.
We all share the future. The question is, will we share these opportunities and responsibilities or continue the conflicts and suffer the consequences? These reads remind us that each day gives us new opportunities to make something good happen. And we’ve got to take it. We’re ready for you, 2014.
