SLOs for a Real Education

Really interesting podcast (first in what is hopefully going to be a series) from Michael Wesch. I'm still processing what I think about the entire podcast (there were certainly parts that made me uncomfortable, which probably means it's something I need to think about more), but I wanted to pull out this quote about what real Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) should look like (about 6:53 mark):

And we have to help them achieve all this within a bureaucratic structure that demands that we frame our goals in a few neat bullet points at the top of our syllabus in a section called: Student Learning Outcomes, often called SLOs. I've never been satisfied with these, they never reflect the complexity or necessity of a real education. If I were to write SLOs for a real education, they might be something like this:

Students will be able to:

1. Ask questions that burn in their soul and take them farther than they ever thought possible.
2. Open themselves up to others and new experiences, to challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions.
3. Cross rivers of doubt and conquer mountains of fear to set themselves free.

I think this very nicely identifies the tension between the SLOs we are supposed to write (and achieve) and the ones that really matter. I know there are many that will read the above and completely dismiss them as late-night-college ramblings (which, indeed, they are), but I think we need to take the time to reexamine our "taken-for-granted assumptions".

Yes, there are more specific, down-to-earth learning outcomes for our courses that I think should be part of the discussion, but I think very few of those should be (or even can be) standardized for all students. These "late-night college ramblings", however, are the types of outcomes that I can support being a requirement (or at least a worthy goal) for all of our students.

So I wonder why it is that we shy away from discussions around outcomes such as these, and obsess over measuring how our students do on discrete, isolated skills that very few of them will ever need to actually use. Perhaps it's because we are afraid of what we will discover. As Wesch says (about 49:50 mark):

You can't just think your way into a new way of living; you have to live your way into a new way of thinking.

Teach This, Not That

I think I've made it pretty clear in previous postings that I'm not a fan of standardization, but I realize that most teachers don't have a lot of choice and are required to teach to certain standards. Given that, teachers still often make choices about which standards they cover (since there's never enough time to cover them all) and how in-depth they go on each standard. Since my daughter is currently taking Algebra, I'm helping a home-bound student some with Algebra, and I occasionally teach Algebra myself, I thought I would pick an example from Algebra for my first (and perhaps last) "teach this, not that" post.

I was recently helping that home-bound student with the polynomial unit in Algebra 1. She did some marginally interesting topics, but - since I get to cherry pick for this post - she also did an assignment that I'll excerpt below.

Here's a screenshot of some of the problems she had to do.

And here's a screenshot of the answers.

Later in the semester she'll get to explore exponential functions a bit, so we'll see what types of activities she gets to do for those, but one typical way they could explore exponential growth would be a compound interest type of problem.

Now, every teacher is different, but based on my experience, if an Algebra teacher has to choose one of these two things to cover in an Algebra 1 course, they often pick the first one. Why? Because polynomials seems to "fit" better in the Algebra 1 curriculum and exponential growth does not, and compound interest problems are often presented in a way that it's mostly just plugging numbers into a formula and computing an answer.

From my perspective, however, it should be exactly the opposite. There may be some reason why some people might want to know that a certain polynomial is a quartic trinomial, but I have to think that for most of our students that's not a particularly good use of their time. Compound growth, however, is something that could be life-changing for them and their families (credit cards, car loans, mortgages, savings accounts, investments - and that's just financial applications), yet even when we do teach it, we often teach it as simply "plug-n-chug."

Here are two problems that I think would be interesting for every high school student to explore (and probably most of the high school staff, for that matter).

(Please note that while the math in these examples works no matter what, the feasibility of these scenarios is much more likely in a middle class or higher household. Those happen to be the students I work with, but I understand and empathize with folks who might be frustrated with these examples because they work with students in poverty.)

Scenario 1: Save for your retirement . . . before you graduate from high school.

Many students in my school get a job in high school, often over the summer after their sophomore year. If they work full-time over the course of that summer, they could easily gross $3000. Now, being the teenagers that they are, they are most likely going to want to spend a fair amount of that money. And they should. But I would suggest that by exploring the mathematics a bit, they - and their parents - might also want to invest it.

So, if this were my daughter (we'll see if she chooses to get a job after her sophomore year or not), I'd suggest she invest at least a bit of that money in a Roth IRA. And then I would contribute the rest up to whatever her gross earnings were for the year (we'll say $3000 for this example). Here's why:

1. She won't owe any income tax on that low of earnings, so even though Roth IRA contributions are "after tax" contributions, this would effectively be "no tax" contributions for her, and all earnings will be tax free.
2. I would suggest she invest that money 100% in a low-cost equity index fund, reinvest dividends, and never touch it again until retirement. (No reason not to be 100% in equities for this type of investment and time horizon.)
3. Current assumptions (which I think will change, but we'll go with it), is that a current 16-year old might retire at age 67 or so, so we're looking at a 50-year + investment horizon. What will $3000 grow to in those 50 years? And there's the exponential growth question.

So, what will $3000 grow to in 50 years? Well, to be sure, no one can answer that question, but we can estimate based on a lot of data from past experience. (This is assuming that the way economies and capital markets work will not dramatically change, which I think is perhaps not a good assumption, but for estimating purposes it's the best we've got.) Since 1930, the long term annualized return of the S&P 500 is about 9.7%. If our 16-year old would achieve that kind of return over 50 years, she'd have about $307,000 at retirement. Just from that one summer's investment. If she works after her junior and senior years and puts in an additional $3000 each summer, she'd be looking at over $900,000.

But since we're talking about 50 years, I think we should at least consider investing in riskier equities that - over time - are likely to achieve a higher return. Since 1930 Large Cap Value has returned 11.2%, Small Cap has returned 12.7%, and Small Cap Value has returned 14.4%. Now, most folks would look at that and say that certainly the amount she'd have in the end would be higher, but I'm not sure they'd realize how much higher.

For the $3000 investment, the total after 50 years for Large Cap Value would be over $600,000, for Small Cap would be over $1.1 million, and for Small Cap Value it would be over $2.5 million. For $9000 investment (3 summers), triple those numbers. Keep in mind, that's all tax free, and all with not contributing any money to her retirement account after graduating from high school. (With the assumption that even if tax laws change, they will grandfather in existing accounts.)

Of course now would be a good time to talk with our student about inflation, and how that $7.5 million ($9000 for 50 years in Small Cap Value) in 2067 won't buy the same amount as $7.5 million today. So let's assume an average annual inflation increase of 3.5%. Lots of interesting discussions to have here about how students could use that information to calculate the end result but, simply discounting our returns by that amount turns that $7.5 million into about $1.99 million in today's dollars, which translates to being able to spend about $80,000 a year - (today's dollars) using the 4% rule. Still pretty darn good, which is why I think this is a worthwhile scenario to explore with students and why I think this might be a better use of time than learning about quartic trinomials.

Scenario 2: Don't go to college . . . and retire much earlier.

Yes, it's provocative, but that's part of what makes it interesting. I've written before about our assumption that college is the default goal for our students, but let's look a bit closer at the mathematics.

Like most parents, I've paid attention to the tremendous increase in the cost of attending college. We also started saving for college even before we adopted our daughter, using a tax-advantaged 529 plan. We invested in Colorado's plan because, in addition to earnings and withdrawals being tax free, contributions are exempt from Colorado state taxes (which is like earning 4.63% right off the bat). Due to our diligent saving and investing, and the benefits of compound growth (even with 2008), we have about $120,000 set aside in our 529 for our daughter's college expenses.

Well, that sets up an interesting scenario for a problem about exponential growth. What if she didn't go to college and, instead, invested that money now (we'll take a tax hit since it's not being used for college, but I'm willing to cover that), immediately got a job that didn't require a college degree, and continued to add to that investment over the years? Lots and lots of messy details here, which is why it's such a good problem situation to work through with students, but let's look at a simplified version with lots of assumptions just to get the feel for it.

We'll use the same investment return information from Scenario 1, including investing in index funds with 100% in equities, since she's young and has a long investment horizon. We'll assume that she'll get a job paying at least $25,000 per year to start off with, and that each year she'll get a raise that's at least equal to inflation. We'll also assume that she'll be able to save and invest an additional $3000 each year. I realize that can be tough when she's starting at $25,000 per year, but that works out to a reasonable 12% of her income, and perhaps we'll let her live at home for the four years she would've been in college to help her start off. I'm going to make one more assumption, which is that she could retire comfortably on $40,000 per year. That's for just her, if she gets married she would obviously have additional income, additional investments, and additional expenses that would complicate it a bit; but as a family of three we are currently spending about that much (when you take away what we're saving for retirement), so I don't think it's an outrageous assumption for one person.

Well, the numbers are pretty interesting to play with, especially with the excellent FIRECalc tool. Lots of choices to make here as well, but on the first tab (Start Here) I put in $120,000 portfolio to start, with anticipated spending needs of $40,000 per year (today's dollars), and wanting it to last for 80 years (50 years after she retires). I left the second tab blank, meaning I'm assuming no social security or pension income (there probably would be some, but we'll leave it at 0 for now). On the third tab (Not Retired?), I put in a retirement year of 2045 (so that's assuming working for 30 years, starting now), and that she'll add $3000 to her portfolio each year (adjusted for inflation). For the fourth tab (Spending Models), I chose Bernicke's Reality Retirement Plan. The fifth tab (Portfolio), I adjusted to 100% equities. When I do all that, it gives me this. (You'll have to click submit if you follow that link to see the results page yourself, but here's some of the verbiage):

Following the "Reality Retirement Plan" as described by Ty Bernicke, withdrawals after age 55 are reduced by 2-3% per year until age 76.

Because you indicated a future retirement date (2045), the withdrawals won't start until that year. Your contributions will continue until then. The tested period is 30 years of preretirement plus 50 years of retirement, or 80 years.

FIRECalc looked at the 64 possible 80 year periods in the available data, starting with a portfolio of $120,000 and spending your specified amounts each year thereafter.

Here is how your portfolio would have fared in each of the 64 cycles. The lowest and highest portfolio balance throughout your retirement was $120,000 to $56,587,349, with an average of $15,925,319. (Note: values are in terms of the dollars as of the beginning of the retirement period for each cycle.)

For our purposes, failure means the portfolio was depleted before the end of the 80 years. FIRECalc found that 0 cycles failed, for a success rate of 100.0%.

You really should explore FIRECalc some more but, based on a lot of baked-in (but not half-baked) assumptions, it tells me that for the 64 possible 80 year periods that the historical data supports, not once would she have run out of money (and usually would leave quite an estate). Note that has her retiring at the age of 48 and living until 98. (If you want to change it to constant spending power instead of Bernicke's Reality, then you still have an 81.3% success rate. But working just 3 more years, so retiring at 51, would have had a 100% success rate.) Keep in mind all of this is assuming no pension or social security income, which you definitely would have if you worked for 30+ years. After playing around, you can even discover that she could retire in 2036 - so at age 39 - with a 97% chance of success (and with 59 years of retirement, and usually a sizable estate). So, at an age when some college graduates are still paying off their college loans, she could be retired. Provocative enough?

FIRECalc even lets you download a spreadsheet based on your inputs that you could analyze with students to examine (and perhaps manipulate) the formulas. Again, I would suggest this is not only more interesting than quartic trinomials mathematically, but also practically for students. And, of course, there's nothing preventing our student from doing both Scenario 1 and Scenario 2.

That's just two examples. Lots and lots more you could do with debt (credit cards, car loans, mortgages), governmental policy (budget, entitlements, social security, medicare), and on and on and on. But I don't know anyone that really does, because there's always one more standard we need to cover, and students just might get asked to name a quartic trinomial on some test sometime. It's probably a good thing, though, since we wouldn't want our students to be financially independent and able to retire before we can, would we?

The New NCLB: No Curler Left Behind

The Denver Post is my local newspaper. I always find it interesting that during the Olympics they prominently run a "medal count" graphic each day, showing which countries have won the most medals. It's always struck me as kind of silly, as if the number of medals says anything about the success and worth - or lack thereof - of both the individual athletes and the countries they represent.

I've also always marveled at how different the Post's (and others') coverage of education comparisons is from their Olympic ones, and wondered how it might look if they covered the Olympics the same way they do education. Thankfully, Richard Florida has come through with a post that does it for me (in a way).

Because, really, it shouldn't be the total number of medals we're comparing, right? After all, does anyone really expect Slovenia to get more medals than the United States? So it was good to see Richard Florida point out that the United States is currently coming in a dismal 22nd place (behind Kazakhstan) in medals per 10 million people at Sochi.

Unfortunately, that's the good news. When you rank countries in number of medals per GDP, the U.S. comes in even worse: 23rd. (Jeesh, even Kazakhstan rose up to 17th).

Where's the outrage in Washington, D.C.? Why isn't the Denver Post writing editorials decrying the state of the U.S. Olympic program? Why isn't NBC holding a day-long "Olympic Nation" (with accompanying website) to figure out what we're doing wrong? I mean, if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre Olympic performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

Well, I for one will not stand idly by while our children's future slips away. Clearly we need some changes, and we need them fast. So I propose a Blue Ribbon panel to examine this issue. I think we should get someone eminently qualified to lead this panel. I propose Bill Gates, but I suppose I'd be okay with someone like Eli Broad.

This really needs to be a public/private partnership, however. After all, the Olympics are a national priority and surely the government has a role here. I think we should come up with a new government program with incentives to the States to develop better Olympic athletes. Given the prevalence of racing in the Olympics, I thought Race to the Top sounded pretty good, but unfortunately I found out that was already taken. So instead I propose we call it NCLB: No Curler Left Behind. Perhaps we could get the Governors of all the States together and they could come up with some new standards for our Olympic athletes. (Personally, to be successful in today's world I think that all of our athletes should be well-versed in the four C's: Curling, Cricket, Camel Racing and Caber Toss.)

But it's not enough to create the commission and choose some extremely successful businesspeople and politicians to head it, we need some concrete proposals to get the discussion started. Clearly our athletes are not measuring up to expectations and I think we all know part of the reason - they simply aren't being held accountable. I think we need to have them test their abilities more frequently against the competition so we can find out what's working and what's not, and then make the necessary adjustments.

So my first proposal is to hold the World Championship in each Olympic sport three times a year, once every three months. That will give us some formative data in order to make better decisions. If some athletes aren't performing up to expectations, perhaps we can hold them back and have them repeat a season or something.

My next proposal is so obvious I can't figure out why it's not already in place. Whose idea was it to have the Olympics only once every four years? If we have the World Championship in each sport three times a year (in the first nine months of the year), then at the end of the year we should hold the Olympics. Each year, not once every four years. Surely holding the Olympics every year would hold the athletes (and their coaches and trainers) more accountable?

And since corporate sponsorship is a big piece of how we pay for our Olympic Team,  perhaps we can ask Pearson to get involved in developing the criteria and then performing the judging of the Olympics? Since we're well into the 21st century, I think we should utilize the amazing technology we have available to us and test our athletes on computers. True, it's not quite the same as actually performing on the ski slope or the ice rink, but it is much more efficient and makes it much easier to compare them. We could then develop Performance Leveraging Committees (PLC's) to analyze the data and improve our implementation of NCLB.

Now, some folks will worry about the athletes, coaches and trainers who are struggling a bit but, when push comes to shove, if they aren't cutting it, we should be cutting them. If after a year or two of world championships and Olympic competitions they aren't winning Gold medals (or at least making Adequately Yearly Progress toward the Gold), then we should disband those teams and send them to more successful teams. And, frankly, we shouldn't limit those teams under the umbrella of the United States Olympic Committee, we should get the market involved. I mean, why should Park (PARCC?) City and Steamboat Springs and Lake Placid and Colorado Springs get to hold a monopoly on U.S. Winter Olympics training? A little competition would do Team USA some good, wouldn't it? Who wouldn't want to be part of Team Coca Cola Skeleton Racing in Atlanta?

I haven't though this next idea completely through yet, but it's pretty exciting so I thought I'd share it anyway. What if we flipped the Summer and Winter Olympics? I mean the Russians are basically already trying that by holding the Winter Olympics in the beach resort city of Sochi, why shouldn't we try a 100% flipped environment here in the U.S.? That would be some disruptive innovation right there.

Now these aren't my only ideas, but I don't want to dominate the conversation too much. I think we can all agree that if we would just raise the bar a little bit and hold these folks accountable, their performance would improve. (In the case of the Summer Olympics, I would suggest we literally raise the bar; perhaps to 10 feet in the high jump, and 25 feet in the pole vault. After all, our athletes should be outperforming the rest of the world.) And we should learn from those countries that are currently kicking our butt. If it works in Slovenia and Latvia (I've heard some people refer to it as the Slavic Miracle), it should work twice as well in the U.S., right?

I have a lot more to say, but I'm getting a little tired and my eyes are getting red, so I think I'll sign off for now, but I hope this idea goes viral. If I get some time tomorrow I think I'll extend this idea to the NFL. I hope the Broncos are listening . . .

What If They All Took Art?

It's interesting. Over the last several months I've been involved in several conversations around the idea of giving students more control over their own learning, letting them choose to pursue things they are interested in, pursue their passions, create a more "personal" curriculum and perhaps not take a full-blown, "comprehensive" schedule of classes in high school. At some point in each of these conversations, someone always objects with a statement along the lines of, "Well, they'd all choose just to take Art." (In fairness, sometimes it's PE.) That question kinda bugs me, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and explore it a bit.

First, what if they all did take Art, would that be so bad? I mean if everyone had a greater appreciation for art, and beauty, and creativity, as well as perhaps had more opportunity to be creative themselves, would that be so bad? I can imagine a lot worse things than a world full of folks who create and appreciate art.

But I know the real objection is often along the lines of a more practical nature: employment. Where would all these artists work? Don't they need math, and science, and language arts, and social studies in order to be prepared to enter the workforce? Well, maybe. But don't they need Art just as much? As Daniel Pink said in A Whole New Mind, the MFA is the new MBA. Whether it's high profile folks like Jonathan Ive at Apple or Michael Graves at Target, or under-the-radar folks like the person that's creating websites or the latest app, design is huge in today's workforce. Both beauty and functionality is prized in products today (at least in the so-called developed world). People who can design things that work well and look good, and especially if they can do it with a minimal environmental and energy footprint, are in high demand (coincidentally, this came across my Twitter feed as I was composing this.) So perhaps we should be asking, "What if they all took Math" instead. Or what if they all took a "comprehensive" curriculum that was often devoid of relevance and meaning, and only allowed them to explore many different areas at a superficial level. What about that?

The second piece I want to explore is the assumption that our students will take the "easy" way out. That's typically part of the conversation as well, students will just take Art (or P.E.) because it's easy and they don't want to work or think hard. But let's examine the assumptions behind that. First, the "easy" way out assumes a culture of required courses and the all-important grade. Whereas the idea many of us are exploring is students pursuing their own interests, and grades are nowhere to be found. If you remove the artificial constraints of grades and transcripts, required courses and required credits in certain areas, the whole idea of "the easy way out" doesn't really apply anymore. There is no "out," there is only learning more about what you're interested in.

The second underlying assumption is that students are lazy. There's an incredible lack of respect shown to our students in this attitude. Imagine the entire four years of high school was built around the students' interests and passions, with guidance from caring adults. Do you really think that students, looking at four years of that, would just completely blow it off? Some folks argue, "Well, 14-year olds don't know what they're passionate about." That's true to some extent, but what if the four years of high school was helping them find and develop that passion? Would that perhaps be a better use of their (and our) time?

The next objection is often, "But what if some kids don't find their passion" or perhaps "some kids still won't care?" That's certainly possible. But what do you think is happening to those kids right now in our current system? Do you really think they are being successful now? I would bet that many more students would be successfully served by a passion-based education than our current system, even if I won't guarantee 100% success.

The third piece I want to explore is the idea of a "comprehensive" high school. This argument revolves around the idea that if students are allowed to pursue their passions, they won't be well-rounded and won't be functional citizens and community members. I share this concern, and believe there is some merit to this argument, but again I think there are two big assumptions being made here. First, that our current system is being successful in this area, and second that a passion-based system would not be.

We read every day about what a horrible job we're doing in schools. Whether it's state testing, or PISA, or some other measure, clearly we are "failing" in our job of creating well-prepared, well-rounded citizens and employees. Yet all of the mainstream education reform efforts are built-around doubling-down on the existing system. "Let's have more, and higher standards. Let's increase graduation requirements and the number of days of school. Let's hold students and teachers more accountable." If the current system isn't working, getting better at it isn't going to help, it's just going to more efficiently not work.

But what about the other side of this, that if students are pursuing their passion, say, taking all Art classes, that they can't possibly get a well-rounded education? I find this so interesting, because the argument is essentially that as an Art teacher, or a Math teacher, or a whatever teacher, I'm not capable of helping students learn about the world around them in these other areas. How often have you heard a teacher say, "Well, I'm a math teacher, so I can't really help you with that. Go see so-and-so." So we don't expect ourselves as teachers to be well-rounded, but that's exactly what we're asking our students to be. "Well, I can't help you with that, but you sure as heck ought to be an expert in all these areas all at the same time." Double-standard much?

If we truly expect our students to be well-rounded, shouldn't we have the same expectations for ourselves? Shouldn't an art teacher, or a math teacher, or a whatever teacher be able to help students learn more about the civil war in Syria, or Nelson Mandela, or climate change? Shouldn't a Language Arts teacher be able to help their students with the scientific method or understanding social security? If we expect our students to master 8-9 classes at a time (in my school), and pass comprehensive final exams, shouldn't we be able to as well? So go ahead, I dare you, take all the final exams that a representative high school student in your school is going to be taking in about two weeks. See how you do. Now convince me that all those topics you just tested on were "essential." Paraphrasing Yong Zhao, if things are really essential, then it's awfully hard to avoid them even if you are pursuing your interests and passions.

So, if we're going to have a real conversation about this, let's at least be upfront about our assumptions, and then let's examine them to see if they really hold water. I'm not arguing that students shouldn't be exposed to many different areas, that they should narrowly focus and "major" in a subject in high school. What I'm suggesting is that pursuing your passion and discussing the wider world of knowledge are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, might better achieve that "well-rounded, comprehensive education, liberal arts" ideal that we claim to value.

What if they all did take Art? I think that might be a good thing.