21st Century learning: Beyond brick and mortar

Question: Should the public invest in more brick-and-mortar school facilities in this internet age?

The question is particularly relevant as Portland Public School District officials lay the groundwork for another campaign to pass a bond measure for capital improvements, including new schools.

The last measure, for more than a half billion dollars, was narrowly defeated on election day one year ago.

Missing in this year’s run-up is the discussion of how technology is changing the very nature of education. And education is what we should be focused on, not schools.

Communication technology is doing to schools what it has done to “traditional media,” newspapers and television. But because the media are in the private sector, media organizations have to stay focused on the bottom line. As a result they have scrambled and changed to be financially sustainable.

Those that failed to make needed changes have died or are dying. And, not surprisingly, readers and viewers have adjusted too, or they have paid the price of being uninformed...or ill-informed.

On the other hand, schools, as public institutions, have little motivation to change in fundamental ways. They are tied to building-based learning and teachers standing at the front of the class. Even traditional textbooks are still in the budgets.

The only change we are seeing in the schools is reactive, resulting from declining revenues. The change is taking the form of traditional cuts in staff and programs.

Instead, the crisis should prompt a deep reappraisal of what education needs to be, and how it is delivered, in the 21st Century.

I didn’t vote for last year’s bond measure in part because of this institutional myopia. The other part, not surprisingly, was a big jump to my tax bill in a time of financial hardship. I doubt I was alone in the way I reacted.

The two parts of my reaction are related. As we know, we live in an information age, and information is at the heart of learning and of economic success. If we are to be a competitive society in a world economy, we — our educational leaders, our governmental institutions, our businesses —must use technology to advance learning and innovation.

From all appearances, our children are more than ready to embrace this technology (if not always in the best ways), but are we adults? And are we willing to create the norms that allow young generations to get the most out of powerful emerging and changing communication/education technology?

HERE is just one development in how technology could reshape education.

Money for an out-dated "schools" paradigm

Portland Public Schools is placing a $548 million bond measure on the May ballot. If approved by the voters, the money will be used largely for capital construction of new or expanded schools.

Question: Why would PPS want to spend a half billion dollars on bricks and mortar in this internet age? The money will simply be propping up an out-moded paradigm, one built on school-based education.

Certainly we can spend education money more wisely in today’s world.

Rows of desks, schedules of one-hour "modules," and long bus rides are at odds with the world students know and the nature of the times. Outside the school (and often in it), students are immersed in a private place defined by rapid-fire communication.

It’s haphazard “learning” through dizzying dexterity and hand-held computers.

Logically, education should tap into those communication devices and networks, which, like television before them, are the greatest teaching tools yet invented.

And yet, as it was for television, the question is what are those little “smart” devices teaching?

Right now, as far as needed education is concerned, not a lot.

What could they be teaching? It would take a lot less than $548 million to find out and get started restructuring education to fit the findings.

As for bricks-and-mortar schools, let’s make them into community learning centers. One of the “courses” would have the kids teach the rest of us how to use technology. We could teach them how to use it constructively.

Imagine the creativity that would be unleashed if we ended this now ever-growing technological generation gap.

A Start on Solar

In the current issue of the Hillsdale News, I've written a story about the possibility of Rieke Elementary School having its own photo-voltaic panels by the end of this year. Yesterday Steve McGrath of Commercial Solar Ventures, and Catherine Diviney, the solar specialist for Portland Public Schools, scrambled up the slope above Bertha Court to assess the site for the 200-foot-long solar array. The panels would provide 60 percent of Rieke's electricity.

McGrath reported that the site would work although it isn't perfect. The exposure isn't perfectly oriented to the south. A slightly less steep grade would be better, he said. Still, he gave it a thumbs-up.

An open house to discuss the installation with the community members will likely be held in June. Topics of discussion include the appearance of the panels and whether they would reflect into the nearby Watershed.

The rendering (below) of what the $800,000 - $850,000 panel array might look like on the hillside was made by Brian Sheehan of the Portland Planning Bureau. The stop sign is at the corner of Bertha Court and Bertha Boulevard. The Healy Heights tower is in the distance.

"The Pen" isn't enough

You may want to check out my thoughts about commercialism in Portland's public schools as they appear here in yesterday's Portland Tribune.

My colleagues at the Coalition for Commercial-Free Schools get pretty excited when things like this get published.

I'm more skeptical. The pen may be mightier than the sword but....

Change results from civil engagement and finding agreement. If the school board is willing to meet with the coalition over this issue, we have the possibility of change.

At best, the article may get the board's attention and offer a basis for discussion.

I might add that while newly elected board member Ruth Adkins, who is from Hillsdale, didn't oppose the deal that slathered the Blazer logo on 10 school basketball courts, she agrees that creeping commercialism in the schools needs to be addressed.

The coalition is hopeful Ruth will provide a forum for establishing a school board policy eliminating such blatant commercialism in our schools.

No news, ghoulish scanners, Spike City

I have some interesting news I’m not going to tell you. I’m saving it for issue #7 of the Hillsdale News, which I will publish tomorrow.

No, I am not sticking out my tongue as I write this. It's just that I don't want to scoop myself.

You can make sure the news is sent to you by going to the Hillsdale News site now and signing up to receive the e-newsletter. Many of you are already among the 171 on its e-mail list.

Of course after I send out the newsletter, you can always just go to the site to find the contents.

Journalists always worry about being scooped by the competition, but until now I’ve never had to worry about scooping myself. The Internet makes such things possible by allowing me to create two (or three or four…) potentially competing “publications.”

Why am I favoring the Hillsdale News over "Red" with this story? This site is generally for opinion. The "News" is for, well, news.

That said, I do have one sliver of news to share: We have a date certain for the closing of the Hillsdale Wild Oats store. A clerk told me tonight that it will be Saturday, Oct 13.

As I talked with her about the store's demise, teams of Whole Foods inventory takers roamed the aisles, ghoulishly scanning the shelves.

Finally, my previous post about last night’s gutless school board meeting was read by a record number of visitors to the Red Electric. At last count, 117. The high volume is because Steve Rawley, who has a popular, civic-minded site, More Hockey Less War, sent my post to the Oregonian's Oregon Live site and then promptly “voted” for it as the day’s hottest "Oregon Reddit" post. A couple of others did the same and, voila, “Red’s” link was right there on Oregon Live for the clicking.

Over three hours at mid-day, I had 76 visitors.

Spike City.

Portland School Board flunks media literacy

Like the Portland City Council, the Portland School Board is apparently media illiterate.

They simply don’t get it that it is wrong to sell off public property for commercial advertising in the name of “corporate partnerships” or “recognition opportunities.”

The issue arose before the City Council in the spring when some of us tried to block the selling of naming rights to parks facilities. We lost.

Last night three of us from the Coalition for Commercial Free Schools testified before the school board. (By the way I wrote about this issue here a couple of days ago.)

We might as well have been talking to a wall.

At one point our presentation even drew applause for folks who happened to be in the audience to address other issues. They got it.

A couple of them even e-mailed us today offering support. One, Steve Rawley, is commenting on our testimony on his issue-packed blog, More Hockey Less War.

If we persuaded the audience, why not the board?

Two possibilities:

1. These folks just don't think critically about media and its impact on kids. As suggest above, they are media ILLiterate.

2. They are so busy with and blinded by hiring a new superintendent, trying to keep the system running and meeting No Child Left Behind requirements that they don't have the time or inclination to tell the Portland Trailblazers, “No, we will not let you plaster your logo on the walls of 13 gyms in exchange for refurbishing the floors. Alternatively, we will happily accept the $600,000 for the work as a donation, with the understanding that we will publicly and sincerely thank you with a press conference and a small plaque.”

In our testimony last night my colleagues and I told the board of a host of health issues associated with this kind of rampant commercialism in the schools. We also underscored a host of social, educational and ethical issues.

We want the school board to promulgate a policy that clearly defines how corporate donors are to be thanked. The definition should not include PR and advertising “recognition opportunities,” which school marketing staff are blatantly peddling to attract corporate dollars.

By the way, reporters at both The Oregonian and The Tribune are working on stories on the issue.

Here’s what I told the board.

9/24/2007 Statement before the Portland School Board.

Re: Resolution No. 3764

I am Rick Seifert of Media Think, a local media literacy group, which is a member of the Coalition for Commercial-Free schools.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

The most instructive aspect of the deal before you is that one of the terms used to describe it is a “recognition opportunity.”

The term goes by less revealing terms as “corporate partnerships” and “corporate sponsorships,” but “recognition opportunity” directly addresses motive. Search the web for “recognition opportunities” and you will find they are rampant.

“Recognition opportunities” are nothing more than contributions made on condition that they will produce a return in advertising and public relations.

High school students, as you know, are a highly sought-after advertising demographic target. They have years of purchasing ahead of them. To plant a logo in front of their eyes repeatedly in an emotionally charged athletic setting over ten years is brilliant marketing.

That logo will carry no explanation for why it is on the floor. For all future students may know, the school district endorses the companies and their products, be they sneakers or professional basketball games.

I suggest you test the motives at work here, not that you have to, because your staff is using the term “recognition opportunity” to seek funds.

Test it by proposing this: We accept and deeply appreciate the money to refurbish these floors, we offer thanks publicly and will put up small, unobtrusive plaques in each gym to acknowledge the gift. The plaques come down when it is time to refurbish again.

Will the donors agree? Apparently not.

Motive is important.

If I knew you ran for the school board in order to seize a “recognition opportunity,” would I vote for you?

If I were appearing here tonight in order to gain a “recognition opportunity” would you listen to me?

Do we want our children to do good works as “recognition opportunities”? Do you want them to know that their schools feed these motives? Do you want them to know that you are basically selling them as a captive audience to advertisers?

Finally, as taxpayers do we want to pay for school facilities only to have them be turned into billboards for “recognition opportunity” seekers.

Here is my advice. Publicly thank the donors for their generous gift. Acknowledge it specifically on plaques and then….do the much needed work of coming up with a clear policy to cover how you will acknowledge such gifts in a way that is open, dignified and exemplary.

Thank you

Land of (Recognition) Opportunity

We like to think of America as the “Land of Opportunity. But how about the land of “recognition opportunity”?

What is a “recognition opportunity”? you might wonder.

Well, if you google the term, you’ll get the picture. The term is rampant. “Recognition opportunities” are being advertised everywhere on the internet.

But if you want to “search” closer to home, check in with the Portland School District. Or the Portland Parks and Recreation Bureau.

Both are in the business of peddling “recognition opportunities.” The opportunities turn out to be on our publicly owned property.

A “recognition opportunity” is the chance for a donor, whether a corporation or an individual, to slap a name or logo on a highly frequented or highly visible public facility like a school gymnasium, stadium or museum.

It is, in short, a concoction of advertising and PR.

Of course, essential to the deal is determining what the recognition is for. In this era of starved public institutions, the exchange involves money. Institutions are coming to rely on “recognition opportunities.”

Some argue that, if the trend continues, we will no longer have public institutions. (Remember when “public” television used to be called “non-commercial”?)

Consider a case that will be coming before the Portland School Board next Monday evening.

Nike and the Portland Trailblazers, neither shy about making themselves recognized, are in line to resurface 13 gymnasium floors in 10 Portland high schools in exchange for some recognition — a logo here, a logo there. Each logo would be viewed hundreds of thousands of times over the ten-year life of the floor. The viewers are from a demographic group sports marketers drool over: kids, with decades of purchasing ahead of them.

The price of the PPS gym floor refinishing work is estimated at $600,000. Seemingly not small change until you look at what advertising costs. And this is gold-standard advertising — sanctioned by our august school system.

If you want to test Nike and the Trailblazers’ motives, all the school district would have to do is agree to take the money and offer a simple, heart-felt thank you.

Good luck.

No, Nike and the Trailblazers are in this for the “recognition,” again and again and again.

Equally troubling is that these “recognition opportunities” are being offered on public facilities without the approval of the public and without a policy in place to govern them. What is the real value of having a Nike logo on 13 gymnasium floors over the next 10 years? What precedent does it set? Why not logos on classroom walls or on the floors of school corridors?

Where does this end?

The school district has no clue, and it’s time it did. That’s why my colleagues and I from the Coalition for Commercial-Free Schools will be calling for the Nike/Trailblazer deal to be tabled until the public and the school board hammer out a policy.

Moreover, the phenomenon of the district having to go hat-in-hand to corporate America with “recognition opportunities” to get gym floors refinished is prima facie evidence that the school district needs a lesson in management. Well-run organizations don’t beg; they budget.

How did the district pay for refinishing the floors 20 years ago? They budgeted for it.

Finally, what does it say to students that “recognition” can be bought? Isn’t recognition something we earn? Moreover, students need to learn about people who don’t seek recognition or “recognition opportunities” at all but find reward enough in the act of giving and seeing results.

How’s that for a lesson?

Off the Charts

Charts and graphs tell stories — many stories.

The Oregonian looked at the just released results of SAT scores for the Class of 2007 and wrote a story accompanied by a chart and a graph.

Here is the story and here are the chart and the graph, which, unfortunately, weren't presented on OregonLive. You can click on my scan to make the chart and graph larger.

Before "reading" the graphic stories, it's worth noting that the bar graph starts at a score of 450 as its base. Ed Tufte, who has written extensively about graphic integrity, calls this lying with graphics. Show the full range when you depict results, he says, otherwise your portrayal is a visual distortion.

Using the distorted parameters of the graph and applying data from the chart to it, two Portland High Schools, Jefferson and Roosevelt, are literally off-the-charts — way off the charts. They fall well below the 450 base.

To me, that poor SAT performance is a major story, along with the fact that such a small percentage of students are even taking the SAT at these two high-minority enrollment schools. Franklin and Marshall also have startlingly low SAT participation.

I'm obviously not the reporter on this story, but the results and participation for these schools suggest a call the Portland Public School District.

I have also pencil marked Lincoln's scores (the highest) and Wilson's (of particular interest to Hillsdale). The difference in combined average scores for Lincoln (where 82 percent of the students took the test) and Jefferson (where a mere 28 percent took the test) is a stunning 662 points.

What other stories suggest themselves? One has to do with gross disparity between our high schools. Another has to do with college aspirations and academic preparation to achieve those goals. Do students at Jefferson and Roosevelt want to go on to college? Some do, and apparently many don't. If they don't, why? If they do, why have so many seemingly given up trying? Or if they are among those trying by taking the SAT, why are they doing so poorly?

My guess is that peer values and norms as well as expectations and financial resources are huge influences. Oh, and add media stereotyping and celebrity role models to the mix.

That's just for starters. Clearly, there is a whole lot more going on, and it isn't pretty.

I also want to know how these statistics from the best performing and the poorest performing schools have changed from the previous year. Is the gap widening? Did Jefferson improve or decline from 2006? The story by Suzanne Pardington mentioned improvement at only one high school, Oregon City.

I hope that The Oregonian plans to report on the other "news" contained in these results.

Learning communities vs. school inequity

I have two conflicting views about schools today. Well, I probably have a lot more than that, but two significant ones have emerged in the past few days.

They jelled last night at a meeting five of us had with my Hillsdale neighbor, and now new school board member, Ruth Adkins.

The five of us are members of something called “the Coalition for Commercial-Free Schools.” The name pretty much says it all. We don’t think our schools should be exploited for marketing purposes, no matter how much corporations are willing to pay the strapped schools for exclusive access to our kids.

That said, my conflicting views don’t have anything directly to do with commercialism in the schools.

No, it’s an even bigger problem than that.

Ruth shared with us the Portland school district’s apparent interest in having schools and their communities work more closely together. That’s a move in the right direction.

For sometime I’ve argued that schools and their communities should be one — that we should consider our schools being wall-less. We should think of them as having permeable membranes, if you will. Kids, parents, grandparents, teachers, business owners, lawyers, carpenters, fire-fighters, housewives and househusbands — everybody — would flow through the school and through the community.

We would all teach each other.

And if you don’t think kids can teach you anything, I have a question for you: When was the last time you text-messaged?

So that’s one view: Communities and schools should be one. In essence, we shouldn’t have schools but community learning centers. Ideally, communities would BE learning centers, or more exactly, learning communities. (And that means striking up a new relationship with media and the time we spend with it — but don’t get me started….)

So here’s the conflict. Late last year I volunteered to read a few thousand community responses to the Mayor’s Visioning Project, VisionPDX. My assigned readings happened to be about schools. A major theme in the responses was that Portland suffers gross inequities between schools in different parts of the city. Our children simply aren’t being granted equal opportunity in the classroom.

Something has to be done about the problem. Unfortunately, I don’t see the solution in community learning centers, or learning communities. If anything, prosperous communities will have prosperous learning centers, and poor communities will have poor learning centers.

Indeed the inequities could become much worse under my proposed “permeable membrane” approach.

So as I talked this through with Ruth and the others Wednesday night, I invoked an idea I have floated about developing model Portland Town Centers, a model Hillsdale Town Center being one of them. The idea is to pair town centers (and communties) that are diverse. Lents and Hillsdale, for example.

How can we help each other? What can we learn from each other? I’ve even thought that measurements of success should yoke the progress of the paired communities. Unless both succeed, neither does.

Have I resolved my conflict about learning communities? Not really. At best, it is a hypothetical resolution to a hypothetical problem. Until we reshape our schools and our neighborhoods into learning communities with community learning centers, we won’t have the luxury of addressing this kind of problem.

Still, if the school district does indeed move ahead with linking schools and communities, it should do so in a way that ends educational inequity in Portland.

A wish list for Hillsdale — and beyond

Mayor Tom Potter's election night comments about the defeat of charter revision disturbed me. He said he no longer would push for change in Portland's form of government although he obviously feels it is needed.

If he doesn't return to the issue, who will? And, more importantly, when? The next mayor likely will be one of the current commissioners. They seem quite satisfied with the archaic, fragmented system we have.

Potter's words remind me of just how achingly long change can take. Increasingly I'm realizing that many of the changes I want to see happen in Hillsdale won't occur in my lifetime.

More and more I am resigned to maximizing the possibility of eventual success rather than actually witnessing it.

I’ll settle for hope and the knowledge that I’ve done what I can to effect change here.

For the record, here’s what I’d like to see happen:

I want to see the mess of utility wires put underground in the Town Center. It will cost $1 million in today’s dollars.

I want to see the Hillsdale plaza with its tiers of sheltering solar panels shading farmers
stalls. That too likely will cost $1 million.

I want to see DeWitt Park extended to Sunset Boulevard to create a plaza fully in front of the library. Another $ million. The kind of money Bill Gates makes in a day.

I want to see Hillsdale (in league with Multnomah Village and Bridlemile and perhaps Hayhurst or Southwest Hills Residential League), represented on a reconfigured and reformed City Council of 20 or so representatives elected by neighborhood coalitions. I have no idea what it will cost, but it won’t come cheap, media-driven politics being what it is.

I want to see our schools transformed into true inter- and multi-generational community learning centers. In this 21st Century maelstrom of change, we must go well beyond “no child left behind” to no person left behind. There’s no telling what that might cost, but the cost will be worth it. My guess is the greatest cost will be measured in volunteer capital, which is no cost at all by current budgetary standards.

I want to entice people to abandon the four to five hours each day they waste glued to their TV sets. I want them to devote that time to helping each other and their community. The regained hours (15 full years in a life span of 80 years) would be a huge investment of the human capital mentioned above.

I want to know by name all of the neighbors within two blocks of my house. Yes, even and perhaps especially, the ones whose dog barks incessantly beginning at 6 a.m. Knowing my neighbors costs only time — time well and joyously spent.

I want there to be one car per household and a small grocery and bus stop within easy walking distance of every Hillsdale household. If zoning allowed it and incentives were in place, it would cost nothing and might just help save the planet.

I want those grocery stores to sell only produce grown in an area no more than 60 miles from Portland. Market forces should take care of that, as we are seeing with our farmers market.

Beyond Hillsdale, I want an America that once again stands for justice, peace, equality and fair play. I want an America that is strong not in its self-righteousness or its military but in its magnanimity, morality and humility as a one nation among many.

I began this by saying I was in a time bind. I am unlikely to see any of these goals accomplished within my lifetime. I have come to accept that. My hope now is to help plant seeds so that future generations will reap the benefits.

Note: For the next four days, I will not be posting on The Red Electric as I will be out of town. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and inviting yours when I return.

Big "O" to Coca-Cola: Back off!

Today's Oregonian editorial nailed it by telling Coca-Cola to let the Portland Public School district out of the its junk beverage contract with Coke.

Check it out.

The editorial would have had more teeth had it included reference to growing talk around town of boycotting Coke products (Dannon Yogurt, Odwalla drinks, Minute Maid etc.) if the food giant puts a $600,000 hit on our strapped schools for breaking the contract.

Hey, we'll take what we can get.

On hold, waiting for "boycott" comment

I usually put up a post a day on The Red Electric, but I don't want to detract from the previous post or from my invitation for you to comment. (Stop gawking and write!)

My sources tell me that Portland Public Schools is still negotiating over Coca-Cola's demands, which are excessive in light of the terms of the district's Faustian contract with the giant beverage company.

One thing is for sure: whatever Coca-Cola gets out of this in dollars, it is going to lose several times over in bad publicity.

My "boycott donation" proposal (scroll down to yesterday's post) addresses the school district's financial need, and punishes Coke in the Portland marketplace.

A show of support for the idea by you and others could get Coke to soften its demands. Pass the word....

Let's make Coke pay for its pay-off

As the Portland School District hand-wrestles with the giant Coca-Cola Company behind closed doors, a few of us have been considering calling a boycott against dozens of Coca-Cola products.

Coke is trying to force its junk beverages back on our schools after agreeing to withdraw them. If the district doesn’t accept, Coke is threatening to sue to the tune of $600,000, the equivalent of the salaries of more than a dozen teachers.

When it comes to boycotting, Coke presents a big, exposed target. Visit the Coca-Cola brand list site to see just how exposed. The list includes Dannon Yoghurt, Odwalla and Minute Maid orange juice. Ever buy those?

There’s no doubt the school district botched its dealings with Coke, so the district needs to swallow its pride, pay off Coke and kick junk beverages out of our schools.

But then we, nearly 600,000 Portland consumers, need to step up and make Coca-Cola Company pay the price by targeted restraint in the supermarket. What we save by not buying Coca-Cola products—at least $600,000—we should donate immediately to an as-yet-to-be-established PPS "Junk-the-Junk-Food Fund."

To measure support for this idea, please comment below. Please indicate a willingness to contribute to the “Junk the Junk Food Fund.” You can pay up when the fund has been established.

Finally, alert others to this site and the chance to comment and pledge.