Do, listen, read, watch. Let’s think and talk about this together. Explain it to me. Show me. Once again. That’s good!

When teaching and learning are kept simple, children learn. Call this kind of teaching old fashioned. Label it as standard or traditional or “not very exciting” teaching. You may or may not see a lot of technology in this kind of lesson. And, it may not be the first thing a child talks about at the supper table when asked “What did you do at school today?” But, at the end of any day, acknowledge that this kind of teaching is exceptionally effective in causing children to learn.

This is how it works. The teacher sets the purpose of the lesson and helps children to connect the new lesson to what they already know. The children engage (do, listen, read, or watch) with what is to be learned. The teacher and children talk about it; children tell what they did, heard, read or saw and what they think and how they feel about it. The teacher asks questions of the children to clarify their learning story. Then, the teacher asks children to “do, tell, read or watch” again perhaps using different words or “stuff” to ascertain that each child actually accomplished the purpose of the lesson. Maybe children are asked to do it once again later or the next day to reinforce what they have learned. Children learn. Children conceptualize their learning. Children generalize from their learned concepts. Children grow from their learning and in their growth expand their expertise and capacity for more learning. And, this type of lesson design works in any curriculum and any subject. It works in reading and math and social studies as well as art, woodshop and computer studies. It works because it connects the child, teacher and what is to be learned and it applies good teaching and learning theories.

In the early 1900s John Dewey, American educator and philosopher, considered the linkage between children and their learning. He gave weight to the three components of teaching and learning by acknowledging the teacher, the matter to be learned, and the student. He conceived of the teacher as a guide to learning who adjusts the essential balance between the needs of the student and the integrity of the content, skills or processes to be learned. Dewey liked clear and simple instruction that challenged a child to create meaning from her experiences.

Madeline Hunter conceptualized the interplay of effective instructional practices with the theories of motivation, reinforcement and the transfer of learning in the 1980s. She understood the complexity of teaching and integrated research-based teaching practices and brain theories with schoolhouse practicalities.

Her methodology was popularized to an extreme in the 80s and 90s and later berated because it seemed too repetitively mechanical and overdone. In the rush to reform, the clarity and directness of Dr. Hunter’s methodologies were set aside for newer trends, especially trends that de-emphasized the importance of the teacher and emphasized the perceived needs of the learner. Interestingly, the current political mandates for improving the achievement of all children in U.S. schools is returning Madeline Hunter’s instructional practices to the front of the classroom. In his 2011 book, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning, Mike Schmoker expounds on the values of Hunter’s methodologies.

In the context of school choice and educational consumerism, the need to keep children happy and their parents satisfied has changed our understanding of learning engagement. For many in our post-Dewey and Hunter century, the processes of learning often seem to supersede the outcomes of learning. A shortened attention span and need for quick successes connect millennial children with the advantages of techno-learning and fast-change options. Further, revolving choices of schools, curricula, and real and virtual teachers disconnects children and families from school communities. Whereas, speed and access to almost limitless experiences are a key stroke away at gigabytes per second, meaning and understanding that are checked and clarified by a knowledgeable adult operate at the speed of human conversation. The reality of that dichotomy aligns perfectly with a re-emergence of Dewey and Hunter. No matter how a child engages with a learning objective, “explain it to me, show me, and once again” are timeless in causing a child to learn and find meaning in what they learn.

The absence of “explain it, show me, and once again” may be analogous to manufacturing without a quality control. A child needs to know that learning has been achieved and that what has been learned is meaningful and matters in that child’s life. Good teaching completes and reinforces the loop connecting the purpose of learning, processes of learning, effectiveness of learning and application of learning.

Keep it John Dewey simple and meaningful. Keep it Madeline Hunter connected to sound learning theories. These two things keep teaching and learning effective and children learning.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) released its 2012 study of 65 participating nations/education systems this month. The news that 15-year olds in the U.S. once again were in the middle of the pack was printed as “PISA Test Results for U.S. Students are ‘Sobering’” (NPR), “American Kids Whiffed the PISA Exam” (Slate), “Testing Education: PISA Envy” (The Economist).

What price would need to be paid for the United States to climb the rank of education systems displayed in the PISA study? Let’s consider two elements – political commitment and cultural willingness.  What would it take on these two fronts to affect a change in the U.S. PISA fortunes?  For political commitment, we will examine my home state of Wisconsin.

This week Governor Walker received a letter from Tea Party and in- and out-of-state conservative groups calling for him to be a “hero” and bring legislation that would reject the Common Core Standards in Wisconsin schools. Be a hero? Abandon what more than 400 school districts have already accomplished in moving local instruction to the Core? Be a hero – for whom?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/27/scott-walker-common-core-standards-tea-party_n_4351092.html

Let’s see what this really means.

In 2010 the Thomas B. Fordham Institute evaluated the academic standards in each state and ranked Wisconsin’s mathematics standards with a grade of F. “With their grade of F, Wisconsin’s mathematics standards are among the worst in the country, while those developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative earn an impressive A-. The CCSS math standards are vastly superior to what the Badger state has in place today.”

http://edexcellencemedia.net/publications/2010/201007_state_education_standards_common_standards/Wisconsin.pdf

The Fordham Institute awarded the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards for English Language Arts a grade of D. “Wisconsin’s ELA standards are generally clearly written and presented, and include some rigorous content. Unfortunately, their failure to provide grade-specific expectations creates critical gaps in content that leave teachers without the guidance they need to drive rigorous curriculum, assessment and instruction.”

The letter to Governor Walker does not offer a substitute reform of educational standards or academic goals to replace the Common Core. The state legislators who held hearings around the state on the question of whether Wisconsin should support the Common Core also have not exposed anything but their disdain for the Common Core. Hence, abandoning the Common Core in the absence of any other improvement in academic standards returns Wisconsin schools to the Model Academic Standards that were graded with an F and D for their inadequacies. Interestingly, Model Academic Standards for all other subject areas remain the standards for instruction in those subject areas in our state’s public schools.  How would they be graded?

Standards make a difference in a discussion of PISA. The assessment of 15-year olds not only assesses their achievement on a once-every-three years test, but also assesses the instruction that is the foundation of that achievement. The dilemma in Wisconsin is the grave disconnect between the Model Academic Standards and the standards underlying the PISA test.

PISA views math literacy as “an individual’s capacity to formulate, employ, and interpret mathematics in a variety of contexts. It includes reasoning mathematically and using mathematical concepts, procedures, facts, and tools to describe, explain, and predict phenomenon. It assists individuals to recognize the role that mathematics plays in the world and to make the well-founded judgments and decisions by constructive, engaged, and reflective citizens.” As fact, the Fordham study found this definition of math literacy to be undeniably absent from the Wisconsin standards. Any Wisconsin student taking the PISA assessment could not rely upon his or her annual math instruction based upon the Model Academic Standards to assist their responses to PISA literacy in mathematics.

The problem is that current political commitment in Wisconsin is to politics and not to reforming the essential skeletal structure of public education, its academic standards. Any inference connecting the 2012 PISA results to public education in Wisconsin must be answered with the statement that state leadership is more interested in using education to improve its political advantage rather than using politics to improve public education.

The political price for Wisconsin’s improvement on PISA-like assessments is the commitment of our political leadership to real reform and measured improvement, like what the leaders in Massachusetts have rendered.  Massachusetts, and Connecticut and Florida, were accepted as independent education systems in the 2012 PISA assessment.  Massachusetts’ results rank the achievements of its 15-year olds among the top ten international education systems in the PISA data.  Those results did not happen by accident.  The are the result of a state commitment to achieving high results in the outcomes of their public education.  Way to go Massachusetts!

The status of cultural willingness is not much better off than political commitment when related to public education.

Frank Bruni, op-ed columnist for the New York Times recently asked “Are Kids Too Coddled?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/opinion/sunday/bruni-are-kids-too-coddled.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Mr. Bruni cites the complaints by parents, teachers and social workers in New York who recently testified that “kids are not enjoying school as much; feel a level of stress that they shouldn’t have to; are being judged too narrowly; and doubt their own mettle.” While he accepts the earnestness of these complaints, he says, “…we need to ask ourselves how much panic is trickling down from their parents and whether we’re paying the price of having insulated kids from blows to their egos and from the realization that not everyone’s a winner in every activity on every day.” Bruni points to the awarding of trophies not to the winner of a contest but to every participant, of the 20 to 30 valedictorians honored at high school graduations, and a court suit brought in Texas where a parent believes that a lopsided football score is a form of “bullying” an underachieving rival.

Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Education wrote in Education Week that “our students have an inflated sense of their academic prowess. They do not spend that much time studying, but they expect good grades and marketable degrees.”

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2013/10/tales_of_the_common_core.html

“The questions asked when international comparative tests are given show that American schools typically believe that they are better at math and science than students in other countries believe they are, even though the converse is true; foreign students outperform ours…

The single biggest challenge in implementing the Common Core will be raising the expectations of Americans for their children’s achievement. While American parents are pulling their kids out of tests because the results make the kids feel bad, parents in other countries are looking at the results and asking themselves how they can help their children to do better.”

Cultural willingness has a major impact upon the achievement of children in school.  The price of improvement is an upgrading of Wisconsin’s “grit” quotient.  Can you hear your grandparent when you were feeling dejected or defeated or sorry for yourself say “when the going gets tough, the tough get going!”  Grit keeps children in Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, and Massachusetts at their learning tasks when new learning is difficult.  It is their culture.

The capacity for children in the U.S. to be competitive in any international assessment is present. At some time soon, there will be a determination of who the adults in the room are and those adults will make a political commitment to improving educational achievement and those same adults will show a willingness to teach their children to “redefine self-esteem as something achieved through hard work. Students may not enjoy every step of it,” wrote David Coleman, President of the College Board and member of the Core authoring team). Coleman went further to say, “But if it takes them somewhere big and real, they’ll discover a satisfaction that redeems sweat. And, they’ll be ready to compete globally, an ability that too much worry over their egos could hinder.”

The price for the U.S. to achieve glory in the international competition of educational systems is not an insurmountable sum. Money is spent on public education every day. Politics is a game played every day. A political commitment could redirect money and human effort in a direction that already is available – the support of a public education based upon rigorous academic standards that align with the international educational community – movement up the PISA ladder is very realistic. At the same time, parental effort is expended every day to direct the lives of children. There is an equally important new call for parents: a willingness to redirect children toward to the work of an academically challenging studenthood and the connection of hard work, earned success, and self-esteem. Past generations of young Americans have been challenged with wars and depressions and questions of humanity. Being a more diligent student is doable.

The next PISA tests will be administered in 2015. History will record whether Americans were willing to do what needed to be done to achieve glory.

Duck, if you are a person responsible for the achievement of children in our nation’s public school systems. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) released its 2012 assessment results on December 3 and in the international box score the United States continues to languish around the middle of the pack of 65 nations. Although an assessment of 15-year old students only, PISA does not reflect well on the national entity of U.S public education.

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/

In the words of the National Center for Education Statistics,

In mathematics literacy, “the U.S. percentage was lower than 27 education systems, higher than 22 education systems, and not measurably different than 13 education systems.” Twenty-six percent of the tested children scored below level two on the assessment; level two is the bench line for proficiency in mathematics literacy.

In reading literacy, “the U.S. percentage was lower than 14 education systems, higher than 33 education systems, and not measurably different than 17 education systems.” Seventeen percent of U.S. students did not achieve the bench line for reading literacy proficiency.

In science literacy, “the U.S. percentage was higher than 21 education systems, lower than 29 education systems, and not measurably different than 14 education systems.” Eighteen percent of U.S. students did not achieve the bench line for science literacy proficiency.

Using the lens of time, the U.S. average scores in math, reading and science literacy were not measurably different than the average U.S. scores in prior PISA assessments dating back to 2003.

Of interest, PISA allowed three U.S. states, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Florida, to enter assessment data for students in their state independent of the U.S. data. The achievement of students in these states also were included in the U.S. data. Of these states, Massachusetts moves into the top ten education systems in each assessment and Connecticut is in the top ten in two assessments. The average scores of both states were superior to the average scores of the United States. On a comparative basis, the population and economic status of Massachusetts and Connecticut are greater than many of the 65 national/education systems participating in PISA.

To date, China has not participated as a nation. Specific cities in China have participated and Shanghai and Hong Kong have been assessment leaders in recent tests.

The 2012 international stars on the PISA look like a reshuffle of a ten card deck. The top ten just seem to shift places. However, Finland fell out of the top ten in mathematics literacy to 16th and was surpassed by Massachusetts. Massachusetts’ results were not measurably different than Finland in reading literacy and just below Finland’s average in science literacy.

If you tend to be a critic of public education in the United States, your criticism will be much the same as it was in 2009 and 2006. Why don’t children completing middle school and entering high school in the U.S., children and schools who have so many educational advantages over their international peers, achieve better than the middle of the pack? You will make accusations about systems failures. PISA’s stated goal “is to assess students’ preparation for the challenges of life as young adults.” (NCES.ed.gov) The PISA data would tell you that the next generation of 15-year olds in over half of the national education systems tested may be better prepared for their future than those in the United States.

If you tend to be a proponent of public education, your commentary will indicate that historical trends indicate little change, up or down, in the achievements of U.S. 15-year olds. You will point to the continuing emphasis in our nation’s schools on equity and equality of educational opportunity and progress in closing the achievement gaps displayed by state and local assessments among children in our local schools. You will talk about consistent achievement in the face of the many social and political agenda for public education.

You may also point to a disconnection between your local mathematics curriculum and the PISA assessment. PISA views math literacy as “an individual’s capacity to formulate, employ, and interpret mathematics in a variety of contexts. If includes reasoning mathematically and using mathematical concepts, procedures, facts, and tools to describe, explain, and predict phenomenon. It assists individuals to recognize the role that mathematics plays in the world and to make the well-founded judgments and decisions by constructive, engaged, and reflective citizens.” If your local curriculum is not Common Core aligned, it is probable that the PISA definition of math literacy does not match the course-based math at your local children are learning.

If you tend to be politically and economically realistic, you will speak about education being a political lever for many governors. They pull the lever down to move state financing committed to education to cover other non-education costs as they balance state budgets. They push the lever up to spotlight selected school successes and never fail to take advantage of the photo op. They push or pull the lever depending on their party affiliation, strip teachers of unionized rights, and give local school boards “tools” to change their local economic situation in the absence of collective bargaining. You will wonder how our schools continue to cause student learning with all of the politico-economic hub-bub.

If you are in the long haul, you will urge folks not to make knee-jerk reactions to the 2012 results. Wait until the 2015 results! PISA results are released every three years and thus far a success or lack of success on this international test has not impacted local education.

The PISA data pile continues to lean in disfavor of the U.S. Even so, school doors were open this morning to children across our nation. Moms and dads packed lunches, watched their children board a bus or walk or car pool to school and these same parents will sit in the bleachers or theater seats this week to support their children in their athletics and fine arts. Children in a thousands of classrooms will engage with their teachers and classmates and they will continue to learn although most will continue to report at the supper table that “nothing happened at school today.”

And, the PISA data will continue to lean. Let it lean. Our children are learning.

How did that happen? Now, there’s a common question asked by many who try to understand how an event or a situation or a set of events and situations came to be. In the weeks following Thanksgiving, one may ask “how did that happen?” when needing one more notch in the belt to hold up a pair of pants or a skirt. One looks for causes, usually something to point at, in order to explain the current condition. Some causes or reasons come easily to mind. Others are more difficult to divine.

Attribution is a concept used in psychology to explore the processes that we use to explain the causes of behavior or events or situations that we believe need explaining.

Explanatory attributions allow us, as best as we are able, to understand a particular problem that may have complex and complicated reasons. When we discuss attributing factors, we use logic and inference. We point directly to some attributes, like the extra helping of turkey and dressing and the double wedge of pumpkin pie and the late night bowl of left-over dressing on Thanksgiving day, when we step on the scale the following Sunday. “If only I had not eaten…” Some attributes are more difficult to point at. The fact that Uncle Pete and your grandfather and your father each had an endomorphic body shape, the stomach section of the body is wider than the hips, may lead us to an inference about our heredity and propensity for adding weight where it is difficult to lose. Whether through the use of logic or inference, we like to make causal statements and point at the attributes that lead us to our current conditions. Something or somebody must be the cause, perhaps the blame.

Public education is fertile ground for attribution. Johnny can’t read. There must be a cause. Algebra is difficult. There must be a cause. Student daily absenteeism from school increases as the student progresses through the grades. Of course, there is a cause. Children in the U.S. do not achieve the same as their international age peers on exams of reading, math and science. There must be a cause. Logical or inferential, there must be a cause.

In his Education Week Spotlight article, “Staff Development for Teachers Deemed Fragmented,” Stephen Sawchuk reports that “Although American teachers spend more time working in classrooms than do instructors in some of the top-performing European and Asian countries, U.S. students have scored in the middle of the pack on a number of prominent international exams in recent years.

That paradox appears to stem at least in part from a failing of the United States’ systems for supporting professional learning, concludes a new report released here last week. American teachers, it finds, are not given as many opportunities for on-the-job training as their international peers, and their effectiveness appears to suffer as a result.”

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/02/11/21development-2.h28.html

The finger is pointed. The “subsequent” mediocre achievement of Unites States children on international tests is attributed to the “antecedent” failure of our nation’s education systems to properly provide our teachers with effective professional development. Is this as good as pointing at the extra servings on Thanksgiving Day? Not quite, but let’s explore. There must be a cause.

What is professional development?

By definition, a professional is one whose work “relates to a job that requires special education, training or skill.” Consequently, professional development is the continuing education of a professional for the purpose of furthering the professional’s expertise in using the requisite knowledge, skills and processes of that profession. A somewhat circular statement, but it works.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional

To achieve an understanding of professional development for teachers one must find a comfortable chair and be patient. Professional development for teachers is one of those very large industries that lie just below the public radar. It does not receive the daily press of the health care industry or pharmaceutical industry or even the dairy products industry. But, it is LARGE and looming. Millions of dollars are spent annually on professional development for teachers. According to the Huffington Post, “The federal government gives local school districts more than $1 billion annually for training programs. New York City schools spent close to $100 million last year just on private consultants.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/improving-teachers-millio_n_1568103.html

So, what is professional development for a teacher? A scan of Education Week’s Professional Development Directory displays 38 categories of PD topics and within each category scores of listings. For example, under the category of “Effective Teaching Strategies” there are 99 listings. From A to Z, Action Learning Systems, Inc to Zia Learning, Inc, a PD-seeker can find everything from national multi—day workshops to online courses for graduate credit to multi-media kits designed for a school faculty’s in-service program. There are courses to train teachers in the latest teaching strategies, principals in effective supervision and coaching models, and everyone in the use of computer-based technologies. The fact that there is so much PD on the market leads to consumer confusion regarding what the best continuing education to resolve a school’s or a teacher’s educational challenges might be. Caveat emptor!

http://pddirectory.edweek.org/search-companies-by-category/effective-teaching-strategies

If professional development is an attribute for internationally non-competitive, student achievement, what could turn PD from being a cause of mediocrity to a cause of improvement and success?

The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education sponsored the “Transforming Schooling and Teaching: Teacher Professional Series” project led by Linda Darling-Hammond. As reported by Sawchuk in his EdWeek article, “Ms. Darling-Hammond and her colleagues extensively reviewed the research literature on professional development. The review included a synthesis of results from those studies employing the most scientifically rigorous research methodologies.

That synthesis found that training programs of a certain duration—30 to 100 hours of time over six months to a year—positively influenced student achievement, while those with fewer than 14 hours had little effect.

The report’s authors also drew on qualitative research to outline common features of professional development that appear to be associated with changes in teacher practices. Such features include a sustained curriculum that is connected to teachers’ classroom practice, focuses on specific content, aligns with school improvement goals, and fosters collaboration among a school’s staff. Professional-development practices in some of the top-performing industrialized countries frequently align to such a research base, while those in the United States largely contradict it.”

Sawchuk also cited Stephanie Hirsh, executive director of the National Staff Development Council. “In the U.S., professional development is predominantly an individual enterprise focused on serving individuals rather than focusing on what students need.”

According to Darling-Hammond, “… no causal evidence exists to link other countries’ professional-development techniques directly to their scores on international tests, the alignment of those countries’ practices to the research “suggest[s] that there may be some connection between the opportunities for teacher development and the quality of teaching and learning that result.”

Sawchuk reported that Susan Sclafani, director of state services for the National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington-based nonprofit group that promotes a tighter link between education and workforce development, noted that several of the top-performing countries have stricter front-end selection criteria for teachers, larger class sizes, and longer hours to facilitate on-site professional learning. The United States, in contrast, typically has lax entry standards and smaller classes, and the majority of teachers receive no more than 16 hours of training in their subject per year.

These could be new attributes for future success in causing children in the U.S. to improve their competitive status. More importantly, these could be new attributes for improved classroom instruction.

Professional development for teachers that is

• Related to the daily instructional/learning needs of the children they teach.

Until education runs out of things to test, let the “what gets tested gets taught” rule prevail. Today, this would be Common Core standards paired with college and career readiness knowledge, skills and problem-solving skills. PD should make a teacher an expert in understanding and interpreting the complexities of the Core standards and in the pedagogy for teaching these standards to all children. Being an expert is a good PD target.

Associated with “what gets tested gets taught” is “student readiness to learn.” If the teacher cannot address “readiness or unreadiness” issues, the student will not learn. PD should train teachers in the abilities to develop positive, educational relationships with each student.

Building instructional expertise and a capacity for interpersonal relationships are the elements that should drive the “what” of teacher PD.

• Customized for the teacher’s readiness to learn new professional knowledge, skills and  instructional/learning processes.

Why would we ignore what we know about teaching children when we teach adults? PD must be matched with the teacher’s current professional expertise (content, pedagogical skills, instructional/learning processes) and readiness to learn. Just as importantly, PD for a teacher must be personalized and customized for the teacher’s successful growth. If so, we can expect growth in learning. If not, why are we surprised when there is no change in professional expertise? Treating the elements of readiness is the “when” of PD and is essential for its success.

• Provided in a consistent and constant manner until the teacher demonstrates                competence in the new professional learning.

Every sound principle of sequential learning, pacing, transfer from prior learning, reinforcement, guided and independent practice, and monitored results must be incorporated in PD for teachers. This means that PD is a year-round, continuing education. Two-day workshops, monthly staff meetings, once-a-semester in-service days loaded with disjointed meetings, guest speakers, and stand-alone conferences do not meet the standards of best PD practice. They may be incorporated into a constant and consistent PD, but as disjointed events they only breed disinterest at best and an anti-PD attitude at worst. Segregated time on a weekly basis over many months is the ticket for success.

• Delivered close to the teacher, in clusters of educators facing similar    instructional/learning challenges, makes teacher participation reasonable and acceptable.

Massed meetings held at a centralized location that necessitate a teacher to prepare for substitute teacher, drive many miles to the meeting place, sit and get generalized information in a loosely assembled grouping of teachers for six hours, and then drive back home is a sure recipe for failed PD. A teacher will grow to resent time away from the classroom, especially time spent driving to and from a meeting of massed peers and generalized delivery. PD that assembles and clusters teachers with similar instructional/learning needs presenting a similar readiness to learn in a location near their home school clearly demonstrates an awareness and accommodation of what are otherwise distractors to the teacher’s professional learning. PD is not about meeting the logistical needs of the providers; PD is all about the learning teacher.

• Based upon the best practices of instruction.

The “science of teaching” should be best practice in PD for teachers. At the end of a semester’s work, no one gains if the teacher/learner has not learned. Hence, a Hunteresque lesson design with emphasis upon higher order learning and constant checking for understanding infuses very well into professional development for teachers. If this is the standard for assuring learning success for children, the design should be adapted to adult education.

• Designed with performance-based metrics to inform, reinforce and validate the teacher’s  new professional learning.

The metric of interest is how PD contributes to improved student learning and measured achievements. Part of the pre-PD design is to assay the status of student achievement. Part of the post-PD design is a second assessment of student achievement. The first purpose of professional development is to improve and extend a teacher’s professional expertise. The ultimate purpose of PD is to improve and extend student learning. Using classroom jargon, “if the assessment needle does not move in a significant, positive direction, there is a need for more but different PD. Time reteach until learning is successful.”

If our dissatisfaction with student learning performances causes us to point at the status of professional development for teachers, then we need to change the nature of that attribute. Making small adjustments through the selection of professional development on the national menu of PD will not turn the trick. The work of PD must be done differently and it is up to educational leadership to stipulate how a different PD looks and behaves. Then, if the subsequent conditions do not change as a result of different antecedents, point at the leaders.

Melanie Parma and Larry LePage, architects with Somerville, Inc, and I spoke at the 6th Annual Midwest Facility Masters Conference on November 14. Our presentation, “Discover the Twenty-First Century Learning Environment Within Your Existing Building,” illustrated how an existing school house can be transformed using the important concepts of security, storage, flexibility, and collaboration. Re-conceptualized classrooms, gyms, auditoriums, media/information centers, and pupil services centers in a 1950s building can function fully to support the designs of a 21st century educational center.

According to the 2010 census and the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 99,000 public schools in the United States. The average age was 42 years old. That means that more than half of our schools were constructed before 1968. In order to be more informative, the NCES sorts school buildings by functional age or the date of the last renovation to the main structure of the school house. Using this definition, the average age of America’s schools is 16 years. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/frss/inc/displaytables_inc.asp

The difficulty for many older school houses is that they have been the subject of multiple renovations or additions. Like a person with organ transplants and/or synthetic joint replacements who says my kidneys are three years old, my right hip is eight years old, my knees are ten years old and the lenses in my eyes are six months old, age may seem interpretative but it really is a fixed number. And, by the way, my heart and lungs and brain and the rest of my body are 65 years old; like NCES schools, I am younger than my age.

My local school house is a K-12 school. It is an aggregate of an original gymnasium and three classrooms built in 1938, an elementary school that presents the front face of the school house and built in 1952, a high school addition built in 1976, two elementary wings and a middle school wing built in the 1980s, and a music wing built in 2005. The boilers, electrical and water/plumbing services are of the 1970s vintage. Most local community members are not able to attach a date to their local school but can approximate the most recent additions. Their perception is that the school is in good condition. Of course, their perspective derives from their experience as students in the school or as parents of children in the school; an historical perspective. Ms. Parma, Mr. LePage and I addressed age of a school from the perspective of future utility.

Security and access to the school currently is a non-negotiable issue for school architecture. The tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary is indelible and no school board wants to become a double victim of school violence; violent injury to children and/or school personnel, and, a perceived failure to take post-Sandy Hook security precautions. Most schools have weighed their vulnerability to a violent event and taken action to secure school doorways. Hardened vestibules and audio-visual surveillance are now the norm at most school buildings.

A 21st security system is physical and attitudinal. Parents bringing a forgotten lunch or picking up a child for a medical appointment or by a local banker coming to talk with high school business education students need reasonable access to the school house while the unknown and unanticipated visitor must be screened. Security being security, access for the first group above is shaping up to be a little different from access for the latter group. These concerns require physical changes to the school house and a public relations campaign to explain how reasonable and needed access by non-school folks can be facilitated.

A 21st security system also is infrastructural. Safety procedures extend to food, water and air safety and protective systems. New procedures also extend to the school’s Internet and Wifi systems. From the vantage point of school safety, the entry and exit of every person, every supply, and every service becomes a new concern. In-school and community discussion of these concerns is the beginning point of institutionalized change. Interestingly, a concern need not become a dollar sign when attitude and information can change behavior.

In every discussion, in-school storage is one of the most common needs of all staff members from teacher to administrator to custodian to food service to bus drivers. No one has enough storage. We often perceive that a 21st century education will utilize digital information and should reduce the volume of books and paper supplies. While this is partially true, the emphasis of reform education on real life problem solving has made learning “stuff rich.” Real life problems require access to real life things and when complex problems are contemplated the quantity of stuff multiplies. Additionally, mobility has moved school supplies from the classroom student desk and shelf to the student back pack. Traditional hallway lockers and under-the-chair book bins are too small. Learning centers are organized on carts as are classroom laptops. Storage areas have begun to look like garages for classroom carts, some of which are needed daily and others are needed for instruction in October only. Conceptually, storage can go horizontal or vertical, on-site and off-site, real or virtual. Planners for a 21st century learning environment will exploit all of these opti0ns to assure that a 20th century classroom functions successfully in this century.

The need and accountability for spatial flexibility is heightened in 21st century school houses. All school departments are called upon to increase productivity while holding or diminishing operational costs. Multiple purpose rooms in a school have become physical “gold.” Whereas, in the early 1950s the construction of a school auditorium or a cafeteria or a rehearsal room may have received easy approval, school rooms or spaces that are used only a fraction of the school day are not acceptable today. Rooms that can double as lunch rooms and community rooms and study halls are needed. Renovations that install partitions and interchangeable seating and variable lighting are very good financial investments.

Flexible usage necessitates flexible structure and infrastructure. 21st learning uses an increasing number of electrical devices. These need electrical power. Power either is made pervasive through extended wiring service or portable with available battery exchanges. 21st learning requires grouping and regrouping of students and teachers. Large group spaces. Small group spaces. Conference rooms. Individual work spaces. All spaces must have access to power and computer servers. Also, 21st century learning is messy. Students engaged in complex and complicated problems need space for spreading out, organizing, analyzing, assembling and presenting their conclusions. Walls with whiteboards, conference table tops that can withstand tape and markers, and floors that can withstand debris and messiness are needed. Attitudinally flexible maintenance and custodial staff are essential now more than ever before.

The last 21st century learning environmental issue we addressed, collaborative processes, is almost anti-facility. In the hypothetical, collaborative learning requires near-spontaneous and simultaneous access of learner to learner, learner to teacher/mentor, and learner to learning information or material. In the hypothetical, a student with a laptop or tablet and cell phone could access any other student or teacher or community resource or higher education or real-world resource and collaboratively to engage in their needed learning experiences.

In real time, collaborative processes optimize a student’s access to teachers, mentors, other students and learning resources in or near to the physical environment of the school. For the facility master, the learning environment begins to resemble an open spaces center with minimized walls and barriers between students and teachers who are organized in subject-specific classes. For example, students in a social studies class examining the politics of global warming could have reasonable physical access to a science class investigating changing weather patterns and a math class learning about statistical models. Collaborative learning is optimized when students in these three disciplines can easily share instruction and study and conclusions. And, teachers of one discipline can engage students in another discipline whose learning needs at that moment require more than one teacher. Not hypothetically, fixed walls and corridors are barriers to optimal collaboration.

Additionally, collaborative learning environments may encompass aspects of security, storage and flexibility. Taken to an extreme, collaborative learning environments also may make the school house obsolete as learning in this context can take place almost anywhere anytime.

The NCES definition of the functional age of a school may require rethinking. The new definition must be in the context of a 21st century learning environment. Using this definition, it is probable that schools renovated even sixteen years ago now face outdated operability. It is probable that only 32 percent of all schools, those with original construction of less than five years present a 21st century learning environment. With clear insights into the differences between 20th and 21st century learning needs, older school houses can be made young again.