What's Become Clear

Below you will find an interview with my friend Bentley Richert. Bentley now teaches at Inman elementary school that was a coworker for many years. Over those years we spent many hours discussing school change. Bentley decided to go back to the classroom and see if all those ideas really make sense.

I think you’ll enjoy our conversation that ranges from authentic engagement to standardized tests. Bentley expreses his ideas about individualization and customization, learning by doing, and the use of technology in the 21st century.

Bentley teaches at Inman Elementary School and has a background as an educational specialist at ESSDACK, teacher at a charter school and as a classroom teacher in the Haven school district.

What’s Become Clear w/ Bentley Richert from Steve Wyckoff on Vimeo.

What’s Become Clear w/ Bentley Richert from Steve Wyckoff on Vimeo.

One of the comments that I’ve heard several times recently is that the one thing we really do well is to teach our kids how to learn. In my opinion one of the very poorest things we do is teach our kids how learn. In fact, when I talk about school change that should be one of the first things on our agenda.

I think we confuse students sitting passively, compliantly taking in information, then giving that information back to us on the test, with learning. I’ve referred many times to my experiences speaking with the college of education students at the University of Kansas. One of the things I always ask them is, “If they took a test as seniors in high school that they got an  “A” on, that they couldn’t pass as freshman in college?” They always roar with laughter and every hand goes up.

My question to them is if you didn’t remember the information long enough to recall it less than a year later did you really learn it?

My good friends Kevin Honeycutt and Ginger Lewman talk a lot about L2L2, Learning To Love To Learn.I agree with him completely but the phrase I  chose, which is less emotional, is that our students become self-directed learners. I do absolutely agree that students who love to learn are our best learners.

This was driven home to me some time ago while I was visiting with a group of students. We were talking about learning when it dawned on me that students see the term learning, in many cases, as a negative. They associate the term learning with boredom, sitting passively, and content that is uninteresting and irrelevant.

The conundrum for educators is this. All of our educators were taught to teach just as they were taught. Yet this traditional teaching mode doesn’t engage students, nor create educational experiences, that give the student the opportunity to be either self-directed nor L2L2L.

In order to give students the opportunity to engage in self directed learning the teacher, in collaboration with the student, must create a learning experience that engages the student and at the same time leads to the learning that the teacher desires. This is a far different requirements than simply creating traditional lesson plans.

It can be done, I spent two days last week observing it. I spent one day in Stafford Kansas at the SEED center, and half a day in the Newton Kansas school district at the Walton Rural Life School. Two very different schools, one for high school students, and one for elementary students. One with the theme of rural life were kids are raising chickens and goats, and one focusing on entrepreneurship were students are actually running their own business.

What they both have in common is learning by doing experiences were the teachers are facilitators who practice excellent Socratic skills, rather than direct instruction skills.

Real school change has to include different learned behaviors on the part of teachers, that lead to learning by doing experiences for students, and real behavioral changes on the part of students. – Steve Wyckoff

Several things have become clear to me when thinking about school change in rural America. I’ve been listening to conversations about declining enrollment for over 20 years. During that time I’ve facilitated goal setting for many boards of education in rural communities. Most of them have a discussion during that goal setting about stealing students from their neighbors. Few, if any, succeed consistently at this goal.

I’ve been thinking about this issue differently over the last year. What we really need to do is to attract new residents to our rural communities. Not an easy task, but it can be done. We do have new families move into our rural communities, just not often enough.

So recently I began to think about this issue from the perspective of a family considering a move to rural America. I think, generally speaking, a family would consider two things in deciding where to relocate.

First, they would want to know about the schools. If it were me, I would want to know what the school could do to help my child become remarkable. No, most parents wouldn’t use the word remarkable, but I think that’s what all of us want for our kids. Unfortunately, we usually settle for our kids surviving the system.

Secondly, they would want to know what the community had to offer. Would my family fit in? Would we be welcomed? Are there things to do, that we enjoy doing? Are the amenities present that we need to live the lifestyle that we desire? Will our finances go further than they did in the city?

A couple of thoughts about answering these questions. First of all our rural communities need to be thinking from this perspective, and as a community take action to develop our community. The same things that would attract a new family will be attractive to the current residents.

This is also a great opportunity to engage our students in real-world experiences that are meaningful and engaging, and at the same time prepare them for the real world. There is no reason that our students couldn’t be involved in all aspects of community development. Their activities would not only be of benefit to the community, but would also facilitate the learning and application of academic skills in a real-world setting.

The new key component  that I’ve learned over the last year is how people find what they want in the 21st century. The first thing we do today when we want to find something is Google it. So we need to teach our rural communities and our schools how to present themselves so that they’re found on Google.

The second part of that key component is social networking. Over 200 million Americans are on Facebook. Our schools and communities need to have a presence on Facebook and work diligently to spread the word about our schools and communities through Facebook and other social media.

As we consider school change it is imperative that we also consider community development, and how to market our schools and communities in the 21st century. Kansas, and almost all of the other 49 states, have substantial rural populations and there is no reason that we can’t educate our kids better and at the same time develop and market our rural communities. Now that would be real school change. – Steve Wyckoff

I received an email from a superintendent/friend regarding my blog post Oklahoma Gets It, Kansas Doesn’t, and I’d like to respond here so that others with the same questions/thoughts might see my response also.

Your recent article “Oklahoma gets it, Kansas doesn’t” has raised some conversation within our district. One of the comments was “That’s interesting because I was at one of the Kansas conferences he was at last week, and we didn’t have any sessions that covered raising test scores.

I’m assuming you could pick presentations to attend that would avoid the topic of assessments. And while I didn’t hear the keynotes, typically KSDE has brought in speakers who present the bigger picture of the world. So I’m not doubting the validity of the above statement. But, the conference title used to be, “The Fall Assessment Conference.” It has been combined with the annual conference but with a major emphasis still on NCLB, AYP, and standardized tests.

I did a little further digging in the breakout session descriptions and the  topic of assessment, and the variations on the word assessment, was mentioned 71 times; tests was mentioned 58 times. Inspire, and its variations, were mentioned 2 times; and innovation, and its variations, were mentioned 4 times. Creativity, passion, and remarkable  weren’t mentioned in any of the descriptions.

So again I don’t doubt the validity of the statement, but there is no doubt that the focus of this conference was on standardized tests and not on our kids and their futures.

The next comment in the e-mail was;

In fact, we had some speakers from Kansas talking about some of the things these national/international speakers were talking about…”

Again, I don’t doubt the validity of this statement. In fact I had many conversations with individuals about the things that we should be doing in education. And I’m sure that these ideas were talked about in breakout sessions. It is my experience in talking one-on-one with educators that there are some broad areas that we have a high agreement on. Unfortunately policymakers and higher-level administrators aren’t moving the system in that direction. And the reality is, like it or not, our standardized test scores in reading and math are what we are measured by. And a preponderance of the breakout sessions were focused on standardized test scores.

I think the focus at the national level, regardless of the rhetoric, is solely focused on standardized test scores. And regardless of what our policy makers and state-level administrators wish we were doing, they are being forced to comply with the feds desires.

Other comments have to do with what the direction of education should be. We keep hearing that we need to change and there is never an answer about what needs to change. I know the long range vision would be to do something different with our educational system but my question is what?

This discussion is worth an entire blog post, so click this link to read what I believe are the most important changes that need to be made.

I think we do some things very well and there are some areas that frankly we have not been able to change for whatever reason. We as a nation have been accused of not preparing our students for the future and to some extent I would agree with that.

I agree completely. In fact I repeatedly say, and it almost never gets heard, we are doing the best job that we have ever done at what we’ve always done. There’s no doubt that we have optimized the current system. The problem is policymakers and state and federal administrators keep forcing us down the old path.

When policymakers and state and federal administrators told us we needed to raise test scores, we raised test scores. And that’s just the latest mandate that we’ve endured. Unfortunately, higher test scores are not an indicator of a student’s readiness for their future.

I know we have not kept up with the test comparisons around the world but I also know that we include a totally different group of students in the results than most nations.

In my mind comparisons of test scores with other countries are useless. So is the conversation about national standards. The United States has never led the world in standardized test scores since the comparisons began in the 1950s. What we have led the world at is innovation and creativity, both of which are being sacrificed today to achieve higher test scores.

And the advocates for national standards all point to the fact that all of the countries who score better than us on standardized test scores all have national standards. What they fail to mention is the bottom 12 countries and those comparisons also have national standards.

I would caution you to get on the bandwagon of anything that standardizes. We are in an era of customization and individualization. In the education our children receive should be as customizable as any good or service today.

I hope that I have addressed the concerns completely and adequately. I truly appreciate any opportunity to have dialogue on the topic of school change. So please, if you have a comment let me know and let’s talk about it. – Steve Wyckoff

One of the projects that I’m actively involved in is the movement to incorporate entrepreneurship into schools, especially small, rural, declining enrollment schools. The group that I’m working with is very specific in their desire. They don’t want kids to learn about entrepreneurship, they want the students to practice the discipline of entrepreneurs.

I believe that you only learn when you’re doing. And in this case the doing that we want kids to do, is being entrepreneurs … Starting and running businesses.

This week I had the opportunity and the pleasure to visit with Kylie Stupka who is theExecutive Director of Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas, and Phoebe Bachura who is the Development Director. I was aware of Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas. I had looked over their website and read some of their literature. Both of which were very impressive.

But visiting with these two young ladies in person was beyond impressive. Their organization is doing exemplary work with students mostly in south central Kansas. My hope is that we can collaborate with Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas and find a way to scale their program across the state, but especially to rural schools.

One of the major issues we have in rural America is the shortage of jobs and businesses. If we can find those students across rural America who have a passion that can be applied in a local business, we can grow our own jobs. We’re never going to get businesses to move to rural Kansas in sufficient numbers to solve the problem. It’s imperative for the survival of rural America that we begin to grow our own jobs.

At the same time we can use entrepreneurship to authentically engage our students in their learning experiences. Students should be able to apply and master academic skills in the context of whatever it is they’re passionate about, and the businesses they start around those passions.

After all, if our academic standards can’t be applied in real world settings, why do we have them? This is school change that can not only benefit the students but our rural communities. Please take a minute and watch the video below, I think you’ll be fascinated and impressed. – Steve Wyckoff

The annual KSDE conference was held this past week and I was interested in some themes that seem to be emerging from the many conversations. You can decide which conversations were the good news, and which were the bad.

Conversation number one. As always I had the opportunity to talk to a great number of superintendents about this years enrollment. The trend started early, superintendents were telling me that their enrollment was up. I don’t know what the numbers are, yes this opinion is unburdened by data, but I quickly became aware of how many school districts reported that they had increased enrollment. If this trend holds it is definitely a reversal from recent years.

Conversation number two. Actually, this was the un conversation that I became aware of when I talk to Terrel Harrison from Colby. She told me that it had been a much more pleasant fall without the constant threat of imminent budget cuts. That’s when I realized I hadn’t had a single conversation about money.

Conversation number three. The new Deputy Commissioner appointed just the day before the conference started was on many peoples’ minds. Some were exuberant in their support, many reserved judgment. Concerns for those that had them seemed to center on the issue of his support for innovation and creativity in schools, or would his traditional paradigm stifle the innovators? This will be an issue worth watching since the goal of the state Board of Education is the redesign of the delivery model. It’s hard to redesign the delivery model without turning the creative and innovative people loose to experiment.

Conversation number four. Testing, testing, testing … Insanity!

Conversation number five. The recommendations starting to come out of the Kansas Education Commission. There seems to be large and growing support for project-based learning, or more generally learning by doing; focusing on authentic student engagement, not just test scores; and the tension that is growing between college ready, career ready, and more generally, life ready.

In my opinion the news was a mixed bag. Some good, some bad, some wait and see. I am still very concerned that the federal government is absolutely forcing us in the wrong direction, but there are more and more conversations about how to mitigate the damages done by ESEA. We have had 12 years and two administrations encouraging the wrong kind of school change.

I am encouraged that there are more and more conversations about doing what’s best for kids rather than what’s best for the federal government. Stay tuned. – Steve Wyckoff

Last week at the the Kansas Education Commission meeting one of the participants commented about “the classic liberal arts education” as if it were given how important, and appropriate, the classic liberal arts education is. As I’ve written before, the most difficult thing to do in school change is to decide what not to do any longer.

I think that it’s time to take a critical look at the “classic liberal arts education” and make some tough decisions about the assumptions we have made for over 100 years, and decide what parts of that education should be abandoned. I know that opinion will rankle more than a few feathers, especially among higher education people, and those who teach in the K-12 core curriculum.

But with the ever changing face of our society it’s imperative that we begin to abandon the least worthy pieces of our traditional education system. I make light of the fact that we seem to think there’s nothing more important than reading the works of dead white European male authors. While I may say it lightheartedly, I am dead serious with my question. What is so important about dead white European male authors that they must be studied by every student.

Not only do I believe that much of what we teach in the classic liberal arts education is no longer appropriate, but I believe it’s the part of our curriculum that students find most boring and irrelevant. At the very least we have to figure out how to make our core curriculum relevant and interesting to our students. In the best possible world we should figure out what to do instead of much of what we do in our core curriculum.

I know this will be hard to swallow for many educators, but at some point we have to begin to abandon something, and somebody’s sacred cow is going to get gored. When we talk about school change we mean exactly that, change! You can’t keep doing everything you’ve always done and pretend that you’re changing. – Steve Wyckoff

As I talk with individuals about school change one of the issues that always arises is the sense that teachers get that they are being criticized for not being good teachers. I always try to point out when I talk about school change that teachers are doing the best job they’ve ever done, at what we’ve always done in education.

The issue is this, the needs of our kids after they graduate have changed dramatically. And therefore what we do in K-12 schools needs to change dramatically.

One of the fundamental changes that has occurred very subtly over the last several decades, is the need for our students to be able to do something with what they know, not just know something.

There are a couple of different aspects to this need. First of all, for decades and decades, it was sufficient to just know a lot of stuff. That’s what separated the educated from the uneducated. And that was okay because the uneducated could still go out, and if they were willing to show up every day and work hard, they could earn a good living.

And Americans are known for their work ethic. So that worked well.

But gradually the need to be able to do something with what you know became paramount. In 1950 65% of jobs were unskilled. They required no post secondary education. Just show up and work hard and you could be successful.

Today those numbers have changed dramatically. In fact about the same percentage, 65% of jobs, require the individual to have acquired some type of technical skills in order to successfully do their work. The real kicker is those necessary skills are always changing. So the need to not only be able to do something is important, but the ability to learn new skills and apply them is now extremely important.

Howard Gardner in his latest book, Five Minds For The Future, does an outstanding job of describing the need for our students to not simply know about a subject, but to practice the discipline of that subject. It isn’t enough to know about biology. We must allow our students to practice the discipline of a biologist. That same logic can be applied to any subject area.

Obviously, it’s impractical to have every student practice the discipline of every field. There simply isn’t enough time. So we need to be figuring out how to allow students to sample the various disciplines and then begin to choose those fields that are most personally interesting to them.

This solves another major issue that we face in schools. By my estimation less than 5% of our kids are authentically engaged in the educational process in our schools. And according to Gallup’s research, 50% of our students are either going through the motions at school, or are actively undermining the teaching learning process.

There is ample evidence to show that students who are given the choice to choose fields that are interesting to them, and are allowed to learn by actually practicing the discipline of that field, are dramatically more engaged than the students who were not.

This means that schools must begin to analyze their entire curriculum, and learning experiences, and figure out ways to move to a learning by doing model.

So I’m not criticizing teachers’ effort or results when I say they need to change. But I am criticizing leaders for not “leading” their schools to models that are more beneficial to our students. That’s what I mean when I talk about school change.–Steve Wyckoff

School change means different things to different people, but one of the things that I believe we have to change in schools, especially in rural areas, is a focus on entrepreneurship. If our rural towns are going to survive, and the kids who stay there  live a decent life, then we have to grow our own entrepreneurs, businesses simply aren’t going to move to small rural towns.

This morning I had the opportunity to visit the entrepreneurship school in Stafford Kansas. What a breath of fresh air! The kids at the Seed Academy, which stands for Stafford Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, are doing things that truly impressed me. Not only are they creative an innovative, but their work is of the highest quality.

Over 20% of all of the students at Stafford High School are involved in the Seed Academy. Most of them will never open a business, and even fewer will open a business in Stafford. But some will. And in the community like Stafford every business makes a difference. If only one student a year ends up opening a business in Stafford it will make a huge difference to the community and the economics of the area.

Even the students who never open a business are learning very important lessons for their future. And they are learning by doing, which is absolutely the way all learning should occur.

Their next step? I believe that their next step needs to be a system where students receive academic credit when they master academic skills in a real world setting. I saw numerous examples in the brief time I was there where students could demonstrate under real-world conditions the use of academic skills and knowledge. There is no reason for students to set through an English class when they are demonstrating all of the skills that they would be learning in the class. Give them English credit and let them move on!

I always enjoy visiting those rare examples where schools are truly authentically engaging students in real-world experiences. In my mind that’s what school changes all about. – Steve Wyckoff

I’ve long preached that the measure we should look at when we talk about school change, is the degree to which our students are authentically engaged in the educational process. That isn’t a new thought by me, W. Edwards Deming said it something like this, every child should leave school loving to learn. If they did everything else would take care of itself. I couldn’t agree more.

The other day Dr. John Burke, my friend and superintendent at Haysville public schools, shared with me a student survey developed by the people at Gallup.The Gallup student poll. Check it out, it’s very interesting stuff. Here is the purpose and the three things the poll measures.

Purpose:

Through years of research, Gallup discovered three true indicators of student success; hope, engagement, and wellbeing. These three key factors drive students’ grades, achievement scores, retention, and future employment.

Hope: the ideas and energy we have for the future. Hope drives attendance, credits earned, and GPA of highschool students. Hope scores are more robust predictors of college success than are high school GPA, SAT, and ACT scores.

Engagement: the involvement in and enthusiasm for school. Engagement distinguishes between high-performing and low-performing schools.

Wellbeing: how we think about and experience our lives. Wellbeing tells us how our students are doing today and predicts their success in the future.

And it’s free! I don’t know if this is the best survey, but I know if Gallup created it it is completely research-based and valid and reliable.

It is my hope that in the near future when we talk about measures, and evidence, of school change and student success, that we have some measure of student engagement that has equal weight with standardized tests. – Steve Wyckoff

During a conversation about school change an individual made the comment that we’d be fine if, “The kids would just bear down and be responsible like they used to be!” Interesting thought. This individual went on to say that students from foreign countries, especially emerging countries, come to America and kick our kids butts in school.

As you might guess, I have a different point of view on this. I think that if our kids got their drinking water from a hole next to their house they would be equally motivated to do what ever it takes to change their station in life. Fortunately this isn’t the case.

In an affluent society such as ours we are never going to return to the student behaviors of the past. It’s incumbent upon us as educators to create a system that meets the needs of society in such a way that it also engages our students as they’ve never been engaged before.

The other day while speaking at the University of Kansas to a group of teachers in the process of obtaining their certification to become building level administrators, I was asked if there has ever been a time in our history that our students were authentically engaged on a regular basis. The answer obviously, is no. But it didn’t matter. Our students were being prepared for a completely different society than we have today.

In fact, that’s part of our problem. We are still preparing students for a world of factories and mass production. A world where the most important skill was compliance. If you want to succeed in today’s schools, be very compliant, and act like you care. Guaranteed success.

Unfortunately, graduating from that system doesn’t guarantee success in life. In fact being compliant is the path to a job that has, low pay, high potential for being outsourced, or automated using technology.

The school change we need to make needs to be a thoughtful transformation to schools that prepare kids for their future in the 21st century. For us to attempt to make our kids adapt to our schools is utter nonsense! – Steve Wyckoff

I’ve been watching Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking. Fascinating stuff. But it got me to thinking how boring all of my science classes were. So I tried to reflect on why they were so boring and these programs are so interesting. And then it hit me, these programs are a story, my science classes were a string of endless, meaningless, many times incomprehensible, facts.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not promoting students listening to stories over actually learning by doing. But If we are going to continue in the traditional “chalk and talk” educational model, at least do it in a story that’s interesting. Will the stories be more engaging? Probably a little, but they will be much more entertaining. And I guess barring actual engagement at least entertaining is more tolerable for our kids.

Not the school change I would ask for, or hope for, but at least less boring. – Steve Wyckoff

Have you ever heard somebody say something and said to yourself, “That really make sense.” And then days later, or weeks later, or years later, and even decades later you realize how profound that statement was. Well  Phil Schlechty has one of those quotes. The first time I heard it I was intrigued but over the last couple of decades, as I thought more and more about it, I realized how profound it is. Phil said;

“A teacher’s job is not to teach kids, a teacher’s job is to create meaningful engaging work whereby the student learns the things we want them to learn.”

How profound. Phil also led me to understand how important authentic engagement is to learning. I don’t know if Phil decided authentic engagement was important and that led him to understand what the teacher’s role needed to be. Or if he analyzed successful teachers and saw that those that created work for the student, that was meaningful and engaging, led to engaged students. It may be a chicken or egg discussion.

But the reality is this, for students to truly learn, not just remembering stuff until the  standardized tests are over, they must be emotionally engaged in the learning process. Nothing emotionally engages students in what they’re learning more than doing work that is meaningful and engaging to them.

“Work” also implies that the students are doing something, not passively observing as the teacher does the work. There is a mountain of research that you only learn something, by doing something. My friend Roger Schank has led the research and the movement for learning by doing.

I think when you couple learning by doing, Roger Schank’s work, with Phil Schlechty’s theories, work that is meaningful and engaging, you have the recipe for students becoming remarkable. – Steve Wyckoff

The idea of engaging students has long been an interest of mine. I suspect it goes back years to my first interaction with Phil Schlechty who enlightened me on the different types of engagement. Phil talked about four kinds of engagement; authentic, ritualistic, passive compliant, and rebellious.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this lately as I listened to the discussions about “motivating” our students on state standardized tests. We use everything from pep rallies to brides, for the kids and their parents, in order to raise test scores.

That’s what got me back thinking about Phil and his work. Over the years I’ve tried to motivate several individuals, with the appropriate skills and knowledge, to develop a survey that measures authentic engagement. There are many “engagement” surveys out there, but to the best of my knowledge they all measure ritualistic engagement.

So what’s the difference? Ritualistic engagement is characterized by stuff like the student always being on time the class, always turning in their homework, paying attention during class, etc. Authentic engagement is a much different animal. Students who are authentically engaged get “lost” in their work. They are so into what they’re doing that they lose track of time.

Csikszentmihalyi in his research called it “flow.” But there is a world of difference between true authentic engagement and pretending to be authentically engaged. As I’ve written before, I have the opportunity every semester to speak to almost 200 education students at the University of Kansas. I’ve done it for nine years. In each of those nine years I discussed the difference between authentic engagement and ritualistic engagement with the students.

I always end this discussion by asking them how many of them were authentically engaged on a regular basis in high school. I’ve never had more than 5% or 6% of the students say they were authentically engaged. But when I asked them how many of them had their teachers convinced they were authentically engaged, every hand goes up, and the room breaks out in laughter.

The point of this? If you’re truly going to make real school change you have to start by authentically engaging every student! Our teachers do a wonderful job of convincing kids to at least act like they care about the nonsense we do in schools. If we were doing things that were meaningful and engaging to the students, they wouldn’t have to pretend. – Steve Wyckoff

I had the opportunity yesterday to play with the new iPad and as I was putting it through its paces I kept wondering, “is this the new technology that will lead to school change?” My friend Kevin Honeycutt had pre-ordered the new iPad and sat patiently on his front porch Saturday until it arrived.

This new technology is off the charts cool! Actually it’s an iPhone on steroids. All of Kevin’s apps from his iPhone work on his iPad. But in many cases their functionality changes dramatically simply because there’s a bigger screen. And in some cases there are some new applications.

As I played with it I kept wondering how might kids use this in school? Reading books on it is amazing. The lighting is perfect and I can control the size of the font, while still holding it just like a book. I can easily see books that we have kids read being downloaded and read right on their iPad.

And if you read my blog at all you know that I don’t type, I use MacSpeech dictate which is a speech to text software application. Well the new iPad has built-in Dragon speak. It may be even better than the computer version of the software since you don’t have to train it. For all of those kids out there like me who struggle writing, this free application could be a lifesaver.

I haven’t even talked about the Internet search capabilities. The iPad is blazing fast and is completely controlled by the touch of your finger. Students could use the iPad in class to instantly access any needed information. To say nothing of the engagement factor this technology would have on kids.

So what do I think the chances are that this technology will lead to school change? None. Once again, what we have kids learning and how we have kids learning, is completely isolated from modern technology and the modern world. Perhaps if somebody could show educators how this new technology dramatically raises standardized test scores then it might be adopted, until then there isn’t a chance. –  Steve Wyckoff

If you liked this post then check out Kevin Honeycutt’s post on Literacy Apps For The iPad.