K-12 Impact on Educators & Learners and how that affects the Future of the Trend or Challenge

Arizona schools are funded at the lowest rate in the nation which impacts their ability to provide technological resources for students. While the need for improving technological offerings is great at the K-12 level, there are large challenges for the schools. Because I collaborate with schools, there is an example of how this has worked locally.

Just a couple of years ago (2012), Bisbee High School received a grant from Freeport McMoran for $100,000 for technological advances, in part to create what are called COWS -- Computers On Wheels. These sets of laptop computers were for use by classroom teachers to allow for increases in educational technology. However, after only a few years of use, the hardware has become dated and lack of technological expertise on the site creates difficulty keeping enough of the computers functioning to allow for all three COWS to be in use at one time without cannibalizing one of the sets to keep the other two sets running. Currently, there is no state funding to upgrade software or repair hardware as the only way that the school was able to acquire the technology was through grant funding. Lack of state funding places pressure on schools to find grant funding, but when grants run out, there can be gaps in services and personnel that can create additional challenges for the school to maintain what has been gained from grants.

Impact on Educators --Technology teachers are classified as elective teachers who fall outside of the core subjects and often are singles--do not have another teacher in the school who also teaches that subject area. This makes professional development in that subject area problematic. In small school districts, these teachers are usually required to find their own content specific professional development outside of the site based professional development that is provided. Often rural schools have the majority of their professional development provided by the Principal. It can be unrealistic to expect a rural administrator to have content expertise in all of the elective areas to provide meaningful professional development in each of those areas. Because of this lack of expertise especially in rural districts (some districts have one or two schools and lack a district office), I see the training necessary for educators interested in flipping their classrooms as a challenge to the shift in teacher roles.

Impact on Learners--Because of poverty conditions (Bisbee's median income is is roughly $33,000 whereas Arizona's median is almost $50,000), students tend to have limited computer accessibility from home and the Hispanic population at the Bisbee High School feeds heavily from Naco (this community is on the border). Many of the Naco students have been observed crossing into Mexico as daily crossing of the border is not uncommon as many Mexican parents have children who are US citizens who attend schools in the US. Hence, sending home school technology for the purpose of a flipped classroom has different implications when students may be transporting that technology across an international border. If schools were able to provide technological hardware for home use to low income students the possibilities would be endless as to the applications for learning. Poverty tends to influence every aspect of student achievement as it affects access to books, libraries, museums, educational enrichment, exposure to cultures, and the vast resources of the internet have placed access at the fingertips of anyone with the appropriate technology. Technology could level the educational playing field for Arizona learners, but school funding issues are paramount in this state.

While it is not impossible for flipped classrooms to be used in Arizona, I believe there are large challenges in the schools that are going to take time to overcome.

K-12 Impact of the Trend and Challenge

The impact of shifting the role of teachers to student centered learning and the expectation of flipping classrooms is huge in the K-12 system. However, to understand, I would have to backtrack for a moment to provide a little background as to why Arizona in particular might have difficulty embracing this shift.

Arizona's educational system is known in the United States as having challenges. The state is According to Hart and Hager (2012), Latino student test scores are lower in all [emphasis added] subject areas which have not changed in the past decade. By the end of elementary school, Latino students are two years behind, by the end of middle school they are three years behind, and by high school they are four years behind their white counterparts (Green, 2008). The United States Census Bureau (2011), reports that 27% of Arizona’s population speaks a language other than English at home (Ryan, 2013). Within the four counties that share a border with Mexico; Yuma, Pima, Santa Cruz, and Cochise, the population that speaks Spanish increases dramatically with Yuma and Santa Cruz counties having a range of 47.5% or more and Pima and Cochise Counties having a range of 23.6-47.4%. The metropolitan area of Yuma and Tucson had 96.2% and 82.3% of their populations speaking Spanish respectively (Ryan, 2013). These statistics transfer to school children as nearly 90% of English Language Learners (ELLs) speak Spanish, according to Jiménez-Castellanos, Combs, Martinez, and Gomez (2013). 
ranked 50th (National Educator's Association, 2013) for funding per student at just under $7,000 per student compared to New Hampshire's nearly $20,000 per student. At the same time, Hart and Hager (2012) report that of the one million students in K-12 in Arizona, there were only 8,000 more Whites than Hispanics (which by now has evened or has a Hispanic majority).

This is significant as educational policies deem that principals that are unable to show Adequate Yearly Progress after three years are placed in Turnaround Status and have the following consequences: 1) turnaround-- they are fired as is half of their staff, 2) shutdown-- the school is closed, 3) restart--school reopens as a charter (they are still fired),  4) transformation--they are fired and a new principal and team comes in with an intensive program of professional development, extended learning for students, and the school is revamped.  

The reason that shifting to student centered learning and flipping classrooms is going to be very difficult is the very large amount of time that it takes to create the recorded lectures. K-12 teachers are overworked currently because of the current crisis within education without adding this. Furthermore, Arizona schools are lack critical funding necessary for daily services. I work with nearly 40 schools in Cochise County and I'm not sure that more than one would have the technology available to send home some type of technology with their students to watch the lectures prior to class.

However, the crushing blow to this type of instruction in the K-12 system is really the pressure that teachers have to get their students to do well on standardized tests. Those tests are in English and until the teachers can help Hispanic students speak enough English to do well on the tests, the focus at the early elementary grades is all about reading, writing, and math. Even in upper grades, as Hispanic student scores drop, the teachers are to focus on the lowest 25% of students to get their scores up as it helps the school avoid turnaround status. I support flipping classrooms and student centered learning, but as long as standardized testing is the measure of assessments and funding, there is a difficult road ahead for anything in schools but those areas that bring in money. Now that teacher pay is tied to student achievement on standardized tests, emphasis in schools is driven by testing.

References:

Green, P. (2008). The politics of (de)segregation. In Handbook of education politics and policy. Routledge.

Hart, B., and Hager, C. (2012). Dropped? Latino education and Arizona's economic future. In Morrison Institute for Public Policy (p. 17-37). Phoenix: Arizona State University.

Jiménez - Castellanos, O., Combs, M., Martinez, D., & Gomez, L. (2013, January 1). English language learners: What's at stake for Arizona? Retrieved April 20, 2015, from http://arizonaindicators.org/sites/default/files/content/publications/ELL_stake.pdf

Ryan, C. (2013, August 1). American Community Survey Briefs. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from: http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf

U.S. Census, American Community Survey Results, 2011.

K-12 -- Solvable Challenges -- Creating Authentic Learning Opportunities - Examples

The Horizon Report defines authentic learning as: "real-world, complex problems and their solutions, using role playing exercises, problem-based activities, case studies, and participation in virtual communities of practice". The report expands the definition to include experiential and "hands-on" opportunities that create mutually beneficial relationships between students and business or help students mimic the work of scientists or other professionals. This type of education follows with the ideology of student centered learning and blends with the evolving role of educators moving from direct instruction to the role of a mentor or guide as student assume more responsibility for their learning. Authentic learning opportunities might include students creating a Wiki on a topic of mutual interest rather than a single research paper. Or, students in a personal finance class might fill out online job applications and interview via Skype as an example of an authentic learning performance based assessment.

K-12 -- Rethinking the Roles of Teachers -- Shifting from Teacher Centered to Student Centered Learning

 According to Johnson, Becker, Estrada, and Freeman (2014), K-12 classrooms are starting to shift from traditional to "flipped" classrooms.

 These "flipped" classrooms allow for teachers to move class time instruction to high order thinking skills. Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification guide for learning outcomes that is widely used by K-12 educators. These classifications work from lowest level thinking skills (at the bottom) to highest level thinking skills (at the top). The K-12 system has been highly criticized for its emphasis on standardized testing because of its unprecedented accountability requirements set into motion by the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2001 (Goodman, Shannon, Goodman, & Rapaport, 2004). Therefore, current Common Core pressure has been on increasing higher order thinking skill building to combat the perception that students have been taught how to test and have not learned content or thinking skills.

  The goal of flipping classrooms is to begin to move classroom time from lecture based activities to higher order thinking tasks such as group activities, discussions, and student centered learning.

Bloom's Taxonomy's original triangle shows Remembering as the base of the pyramid, but it has also been flipped as the role of teachers is evolving. As the impetus of learning is shifting in the classroom from teacher to student, so too is the time spent in the classroom on the specific thinking skills. As the teacher was the center of learning, more time was spent on remember and understanding level thinking skills in the traditional classroom.

In flipped and more student centered classrooms, less time is spent in the remembering and understanding levels of thinking skills (names, dates, phonics, low level activities). As students assume more responsibility for learning, more time is spent on applying learning and analyzing and evaluating that learning to find deeper levels of synthesis and even debating the truth or bias of research in the evaluating level. In science, the creating level might have students creating multi-variable experiments and carrying those out over a period of time and even sharing those results with local stakeholders. Through the use of student centered classrooms, student engagement is increased and the use of technology and tools become integral pieces of equipment that assist and deepen the learning. This type of real life learning is termed authentic learning and is one of the solvable challenges shared in the Horizon Report.

References:
Goodman, K., Shannon, P., Goodman, Y., and Rapaport, R. (2004) Saving our schools: The case for public education saying no to "No child left behind". Georgetown, Ontario: Jaguar Book Group.
Johnson, L., Becker, S., Estrada, V., & Freeman, A. (2014). The horizon report (K-12 ed.). Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

K-12 Rethinking the Role of Teachers--Historical Context

While those of us in the class have many unique life experiences, it would not be uncommon for our elementary education to have some commonalities. Typically, the classroom would have been populated with other boys and girls of the same approximate age. There would have been desks or tables with small chairs. A section of the room may have had room for coats or backpacks. And, a teacher (often female in lower elementary grades) would be assigned to educate us during a period of time (usually from fall until spring, or the entire year for those with a year-round schedule). Often, the teacher would have stood in front of the classroom and lectured or imparted information directly to students. This direct instruction methodology has been used in classrooms in the United States and in other countries for more than 100 years and can be an effective teaching strategy.