Ideas

Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. specializing in education evaluation from U.C. Berkeley.

A radical plan for reinventing K-12 education

In the most recent international comparison of school achievement, among the 34 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, the U.S. ranked 17^th in reading, 20^th in science and 27^th in math, behind such countries as Portugal, Italy and Spain. (Shanghai China ranked 1^st.) The results are virtually unchanged from previous years. And our top students are doing particularly poorly. For example, in math, only 2% of U.S. students scored a 6 (the highest), compared with 31% in Shanghai China. The U.S. is moving toward mediocrity in a world that requires anything but.

And it’s not for lack of spending. The U.S. ranks #1 in the world in per-student spending on education.

Politicians tout education as key to America’s future, including closing the achievement gap. But for education to fulfill the hope, education may need not more tweaks, but reinvention.

Dream-Team Teachers

Imagine that every child, rich and poor, from Maine to San Diego, would be taught by a dream team of the world’s most inspiring, transformational teachers and receive totally individualized instruction. It’s possible. Here’s how.

Take, for example, Algebra 1, considered (falsely, as I will argue later) a critical course. Think back to when you took it. Unless you were the exception, your teacher didn’t fascinate you nor did you learn algebra in a way that you use it in your daily life. But from among the nation’s thousands of algebra teachers, there must be a few who are magical in their ability to get kids to understand algebra, love it and make it part of their lives.

So imagine that the U.S. Department of Education invited algebra teachers worldwide to submit a video of themselves teaching, and picked three highly transformational teachers. Each would create his or her favorite 1/3 of the course with the help of a world-class gamification/simulation expert (for example, someone from Electronic Arts or LucasArts) and a techie to put it all into an interactive, individualized online course. The teacher would give mini-lectures followed by simulations, games, individualized practice and supplementary materials. That online course would be available on all types of devices and platforms, and to every teacher in the nation and beyond. Each teacher could use it as the centerpiece of class time or decide to teach the class traditionally and use the dream-team-taught lessons as homework.

If dream-team instruction proves superior, it could be expanded to all high school subjects and even piloted with lower grades, for example, third-grade science.

Dream Curriculum

Even with dream instruction, if students are taught the same things that turn off even many motivated students, we’re fighting the battle to educate with one arm tied behind our back.

It is elitist that the school curriculum, especially the new national Common Core curriculum, demands all students learn arcana they won’t even need in college, let alone in life–for example, the intricacies of Shakespeare and the trigonometric reciprocal functions. Meanwhile, the curriculum does not focus on helping students graduate with far more critical skills: tools for resolving conflict without fisticuffs, parenting skills or financial literacy such as smart ways to save and borrow and estimation skills, for example, whether a person can afford to move out of his parents’ house.

Do we actually graduate so many high school students without basic skills? Consider this. The Education Trust reported that in 2010, 23% of applicants to the Army scored below the absolute minimum (31 percentile) on a basic skills test (Armed Forces Qualification Test) be considered by the military. The questions are truly basic. Here are samples.

The pool from which that 23% of low scorers came from had already been prescreened to eliminate candidates with criminal records and the intellectually disabled, for example.

And are the Common Core standards truly that esoteric? Indeed. For example, here is the introduction to and first example of the 8th grade math standards—students are required to learn all of these:

In Grade 8, instructional time should focus on three critical areas: (1) formulating and reasoning about expressions and equations, including modeling an association in bivariate data with a linear equation, and solving linear equations and systems of linear equations; (2) grasping the concept of a function and using functions to describe quantitative relationships; (3) analyzing two- and three-dimensional space and figures using distance, angle, similarity, and congruence, and understanding and applying the Pythagorean Theorem.

1. Students use linear equations and systems of linear equations to represent, analyze, and solve a variety of problems. Students recognize equations for proportions (/ = or = mx) as special linear equations ( = mx + ), understanding that the constant of proportionality () is the slope, and the graphs are lines through the origin. They understand that the slope () of a line is a constant rate of change, so that if the input or -coordinate changes by an amount , the output or -coordinate changes by the amount m·A. Students also use a linear equation to describe the association between two quantities in bivariate data (such as arm span vs. height for students in a classroom). At this grade, fitting the model, and assessing its fit to the data are done informally. Interpreting the model in the context of the data requires students to express a relationship between the two quantities in question and to interpret components of the relationship (such as slope and -intercept) in terms of the situation.

A schools superintendent and member of a major state superintendent’s cabinet, who wishes to remain anonymous, said, “If my fellow superintendents and I were in a room and told we had to take an exam that tested whether we met the 8^th grade standards, there’d be a massive rush for the door.” Yet we require all high schools students to learn that arcana while allowing them to graduate without basics?

Students, especially slow learners, cannot learn all we’d like. Can anyone who actually cares about students assert that it’s more important that they know even those 8^th-grade standards by the time they graduate from high school than the aforementioned more life-central skills?

First things should be first. You shouldn’t teach the area of the parabola unless a student knows how to estimate the full four-year cost of college attendance. At some point, a student may get to the point where the esoterica is next in line, but most of that would occur in college or graduate school.

Not only would students learn more in a first-things-first curriculum, they’d be more motivated to learn because the material is obviously important. For students, teachers and society, such a curriculum, especially compared with the Common Core, would indeed be a Dream Curriculum.

The Dream

I view the above as comprising the key elements of a Dream School. Such a school would fulfill students’ dreams of loving school, parents’ dreams of having their children grow more than they could have imagined and society’s dream of a citizenry that’s wise, employable and contributing both to their self-sufficiency and to the larger good.

Marty Nemko is an award-winning career coach, writer, speaker and public radio host specializing in career/workplace issues and education reform. His writings and radio programs are archived on www.martynemko.com.

Your goal really should be to get another job, while you're still employed, before the axe falls

Answer by Michael O. Church on Quora.

You get more warning if it’s a larger company. In small companies, the warning can be zero.

As soon as a manager puts something negative in writing, that’s a warning sign. If you get something to the effect of, “On September 4, we discussed <X> and you agreed to <Y>, but then you <Z>,” you should know that something’s up. There will probably be factual inaccuracies. You should correct your boss, in writing, but don’t expect it to do any good in terms of keeping your job. You just do that to make it clear that you can play the documentation game too, and that you won’t go down without a fight, so they are more likely to give you more time to get out on your own terms, and severance if they eventually fire you.

A PIP is a dead giveaway. Almost no one passes PIPs. You either fail (and get fired) or it’s ruled “inconclusive”, which means you might face another PIP in 6 months. (HR didn’t think you could cheaply be fired. “Inconclusive” means you have the same boss, more pissed off.) The only time people pass PIPs is when they change manager mid-PIP (and that’s usually only possible when your current manager leaves, because people don’t want PIP’d employees to transfer to their teams) and the new manager likes them.

Once you’re on a PIP, you better be job searching. Document every interview as a sick day, related to a disclosed health problem, and demand that your manager and HR accommodate it by adding time on the PIP. They hate that. It’s not going to save your job, but it sets the precedent that things are happening on your terms. Demand a time study for a PIP and, if they laugh that off, say that you’re going to talk to some unions about getting the performance evaluation process (including your PIP) evaluated for time study. (If they fire you early, they’re guilty of retaliation. They can still, however, legally fire you at the end of your PIP.) Remember: your goal isn’t to keep your job (you can’t) but to scare them into paralysis or capitulation, in order to get out on your own terms. Once you get another job, tell absolutely no one where you’re going until you’ve been in the new place for at least 6 months. You don’t want your boss or some other adversary finding out where you’re heading and shoot you down.

The termination endgame is unpredictable and dangerous no matter what, so you can’t bank on anything. Even if you do everything right, you may not get a severance, and you may be fired early even if you think they legally can’t. (At-will employment is intensely complicated and often has undefined behavior, but this also means that some companies take chances that no lawyer would endorse.) So don’t bank on a severance. Your goal really should be to get another job, while you’re still employed, before the axe falls. The benefit of being employed while job searching is worth more than a severance. Already-employed people easily get 10% higher salaries, and are assigned to better projects, and when you multiply this by, say, five years… the math favors changing jobs before the severance conversation can happen. Your new employer will just put you on a better track if it’s poaching you than if you’re seen as having come off the street.

If you do end up in a severance negotiation and the cash is enough to cover the expected length of a job search, take it. Ask for the right to represent yourself as employed. You may want to get agreement on a good reference, but that’s not as important if you’re pretty sure they won’t give you a bad reference. (Obviously, you won’t want to use your manager.) Use a peer or an ally for a reference.

If you’re fired during a job search process, don’t update any companies that you’re currently interviewing with on that development. (It does no good, because no one will consider you ethically obligated to do so.) You also don’t want to update your CV. As for whether you continue to represent yourself as employed, if you’ve been given that right formally, the answer is an obvious yes. If you haven’t, the answer is “it depends.” In that case, you have to weigh the risk of getting caught against the risk of having your unemployment counted against you.

This question originally appeared on Quora: How do you know if you’re going to soon be fired and what can you do about it?

The only thing that matters is what you can control and what you do about it

Answer by Oliver Emberton on Quora.

There are just two reasons why you haven’t done the stuff that you ‘want’ to do.

1. You can’t because of something external
2. You won’t because of something internal

Here’s the thing: nearly everyone who succeeds, will always assume number #2. By default, the reason they have failed is themselves. It is, without fail, their own fault. Always.

If this sounds like willful bunk, consider the flip side: those who fail always assume it’s not their fault. With that attitude, your ego is forever letting itself off the hook. You can’t learn from your experiences, except maybe that you shouldn’t have even tried, because — well — that big bad world was just super-mean to you again.

Try listening to a lot of normal conversation: it’s just ego repair.

“I’ve been here 6 years in the same job and they still haven’t promoted me!”
“I know, me too! It’s so unfair…”

As Don Draper would say: I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent.

Whenever “it” or “they”, “he” or “she” is to blame, you’re just diverting the blame. Because the only thing that matters is what you can control: what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it?

There are always situations when you really can’t have something that you don’t control. Maybe you dream of being a championship triathlete, but you were born without legs. Well of course.

Except that kind of reductio ad absurdum doesn’t excuse 99.99% of the identical, fundamental ridiculousness that most people lament about: their health, jobs and relationships. For this trinity, the principles are well known and within the capability of everyone. Assuming, of course, you accept responsibility for that.

Why do we make excuses?

Making excuses can make us feel better. Excuses are like painkillers for our self-respect.

Surely they evolved with this purpose. For not everyone can succeed all the time, and if you can’t, it’s better that you don’t become too depressed about it.

But the chances are the things that you want — that you want the most — are not fast cars, Angelina Jolie’s chest or a giant catapult to the moon. Most of us crave fundamentally simple things: love, respect, security, health, significance. These things don’t require that we’re born to wealthy parents, or with perfect genes.

If you’re reading this, the chances are you have access to education, sanitation, medicine, freedom of speech, shelter and the sum of the world’s knowledge (Google), and that you take them for granted. For over 150,000 years human life would have utterly sucked compared to now, and you’ve been born in the last 70 or so, in the blessed minority, when it doesn’t. You’re so lucky you can’t imagine.

You are the problem.

Whenever you hit a wall: find what you can do about it, do it, and forget anything else. All the other stuff just consumes your attention and accomplishes nothing.

The solutions to all your problems are probably so obvious, you likely already know them. The trick is simply acknowledging it’s your responsibility alone to make it happen.

This question originally appeared on Quora: How can I get what I want?

How to act in an argument

Answer by Lidia Stanton on Quora.

Assertiveness (even if you’re an introvert) will help you gain respect and save your dignity when you’re under verbal attack from an angry or unreasonable person.

Here’s a little trick:

1. Respond calmly using as few words as possible. Use simple sentence structure and key words only — going round the houses shows anxiety and indicates you may not know what you’re talking about or what you’re trying to say.
2. Finish on a strongest word/phrase you can think of that summarises your point (e.g. “I said many times before I have dyslexia. No one can argue against learning disabilities,” or “And for this reason I find you misinformed.”)
3. Meet the other person’s gaze and hold it for as many seconds as you can until you start feeling uncomfortable.
4. Do not say anything else, even when provoked. It is incredibly important that you don’t.
5. The awkward silence will make the aggressive person say lots of things in return (first of all, to fill the awkward gap in communication, then to counter-attack you) but none of their statements will have the same psychological effect as the last thing you said followed by your silence and gaze.
6. You’ve won. The first person to speak after you’ve created the powerful silence loses. They will also know it and find it incredibly difficult to deal with your assertiveness. They will crumble.

Now think of different media personalities who use the trick all the time, or interviews with politicians. Some celebrities unfortunately abuse it, just think of Simon Cowell.

This question originally appeared on Quora: What is the most valuable skill a person can have for their entire life?

Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is President of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.

With each election, Americans become less confident that their leaders will make America more just, equal and free

Our country is stuck. We’ve lost sight of what government should be. And even when we do agree on problems that need to be addressed, special interests too often confound even the broadest compromises and the most basic functions of government.

On Tuesday, Americans delivered control of the Senate to the Republican Party, yet few believe—on the right or left—that this election will create the change so many long to see. With each election, Americans become less confident that their elected leaders will be able to do the things that will make America a more just, equal and free society for everyone.

Through the corrosive influence of money in politics, the corrupt process of gerrymandering electoral district lines, and racist voter ID laws, our government is becoming less reflective of the people it represents and more reflective of the special interests of those with special access to our elected leaders. Our democracy is broken and nothing short of a people’s movement for deep, systemic change will fix it.

The state-sanctioned violence perpetrated against young African American and Latino men in this country is abominable. It is cruel and sadistic, and undergirding it are myriad, malevolent forces that are destroying communities of color and poor communities across the country. And it’s getting worse everyday.

Moreover, the privileges and fears attached to whiteness and cultivated in white communities fuel it and stop many from standing against it. This reality directly contradicts every deep tenet of our Christian faith, and if we do not challenge it, we are complicit in it. We are called to celebrate, not destroy, human life. We are required to liberate not imprison the oppressed and to love and nurture, not to annihilate, our young people.

As a Christian, I read Romans 13 and believe that government has the responsibility to “not [be] a terror.” Yet again and again, unarmed African Americans fall victim to excessive use of police force.

Millions of other Americans are suffering and dying in poverty, due to the egregious sin of income inequality. In the country that has produced the most wealth in human history, too many families are having to choose between putting food on the table for their children and paying the electric bill during cold winter months.

We, as people of conscience, and we, the people, through our government, have a duty to take on root causes of racism, poverty and economic injustice. In the 72nd Psalm, King Solomon prays that he may use his authority to “defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.” It is our duty as people of faith to take leadership in our communities to solve the problems that are keeping so many people from flourishing.

As frustrated as I am by the shortcomings of our democracy, I am hopeful that out of our disappointment will spring forth activism rooted in a faith bigger than all of us. Though hope for just legislative solutions seems dead, I remain firm in my belief in a God of resurrection. Using the fierce and grounded (and biblical) model of love and non-violence, I am hopeful that Americans of all faiths can band together to work for real change on the issues plaguing us.

Nothing less than future of our democracy is at stake.

Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is President of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, where she also holds the Johnston Family Chair in Religion and Democracy. She is Vice President of the American Academy of Religion, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and author of Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World.

Hatshepsut, a woman who was Egypt’s king, serves as a model and cautionary tale for today’s female politicians

This November, nearly 200 women ran for Congress. Most didn’t win. Of the 535 representatives and senators currently serving, only 99 — 18.5 percent — are women. Why are there so few women in positions of power in this modern age?

One way to answer that question is through the story of the greatest woman ever to rule in the ancient world — an Egyptian pharaoh.

In Egypt in the 15^th century B.C., women were considered sexual companions and the carriers of men’s seed—not rulers. But Hatshepsut found her way to the throne of the richest and most powerful state in the ancient world. Then, a mere 25 years after her death, ruling elites had her statues smashed into bits.

I wrote my book about Hatshepsut, The Woman Who Would Be King, after the birth of my son. Motherhood made me realize, as I never had before, how trapped women are by our bodies. Hatshepsut must have felt the same kind of entrapment after she gave birth to the child of her half-brother, the king, while still in her early teens. That child was a girl, not the son for whom her people had hoped. But Hatshepsut’s lack of a son laid the foundation for the rest of her strange, charmed life.

Hatshepsut’s husband passed away after only three years of rule, when Hatshepsut was very young, perhaps 16. At the time, the next in line to be king of Egypt was a mere infant—not her own baby, but a baby belonging to one of her husband’s second-class wives.

Hatshepsut had the power to fill this vacuum. Her bloodline was impeccable, back to kings of the earlier 18^th Dynasty. She had an education, likely begun in early childhood. Not only was she the highest-ranking royal wife, but also she was Egypt’s most powerful priestess.

Hatshepsut made sure the young king — that infant son of a lesser wife — was educated, brought up in the temple mysteries, and trained in the military arts. But since he was so small, Hatshepsut took charge.

So it was Hatshepsut who gave the vizier — the king’s second-in-command — orders about trading ventures to the land of Punt, who discussed treasury matters with her royal steward, and who put down insurrections in Kerma (in modern-day Sudan). She personally oversaw the collection of the spoils of war, according to a tomb inscription written by her overseer of the treasury.

Then, for reasons that were not recorded, Hatshepsut was given — or decided she needed — more. When the young King Thutmose III was just 8 or 9, Hatshepsut was crowned king alongside him, with the full support of her courtiers, Egypt’s elite families, and its powerful temple priesthoods. Hatshepsut became a king — because ancient Egypt had no word for a female ruler.

She won this prize because she was the most able person for the job. Hatshepsut also built a strong cohort of supporters — men whose continued prosperity depended on her power.

When Thutmose III was approaching his 16^th year, she tried another strategy to retain power. In statuary, in reliefs, maybe even in rituals before her elites and populace — she took on the appearance of a man. She bound her breasts; she wore a masculine kilt; she tied on the long beard of kings. She was ostensibly past childbearing years, which meant that she would never bear her own heir to the throne, and her co-king was quickly becoming a man. She had to stay ahead of him.

Historians have given many explanations for Hatshepsut’s power plays — an unreasonable greed and lust for influence being chief among them. But she actually helped Thutmose III’s position by keeping him by her side. Thutmose III accompanied her on campaigns to Kush, presumably participating in the battles, the dispatch of enemies and the taking of spoils. The investment paid off: Thutmose III became the greatest warrior king Egypt had ever seen.

The history of her reign became troublesome as Thutmose III was grooming his chosen son to be next in line. The possibility of another woman taking the throne was a complication he decided to erase. So down went the statues and the first layer of the temple reliefs.

We’ve come a long way since the 15^th century B.C., but what’s interesting is how much remains the same.

Kara Cooney is associate professor of Egyptian art and architecture at the University of California at Los Angeles. She wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.

Whether you’re in high-turnout Sweden or low-turnout L.A., the task of getting people to participate must be a constant, year-round focus of attention, not just an issue of concern at election time

I did not receive the warmest welcome from my colleagues four years ago, at my very first meeting of the Falun Election Commission. In fact, most members of the authority in Falun, the Swedish city of 57,000 where I live, were surprised I had called a meeting at all.

“What is this all about?” a colleague asked me. “The next elections are in four years and we had just an election with a great turnout. The only thing we are elected to do is administer the next elections.”

My colleague had a point. The Swedish law makes clear the election commission’s job is to administer election, full stop. And participation in the 2010 local, regional and national elections here in Sweden—which are held together at the same time—was terrific. Turnout of those eligible to vote was 82 percent.

That may sound like another world entirely to people in the U.S. where I’m visiting this week in part to observe preparations for Tuesday’s elections. I know that many places in the country, including California, where I’m writing this, are experiencing record low turnout.

But I also know this: Whether you’re in high-turnout Sweden or low-turnout L.A., the task of getting people to participate must be a constant, year-round focus of attention, not just an issue of concern at election time. Conventional wisdom is that turnout is beyond the control of election organizers. I’d suggest—after spending the past four years trying to raise turnout for the 2014 elections—that election administrators can make the difference.

I’m highly sensitive to the issues of participation because democracy is such a big part of my life. I’m a professional journalist for Swiss radio who covers a lot of elections around Europe and the world. I’ve been an official observer of elections (my co-observer President Jimmy Carter failed to show up when we were paired recently as observers of Taiwanese elections). And I vote in two different countries because I’m a citizen of Sweden and Switzerland, as well as the European Union.

In all these contexts, I’ve seen that the places with the greatest participation do not necessarily have the most media coverage and campaign materials demanding that people show up at the polls. The places that improve participation tend to be places where regular people connect with politics and make collective decisions all the time, not just in election season.

How to create these connections? You need to strengthen existing institutions—and build new ones—that encourage active citizenship year-round.

In Falun, I wanted to take advantage of new initiative and referendum rights in Sweden and Europe to try to boost participation. After that first uncomfortable meeting, my colleagues decided that the role of our local government was to make sure that people understood these new rights and how to use them.

But it wasn’t enough to just notify people. My colleagues on the commission insisted on a test of our work in what came to be called a “supersized participation challenge.” All of our work between elections would be measured by whether or not voting participation increased.

One of our first ideas was to develop and distribute a “Democracy Passport” to every citizen; We made an extra effort to get it into the hands of first-time voters. The passport is the size and shape of a national passport, and it described all the political powers that Falun citizens have and all the forums where they have the right to weigh in—at the city, state, country and European Union level. The passport explains which levels of government do what, as well as what you can do to influence the government.

We also opened a “Democracy Center” at our public library, offering a free public space for democratic information, education, and dialogue. We hired a full-time “Democracy Navigator,” whose job was to assist individual citizens and groups to make their voices heard. Finally we started to renew the city’s online services, incorporating modern forms of transparency and citizen interaction.

We did all of this with the agreement of each of the nine political parties in the city parliament, which consists of 61 members. Our message was a paradigm shift: We need to move away from the idea that citizens are just consumers of political programs and parties and start seeing them as direct participants in the community. In this, we had a distinct advantage: Sweden’s long history of democracy has generated significant trust in public institutions.

After three years of work (in which I also chaired another public body, the Falun Democracy Council, which did related work), we reached the “months of truth” this year. Elections for the European Union parliament were held in May, and then the joint elections for local, regional and national Swedish parliaments were held in September.

Determined to boost participation, we made use of our very generous voting regulations—we permit early voting, voting by mail, and even second voting. What’s second voting? People who voted early can go to a polling station on Election Day and change their vote in person; When people do this, the vote in the polling station is accepted and the advance vote declared invalid.

We also have automatic voter registration—you don’t have to sign up yourself. And we have been aggressive in making sure that voters who were not born in Sweden but have lived here for three years (non-citizens with residency can vote in local and regional elections) are on the rolls. We organized meetings with Somali-Swedish women, translated the Democracy Passport into Arabic, and invited new voters to participate in walks we organized and staffed with interpreters to the offices of elected officials, political parties and interest groups.

In the end, we met the supersizing challenge. At the European elections in May—elections where turnout has been lowest in Sweden—we boosted turnout from 45 percent to 54 percent, among the highest in Sweden.

And in the mid-September elections, we went from 82 percent to 87 percent. That’s healthy, of course. But it’s not good enough. We’re already planning for the next elections, and thinking about how to invest more in our democratic infrastructure.

Bruno Kaufmann, a journalist and election commissioner in Falun, Sweden, is founder of People2Power, a publication on democracy. He wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.