Vision 2021 Provocative Forecasts.1

Provocative Forecasts of Uncertainty and Opportunity A 2021 Dialogue on Schools & the Principalship

Developed By

The Institute for Alternative Futures

Provocative Forecasts of Uncertainty and Opportunity Provocative forecasts are designed to help leaders question their assumptions about the future and explore the uncertainty and opportunity ahead for their organizations. The National Association of Elementary School Principals commissioned the Institute for Alternative Futures to explore areas of uncertainty and opportunity for schools and the principalship as part of its Vision 2021 Project. IAF crafted the nine forecasts in this section to start a dialogue with school principals, other educators, and the public about a preferred future. IAF can see signals from the future in various interacting forces that could lead to these forecasts. It is more important to see these forecasts as opportunities for leadership than as predictions about the future. In fact, as the dialogue that follows each provocative question illustrates, leaders have many opportunities to shape the outcomes toward a preferred future. NAESP leaders proposed some options for creating a preferred future. You are now invited into this dialogue to define the possibilities for the future of schools and the principalship and to decide what you are ready to do to create a preferred future. The nine provocative forecasts are: 1. Schools become the learning portals to a global workplace. This forecast explores what schools must become to align with the new requirements of a global society. 2. Free market forces favor school choice over educational equity. This forecast probes social preferences for choice and the possibility for recommitting to educational equity. 3. Hyperlinked learning explores meaning through multimedia. This forecast examines new capabilities to enrich and transform the learning experience. 4. Scientific knowledge brings new understanding to child development. This forecast anticipates scientific research that clarifies individual differences and defines appropriate learning approaches for different students. 5. Holistic standards expand expectations for achieving student potential. This forecast explains how today’s proficiency standards will necessarily morph into standards that support educating the whole child. 6. Networks of learning innovation experiment with new learning strategies for children. This forecast anticipates networks of research and development that link schools to centers of innovation in collaborating research and knowledge sharing.

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7. Surveillance society links schoolhouses into electronic safety network. This forecast projects today’s concerns about school safety into a future where surveillance is ubiquitous and welcome. 8. Society’s mounting debts compromise future investments in education. This forecast takes a hard look at the limitations schools face and asks what it would take to create a tipping point where education is a priority. 9. Principals set the standard for chief learning officers. This forecast acknowledges that principals will be using continuous learning processes to engage students, teachers, parents and the community in achieving learning outcomes for students.

1. Schools Become the Learning Portals to a Global Workplace Schools will shift from learning environments producing workers suited to an industrial era to integrated settings producing lifelong learners for the global workplace. State of the art school design in 2021 will integrate students into a work world that relies on project-based learning, team building, and technologies that remove the barriers between schools and companies, organizations and communities around the globe.

Interacting Forces of Change • • •

Global collaboration and competition is open to individuals and companies.1 The knowledge economy needs workers who can think critically, work collaboratively and adapt and innovate in a changing world. Education is undergoing intensive globalization as schools all over the world respond to similar ideas about what and how students should learn.2

Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue What is the work world our schools must prepare students to enter? The twin objectives of schooling have been to create a competent national workforce and a well functioning society. The need for a large national industrial workforce gave rise to schools in which students mimic the pattern of expected

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Friedman, TL. (2005) The World Is Flat. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. Baker, DP. and LeTendre, GK. (2005) National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. 2

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employment, sitting patiently through regimented lessons.3 However, the needs of the economy have shifted, creating a higher demand for a more multi-faceted workforce. Today’s kindergartener will graduate into a very different workforce. She will compete not only with her classmates, but with competitors around the globe. She can expect to change careers numerous times throughout her life and will, above all, require the capacity to educate herself long after her initial education has ended. To give her an edge, schools must prepare her to be both adaptive and flexible. Futurist Alvin Toffler noted that "the illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”4 Employers asked to rank what they value most for the 21st century workforce put a premium on such applied skills as professionalism/work ethic, teamwork/ collaboration, and oral communications. Creativity and innovation are rising in importance as is knowledge of foreign language.5 The Council on Competitiveness warns companies to embrace innovation as a core business value and advises that innovation is “inherently multidisciplinary in nature” and “the realms of science, politics, culture, business, health care and education are becoming increasingly intertwined.”6 A learning environment that connects education and economic success would support the freedom to play, experiment, and enter into dialogue. It would assume shared knowledge and collegial relationships.7 This intellectual exploration and these collegial relationships can now extend well beyond the traditional boundaries of classrooms and companies. It is not a far stretch to imagine adults gaining fresh perspectives from their dialogues with children and children accelerating their learning through real and virtual connections to the tasks working adults perform. How should schools operate when integrating across boundaries is simply expected? Globalization observer Thomas Friedman describes the global economy as driving toward integration. The Internet facilitates “sourcing work to the best price, best quality, from the best place with a great amount of sharing of practices and knowledge.” He predicts America will “do fine in a flat world with 3

Hanna, D. (1998). Higher Education in an Era of Digital Competition: Emerging Organizational Models. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks. 4 Toffler, A. (1984) The Third Wave. 5 Employers’ Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce Retrieved 12/5/2006 at: http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/documents/FINAL_REPORT_PDF9-2906.pdf 6 Innovate America: Thriving in a World of Challenge and Change, July 2004. National Innovation Initiative, Council on Competitiveness. 7 Zuboff, S. (1989) In The Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power. Basic Books.

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free trade—provided it continues to churn out knowledge workers who are able to produce idea-based goods that can be sold globally and who are able to fill the knowledge jobs that will be created as we not only expand the global economy but connect all the knowledge pools in the world. There may be a limit to the number of good factory jobs in the world, but there is no limit to the number of idea-generated jobs in the world.”8 If knowledge sharing is so critical to a healthy global economy, then the task of connecting students everywhere cannot begin too early. Just as the best companies are excelling at collaborating within and between companies, the best schools will find inspiration for their students in collaborating with students around the world. There are already scattered and exciting examples of schools using the internet to connect students across international and cultural boundaries. Schools all over the world appear to run in much the same way. Educational researchers David P. Baker and Gerard K. LeTendre examined national differences in mathematics and science at the elementary and secondary level and discovered many global similarities. “If current trends continue, we should expect to see continued standardization of core teaching practices within academic subjects around the world.” Baker and Gerard continue to explain that cross-national studies of schooling are standardizing measures of educational achievement across countries. “The globalization of curricula and its implementation in classrooms will exert a soft but steady pull on nations toward a world norm, to the point where little variation in curricula exists across nations.”9 What is the greatest contribution schools can make to a well functioning society in the next 15 years? Schools must produce responsible global citizens who can address world problems to sustain life on the planet. Our children will live in a world where population will grow quickly from 6.6 billion to nearly 8 billion by 2021. The population growth will bring complex problems that our children will have to solve to improve life on earth in the 21st century. Futurist Marsha Rhea writes about schools as the logical laboratory for learning together how to face challenges at a scale and complexity the world has never seen before. “We live in a time of split-second opportunities and threats. We could just as easily fall into a feared future as stay on track for an expected future. For a preferred future, we need to do much better than simply stay in step with rapid technological and evolutionary advances. Anticipatory learning gives us the learning and skills to shape our future in complex and interdependent times.”10

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Friedman, TL (2005). The World Is Flat. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. Baker, D. and LeTendre, GK. (2005) Op. cit. 10 Rhea, M. (2005) Anticipate the World You Want: Learning for Alternative Futures. Scarecrow Education, Lanham, MD. 9

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This anticipatory learning requires both objective and subjective learning. Schools will now need to shape students into global citizens. It is particularly urgent in today’s turbulent times that people learn to honor different cultures, religions, and world views. With an increasingly diverse immigrant population, American schools have a tremendous opportunity to start close to home building these bridges of understanding. With increased immigration, travel and inexpensive internet communications, many students already have circles of friends that span the globe.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. Principals can erase school walls by networking with others who shape the lives of their students outside of school and with principals and other educators around the world. 2. American elementary schools can connect with peer institutions across the world through project-based learning on common issues such as the environment, economy, and global citizenship.

2. Free Market Forces Favor School Choice over Educational Equity For the first decade of the 21st century, school choice proves to be a popular public policy. Baby Boomers trust free market approaches to deliver results and as consumers they like having it their way in the marketplace. People with the means and smarts secure the best for their children. However, by 2021 the nation’s growing immigrant and minority population has made attacking this two-tier system a priority to restore the American dream of equal opportunity through education.

Interacting Forces of Change • • • • •

School failures over the past decade strengthen the school choice movement. Baby Boomers, the “Me Generation,” dominate public policy with their strong ideologies which results in political polarization. The birth rate of immigrants and minorities will mean a growing number of children and parents will need more services from schools. Communities compete to create economic gains in quality of life by offering better schools to employers and citizens. The Millennial Generation and Generation X, who are both more accepting of diversity, support the redistribution of funds to underperforming schools in minority communities.

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Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue Can schools modify or reverse the trend of a growing gap between the prospects for the poor and the rich? Race and wealth are still the best predictors of school achievement. As a recent New York Times Magazine article found, public schools with mostly well-off white students had a 1 in 4 chance of performing well on tests while schools with mostly poor minority students had a 1 in 300 chance. Middle class parents use more words of encouragement and socialize their children to act and think in the ways that schools value. Some schools, especially well regarded charter schools, have found intensive ways to overcome these life conditions. But the author compared the level of effort required to achieve the proficiency goal set by the No Child Left Behind Act as akin to “a national undertaking on the order of a moon landing” without the funding to achieve it.11 Universal preschool education may be the investment with the highest potential for closing the gap. Public pre-kindergarten is now available to at least some groups of children in 40 states. Preschool programs enhance school readiness and pay off in dollars saved as children reach adulthood. The most effective preschool education would take a whole child approach that offers comprehensive services.12 Extending the time students spend in school through extended days, after school programs and extended school years also could help. Social workers based in schools can champion the social services students need. Offering incentives to attract the best teachers to challenging schools also would make a difference. Will parents still find ways to use education to transmit social advantage to their children? There is a powerful reason behind why parents almost everywhere want the very best education for their children. In their global study of mass schooling, David P. Baker and Gerald K. LeTendre found “the myth of meritocratic production of human capital and adult status has won out over family status, estates, and even extreme class reproduction. In Western culture, these ideals are implemented with varying effect in public mass schooling, but it is schooling that has come to be the institution identified with allocation of future life chances.” These researchers forecast that “families of the future will likely spend more resources and time on education for their children, particularly resources aimed at enhancing the child’s cognitive achievement as much as possible. Continued inequality in education will be generated by differences in families’ resources, access to political power, and knowledge.” 13 11

Tough, P. (2006, Nov. 26) What Will It Really Take to Close the Education Gap. The New York Times Magazine. 12 Zigler, E., Gilliam, WS and Jones, SM. (2006) A Vision for Universal Preschool Education. JY: Cambridge University Press. 13 Baker, DP. and LeTendre, GK. (2005) Op cit.

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Affluent and middle class parents are willing to invest in computers, tutoring, academic camps and enrichment opportunities. Parents are prepping their children from birth to compete for the top spots in elite schools. Do the majority of elementary and middle school principals have what it will take to secure the resources their schools need? If free market dynamics and school choice prevail, principals will have the job of attracting students and teachers to create a strong, marketable brand. Even elite private schools fail without good leaders. In public school districts where parents can exercise their preferences for school assignment, principals find they are the leaders in marketing their schools’ attributes. If immigrant and minority parents do decide to organize their growing numbers into a political force for education, principals can be key allies in organizing at the community, state and federal level. Many already have the essential relationships with parents and the community. All politics are local and nothing is more effective in persuading national politicians to act than their determined constituents.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. All schools can position themselves as “schools of choice” by offering distinctive school brands designed to serve specialized needs and interests. 2. Principals can become the recognizable face of their school, actively promoting its brand in the community and highlighting the services it offers to students.

3. Hyperlinked Learning Explores Meaning through Multimedia Teachers and students in 2021 are making sense of an increasingly complex world using multimedia and learning technologies that honor multiple forms of intelligence and different ways of knowing. Learners are finding these hyperlinked experiences provide the context that connects facts and skills into understanding. As these learning technologies enable more collaborative and accelerated learning, they are redefining the boundaries of place, curriculum, and grade.

Interacting Forces of Change • •

Rapidly improving online learning and learning technologies are expanding the options for schooling. The growing amount of information available today is pushing demand for knowledge technologies, such as intelligent agents, to improve learning and decision making. 7

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Visual forms of learning improve as video and simulations proliferate. The World Wide Web is gaining greater power and breadth to link and layer more context around information.

Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue Will virtual schools become a serious competitor to place-based schools? Thousands of students are regularly participating in learning environments beyond traditional schools. Students are using social networking to form communities around their interests and talents. Photo and music editing software enable students to develop technical, artistic and musical skills while modeling and simulation software will enable students to conduct virtual science experiments to develop and test hypotheses. Many of these programs will be developed as games where student learning and fun are combined. These programs will expand the range of electives offered to students and will enable new options for education that appeal to the estimated 30 percent of audio/visual learners who acquire knowledge best through reading, visual instruction and manipulating visual media. If used correctly, these new technology options will provide greater flexibility in the educational process and create new ways to deliver content. The greater use of games, models and simulations will reduce the need for dedicated classrooms for subjects such as art, music and science classes. These lessons will also be integrated with the outside environment and community through the combination of textual learning and wireless education.14 Schools can play a role in developing media literacy. Sherry Turkle, an expert in the social impact of information technology, has called for readership skills for the culture of simulation. “A central project for higher education during the next 10 years should be creating programs in information-technology literacy, with the goal of teaching students to interrogate simulations in much the same spirit, challenging their built-in assumptions.”15 As these learning technologies become pervasive, teaching these skills in college will be too late and largely remedial. Students will need to learn to tell stories through “images, graphics, color, sound, music and dance.”16 As Will Richardson, a blogger on education observes, “These technologies scare us, challenge us, and the friction between the old, closed-door classrooms and 14

Synder, DP. (2004, Jan.) A Look at the Future: Is Technology the Answer to Education's longterm Staffing Problems? Retrieved 10/02/2006 at http://www.asbj.com/2004/01/0104technologyfocus.html 15 th Turkle, S. (2004, Jan. 30 ) How Computers Change the Way We Think. The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2004. 16 th Shlain, L.(2006, Oct. 5 ) Visually Speaking. Edutopia. Retrieved at http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1361&issue=oct_05

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this new, open, transparent world of learning is becoming more and more apparent.”17 When the students know more about using these technologies than the teachers, resistance to widespread adoption is natural. This change will accelerate when teachers and principals recognize it is OK to co-evolve this expertise with their students. It will mean opening up schools to such learning technologies as wikis, blogs, virtual worlds, games and simulations and being willing to follow students into these alternative environments. What disparity reducing strategies will prove most effective in reducing the have-have not gap around technology? Whenever new technologies become available, whether in education, healthcare, or daily life, the rich get access well before the poor. Educators are very concerned about the digital divide and their willingness to champion equity will foster decisions that help close the gap. Improvements in personal computing will make it possible for many school districts to offer low cost personal computers to students within the next five to ten years. These laptops will be very inexpensive (under $250) fully capable machines with wireless broadband access. MIT is currently working on $100 laptops for school children in the developing world and many of the technologies they developed will likely be imitated by computer companies to create affordable laptops for the large school market in the United States.18 Wireless connectivity will soon extend beyond wireless hotspots like coffee shops, offices and schools to entire communities. Some cities, such as Philadelphia, are moving to provide wireless service as a municipal utility. Students will have free access to wireless throughout the city.19 WiMax technology, which enables high speed internet over large areas, will extend the benefits of wireless to rural as well as urban communities. Will learning technologies help humans reach a higher level of collective intelligence? These technologies make it easy to connect diverse individuals into a global mind to learn faster and deeper to meet the demands of a complex and fast-changing world. The Web gives people access to the collective intelligence of people around the globe. But it is more than access to static resources. People are joining in collaborative learning communities to create new knowledge drawn from different disciplines, cultures and generations.

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Richardson, W. (2006, Oct.) The New Face of Learning. What Happens to Time-Worn Concepts of Classrooms and Teaching When We Can Now Go Online and Learn Anything, Anywhere, Anytime. Edutopia, October. 18 Fahrenthold, DA (2005, November 16) MIT Is Crafting Cheap -- But Invaluable – Laptops. The Washington Post. Retrieved 10/10/2006 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501546.html 19 th Staff Writer. (2004 Sept. 8 .) Wireless Philadelphia to Provide Free Internet, Access to Education. IP Links. Retrieved 9/28/2006 at http://www.imakenews.com/innovationphiladelphia/e_article000300850.cfm?x=b3vn5LM,b1NyrLJ C

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Collective intelligence respects multiple forms of intelligence. Howard Gardner, a leading educator, has defined these as linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist (making consequential discriminations in the natural world), interpersonal, intrapersonal, and existential (posing and pondering the big questions).20 High performance teams are learning that to thrive in an increasingly diverse society they need to tap into these different ways of knowing.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. Principals can help break down the generational divide on accepting new technologies in schools. This may mean getting comfortable with learning from kids who are already using the technology. 2. Schools may find they can move to new staff structures, such as learning coordinators or proctors.

4. Scientific Knowledge Brings New Understanding to Child Development Scientific knowledge from neuroscience, psychology and biology will confirm how brain function, biological factors and life conditions contribute to intellectual capabilities. Students will use assistive technologies to gain access to a wider range of personal capabilities. Educators will use this new knowledge and technologies to customize developmental pathways for students that redefine and re-sequence elementary and middle school pedagogy.

Interacting Forces of Change • •

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Optical imaging will allow researchers to study brain function in free environments such as schools. Knowledge about different forms of intelligence and developmental patterns improves the ability to differentiate and nurture mental abilities. The NCLB Act contains 111 references to “scientifically based research” and promises billions of dollars to support such research.21 Current personal digital assistants are evolving into more powerful tools for memorizing, analyzing and synthesizing information. Development will be distinguished from chronological age along multiple lines, e.g., cognitive, physical and moral.

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Gardner, H. (2004) Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds. Harvard Business School Press. 21 Feuer, MJ, Towne, L and Shavelson, R.J. (2002). Scientific Culture and Educational Research. Educational Researcher, 31 (8): 4–14.

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Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue How many learning styles and developmental stages will we recognize and accommodate in 2021? Over the next 14 years, the findings of science will be more integrated into the pedagogy of elementary and middle schools. This integration will be based on new learning on brain function and its relation to learning development and learning disabilities. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act will accelerate this trend with its mandate and funding to support education and programs based on scientific research evidence. Principals and teachers will look to science for proven strategies to improve outcomes as education accountability continues to take hold in schools. Advances in imaging science and genomics will deepen and extend our understanding of brain function and development. Previously, most brain imaging was considered either too invasive for children or required children to be stationary. Optical imaging, a new technology, enables cognitive neuroscientists to non-invasively see neural activity and brain function in a much less constrained environment than previous technologies. This ability will dramatically expand knowledge of brain development and enable researchers to explore what types of environments and experiences encourage brain development. The models of learning styles are likely to improve as knowledge of the brain improves. Cognitive and learning styles have been linked to differences in brain function. The application of learning styles has been continuously refined over the last decade to focus on smaller subgroups of learners. The application of brain research is likely to continue this process by linking learning to smaller subgroups based on brain function. It may become possible to individually characterize approaches to learning based on tests of brain function. Systems biology, the study of the system of interactions that is now focused at the cellular level, is developing as a new way to understand cellular function in the brain. Molecular biology is also making tremendous advances in understanding the function of other molecules in the cell such as proteins, sugars and metabolites. These new advances in systems and molecular biology will improve our knowledge of the genetic basis of learning disabilities and disorders. These advances combined with a better understanding of how the external environment influences brain development will create new approaches to address learning disabilities and disorders.22 Scientific research will also expand our knowledge of critical learning periods in child development. Case studies of neglected children showed a link between early childhood experience and the development of fine motor skills, speech and 22

For more information on future advances in imaging, genomics, proteomics, systems biology and other topics please see IAF’s report The 2029 Project: Creating an Ethical Future for Biomedical R&D at http://www.altfutures.com/2029.asp.

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other skills.23 These studies showed a great deal about the environmental conditions that can cause danger to brain development and subsequent learning, but reveal very little about how to optimize or accelerate learning.24 However, researchers have used these and other observational studies of children to identify critical learning periods for key skills such as language development, second language acquisition, and learning a musical instrument, among other learning activities. Advances in molecular and brain imaging will transform this area of education research by linking critical learning periods to molecular and functional changes in the brain. It might also be possible in the future to identify individual variations in critical learning periods. What will be the new assistive technologies for learning? In the future educators will remember the debates about allowing calculators in classrooms as quite quaint. The next generation of cognitive assistive technologies will be memorizers, analyzers and synthesizers. Memorizers will evolve from today’s personal digital assistants and mobile phones that keep track of important personal information. These portable devices will link personal information with school databases. This will provide students with automated alerts for homework, extracurricular activities and other school events. Parents will also have their memorizers linked to school databases to pre-arrange student absences as well as monitor student grades, attendance and other important information. Students who can quickly access resources like Wikipedia and other knowledge resources have little need to memorize data. Analyzers, perhaps incorporated into the same portable device, will use intelligent agents that rely on algorithms and probability to draw meaning from data. This will allow teachers and parents to monitor trends in school performance and intervene early to prevent academic problems. Synthesizers could evolve out of simulations that present knowledge as experience and social networking that draws knowledge from the experiences of an individual’s network. This ability will be an important part of arranging mentorships, internships and other outside learning opportunities for students. Over the next 14 years, language translation devices will improve significantly. Such assistive technologies will extend the capabilities of all students in novel ways. Text readers will be able to take printed text into an auditory form for students who are sight-impaired or dyslexic. Voice recognition software will be able to transfer the spoken word into text for those who cannot hear. Instruction in reading, writing and language will be enhanced when students can move in and out of written and audio forms with greater ease. 23

MacNaughton, G. (2004) The Politics of Logic in Early Childhood Research: A Case of the Brain, Hard Facts, Trees and Rhizomes. The Australian Educational Researcher, 31 (3): 87-104. 24 Institute of Medicine (2000) From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. National Academies Press. Retrieved 11/1/06 at http://newton.nap.edu/books/0309069882/html

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In the future people will be able to decide whether they want to take advantage of other technologies to enhance human potential. Prosthetic and robotic devices will be used to provide greater mobility to able-bodied people Parents will take advantage of pharmaceuticals to enhance their children’s mental and physical performance beyond what today’s drugs can offer. In the next 15 years, scientific and technological advances will stretch the limits of individual achievement in exciting and controversial ways. Will this scientific knowledge about individual potential be used wisely and ethically? Increasing knowledge shines a bright light on discriminatory practices. For example, researchers have identified more than 100 differences between the brains of boys and girls that predispose them to different types of learning.25 Worldwide, boys have lower grades, are more likely to be “labeled” as learning disabled,26 suffer more discipline problems, and are more likely to have learning and behavior disorders than girls.27 Boys now make up two-thirds of students in special education.28 Teachers and parents that don’t understand these differences can often misdiagnosis normal boys with learning disabilities or behavioral problems. These disparities have created a professional dilemma for educators as they try to untangle the scientific and cultural components of what many researches have described as the “boy crisis” in education. The ethical and professional challenges caused by the “boy crisis” will be small compared to future ethical challenges poised by better knowledge of the brain. Better diagnostic capability will highlight the functional underpinnings of both individual differences and deficiencies in learning. It will also highlight the importance of larger societal issues in education. These include such things as early learning experiences and family and community support. Educators will have the challenge of dealing with these intertwined issues and determining their duty to address the individual differences in learning in their curriculum.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. Principals will have access to new research on the learning of different student subgroups. Schools will need to be careful to not track or limit children when using this research in their curriculum. 2. Schools can use scientific research to recognize and develop the human potential of each child.

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King, K and Gurian, M. (2006) With Boys in Mind/Teaching to the Minds of Boys. Educational Leadership. 26 Perkins-Gough, D. (2006). Do We Really Have a “Boy Crisis”? Educational Leadership. 27 Gurian, M., & Stevens, K. (2005) The minds of boys: Saving our sons from falling behind in school and life. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass. 28 Perkins-Gough, D. (2006) Do We Really Have a “Boy Crisis”? Educational Leadership.

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5. Holistic Standards Expand Expectations for Achieving Student Potential The first No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law mandated in 2002 that schools be responsible for the success of every student under an important but narrow definition of achievement. In subsequent reauthorizations, educators and public officials have widened the scope to hold schools accountable for educating the whole child. Standards in effect in 2021 require individualized learning and hold schools accountable for meeting holistic indicators of student potential.

Interacting Forces of Change • • •

The public continues to demand accountability and transparency for school performance. Vast data fields will provide exquisitely tailored comparative groups for standards appropriate to different individuals. Some states are beginning to encourage high school students to develop learning plans related to future careers.

Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue What will be the future of assessment? Today most standards and achievement tests measure school and student performance in selected grades and only once or twice a year. In the future, schools will use continuous testing which provides immediate feedback to tailor classroom and individual instruction. Children will relate to these tests as they do to the continuous feedback they get from games. The NCLB standards will give way to individualized measures. More data will be collected through continuous testing, feedback from simulations and games, and analysis of classroom video. This data will help shift from the “massified” population based view of students on a bell shaped curve to subpopulation based views that create a variety of curves based upon different dimensions that can be measured. Students will be compared with appropriate subpopulations using data on matched cohorts for any given measure. For example, language proficiency would have a different cohort for native-born speakers than for immigrants, and of course students with disabilities would be measured with students with similar disabilities. Schools also will be expected to meet other key indicators to show that they are meeting the needs of the whole child. Pre-kindergarten students will be evaluated against readiness indicators. After school programs will be evaluated for their quality and effectiveness in enriching student learning. Students will be evaluated against measures of physical and mental health. Those that are failing will be referred to an array of health and social services to get back on track. These 14

changes will be an inevitable consequence of discovering what it truly does take to bring all students to a basic proficiency level. Will all students have individualized learning plans? For some time educators have recommended extending the idea of individual learning plans used with special needs students to all students. Schools could never handle this idea if it is implemented in the same bureaucratic and often contentious manner seen with special needs children. The ability to do continuous assessment of student performance will enable educators to move beyond individualized learning plans to a more adaptive approach to individualized learning. A better phrase for the future of individualized learning could be called a “dynamic learning system”. Rather than a plan, a system for individualized learning would incorporate multiple sources of information to set both a learning strategy and evaluate its effectiveness. The system would use continuous feedback from student assessments. Some of these assessments and changes would be automated based on assessment tools built into new e-learning technologies such as games and simulations. The use of a dynamic learning system could have a profound impact on student learning. Students could move through a learning continuum at their own rate of speed. Multi-age instruction would have to become the norm and even very young students would need different learning teams. This will not seem as disruptive for children who are becoming increasingly accustomed to a fastpaced and stimulating culture. Older elementary school students will even be encouraged to understand and participate in these assignment decisions. Adaptive assignment would lead to more systematic matching of students with teachers to create the most effective combinations for learning. Students may be matched to teachers who are adept at educating cohorts with their specific profile. Schools will get far more effective at matching these student-teacher dyads, triads or even constellations of students and teachers. Student assignment will move from art to informed decision making as every aspect of student learning and well being is better understood and continuously tracked. Will schools become surrogate parents with responsibility from birth to adulthood? By 2021, educators and policy makers will recognize the need for holistic standards to develop human capital. While schools are the most important public institution involved in developing human capital, other community and political interests will be threatened if schools take on the level of responsibility required to meet multiple indicators of human learning and well being. Once medical and social science clearly establish the role that life conditions play in academic success, schools may seek to find ways to intervene in parenting from birth.

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Studies already show that the children of professional parents hear more words of encouragement and a richer vocabulary than do children of welfare parents, and middle class parents are more likely to socialize their children in ways that school cultures reward.29 A student’s health and mental capacity are influenced by a variety of factors from nutrition to toxins in the environment to the physical activity of parents. To improve student performance schools may need to cross lines that have historically defined family roles as off limits. If schools do not become surrogate parents, they certainly will be far more effective as an early warning system that interventions are needed. They will connect families to parenting classes and coach parents in how to effectively team with children and their teachers in learning. For some parents, this may well mean helping close the gap in their own schooling. Elementary schools will become a major catalyst to lifelong learning for a generation that grew up in an era when society could afford to overlook learning disparities. As global education researchers David Baker and Gerald LeTendre observed, “A powerful modern ideology is that society itself is a project, and one of the fundamental parts of the project is to use education to achieve society.”30 They see this ideology driving continuous reform across many nations. As nations work to keep pace with one another in a global community, they will gravitate more toward public policies that make social welfare a priority.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. Principals can advocate for a renaissance in education that goes beyond test scores to honoring different ways of being human. 2. Schools can use new diagnostic technologies, such as functional MRIs, to identify student learning needs early.

6. Networks of Learning Innovation Experiment with New Learning Strategies for Children Networks of learning innovation research find new ways to accelerate and deepen student learning. These 2021 networks emerged from a fertile period of experimentation and uneven success in charter, magnet, home, university lab and virtual schools. They rigorously evaluate their practices and use learning technologies to collaborate with and transfer knowledge into the wider education community.

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Tough, Paul. What Will It Really Take to Close the Education Gap. The New York Times Magazine, November 26, 2006. 30 Baker, DP. and LeTendre, GK. (2005) Op. cit.

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Interacting Forces of Change •

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Some charter schools have identified strategies that work for failing students and they are attracting sufficient public and private support to continue innovating. Knowledge businesses are attracted to communities with schools that can sustain excellence. Knowledge workers are linking to research and innovation networks and using intelligent agents to speed knowledge transfer.

Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue How will principals know which innovations will actually work? A key mantra in industries closely involved in innovation is ‘fail early and fail often.’ The statement captures the fundamental risk of innovation. Most innovations will fail, so the key to success is to identify failures early and move on to the next innovation. The successes pay for the failures as they are rolled out in the organization or industry. This presents a dilemma for education. Failing often and failing early is perfectly acceptable when creating a new software program, but the idea of failing often and early with our nation’s children is unacceptable. However, stagnation in education is equally untenable. Key elements of NCLB are designed to foster innovation and create a process to encourage “scientific” research. These elements of NCLB will create intense debates over the next five years on how to foster innovation and increase the quality of education research. Educational research is not a “soft” science, but rather the most difficult type of science. Because children are complex and classrooms are dynamic environments, educational research is extremely difficult. The dynamic and unique nature of education may be one reason that school reform movements have historically had problems replicating successes in one school to other schools. However, to construe “scientific” in the context of educational research as only those methods that use controlled quantitative strategies would be a mistake.31 The next 14 years will see a sea change in how principals identify and incorporate innovation. The standards of NCLB will create a much higher level of educational research that incorporates more “scientific” methods from other disciplines while maintaining the learning they have developed to apply that learning to complex and dynamic classrooms. Non-profit organizations such as Educational Underwriters will also emerge to certify research and products that meet “evidence standards” under NCLB and to help principals pick the products that are the best fit for their schools.

31

Berliner, D.C. (2002) Educational Research: The Hardest Science of All. Educational Researcher, 31 (8): 18–20.

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Where will these networks of learning innovation emerge? Over the next 14 years, many public, charter and magnet schools will become centers of innovation. Other industries such as healthcare look to innovate in dedicated centers of excellence and then attempt to diffuse those innovations rapidly to the larger system. Like healthcare, the education system needs to focus more on the translation of innovation than innovation itself. Not every school needs to be on the forefront of innovation, but those that are need to translate those innovations as broadly and as quickly as possible. The Office of Innovation and Improvement at the Department of Education can identify a number of innovative magnet and charter schools.32 However, many other magnet and charter schools are not succeeding. The key to making magnet and charter schools succeed not just on an individual basis, but for all schools, is developing ways to identify successful schools and fixing or revoking the charter of problem schools quickly. The second important step for making charter and magnet schools work for all is to make them centers of innovation. Those magnet and charter schools that succeed need to have established channels to share their successes with other schools in the region. This creates an innovation network where magnet and charter schools become a hub for innovation and their successes are shared with others. Education research centers at universities and education technology companies also need to be involved in these innovation networks. These research and development centers will partner with local schools to create living laboratories to test their learning strategies and products. How will busy educators learn about and use these innovations? New technologies are likely to improve the ability of principals and teachers to identify successful innovation in other schools. Intelligent agents will retrieve and filter information so that it is easier to find and create relevant knowledge. Digital communication technologies will also make it cheaper and easier for schools to participate in these innovation networks as nodes for research and learning. Platforms and practices for open source research are making it possible for organizations in different locations to share data and findings. In an open source model, schools will be able to test innovations in other schools against the data for their own unique situations. When more principals and teachers can be active participants in research and development, knowledge about important innovations will diffuse more rapidly.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. Principals can mentor aspiring principals or those having performance problems. 32

For examples of innovative magnet and charter schools see: http://www.ed.gov/admins/comm/choice/charter/index.html and http://www.edgov/admins/comm/choie/magnet/index.html

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2. Schools can look to other schools/organizations to form a local or regional innovation networks.

7. Surveillance Society Links Schoolhouses into Electronic Safety Network Schools in 2021 are linked into an electronic safety network that features sophisticated threat detection and rapid response. Biometrics clear students and personnel for entry while profiling systems warn when a “person of interest” tries to come on school grounds. Biosensors are used to detect sudden changes in patterns of behavior or activities. Schools are becoming more open to parents and the community through secured entries and virtual visitation.

Interacting Forces of Change • •

•

Sensors and monitoring equipment will be ubiquitous in public areas to continuously scan for risks. The security industry is refining behavioral research and data gathering systems to help government agencies prevent terrorist or aberrant behavior. Public defense systems will continue refining rapid alert and response systems featuring skilled teams equipped with robotics.

Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue What surveillance technologies will be commonplace in schools in 2021? Security technology is already a fixture of many schools. Metal detectors have become common at many urban school districts. Approximately 10% of high and middle schools and 3% of elementary schools have metal detectors.33 Video surveillance can enable security personnel to monitor multiple schools at the same time. It also allows police to be automatically notified if something occurs after hours. Approximately 16% of the nation’s 100,000 schools have some form of video surveillance systems in place. Most of these systems are expensive closed-circuit television systems (CCTV), which require expensive equipment and extensive rewiring.34

33

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2001). School Health Policies and Programs Study 2000. Journal of School Health 71 (7). 34 Nilsson, F. (2004, August) Surveillance 101. T.H.E. Journal. Retrieved 10/24/2006 at http://www.thejournal.com/articles/16867

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A new and disruptive technology, IP TV, is a much cheaper way to introduce video surveillance into school. These systems are easy to scale, allowing schools to expand the number of cameras over the course of multiple fiscal years. As the cost of these systems continues to decrease, more schools are likely to put video surveillance systems into classrooms as well.35 Concerns over terrorism have prompted increased funding in research and development in biometric security. Elementary and middle schools are a logical next step for the rollout of biometric devices after high profile public places. Three schools in New Jersey have already implemented a pilot project to test iris scanning to control access to the schools to teachers, parents and staff.36 In the near future, many schools will integrate their IT systems with their biometric security systems.37 This will create new applications for principals to track who uses school facilities and help first responders make life saving decisions in case of an emergency. Will surveillance technology provide new tools for principals, teachers and parents to improve learning? Digital security technology will provide not only increased security, but new tools to improve staff performance and improve the learning experience. Parents could use remote viewing capability to check up on their children and observe teachers. Video from classrooms could also be recorded to share best practices among the teaching staff, to allow students and parents to review presentations and to help principals do evaluations of their staff. Canton High School is an example of a high school that is innovating through video surveillance technology. Students can access video recordings from their classes through the school network to study for upcoming tests and recordings of the best performing teachers are often used in teacher training sessions.38 Parents will have a wide range of technologies available to them to track their children and their education. These include GPS monitoring systems that can be placed inside cell phones, cars and even clothing. Software programs are also available for parents to monitor online activity and communication.39 It is likely that these technologies will extend into the schoolhouse. Parents could use 35

Nilsson, F. (2004, August) Surveillance 101. T.H.E. Journal. Retrieved 10/24/2006 at http://www.thejournal.com/articles/16867 36 Sullivan, L. (2006, June 23). Iris Scanning for New Jersey Grade School. Tech Web News. Retrieved 10/24/2006 at http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/personaltech/177103027 37 Goldberg, L. (2003, September). Creating Safer and More Efficient Schools With Biometric Technologies. T.H.E. Journal. Retrieved 10/21/2006 at http://www.thejournal.com/articles/16433 38 Nilsson, F. (2004, August) Surveillance 101. T.H.E. Journal. Retrieved 10/24/2006 at http://www.thejournal.com/articles/16867 39 th DeFao, J. (2006, July 9 ). Parents Turn to Tech Toys to Track Teens. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 10/24/2006 at http://sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/09/BIGMOTHER.TMP

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tracking technology to monitor their children’s movements, video cameras to observe their children’s education and software programs to monitor their communications.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. Principals will need to gain public trust that new technologies will benefit all involved and will not be misused. 2. Schools could create educational passports for children that contain standard information on a chip. This passport would provide for continuity of learning and safety in a highly mobile world.

8. Society’s Mounting Debts Compromise Future Investments in Education Although Americans buy into nationalistic appeals to invest in science and technology to keep the economy globally competitive over the next decade, mounting debts make it difficult to invest in education. The public treasury is stressed by rising costs for health care and pensions, national security and a long neglected public infrastructure. High levels of personal debt make increased taxes politically untenable.

Interacting Forces of Change • • •

Aged Baby Boomers nearing end of life are placing extraordinary demands on Social Security and Medicare. There is a growing push to balance fairness of funding per student with fairness of tax burden placed on taxpayers.40 A growing number of the super wealthy are becoming philanthropists who step in where government funding is unavailable.

Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue What will be competing for funds for public purposes in 2021? Longer life spans, improvements in expensive medical technology and an expansion of benefits have made the continued growth of retirement and health plans for the elderly untenable. By 2020, it is estimated that 26.6% of all federal income taxes will be needed to pay for Social Security and Medicare. By 2030, that number is projected to increase to 49.7%.41 40

Cohn, Dana B. (2006) Explaining Varied Willingness to Pay for Elementary and Secondary Public Schools. The University of Nebraska. 41 John, DC and Moffit, RE (2006) Medicare and Social Security: Big Entitlement Costs on the Horizon. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 12/3/2006 at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm1054.cfm

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Baby Boomers, and their retirement, are both the source of the funding crisis and its solution. Since their numbers are too great to be out-voted, they will need to be persuaded that the needs of the next generation are more important than their own. Baby Boomers may avert the Medicare funding crisis if they elect in large enough numbers to withdraw from costly end of life healthcare services. Likewise, they may mitigate the Social Security crisis if they continue to work later into life. However, the enormous amount of debt many Americans have taken on in recent years will reduce the willingness of taxpayers to fund rate hikes even if the Baby Boomers decide to work longer and withdraw from costly end of life services. Shortages of funds are already hurting social programs such as education in many states. In 2005, the household debt-service ratio reached an all time high of 13.4% of after tax income.42 The majority of Americans have borrowed the resources for a lifestyle they can ill afford. It would take a major reordering of values to get Americans to give up credit and buy into taxes for public education. Instead it is the super wealthy who increasingly are filling this shortfall in public resources for the common good. This may be a form of economic justice, since as economic and political commenter Kevin Phillips observes; credible calculations show that the top 1% of Americans in 2000 had as much disposable income as the bottom 35%.43 Even so, the Gates Foundation and all its counterpart philanthropies and corporate foundations cannot spread sufficient funding equitably across a nation of more than 300 million people to meet every public need. What can be done to increase the priority for education? The short and simple answer is a values shift. A tipping point must be created toward an ethic that educating people is critical to a well functioning democracy. Then spending has to be aligned with that value. Even if Americans are slow to invest in the next generation for altruistic reasons, they may be compelled to act in their economic interest. Thomas Friedman sounded this alarm in the best seller The World Is Flat: “Because it takes fifteen years to create a scientist or advanced engineer, starting from when that young man or woman first gets hooked on science and math in elementary school, we should be embarking on an all-hands-on-deck, no-holds-barred, no-budget-toolarge crash program for science and engineering education immediately.”44 Volunteering may help contribute to creating a tipping point. Teach for America has been tremendously successful in giving the best and brightest of this college 42

Phillips, K. (2006) American Theocracy: The Period and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and st Borrowed Money in the 21 Century. Penguin Books. 43 Ibid. 44 Friedman, TL. (2005) Op. cit.

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generation a firsthand experience with schools. Teach for America is well on the way to achieving its goal of being the top recruiter at elite campuses. Although only a few of these talented young people continue in a career in education, they are leaving with a keener understanding of what schools need. By 2021 thousands of Teach for America alumni will be in key leadership positions in business, government, and their communities.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. Principals can engage the public in understanding where public investments are most effective in the transitions from pre-K to college. 2. Schools should look to become a center for community activities to help build support for additional funding.

9. Principals Set the Standard for Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) Effective principals in 2021 have become the model that other chief learning officers in corporations and organizations want to emulate. They are masters in leading their schools to learn and adapt in an uncompromising pursuit of what is best for their students. Emerging from an era of intense accountability few corporations will ever experience, these principals are creating learning organizations that are transforming individual lives and communities.

Interacting Forces of Change •

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As more is known about how to close the education gap for underachieving students, the public will recognize the integral role principals play in the continuous improvement of learning processes. With so many corporate leaders falling into low public esteem for acts of corruption and greed, the public will turn to other sectors to find leaders to trust and respect. The Malcolm Baldridge quality program inspires teachers and principals to use goal setting and evaluation to measure organizational improvement.

Provocative Questions for the Vision 2021 Dialogue What will be the job description of the 2021 principal? In 2002, the National Association of Elementary School Principals anticipated the answer in its publication, Leading Learning Communities. NAESP focused on principals as instructional leaders, but this term may be too narrow to capture the full scope of the evolving job description. Chief learning officer seems a more fitting title for

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someone who is expected to be a “force that creates collaboration and cohesion around school learning goals and the commitment to achieve those goals.” Principals as CLOs will place student and adult learning at the center of the school. They help students achieve high standards of academic performance by creating safe and secure learning environments for students and fostering collaborative learning communities for adults. In 2021, as it was in 2002, the “new model of a school leader is one who is continually learning.” Some experts argue that no one person can do the job of principal and new structures are required, like a team of leaders including a business manager or chief of operations and a chief academic officer.45 Whatever the future configuration, principals will practice learner-centered leadership and seek leadership contributions from multiple sources to balance management and leadership roles. As a knowledge manager, the principal will need to draw on both theoretical and practical knowledge about learning processes.46The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) established competencies to guide the professional development of school administrators. ISLLC charges educational leaders with facilitating the development, articulation, implementation and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community.47 Whether they are sustaining a school culture, managing operations, collaborating with families and community members, or responding to the larger political, legal and social context, all their responsibilities are centered on learning. Why must principals be leaders of change? Strategic leaders know how to lead change. They understand how to use information to accurately assess the situation, set goals that define the work to be accomplished, inspire people to overcome resistance, and help their followers achieve and celebrate the small victories that add up to major transformation. Leading complex organizations like schools requires a “complex interplay of skills, motivation, and capacity to provide meaning and animate others.48 In the face of the challenges schools face today, principals must be prepared to be responsive and flexible in how they learn with their teachers, students, parents and community what it takes to achieve learning outcomes. 45

Tucker, MS. and Codding, JB. (2002) Preparing Principals in the Age of Accountability, from The Principal Challenge, Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability, JosseyBass, San Francisco. 46 Hill, P. (2002) What Principals Need to Know About Teaching and Learning, in The Principal Challenge, Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability. Editors Marc S. Tucker ad Judy B. Codding. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. 47 Brian JC, Calnin, GT and Cahill, WP. (2002) Mission Possible? An International Analysis of Training for Principals, in The Principal Challenge, Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability. Editors Marc S. Tucker ad Judy B. Codding. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. 48 Ibid.

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As Michael Fullan observes, “leading schools through complex reform agendas requires new leadership that goes far beyond improving test scores.” Principals will need the “courage and capacity to build new cultures based on trusting relationships and a culture of disciplined inquiry and action.”49 How will principals grow into this challenging new role of chief learning officer? Chief learning officers have to model the highest commitment to learning in their organizations. They engage in continuous learning around the goals their organizations are working to achieve. Some principals are already living this role today, and they can become the core of a network of mentors. They can be the lead learners in collaborative learning communities that extend beyond their own schools. Professionals define the standards of their profession and commit to training new entrants. School principals will have to be active in defining minimum competencies and high levels of performance for their field. They will have to be equally willing to mentor new entrants and to discipline colleagues who fall short of accepted standards of performance.

Options for a Preferred Future for Schools & the Principalship 1. Principals can expand their vision of learning to embrace the experience of children outside the schoolhouse. 2. Schools could experiment with the Chief Learning Officer (CLO). For example, CLOs could be given responsibility over a set number of students or teachers rather than a particular schoolhouse.

49

Michael F. (2003) The Moral Imperative of School Leadership. Ontario Principals’ Council and Corwin Press, 2003.

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