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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 2015)
September 30, 2015 Minority & Small Business Week Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. Page 23 O PINION Making Classrooms Work for All Our Students Big data meets the ‘three Rs’ B EN J EALOUS The most im- portant factor in a student’s success is a great teacher. But in the modern class- room, even great teachers face daunting obsta- cles. This is a story about what happens when big data meets the “three R’s” - reading, writ- ing, and arithmetic. It’s a story about the recent revolution in education technology, and how we in EdTech can help make our education system work for all American students. Kids learn at different speeds and in different ways. A lesson perceived as boring and un- der stimulating to one student could strike another student as far too complicated to keep up. According to one study, sev- en out of 10 middle and high school students require instruc- WLRQWKDWLVVSHFL¿FDOO\WDUJHWHG to their strengths and weak- nesses. This is partly a function of human nature, but it is also a BY IXQFWLRQRILQHTXDOLW\7KH¿UVW few years of a child’s life are crucial for their development, as they learn to recognize w words and numbers by sig and sound. sight Many children who grow up poor - partic- gr ularly poor children of ul color co - have fewer books in their homes, less ac- teach them the same material? A new generation of education software is beginning to help teachers answer that question. One of these services is Newsela. Newsela provides teachers with daily news ar- ticles from national and local QHZVSDSHUV ZULWWHQ DW ¿YH different reading levels. The class can discuss the news as dents based on their personal interests - for instance, Harry Potter or Spongebob. The pro- gram allows teachers to track students’ growth and progress and adapts questions based on what a student gets right or wrong. Like Newsela, it meets students where they are. On the other side of the aca- demic spectrum is Front Row. This creates a challenge for teachers: how do you take a class of 20 or 30 students who all have different home lives, backgrounds and skill sets, and somehow manage to teach them the same material? cess to good libraries and less access to the Internet. As early as kindergarten, children in the highest socioeconomic level already outperform their play- mates in the lowest socioeco- nomic level by 60 percent. This creates a challenge IRU WHDFKHUV KRZ GR \RX WDNH a class of 20 or 30 students who all have different home lives, backgrounds and skill sets, and somehow manage to a group, and students can earn the satisfaction of moving up a level when they are ready. The software helps struggling stu- dents keep up with the class, and allows the brightest stu- GHQWVWR¿QGHQJDJLQJPDWHULDO What Newsela does for reading comprehension, NoRedInk does for writing. The web-based learning engine generates writing exercises and grammar questions for stu- Front Row is an online soft- ware that generates math exer- cises for students based on their current skill level. Like Newse- la and No Red Ink, it tailors the lesson to students’ needs and automatically tracks progress. The program even reads math questions aloud for English as a Second Language (ESL) stu- dents - something that’s partic- ularly important in light of the fact that by high school, fewer than one out of 10 students tak- ing AP Computer Science are Latino. We are entering a new age of Edtech. As Silicon Valley investor Umang Gupta has pointed out, there has never been a “mega-breakout” in the education software space, and only one percent of all educa- tion spending right now is on technology. But that is likely to change. Computers and tablets only continue to get cheap- er, and broadband access only continues to improve. In an increasingly diverse nation, we need to use all the tools at our disposal - old-fash- ioned and new - to ensure that schools work for all of our kids. The era of widespread personalized education is rap- idly approaching, and social justice-minded entrepreneurs are starting to break the code on how to teach using tech. Ben Jealous is former presi- GHQWDQGFKLHIH[HFXWLYHRI¿FHU of the NAACP, and Partner at Kapor Capital, a social impact LQYHVWLQJ ¿UP WKDW LQYHVWV LQ EdTech companies including Newsela, No Red Ink and Front Row. Opening Doors to the Global, High-Tech Economy Overcoming the crisis in education M ARC H. M ORIAL Our nation’s high schools are in a state of troubling crisis. Too many of our stu- dents are graduating ill-equipped for the academic rigors of college and, ultimate- ly, the challenges and needs of today’s global, high-tech econ- omy. For many of our high school graduates, earning a college GHJUHHZLOOEHWKHLU¿UVWVWHSRQ the path towards the “American Dream” of the job, the house and future economic securi- ty. And the data consistently points to this traditionally ac- FHSWHG FRQFOXVLRQ WKRVH ZKR earn a college degree are more likely to attain higher-skilled BY and better paying jobs than their peers who only have a high school diploma. But a recent report points to a concerning reality, RQH ZKHUH LQVXI¿FLHQW college readiness is cut- ting off large numbers of students from a critical conduit of future oppor- tunity and success--and because of historic dis- The ACT testing company, which administers a popular, nation-wide college admis- sions and placement test, pub- lished a report that showed that one in three students who took the ACT are not ready for col- lege course work. In fact, just over 6 in 10 students met the test’s col- lege-ready benchmarks in English, math, reading and For white high school stu- dents who took the ACT in 2014, 76 percent tested compe- tent for college-level English courses and 52 percent tested competent for math. Only 34 percent of black high school graduates tested competent for college-level English cours- es, and just 14 percent were ready to tackle college-level math. For Hispanic students, Only 34 percent of black high school graduates tested competent for college- level English courses, and just 14 percent were ready to tackle college-level math. parities in education between white students and black and Latino students, students of color are impacted in greater numbers. science. The data points to a disturbing performance gap when you compare the results of black and Latino students to their white peers. 47 percent were prepared for college-level English and 29 percent were ready for col- lege-level math courses. As we face a nationwide challenge to prepare all of our students for post-secondary academic success, it must be acknowledged that students of color are feeling the impact of the failure to prepare our stu- dents in far greater numbers. This failure not only hurts the individual student by curb- ing job prospects and higher earning potential, it weakens our nation and our standing as a strong competitor in a glob- al marketplace that values the knowledge and skills that come with schooling and training be- yond high school. Understanding that time-tested correlation be- tween educational opportunity and future economic empow- erment, the National Urban League has developed Project Ready, a signature program- ming initiative that prepares African-American students and other urban youth for college, work and life.
