|
Test-whipped and standards-flogged, today's schools are so desperate
for achievement- score gains that they remove recess, dump band,
and cut electives. But what if we are looking for learning in
the wrong direction?
We suggest that using learning technology to increase the "play
quotient" in school-home interaction can yield powerful results.
The wholesome possibilities have been evident ever since two Silicon
Valley brothers reminisced about playing board games with their
parents and proceeded to write an "electronic board game," Carmen
San Diego (Broderbund), which has sold two million copies and
crossed over from retail sales to school use in teaching geography.
In the same vein, Seymour Papert's Lego Logo -- which teaches
simple programming using the popular plastic building bricks --
links the home toy box with the school technology lab and blurs
the line between playing and learning. And now, studies of a pilot
program in Colorado (more on this later) show positive results
for inexpensive technology that builds on the learning value of
play.
Serious play at school and home
"To be playful and serious at the same time is possible," John
Dewey observed, "as it defines the ideal mental condition." Play
is not the same thing as its passive cousin, entertainment. Children
do play; they watch entertainment. Players learn more than spectators.
The useful outcomes of play have been widely documented: Play
in the Lives of Children, the 1988 book by Cosby Rogers and Janet
Sawyer, has no fewer than 300 primary citations. But in schools,
it seems the only people who have remembered the adage that "play
is a child's work" are early childhood educators and coaches.
Everyone else grinds through the work sheets and the state-required
syllabus.
It might come as a surprise to task-oriented parents and educators
fixed on direct instruction to learn that the more children play,
the more likely they are to read early, to write well, and to
have advanced language skills. Rogers and Sawyer conclude that
"although play is not a necessary condition for learning language
and literacy skills, play is probably the best environment for
these abilities to thrive."
All of us learn best when we enjoy learning. But until recently,
materials that make use of play as an assist to learning have
been rare -- especially materials that help both teachers and
parents.
That home connection is vital: The biggest unused lever for
improvement is not inside the school but outside it. In Beyond
the Classroom, Laurence Steinberg pointed out what he called our
"general disregard of the contributing forces that, while outside
the boundaries of the school, are probably more influential."
And Secretary of Education Richard Riley often speaks of "parents
as the child's first teacher" and "the home as America's smallest
school."
Riley's insight and Steinberg's conclusion are both supported
by hard data that have been available (but largely ignored) for
a third of a century. In 1966, in a landmark report for the U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare titled Equality of
Educational Opportunity, James S. Coleman researched thousands
of children and concluded, "Studies of school achievement have
consistently shown that variations in family background account
for far more variation in school achievement than do variations
in school characteristics."
Coleman went on to say, "... [D]espite the wide range of diversity
of school facilities, curriculum and teachers, and despite the
wide diversity among student bodies in different schools, over
70 percent of the variation in achievement for each group is variation
within the same student body."
Do the numbers: If the school accounts for 30 percent of children's
achievement, it is also true that the home, neighborhood, and
peer environment account for 70 percent of what children do. This
difference between what schools can and cannot influence is intuitively
and practically obvious. Imagine a principal who has to "explain"
the English-language test-score performance of a child from a
family recently emigrated from Laos, a family that speaks no English.
What is more relevant to that Laotian-American child's test scores
-- the number of in-service sessions the teacher attended, or
the fact that the child took the test in a language that neither
child nor parents speak or read?
Telecommuting between home and school
Consider the ways American schools and homes traditionally get
together. According to Family Involvement in Education: A National
Portrait, by A. Rupa Datta and Adriana de Kanter:
- 38 percent of schools require parents to sign their child's
homework.
- 32 percent sponsor agreements with parents about learning
at home.
- 22 percent assign homework that requires parent involvement.
Datta and Kanter report that educators are also using print
and telecommunications to forge connections between homes and
schools:
- 75 percent of parents get school newsletters.
- 72 percent get phone calls from teachers and administrators.
- e-mail, web sites, and cable TV reach fewer than one parent
in four.
Can we do better? Instructional technology is an obvious place
to look. The International
Society for Technology in Education's 1998 National Educational
Technology Standards for Students recommends that technology be
used to shift education from:
- teacher-centered to learner-centered instruction
- single media to multimedia
- single sense to multisense
- passive learning to active, inquiry-based learning
- facts to critical thinking
That sounds impressive ... and expensive. But the CEO Forum
on Education and Technology reports that, during the 1997-98 school
year, schools spent less than the cost of two movie tickets on
instructional software and online services per student -- $13.68
for each kid for the whole year. What's more, only 3 percent of
American classrooms fully integrate technology with teaching and
learning, according to a 1997 report from the CEO Forum, which
classifies 59 percent of U.S. schools as "low technology."
And yet, as Carole Cotton of CCA Research observes about technology,
"The exponential benefits to students do not usually occur until
home use is integrated into the curriculum." Schools are in a
bind: They need more instructional technology for their teachers
and classrooms, and they understand that they must get beyond
the schoolhouse to the homes. Some partner with corporations to
provide laptops that students can use at school or at home. But
schools can't buy everything for everyone.
One possibility is "appropriate technology" -- that is, not
the most advanced (and expensive) technology, but the technology
that gives the best performance in relation to price. After all,
only 11 percent of families with incomes less than $20,000 have
computers at home, according to the Washington, D.C., based Benton
Foundation. But less-expensive options are available, including
Internet-enabled TV. More accessible still are game machines such
as the Sony PlayStation, a 56-bit RISC processor that plays CD-ROMs
through the home's TV screen and costs $100 at retail. This is
the delivery platform that was used in a successful pilot program
in Adams County School District 50 in Westminster, Colo.
The Adams County experience
Our study was designed to determine whether interactive materials
produced by the Lightspan
Partnership, Inc., would have a positive effect on student
achievement. The materials, which are linked to the school's curriculum
and indexed to the state curriculum frameworks and standards,
are launched in the classroom and then taken home by children
to extend their learning, often with their parents. All the materials
have three to five levels of performance challenge, and they are
indexed to an online, criterion-based assessment program that
relates curriculum materials and student performance to commonly
used curriculum standards.
The links to standards and assessment are crucial. "Staff need
to ensure that what they are teaching is aligned to the standards
and that their teaching is responsive to the needs of the students,"
says district superintendent Michael Massarotti. "Teachers have
to administer frequent assessments to see if children are achieving
and make appropriate adjustments when kids are not achieving."
Adams County 50 is a Denver-area district that serves 11,000
children in grades K-12 in 27 schools and centers. The annual
budget is $55 million, the average daily attendance is 95 percent,
the graduation rate is 80 percent, and the dropout rate is 6.4
percent. Our analysis was conducted in six otherwise similar elementary
schools, three of which used the Lightspan materials and three
of which did not. The schools ranged from 25 percent at or below
poverty level to 74 percent; enrollment ranged from 39 to 79 percent
white and 12 to 50 percent Hispanic.
We looked at the test score changes of third-graders over two
years and in two groups of schools -- the pilot schools that used
the materials, and the control schools that did not. At the start
of the test year, the three control schools scored higher than
their counterparts. At the end of the first year, the Lightspan
schools scored higher than the control schools on both reading
and math in the California Test of Basic Skills (see
the Test Score Comparison table).
Schools are seldom static, so we also looked at the changes in
the scores before and after using the materials. As a group, the
pilot schools gained more in both math and reading. The table
shows the size of the advantage between those schools and the
control schools, as well as individual school mean score differences
by subject matter. Comparing the average score differences, Lightspan
schools gain an average of 14 points more on the CTBS math performance
scale and eight points more on the CTBS reading scale than the
control schools.
And, looking across third-graders grouped by achievement quartiles,
the first (lowest achieving), third, and fourth (highest achieving)
groups all show higher performance in both math and reading for
children with access to Lightspan than those without. The biggest
combined gain in math and reading was achieved by the neediest
children, those in the lowest achievement quartile.
Teachers' and parents' voices
Over the course of the year, we listened in person to teachers,
who reported such reactions as, "This hits all the learning modalities,"
and "Students feel successful, they think it is fun, and they
are excited to learn." Describing one restless and unfocused boy,
a teacher told us, "He's very bright, but he was disruptive in
class. By the end of the year, he was transformed. Using the materials
really motivated him -- he found the games challenging and the
program allowed him to progress at his own pace."
"I launch the lesson in my room but parents reinforce it at
home," another said. And parents responded positively as well.
Of the 750 parents we interviewed at four intervals over the year,
79 percent said that, using the materials, their children went
beyond what the teacher assigned as homework. Seventy-one percent
thought their children were more enthusiastic about school, and
97 percent said that their children watched less TV as a result.
On average, the parents reported spending 39 minutes nightly helping
their child with homework.
On this evidence, we conclude that a serious play curriculum
used at home can help elementary schools be more successful with
learning time, access to high-quality learning technology, and
family involvement -- and, through these levers, to increased
student achievement.
Part of the explanation for these effects lies with district
leaders, who integrated this curriculum into a larger environment
of reforms. But part of the explanation is that these school-home
materials have been designed for the reality of American homes
-- two wage earners, not much time, and a lot of distractions.
Homework and video games share a common rule: Not Fun = Not Done.
These materials use the imagination of the entertainment industry,
the platform of available technology, and the framework of the
school's purpose to everyone's gain.
Dale
Mann is a managing director of Interactive,
Inc., in Huntington, N.Y., and a professor in the Department of
Organization and Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University.
Charol Shakeshaft
is a managing director of Interactive, Inc., and a professor in
the Department of Foundations, Leadership, and Policy Study, Hofstra
University. Robert Kottkamp
is a professor in the Foundations, Leadership, and Policy Study,
Hofstra University. Jonathan
Becker is program director of Interactive, Inc., and a professor
in the Program of Education Policy at Teachers College, Columbia
University.
|
