Ken Kay Hasn’t Met an Educator Yet That Believes State Standards Are Working
ENA recently sat down with Ken Kay, one of the nation’s leading voices for 21st century readiness in our schools. He shared with ENA some intriguing thoughts about the current state of education in America.
Q: Tell me a little about yourself and your background.
A: I got into the education field in the mid-90s although I’m an attorney by training—in fact, I often refer to myself as a recovering attorney. I used to do public policy for hi-tech industries and found myself doing a lot of work in the mid 80s on U.S. competitiveness issues. That led me to becoming very interested in issues involving education, innovation and technology. From 1996 to 2001 I led a group called the CEO Forum on Education and Technology. Several members of that group asked me to consider starting another coalition to focus on the skills young people needed in the new global economy. That’s how the Partnership for 21st Century Skills came to be in 2001, an organization for which I served as president for eight years. Just recently I started a new project called EdLeader21, a professional learning community for 21st century education leaders.
Q: What are the essential skills that students need to live and work with success in the 21st century?
A: There’s a very long list of skills contained in the framework of P21 [the abbreviation for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills]. More recently, we’ve focused on the “4 Cs”: critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. There are two others that I often add to that list: global citizenship and self-direction. That’s what I
would prioritize if I were on a school board or a superintendent.
Q: Could you talk a little more about global citizenship and self direction?
A: Global citizenship is important because much of the work in the 21st century is done in global teams and in the context of global collaboration. People need to understand how to be a global citizen, a global participant and to have a global perspective. Today’s products and projects have the benefits of the best expertise and the best components from around the world. So it follows that we be able to work with people from other cultures, to appreciate the differences between cultures and to appreciate the interconnectedness of our problems and the problems of other countries. It’s critical. To the degree we’re preparing our young people for 21st century careers and citizenship, we need to understand problems not in just a local, state or national context, but in an international context. Self-direction is one of the big sleeper skills of the 21st century. Employers like ENA expect you to work hard but also to know what to do next. Last year an executive at Apple told me that if an employee needs to be managed, then that employee is no longer employable at Apple. What that means is that their people are expected to be able to figure out what to do next, not wait to be told what to do next. Well, I’m deeply concerned that our schooling strategy is premised on people telling kids what to do next when one of the most important skills they can learn is how to figure out what to do next. How are they self-directed, self-motivated? Daniel Pink has a new booked called Drive that addresses this issue very well. How do we move schooling so that kids are motivated to be self-directed in their work so they can become self-directed citizens and self-directed workers? As budgets of all kinds are slashed, especially in education, this idea becomes even more compelling. When I go around the country speaking to superintendents, they tell me their own employees need to be more self-directed. In education, we can’t afford to have management layers as do other industries in this county. Cutting-edge districts are thinking deeply on this issue
Q: How does robust connectivity and technologies such as video teleconferencing fit into this 21st century teaching and learning paradigm?
A: I’ll give you a very concrete example. What if your school district decides that every student needed to be globally competent? What does that mean? What does being globally competent mean in the 21st century? As we’ve discussed, it means being able to work with people from other cultures and countries, to understand their perspectives. But how do you do that? Either you go visit those cultures—but more often than not students can’t afford to do that—or you learn about those places and learn to interact with the people that live there via the Internet.. So thirdgrade
classrooms collaborate with third grade classrooms from another culture. These kinds of collaborate projects are the building blocks of becoming globally competent. You can’t do that without connectivity. All of these skills that I mentioned previously, you’ve got to be able to do all of those in the context of the 21st century and that requires robust connectivity. I’m not a big subscriber to technology competency for its own sake. But if you look at the six skills I’ve prioritized, in the 21st century all of those need to be accomplished in an online environment.
Q: What single change in a classroom would make the greatest difference in our student’s 21st century preparation? What single mindset change in teachers would make the most radical difference?
A: That is very difficult to answer because there is no silver bullet. But if I were forced to implement a single change, then I would choose that a higher percentage of students direct more of their own learning and be challenged to problem-solve. What happens too often is that we are still in an outdated lecture mode. I’d like to see students actively engaged in trying to do something, learning their skills and content, while in the context of solving a problem or a robust challenge. That is how students learn to tackle the problems that face their communities and our society. That would be an important change. Problem-based learning exists, but as one principal said to me recently, “It’s present, but not prevalent.” We need to migrate from present to prevalent.
Q: Let’s say you’re the father of a third-grader. Ideally, what would his or her school day look like? What about a junior in high school?
A: Classrooms don’t need to look like what they look like today. The schools I’m most excited about are doing problem based learning. Teachers are leading teams of students, not lecturing to them. The students are working together in groups around tables, actively engaged in solving a problem and actively using tools such as technology to solve that problem. I think there are appropriate challenges for third-graders and appropriate challenges for eleventh-graders, so I don’t think my description of their classrooms changes that much from grade to grade. Only the level of sophistication of the problems and solutions differ. I do think that the second half of twelfth grade, if not all of it, isn’t working well today. I’d like to see senior capstone projects where students are not feeling like the last six months of high school is irrelevant but actually working on major projects out in the community that they care about. I’ll add a futuristic vision that I think about sometimes in which I conceive of high school as not a single building but a campus of the most important institutions in a given city or town. Envision the museum, the library and government buildings all housing students that are working on challenges related to those institutions. Envision your whole town or city as the campus of your high schools. High school today is badly broken and needs to be re-envisioned in order to become a very vibrant place. Young people are very willing to be engaged and challenged. Yet we’ve put them in very passive environments and wonder why they’re bored and dropping out. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to us.
Q: Given that most districts in the nation are a long way from that vision and that most schools have adopted problem-based learning to the degree that you are advocating, how optimistic are you about the prospect of meaningful, near-term, systemic change in America’s schools?
A: By nature I’m an optimist. I don’t think you can be in this line of work without thinking it can get better. The depressing part is that in some ways we’re headed in the wrong direction. A lot of the practices and standards that we currently have are disengaging and not focused on the skills young people really need. But the reason I’m optimistic is that I see active classrooms and active schools embracing new visions and innovations. I think we know now what to do but that we’re just stuck in old models. Communities need to get together and realize we’re in a very, very major time of transformation. Communities need to empower good educators to move our systems into the 21st century. There are districts doing this across the country. Education and community leaders need to seek out these enterprising districts, see what they look like and what they are doing, and then emulate them. We need to take advantage of those pioneering districts. But I’m hopeful because I’m seeing great leaders, particularly district superintendents, taking their schools in the right direction.
Q: You’re going to be joining ENA this spring as we take our “Discovering New Horizons” speaker series show on the road in Tennessee. Most of those in the audience will be district technology coordinators or directors and superintendents. What will you say to motivate and inspire them?
A: I don’t want to give that away else they won’t come! Just assure them that it’s inspiring. No, I’m kidding. As for technology directors, I encourage them to focus on the linkage between technology and the outcomes rather focusing simply on technology. I think the really great technology directors are using technology to help students get and refine the skills they need. As far as getting superintendents excited, they face a huge challenge, caught between the current set of rules, particularly No Child Left Behind, and their own convictions about what young people in their districts really need. So the great superintendents are blending the two, accepting that they have to follow the state standards no matter what but also asking the question, “Are these standards, by themselves, preparing my students for the 21st century?” I have not been anywhere in this country yet where I’ve had one person raise their hand and say, “My state standards are preparing the young people of this state for 21st century challenges, for 21st century work, for 21st century life and for 21st century citizenship.” What that means is that local leaders, both superintendents and school board members, are going to have to come to the table as a more important partner and say, “Yeah, the state standards are what they are—they may get better with new common core standards coming down the road—but beyond this what do young people need to be able to do?” It’s a very long haul to change curriculum, instruction, professional development and assessment so that the entire educational system is trained on producing young people with 21st century skills and outcomes, but this is where we start.
Q: This is a nice segue into EdLeader21, correct? Tell us about this latest initiative.
A: Yes, it is. EdLeader21 was launchedDecember 1, 2010, and I’m very excited about it. Last summer I went all around the country asking superintendents what I could do to support them and their district leaders in their 21set century education efforts. They came up with this idea of creating a professional learning environment for superintendents committed to 21st education and therefore we have launched this new initiative. We have 40 districts from 18 states participating in a professional learning community in which district leaders are connected in a social network and working with each other on the best strategies to implement 21ste education. It is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever worked on—to be in the position of supporting local superintendents to transform their districts. You know, the great superintendents in this country are among the most visionary, committed public servants that I’ve met. I’ve been very inspired by their work and I feel very fortunate to be in a position to support them as they lead their districts, and by extension our entire nation, into21st century teaching and learning. For more information about EdLeader21, please visit: www.edleader21.com.
