NCTM New Orleans 2014:Levine's The Coming Transformation of American Education: Implications for Mathematics Education

Dr. Arthur Levine - President of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation (amongst other things)

NCTM Research Conference - Monday, April 7, 7:00 pm

Arthur Levine.
Source: http://woodrow.org/about/president/

The 2014 NCTM kicked off this evening with a poster session (which I missed, sadly) and an address by Dr. Arthur Levine, President of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and former President of Teachers College, Columbia University. In this talk, Levine detailed what he saw as six current and future forces that have the capacity to transform education.

Force #1: Demographics

In this section of the talk, Levine focused on demographic shifts, such as an aging population, an increased number of people moving to the Sun Belt, changes in color and diversity, and increasing immigration. Here are some of Levine's thoughts and claims:

• We're going to see an extraordinary number of retirements, both in our university and K-12 systems, and they must be replaced.
• There's been a 12% increase in math majors in the past 10 years, but it's really hard to recruit them into math education because other professions are more lucrative.
• We're going to see a new majority of students in higher education: older than 25, part time, overwhelmingly female, and working. Higher education won't be their primary interest as they juggle responsibilities of work and family.
• Students of the future aren't going to want higher education with "softball leagues or psychological counseling," as they can get those elsewhere. What they want is convenience, service, reliable financial aid, quality instruction, professors who are current in their fields, and low cost. They won't want to pay for things they don't use and they won't care about elective courses. These students will be prime candidates for online instruction.
• People are moving to traditionally conservative states and we'll have a "Republican hegemony," at least for the near future. This will stress some education systems and deplete others.

Force #2: Economy

Here Levine talked about the shift from an "analog" economy to a "digital" economy and the jobs that either went abroad or no longer exist. Some claims:

• Entry-level job skills are higher-skilled, with a particular demand for STEM knowledge and skill.
• States are increasing their graduation standards to the highest levels in history and saying dropouts aren't acceptable, like they could in the past when dropouts could more easily find steady jobs.
• We're going to find that the fastest growing job fields are STEM fields.
• Levine says governors who he talks to only talk about economic development and STEM.
• Everyone will have to be fluent in two languages - words and numbers. We thought we needed to teach kids Chinese, but instead we realized we need to teach them how to code.
• The symbol of the industrial era is the assembly line. Our schools looked like that and, for a time, it worked. Students moved through by age, taking courses measured in Carnegie units devised in 1910. Now time is variable, process is variable, and we're switching from process to outcomes and a focus from teachers to students. States are imposing standards and outcomes, and this means more accountability and regulation.
• We're going to see a proliferation of equity lawsuits. Equity used to mean access to the same process. Now students need access to the same outcomes. We've started to see the rise of these lawsuits and they're going to go "through the skies" in the coming years.

Force #3: Relationships with Government

More thoughts from Levine:

• The emphasis in education is economic development, with STEM on the rise and humanities on the decline.
• Higher education has shifted from a growth industry to a mature industry. Truman convened a committee in 1947 to engineer for growth. Now it's different. We're not trying to bump from 70% completion rates to 90%. Instead, we're trying to tighten regulations and become more efficient, doing more with less money.
• If you look at the Obama education plan, you see choice, charters, and accountability. We used to have a name for people who supported those things: Republicans. Republicans and Democrats now only differ on two big education issues: Republicans trash unions in public, while Democrats do so in private, and they disagree on vouchers.
• Educational improvement has been on the agenda for 30 years. Baby boomers are such a large segment and when they agree on what they want - which isn't often - they get it. Boomers had kids in the 1980s and they demanded great schools. "If you were running for dog catcher or president, you needed an education plan." Now boomers are older and their issues are their parents, if they still have them, and they want health care, elder care, and social security. There are limited budgets and health care will compete with education for public dollars.

Force #4: Technology

Technology is a marker and driver of change, and Levine predicts that curricular materials will change drastically, making traditional textbooks a thing of the past. The same technologies that we use to construct virtual environments like possible sci-fi visions of the future will be used to make rich simulations of history. No longer will students be limited to reading about fifth-century Athens; instead, they can go there virtually, where they'll virtually interact with classmates from around the world. Levine continued with thoughts on "digital natives":

• "This year's freshmen were born in 1995. That's like last week."
• "I asked a student in a focus group, 'How are you adapting to new technology?' He said, 'It's not technology unless it happens after you're born.' It's just reality, digital natives at analog universities being taught by digital immigrants."
• "Sometimes what we call cheating students call collaboration and file sharing. These students float in miles of data one inch deep. If we're hunters, they're gatherers. If we do depth, they do breadth."

Force #5: Privatization

For Levine, this one is relatively simple. Education is very appealing to the private sector. They see it as a growth industry that's counter-cyclical: the market for education goes up when the economy goes down, and education is subsidized with dependable cash flows. Private says they educate more efficiently and with stronger leadership, so we can expect to see more and more money from the private sector in both post-secondary and K-12.

Force #6: Knowledge Producers

Publishers and other content producers are all after the same information, says Levine. He recalled a conversation he had with someone in the educational content/publishing industry:

Publisher: "We're not in the book business anymore. We're in the knowledge business. We have products in 15,000 schools and we offer professional development. No higher education institution can match that."
Levine: "Where are you getting your content from?"
Publisher: "We hired full-time content providers."
Levine: "I thought to myself, 'I don't know anyone who is a content provider,' so I had to ask what one was. What the publisher described is essentially what I would call 'professors.' So we're competing for the same people, except he can offer bonuses."

Implications

Levine summarizes with the claim that we'll see an increase in education providers, with a blurring about what's private and what's public. We'll also see a blurring of local and global. We've transitioned before, says Levine, when our country went from a predominantly agricultural economy to an industrial economy. The Latin and Greek classes the educated elite enjoyed weren't of much use in an industrial economy, so new universities were created that were more specialized and technical, like MIT, along with land-grant universities straddling the worlds of arts and sciences and community colleges that made higher education local. Our coming transformation will re-position faculty as assessors, prescriptors, diagnosticians, while learning will increasingly become outcome based.

More from Levine:

• We're going to see three kinds of higher ed institutions: brick, click, and brick-n-click.
• For students, we'll see more choice, "anytime" studies (study anyplace, anytime, any style/mode)
• "If students are going to school and every choice doesn't look like 15 weeks, 3 hours a week, there's got to be a way to calibrate it all, and I think we'll do it based on outcomes."
• "I think we'll see a change in high-stakes assessment. Imagine if our GPS gave us results every hour. What would it tell us? 'You're 80 miles out of the way. Recalculating.' That's not useful. Assessment will move from largely summative to formative, formative, formative until it's summative. I think we're also going to see data, data, evidence, evidence as we focus on outcomes and learning. We'll ask what George W. Bush once asked: 'Is our children learning?'"
• We're also going to see much more lifelong learning. "Now we have students taking all their courses just in case they'll need them." In the future, courses will be delivered just-in-time.
• I think we'll see talent prioritized over the institutions where talent works. Is it more important to have 100,000 students in a class, or be faculty at Stanford? Someone with 100,000 students doesn't need Stanford. They'll say, "I'm the product. I don't need their branding." These faculty won't have jobs - they'll have agents. Faculty will want MOOCs, consulting deals, book deals, TV deals, and they'll negotiate for them. This happened in Hollywood; for a time the movie studios dominated, but now we go for the actors and don't care about the studio. That will become increasingly true in higher education.

Lastly, Levine believes that mathematics and STEM is in a spotlight we haven't seen since the Sputnik era. So what do we do? This won't last forever:

"When it comes time to talk STEM and math, right now the media is much more likely not to come to us instead of Bill Gates. He's seen as being ahead of where we are. But these are the fields of the future, the ones our children will depend upon. I think universities are still the right ones for the job. Ninety percent of STEM educators are prepared there. Research shows that nobody's better than we are at this."

NCTM Annual Meeting Fee Frustration (Updated 9-18)

I was recently informed by NCTM that my proposal to speak at the 2014 NCTM Annual Meeting was accepted. That's the good news. Unlike last year, when the conference was held in my backyard of Denver, I hesitated to accept NCTM's invitation to speak because of the costs involved. Registration fees, hotels, and transportation add up alarmingly quickly, especially for a graduate student getting by on a modest stipend and student loans.

Today I decided to accept the invitation and proceeded through NCTM's multi-step process. Step 1 was to accept, which was done with a quick login and a few clicks. Step 2 was to register for the conference. The registration fee for lead speakers is $281. Okay, but what are the fees for regular attendees? Here are the fees listed at http://www.nctm.org/researchconf/:

Fees at http://www.nctm.org/researchconf/, current as of 9/17/13.

Do you see what I see? If I were a regular NCTM member, the full, early-bird fee would be $345, which means the $281 speaker fee represents a $64 discount. That's a nice way to show your appreciation to speakers, isn't it? But what about student NCTM members? My full, early-bird fee is $172, which means the $281 speaker fee represents a $109 penalty.

Why is this? Does NCTM want to discourage students from presenting? I doubt it, but unless they get their fee structure sorted out that might be the result. I've emailed NCTM about this issue, and I hope they reply sensibly.

While I'm ranting, here's a selection of other things about this process that makes me mean:

• Silly me did Step 1 before Step 2, which mean I accepted before checking out the speaker fee. Even worse, NCTM warns you that accepting then cancelling puts you in the NCTM doghouse and decreases the chances that any future proposals get accepted.
• Too many policies at http://www.nctm.org/speak/neworleans/ disappoint me, such as:
  
• Remember that recording of Steven Leinwand's talk I posted from the last Annual Meeting? That apparently is (or will be) against NCTM's wishes, as they state: "Written permission to tape or record presentations must be obtained directly from the speaker involved at least thirty days before the NCTM Annual Meeting & Exposition. The request must contain a statement indicating the intended use of such a recording or videotape. The person making the request should also inform the NCTM Headquarters Office in writing at least two weeks prior to the NCTM Annual Meeting & Exposition." I had Leinwand's permission to post the recording, but didn't get that permission from him in advance.
• If you aren't a lead speaker, but a co-speaker, your registration rate is $344. Yes, a $1 discount compared to the regular, early-bird registration rate. That's like leaving your waitstaff a nickel tip. I'm assuming this higher fee applies to students, too.
• Speakers must submit a written request to use any art related to the Annual Meeting. I can't imagine there's any real risk to just letting registered speakers download that from the password-protected speaker's website.
• NCTM's idea of "going green" is to pick up your program book when you register so they don't have to mail it to you. This wouldn't have struck me as strange 10 years ago, but it sure does now. Why not try this, NCTM: Tell everyone that program books will be available electronically, and those wishing a paper copy can pay an extra $5 with their registration. That way you'll have an estimate of how many copies to print, and be "going green" 2014-style.

UPDATE! (Wednesday, September 18)

I received a reply this morning from Michael Barbagallo, Senior Manager of Member Services at NCTM. He said I can pay the student rate and not the speaker rate, but their system does not currently give me a way to register as a student until registration opens to everyone in November. For now I should confirm I will present (which I've done) and book my hotel room (uhh...can I just bring a tent and a sleeping bag to New Orleans?), then NCTM will sort things out in November when I register for the conference. It sounds like there's no automated way to do this and according to Mr. Barbagallo, "we have few students who speak." To that, I say to grad students: I know the culture of academia and research tells us that presenting at research conferences deserves higher priority than presenting at teacher conferences. Cultures can be changed and good things often come when they are challenged.

Starting the Standards Era: NCTM and the 1980s (Part 5 of 6, Making a Draft Widely Available for Review; Publishing and Promoting)

(See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this six-part series.)

So far this series has described the first three of six characteristics of the policy process I outlined in Part 1. This installment will look at the next two characteristics. Despite their shorter descriptions, both were critical in NCTM's effort to have the Standards see wide adoption.

Making a Draft Widely Available for Review

There was one aspect of the Standards draft review process that had significant policy implications. Instead of just sending drafts to a limited number of outside experts, as is often the norm in such cases, NCTM sent out 10,000 copies of the 1987 draft to more than fifty other groups with interests in mathematics education (McLeod, 2003, p. 779). Every single page of the draft contained room for comments, and the working groups received comments by the thousands. Not only did such wide distribution create anticipation for the final draft, the NCTM garnered the support of sixty organizations whose names were printed in the opening pages of the final draft (NCTM, 1989, pp. vi-viii). Listing as endorsers the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Mathematical Sciences Education Board helped moderate the opinion by some that mathematicians were excluded from the Standards writing process.

In the end, the Standards incorporated the perspectives of many people and organizations, but not without compromise. Building consensus while being provocative is a tricky balance, something to which Michael Apple (1992) applied the term "slogan system," meaning they were

a statement of goals that was specific enough to provide direction to the field, vague enough to be acceptable to most mathematics teachers, and novel enough for its vision to catch the attention of the many different groups having a stake in mathematics education. (McLeod, 2003, p. 783)

Publishing and Promoting

While the public relations campaign undertaken by the NCTM to promote the Standards may not have been notable from Mary Lindquist's perspective as a writer (see the difference between her four characteristics and my six in Part 1), it certainly deserves attention as a matter of policy. Without a massive effort, the immediate and lasting policy influence of both the NCTM and the Standards would have certainly been reduced. By the time of publication in March 1989, the total expense of the Standards project had reached approximately $1,000,000, far exceeding the initial estimate of $258,000 (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 44). Included in the million-dollar total was $200,000 in expenses paid to public relations firms. Without this and continuing effort, the worry was that the Standards would be resigned to "sit on shelves" (Lindquist, 2003, p. 840), where all but a few curious graduate students would ever look at them again.

The public relations efforts had all the signs of a six-figure expense (McLeod et al, 1996, pp. 15-16). First, NCTM leadership, including President Shirley Frye and Tom Romberg, were coached to improve their ability to positively present themselves and to handle tough questions gracefully. They then hosted a press conference in Washington D.C. for about 200 members of the media. NCTM leaders made appearances on the Today Show and other major news programs and Astronaut Sally Ride was brought in to help by lending her endorsement. A video featuring jazz musician Wynton Marsalis describing the Standards was "shown over 6000 times by 121 television stations, reaching an audience in the millions" (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 64).

Perhaps most significant was how many copies of the Standards the NCTM had arranged to give away. Unlike the Agenda's relatively short 30 pages, the Standards were 258 pages in length. Still, the NCTM gave away a copy to each one of their 51,000-plus members, as well as anyone and everyone who might have influence but wasn’t an NCTM member. Judith Sowder, Standards Coordinating Committee chair, remembered:

The mailing lists were enormous. The NCTM lobbyist took [the Standards] around personally and handed them to members of Congress. Certainly every dean of sciences, every chair of a mathematics department, every math coordinator, high school principal, and elementary school principal who was on our mailing lists got one. We sent to PTA presidents, school board presidents, and on and on and on. Every mailing list that could possibly be used was used. (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 63)

While the size of this giveaway represented a huge cost to NCTM, it was necessary to ensure widespread adoption. Fortunately for NCTM and their budget, by 1995 more than 258,000 copies of the Standards had been distributed, including the giveaways, and the $25 cost per purchased copy made up for the lost revenue and helped pay for the expenses of the project (McLeod et al., 1996, p. 63).

Now that NCTM had written, published, and promoted the Standards, the last important piece was to make sure they played a part in future efforts. In Part 6, we'll look at how the NCTM focused efforts around the Standards, and I'll wrap up the series with some reflection.

References

Apple, M. W. (1992). Do the standards go far enough? Power, policy, and practice in mathematics education. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 23(5), 412-431. doi:10.2307/749562

Lindquist, M. M. (2003). My perspective on the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 819-842). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B. (2003). From consensus to controversy: The story of the NCTM Standards. In G. M. A. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics (pp. 753-818). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

McLeod, D. B., Stake, R. E., Schappelle, B. P., Mellissinos, M., & Gierl, M. J. (1996). Setting the standards: NCTM's role in the reform of mathematics education. In S. A. Raizen & E. D. Britton (Eds.), Bold ventures: Case studies of U.S. innovations in mathematics education (pp. 13-132). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (1989). Curriculum and evaluation standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA: Author.

How Can Texas Instruments Adapt to Post-Tech-Monopoly Classrooms?

Bill Cosby has been right about a lot of things, but he might not have seen the future when he advertised the Texas Instruments TI-99 computer as "The One:"



I think I'm glad the TI-99 computer didn't become "The One," because when the TI-83 graphing calculator became "The One" for students, Texas Instruments showed they were all-too-happy to keep pushing that same basic technology for about the same price for 10+ years. Only when you have a tech monopoly can you resist that much change for so long.

Now I finally feel like TI is facing some real competition in the classroom. If I were them, I'd be developing and marketing smartphone apps that replicate the functionality of their calculators with one key feature: the ability for the user to put the app in "lock mode" which makes the device a dedicated calculator for a predetermined amount of time. I wouldn't worry about students cheating with their phones if I could see them trigger the lock mode at the beginning of a test and then prove to me at the end that the calculator app was the only app running the entire time. If TI could get that approved by the ACT and SAT, I think it's an app that students would gladly pay for.

The Research Works Act and the White House OSTP

Imagine Company X proposed a law that said if they added value to a public highway -- such as by organizing volunteers to pick up trash on the side of the road -- then that gave Company X ownership of the road and the rights to charge the public tolls to use them. Sounds crazy, right? Well, replace "Company X," "public highway," and "pick up trash" with "Reed Elsevier," "publicly-funded research," and "peer review," respectively, and you've basically got the Research Works Act, a bill currently in the U.S. House of Representatives. If passed, the Research Works Act would prohibit federal funding agencies (such as the National Institutes of Health) from requiring that the research they fund (with your tax dollars) be available to the public. Instead, publishers could restrict access to any research they add value to (such as coordinating volunteers for peer review) for profit. Where does that profit come from? Usually from the high subscription fees paid by research universities, money often obtained from public funds and tuition dollars. The effect is that taxpayers are paying twice for research that, in many cases, they still don't have access to.

Fortunately, people are paying attention. Michael Eisen's op-ed in the New York Times explains the Research Works Act and its potential harm to research and scholarship, and plenty more articles on the subject are easily found. Somewhat coincidentally, we are also at the end of a feedback period for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where they have made a formal Request for Information (RFI) about open access to scientific publications. Yes, the Research Works Act should be stopped and seen as little more than a request by for-profit publishers to continue having their work (along with their alarming profits) subsidized by tax dollars. But I don't think stopping one bill is enough. Instead, I hope to see all federal funding agencies adopt policies similar to those of the NIH. I expressed these hopes in an email today to the White House OSTP, the text of which I've copied below.

---

University of Colorado at Boulder
School of Education
249 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0249

January 12, 2012

To: Office of Science and Technology Policy
Executive Office of the President
725 17th Street Room 5228
Washington, DC 2050

From: Raymond C. Johnson, Doctoral Student in Mathematics Education
School of Education, University of Colorado at Boulder

Re: Response to the White House RFI on OA publications

I am a researcher, concerned citizen, and a supporter of open, public access to publicly-funded research. I speak for myself and not on behalf of my colleagues or my institution, although I believe I express ideas and opinions shared by many researchers and educators. In response to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy request for information on “Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Resulting From Federally Funded Research,” I urge you to preserve policies that require public access (such as from the National Institutes of Health) and expand similar policies to other federal funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, a key source of funding for education research in mathematics, science, and technology. Currently it is with great jealousy I see the growth of open access publishing in areas such as health and medicine; as an education researcher I wish I had the ability to share the latest research with teachers and administrators, most of whom cannot afford the high fees charged by publishers of education research. Unfortunately, open access journals in education are relatively rare and undervalued. A change in policy, one that would require public access to federally-funded research, would quickly change the perceived valuation of open access publishing outlets and bring much-needed information to educators everywhere.

Prior to my becoming a researcher I was a high school mathematics teacher for six years in high poverty, rural Colorado school districts. I did not have the benefit of a nearby university or a district support staff with access to recent or prominent research. My main link to information was a powerful one: the internet. However, it seemed that my searches for research about teaching methods, curriculum, education policy implementation, etc., all eventually led me to paywalls put up by publishers to “protect” their work, requesting fees I could not afford to pay. Now, as a researcher, I realize that the authors of education research -- much of it funded with federal dollars -- are asked to give their copyrights to publishers in exchange for so-called “widest possible dissemination” of that research. Researchers neither receive nor expect any pay or rewards for giving away their work, other than some scholarly esteem and the hope their research somehow reaches and benefits students and educators. While that publishing model might have made sense twenty years ago, it does not any more. Any claim of “widest possible dissemination” that currently does not include searchable, full-text publication on the public internet is false, at best, and fraudulent, at worst.

In response to the eight questions in the RFI, I encourage you to consider the arguments and recommendations made by Harvard University in their response (http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/stp-rfi-response-january-2012). Their expertise in these matters far exceeds mine. However, I do wish to make the following amendments to their responses for questions (2) and (7):

(2) What specific steps can be taken to protect the intellectual property interests of publishers, scientists, Federal agencies, and other stakeholders involved with the publication and dissemination of peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from federally funded scientific research? Conversely, are there policies that should not be adopted with respect to public access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications so as not to undermine any intellectual property rights of publishers, scientists, Federal agencies, and other stakeholders?

Harvard’s response refers to a need to divide and share rights between researchers and publishers. My recommendation beyond their statement is that any discussion of copyright include Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/), an organization dedicated to creating and defending content licenses that allow creators to reserve some, but not all, of their copyrights. Their expertise should be invaluable in any discussion about the sharing of intellectual property rights. The Harvard response includes a recommendation of a Creative Commons license at the end of their response to question 1. I also urge you to consider the expertise of SPARC (http://www.arl.org/sparc/), the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition.

(7) Besides scholarly journal articles, should other types of peer-reviewed publications resulting from federally funded research, such as book chapters and conference proceedings, be covered by these public access policies?

In Harvard’s response, they say they “could support mandatory public access” for non-journal works, but consider these to be “secondary issues” and are “not prepared to list all the types of content to which a federal public-access policy ought to apply.” I worry that this position is short-sighted and leaves too much room to abuse public access policies. Often the events that lead to research becoming a book chapter instead of a journal article are entirely matters of circumstance, and not a basis of quality or public importance. In fact, the entire distinction between article and chapter relates to a paper-based publishing economy, one that is increasingly irrelevant in a digital age. After all, if we were still limited to publishing on paper it is unlikely that this kind of public access policy discussion would even exist. If the spirit of these policies is to give the public access to research they have funded through federal tax dollars, there is no need to worry about “types of content” other than to say the research will consist of bytes and files traveling the internet. Furthermore, if the policy only requires “journal articles” to be published openly, what is to keep publishers from re-branding themselves as something other than a journal? By relabeling their products as books, magazines, or something entirely new, unwanted loopholes around public access are sure to emerge.

Reflections of Multicultural Education

It’s the day after the last day of what has been a very busy semester. Being busy is good, and being awash in new information every day is something I relish. But there comes a time when we must pause and reflect, and too often this semester I have not given myself that time. Admittedly, just keeping up with the flood of new information proved to be too much, and the student-to-student whispers of “You can’t read everything, you know” proved too regularly to be true. But finally, now, I can take a few hours and think about the last core course of my doctoral program: Multicultural Education (MCED), taught by Linda Mizell.

Assessing the value of this class has been difficult, as there were plenty of moments during the semester when I felt I wasn’t making much scholarly progress. One reason for that feeling – and a reason I appreciate – is that prior coursework had left me better prepared for MCED than I expected. (Or so I thought.) Rarely were the issues we explored in MCED not ones I’d considered in prior courses like Culture and Ethnography, Ethics in Education, Policy Issues, Education Research and Policy, and Perspectives on Classrooms, Teaching, and Learning. It is a credit to my institution that attention to multiculturalism and equity permeates into most corners of the school, although I admit there are times where I still sense it as artificially layered on to a lesson or, even worse, uncomfortably absent. A second reason for that lack-of-progress feeling stemmed from not being able to keep up with all the reading and assignments for the semester. As I finished the last of my papers last night, I thought back to what remained unfinished and one reading in particular stood out: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism Without Racists.

So after submitting my last final paper, I pulled Bonilla-Silva back off the shelf and picked up where I’d left off. I had read all but the last two chapters, but it was in those last two chapters where things appeared to get most interesting. In this, the third edition of Racism Without Racists, Bonilla-Silva added a new chapter at the end addressing the “Obama Phenomenon.” I started reading and almost immediately I was taken back to what I thought made this book so interesting, engaging, and challenging to begin with: Bonilla-Silva’s outspoken criticism of a system that perpetuates racism and inequality. In general, I do not disagree with Bonilla-Silva’s message. But the style with which the message was delivered came as a bit of an uncomfortable shock.

In his detailed analysis of interviews with both white and minority students, Bonilla-Silva exposed the racism found in peoples’ language. For example, in an interview with a white girl named Jill who claimed, “One of my best friends is black” (p. 58), Bonilla-Silva asks her to go into more detail. Jill then describes her friend as “bright” but with “terrible GMAT scores,” and then says, “What he lacks in intellect he makes up for in…he works so hard and he’s always trying to improve himself.” In his analysis, Bonilla-Silva addresses the contradiction about intelligence and points out that Jill never mentions this friend by name. This example by itself might seem lacking in evidence, but it is far from an isolated incident in the text. The dissection of racism in peoples’ speech happens on page after page. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes less so, and I remember feeling during my first reading that I’m glad Bonilla-Silva wasn’t interviewing me, because he seemed to make everybody sound racist!

Now, reflecting exactly on that thought, I see how that thinking exposes how I largely missed Bonilla-Silva’s greater point (even though it’s the title of the book): the kind of racism we’re dealing with now is less about the individual and more about a system. Bonilla-Silva wasn’t after Jill to make her sound like a racist – at least not the kind of racist most people imagine when they hear that label. Bonilla-Silva was instead exposing how Jill, along with most of the other interviewees in the book, demonstrates the systems and structures of racism and how they exist in what we all say, do, and believe. In other words, it’s not about Jill. For the same reason, I shouldn’t have worried about Bonilla-Silva interviewing me, as the interview would have only helped me understand how my actions, behaviors, and attitudes are being affected by the subtle yet significant culture of racism that still exists in our society. And until we are forced to recognize it, there is very little we can or will do about it.

It’s also this same system that allowed much of the country to endorse President Obama, and how that endorsement gives us a false sense of accomplishment that we’ve somehow reached a “post-racial” society. (We haven’t.) As an educator I wonder how we can have policies like NCLB which are so bold to declare a school a failure when achievement gaps persist, yet our greater society and government doesn’t always extend that same failure judgment to the enormous gaps in achievement, income, wealth, health, etc. that we see in our society. Sure, the #Occupy protesters have their message, but it’s unfortunate that so few were shouting until the perils of inequity reached beyond minorities.

The system that Bonilla-Silva describes should not have been an “uncomfortable shock” to me. From where I now stand, I can see how other readings described much of the same system, yet somehow by using more academic or less forceful language I was led to think I understood when I didn’t. Perhaps the best example of this is Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” I remember thinking as I read it, “I really like Beverly Daniel Tatum because she’s making me feel comfortable about a difficult topic.” Where I feared an interview with Bonilla-Silva, I would have welcomed the opportunity to speak with Beverly Daniel Tatum.

But somehow, disguised by my initial affection for the authors, I didn’t immediately see how in many ways Bonilla-Silva and Tatum were largely describing the same system of racism. I’m glad I read Tatum first and then Bonilla-Silva, because now as I reflect I can see how Tatum’s message didn’t really sink in for me; if it had, I wouldn’t have been so challenged by Bonilla-Silva. The lesson for me is not that I need to keep reading more critical work (although that would certainly help), but that it’s going to take more effort to make myself feel uncomfortable about issues of culture, race, class, power, etc., before somebody else gets the chance to do it for me.

For me, the simple title to this post has a double meaning. First is the more obvious, that I’m finally taking some time to think about a class I experienced over the past semester. Second, and more importantly, is the idea that multicultural education has a reflective property like a mirror bouncing light around a corner. As an educator who had a relatively monocultural upbringing in the rural Midwest, and who apparently can still be surprised by the injustices in the world around me, I need to use what I’ve learned about multicultural education to shine some light not only around corners, but back on myself. There’s so much more for me to see, most of which is hidden by its largeness, not its smallness. As an educator this is what we do: we help students explore and understand the world around them, and our reward for doing so comes both in our students’ growth and our own.

Designing a School

During my first fall of teaching in 2003, the school district I worked for passed a bond issue to build a new high school. The following spring the architects and facility committee (which I would later join) asked for staff input. So I ask you: What would your ideal school look like? What features would you prioritize? How would you maximize utility within a budget?

I was reminded of this activity by a recent post by Zac Chase. In that post, he discusses a class activity where he and other students plan the layout of a school in order to think about the environments that best support teaching and learning. In 2004, when I was faced with a similar task, I set to work sketching on paper. When sketching wasn't good enough, I went with graph paper and scale drawings. When graph paper wasn't good enough, I downloaded a free CAD program, taught myself how to use it, and set out to design an entire school. I was a bit obsessed. I had the following goals and guidelines to consider:

1. The design needed to accommodate 750 students in classrooms and have "common spaces" (gym, locker room, cafeteria, library, etc.) to handle an expansion up to 1500 students.
2. The school budget allowed for approximately 115,000 square feet.
3. Hallways are an expensive use of little-used space. I wanted to minimize them.
4. Departments would have common computer lab space and office space for teachers.

After a lot of editing and calculating, this is what I came up with on the first floor (open link in new tab and zoom for maximum detail):

First floor

And here was the plan for the second floor:

Second floor

I was (and still am) pretty proud of this creation. In fact, I still believe this school offers a better use of space than the school that was eventually built. However, with 7+ years of hindsight, I think this plan could have used the following improvements:

1. Instead of shared "computer lab" space for each department, students would take their technology with them to the classroom.
2. In place of the computer spaces, I'd provide more space for student group collaboration. I was thinking about the office for teacher collaboration space, but at the time I didn't think enough about student collaboration space.
3. I didn't think too much about the cafeteria, and it shows. Dining areas should be more inviting than the rows-of-tables design I designed.

One other lesson I learned after serving on two facility committees is this: Don't just ask teachers what they want in their classroom and school. Ask teachers what they imagine a teacher twenty years from now will want. Otherwise, it's too easy to give teachers the impression that the school is being custom-built for them, something that's not likely to happen. It might not even be desirable. Instead, ask them questions that reflect the school's long-term value to the community.

Those are important, but otherwise I think my floorplans still have something to offer. I don't know why I hadn't shared them until now, but maybe they'll be of some use to somebody looking for school building ideas. Just promise me that if you build this thing, invite me to come see it!

What Makes a Student Public? An Alternative Outcome for the Douglas County Voucher Program

Although the ruling came in about two weeks ago, lately the Douglas County voucher program hasn't been far from my mind. I credit George Will's column in Friday's Washington Post for making me rethink the case and its outcome, and finally motivating me to organize some loose thoughts that have been floating around in my head.

If you aren't familiar with the case, it basically boils down to this: The Douglas County School Board believed so strongly in school choice that it voted to give 500 "choice scholarships" (vouchers) to its own students to attend area private schools. The scholarships are worth $4,575, or 75% of the district's per pupil revenue. (The district is keeping the remaining 25%.) Several groups representing the interests of taxpayers and those worried about public funding of private religious schools filed lawsuits, and on August 12th Judge Michael Martinez ruled in their favor, saying the plan "violates both financial and religious provisions" of the Colorado Constitution. Some of the consequences of this ruling are unclear, as many students have already accepted part of their scholarships and are enrolled at private schools.

I was a bit surprised by Judge Martinez's ruling. Not because it came down on the side of the plaintiffs, but because it used the public funding of religious schools as a primary reason. In reaching this decision, Martinez seems at odds with Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, a 2002 case where the Supreme Court upheld an Ohio voucher program primarily because the vouchers went to parents and not directly to religious schools. Although I don't know many of the details surrounding either Zelman v. Simmons-Harris or the DougCo case, George Will's assertion that the two are "legally indistinguishable" seems to have some merit. But that got me thinking -- what if Martinez had found different reasoning for his decision, one not relying on religion at all?

I think we tend to focus the debate on public vs. private schools. Instead, let's focus on students. Previous Supreme Court decisions have upheld both students' rights to receive a free appropriate public education and attend private schools, as well as receive vouchers. Students who attend public schools are public school students. Students who attend private schools (without vouchers) are private school students. But what are students who use vouchers to attend private schools? Public or private? Can we have something in-between?  If so, what rights do those students have?

In Douglas County, students who receive the voucher are still required to take the CSAP, Colorado's annual standardized test. Participating private schools are required to provide information to the district about their attendance and the qualifications of their teachers, as well as be willing to waive requirements that participating students attend religious services. It's clear that these provisions are included to meet various requirements of federal education law, namely No Child Left Behind's testing and "highly qualified educator" requirements. These are requirements of public schools and public school students. And let's not forget that Douglas County is keeping 25% of each student's share of state funding. Could it do this if it didn't claim the students were not, at least in some way, students of the Douglas County School District?

Instead of essentially upholding the Establishment Clause, what if Judge Martinez had instead declared the DougCo "scholarship" students as public students and decided that voucher students had the right to simultaneously receive both a free and private education? In essence, what if he had told Douglas County that the vouchers would be legal so long as they covered the entire cost of each student's education at their chosen private school? If the court decided that (a) by benefiting from public monies, the students were public school students (and there is no murky in-between), and (b) public school students have the right to a free education, then (ironically!) Douglas County would be facing a difficult choice about whether or not a voucher program was in their best interest. As proponents of school choice it would be awkward for the district to back away because they couldn't afford the vouchers, although the high cost is surely what keeps many families away from private schools, voucher or no voucher.

At this point I realize that my knowledge of the law is rather limited and this issue was probably dealt with a long time ago. Still, I find it an interesting perspective and it makes me want to hunt down Kevin Welner (who knows a thing or two about vouchers) in the hallways next week to ask him about it. If any of you have any knowledge or thoughts you'd like to share, I'd love to hear it in the comments below.

A Week for Irony and Contradictions in Education

The recent past has been wrought with irony (or at least contradictions) in all corners of education. Let's look at a list:

Read Bruce Baker's "If money doesn't matter..."  Bruce examines the argument that "we keep throwing money at education and it hasn't made a difference," and points out that (a) schools with lots of money tend to do well, and (b) people who make that argument don't mind throwing money at charter schools.

Just days after Vanderbilt University released their study finding no improvement in test scores in Nashville's merit pay system, schools around the country (including Colorado) received millions of dollars from the federal government to implement merit pay systems.

NBC's "Education Nation" summit will gather "the foremost policymakers, elected officials, thought leaders, educators, members of the business community and engaged citizens" to discuss issues in U.S. education. Unfortunately, the list of invited panelists NBC is promoting doesn't include any teachers, students, principals, or professors. The only university-affiliated participant on the list is the President of the University of Phoenix, who happens to be a major sponsor of the event.

In a post called "Does Education Pay?" the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) criticize the College Board for "a confusion of correlation with causation." The day before, the CCAP asked, "Should We Abolish Colleges of Education?" and use this logic:

1. U.S. students "perform in a mediocre fashion" on international tests.
2. Kids need remediation and/or drop out of college because of their mediocre education.
3. Good teaching is better than mediocre teaching.
4. Most teachers studied at a college of education.
5. The teachers who didn't go to a college of education are as good or better than those who did, such as Teach for America teachers. (Sorry, CCAP, that's rarely true.)
6. Colleges of education support anti-knowledge and anti-intellectual biases and make their poor students look good by inflating grades.
7. Colleges of education don't want teachers to be rewarded for student learning because student self-esteem is more important than knowledge.
8. While there might be some good colleges of education, most of the people who really understand education are not in education schools.
9. Courses in education are less helpful for math teachers (for example) than advanced math courses. (This was not the finding by Floden and Meniketti (2005), who say it's not as simple as "more math is better.")
10. THEREFORE, we should close colleges of education, which are a "blight on true 'higher education' [that] should be discouraged at all institutions depending on taxpayer funds."

I admit, that post had no trouble working its way under my skin. If you can keep track of all the assumptions and correlation/causation confusions in their argument, you're doing better than me.

If I missed anything you want to add to this week's list, feel free to add them in the comments.

References
Floden, R. E., & Meniketti, M. (2005). Research on the effects of coursework in the arts and sciences and in the foundations of education. In M. Cochran-Smith & K.M. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The Report of AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education (pp. 261-308). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Colorado's Amendment 61: The Simple Facts

Several stories have hit the news recently about Amendment 61, which Coloradoans will vote on this November. Here's what you need to know:

• The property taxes that Colorado school districts rely upon for their funding usually start coming in during March.
• When Colorado school districts used to budget around a calendar year (Jan-Dec), they didn't have long to wait (~3 months) for property tax funds to arrive.
• When Colorado school districts switched to fiscal years (Jul-Jun), they had to wait much longer (~9 months) for property tax funds. Since districts don't have an extra 6 months of cash lying around, the state has provided interest-free loans to school districts to bridge the gap.
• A provision of Amendment 61, if passed, prohibits the state from making these loans to school districts, and many districts aren't sure what they will do (or, better put, not do) without that money.

I don't think I need to tell you how to vote, but this does sound like an Amendment worth studying carefully. Ed News Colorado has the best coverage I've seen yet, including links to sites for and against Amendment 61.

I Love Good Data Visualization. This Isn't It.

Earlier this week Newsweek ran a story titled, "Classrooms or Prison Cells?" Given some of the more recent education coverage from Newsweek I wouldn't have been very surprised if the article came down in favor of prisons.

Thankfully, the article was generally informative and unbiased, and told the story of California's 30-year rise in corrections costs amidst education budget cuts. According to the article, in 1980 California spent 10% of its budget on higher education and 3% on prisons. Now, almost 11% goes to prisons while higher education spending has dropped to 7.5%. If you thought that was a tragedy, check out the graph that accompanied the article:

(Image Source: http://www.newsweek.com/content/newsweek/2010/06/28/classrooms-or-prison-cells/_jcr_content/body/inlineimage.img.png/1277695326254.png)

Do you get the feeling that somebody in the Newsweek graphics department got this assignment at 4:45pm on a Friday afternoon? I would have loved to see the graph try to predict future spending. Given the assumption that these rates are truly linear, you can predict that by the end of this century California will be spending 35% of its budget on prisons and not a single dime on higher education.

Trying to Understand Colorado's School Funding Problems

Yesterday Colorado's Senate Education Committee approved House Bill 10-1369, the school finance bill. If passed, it requires every school district to reduce the state share of their total program funding by 6.35 percent. (State Share = Total Program - Local Share) But here's the catch: seven Colorado districts (Clear Creek, West Grand, Gunnison, Estes Park, Park, Aspen, and Summit) collect less than 6.35 percent's worth of state aid. For example, Park only collects $81 of state aid. (This seems impossible, but that's what the state says.) Instead of losing just that $81, they have to reduce local revenues (which means reducing their override mil levy) by more than a quarter million dollars so they have the same 6.35 percent reduction as every other district. How cutting local revenues helps the state budget is beyond me, so it seems the legislature is doing this in the name of equity. I'd like to think I'm somehow reading the information incorrectly, but I'm afraid I'm not.

(Update 3/31/2010: The Colorado State Senate approved the school finance bill, but thanks to an amendment proposed by Bob Bacon of Fort Collins, the seven districts named above will not suffer any loss of local funding.)
(Update 4/16/2010: After the House rejected Bacon's amendment, a committee agreed that the seven districts will lose money through state categorical grants. I'm not totally sure what that money is, but I hope to find out. The compromised bill still has to be approved by both houses.)
(Update to the update 4/16/2010: Previously I had confused the "factors" from the "categoricals," and the post now recognizes them properly.)

It may sound crazy, but it's just another example of Colorado's school funding problems. Colorado's school finance formula, established in 1994, determines base funding (a set per-pupil amount) and funding factors (extra money for cost of living, personnel costs, district size, at-risk students, and online students). Together, these define "Total Program" funding. In addition to Total Program funding, some schools get state "categorical" funding, which provide extra money for six categories: small attendance centers, English language proficiency, gifted and talented, special education, transportation, and vocational education. Colorado's tax revenue and education spending picture is defined by three sometimes contradictory laws: the Gallagher Amendment, TABOR, and Amendment 23.

Gallagher, passed in 1982, protects Coloradoans from increasing residential property taxes. Unfortunately, it might be doing that job too well -- Gallagher mandates that residential properties account for 55 percent of all property tax, the same as in 1985. The housing boom of the 1990s and early 2000s added greatly to the value of Colorado's residential property, forcing property tax rates down significantly in order to keep revenues in line with the 55 percent rule.

TABOR (the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights), passed in 1992, puts revenue and spending limitations on all levels of Colorado government, including schools. Government can't grow any faster than inflation plus population growth. In good years, excess revenue is returned to taxpayers. Unfortunately, that means Colorado has a difficult time building up a rainy-day fund in the event of hard times, such as those we have now. In 2005 Coloradoans passed Referendum C, a five-year "time-out" from TABOR, but during that time the state didn't have many opportunities to stockpile surpluses.

The restrictions of Gallagher and TABOR were causing some pretty dire restrictions on education funding, so in 2000 voters passed Amendment 23. The amendment was to restore funding to pre-TABOR levels and mandate minimum increases (at least the rate of inflation) for education spending. You should be wondering: if Amendment 23 requires spending increases, how is the legislature decreasing school spending next year? Due to the tight budget, lawmakers have had to "reinterpret" Amendment 23 to apply it only to base per-pupil funding, and not categorical factors.

So what are the consequences? Gallagher lowered property taxes, reducing one of a school district's primary local revenue sources, and pushed greater funding responsibility onto the state's general fund. TABOR placed restrictions on the general fund, causing underfunding of schools. Amendment 23 promised better funding for schools, but it didn't solve the revenue problems and Colorado still ranks very low nationally in various measures of K-12 spending. There's a current movement to exempt education spending from TABOR, but doing so would allow the legislature to backfill spending in other areas with education dollars, then raise taxes to fill the education hole. Whether you like TABOR or not, creating a loophole is probably not the best way to untangle Colorado's education spending knot.

One effort to untie the Gallagher/TABOR knot is the Lobato v. State case. That case challenges the state's constitutional responsibility to maintain a "thorough and uniform system of free public schools." If successful, the lawsuit would force Colorado to re-examine its 1994 school finance formulas, which in turn could force changes in Gallagher and TABOR. Defining "adequate" school funding isn't easy, and much of what was done in 1994 involved the political negotiation of available funds, and not an analysis of how much is actually costs to educate a student. There are three common ways to do this:

1. The "Successful School District" Approach (Empirical Identification) - Identify school districts that are performing at or above a set level, then examine how much it's costing them
2. The "Professional Judgement" Approach (Resource Cost Model) - Ask experts to estimate the resources necessary for success
3. The "Statistical Prediction" Approach (Cost Functions) - Use statistics to extrapolate funding based on extrapolations of current data

A good adequacy analysis will use multiple approaches and look for agreement between the models. Analyses recently completed for Colorado suggest adequacy levels near 150 percent of current state funding. Such increases could dramatically change education and school funding in Colorado for the long-term. In the short-term, however, it appears there is no fix to the current budget hole.

(If I've been incorrect in any of the above, by all means, suggest a correction in the comments!)

Taking the Salary Schedule Beyond Two Dimensions

If you were to listen to the TV and movie industry, you'd be convinced that two-dimensional content belongs in a museum next to 35mm film and cassette tapes. Soon we'll all be wearing funny glasses in our living rooms, watching Avatar in 3D. Three is more than two, so 3D must be better than 2D, right?

The vast majority of teacher salary schedules are two-dimensional, with experience on the vertical axis and credit hours on the horizontal axis. It's a simple system, and there are some good reasons that teachers unions have fought to keep them, namely the inability for an employer using such a salary system to discriminate against females and minorities doing the same work with similar qualifications. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say 2D salary schedules are fair; we hold on to them because they are familiar, easy to use, and teachers accept them as part of their employment. Merit pay might be no more or less fair than a 2D salary schedule, but salary schedules are an unfairness most teachers can agree upon.

Why 2D? Why not 1D? Why not 3D?
So why are our salary schedules two-dimensional, and why did we choose experience and education as the two dimensions? Well, a one-dimensional system is unnecessarily limited; it suggests that only one variable determines the quality of a teacher, and few of us like being told that only one thing about us matters. So why not three dimensions? I think we don't have 3D or higher-dimensional salary schedules because we can't print them in rows and columns on a piece of paper. You can't tell me that years of service and credits earned are the only two objective measures worthy of the salary schedule. I'm currently earning three credit hours for a graduate-level class in the assessment of math and science. If I went back to teaching mathematics now, those three hours would count the same as my three hours in cartography.

Hypothetically, let's ponder a third dimension: student load. The number of students a teacher sees daily impacts the sheer quantity of work most teachers have to do, so why not reward them for it? (Remember, I'm not looking for a perfect measure here - just something that makes at least as much sense as graduate credit hours.) We'd have to determine how and when the number of students in a teacher's class is counted, but as student numbers are tied to school funding, there shouldn't be any budget-busting surprises here. But now we're beyond 2D, and our rows and columns might best give way to a formula. Imagine a school where teacher salaries range between $30,000 and $50,000. Our formula might look like this:

Salary = $25,000 + ($750 * Years) + ($100 * Credits) + ($50 * Students)

Under this formula, a brand-new teacher with no graduate credits and 120 students would make $31,000. A veteran teacher with 20 years of experience, 45 graduate credits, and 120 students would make $50,500. How'd I pick the $750, $100, and $50 amounts? Pretty arbitrarily, just as districts now negotiate for the size of steps in their 2D salary schedules.

Should Salary Growth Be Linear Along All Axes?
Here's where things get controversial. Which teacher is bound to show more growth and improvement: the one moving from year 2 to year 3, or the one moving from year 16 to year 17? Should more growth mean a greater increase in pay? Should all credit hours be counted equally? Consider this formula:

Salary = $25,000 + (4000*sqrt(Years)) + ($20 * Credits + $20 * Credits Specific to Current Teaching Assignment + $60 * Credits Earned in Last 3 Years) + ($50 * Students)

Our brand-new teacher with no credits and 120 students still makes $31,000, and our veteran with 20 years of experience, 45 graduate credits (let's say 30 are specific to their current assignment and 3 were taken in the past 3 years), and 120 students makes $50,568.54. Like I've said, I'm picking these figures rather arbitrarily to provoke some thought, and further judgement of the formula is left as an exercise to the reader.

If you could pick a third (or fourth, or fifth) variable to take us beyond a two-dimensional salary schedule, what would it be?

Why Digital Books Won't Spread Like Digital Music

Bud Hunt posed a question tonight asking why schools should consider replacing their paper books with eBook readers. After reading and writing responses, I think I know why you (or your school) should hold on to those dead-tree versions a while longer.

People want, even expect, to access books digitally. Wasn't "all the world's libraries in your computer" one of the early promises of the internet? We will still get there someday, but our vision is being clouded somewhat by our memories and experiences with music. I, like you, used to get my music by going to a store and buying the CD (or tape or record). Now if I want music, I can download it instantly, put it on my mp3 player, and take it everywhere. Now that we have that model to follow, why should digital books be any different?

What we lack in the book world are all those college kids in their dorm rooms, ripping their CDs and posting mp3s to their FTP server or onto P2P networks. The music labels certainly didn't want a digital music market, but it quickly became so easy to get music for free that they had to compete on the digital level or risk their business. iTunes and Amazon's mp3 store exist, in large part, because studio executives knew that selling music for $0.99 a track was better than getting nothing at all. Now digital music is everywhere, both legit and otherwise, and the record labels know that raising their prices would only drive customers to illegal downloading.

I'm a college student. I have books. I have a scanner. But if you think I'm going to sit here and scan my books so I can share digital copies with the rest of the world, you're crazy. I'd love to have PDF versions of all my books, but it's not worth my time or effort to digitize them. I know plenty of people who rip CDs and share their mp3s, but I don't know a single one who "rips and shares" their books. The book publishers aren't working with the same market forces as the music labels, and thus can afford to be conservative and patient with their business.

Our eBook revolution is going to happen, to be sure, but it's not going to look like the mp3 revolution. It will be slower, DRM will be as restrictive as the publishers and device manufacturers can make it, and there's no real pressure driving content prices down. Don't think so? Look what happened when Amazon tried to hold their ground on Macmillan's price hikes. Not that I like to promote any sort of illegal activity, but you might want to wait until someone breaks Amazon's (or somebody else's) DRM and spreads universally-readable versions of those books all over the internet. Until then, I wouldn't worry about missing the eBook revolution.