Joining the Internet "Land Rush!"

We've been really busy with creating a presence on the Web; and, it’s a fascinating environment to work in.  The way that people are rushing in makes me think a little bit of the movie Oklahoma about the land rush where pioneers are in their buggies waiting for some guy to shoot off a gun so they can all race out into the plains to stake a claim, grab some prime property.

The virtual (Internet) land rush is still on today and I wonder if some day into the future, we all might reminisce about what could have been if we had just staked out some electronic ground for ourselves and held on tight to it.

One of the lessons I’ve learned is that finding a good domain isn’t easy.  If you think of practically anything in the world that is a one word term for something, it’s long gone.  Long, long gone, or, it could be up for sale fetching thousands of dollars when the right entrepreneur comes along to buy it.

Of course buying a piece of property isn’t the same thing as making it fertile and productive.  That is of course the real work of the Internet, that’s where the true gold lies.  And there’s lots of miners, i.e., programmers and engineers working like slaves to their computer to find the next big thing, or even the next moderate thing, some program, application, or web site they can sell off to Google or Yahoo and retire at thirty.

It’s fascinating to become involved - a bit of a blur - and have just enough knowledge to see a little of what is possible on the Internet.  The scene is a flashback to what California must have been like during the gold rush.  Lots of people with dollar signs in their eyeballs buying the tools and rushing forth to do the work, hoping to strike it rich with sweat, effort, and a lot of luck.  Maybe like California's Sam Brannan during the Gold Rush, the business geniuses today are mostly in the tool-selling business.

Most of those chasing their fortune will never get rich off the net; many instead will have to be satisfied at age 50 to be employed and making a living.  I bet they’ll be wondering how they missed the last ten big opportunities that filled someone else’s pockets with gold.  Many more of us will wonder how we missed the opportunities that opened up right before our eyes.

We’re working a lot on our web site.  We’re creating and delivering online resources and online training.  Creating good content is the part we know how to do, getting people who want it to find it is the trickier part!

SIG Schools Part II – What part does student poverty or affluence play in school performance?

This is the second in a multi-part series about the schools eligible to apply for some of the “Race to the Top”/ “School Improvement Grant (SIG)” funding provided through President Obama’s Education program via the Federal Department of Education.  Race to the Top is the key effort by the administration to raise achievement in America ’s underperforming schools.

In California, SIG funding is targeted at the lowest achieving schools identified as Tier I and Tier II schools, those falling into the bottom 5% in terms of achievement.  As mentioned in part I of this series, our company assisted one school district complete and application for the SIG and we helped another district by reviewing their grant before it was submitted.

Because of our work, we are curious about whether Tier I schools have similar characteristics other than low achievement.  We have undertaken this analysis of publicly available data about the Tier I schools first identified by the California Superintendent of Schools in a press release.

There are 136 schools identified in Tier 1.  Our first question is: Where are these schools and is their location predictive of student achievement levels?  Are these schools located in impoverished counties?

If we examine the income levels of the counties where these schools are located, we find that 67 of the Tier 1 schools are in counties with per capita incomes below the state median while 69 of the schools are located in counties where per capita income is above the state median.  When the median household income is examined, a similar picture emerges with 65 of the schools located in counties where household income falls below the state median and 71 schools are located in counties with household incomes above the median. 

If child lives in a wealthy county like Alameda County, which has the highest per capita income in the state at $44,962, and the third highest average household income at $71,306, how is it that some of the schools are ranking within the bottom 5% and why is it that a wealthy county like Alameda requires additional federal funding to raise student achievement?

County wealth does not appear to be predictive of whether a school will be underperforming or not.  Perhaps county income levels are not a fine enough measurement to use, so let’s zoom in on a school-by-school level.

One accessible form of public data on the economic circumstances of families at a school is the percentage of students for qualifying for the Federal free and reduced price lunch program (FRPL).  Families must apply for this program and they qualify by showing evidence of financial need.

We gathered Free/Reduced Price Lunch (FRPL) data on the 136 Tier I schools as well as on 136 of the schools identified by the state in 2010 as “Distinguished Schools”.  The Distinguished schools were selected for comparison in this series were chosen according to several criteria, 1) the school was in a school district that also had Tier I schools, 2) the school was from the same county as some of the Tier 1 schools, 3) where neither condition 1, or 2 could be met, they were randomly chosen from the same region of the state.  Whenever possible, we matched 1:1 using criteria 1 and 2 before using criteria 3.

The results show that on average, 84.1% of students in the SIG Schools qualify for FRPL and in the Distinguished Schools 49.1% of student qualify for FRPL.  This significant discrepancy in the poverty levels between children at Distinguished Schools and those at Tier I schools is striking and may provide one clue to understanding the discrepancy in achievement levels.

What immediate becomes clear, though, is that there are holes in the argument that FRPL is a good indicator for low achievement. Among the group of Distinguished Schools used for comparison, there are 45 schools with significant percentages of students that qualify for FRPL (60%+).  Clearly, there is more to understand than the economic status of the families who send their children to a school.

These are difficult and complicated questions, but the level of investment being made by the taxpayer in these Tier I schools requires that they be asked and answered.  Clearly there is an economic discrepancy between Tier I schools and Distinguished schools.  We will examine other discrepancies in Part III of our SIG series.


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Read all of the first post in this series: Low Performing Schools - SIG Schools Series, Part I

Be a Professional (Pro)

Some advice from Expert Grant Writer, Derek Link on being a professional:

I was given sage advice as a young man, "Whatever you do in life, be a Pro, because there are so few Pro's". Like much advice I’ve received in life, it was given without asking; but this once I was happy to receive it. I was on a balcony, outside a classroom where I was taking a class for my Master’s, taking a break. The instructor’s elderly husband had come along with her for some reason and was also enjoying the afternoon sunshine outside the room with me, and we were chatting.

He was a successful man; although, the details of his success I’ve long forgotten. He saw an opportunity in our conversation about the class I was engaged in to share a wisp of wisdom with me.

“Be a garbage man,” he said, “Be anything you want to be, but be a Pro at it”. Be a professional. I thought a lot about that conversation over the past 25 years or so that have gone by and I’ve tried hard to live my work life as a Pro. I haven’t always succeeded, I’ll admit. At times I get lazy, distracted, unmotivated, timid, or dissatisfied; and it is at those times that I merely plug along at my work. When I merely plug along, I am never doing my best work.

To be a Pro means the following to me:

1. Be honest (with discretion)
2. Show Up (always and on time)
3. Work until the job is done right
4. Be brave enough to take risks
5. Constantly grow and seek opportunities to improve
6. Attend to the details
7. Be well-groomed and well spoken
8. Keep petty personal events private without being cold
9. Be supportive of the growth of others
10. Contribute positively to the professional climate
11. Be loyal
12. Be helpful

There are likely components I am forgetting to mention in here but these are the first twelve that come to mind and which - when I live by them – have served me well in my career. Please feel free to comment and add other ideas to the list.

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A Real Life Parable about Data and Hearing What You Want to Hear Regardless of What Has Been Said

A school district contracted with a research firm to conduct a telephone survey of local residents to determine if there was enough support for a parcel tax measure to move forward with it. The research firm was paid over $18,000 to conduct the telephone survey over a five day period. A total of 400 surveys/interviews were conducted and factored into the results. Fifty-five percent (55%) of those surveyed said they would support the measure, which falls short of the two-thirds required for the measure to pass, so the school board chose to abandon the measure at this time.

The survey also revealed that "only 14 percent of those surveyed think the district is doing a good job of providing high quality education or preparing students for a job," and 60% of those surveyed believe that overall management of the district is poor.  Sixty-four percent (64%) believe that the district is doing a poor to only fair job of managing public funds.

Ouch.

Now, there are many things about this whole process that I could discuss, from the fact that $18,000 is an exorbitant fee to pay for a telephone survey of 400 residents (yes, many reputable research firms, including my own, would do an excellent job for much less) to the fact that the district had other no-cost and low-cost ways of getting pretty close to the same information, but I'm going to focus on the response to the survey results.

Just about anyone I have discussed this with says something like, "Wow. It's pretty clear that folks in that town think the school district is doing a lousy job. The public doesn't trust them with their money."

Interestingly, though, that's not what the school superintendent got out of those results. Here's what the local newspaper had to say about that: "She was interested to learn that, based on the survey, the community most valued tutoring for students, curriculum that uses science and technology, and more opportunities for students to take advanced classes."  And then the superintendent was quoted, "We need to continue to help kids that need extra help, continue to challenge kids that need more (rigor), and we need to do that with current technology."

Huh?

While all of that may be true, it seems to me that the real message to get is that the community doesn't trust the school district and thinks it's doing a lousy job.  That's what needs to be addressed.

We could debate the value of spending a lot of money on data gathering efforts.  As an evaluator, I'm a believer in investing in data collection to help you demonstrate the value of your programs and evaluate their effectiveness so you can improve them. The questions that comes up is always, "How much money is too much to spend for evaluation and data collection?"

But even that is not the moral to this story. 

The moral to this story is this:  If you're going to spend anything on conducting a survey, be willing to really listen and hear what people are saying.  If you're not going to learn from what has been said, even a dime is too much to pay for the information.

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Click here for a free webinar on Tips for Conducting Focus Group Interviews.

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Federal Government Grant Priorities.....Whose Priorities?

I was scanning the grant opportunities at grants.gov this morning, and I noticed something that I have noticed for years, but today it struck me a bit differently. I'm accustomed to seeing hundreds of grant opportunities that don't apply to my clients.  Many are amusing (I've posted on Facebook about competitions for funds to save particular obscure animal species, etc.) and some are just incomprehensible. However, at a time when our economy is in trouble and people are suffering, some of the federal grant priorities seem just wrong.

Non-profit organizations that are often the last line of support for our most needy citizens are struggling for every dime these days, yet here are just a few of the hundreds of things that the government is choosing to fund instead:

Inventory of Cave Dwelling Animals in Wet Caves Grant - I think we could just go with last year's inventory numbers, don't you?

Azerbaijan New Media Project - This is $4,000,000 to support the development of new media and online communities in Azerbaijan. Supposedly it will help with the distribution of US aide there.

Establishing a Global System of Regional Wildlife Networks: Providing Support for Central American Wildlife - Wildlife here are so well protected that we have extra cash to be protecting wildlife in Central America?

Mexican Spotted Owl Grant - This announcement lists only "Mexican Spotted Owl" in the full description of the project.  Are we buying a Mexican spotted owl?  Several? Are we protecting it? Feeding it? Whatever we are doing to it, is it more important than $280,000 worth of food for the homeless?

Youth Empowerment Program in Kenya - $14,000,000 for this one, folks. I guess all of the youth in the US are empowered and well-educated, so it's time to move on the youth of Kenya.

Decentralization Enabling Environment - I find this one to be particularly ironic. This grant provides $2,000,000 to a nongovernmental agency in Honduras to help develop the "environment necessary for decentralization of government services to the local level in order to better respond to citizen needs." At a time when local organizations in the U.S. that do this very thing are suffering and the U.S. is going through a dramatic centralization of services and resources, we're giving money to another country to do the opposite.

MERIDA Small Grant Program for Community Youth at Risk - This one is for community-based programs for at-risk youth in Panama. See my comment above about the Youth Empowerment Program in Kenya.

Please don't misunderstand.  I am sure that there is some value in each of these programs. What kind of human being would I be if I didn't think doing something to or with Mexican Spotted Owls was important or that we shouldn't have an accurate inventory of wet cave dwelling animals?

Even so, I think we need to do a much better job of prioritizing.  Every family knows that you can't have everything. Some things that you think are important have to be put aside or postponed until you can afford them in favor of funding things that are much more important.

As for the grants I just cited (and the hundreds of others like them), just whose priorities are those, anyway?

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