The two Mike Goldstein's
By Beth Daley
Their college professors mixed up their grades. Their classmates couldn't keep their e-mails straight. They got each other's phone calls until acquaintances and solicitors figured out that the two Michael Goldsteins, both in their late 20s, both at Harvard's Kennedy School, had different middle initials.
After the two men graduated in 1998, each with a master's degree in public policy, the cases of mistaken identity became even more frequent because of the work they chose to do: The Goldsteins - living less than a mile apart - independently embarked on separate plans to use technology to turn kids on to school.
Overlap was inevitable, even though the two Goldsteins are tackling the challenge of integrating technology into Massachusetts high school classrooms in completely different ways. One is creating an entirely new school while the other has developed a program that is designed to help existing schools.
Michael Aaron Goldstein barely tolerates tech speak. And he doesn't think computers are doing their job in schools, because few teachers know how to use the machines to help kids learn. But he does see value in the creative offshoots of technology: In September, he will become executive director of the Media and Technology Charter High School, a public school for Boston teenagers that uses funky media tools like radio diaries and interactive Web sites to entice bored students to learn. Augment the lectures in science class, he says, and have teachers use education tools that kids really want to get their hands on.
By contrast, Michael Seth Goldstein is pure protech. His two-year-old nonprofit program, Youth Tech Entrepreneurs, which is based at the state Department of Education headquarters in Malden, sends teachers into high schools across the state to create a corps of student computer experts. Students accepted into the program have to prove they are serious. The three-year program, in place since 1998, includes after-school assignments, intense academics, and summer internships. These teenagers are being trained to trouble-shoot in schools - maintaining networks and fixing the computer glitches that can bring a teacher's lesson to a halt. We should teach kids by giving them a stake in making the schools hum, he says, as well as giving them leadership skills and the ability to succeed in college. Next year, Michael S. Goldstein envisions operating as a "principal" of a 500-pupil "school," spread out in nine districts across Massachusetts. By 2004, he wants the program to be in 47 public school districts statewide and working with about 3,500 students.
In excerpts of interviews with the two Mike Goldsteins, we learn about their differing philosophies, their programs, and how they see the future of computers in education.
QUESTION
Could you please give me a quick vision of your projects?
MIKE A
We say, "Look, we'll make this trade-off with you: You're bored, and you're being underchallenged. We'll ask from you a lot more time, a much longer school day, and summer programs in exchange for trying to make school a lot more interesting." It is the chance not to replace traditional homework and exams but to supplement that with creating projects. Not watching documentaries about science and history but making films, shooting photo essays, and building Web sites about topics that students need to know. And we basically say to kids in the beginning, "If you look at the number of kids coming out of Boston public schools - or any urban public school - and the rates of success in college, at least two-thirds of Boston kids start college and do not finish it." Our goal is to get kids so they are ready for college.
MIKE S
Our students have held computer courses for families and teachers, created a Web site for the Malden mayor's office and seven other clients, refurbished computers for the schools, and provided tech support for the community. Students in the program commit to over 500 hours of instruction in class, after school, and in summer internships and leave after three years of working with us. We have 158 students now in Malden, Medford, Waltham, and Concord-Carlisle.
QUESTION
Where do you see computers in education in five years?
MIKE A
In five years, you will only hear a rising chorus of criticism. Radio, TV, VCR - everything is supposed to transform schools and then they never do. You have to be a hell of a brave superintendent or principal to say, look, the reality is no one has figured out, in the big picture, how to get a lot of mileage out of technology in the schools. In five years, we will see less and less instruction in how to just use computers. So if a school is going to get any mileage out of technology, it will have be in how they use computers for these big projects in the core academic classes. And the only way to do that is to not force teachers to become technology teachers but to train and hire people whose job it is to be those gurus.
MIKE S
[The state is] going to connect schools with city halls and libraries in every community in the state and do it on a scale that will save a massive amount of money. [Education officials] are developing a virtual community on line. It allows teachers to share ideas - by some things that are familiar, like e-mail, but also with this virtual learning space. Teachers are going to put lesson plans up, and if someone uses them, the teacher gets a royalty. It's self-propelling: to reward great teachers for great lesson plans. It treats them as professionals. For the first time, this virtual learning space is going to allow sharing not just between teachers in the same school; now the fifth-grade math teachers in Springfield and Barnstable can share successes in their classrooms.
QUESTION
Why haven't computers worked in schools so far?
MIKE A
From the teacher in the classroom end, if you can't rely on the computer network, if you have, let's say, only a 75 percent chance of having that lesson work when you need it to work, that is too big a risk to build your day-by-day lesson plan. I see it in every single school, including the schools that get incredible press for using media well. It's a dirty little secret that people don't want to deal with.
MIKE S
The financing of schools encourages this behavior of buying equipment and not [hiring] people. Voters buy equipment; they like equipment. The great appeal of computers is that you can see it: before your purchases, nothing; after, a computer. But we need more people who know technology. You "buy" a person [i.e., a teacher], and it isn't completely clear how you are going to get your money's worth. That's a problem.
QUESTION
What would make you [Mike A.] optimistic about technology in schools?
MIKE A
For the governor, the mayor, and local CEOs, who deserve credit for getting schools wired, to come back for encores to donate money for information-technology help. Perhaps even to the point of a Raytheon or Gillette or a Lycos donating employees' time rather than machines. Second, universities have to figure out how to churn out the technology-curriculum specialists to help history teachers, for example, deal with computers. And, third, you can't lock the school doors at 2 p.m. That might be the end of a core teacher's day, but if you really are going to use this technology for meaningful projects, it takes a lot of time. If we can make those three things happen, then we have a chance of being the first state in the country to get a return on the technology investment.
QUESTION
And Mike S., what would make you pessimistic about technology in schools?
MIKE S
[If] people decide that spending for education reform is enough - "we've tried it; schools don't work, so let's cut it" - and they move on to another issue. I am concerned that people do not see improvement in five- or 10-year time frames but in six-month time frames. And that was the same mind-set that happened after Proposition 2, of "protect what we have, save what we have," which just killed reform and demoralized teachers. I'm afraid that's going to happen again. And then pretty much all bets are off.
QUESTION
Is it a good idea to donate computers to schools?
MIKE A
The price of machines is falling so quickly that it's not about the machines anymore. We need to rethink the life of a computer. Realistically, a computer's life, depending on its purpose, is two years. So schools can't accept many donations, because people are basically donating something that has a couple of months left of life. It's not really a donation; it's like giving away not the nice sport coat you never wear but the ratty, ripped-up one. People need to start thinking about computers that way.
MIKE S
Absolutely. However, understand that just because something seems free, it isn't. For every dollar a school invests in computers, it needs to invest three dollars in training and upkeep. The appeal of Youth Tech Entrepreneurs is that we manage the donation process for schools. We're testing the computers and installing them and providing support. Most schools have an ad hoc process of accepting computers. A teacher once said to me, "What I want really to teach schools is, it is OK to throw things away." And it is. YTE makes sense of what a school really needs and makes sure what we get actually works.
QUESTION
Why is technology so important when all we read about is how so many children are not even able to write a coherent sentence?
MIKE A
Writing is far and away the most important skill students should leave schools with. The only question is, is technology engaging or supporting the efforts to help those students become great writers or even competent writers? Or is it simply distraction? And I think people who ask that question, sometimes they are right, because [educators] are caught up with the bells and whistles ... because the job of helping someone become a great writer is really damn hard.
MIKE S
Technology is sexy to students. Students become better writers, become more astute problem solvers, because they have that tool they are excited to use. Students love this stuff, and there are not too many things students love.
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