Part 1: http://filesource.abacast.com/wsradio/bltampa/081111/segment1081111.mp3

Part 2: http://filesource.abacast.com/wsradio/bltampa/081111/segment2081111.mp3

Part 3: http://filesource.abacast.com/wsradio/bltampa/081111/segment3081111.mp3

Part 4: http://filesource.abacast.com/wsradio/bltampa/081111/segment4081111.mp3

The problem is how to invest in people, but achieve this with  short, affordable, effective training designs, that deliver a considerable amount of customized, sustainable learning and attitude change. Businesses need training interventions that provide

• powerfully interactive experiences: they need these to cost as little as possible,
• real lasting learning: they need these to take people off the job for the shortest time possible, and
• engaging training experiences that spark innovation and collaboration: they need these to be custom targeted on the specific needs of their organization so that people feel  “invested in”

It’s hard to blame them.  Organizations are “doing more with less,” and their alternatives are often minimal canned training, on-line non-collaborative training, or no training at all.

CPS began addressing this need by using accelerated learning techniques, such as jigsaw training designs, often mixed with plays and/or multiple intelligence work.  These most powerful, interactive learning methods work well for all generations. The collaborative nature of the work is ideal for innovation and cross-functional problem solving.

Topics included Generational Communication, Managing Generations and Multi-cultural Understanding (which does not mean international etiquette!).

We recently shared this technique (with everyone participating in a cultural jigsaw) with the Suncoast learning community at the ASTD Suncoast Chapter in November. Dr. Deidre Cobb-Roberts came from USF to participate (and commend the results highly) The learners built insights into how misunderstandings arise as a result of often-invisible culture differences between occupations, organizations,  regions and  national/ethnic cultures.

Other topics such as green attitudes and commitment, performance management, innovative and critical thinking are designed to include other interactive, accelerated techniques such as plays and/or multiple intelligence activities.

Where we use plays, the dialogues are often custom-written around industry-specific issues, and the roles are often created around Myers Briggs or DISC guide-lines.

Our largest jigsaw to date has been the Tech Data Pow-Wow, with 150 managers present and six other sites linked in technologically. Feedback from clients suggests that our most entertaining jigsaws are our “dog-and-pony show” jigsaws, where Glynis and Greg facilitate subjects like generational communication together, from their widely-different generational perspectives and knowledge bases.

Learning and retention: When participants learn material and then teach it to each other, they retain about 90% of the material (vs 20% of a Powerpoint-based presentation). When they are responsible for creating a mental framework for their section of the learning, they use this mental framework  to process and store learning received from their colleagues. The intense interaction and focus achieved in small groups working on tightly-targeting learning  leads to powerful insights, and to conceptual breakthroughs.

Time: Jigsaws take up to 2 hours, and can cover almost any learning area. The design can accommodate many people from a minimum of 16, up to over 100 participants.

If you would like to try a jigsaw or other interactive, accelerated learning experience with your team or company,  email glynis[@]c-psolutions.com or call 813 598 9184.

A competency is (per Rodney Rogers of Portland State University) a persistent pattern of behaviour resulting from a cluster of knowledge, skills, abilities, and motivations. The persistence of those behaviors is an essential part of their being a competency.

Three tips:

Tip One: You are likely to run into a very specific problem, unless you are working with a fully-qualified competency expert. (Look for an international qualification, specifically in competencies, like City and Guilds of London, such as CPS has.)

Here is the problem: as you discuss competencies, you become very familiar with the information. You therefore take the material to higher and higher levels of abstraction. You also start to clump the competencies together, so you end up with about 12 broad abstract statements, covering a whole position. These are no use at all.

You don’t want a laundry list of 1000 things that your people know or can do, but a few 30,000 foot statements that only you truly understand will simply be filed and forgotten. (I’ve seen it often). There is a happy medium, usually because the competencies are backed up by assessment documents. (See point 2 – you don’t even have to write these – they are already written!)

The best book on this common trap  is actually a book about how to make a good presentation, because the same thing happens there. The presenter studies the material and then delivers the 30,000 foot level speech while audience members can’t  match this with their less complex understanding of the issues.

Buy “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. It has a crystal clear explanation of this issue. The Heath brothers will repair both your presentations, and your thinking about competency formation.

Another check: ask yourself “can I write an assessment document from these competencies?” If the answer is no, get a competency expert to give you a lesson on how to write them, before you waste time or money on getting it wrong! S/he should be able to find international assessment documents for you to work from too.

Tip Two: Don’t reinvent the wheel. US competencies do exist (e.g. the CUNA ones if you are in finance) or you can begin with the international ones for your industry. Then customize them. Then customize the assessment documents.

I gave you these starting points last July, so here is a reminder:

• The National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in England & Wales
• The Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ)
• The National Qualifications Framework (NQF) of New Zealand
• The National Qualifications Framework (NQF) of South Africa (SAQA)
• The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF)
• The European Qualification Framework (EQF)

Some newer systems, like the one in Singapore, have some great stuff.

Everything is there. My son/partner Greg got an extra half-letter for his MBA thesis by using one of these. What’s more, he needed only 30 minutes to find and download the competencies and assessment documents for every task in running a tanker-washing company (Aussie documents). These provided a complete training plan for his client. USF was filled with amazement. These things are also free.

Tip Three: In the case of competencies, the dictionary definition applies. The word competency means “having suitable or sufficient skill, knowledge, experience; properly qualified”. It means that your people know, and can do, everything necessary to do the job properly.

Competency is the standard you need. Someone is either competent, or not yet competent.

So we train towards the standard (competency) and we assess against the standard (competency). We manage to the standard (competency).

For some years, I worked in international ultra-precision engineering. I’d work with a SME, and create a protocol of competency (in Tampa, but with the UK, EU etc competencies in hand). If the person trained was not competent, the lathe slide would crash, the diamond tools would be ruined, and an engineer would have to go to the site (maybe the Far East) to fix the mess. The damage might cost $50,000. So the standard was competency.

If your employee does not know, or cannot do, what is required, you lose customers, reputation, team spirit, maybe materials and equipment. Your productivity and retention suffers. Maybe the damage is also $50,000. Your international competitors are all using competency-based learning and performance standards for that very reason. Clarify your competencies and use them!

The Emory University Professor presents his figures showing a decline in US adult literacy (40% of high-school grads in 1992; only 31% in 2003) and the many areas where young Americans lack knowledge, such as geographic, historical and political cluelessness.

Bauerlein is even more annoyed because his Gen-Yers are unapologetic about their ignorance. They dismiss the idea that they should have more facts in their heads, and call it a pre-Google and pre-wiki anachronism.

CPS’s position is that Bauerlein has a good case, and is also completely wrong. Gen Y has massive skills gaps in some areas, but is the smartest generation ever in others.

1. We’re inclined to be impressed with the anecdotal, and the growing empirical case, that technology is changing the way people’s brains process information.

2. We see fluid intelligence and life-long learning as the keys to economic prosperity. We think that the trend in European education systems (smaller numbers of facts, higher emphasis on thinking skills) is the way to go to build the cognitive skills required for higher-paying, secure work in the 21st Century. It doesn’t matter if you know the fact, as long as you have the conceptual schema, and know how to retrieve the details. If the educational process builds a love of learning, and confidence in your mind-power, this will create a life-long learner.

3.    We’re not fans of the crusty professor’s assumption of “Millennial fault”. He’s quick to blame X boxes and technology, but is the blame to be placed on the GenYs? There are plenty of other places to place it:  the deterioration of family interactions (including the decline of the family dinner conversation, ever-blaring TV, and the parochial and sensationalist, sound-byte news-that-sells?)

4.    Bauerlein has a good point that education in the USA is broken in many areas. CPS is especially concerned about the way the demand for grade averages has led, by a domino effect, to the dumbing-down of K12 systems to achieve more A results for college entrance. In an effort to ensure that “all students are above average”, teachers are often pressured towards the lower levels of cognitions and the simple recall of knowledge.  Of course this often results only in temporary learning, because the material is not processed at the level of analysis and evaluation.*

*Note: CPS provides structured, competency-based, peer-coached and behaviorally-referenced professional development processes to school districts, to develop higher order thinking skills in our students. The cost is $1 per teacher, and we obtain funding from the private sector where necessary. This is a CPS initiative to make our communities more globally competitive.

Please let us know what you think: the Dumbest Generation? Yes? No? Why? All opinions welcome!

Glynis writes the Hillsborough Public Schools’ program on developing higher order thinking skills for students (although this is under-used). She coaches teaching faculties (on a voluntary basis) on how thinking works, and how to develop the skills that their students will need to prosper in the economy they will enter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

CPS is willing to share these professional development modules with schools that are interested.

The modules have the following format:

• All can be delivered in an initial one-hour faculty-meeting time slot.
• All have a follow-up competency-based program and workbook, outlining a consolidation process.
• All follow a peer-mentored process that can be done by any two teachers, irrespective of experience.
• All use positive psychology (appreciative inquiry) and encouragement, not criticism, thus building faculty harmony and rapport.
• All have behaviorally-referenced criteria, and three levels of exit standards, for new, moderately experienced or very experienced teachers.
• CPS is more than willing to help mentor schools who wish to use these programs (as schools that have worked with us can testify).
• The programs can be done through Title One funding and for professional development credit.

The modules available include:

1: Building Higher-Order Thinking Skills: Blooms Taxonomy as a key tool for building 21st Century thinking.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a highly effective and useful tool, by which teachers can structure information and grow student thinking. It is a direct route to better comprehension, retention, higher grades, and better thinkers. In a world where thinking skills are a nation’s primary competitive advantage, too many teachers regard Bloom’s as some theory they learned at college, instead of a simple daily tool that will get them to their goals in a very effective way.

This program shows how teachers can use Bloom’s to plan, deliver and assess successful learning, and specifies exactly what success with this looks like, for teachers who are new to working with the tool, somewhat experienced, or experienced.

The learning phase is followed by a peer-assisted coaching period, that supports teachers as they consolidate the steps to become comfortable with using scaffolded thinking. The guide uses the team-building, and confidence-building technique of appreciative inquiry. It gives clear, concrete descriptions of each level of competency, for use in peer coaching or self-assessment.

2: The Self-Aware Learner: Thinking about learning, and becoming more effective learners.

“It is strange that we expect students to learn, yet seldom teach them anything about learning.” Donald Norman.

This program covers how people learn, and how students learn more effectively when they understand their own learning processes. Analogies, narratives and games are included, that are suitable for students from a young age, up to senior high school.

The specific competencies for teachers are spelled out, together with a post-workshop coaching program. During the coaching period, teachers work with their peers to implement the skills, and to compare their results against the competency examples and exercises.

As with all CPS programs, this includes ways to measure the effectiveness of the techniques, to ensure that student learning results are improved, students understand and take more ownership of their learning, and the school faculty builds a greater sense of teamwork and mutual support during the process.

3: The Thinking-Skills Toolbox 1: Thinking skills for reading comprehension (understanding the structure and meaning of text).

This workshop covers three strategies to create purposeful, active readers, who control their own reading comprehension.

Each strategy uses the power of both individual critical thinking, and group collaborative thinking. As with the Bloom’s module, it has classroom tools, desk tents, etc on cd or in downloadable form.

The competencies for teachers are laid out in measurable detail, along with the coaching plan that is included in all CPS programs. Competencies are differentiated, so that there are goals for those who are new to each strategy, and more challenging objectives for more experienced users of each strategy.

The coaching guides emphasize the use of appreciative inquiry in the peer-coaching process, and show ways of measuring the effectiveness of the strategies.

4: The Thinking-Skills Toolbox 2: Raising grades while building knowledge workers.

The tools of good thinking are both the route to better grades, and the path to a competitive US economy. This program details concrete methods of building these tools into daily classroom activities, through the school years.

“We should be teaching students how to think. Instead, we are teaching them what to think.” Clement and Lochhead.

The activities, aids and criteria for success are detailed by student age and teacher experience, together with a peer-mentored coaching program to consolidate and measure participant progress.

5: Collaborative Thinking: Mobilizing minds to learn and think together.

Active and interactive group learning and thinking processes do two things. They enhance learning and thinking, and also prepare our students to live and work in an ever-more complex and networked world. This module defines key criteria for group thinking processes, and shows how to make sure that these translate into motivated students and higher grades.

This module chooses two collaborative thinking options (with the measurable criteria of competency, by student age and teacher experience) and then suggests other structures and options that will work to the same criteria.

The format is the same as other CPS modules: a learning session, detailed notes, a peer-mentored consolidation period and a competency-based assessment.

6: 21st Century Creative Thinkers: Creativity as a tool of learning.

Thomas Friedman, visionary economist and author of “The World is Flat” and “Hot, Flat and Crowded” looks at the US economy and says “Invent, baby, invent!”

Creativity brings together all the multiple intelligences, learning styles and levels of Blooms. This workshop shows how our teachers, as our most transformational and creative professionals, can use this intentionally to build learning, while also preparing our students for the needs of the new economy.

This program details how to use measurable, criterion-based learning products, with the flexibility of individual interest, level and style, in a context of understanding that all students have the ability to be creative beyond many expectations.

The format is the same as other CPS modules: a learning session, detailed notes, a peer-mentored consolidation period and a competency-based assessment.

This is the ability to think well.*

Can we create world-class thinkers in the schools of the United States, at a time when nations who are our economic competitors are pouring their resources into achieving the same objective?

The Florida Commissioner of Education’s Business Forum (28th Sept 08) pointed out how much catching up we have to do in thinking skills: e.g in areas like problem solving skills (Slide 31) where we rank 24th in the world.

(Ref:   http://www.fldoe.org/whatworks/ (with podcast of speech and slides) or alternative of slides:

http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Product+Catalog/PowerPoint.htm)

I explain my view of a skilled thinker below.*

The answer is a clear yes.  The data is in, and we can develop our students to have all the skills that we need to compete vigorously, internationally, in the Age of Knowledge. This is irrespective of socio-economic status, ethnic grouping etc.**

CPS is working with educators to create internationally-competitive thinkers, without placing a strain on our education budget. (There are innovative ways to do this, without significant costs, at a time of economic stress.)

The Counties that are interested in our peer-coachable programs are:

•    Concerned about test results, graduation results, college completion, and about how best to prepare our kids for well-paid, secure work in the new economy.
•    Disappointed that past training programs have not made enough real difference to how teachers actually teach for better thinking skills in the classroom.
•    Worried about budget cuts, and the need to deliver quality training, through affordable programs that deliver real results.

* What is a skilled thinker? The people who will always have a secure place in the world economy will be able to:

1) process information, assess the origins of data, analyze and evaluate concepts and think flexibly and logically.
2) be collaborative thinkers – able to use cooperative learning, and contribute to group thinking processes, including rigorous, critical thinking, strategic thinking, project management, or working in team-based creativity and innovation.

How does the CPS “less than $1 per teacher” solution work?

Each program includes:

1.    A learning session, facilitated by members of a school’s faculty, for their fellow-teachers, in their own schools, in any 60 minute staff meeting or development session.
2.    A consolidation and practice phase, guided by clearly-directed, concrete and structured competency-based outcomes, and supported by peer-coaching.
3.    A final assessment phase, based on the competencies. This may be self-assessment or peer-assisted assessment, measured against clear criteria.
4.    The meticulously-structured process is differentiated, covering three different levels of teaching experience.

➢    Team benefits: communication, motivation and team-building: the coaching uses the technique of appreciative inquiry, to ensure that mutual coaching is a strong, happy, team-building process. (This can also build communication before a curriculum mapping process.)
➢    Logistics benefits: travel or scheduling problems basically disappear. County professional development staff may also have more time to visit schools, support and coach.
➢    Budget benefits: minimal cost ($1 per teacher). CPS helps obtain funding, usually from business (the end user of education). The county owns “endless use” rights to the program, and can train new teachers as needed, and there is never a problem sourcing the material again.

The work of a teacher is to change, grow and re-form the neurological connections in the brains of his/her students. If our profession had a slogan of what we do, the way a rental car company does, it would be: “Avis rents cars, teacher change brains.”

** Where is the evidence that we can do this irrespective of ethnicity and socio-economic status? I’m not just talking about things like the KIPP schools. The Florida Commissioner of Education’s Business Forum featured schools like:

(Ref: http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Product+Catalog/PowerPoint.htm)

•    Centennial Place Elementary School, Atlanta, Georgia (Slide 47)
•    Lapwai Elementary, Lapwai, ID (Slide 50)
•    Norview High School Norfolk, Virginia (Slide 52)

The story told at the Commissioner’s forum of Ware Elementary School in Fort Riley, Kansas, that serves children from low-income Army families, was especially interesting, as many parents are in Iraq, and are not even present to support their children.

The other slide presentation from the Education Commissioner’s Business Forum is here: http://www2.edtrust.org/edtrust/Product+Catalog/recent+presentations

Note: CPS is committed to the economic success of our communities and the USA, and takes no position on any educational organization or the politics of education. We simply want all our people to have the skills to have rewarding, secure, legitimate work. We want them to build prosperity and security for themselves, their families and communities, and to pursue happiness, in a complex and changing world.

The real growth, and real wealth, has come largely from knowledge-based activity. We have created vast real market capitalization – in real growth – as we shift gradually from an industrial age, to what has been called the Information Age, the Digital Age or the Age of Knowledge. New innovation and thought-based entrepreneurship has created new industries and jobs few people dreamed existed, and this will continue to happen.

At the same time, there has been on-going growth in our scientific knowledge about learning. This comes from research using both MRI-neurologically based and from other testing/experimental-type work, and it has given us hugely enhanced insight into how to create knowledge and learning.

We now know how to build the metaskills which lead to effective organizations, and how to develop the underlying base-skills, attitudes, values and collaborative behaviors which are already powering the world’s most successful companies.

We know how to build collaborative knowledge communities, and how to support them as they create wealth.

We have a very good idea of how to scaffold learning to create the on-going development of competencies across all industries and managerial structures.

We also know how to stop wasting money when creating learning. We still spend billions on canned talk-and-chalk, death-by-powerpoint and click-and-forget training, but we’re getting smarter. For example:

a.            Most people in an organization understand that “if behavior didn’t change, the training didn’t happen”.
b.            We’re assessing learning transfer (more than 72 hours after training).

c.            Learners themselves are asking about what they need to learn, whether content is useful, and whether there was a front-end analysis (especially GenY, aka Gen-Why?).

d.            We’re using the right kind of channels and modalities to create learning. Finger-tip learning and performance support when that suits the situation, group work in other situations…

A lot of newer business thinking now places learning front-and-center in any effective business process. You’ll also see practical plans for implementing wealth-based, growth-through-knowledge, and analysis or benchmarking of how this is being done by the most successful companies of our time.

Great read: L Bryan and C Joyce’s Mobilizing Minds: Creating Wealth From Talent in the 21st Century Organizations. (Yes, it’s from McKinsey (who produced the famous Allstate document from the 1990s.) It’s also a fascinating look at how organizations can design themselves to maximize the knowledge-based development of wealth.

The authors focus mainly on large companies, but the principles are applicable right down to small business.

They tackle a lot of big, common problems, such as the dilemma of line-managers being focused on the tactics of making budget, which often prevents an organization’s benefiting from long-term strategic initiatives. They map each solution (e.g. the structures and processes that nurture a portfolio of developmental and entrepreneurial possibilities, at low cost and low risk.)

1 How does your organization tell its story (brand itself) in an age of web transparency?

We’ve always added value to goods and services with stories. A good story, with its associated emotions and images, can make bottled water worth seven times the price of gasoline. A tatty old rug with a history is a valuable antique… a shrimp cooked by a famous chef can cost twenty times more than one from a chain restaurant.

I’m sure that your strategic people get together regularly to review the “sizzle” which adds value to your services and products.

Questions to ask include: are you telling your story in a different way from the way you told it five years ago? Hot buttons are changing, and even a subtle shift will show on your bottom line.

(Feel free to invite CPS sometime. Fresh eyes, experience, creativity and solid skills …)

Are you changing your strategies to adjust to the transparent world? Everyone is losing the power to control their Internet brands, but we are all getting an invaluable free service in return. The net monitor brands. It will tell you quickly where any brand problems lie, and will show you exactly how to repair whichever area of your brand segment(s) show signs of deteriorating.

Marc Andreessen’s somewhat brutal feedback to the New York Times appears at the end of this newsletter. It was also the basis of a story in Fortune recently.

2 How do your learning and development team tell their story?

Your learning and development department needs its own brand, to tell the story of learning in your organization to your internal customers.

If your organization is not large enough to have a learning and development department, how is the executive tasked with this function telling the story of learning in your organization?

Training and development need the usual branding package:

a) an identifier (usually a special variant of your company logo, which is only used for your learning interventions).
b) a clear idea of the attributes (features/benefits) which define your learning mission.
c) a strong association between the two.

Focus carefully on the one or two benefits (or features) of your learning mission which you want to emphasize. What do you want everyone in the company to know about this? You can only get real impact if you keep your brand focused on a couple of points.

Tie that tightly to what you deliver, and to your consistent message about learning in your organization.

As with all branding and stories, the customer owns the brand. Whatever your people believe to be true about your learning process, is true. If you say you deliver interactive, sustainable customized learning experiences, but you really deliver canned, death-by-powerpoint or click-and-forget training, your brand is worth little.

As discussed in CPS’s February newsletter, learning and development are at the core of the greatest creation of wealth in the United States in the last dozen years. Knowledge drives the development of value in our present economy. You focus on marketing your learning process will develop real wealth in your organization.

3 Does your organization buy stories over quality?

This is an age where we brand everything – including politicians, churches, universities and cultural institutions like museums.

Interesting read: Branded Nation by James B Twitchell.

Some questions to ask include:

Does your purchasing department buy the most readily-available stories/ brands? And:
How much effort does your company put into choosing quality over the most available (widely advertised) brands?

As a woman-owned, small business, I am intensely aware that local small businesses often provide better quality, value and service. They are often run by passionately dedicated and knowledgeable people, who hold themselves personally accountable for better, cheaper, customized results, and for providing careful attention to detail and quality.

4 Do you know and monitor your personal brand?

Close to 80% of recruiters google applicants to learn more about them. Nearly half of them have disqualified people on the basis of the information which turns up on the all-seeing Internet.

College students are coached to remove unprofessional material from the web, and to use the various free online identity calculators, and monitoring programs, to see what their personal brand is, at any given moment.

It’s not vanity to Google yourself – it’s smart in an age when every person, company, non-profit, church, and pastime has a brand attached to it.

In a time of economic weakness, it’s especially important to make sure that all your key people are financially intelligent.

And not only key people – all your people. Back in the Age of Industry, only managers were expected to understand revenue and expenditure. Now everyone needs to ask:

1) How can we increase the numbers above the line?

You can simplify this into four starting points:

a) How can we sell more of our existing products or services to our existing customers?
b) How can we sell more of our existing products and services to new clients?
c) How can we sell new products or services to existing customers?
d) How can we sell new products or services to new customers?

… and what can I, personally, and my team, do about it?

2) How can we reduce the numbers below the line?

… and what can I, personally, and my team, do about it?

3) Do you have employees who cannot sketch the company’s business cycle, or even explain their team’s place in your business process? Do you perhaps have a manager who cannot decipher an income statement?

People, who think like business people, act like business people. There is huge ROI on helping your team to understand what is important, and why it is important in making your organization run effectively.

A How could our education system be making you poorer, even if you do not have children in school, and already have a good education yourself?

Forbes.com has plenty of data on the best place to locate a business or build a career. The South East is generally doing well, but Tampa-St Pete is now is 132nd place on educational attainment, compared to similar metros.

(And Florida ranks 48th out of 50 states on indicators like the national ACT college entrance test.)

Good education is the tide that lifts all ships.

Businesses move to, or grow in, areas where they can find educated workers…
–> Successful businesses create local customers, and a strong economic base.
–> Resources recycle back into maintaining an educated, healthy, stable community.
–> More entrepreneurship thrives in the prosperous, safe, high-skill community.

Weak education systems affect everyone.

1) You can be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but no-one makes good money without good people.

CPS has both the research, and years of experience in analyzing business processes and people issues, to show the costs to organizations, when education systems fail to deliver properly.

2) Bad education costs everyone: Anyone who leaves school without full literacy is largely excluded from the new knowledge economy.

Our educational failures become targets for illegal industries such as drugs. They face a high risk of minimum wage poverty, or time with the 1% of the US population in prison. The community picks up all the extra health /social/criminal justice system etc costs. (That means you pick up these costs.)

3) Education for all kids becomes “dumbed down”. Parents and colleges want straight A’s, so schools can be pressured move away from the higher-order thinking and creativity, which the US desperately needs for international competitiveness.

It is much easier to give out A’s for simple knowledge and basic-level understanding. Teachers may also be rewarded for teaching-to-the-test. These practices then result in the occasional “drop-out factory” statistics scandal, or the discovery that many new hires lack the analytical, innovative and critical thinking skills we need to create a competitive advantage.

B Can you and your organization can something small, inexpensive but effective about this?*

1) Offer courses for employee-parents on reading with children, and other skills which lead to school success. Invite your customers and suppliers too.

2) Teach your employees how both adults and children learn. You are investing in the future of your employees and your community. Off-set the pain by inviting customers too. CPS has this material for you.

3) Get books to kids. Reward employee performance with vouchers for books for home libraries. Arrange used book-swaps. Invite new or second-hand bookstores to put on book displays or sales. Offer a lunch-‘n-learn on “how to choose engaging books for kids”. Create a company family library.

4) Encourage employees to coach kids in need of extra tuition. Add a tutor link-up page to your intranet. Buy tutoring guides or home-schooling type material for your company library, to help volunteer tutors. Summer is a great time to get this going.

5) Call your local schools, public and private. Ask what they need. Some teachers pay for supplies out of their own meager salaries in disadvantaged areas, so basic stationery is treasured. Upgrade and donate old computers.

6) Sponsor a continuing education program, with follow-up coaching, for the teachers at your local school.

7) Contact local colleges and universities. Offer whatever mentoring, research opportunities and internships you can afford.
Consider sponsoring your ex-employees into a career in education during outplacement, if it becomes necessary.

For ideas on long-term vision: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1713557,00.html

*CPS focuses on sustainable, affordable, customized business learning, but we have sourced accredited help in the education field for organizations if required. CPS is involved in presentations to parents and communities regarding reading with children, achieving school success etc. We are very willing to help your organization with these subjects, or to put you in touch with suitable resources.