The Education Business Blog

Are trade shows rising from the dead? Last week at CEC and this week at IRA attendance was up dramatically from last year. CEC went from 5,200 attendees to over 6,500. IRA was somewhere north of 12,000 depending who you believe.

Activity on the show floors was strong and sessions were oversubscribed.

Vendors I spoke with said their lead flow exceeded their goals and that they were having productive and valuable conversations. One company even had to FeEx in catalogs after they ran out at end of the first day. Attendees were not tire kickers but buyers looking for solutions.

Despite this I am skeptical that this is a sustained revival in show traffic. My sense is that this is a short term bubble driven largely by the stimulus. School districts can't put ARRA money towards long term projects so sending teachers and administrators to shows for professional development is a good investment. If I'm right this will last through next year's shows - then attendance will fall off again in 2012.

Several people I talked to also noted that Nashville and Chicago are better draws than Seattle and Minneapolis and that may also factor into the equation.

IRA - Intervention Central

I only had a couple of hours to walk the IRA floor yesterday - but that was all I needed. The show floor was subdued compared to prior years. The big companies were mostly there, but the footprint was smaller and a good 1/3 of the hall was empty space. Those who did show up ditched the rock star lighting and troops of dancers.

What stood out was the focus on intervention and remediation. While basal programs were there they were not the focus the way they have been in prior years. This is probably due to the collapse of the adoption market in the last 18 months - the focus has shifted to Title 1 and IDEA rather than state categorical funds.

Another industry veteran noted that despite the clamor for more technology from schools the paucity of software was surprising. It was still largely a book fair.

Going Forward

We probably won't be adjusting our trade show plans in terms of space or shows but we will probably send more materials and perhaps staff up a bit to handle the traffic. The analysis from the popular post on trade shows vs. web marketing still holds.

When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made room in his schedule on short notice to keynote the Council for Exceptional Children’s annual convention in Nashville this week it sent a clear message that students with special needs will be front and center in policy decisions from the Obama Administration.

The biggest message was his presence. It left no doubt about how seriously Obama and he feel about improving the lives of students with disabilities. This was welcome because much of the work they have done in this area so far has not been particularly visible.

He laid out a vision for the Administration’s education legislative priorities and the central role that serving people with disabilities will play in ESEA (aka NCLB). The linkages between ESEA and IDEA that were created during the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) will also be strengthened and improved.

What follows is a recap of the talk and some thoughts on what this means for the SPED community.

Special Education Is The Civil Rights Issue of Our Generation

He opened by observing that Obama and he believe every child deserves a world-class education. While almost everyone says this, a gap still exists between our aspirations and reality. Subtle prejudices and roadblocks still get in the way of people with special needs.

Most of the talk teed up the idea that we have a historic opportunity to full this promise for all students with the upcoming ESEA and IDEA reauthorizations.

The argument was initially framed around global competitiveness. America simply does not have expendable students if we are going to prosper in an increasingly globalized world.

But he closed this part of the speech by saying that serving students isn’t just about economics. It is a moral issue. In fact he called it “the civil rights issue of our generation.”

He hammered this point home by talking about how the civil rights battles of the 60’s for racial equality paved the way for IDEA in the mid-seventies for people with disabilities. He made a strong statement about how he and Obama are committed to making this promise a reality.

Personally I really appreciated his stand on the role of education in helping people live more fulfilling lives – regardless of the economics. I’m weary of every education policy discussion devolving into how schools are job readiness factories. Of course they are – but they are so much more than that.

Progress Not Perfection

Next he focused on what is working. We have made great strides in the 35 years since IDEA was enacted in making sure a disability shouldn’t stop any child from attending school and pursuing a career.

Students with special needs are no longer turned away at the door, housed in broom closets, or bused to a distant site. Today the 6 million students served by IDEA spend 80% of their time in inclusion classrooms and 95% are in a neighborhood schools.

He told a couple of heartwarming stories of students with special needs learning alongside their peers, eating lunch with them, making friends with them, and demonstrating real leadership in their schools. That society is willing to make this investment sends the message that disabilities alone do not define our work or our worth as human beings. Disabilities are not destiny.

He labeled all these successes are civil rights victories.

First Stop – Enforcement

Duncan at this point pointed out that will all the progress we still have not fulfilled the full promise of IDEA. The data shows us we are getting better – but we must get better faster.

By just about every measure students with disabilities are better educated than just a generation ago. The graduation rate, post secondary enrollment rate, and employment opportunities are increasing but they are all still too low. Students are leaving schools without the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.

The Obama Administration intends to work with schools, districts, and states to enforce existing laws. While this was a relatively passing remark it does mark a change in emphasis from prior administrations. Generally speaking enforcement of existing statutes has gotten short shrift over the past couple of decades (the IRS audit budget was cut dramatically while the economy grew).

For publishers who help districts meet their obligations under IDEA and ADA a renewed emphasis on enforcement means your customers will be open to solutions that help them meet both the spirit and the letter of the law.

ESEA Reauthorization Linked To IDEA

Making ESEA a building block for the subsequent IDEA reauthorization isn’t a new concept. Better integration began with NCLB. But it appears that Obama intends to create a much tighter link between the two, in fact Duncan specifically called it “one seamless approach.”

The administration also isn’t going to scrap NCLB. They want to build on what worked, but fix the things that didn’t. Much of this has been reported elsewhere.

What hasn’t gotten much press is that Special Education will be included in ALL aspects of ESEA. This is great news for the community of educators, professionals, parents, and publishers who serve this population. I believe part of why Duncan was willing to make the time to be in Nashville was simply to drive this point home.

There were three areas that he specifically called out with regard to Special Education – accountability, assessment, and teacher quality.

Accountability

SPED will fully participate in ESEA’s accountability systems. NCLB did this right by requiring the participation of all students. This highlighted achievement gaps and forced districts to address populations that were underserved.

But NCLB’s assessment regime had a central flaw - it failed to measure and reward growth. From Duncan’s perspective we shouldn’t label solid progress towards goals as failure. "It is wrong, inaccurate, and demoralizing." A school that progresses from 2 grade levels behind to 1 level behind has NOT failed – but under NCLB it has been labeled as such. He quipped that “NCLB has 50 ways to fail, very few to succeed.”

The new accountability system will be based mostly on student growth and will recognize schools that show meaningful gains. The law will continue to require teaching students with disabilities and schools will also have to improve the performance of the highest achieving students. The focus on subpopulations isn’t going away.

The vast majority of schools will also have more flexibility to implement locally designed ideas to reach the benchmarks. He believes the best ideas come from the local level.

This does not mean that schools with chronic gaps and poor performance get a pass. The school closure in Central Falls RI in February makes clear that Obama backs strong measures where needed.

In an interesting twist this accountability will also escalate to the district level. District level gaps in progress may not be apparent at the school level.

Assessment Grant Competition

In order for this to happen Duncan recognizes that states will have to significantly improve existing assessments – we must move beyond filling the bubble tests.

In the ESEA blueprint and Race to the Top (RTTT) they are putting investments in building the next generation of assessments. He specifically cited including technology to measure a range of skills that have been difficult to measure.

I think more importantly there will be an emphasis on formative assessments which provide real time feedback to improve teaching and learning.

Assessment reform is especially important for special education. The majority of SPED students take the regular state tests and a few can take alternate assessments. Building assessments that are both accessible and deliver meaningful information requires specialized expertise. The DOE will run a competition to improve special education testing tools.

Students with low incidence disabilities require the same quality of assessments but the development of those tools doesn’t make commercial sense given the size of the sub-groups. It makes enormous educational and civil rights sense – so we were pleased to see the government step in to make this possible. We were also excited to see that it will be run as a competition – allowing multiple approaches which will dramatically increase our odds of finding what works.

Teacher Quality

The last area he talked about is recognizing “the uniquely transformative power of good teachers.” The Obama Administration is investing $4 billion in recruiting, training, and retaining teachers. They are going to have a specific focus on high needs areas - which includes SPED.

This is great news because the turnover in Special Ed is so high. The maturity and classroom judgment that come from experience are at a real premium. Recruiting and rewarding teachers who choose this path is something everyone in the special needs community should celebrate.

Saving Education Jobs – Foundation for Reform

A final point. Secretary Duncan echoed his remarks to Congress last week about the pending catastrophe in teacher employment due to plunging state budgets. He made the point that education reform and saving education jobs go hand in hand. At this time we cannot afford to take a step backwards.

I commented on this last week and strongly encourage publishers to get involved in supporting this effort with whatever influence you have or can create in Washington.

Conclusion

It was really nice to see the Administration make a concerted effort to reach out to the professionals who serve students with special needs. It sent a strong message that the progress we have made in recently will not be lost, and in fact should be accelerated as education policy evolves in the next several years.

Watch the excerpts from the speech below:

An iPad has been floating around the PCI office for the past week (thanks to Randy Pennington's ed-tech jones). Will it be a game changer for education? Can it redefine how we deliver instructional content?

I've tried to refrain from commenting on the iPad until I could see and multi-touch it. Having worked at Apple for 7 years (back in the Pleistocene era) I'm wary of 1.0 releases.

It appears that my skepticism was misplaced in this case. My iPad 3G is now on order (yay!).

Here are a few impressions I've already formed. I'll continue to comment as my personal use matures.

The iPad size and interface make it the perfect content reader.

I've had an iPhone (which I love) for a couple of years. Reading web pages - even those designed for the iPhone - is an eye strainer for those us of a certain age. But for web browsing the iPhone was a huge improvement over the Blackberries I used for years. It was great - until I saw the iPad. Now it feels cramped. Sigh.

I used the phrase "content reader" with purpose. Unlike Kindle and other eReaders the iPad does a whole lot more than text - and in gorgeous color. Movies, animations, games and simulations, and music look and sound spectacular.

I refrained from jumping on the Kindle primarily because about 80% of my current reading is web sites and email. It does neither of those well. Besides, I've never been particularly impressed by recreating the book experience on technology - it just isn't a very imaginative use of the tech. It reminds me of putting plays on TV.

That said - books look beautiful on the iPad. Just don't plan on reading them in direct sunlight.

For education I can easily see the iPad (or something like it) displacing physical textbooks. Because illustrations can be animated (don't try it on the Kindle) and because external web links work flawlessly, the iPad stands alone today as a platform for education content publishing. At 1.2 pounds it slips in a backpack and it sits unobtrusively on a desk.

Stir in a full blown education management system with innovative content and you have a winner. Blackboard has a nice demo of their iPad application in the video below. I can see students and professors at the University level flocking to this experience.

Power to Last All Day

Power has been an achilles heel of several generations of mobile education devices. Because the iPad will run on a charge for a day or two it clears one of the quiet barriers to wide spread technology adoption in the classroom. Teachers and students need to know that the tech will be there whenever they need it if they are going to integrate into daily usage.

Want proof? Look at whiteboards. Until schools started installing them in every classroom teachers could never count on having access to the tech at the teachable moment. As a result they were not widely used. Long lasting power for mobile devices changes the game in the same way.

I saw an ad from Apple last night that this battery technology is in their next generation of MacBook laptops. I'm sure other providers will follow suit shortly. So this advance won't be limited to the iPad.

Small Bore Authoring

I don't think we are going to see the next great novel written on the iPad. But short bursts of tech like blog posts, notes, and and 1-2 page papers should be just fine. The lack of tactile response on the screen based keyboard makes speedy typing problematic. With an outboard keyboard it gets a lot easier, but then you have another piece of crap to haul around, semi-defeating the purpose.

Other media actually do better with multi-touch. Managing, cropping, and resizing photos with your finders - a snap. Editing video and audio by dragging things around - very cool.

I'm looking forward to heading out the on the road with nothing but the iPad. I can stay on top of email, write blog posts, and upload photos with ease (about 99% of what I do out of the office).

There are also presentation solutions - connect to a projector or whiteboard and take it away. There will doubtless be wireless solutions for this as well which will be really nice.

Problem - Price

Except for specialized applications the current price is too high for widespread educational adoption. Full fledged laptops are in the same range. The low end version is $499. The top of the line is $825. Throw in AppleCare and a couple of extras (case, adapters, etc.) and you are in the $700-$1000 range.

I expect Apple will drive down the cost curve as fast as they can - even producing education specific versions to create a market in the $200-$300 range. At that point it gets easier to justify replacing textbooks with the reader.

Competition?

It is too early to really tell who is going to take Apple on in this space. My guess is that people won't stand by for 6-8 months the way they did after the iPhone was released. Expect this to be more of a dogfight. My guess is that Google's Andriod platform and one other provider will emerge as the competitors.

This Mashable roundup has a good rundown on the likely candidates. I'm not sure that in the touch tablet form factor a scaled down Windows 7 will be better than a scaled up iPhone/Andriod OS, but time will tell.

I do believe that the iPhone App platform is a huge leg up for Apple out of the gate regardless of who their competition ends up being. Just look at the thousands of education titles and lectures that already exist.

What's A Textbook Publisher To Do?

For now this is an R&D platform not a distribution channel. I couldn't even bring myself to charge mine on the company card - I took it as a personal expense. But I want to use it, live it, and see how it can change my own workflow. With that experience in hand I hope to have a sounder vision of how the technology can be used in the classroom. It will definitely take off in the trade and home education markets first - schools will follow not lead.

Over the next year we will scatter some around the organization and let people play with it. We'll try some simple projects to learn the toolset, and then we'll get into the serious business of crafting solutions for students with special needs. The multi-touch interface holds huge potential for the population we serve.

We already discovered that Dragon Dictation on the iPad (signficantly better than the iPhone app) can support one of our employees who is deaf in small meetings. It allows more natural and spontaneous two way communication than having to use a sign translator. We speak and it goes to text, she types and we can read it.

Conclusion

The iPad feels in my bones like a game changer - in fact the last time I was this excited about a technology purchase was in 1985 when I purchased a 128k Macintosh. It is so intuitive and easy that a 2 and half year old can figure it out in a matter of seconds. Watch the video below. When she finds the spelling lesson she says "It has games!"

Federal ARRA stimulus funding has been keeping schools around the country on life support for the past year. Despite significant layoffs around the country it headed off catastrophe in many states. That era is coming to an end later this year or early next year.

It was heartening to see Secretary Duncan take up the cause in a statement issued today. Unless Congress acts and provides a second round the deteriorating tax climate at the state and local level is going to cause massive disruption to the education system in 2011 and beyond.

“We are gravely concerned that the kind of state and local budget threats our schools face today will put our hard-earned reforms at risk,” he stated. “Every day brings reports of layoffs, program cuts, class time reductions, and class size increases.”

Potentially hundreds of thousands of educators and other personnel could be laid off if action is not taken quickly to help states and districts cover shortfalls...Literally, tens of millions of students will experience budget cuts in one way or another.” Moreover, schools, districts and states that are working so hard to improve—will see their reforms undermined by these budget problems.

The Secretary urged members to consider another round of emergency support for America’s schools, similar to the aid provided to states through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). “If we do not help avert this state and local budget crisis,” he warned, “we could impede reform and fail another generation of children.” (emphasis added)

Richard Sims, Chief Economist at the NEA, has spoken clearly on the connection between property values and state and local tax receipts. It takes three years for the funding impact from a change in home values to affect school budgets. In other words - we are just starting to see the most serious impact from the decline that started in 2007. If prices bottom out this summer - which is iffy given a potential wave of foreclosures ahead due to ARMs resetting - it will be 2014 before budgets START to recover.

States can not engage in deficit spending and will balance their budgets on the back of massive teacher layoffs, school closures, etc. In most states education is the single biggest line item and accounts for 50% of the budget. While it is always the last thing Governors want to cut they simply won't have an option in the years to come.

The only cavalry that can save the day here is the Federal Government stepping in with additional deficit spending to prop up education budgets.

• Is the political will there to step and engage in additional deficit spending?
• Will advocates for privatization use this as a political opportunity to destroy public education? Many of these folks are also strongly anti-deficit.
• Will reform efforts be set back decades by draconian cuts?

These are not idle questions as we head into 2011-2014.

This battle will largely be fought in the next 12 months and those of us who serve schools should get shoulder to shoulder with any educational association we have a stake in supporting. Join in this fight!