Peggy Charren, the founder of Action for Children’s Television (ACT), died earlier this month at the age of 86, leaving behind a legacy to be thankful for. I’m grateful to Peggy because her work benefited all children, including my three children and six grandchildren—but also because she saved me from embarrassing myself on national radio. I’ll get to that in a minute.

If you were a TV-watching child in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, you saw lots of ads for sugar-laden cereals, unnecessary toys and wall-to-wall cartoons. Yes, your parents might have changed the channel to PBS for ‘Sesame Street,’ ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’ and ‘The Electric Company,’ but those wonderful programs were oases in a vast and unhealthy wasteland.

Then along came Peggy Charren, a Massachusetts mother of two young children who ran a gallery and held children’s book fairs. In the late 1960’s she began what turned into a successful crusade. As reported in The New York Times, she held the first meeting of what became ACT in her living room in Newtown in 1968. At its height, ACT had more than 100,000 members, and Peggy was often called to testify before Congress and the Federal Communications Commission.

Under her leadership, ACT persuaded the National Association of Broadcasters to reduce the amount of commercial time on children’s programs, and in 1974, pressured by ACT, the FCC issued guidelines that directed stations to put educational and informational programming on their channels. In 1990, Congress passed the Children’s Television Act, which established standards and limited the number of commercial minutes. That law represented a triumph for Ms. Charren, who, as The Times points out, had lost quite a few battles during the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

I remember Peggy as smart, energetic, outspoken, generous and feisty. But I am hopelessly biased because she was there when I desperately needed her. The occasion was a Congressional hearing on children’s television, sometime in the mid-1970’s. I had started my weekly program, “Options in Education,” on NPR a few years earlier; those 1-hour programs were documentaries, recorded live somewhere and then edited to time when I got back to Washington. In other words, my mistakes went on the cutting room floor. But, hey, I was NPR’s education guy, and so someone higher up decided that I should anchor the hearings, live on NPR. The fact that I had NEVER been on radio live apparently didn’t bother anyone, and I was up for the challenge.

I knew that I would need to say something to introduce the hearings, and so I read up on the issues and the Committee Chairman, and then I typed up two pages of copy. Put me in, coach!

Congressional hearings are scheduled to begin ‘straight up’ on the clock, meaning 9AM, 10AM, 1PM and so forth. We set up in the back of the Committee Room, I put on my headphones, leaned into the mic, and, voila, I was live, coast-to-coast.

“From National Public Radio in Washington, Welcome to the Congressional hearings on children’s television. I’m John Merrow and….blah blah blah”

In front of me was a half-circle of desks where the Representatives were seated, waiting for the hearing to commence. What I did not know–but should have known–was that hearings operate on ‘Chairman’s Time,’ not Greenwich Mean Time or NPR’s schedule of events. No matter what the schedule said or when NPR went on the air, the hearing would not begin until the Chairman showed up.

So I was looking at that semi-circle of desks, oblivious to the fact that the Chairman’s chair was empty!

We went on live as scheduled, and I began reading my two pages of introductory material. How long does it take to read two pages? Not very long at all, even if you slow down and stretch out every word. About halfway through the second page, reality dawned on me: This was live radio, I was about to run out of stuff to say, the Chairman was nowhere in sight, and in a handful of seconds, NPR would be broadcasting ‘dead air,’ the worst sin in broadcasting except for those seven forbidden words. 40 years later I still remember the awful sinking feeling of impending doom. My producer, Midge Hart, was also in full panic mode, looking around desperately for someone for me to talk to.

I spotted Peggy Charren in the witness area and signaled to Midge to ask her to come over, which she did. I think I handled the transition OK, or at least I hope I did. At that point I probably didn’t care what we talked about, just as long as I didn’t have ‘dead air.’ In addition to her other virtues, Peggy was chatty and eloquent. Nobody’s fool, she was probably thrilled to have a chance to make her case on NPR, which she did, until the Chairman finally showed up 15 or so minutes later.

My national debut on live radio was judged a success, and I don’t think the suits ever realized how close we were to an embarrassment. When I next did live radio, I made certain we had a couple of guests on stand-by and I wrote more than two pages of introductory copy.

If not for Peggy Charren and ACT, children’s television might still be non-stop cartoons and endless commercials. For her work, she eventually received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, from Bill Clinton.

If not for Peggy, I might have become known as “Dead Air Merrow.”

RIP, Peggy Charren, and thanks for everything.

The familiar cliché turns up in a lot of conversations with educators. Normally the emphasis is on the last word, rarely on the fourth. But I believe that “it” is the key word.

I’ll get to it in a minute.

You may have noticed that President Barack Obama all but ignored K-12 education in his State of the Union speech. He made one direct reference to K-12 (to higher graduation rates). He devoted a lot of time to his proposal to make community college free, which is a non-starter for Republicans, and to expanding high-quality early childhood programs, but nary a word about the current effort to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now called No Child Left Behind.

He stayed away from the Common Core National Standards, a wise idea given that the Administration maintains that it’s a state initiative, and the forthcoming Common Core tests, a genuine third rail nowadays. He used to tout ‘Race to the Top,’ the initiative that led many states, desperate for dollars, to line up behind higher standards (read “Common Core”), more charter schools, better information, and test-based accountability, but none of that {{1}} crossed his lips in this year’s State of the Union.

Based on that speech, what is the President’s “it” that schools do, alone or in concert? Graduate as many students as possible, I guess.

Here in New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo is taking a page out of the playbook that the President seemed to abandon last night. He is promising more test-based accountability, more charter schools, and more effective ways of getting rid of ineffective teachers. Some observers believe he has his eye on the White House, which makes others think he’s out of touch with what’s going on in schools and society.

I’m not convinced that the Governor actually has a vision of “it,” though he seems to be convinced that ineffective teachers, obstructionist unions and lead-footed bureaucracies are keeping schools from doing whatever it is they are supposed to be doing.

Now about that cliché, “Schools cannot do it alone.” Most people don’t believe schools should operate alone. Many believe that parents are a child’s primary educators, while others expect parents to participate in their children’s education. Others maintain that it takes a village to educate its children, meaning that education is better when meaningful social services are coordinated and when businesses and community groups pitch in.

Which brings me back to the fourth word and the purpose of schools. Just what is the “it” that schools are supposed to do? Rarely do we examine that question, settling instead for canned phrases like ‘get all children ready to learn,’ ‘educate the whole child,’ and ‘ensure that students are college and career ready.’

For some, the “it” is represented by higher test scores. Get those, and that’s proof that schools have done “it.” For others, increasing the high school graduation rate is evidence that schools have done their job–That was the President’s evidence in his State of the Union speech. Others believe “it” means doing better on international comparisons like PISA, or improving scores on our own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

You may have read “Among the Disrupted” in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. This powerful and disturbing essay by Leon Wieseltier is not about schools. Rather, he attacks the role that data-gathering plays in our culture, but much of what he wrote is pertinent to the role schools could play.

Especially these lines (emphasis added): “Quantification is the most overwhelming influence upon the contemporary American understanding of, well, everything. It is enabled by the idolatry of data, which has itself been enabled by the almost-unimaginable capabilities of the new technology. The distinction between knowledge and information is a thing of the past, and there is no greater disgrace than to be a thing of the past.”

Mr. Wieseltier has identified, for me anyway, the vital “it” that ought to be the purpose of our schools. They must be organized to help young people distinguish between knowledge and information. Teachers must help students formulate questions and then search for answers to those questions. Schools must prove Mr. Wieseltier wrong.

Think of it this way: young people swim in a 24/7 stream of data. In that world of information-overload, how are young people to know what’s true? Only by challenging, asking questions, doubting and digging. And they ought to be doing that in their classrooms, guided by skillful teachers who are comfortable with giving students greater control over their own learning.

Technology floods our world with information, but the human brain can develop ways of weighing and sorting information to separate the wheat from the chaff. (It should go without saying that we need to encourage–and model–choosing the wheat!)

Some schools do this. “What do you know?” the great educator Deborah Meier would ask of students, “And how do you know that you know it?” I imagine that at Sidwell Friends School, where the Obama daughters are students, the “it” of education moved away from regurgitation and toward inquiry a long time ago–and perhaps that’s why the Obamas chose it for their daughters .

But the Administration’s education policies are reinforcing an unimaginative vision of education, a business model with a bottom line of standardized tests results. Ironically, many forward-thinking business leaders have discarded that narrow view and instead support schools that graduate students who can think critically, make sense out of contradictory information, and work well with people of every age, race, gender, religion and sexual identity.

Unlike its rhyming barnyard relative, “it” does not just happen. These are choices we make, choices that matter.

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[[1]]1. One can imagine Education Secretary Arne Duncan and his people sending over suggestions for the speech…and the White House throwing them away as fast as they come in.  After all, these policies, particularly the effort to punish teachers for low student test scores, seriously dampened enthusiasm for Obama and Democrats in the recent elections.[[1]]

For the last 18 months or so, three {{1}} colleagues and I have been immersed in educational technology, trying to figure out how it is being used and abused in our schools.

Technology and the internet changed the rest of our world a long time ago. Now, federal and state government are spending billions to get our schools and classrooms up to speed. While equal access to technology strikes me as a civil right, what happens after access is achieved is just as important. If this marvelous technology is harnessed simply to try to produce higher test scores, then its vast potential will be lost, and those students will be denied opportunities to dig deep, to raise questions and find answers, and to have real control over their own learning.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of what some call ‘electronic work sheets’ and ‘digital drill and kill’ out there.

For this film, we visited schools and teachers in California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Oregon, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere. We learned a lot about what’s called ‘Blended Learning.’ In fact, I believe we have discovered the recipe for successful blended learning, which we will share in the film.

(Here’s a hint: Effective technology and skilled teachers are necessary but not sufficient, because there’s another vital ingredient.)

It’s been an exhilarating journey for us, and you can now enjoy some of what we have seen.

While you’re on the website, please sign up to follow The School Sleuth on Twitter and to get regular bulletins about our progress, including news of when the film will be seen nationally.

We will be posting ‘clues’ and interesting videos on a regular basis, so please consider bookmarking the site. Thanks.

We recognized a major hurdle from day one: Mention “technology in education” to people outside our wonky world, and their eyes glaze over. To keep that from happening, we decided to bring back The School Sleuth, the film noir detective we created 15 years ago. Back then, he was hired by a beautiful blonde to solve “The Case of an Excellent School” but got beaten up along the way by a thug hired by education’s status quo. {{2}}

“The Case of the Wired Classroom” is also a film noir parody. I play the detective, a world-weary gent who is not as bright as he likes to think he is (type casting!).

The film opens in a bar at 4AM, in the city that never sleeps….and goes from there.

The world premiere of “School Sleuth: The Case of the Wired Classroom” will be Friday, March 13th at 2:30 PM in Washington, DC, as part of Digital Learning Day. This year DLD is being wrapped into the annual Celebration of Teaching and Learning, organized by Ron Thorpe’s National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. This event seems to get better and better every year, and I hope to see many of you there.

If there’s a way to reserve a ticket to see the film that afternoon, I suggest you consider doing it, because the room holds only 250 people.

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[[1]]1. Cat McGrath, Jessica Windt and David Wald. Lately we’ve also been helped by Brendan Joyce.[[1]]
[[2]]2. He solved the case and won a Peabody Award, but he didn’t get the girl![[2]]

What kind of year can we expect for public education? I’ve been reading some of the predictions, and most focus on Washington, perhaps because the pundits think that’s where the action is. While predictions are almost always wrong and made to be forgotten, the process can remind us of our goals and values, not a bad thing.

Let’s begin with Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s predictions. He made four, according to Alyson Klein of Education Week. They’re non-controversial, and all in the category of ‘more.’ 1) At least 60,000 more kids will attend quality preschool; 2) 600 more colleges, companies and organizations will commit to help thousands more students get ready for college; 3) 10,000,000 more students will get access to high speed internet; and 4) more students will graduate high school as the percentage climbs above 80. These are admirable resolutions, wonderful goals to aim for.

Counting and measuring was the original federal role in public education. We know our schools are resegregating, for example, because of the Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which, under the strong leadership of Catherine Lhamon, is pushing to wake us up to this national embarrassment.

No predictions from the Secretary about quality, just quantity. Wouldn’t you love to know if he thinks that the in-classroom experiences of most of our kids will be significantly improved in 2015 because of the Common Core State Standards? But he wisely stays away from that.

Nor does the Secretary wade into deep or controversial waters. Will more states walk away from the Common Core and the associated tests? Will more parents join the opt-out movement and keep their children home on testing days? Will more teachers refuse to administer standardized tests? Will more politicians, foundation leaders and others back away from what is called ‘test-based accountability, using scores to judge teachers? Will more parents choose to homeschool their children?

All of those predictions are out there, naturally, from pundits on the left, right and center.

Rather than make predictions, I offer a wish/hope list for 2015: Ten wishes in all.

It’s my hope that Lamar Alexander in the Senate and John Kline in the House will make progress on the reauthorization of ESEA, because the current law, No Child Left Behind, expired years ago but remains in force. That bizarre situation has given the Secretary of Education the power to grant waivers to NCLB’s more onerous provisions, which he has granted to states that have been willing to hew to the Administration’s own reform policies.

I hope that Washington has now, finally, learned the fundamental lesson of NCLB, which is, simply put, “Washington cannot run American public education.” Many learned that during the Bush Administration, but not the Obama Administration. Those folks apparently drew a different conclusion: “Maybe Bush can’t run public education, but we can!” Well, they can’t.

I wish the Secretary would back away from his commitment to tying test scores to judgments about teachers, but that’s not likely to happen. In fact, his choices for Under Secretary (Ted Mitchell, who comes from the market-based education sector) and Special Advisor (former New York State Commissioner John King) suggest that Mr. Duncan is doubling down, not seeking common ground.

It is my fervent wish that the good people within the charter school world will police their own, because it’s increasingly clear that the ‘movement’ is being hijacked by profiteers and other ne’er-do-wells who are in it for the money. If the good folks continue to do very little, charter schools will become another failed experiment. It’s disingenuous for education’s leaders and politicians to say they “support good charters and oppose bad ones” and then do nothing about the loopholes that allow for-profit and not-for-profit charter operators to looti the public treasury.

I hope that the educational approach known as ‘social and emotional learning’ attracts more public support, some new champions, and maybe even a name that doesn’t sound so soft and squishy.

I wish that educators who are using technology just to get test scores up would leave the profession. “Drill and kill” deserves to die. Technology allows students to be producers of knowledge, not just consumers and regurgitators. We owe it to our kids to get it right.

Related to that wish, I hope that the idea of giving students more control over their own learning spreads. When students use technology to do original work, they almost always end up collaborating, a key piece of ‘social and emotional learning.’

I wish that no one ever again use the word ‘rigor’ when talking about education. “Challenging” is good; “rigorous” is bad. Let’s agree to leave rigor where it belongs, with “rigor mortis” and other harsh and unyielding stuff.

I wish that the critics of testing and ‘test-based accountability’ would get together with their opponents and agree on some fair, effective and efficient ways of evaluating teachers. Just being against something isn’t enough, in my book, and teachers deserve to be fairly evaluated.

I wish that we would figure out how to make it harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Right now a lot of our policies and rhetoric are making it downright unpleasant to be a teacher. Let’s raise entry level standards and improve training, but then we need to make sure teachers are free to teach.

How will we remember 2015? Will it be “The Year of the Common Core” or “The Year of Opting Out”? There are other possibilities: “The Year Preschool Took Off,” “The Year College Students and Parents Said ‘No Mas’,” and “The Year of Blended Learning.”

What do you anticipate 2015 will bring for American education? What are your wishes?