Proposal: The Learning Faster XPrize

A three-way partnership between the College Board, the XPrize Foundation, and the Gates Foundation could provide an effective infrastructure for disruptive innovation in educational efficiency.

The basic idea is this: a multi-million-dollar prize would be announced in the field of educational efficiency, using the College Board’s Advanced Placement exams as benchmarks. The College Board would define the Prize; the XPrize Foundation would determine the winner; and the Gates Foundation would provide the prize money.

The first team to achieve a specified metric of improvement to student success on a current AP exam would be awarded the prize.

What should the prize-winning metric be? It seems to me that three variables are involved in educational efficiency:
1. The educational outcome (i.e., exam scores).
2. The percentage of the total student population that attains a given outcome.
3. The cost of attaining a given outcome (including study materials, teacher time, and students’ study & practice time).

Consider the College Board’s Calculus Advanced Placement examination as an example. One could increase educational efficiency by
A. Increasing the average exam score for the current percentage of students at the current cost.
B. Increasing the percentage of students that attained the current average score at the current cost.
C. Reducing the cost of attaining the current average score for the current percentage of students.

One way to define the prize-winning metric would be to simply pick variable A, B, or C above, and to define the amount of improvement needed over the status quo that is necessary to win the prize. For example, one might define the prize-winning metric to be “reducing the cost of attaining a passing grade by 50%.”

This approach could exclude potentially prize-winning solutions that focused on improving the other variables. That’s not good.

However, this downside is ameliorated by the inter-dependency of the variables. Reducing the cost of passing a given exam, for example, will tend to enable a higher percentage of students to pass it. Likewise, those students whose study-investment remained constant, despite the lower cost of passing, would be likely to achieve higher scores, thus raising the average score.

Hence, I suggest that the prize-winning metric should focus on cost-reduction.

If the metric uses the “current average score,” however, then one way to win would be to identify the easiest-to-learn subset of material tested in the examination, teach that material only, and ignore the rest – in short, to “dumb down” the material. That’s not the Prize’s goal at all!

Therefore, rather than using the “current average score,” a much more-demanding metric such as “the current 80th percentile score” should be used.
The metric I propose, then, would be “reducing, by 50%, the cost of attaining a score equal to the 80th percentile score on the previous year’s exam.”

In the previously-mentioned case of AP Calculus, awarding the prize would indicate that students could now learn calculus twice as quickly as before, and that despite this lower investment of time, would learn more than they did before. That’s a very significant outcome, worthy of a multi-million dollar prize.

The Gates Foundation is not, by any means, the only source of funding for such a prize. The US Government has recently expressed interest in offering such prizes, and of course there are many other education-focused philanthropies -- but the Gates Foundation has the size and the focus to help make such a prize successful.

Final Round: Federal Funding of Arts Education Research

Below, you will find my response to the email I received yesterday from John Q. Easton, the newly-appointed Director of the Department of Education's Institute for Education Research, which was in turn a response to my inquiry about the IES' policy of excluding arts education from research funding.

I am entirely satisfied by this response, which I'll hazard to summarize as "the policy priorities that you have questioned are under review, and a public-comment phase is part of the review process, so you can have your say then."

My cynical side can't help but notice that the process that led to the adoption of the current priorities also had a public-comment phase, and that -- according to the minutes of the meeting at which the current priorities were approved -- one of the most common public comments requested a "broadening of the focus on academic content beyond math, reading, and science." Why would public comment succeed in broadening the IES' focus this time around, when such public comment had no apparent effect last time?

To answer my own question, the answer may be that the current financial crisis -- with its potential for decimating of arts education programs nationwide -- may lead the arts education advocacy community to make an even stronger lobbying effort this time around. Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging.

If, on the other hand, the arts education community cannot mount a sufficiently-strong lobbying effort to change this policy, then that failure will prove that the political cost of under-funding arts education research is small, and the current policy is likely to continue.

Gentlepersons, start your engines.

-----------------------

From: Jim Plamondon [mailto:jim@igetitmusic.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:53 AM
To: 'Easton, John'
Cc: 'Harvey, Edith'; 'Geddes, Claire'; 'Jonathan Levy'; 'Ruth Clark'; 'Tom Rudolph'; 'Wendy Free'; 'Michael McCaul'; 'Kay Bailey Hutchison'; 'John Cornyn'
Subject: RE: arts education research policy

Dear Dr. Easton,

I look forward to participating in the IES’ priority-review process. If you would be so kind as to have my email address added to the relevant list server, I would appreciate it. I will also explore further the IES’ “unsolicited proposals” program.

Your description of the IES’ upcoming priority-review process, and your invitation to participate in it via public comment, satisfies my policy inquiry. Other than adding my email address to the relevant list server, I will seek no further follow-up. I appreciate your pursuing this inquiry to a satisfactory response. :-)

Regarding Chicago’s Ambrose Plamondon School – it was built in 1905, and named after Ambrose Plamondon (1833-1896), a founder of Chicago’s manufacturing industry. His firms led the nation in developing the “high-tech” equipment that efficiently transmitted steam power to individual factory machines (before the industrial use of electricity), and in developing “high-tech” systems for efficiently pasteurizing beer (thus making beer more affordable and enabling its nation-wide distribution).

Ambrose’s brother was my grandfather’s grandfather, so I am Ambrose’s (very distant) nephew. My grandfather – also named Ambrose Plamondon – was a motorcycle cop in Chicago after World War I, until an accident shattered his leg, ruined his circulation, and led him to move to warmer California in the early 1930’s. His descendants are now scattered across the West.

My relationship with Ambrose is closer than blood, however. He and I share an intense focus on using contemporary “high tech” to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and broaden access – objectives which, I suspect, are right in line with those of the Obama Administration, given the financial constraints under which it finds itself.

Eager to help ensure that this focus on educational efficiency will figure prominently in the IES’ revised priorities, I remain

Yours Respectfully,

Jim Plamondon
Austin, Texas

Round 4: Federal Funding of Arts Education Research

Here's an email I received yesterday from Dr. John Eastman, the newly-confirmed Director of the Department of Education's Institute for Education Science (IES). I've added a couple of embedded URLs, but not edited it in any other way.

-----------------

From: Easton, John [mailto:John.Easton@ed.gov]
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 1:54 PM
To: jim@igetitmusic.com
Subject:

Dear Mr. Plamondon,

Thank you for your interest in education research and your belief in the importance of arts education. As you may know, we recently released NAEP assessment results for music and visual arts for grades 4 and 8. I attended the release and was heartened by the turnout of so many people who believe in the importance for arts education in our schools today.

As the Director of IES, it is my responsibility to propose priorities for IES to the National Board for Education Sciences, which has the authority to approve or reject those priorities. The current priorities were approved by the Board on September 6, 2005. Over the next year, as I expand my understanding of the needs of schools in our country, I will develop new priorities for IES. The proposed priorities will be available for public comment through the Federal Register and the IES website. After consideration of those comments, the priorities will be proposed to the Board for approval. I will be eager to hear your input, along with many others.

Please note that currently there are provisions for proposed research that is not directly linked to our priorities -- through our “unsolicited proposals” program. See http://ies.ed.gov/funding/unsolicited.asp

Finally, as you may know, I just started in this position on June 1, having come from Chicago where I worked with schools in a variety of research related positions. I made several visits to CPS’s Plamondon school this past year. I wonder if there is a connection?

Sincerely,

John Q. Easton
Director
Institute of Education Sciences

Federal Funding of Arts Education Research: Round 3

Here's the follow-up email I sent earlier today to the US Department of Education, in response to their response of June 9th to my policy inquiry of May 19th.

Basically, I just ask the same questions over again, after pointing out how their initial response was, er, unresponsive. I also suggest that perhaps the new head of the DoEd's Institute for Education Science (IES) – whose appointment had not yet been confirmed, nor term begun, when I sent my first inquiry – would be the best person to answer the questions, since the research funding programs are administered by the IES.

I await the IES' response.

------------------------------

From: Jim Plamondon [mailto:jim@igetitmusic.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 3:17 PM
To: 'Harvey, Edith'; 'Easton, John'
Cc: 'Geddes, Claire'; 'Jonathan Levy'; 'Ruth Clark'; 'Tom Rudolph'; 'Wendy Free'; 'Michael McCaul'; 'Kay Bailey Hutchison'; 'John Cornyn'
Subject: RE: US Department of Education response to your inquiry

Dear Ms. Harvey,

I appreciate your response of 9th June (below) to my email of 19th May to Secretary Duncan, in which I inquired as to whether the Department of Education would continue the Bush-era policy of excluding arts education research from receiving funding from the DoEd’s research grant programs.

I would have appreciated your response even more if it had answered the questions that I had asked. ;-)

In your response, you stated that “The Institute of Education Sciences oversees the research initiatives you inquire about. Their website can be found at the following address: http://ies.ed.gov.”

I appreciate your bringing this information to my attention, although my initial email (appended below)
(a) mentioned the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and its relevant research funding programs by name;
(a) included links to IES website’s relevant web pages; and
(b) was copied to the IES staff member (Dr. Jonathan Levy) who administers those research grant programs.

[Jim: yes, I really did number these items a, a, & b – rather than a, b, & c – which I noticed only after I had sent the email.]

In your response, you stated that “The Department of Education funds several arts education grant programs.”

The only such arts-related program mentioned on DoEd’s website as receiving DoEd grant funding is its Arts in Education outreach program, of which, according to this web page, you are the overseer. Thank you for helping this outreach program, which is described on that web page as seeking to “encourage the involvement of, and foster greater awareness of the need for, arts programs for persons with disabilities.” While this is indeed a worthy program, which I heartily support, it is an outreach program, and my initial inquiry was focused specifically on *research* funding, not outreach funding. If the DoEd funds any arts education *research* programs, I would welcome hearing about them.

With arts education poised to bear the brunt of crisis-driven state and local school budget cuts, research into new means of significantly increasing the educational efficiency of arts instruction – thus giving it more bang for the buck – could not be more timely. This is particularly true, given that the percentage of the US economy that is driven by arts-based creative industries is high and rising. Unfortunately, the IES’ website states clearly that research funding is available only for research into “reading, writing, mathematics, or science” – a list which clearly excludes research into arts education per se.

For your convenience, I will re-state the questions I asked in my initial email:
1. Is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education research from funding under the IES’ Education Technology research initiative?
2. Is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education research from funding under the IES’ Cognition and Student Learning research initiative?
3. If the answer to either or both of the above questions is “yes,” then what change in circumstances would need to be effected in order to make those answers “yes" [Jim: should have been "no" – another typo/error] and what chain of events would be required to bring about that ultimate change in circumstances?

Perhaps these questions could be best answered by the IES’ new Director, Dr. John Q. Easton (whose appointment was confirmed, and whose term began, after I sent my initial enquiry on May 19th). I have taken the liberty of copying Dr. Easton’s presumed email address, John.Easton@ed.gov, on the “to-line” of this message. If this is not his actual email address, I would appreciate your forwarding it to him accordingly.

Respectfully Yours,

Jim Plamondon
Austin, Texas

Federal Arts Funding: Response

I just received the following response from the Department of Education to my email of May 19th.
-----------------------------------

From: Geddes, Claire [mailto:Claire.Geddes@ed.gov]
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 10:49 AM
To: 'jim@igetitmusic.com'
Subject: US Department of Education response to your inquiry

June 9, 2009

Dear Mr. Plamondon:

Thank you for your letter to Secretary Duncan indicating your concern about the inclusion of arts education technology research in the Institute of Education Sciences’ (IES) research initiatives. Your letter has been sent to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement for a response and I have been asked to respond.

It is encouraging to hear from people such as yourself who have definitive ideas about arts education research and its applications. I encourage you to share your ideas on arts education research and instruction with local educators and community leaders.

The research in your JIMS program demonstrates your dedication to arts education technology research and to students. The Department of Education funds several arts education grant programs, and reports from these programs indicate that students who participate in the arts are students who typically do well in reading and math. The Institute of Education Sciences oversees the research initiatives you inquire about. Their website can be found at the following address: http://ies.ed.gov/.

Again, thank you for sharing your concerns with us.

Sincerely,

Edith Harvey
Director
Improvement Programs

-----------------------------------

I'd hoped for more -- including, perhaps, actual answers to my direct questions -- but the above is perhaps the best I could reasonably have expected: a boilerplate non-response.

For example, consider the last two sentences of the above response:

The Institute of Education Sciences oversees the research initiatives you inquire about. Their website can be found at the following address: http://ies.ed.gov/.

These sentences make it clear that my email was not read with any care, as my email's second sentence stated that:

I have copied Dr. Jonathan Levy, Program Officer for the Institute for Educational Sciences’ research programs into Education Technology and Cognition and Student Learning, on this email. According to the IES’ website...

...which makes it obvious that I was already aware of the Institute of Education Sciences and its website to which the response draws my attention. Indeed, it is the specific policies described on that website which were the basis of the questions raised in my email.

To give the DoEd the benefit of the doubt, though, the ideal person to respond to my policy inquiry is the Director of the IES, John Q. Easton. I didn't address my email to him because his nomination was not confirmed until after I sent my policy inquiry, and he didn't start with the IES until June 1st, so I appreciate having someone else answer my inquiry in the meantime.

I will respond to the DoEd's response shortly.

Federal Research Funding for Arts Education

Earlier today, I sent the following email to Arne Duncan, the head of the US Department of Education.

-------------------------------------

From: Jim Plamondon
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 1:59 PM
To: 'Arne Duncan'
Cc: 'Jonathan Levy'; 'Ruth Clark'; 'Tom Rudolph'; 'Wendy Free'; 'Michael McCaul'; 'Kay Bailey Hutchison'; 'John Cornyn'
Subject: Research Funding for Arts Education

Dear Mr. Duncan,

Is it the official policy of the Department of Education to continue to exclude arts education from its research initiatives?
I have copied Dr. Jonathan Levy, Program Officer for the Institute for Educational Sciences’ research programs into Education Technology and Cognition and Student Learning, on this email. According to the IES’ website, these programs remain focused – as they were under the Bush Administration – exclusively on “reading, writing, mathematics, or science,” thereby implicitly excluding the arts from any research funding.

I have also taken the liberty of copying my federal representatives – Michael McCaul, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and John Cornyn – so that they can be advised of this issue and, hopefully, its resolution.

I raise this question because I am aware of an innovation which has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of music education in the K-12 environment, thereby reducing costs while maintaining quality. The potential impact of the ideas underlying the innovation may have application to the STEM domains (Science, Technology, Engineering, and mathematics) currently targeted by the Department of Education’s research efforts. However, the test-case for these ideas is arts-focused, and hence, apparently, barred from consideration for the Department’s relevant research programs, including the IES’ Education Technology Program and the IES’s Cognition and Student Learning programs, which I will now discuss individually.

IES: Education Technology
Is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education technology from the IES’ Education Technology research initiatives?

Please allow me to suggest that this would be a significant oversight, for five reasons:
1. The arts appear to be bearing the brunt of state and local school budget cutbacks resulting from the current, ongoing economic crisis.
2. This places at risk the growth of the USA’s Creative Economy, which has been shown to be an important source of GDP growth and export revenue in recent decades.
3. Whereas music educators might not previously been willing to consider any changes to the technology of music education, the current crisis – which is putting their very livelihoods at risk – could make them more amenable to change. If positive change is the objective, now is a moment of great opportunity.
4. There exists at least one arts education technology, here in the USA, that has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of music education (see this paper: www.igetitmusic.com/papers/JIMS.pdf). If the potential of “JIMS” is borne out by research, then it could reduce the cost of music education by half, or more. This is exactly the kind of dramatic efficiency improvement that cash-strapped American schools desperately need.
5. In addition to reducing the cost of music education, the development of efficiency-improving arts technologies here in the USA can also drive the emergence of a new high-tech American export industry, thereby saving and creating American jobs.

There is not yet any solid proof that JIMS (or other JIMS-like arts education technologies) can indeed deliver efficiency improvements of this magnitude. At present, JIMS is just a “thought experiment.” However, there is a strong possibility that such benefits are possible.

I have taken the liberty of copying two experts in arts education – TI:ME’s Tom Rudolph and the College Board’s Wendy Free – who can attest to the potential benefits of JIMS-like systems. Determining whether this potential can be borne out in practice will require research – exactly the kind of research that the IES exists to fund…if, that is, the IES’ guidelines did not prohibit its funding research into arts education technology.

However, the broader question is not about JIMS, but rather is whether or not the IES will continue, under the Obama Administration, to exclude arts education technology from its Education Technology research funding program. JIMS is just one example of the kind of arts education technology that is being excluded from funding as a result of this inherited policy decision.

IES: Cognition and Student Learning
Likewise, is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education technology from the IES’ Cognition and Student Learning research initiatives?

Please allow me to suggest that this would be a significant oversight. As an expert in the field of educational cognition, you are doubtless familiar with Cognitive Load Theory, which divides cognitive load into intrinsic, extraneous, and germane categories. An American expert on cognitive load theory, Ruth Clark (copied), co-author of Efficiency in Learning, has agreed in principle that “notational load” may be an important component of a subject’s “extraneous load,” and that by reducing the notational load of a given subject, its educational efficiency could be improved. (See the brief discussion of notational load appended below.) JIMS provides one example, in principle only (given that its efficiency benefits have not yet been proven by research), of how the seemingly-intrinsic load of an apparently-complex subject can be exposed as actually being extraneous by reducing its notational load.

Furthermore, past examples of improvements to notation have not only increased educational efficiency, but also enabled new discoveries that were literally “inconceivable” without the new notation. JIMS exhibits this potential also, through its enabling of the recent discovery of Dynamic Tonality.

Should JIMS prove to be effective at increasing the efficiency of music education, then much of the credit will go to its reduction of notational load. This would be an important result, with potential impact not only on the arts, but also on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These domains might see similar educational efficiency gains and new discoveries – discoveries that can save and create American jobs, increase American exports, and improve America’s quality of life…but only if the impact of “notational load” can be proven, which will require research currently blocked by the Department’s funding policies.

Conclusion
As the originator of JIMS, I obviously have an interest in seeing if its benefits will prove to be as significant as I believe they might be. However, as I’ve mentioned, this email is not really about JIMS; it’s about the apparent exclusion of arts education research from the Department of Education’s research funding, no matter how significant and wide-ranging the potential benefits of such research might be.

In closing, I will re-state my initial two questions, and pose a third:
1. Is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education technology from the IES’ Education Technology research initiatives?
2. Is it the official policy of the IES, under the Obama Administration, to continue to exclude arts education from the IES’ Cognition and Student Learning research initiatives?
3. If the answer to either or both of the above questions is “yes,” then what change in circumstances would need to be effected in order to make those answers “yes,” and what chain of events would be required to bring about that ultimate change in circumstances?

Hoping that this email will be received in the constructive manner in which it is offered, I am

Respectfully Yours,

Jim Plamondon
Austin, Texas

------------------------------------------------------------------

Appendix: Notational Load
I define notational load as the cognitive load imposed on a learner by the notation in which a concept is expressed, rather than by the concept itself.

As examples of notational load, consider:

• Roman numerals vs. Arabic numerals: Arithmetic operations such as long division are much easier to teach, learn, and apply using Arabic numerals than Roman numerals. Indeed, the Romans’ numeric notation is often given as the main reason why the Romans contributed almost nothing to mathematics per se, whereas the Arabs made great advances in mathematics.
• Chinese writing vs. Korean writing: The use of Chinese ideograms for Korean writing restricted literacy to Korean elites until the invention of the Korean-specific Hangul writing system, which made it possible for “a bright Korean-speaking student to become literate in one day, and a slow student in ten.” The Cherokee-specific writing system produced a similar jump in literacy rates.
• The musical staff vs. neumes: Guido d’Arrezo’s invention of “sight-singing,” including the musical staff and solmization, is credited with reducing the training time of Church singers from ten years to “one, or at most two” – thus reducing the cost of music education by between 80% and 90% without sacrificing quality.

The development of other notational systems, such as calculus, the Periodic Table, and Feynman diagrams, have similarly contributed to significant increases in the efficiency of education.

Perhaps of even greater importance, the development of new notations has often led to new discoveries that were literally “inconceivable” using the previous notations, because notations invariably constrain, in addition to reflecting, patterns of thought. Examples include the Arabs’ use of their numerals in developing algebra and algorithms (the names of which reflect their Arabic roots), Mendeleev’s prediction of new elements based on “holes” in his Periodic Table, and Feynman’s use of his own diagrams in making major contributions to quantum mechanics.

Intrinsic or Extraneous?
Notational load seems to me to be an entirely extraneous load. In opposition to this position, one could argue that the mastery of a given domain’s traditional notation is required for communication with other professionals within that domain, and that this “communication conformity requirement” makes mastery of a domain’s traditional notation intrinsic. For example, without the ability to read traditional music notation, musicians cannot read the works of other composers.
Or…can they? Using modern music notation software, musicians can convert any given piece of written music to alternative, non-traditional notations such as guitar tab. These programs often support a “plug-in” architecture that enables the developers of alternative notations to retroactively upgrade the software to support new notations The potential availability of such notation-translation software, in any given domain, and the ease of distributing it over the Internet, significantly reduces the communication conformity requirement, supporting the claim that notational load is extraneous.

Changes in notation are not easy to effect in any domain, especially among tightly inter-connected professionals. However, a dramatic increase in learning efficiency may make it possible for non-professionals to rapidly gain knowledge previously restricted to a domain’s professionals. For example, more people in the USA now read Guitar Hero’s scrolling tablature than read traditional music notation, and are, as a result, learning more about music than they otherwise would.