Learn more about Multicultural Children’s Book Day

Despite the fact that 37 percent of the U.S. population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published over the past 18 years contain multicultural content. Today’s celebration of Multicultural Children’s Book Day (MCCBD) is a direct response to this diversity gap that exists in the world of children’s books. Started by two blogger moms and reading and play experts, MCCBD — anchored by the hashtag #ReadYourWorld — is meant to “not only raise awareness for the kids’ books that celebrate diversity, but also to get more of these types of books into classrooms and libraries.”

Amidst the flurry of social media activity surrounding today’s celebrations, it would be short-sighted to leave book apps for kids out of the conversation. According to new research from Digital Book World and PlayScience, 93% of children ages 2–13 now read an enhanced or interactive e-book at least once a week.

We need diverse apps just as much as we need diverse books

Recently, my research assistant and I reviewed dozens of apps to create a curated list of 12 Multicultural Kids’ Books Apps Every Parent Should Know for Multicultural Children’s Book Day. Finding the apps in the first place was a bit of a scavenger hunt. There was no single go-to site; no “weneeddiverseapps” collective that is advocating for and consolidating resources around this topic. We ended up culling through hundreds of websites and review publications. We sifted through listings in the App Store and on Google Play. We read research papers on diversity.

Our takeaways:

• The diversity gap that exists in the world of children’s books exists just as much, if not perhaps a bit more, in the world of children’s apps. In their book Diversity Programming for Digital Youth: Promoting Cultural Competence in the Children’s Library, Jamie Campbell Naidoo and Sarah Park acknowledge this diversity gap in children’s apps. They write:

“Because issues of racism, stereotyping, whitewashing, and other social concerns are still hot topics in children’s and young adult literature, we must be similarly cautious about the presence of these issues in digital media. …We have no reason to believe that the digital media industry is any more socially conscious than the children’s book industry. We would like to believe otherwise, but a glance through the iTunes store reveals that most apps are created with a monocultural child in mind — the white, middle-class child. Essentially the “All-White World of Children’s Books” with the aid of digital enhancements how now morphed into the “All-White World of children’s Book Apps.”

• Multicultural apps that introduce kids to diverse cultures and stories are often created by Indie developers with limited marketing resources. Though they may get great reviews, they get lost easily as time goes on because things like App Store algorithms don’t feature titles based on what the marketplace needs; they are based on what the marketplace already wants, sees, and purchases.If it is so challenging for us—eager beaver hunters for diversity and multicultural content—to find it, how much more difficult must it be for parents, teachers, and librarians to be inclusionary when they are building their collections?

• Publishers outside of the U.S. are doing a better job of creating multicultural content. Whether it’s the app Up or Down or the Collins Big Cat series of books, publishers in Europe are offering children bite-sized reading experiences that authentically reflect the world they live in without being didactic about it or without making the interaction into a social studies lesson.

Diversity is not a matter of supply and demand

The typical media selection behavior of most parents is to dip into a bookstore, Amazon, the App Store, or Google Play and pick out best-seller, featured, or starred review games, books, and apps. And therein lies the rub. Consumers don’t buy diverse and multicultural titles because they are just not that visible. It’s much easier to find syndicated character-driven titles. Media creators don’t create enough diverse books and children’s media because they say that there isn’t enough of a demand.

Just because the consumer network is not up in arms about the diversity gap in kids digital diets does not mean that this issue does not need to be addressed. I agree wholeheartedly with MCCBD founders Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book and Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom who propose that embracing diversity “will lead to acceptance, empathy, and ultimately equality.” Our kids have the right to interact with media that reflects the diversity that exists in our societies today. And, we have the responsibility as media producers to produce content that dispels cultural misconceptions and break stereotypes perpetuated by mainstream media about cultures.

So, what makes an app truly diverse? In July 2014, #storyappchat focused their weekly Twitter meeting on the topic of “Diversity in eBooks, Apps, and Self-Publishing.” Such conversations set a valuable baseline for defining and evaluate the diversity in the world of children’s apps. So do the resources that are being shared amongst communities of librarians, academics, and children’s media producers and reviewers such as Common Sense Media and Digital Storytime.

All of these advocates for diversity and multiculturalism agree that:

• Diverse apps should allow kids to see characters different from themselves and different from each other interacting.
• Diverse apps should feature stories and characters that are multicultural.
• Diverse apps should share ideas, stories and information about cultures, race, religion, language and traditions.
• Diverse apps should offer kids new ways to connect to a diverse and richer world.
• Diverse apps can help kids learn to read and learn in their home language.
• Diverse apps should be created by a diverse team.
• Diverse apps should feature characters who represent the diversity in a classroom or community.
• Diverse apps should educate kids about how different families and ethnicities live.
• Diverse apps can also mean the inclusion of atypical kids , i.e. children with with physical, emotional, intellectual disabilities.
• Diverse apps should not demonstrate “token” diversity; kids of different cultures should not just be placed in a story for the sake of checking off the “diversity” box.
• Diverse apps allow for race, ethnicity, gender to be the secondary story.

Lessons from the print publishing world

The question before the publishing world right now is no longer whether we need more diverse and multicultural books. The challenge is how to get more of them into the hands of little ones, into classrooms, into libraries, and most importantly, onto the printing press. A similar challenge lies ahead for creators of digital media.

Creators of digital kids media can learn a great deal from the a collective of publishing change agents who came together to create We Need Diverse Books last spring. From a #weneeddiversebooks hashtag that went viral on Twitter to a hugely successful Indiegogo campaign that raised over $180,000 to its set up as a nonprofit to advocate for diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature through grants, programs, and publications, We Need Diverse Books has come a long way.

With a starting definition of the standards for diversity, what if our mutual communities of app developers, design studios, funders, publishers, producers, game designers, and distributors all put our heads together to make a commitment to mind the diversity gap?

We could set goals and make sure to include more diverse characters and cultures in our products—even the most commercial ones that have nothing to do with culture or being global citizens. We could create an open source clearinghouse that shares resources and tracks diversity. We could commit to filling up the wells of the App Store and Google Play with authentic diverse digital media that exposes kids not just to characters of other colors and cultures, but also to diverse cultural ways of thinking and ways of problem solving.

So … we have a working definition of diversity. We have a list of to-do’s. We have a great working model for the power of collective action and awareness from We Need Diverse Books.

Now let’s get to work, shall we?
Sandhya Nankani is the founder of Literary Safari, an Indie publisher and content developer which develops K-12  print and interactive content that aligns to 21st century skills and standards and the Common Core. Literary Safari recently published Dentist Bird: A West African Folktale, the first in its series of global folktale-inspired game-rich book apps that are designed to introduce elementary aged children to the diversity of world literature.

Flickr / David Werner

A few weeks ago, the Cooney Center released Family Time with Apps, which helps parents think carefully about how (if at all) they want to support their children’s app use.  A central theme of that guide is “joint media engagement”: the entire family benefits when parents and children explore the app landscape together.  Even the guide itself is designed to be explored by the whole family!

When I talk to parents about supporting their children’s learning, I frequently stress how powerful this co-engagement is.  Technology is cool, but parents are a child’s first and most important teachers.  So in our preschool app series Leo’s Pad, we’ve specifically designed some games to be co-played by a parent and child.  And when my own preschoolers are on the tablet, I try to be right there with them, helping them to reflect on and learn from their digital experiences.

But I can’t always be there, and neither can most other parents and grandparents.  There are times when our children will engage with digital technology while we’re making dinner, driving the car, traveling for work, etc.  And, of course, there may be times when it’s better for a child (especially an older child) to overcome some digital challenges entirely on his or her own.  How can we support our young children’s in-app learning when we’re not there to observe that learning?

At Kidaptive, we’ve spent the past two years building one answer to that question.  A few weeks ago we released Learner Mosaic, a free iPhone app that uses preschoolers’ in-app learning to provide their parents with personalized, research-based tips and activity suggestions.  I’m hopeful that some of the principles we followed in developing our product might be helpful for other educators and app developers as well.

Perhaps the best way to explain what Learner Mosaic does is by example.  Let’s imagine that one evening, my son (whom I’ll call Matt for this example) spends 20 minutes engaging with Leo’s Pad.  During that time, he plays a game in which he gets to mix rocket fuel with budding astronomer Gally (Galileo) and child scientist Marie (Curie).  Learner Mosaic can support this learning in three ways:

• Support co-play: If I happen to be around, I can read suggestions for how to play the fuel-mixing game alongside my son.
  

  Screenshot from Learner Mosaic

• Connect in-app learning to the real world: If I’m not there when my son plays, I can read a “conversation starter” the next morning encouraging me to connect his in-app learning to the real world by talking to him about fuel.
• Offer related real-world activities: And finally, if my son struggled to follow the multi-step instructions in the game, Learner Mosaic might offer me a simple instruction-following game to play with my son that weekend involving a sequence of silly movements.

We chose these three ways of supporting in-app learning based on research in the fields of digital media and learning, cognitive development, and good ol’ educational psychology.  We want to help parents engage at whatever times and in whatever ways work for their family.  And if parents aren’t around as their children engage with apps, Learner Mosaic can still (a) show what their children have been doing and learning and (b) offer ways to extend that learning into the real world through conversation and play.

Another way we’ve tried to give parents something that works for their family is by personalizing all of our recommendations.  Our psychometric engine assesses each child’s progress in over 75 early-learning skill areas, using both the child’s digital gameplay and the parent’s responses to simple questions that we ask in Learner Mosaic.  We also ask the parents which areas they’d like to focus on with their children.  Our system then selects the best recommendations for that parent based on the child’s progress, the parent’s preferred focus areas, and the child’s recent activity (both online and offline).

And where do these recommendations come from?  Our team of developmental psychologists, learning scientists, psychometricians, preschool teachers, and parents wrote every one of them.  The vast majority are drawn from peer-reviewed research, but some also come from team members’ years of professional practice in preschool classrooms.

We are proud of Learner Mosaic, but it is only one small part of an ecosystem that includes many great ways for parents to support their early learners.  More important are the principles behind the app:

• Base recommendations on good child-development research
• Personalize support with both valid assessments and knowledge of specific audience
• Connect in-app learning to real-world contexts
• Support transfer of skills from digital to physical contexts

The first two principles are about us as parents.  We all want to do the best we can for our children, but we are incredibly busy.  We don’t have time to wade through either the research literature or the ocean of general how-to blogs/newsletters/etc.  What we crave is something that is (a) authoritative and (b) specific to our family’s needs.

The second two principles are about our children.  The holy grail of learning is transfer: the ability to adapt something learned in one context to apply it in another.  When people ask whether children playing digital games are “learning anything,” for instance, what they mean is “learning anything that is useful outside the game.”  Helping learners understand how what they’ve learned in context A relates to context B can greatly improve transfer, as can giving them different opportunities to apply specific skills and knowledge.

The more our community of educators, researchers, app developers, and advocates embraces these principles, the better off our 21st-century children will be!

Dylan Arena is a father of two children under the age of six.  He’s
also co-founder and Chief Learning Scientist at Kidaptive, which
creates personalized learning experiences for children and parents to
improve educational outcomes.  Dylan spent eleven years at Stanford
studying cognitive science, game-based learning, and next-generation
assessment while earning a bachelor’s degree in Symbolic Systems, a
master’s degree in Philosophy, a master’s degree in Statistics, and a
Ph.D. in Learning Sciences and Technology Design.  He has been a
MacArthur Emerging Scholar in Digital Media and Learning, a Gordon
Commission Science and Technology Fellow, a Stanford Graduate Fellow in Science and Engineering, a Gerald J. Lieberman Fellow, a FrameWorks Fellow, and a United States Presidential Scholar.

Flickr / Patrick

Last week Scholastic released the Kids and Family Reading Report,  its annual survey of children’s reading, and some of the results run counter to conventional wisdom about how much children love electronic books and desire independence. The responses provide hints of nostalgia for cuddling up on the couch turning pages of paper with their parents by their side.

Parents responded to the survey via the Web, although the sample of respondents were first identified through random selection and contacted by phone and email. (GfK, the survey company, lent computers to parents who did not have them.) The total sample size was 2,558 parents and children. Children ages 6 to 17 answered questions after their parents finished their responses. This is the fifth year that Scholastic has conducted this survey, and it is one of the few national barometers of how children are spending their time in the digital age. (Another recent report, Learning at Home, by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, our Seeding Reading partner, provides a window onto families’ use of what parents consider “educational” media.)

The results are packed with interesting nuggets for parents and educators alike. They show a decline in “reading for fun” at home among some age groups (see more below), while they also show the importance of school to low-income children as a place for reading.  A new section of the report provides insight into reading habits among parents of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. And many of the children’s responses throughout the report point to the power of allowing children to choose what to read.

This post is part of Seeding Reading, an series of articles and analysis by New America’s Ed Policy Program and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. See also the Learning Tech section of EdCentral.org and the JGCC blog.

As part of our Seeding Reading project and forthcoming book, New America and the Cooney Center will be analyzing the results and watching for new interpretations of the data. In the meantime, here are a few take-aways that struck us as unexpected and worth exploring further:

1. Boys and older teenagers are reading books for fun with less frequency than four years ago. In 2010, 32 percent of school-age boys said they read books for fun five to seven days a week.  Four years later, only 24 percent gave the same answer. A significant decline shows up in older teenagers too. Of teenage girls and boys age 15 to 17, the percentage dropped from 24 percent in 2010 to 14 percent in 2014.  Why the drop? Many might speculate that other activities are competing for their time, whether it is sports, homework, or Minecraft.  Scholastic did ask about screen-media activities, for example, and found that “spending less time online using a computer” was a factor in whether children were designated as “frequent” readers, but that was not shown to be one of the most powerful predictors. Instead, the most powerful predictor was whether children said they really enjoyed reading, whether they believed that it was important to read for fun, and whether their parents, too, were frequent readers.

Another area of speculation is that the types of books that were “hot” four years ago were more engaging to kids than the offerings of 2014. Four years ago, the Percy Jackson series and Twilight series, for example, were still relatively new. It also bears looking at how Scholastic asked the question. Children’s reading per week was categorized as either frequent (five to seven days a week), moderately frequent (one to four days a week), and infrequent (less than one day a week). It would be interesting to see if declines show up in moderately frequent readers. Harder to determine, but perhaps just as insightful, would be how children define “reading books for fun.”  Is fiction considered more fun than non-fiction, for example? The Common Core standards emphasize non-fiction books and there’s a chance that children are being steered toward more non-fiction. Also if books are assigned as homework, children may likely categorize them as “not for fun” even if they are having fun reading them. In short, it’s not  possible to know from these data whether children are having less pleasure reading books in general.

2. Parents of preschoolers place high importance on reading aloud to their children, but less than two-thirds do so daily.  While 97 percent of parents of children 0 to 5 say that reading aloud to their children is extremely or very important, 63 percent say that their children get those experiences at home five to seven days a week.  There is no way to know from the data if this is because parents are working or otherwise do not have time, whether these children participate in read-alouds outside the home each day instead, or any number of other reasons. One hint is that fewer than half of very low-income families (those with incomes of less than $35,000 a year) reported hearing the advice that starting at birth children should experience books being read aloud to them. This is the first time that Scholastic has surveyed parents of children under age 6, and it was a smart move to include them given how much science tells us about the importance of children’s early literacy experiences. The survey results beg more unpacking, particularly by specific ages and demographics.

3. Kids want books in print — as opposed to in electronic format — even more than they did two years ago.  So do their parents. In 2012, 65 percent of kids agreed with the statement that they would always want to read books in print even though ebooks are available. That is up from 60 percent in 2012. Parents of children 6 to 17 are expressing more desire for print as well: an increase to 53 percent from 48 percent. (It appears that Scholastic did not ask the question in 2010.) The survey in 2012 and 2014 also asked if children were interested in reading books in electronic format. Declines showed up across all ages, and girls especially seemed to show less preference for ebooks than they did two years ago with 37 percent of them in 2014 saying they were interested in ebooks compared to 57 percent in 2012. What is driving this change? Was there a novelty effect in 2012 that is already wearing off? The publishing industry in general is facing similar questions, as analysts discuss whether the growth rate of ebooks has already hit its peak or whether their growth, even if slowing, is keeping the book industry from facing more painful declines.

4. Kids wish their parents had continued to read to them after they reached school age. Across all age groups, 83 percent of kids say they loved or “liked a lot” those times when parents read to them aloud at home. Only 24 percent of 6-to-8-year-olds and 17 percent of kids ages 9 to 11 say that someone reads aloud to them at home, and many seem to miss it. Four in ten children in that 6-to-11 age range say they wished their parents had continued reading aloud to them. Kristen Harmeling, a researcher at YouGov, a consulting firm that helped Scholastic to conduct the study said one clear message for parents from this survey is to “start early and stay at it.”

This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

Flickr/Mike Oliveri

It’s that time again. New commitments and new resolutions to make…and hopefully keep. As educators and children’s advocates we are involved in many initiatives whose goals are reimagining education and providing equal opportunity to all children. We are board members and advisors to some nonprofits that are doing remarkable work with kids — Sesame Workshop, Creative Commons, The Forum for Youth Investment, We Are Family Foundation, Learning Matters, Vroom and Journeys In Film — to name a handful. These organizations are inspiring hope and change, but we need to make an even stronger social commitment in order to give each child a decent shot at fulfilling their potential.

Here are 10 ways education leaders can take stock of progress and chart a new course in 2015. We start with five takeaways from a mixed track record in the past few years:

Takeaway 1: Let’s celebrate for a moment! Kids across the globe are healthier, more are going to school, and becoming literate. But unfortunately, the U.S. is treading water while the rest of the world is diving ahead. Thanks to the remarkable progress that groups like UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, Acumen Fund, Save the Children and others are making in fighting dread diseases with affordable health regimens, empowering girls, and activating entrepreneurs to make a big difference in families lives, we are building a brighter future for millions. A recent report on the Millennial Development Goals found substantial progress on well over half of all of the target metrics, ranging from maternal and child health to children’s literacy. In our country, children’s education and health care is getting better too — the expansion of affordable health insurance has made a difference to low and moderate income families. And high school graduation rates are up. Still, our progress is at a snail’s pace — four out of five low-income 10-year-olds still can’t read well, and only 80 percent of young adults have a high school diploma. Less than four in 10 are graduating from college — a requirement needed to soar in today’s economy.

Takeaway 2: Let’s get real about standards and accountability. The debate over common core has entered a “silly season.” You know the debate is warped when comedian Louis CK’s rant about the core goes viral, and when former champions of the core — from governors to teachers unions to scholars are bailing out. The grumbling is justified given the weak job advocates have done in explaining what national standards could mean for higher performance and educational equity. David Kirp’s recent piece in the New York Times did a brilliant job of analyzing the gulf between the design of the core and the slow and difficult implementation on the ground. The debate has been, sadly, dominated by politically motivated attacks, whereas more legitimate “speed of implementation” issues are more on target. Make no mistake: the core will fail unless the high stakes testing pressures that stakeholders — especially teachers and parents — are wary of are replaced by tangible evidence of deeper, more engaged learning. Our view: many adults are acting like children, scoring political points — and that has to stop in 2015.

Takeaway 3: We have also done a lousy job engaging youth — let’s listen to the children! Young people are in active revolt against traditional learning. Too many youth are bored to tears but still forced to learn the conventional offerings of “The Place Called School” (RIP John Goodlad). A recent survey of high school kids found that almost all of them — 98 percent, reported being bored with traditional offerings. New disruptive models of education — anytime and anywhere — are proliferating. Esther recently opened up a new journalism lab called the Media Arts Center at Palo Alto High which is a modern day engagement factory for kids. The idea is based on a “blended learning” model where kids gain tangible control over their own learning through creating and participating. Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York and other cities are actively trying to “remake learning” for a digital age through the work of youth serving organizational “hives.” These collective impact clusters have been catalyzed by leadership from MacArthur Foundation, New York Community Trust, Mozilla, the Institute for Museum and Library Services and Grable Foundation.

Takeaway 4: Literacy is being redefined and new equity gaps are on the horizon. The worries from educators that there is no reading going on among today’s youth is not based in reality. Recent studies indicate that the type of reading that is going on is different — short form reading and writing driven by participation in social networking forums is proliferating. There is reason for concern — children may be gravitating away from contemplative, reflective literacy experiences and missing out on relationship-building social emotional learning opportunities. But opportunities are ripe: many youth are beginning to connect and participate in new storytelling and digital literacy experiences that will allow them to compete and cooperate in a digital and global world of work. Our concern: we must zero in on new participation gaps between higher income youth and lower income kids that scholars such as Henry Jenkins of USC, Vikki Katz of Rutgers and Susan Neuman of NYU have written so powerfully about. These scholars document ways in which access to new technologies are a gateway to high performance, and educational equity. We need a new emphasis on closing an increasingly dangerous divide.

Takeaway 5: We need to “rethink the brain.” Scientists are presenting powerful new images of children’s brain development. Beginning in the first year of a baby’s life, where synaptic connections are being molded like a sculptor chiseling a block of marble, until they graduate from high school, children are experiencing remarkable leaps and bounds in their capacities. New insights in behavioral neuroscience and in learning and developmental science can help educators gain a richer understanding of early literacy and language development or for example, the role that digital games can play in helping children focus or to be kind to their peers. Educators should pay close attention to the pioneering language development work of Pat Kuhl, the new focus on “good for you video games” developed by Adam Gazzaley, Richie Davidson, Kurt Squire and Constance Steinkuehler, and the work on executive functioning and gameplay by Daphne Bevalier. Finally, every preschool and elementary school educator would be wise to check out the remarkable work that Ellen Galinsky and colleagues are doing with their community training based on her pioneering book Mind in the Making.

Drawing from these takeaways, how might we renew our commitment to children with new resolutions for 2015? Here are five resolutions we as educators, concerned parents and children’s advocates plan to recommit to this year. We hope you will too:

Resolution 1: Relationships matter the most
Educators need to step back from the daily fray and consider an issue that is too often overlooked: the depth and quality of their relationships with students, peers and parents. Research on young children’s developing brains and self-regulation as active learners is now aligned with decades of research by experts on school climate and parent engagement. Dr. Daniel Siegel, a pioneering neuro-psychiatrist at UCLA, recently observed: “Studies of longevity, medical and mental health, happiness and even wisdom point to relationships as the most robust predictor of positive attributes in our lives across the lifespan.”

The power of school is enhanced or diminished by the types of relationships that are formed at the core of our educational enterprise. Teachers, parents, supervisors and students must be linked together in a relationship-rich environment that is open, flexible and which relentlessly promotes learning. The power and importance of relationships in school is the main focus of Esther’s new book to be released in a few weeks entitled Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom. Students need to feel empowered and have some control over their learning. What we have learned is that “playful learning” cannot be overlooked — we need only look at the amazing staying power and renaissance of global brands like Sesame, Lego, and Disney to understand the magic of playful and purpose-filled relationships.

Resolution 2: Let’s remember that although they are different than when we were growing up, families and teachers matter even more now!
Educators need to vigorously resist being placed at cross-purposes in education reform debates with families. Teachers who are held to stringent assessment metrics often worry about how much they can do to overcome the impact of poverty and family stress — and understandably are critical of policies that weaken autonomy and expect achievement gains that are unrealistic in the short-term. Educators and families need to work together more effectively. Teachers should see parents as collaborators in the effort to educate their children and vice versa. Studies show that the most important years to establish a “pathway to success” are zero to five. Sesame Street and dozens of pioneers in early learning ranging from effective home visitation programs and Head Start have developed programs that target these important years. But parents and teachers today need support since more than 16 million children in the United States — 22% of all children — live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level — $23,550 a year! If we are going to take a broader, bolder approach to school reform, we need to see the interests of families and the teaching force as deeply intertwined. That means we have to stop bashing teachers as a sport! And every educator needs to be an advocate for strong families.

Resolution 3: Let’s make “blended learning” models work at scale.
To engage and excite lifelong learning, we have to remove the moat that too often exists between school and home. Blended learning gives students more control, empowers exploration and cuts the boredom factor. Over four decades after Sesame Street revolutionized the use of television to educate children at home with vital school readiness skills, we still need to build a bridge between informal and formal learning in K-12. One new movement supported by the White House and other leaders called Future Ready Schools focuses on using technology more effectively in schools and at home. At the moment there are thousands of districts signed up to support it but we need the whole nation on board. We also have the capacity to utilize the creativity of educational media innovators in service to our nation’s schools. Some progress has been made to reinvent public media for a digital age, but key collaboration, financial and distribution barriers must be removed between traditional TV producers and new digital media producers to ensure that children’s interests are advanced. One very promising area that the Cooney Center is researching is the power of digital games to engage students. A recent survey found that the overwhelming majority of teachers using games in schools point to positive benefits of personalized, blended learning.

Resolution 4: Let’s reward failure. Real innovation starts by taking risks.
Educators have become too hesitant to try something new which might fail because they are so concerned about accountability. However, experimentation with new media platforms especially have the potential of accelerating progress in K-12 education. In a recent series of studies and scans of the program and digital apps innovation space, the Cooney Center and New America have been mapping and tracking ways in which creative uses of technologies are “Seeding Reading” skills today. With millions of our kids on a pathway to academic failure, we may well need to harness the technology accelerator — and fail a bit through active experimentation — to stop treading water.

Resolution 5: Reformers Need a New Vision: Think Global!
Finally, reformers and Common Core advocates need new allies and a better way of explaining why they are of tangible benefit as 21st Century global competencies. People are spending too much time arguing on the margins: protests against the core need to turn into campaigns to help implement them well and to drive a fresh new vision In a famous scene in the iconic movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman is counseled to think about the next big thing: “plastics.” Today’s graduate should have confidence that they can pioneer a career seeking break-the-mold solutions. Mastering four key competencies aligned with the Common Core: basic literacy, science and math literacy, digital literacy and global literacy will in our view be critical by 2020. We live in a flatter world where the challenges our generation has left — from global conflict and environmental degradation to promoting more equitable economic opportunity — is daunting work that requires a new vision. Yes, we must build college and career ready youth as so many reform advocates have declared. But even more centrally: it’s time to promote education for effective global citizenship.

We offer one version of a new path forward in education reform. Others of equal import exist, we are sure. In any case, let’s all resolve that new efforts to build a better future for all through education will be guided by new ideas, energy and purpose. The kids are counting on us!