hacking education

Interesting post from the Washington Post last Friday about the shortcomings of standardized tests. I concur and believe that I have a solution that can help move us past our dependancy on standardized tests. Drop your email at MotionSpark.com to stay informed on my new startup.

We often forget that there is nothing fixed or natural about “school” but that, like all institutions, it evolves in response to historical circumstances. In the case of standardized testing, the multiple-choice exam has had an impact far beyond the crisis that inspired it, and a reach and application far beyond what its inventor intended.

Institutions of education should be preparing our kids for their future — not for our past. In the Internet age, we are saddled with an educational system that was designed for the industrial age, modeled on mass production and designed for efficiency, not for high standards.

We know that bubble tests address only a quarter of the kinds of knowledge students master in schools. For low-income kids, who have limited resources for college costs and thus little reason to think that their test scores matter to their future, the exams can seem irrelevant. For them, low scores can denote not just a possible lack of knowledge but also a possible lack of motivation to concentrate on the exam. Affluent kids, if they pay enough and take enough test-prep courses, can get higher scores.

We are not teaching and testing our students for responsible participation in the interactive digital age.

We’re facing a crisis in education today, much like Kelly faced in 1914. The U.S. high school completion rate is dropping slightly in real terms, and dramatically relative to other industrialized nations. But even more serious is the rate at which teachers are leaving the profession. Teacher attrition has increased by more than 50 percent in the past decade, and it is often the best teachers who leave first, many citing the demoralizing testing requirements of No Child Left Behind.

Right now, we have teachers, out of self-preservation and to protect their schools and their students, teaching to a test that was designed in the era of the Model T. We are 15 years into the information age. Now is the time to begin to rethink how we assess learning for the challenges of the digital world that lie ahead. It’s not as simple as filling in the bubbles.

Via Washington Post

As you might know, I was a part of the team that helped to build Zinch over the last three years. Today Zinch announced their acquisition to Chegg.

The early days at Zinch are some of the best memories of my life. I joined Zinch in June 2008 after having flown out to Utah unannounced, taking Zinch founders Mick, Brad and Sid to lunch, and pitching them on the fact that they needed financial aid in the Zinch equation. They bit.

The Zinch founders have taught me what it means to be an entrepreneur. They are more than a little crazy, tenacious, scrappy, unrelenting, more than a little crazy, naive, have a vision, believe whatever they set out to do they can achieve, passionate, and more than a little crazy. They are the real deal and will turn whatever they touch into startup gold.

Late 2008 we recruited Anne Dwane to be CEO. Without Anne, Zinch would be a different story. How grateful, I and the many others, are to her in guiding us to our success. Anne taught me what it means to lead. When she took over the reigns of the company, the average age of Zinch employees was like 15. It was a young and passionate group who had yet to earn any stripes. She taught us everything worth knowing and built the company at great personal dedication and sacrifice.

But what startup life has taught me is that in those earliest days it cannot be done without a cast many believers. No entrepreneur has ever succeeded alone.

As the lore goes Cache Merrill was the first person to up and quit their job and bet on Mick's idea for a network connecting students directly with admission officers (that idea seems so natural now but this is in the days when unless you were a college student you didn't know what Facebook was).

Than Hancock has more stories from the earliest days of Zinch than maybe anyone else, as he led the first and largest department of Zinch--sales. They faced selling a new company, in a market that had yet to be proven (social media), to some of the most conservative and hardest to sell-in-to institutions in the world--America's premiere colleges. It was hairy and Than charged through it. Than is a believer and Zinch is in his blood (mixed with some cougar blue).

And at the end of the day, it is Al Wild, who literally built Zinch. It was his code that brought the beast to life. Al is one of those people talented enough to do whatever he wants and Zinch owes Al great thanks for letting that "whatever" be Zinch.

As Mick and Brad have detailed on their blogs there were moments were Zinch was dead and without the faith and belief of many others it couldn't have made it back to fight another day, including our great angel and venture investors as well as industry advocates like Brad Ward and partners like Kevin Ladd and others.

Anne has lived by the adage hire the best people, which we all strive to do, but her differentiating success has been what she does with those people. Anne recruited and empowered the likes of Tom Melcher, Chris McCarthy, Heather Rader, and Jon Assayag whose talents have shaped Zinch into what it is.

For my personal success at Zinch I owe David Parkinson, Marisa Leavitt, Drew Hales, Sean Castillo, Kawai Goodman, Farrah Moore, Mike Bou, and Emily Chien an enormous thank you.

Zinch gave me the privilege of working with these amazing mentors, leaders, and friends. Cheers and congrats to the team!