This post offers a practitioner perspective on San Francisco Unified School District's (SFUSD)  partnership with Ethnic Studies at Cal State San Francisco, and Stanford University as research partners.


From the district's website, you can read more on what students say Ethnic Studies is:

“We’re learning about power — political, economic, social — our race, ethnicity, culture, nationality,” says 14-year-old freshman James Liu.

That’s because ethnic studies is not simply a history course detailing the achievements of members of different racial groups; the curriculum is conscious of and sometimes analytical about how race and ethnicity are intertwined with power.

SFUSD is in the great situation of improving its Ethnic Studies curriculum whereas, in most other places, it's mostly non-existent.  That said, as I've blogged previously, the movement is growing precipitously and it's very exciting and inspiring, to say the least.

-Angela

Using Evidence to Improve Ethnic Studies Curriculum for San Francisco Students

By Urban Education Contributor on August 3, 2017 6:00 AM |

This post is by Bill Sanderson, Assistant Superintendent of High Schools, and Daisy Santos, Executive Director of Humanities at San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD, @SFUnified). Today's post is the practitioner perspective on the research introduced by the Stanford-SFUSD Partnership (@StanfordSFUSD) in Monday's post: Can Ethnic Studies Courses Help Students Succeed in School? Evidence from San Francisco.

The Stanford-SFUSD Partnership previously blogged about the effects of Transitional Kindergarten in San Francisco and how these research findings impacted practice.

When San Francisco Unified School District's commissioners passed a resolution to pilot an ethnic studies course in a select group of five high schools, it stated that "a growing body of academic research shows the importance of culturally meaningful and relevant curriculum."

We already knew that the resolution was on the right track when it said that the course itself would "help close the achievement gap, reduce dropout rates, and increase graduation rates."

We were ready.

However, we knew the school board commissioners would want to know if the ethnic studies course piloted across a set of San Francisco high schools in fact achieved that intended outcome.

We turned to our partnership with Stanford University to find a researcher who could help us analyze the pilot course outcomes. We wanted to have evidence when our school board considered expanding the resolution beyond a small group of schools.

We engaged in many hours of discussions and data review, first with Stanford Professor Tom Dee, and then with Post-Doc (now Assistant Professor at UC Irvine) Emily Penner, about the implementation of the pilot course. Tom and Emily shared the results with us just a few days before the board was to consider a resolution to expand the pilot. 

The Stanford study showed the pilot course boosted students' GPA and attendance in significant ways. This gave us full confidence to support the expansion of the ethnic studies course across San Francisco high schools.

We were then tasked with scaling the ethnic studies course to a broader array of our high schools. While Tom and Emily brought the expertise of the original data, as economists, they could not help us think about how to adapt the piloted course curriculum.

SFUSD teachers, in collaboration with SF State University, originally designed the course. After reviewing the current state of the curriculum, we were aware that we needed to revisit the curriculum in order to make it a viable course for all public high schools in San Francisco.

So, we turned to the expertise of our own teachers to redesign the curriculum and make adjustments to the course to implement at scale. Four important steps we took were:

• Engaging the teachers who taught the pilot course (and with strong backgrounds in ethnic studies content) in the revision of the ethnic studies curriculum
• Updating the ethnic studies curriculum to make the key elements about content more accessible to teachers with less of a background teaching ethnic studies
• Creating units of study and lesson plans in alignment with state standards for history and social science
• Providing teachers who were new to the course with professional development prior to the new school year as well as monthly meetings to support their instruction throughout the year. (This provided teachers with a community where they could discuss their practice).

We are now in talks with our Stanford partners to start the next phase of research on SFUSD's ethnic studies courses. We hope to study the longitudinal outcomes of the students in the original pilot, but to also understand the implementation and the outcomes of our expanded ethnic studies course.

In addition to working with our Stanford research partners, we look forward to our continued work with our teachers on the ethnic studies course as we continue on our learning journey.

 

Girls have so much against them.  Important research on this with implications for teaching and parenting.

Angela

Why Young Girls Don’t Think They Are Smart Enough

By ANDREI CIMPIAN and SARAH-JANE LESLIE 

JAN. 26, 2017

New York Times 

 

By the age of 6, young girls are less likely than boys to view their own gender as brilliant.

In our research, published today in the journal Science, we’ve found that girls as young as 6 start to believe that specific activities are “not for them” simply because they think they’re not smart enough. Our research suggests that American children are picking up on cultural stereotypes about brilliance at an early age. Unfortunately, these stereotypes suggest that girls aren’t as smart as boys.

If you try to think of a character in a book or show who is brilliant, you may come up with someone like Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Spock, Sheldon Cooper from “The Big Bang Theory” – or some other man. Of course, there are exceptions, such as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series and Lisa Simpson in “The Simpsons.” Most often, though, our cultural stereotypes promote the idea that being intellectually gifted is a male quality.

Even if parents do not explicitly endorse this stereotype, evidence suggests that it affects their hopes for their children. A 2014 report found that American parents Googled “Is my son a genius?” more than twice as often as they Googled “Is my daughter a genius?”

In contrast, questions about physical appearance were relatively more common for girls: Parents Googled “Is my daughter overweight?” about 70 percent more often than “Is my son overweight?”

As it happens, boys are slightly more likely to be overweight than girls. And, even though teachers – like parents – tend to assume that boys have greater “natural ability,” in reality girls do better in school.

Do little girls pick up on what their parents and teachers think about their smarts?

In our most recent research, with the psychologist Lin Bian as lead author, we studied 400 children ages 5 to 7, recruited over the last several years from a middle-class community near the University of Illinois, where one of us was working at the time.

For one study, each of 96 children (half boys, half girls) was told two stories about a person whose gender was not specified. They were told that one was about a “really, really smart” person, and the other was about a “really, really nice” person. Next, the children were shown four pictures (two males and two females) and were asked to guess which one might be the person in the story.

At age 5, boys and girls were equally likely to associate intelligence with their own gender, but that changed quickly. At age 6, girls were significantly less likely to associate brilliance with their own gender. Many of them picked a male character to identify as the really smart person in the story, much as the boys did.

These stereotyped responses were given by both white and nonwhite children, and did not seem to vary as a function of parental education and income.

When we asked children to guess which of four children, two boys and two girls, would get the best grades in school, girls picked mostly other girls. In other words, the girls we tested were aware that girls do better in school than boys, but that didn’t change their ideas about who’s “smart.”

Our research also suggests that these stereotypes may have lasting effects. Once internalized, they begin to guide girls’ interests away from things that they perceive as “not for them.”

In another part of the research, 64 children ages 6 and 7 (half boys, half girls) were shown two unfamiliar board games and told that they were either for children who are really smart or for children who try really hard. They were then asked four questions to measure their interest in the games.

When told that a game was for really smart children, the girls showed less interest and motivation than boys. This didn’t have anything to do with the game itself: When we described the exact same game as being for kids who try really hard, girls were just as interested in it as boys.

The difference between 6-year-old boys and girls appears to be related to their emerging stereotypes: We found that 5-year-old boys and girls — whose beliefs about brilliance were not yet differentiated — were equally interested in the game for really smart children.

In later life, these differences in children’s perceptions are likely to be consequential. In fact, in a paper we published in the journal Science in 2015, we found that women are underrepresented in fields thought to require brilliance – fields that include some of the most prestigious careers in our society, such as those in science and engineering. It may be that the roots of this underrepresentation stretch all the way back to childhood.

What is to be done? Research provides some clues. The psychologist Carol Dweck has written that emphasizing the importance of learning and effort — rather than just innate ability — for success in any career might buffer girls against these stereotypes. The relevant stereotypes, already in place at the age of 6, seem to fixate on who is supposed to have innate ability. If innate ability is seen as secondary, then the power of these stereotypes is diminished. Other research indicates that providing girls with successful role models might similarly “inoculate” them, boosting their motivation and protecting them from the idea that they are not intellectually competitive. One study even suggested that witnessing a more equal distribution of household chores could help balance the career aspirations of boys and girls.

Early and consistent exposure to such protective factors – and to the countless contributions made by women – may have the best chance of convincing little girls that they are, in fact, smart enough.

Andrei Cimpian is an associate professor of psychology at New York University. Sarah-Jane Leslie is a philosophy professor and director of the programs in cognitive science and linguistics at Princeton.

UT official resigns after questions raised about ties to startups

By Kirk Ladendorf | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 9:49 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 5, 2012

Richard Miller, the University of Texas' first chief commercialization officer, resigned his position last week after being told he must no longer have a financial interest in startup companies that might want to license technology from the school.

Miller, a veteran biotechnology researcher and entrepreneur in California, went to work for UT in September 2010 to help turn more of the school's research discoveries into new jobs, companies and licensing income. As part of his job, he oversaw the work of the Office of Technology Commercialization, which assists companies that are interested in using patented UT technology and negotiates licensing deals with them.

Miller resigned effective Dec. 31 after he was told by UT officials that he could not have a personal and financial involvement in companies that might want to license technology developed at UT.

UT generated $25.6 million in licensing revenue in the most recent fiscal year and completed 29 new licensing and options agreements, according to the commercialization office's website. The school also received 58 U.S. and foreign patents last year.

Juan Sanchez, UT's vice president of research, said there was no active conflict of interest with Miller's involvement with the companies because they had not yet licensed technology from UT. However, Miller "was setting up a scenario in which he would be negotiating with himself, and that would have been a conflict of interest, which we would not allow," Sanchez said.

"We couldn't move forward with his expectation of having a dual role" with the companies, Sanchez said. "It was clear that he would have to divest his interest. The resignation was his call. I would have liked him to remain as chief commercialization officer, but he chose not to."

Sanchez said he instructed Miller in December to divest his interests in three startup companies that he had co-founded with UT faculty members and graduate students. Miller did divest his holdings in the three companies — Wibole, Graphea Inc. and Ultimor — but resigned sometime after that discussion, Sanchez said.

Sanchez said he asked Miller to divest his interest in the Austin companies he co-founded as soon as he learned of Miller's involvement with them.

Sanchez said that, to the best of his knowledge, Miller received no financial gain when he divested his interest in the companies.

Miller could not be reached by the American-Statesman for comment Thursday.

"In his heart ... Dr. Miller is still an entrepreneur and wants to work directly with startup companies in Austin and elsewhere," Sanchez said in a letter announcing Miller's resignation within UT.

Miller arrived in Austin in 2010 with ambitious plans to accelerate the pace of turning technical discoveries into jobs, companies and licensing revenue at the school.

Miller is an experienced biotech entrepreneur in California, and also taught at Stanford University, considered one of the nation's leaders in commercializing technology advances. He was hired by UT at a salary of $310,000.

UT's Office of Technology Commercialization, which Miller oversaw, had been involved with introducing at least two of the companies that Miller co-founded at conferences in which companies seek new investors. The office reported on a Venture Labs Expo at UT in May , at which Miller spoke and where two of the companies, Wibole and Graphea, were given as examples of the kinds of young companies that the Office of Technology Commercialization was working with.

The report said Graphea "was commercializing a patented graphene-based chemistry for high-performance composites."

It also said that Wibole had developed "a technology to improve the performance of cellular networks" and added that "OTC helped Wibole patent its technology."

But Sanchez said this week that UT has no formal ties with any of the companies Miller co-founded because the school has not yet licensed any of its research discoveries to them.

Sanchez said after his conversation with Miller, he asked UT's legal affairs office to provide a detailed talk to employees at the commercialization office on which limitations apply to them in working with customers that seek to license the school's research.

"We needed to make sure that we properly educated people," Sanchez said of the meeting.

Sanchez has asked Dan Sharp, associate director of the commercialization office, to serve as the interim director until a permanent replacement for Miller is found.

On reflection, Sanchez said, UT had a positive relationship with Miller, who he said brought several innovations to the school's commercialization effort.

"I see this as a minor obstacle that we have to overcome, — to find another chief commercialization officer with the same level of experience and enthusiasm" as Miller, Sanchez said. "I am committed — and so is everyone here at UT — that OTC continue to succeed. We are enthusiastic that we will continue to be very proactive in commercializing research."

While he was at UT, Miller pushed for the creation of a so-called embedded fund that would pay for early-stage work for startup companies working to commercialize the school's research work.

He also said it would take time for his ideas of accelerating commercialization in Austin to bear fruit.

"In a year or two, we will know if we can do some big-time stuff," he told the American-Statesman in an interview published in September 2010. "You will be able to feel that you are getting some traction.

"I am expecting to work very hard. In fact, I am already working very hard. The attraction is the possibility of doing something really, really different that is fun to do and that can have a huge impact."

Over the past decade, UT has stepped up its efforts to generate more revenue from technology licensing. Part of the reason is faculty pressure and recruitment of top-level researchers. Both new recruits and existing research faculty have pressed the school's administration to take a more proactive role in tech commercialization.

Pike Powers, an Austin lawyer and veteran economic development activist, said Miller brought new ideas to UT but might not have understood the constraints of working for a public university.

"He was offering some new ideas and thoughts about ways that the University of Texas could be more competitive," Powers said. "I don't think he received as strong a reception as he wanted to receive, so it was frustrating for him. He met with numerous members of the business community, and we advised him to be very careful about what steps he took next and to make sure he had the full support of the business community and the UT administration. But I don't think he ever heard that message to the extent that he should have."

Obama Calls on University Research to Help Create Manufacturing Jobs

By Paul Basken | Chronicle of Higher Education
June 24, 2011

[Updated (3:45 p.m.) with coverage of the president's speech and comment from Eric E. Schmidt of Google.]

With the nation's economic concerns mounting, President Obama is again turning to its research universities for help.

In a speech Friday morning at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, the president announced a $500-million endeavor through which universities and companies will be asked to develop innovations in manufacturing with the goal of expanding domestic employment.

"American innovation has always been sparked by individual scientists and entrepreneurs, often at universities like Carnegie Mellon or Georgia Tech or Berkeley or Stanford," Mr. Obama said. "But a lot of companies don't invest in early ideas because it won't pay off right away. And that's where government can step in."

The idea is based on recommendations from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, an advisory group of scientists and engineers.

"Investing in manufacturing based on new technologies can provide high-quality, good-paying jobs for American workers," Eric S. Lander, a co-chairman of the advisory panel, said on Thursday in a briefing with reporters. Mr. Lander is director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a biomedical research center in Cambridge, Mass., that is jointly run by Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
Basic or Applied Research

The White House hasn't worked out all details of the effort, including the degree to which it will involve actual research versus commercialization of discoveries. Organizers have, however, identified some initial projects, including allocations of $100-million to develop new materials used in manufacturing and $70-million for robotics development.

Such work is similar to federally financed research already taking place on university campuses that is coordinated by the National Science Foundation, said Ron A. Bloom, assistant to the president for manufacturing policy. The new effort, however, is expected "to provide more focus and direction to this spending."

The total amount of money isn't guaranteed, with the $500-million coming both from money already included in the NSF budget and from future increases requested by the president, Mr. Bloom said.

The administration has invited six universities to join the effort, with more expected to participate later, he said. The initial six are Carnegie Mellon, the Georgia Institute of Technology, MIT, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
From Discovery to Commercialization

The University of Michigan's president, Mary Sue Coleman, said that while those six were probably chosen because of their expertise in manufacturing engineering, the project is especially important to her state, given the decline of its signature automotive industry.

Ms. Coleman, who joined President Obama for the announcement at Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center, said she hoped to emphasize to the president the importance of filling the financial gap between discovery and commercialization.

Ms. Coleman said that she planned to join President Obama for the announcement at Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center, and that she hoped to emphasize to the president the importance of filling the financial gap between discovery and commercialization.

In Michigan, she said, university researchers and companies already can get federal money to invent better ways of making products. The problem, she said, is in the development phase. For example, many small automotive-parts manufacturers don't have the $500,000 to $700,000 they typically need to apply an innovation on a commercial scale.

"I have talked to a number of our scientists, and they say this is a real hang-up," Ms. Coleman said.

And some economists point out the general difficulty of ensuring that greater spending on improving industrial technology will really create more jobs. Labor history in many fields, especially agriculture, has shown that innovation can often lead to machinery's replacing human workers, rather than creating new jobs, said James L. Butkiewicz, a professor of economics at the University of Delaware.

In that regard, universities could be especially important, Mr. Butkiewicz said. That's because manufacturing innovations discovered at universities often center on improving products, which can increase sales and thereby boost employment, he said. Companies, by contrast, might be more focused on improving the efficiency of their manufacturing methods. It will be difficult to judge how well President Obama's new effort will succeed in that regard until more specifics are known, he said.
Creating Jobs

Mr. Obama has repeatedly emphasized the importance he places on universities in preparing American workers for a more-competitive future, in which job success is increasingly tied to educational achievement. At separate events earlier this month, he touted business partnerships with community colleges as a means of helping American workers find new manufacturing jobs, and outlined plans to help train 10,000 new engineers a year.

The president planned the trip to Pittsburgh among growing signs—including stagnant hiring rates, high gas prices, and financial troubles in Europe—that the economic worries of the past five years will continue.

University and company officials leading the president's advisory committee said they were confident the $500-million effort would lead to substantial domestic job production, though they said they could not offer any estimates of how much.

One member of the presidential advisory panel, Eric E. Schmidt, executive chairman of the technology company Google, said some technological improvements could cost American jobs. But over all, Mr. Schmidt said, university-driven improvements in manufacturing technology would undoubtedly help employment.

"Given that the world is moving to more sophisticated and more complex products, wages and growth go to the people who master that," Mr. Schmidt said after the president's announcement. "And ultimately you have two choices: You can basically decide that you're going to invest in the way that we're describing, and build these industries in America, or you can permanently give them up to somebody else. And it's pretty obvious I think to all of us that strategically these are the jobs that America wants and here is a mechanism to get them."

The White House, as part of its announcement, said Mr. Obama would be asking his National Economic Council and his Office of Science and Technology Policy to help develop specific strategies for the endeavor.

The recommendations from the advisory panel led by Mr. Lander included an expansion of federal investment in shared facilities, such as federal and university laboratories, that small and medium-size companies could use to develop new products.

The panel's recommendations also included encouraging a new level of partnerships between industry and academe to identify emerging technologies—such as small-scale flexible electronics and advanced materials—that could be especially valuable in helping the American manufacturing sector to grow.