Quality Control: Devon Tutak

[caption id="attachment_4593" align="alignleft" width="319" caption="Devon Tutak with WordGirl"][/caption]

One thousand, six hundred eighty minutes. That is the average amount of time that children watch television each week according to Nielsen via TV-Free America. Devon Tutak, Ed.M.'04, knows this is a lot. Still, she thinks we need to stretch beyond the debate of how much, and begin concentrating more on what.

"No one is going to convince enough children or their parents to turn off the television and computer," says Tutak. "But you can provide them with quality content that provides a larger benefit than just entertainment."

Tutak was a public television devotee at a young age: "My earliest memories of children's television are mash-ups of Muppets and John Cleese [on Fawlty Towers]," she shares. She became further convinced of its value when she worked first as a teacher, then with the lobbying group, the Association of Public Television Stations. "Those two experiences were very important because they made [it] clear to me that a) we need to be doing more to educate America's children, and b) public television is uniquely capable of supporting that issue."

Now, as project manager at Ready To Learn, a five-year, U.S. Department of Education initiative running through September 2015, Tutak works with partners such as PBS, local public television stations, and the National Summer Learning Association to use public media to combat the effects of poverty on children's math and literacy skills. Along with television programming, the initiative works on multimedia classroom tools, augmented reality games, and transmedia gaming suites.

But in the cluttered children's entertainment landscape, it's difficult to catch — and keep — kids' attention.

"Producers [must] step up to the challenge. Shows that have a meaningful lesson, that connect with a child to give them the 'Aha!' moment when they learn something for the first time or finally grasp a concept that seemed so fuzzy up until that moment, are the best ones," Tutak says, naming Sesame Street and The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! as examples of programs that do this effectively.

Supporting the "best ones" is what Ready To Learn is about. The financial support, Tutak says, allow producers of public television to create "more robust" programming with demonstrated educational benefits. It also allows for more extensive audience testing, market research, and product development that help the shows compete with commercial networks with larger budgets. Having previously worked at PBS, marketing such popular shows as Super WHY!, Dinosaur Train, and The Cat in the Hat, Tutak is enjoying coming at the material with broader goals in mind, thanks, in part, to her Ed School training.

"This new job is a lot closer to my educational roots," she says. "I'm not just focused on getting kids to watch our shows or go to our websites; I want to make sure that they're learning and increasing their chances for success by doing so."