It's a presidential election season, which means we can all be sure of two things: conversations about education will take a backseat to more "pressing" issues like the economy and foreign policy, and Congress will once again do nothing to address our desperate need for a new federal education policy.
However, just because our elected officials can't get the job done doesn't mean the rest of us are powerless to be the change we wish to see in the world. In fact, local educators could do a lot to sidestep national policymakers by committing to do just three things this coming school year:
1. Be Visionary -- Almost every school in America has a mission statement to guide its short-term decisions. Almost no school in America has a vision statement to guide its long-term aspirations. Is it any wonder that educators feel overwhelmed by the day-to-day responsibilities of their work?
One of the defining characteristics of any transformational organization -- whether it's an elementary school or a Fortune 500 company -- is an ability to manage the creative tension between a distant vision and an up-close focus. As educators, that means it's essential we keep an eye on the daily progress of our students in subjects like reading and math. And it means articulating a long-range goal to which we aspire, and being mindful of which decisions will get us there -- and which will take us off course.
As an example, consider Science Leadership Academy, a public high school in Philadelphia with a mission of "providing a rigorous, college-preparatory curriculum with a focus on science, technology, mathematics and entrepreneurship." SLA's mission clarifies the curricular focus of the school, but it tells us little about what shapes its philosophy of learning. For that, you need to consider its vision: to consistently ask and answer three questions -- "How do we learn? What can we create? And what does it mean to lead?"
That extra layer of specificity is helpful not just to prospective parents, but also to SLA students, staff and administrators. And while educators are right to feel that the last ten years of federal education policy have narrowed their work to little more than basic-skills literacy and numeracy, there's nothing preventing schools from taking the time to dream bigger.
2. Be Specific -- Everyone agrees that in an ideal school, young people acquire the skills and habits to develop not just intellectually, but also socially and emotionally. According to our lawmakers, however, the mark of a successful school is still disproportionately based on reading and math scores. That's ridiculous -- but so are we if we refuse to take the time to explicitly identify which additional skills and habits we want students to practice and acquire.
This sort of work occurs informally in most schools, which hold generalized values for things like character, collaboration and empathy. Sometimes these words may appear on a wall; other times they may get discussed during an advisory class. But there's a big difference between implicitly valuing something in a person and explicitly committing to ensure that a person embodies those values.
The good news is that in a lot of schools, this sort of work has already begun. At the Project School in Indiana, educators work every day to nurture three sets of habits in their students: mind, heart and voice. And at the MC2 school in New Hampshire, students are assessed by their ability to master seventeen habits of lifelong learning -- habits with specific rubrics and sub-skills that build a clear map for personal growth and evaluation.
Imagine if every school took the time to decide which skills and habits were most important to them, and then went the extra step by deciding how to measure what matters most?
3. Be Comprehensive -- It is both necessary and insufficient to craft a shared vision or identify which skills are most important for a young person's overall learning and growth. What distinguishes transformational schools from the rest is their commitment to align everything they do -- from student assessment to teacher evaluation to parent inclusion -- around what they aspire to become.
This is not a code our elected lawmakers are likely to crack anytime soon. So let's stop waiting. Let's use the coming school year to take back our profession by raising it to a different standard of clarity and possibility. And let's start holding ourselves accountable to a vision that actually reflects what we know is required to leave no child behind.
Follow Sam Chaltain on Twitter: www.twitter.com/samchaltain
Charter schools work in their own bubble, outside the reach of normal K-12 schools. Charters select only the best students and dump those who don't perform to their "standards". Yet, despite this "reimagining" of what a public education should be really about, they don't score any better on standardized tests, despite the money suck on local school districts that they are.
You want to really reimagine schools? Forget about charter schools and let regular K-12 schools adopt innovative policies for ALL students. Let's see how loudly the charter school reformers yell when they find they can't get a piece of the billions of dollars in public funding!
Ironically, the Project School that was closed, in Indianapolis, was closed because its test scores weren't high enough, precisely because it was seeking out the kids who had struggled the most. Its closing is therefore a useful case study of the ways in which our current ways of evaluating success or failure no longer serve us. The Project School is Bloomington is still alive, and open, and well. There are real issues to be worked through when it comes to the proper relationship between charters and districts, and it is essential that we find a way to create virtuous cycle that results in better learning environments for all kids, and not just another new tier in our apartheid system of schooling Those are serious issues. Your framing of the issue, however, pretends that it's as simple as charters are bad and districts are good. Would that it were so straight-forward!
Where individual, long term, critical must know learning, = Appropriate, Professionally Facilitated: initial understanding, ongoing reinforcement, fluency/mastery, recall (eliminating forgetting), application, stick/behavior change, adaptive reasoning skills, in the most effective and most efficient way possible
Unless we change the educational paradigm from one to many teaching, to student centric long term learning, we will continually struggle
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Heck, in some classrooms teachers don't even have a voice in the handling of their own class-- there are districts out there where teachers are handed a scripted program in a box and they have no opportunity to exercise their professional judgment anywhere.
I agree that everything on your list is important. But I don't know where you are imagining classsroom teachers would have the chance to weigh in on any of these matters. One of the factors driving teachers out of the profession is precisely this-- that when it comes to the big vision and mission issues, our voices are neither sought nor desired.