Imagine a school with no bells or classes, no principal or school board. It's not an idea, it's a large-scale experiment in the upper Midwest.
A column by my friend Joe Nathan reminded me of the pioneering work of the Minnesota-based Edvisions network. Joe reviews a report by Charles Kerchner, a Claremont (California) University professor, "Can Teachers Run their Own Schools?"
The teacher-run school idea was born in Henderson, Minnesota in 1994, with the creation of the Minnesota New Country School (MNCS). Doug and Dee Thomas, and a number of other public school veterans/visionaries created MNCS., with assistance from, Ted Kolderie, a creative Minnesota policy thinker. MNCS, and a larger cooperative called Edvisions remain in Henderson, providing assistance and inspiration to educators and families throughout the United States (as well as visitors from a number of other countries.) There are 12 "Edvisions" schools in Minnesota and 35 others around the country.
"Can teachers run their own schools?" is an interesting question, but it's actually just one of eight innovations explored in Kerchner's paper and exhibited by the Edvisions network:
- Governance: a producers cooperative is not unusual in the upper Midwest, but uncommon in education. Joe points out that doctors, lawyers, journalists and other professionals have options to form professional partnerships. Kerchner notes: "The use of cooperatives is much more widespread than commonly realized, involving as many as 100 million Americans."
Edvisions schools operate under a charter or contract that provides academic and financial autonomy.
- Staffing: There are more generalists than specialists at Edvisions schools with a much higher percentage of staff focused on core academic subjects than administrative duties.
- Coherence: The most under-appreciated feature of good schools is coherence -- everything works together for teachers and kids. Most networks and districts attempt coherence by dictate. Edvisions schools create coherence though collaboration.
- Evaluation: Execution is at least as important as coherence to school performance and teacher evaluations are key to execution. Edvisions schools feature peer review. Occasionally teachers are non-renewed. There is almost always a high degree of ownership for outcomes.
- Pedagogy: Edvisions schools feature a project-based approach that "moves the responsibility for creating projects and keeping on pace to their completion to the student."
- Project-based learning is common but hard to do rigorously. Edvisions encourages standards-based projects with detailed project plans and assessment rubrics.
- Deeper learning: Kerchner suggests that "Teacher-run schools develop introspective routines that cause both students and adults to inquire deeply into whether and how learning is taking place."
- It's fair to say that some Edvisions schools don't produce high test scores; it reflects "a clear belief that the goal of their schools is not to produce higher test scores. Theirs is a broader curriculum in which measured cognitive achievement is subordinated by important student skills in solving problems, in personal discipline, and self-control."
- Competency-based: Nearly lost in this report is what may be the most innovative thing about Edvisions schools -- they are student-centered, "one kid at a time," schools where students move at their own pace and get more time and help where and when they need it.
- Democratic schools: Edvisions schools "Rely on strong cultures, a common mission, and relational trust. The idea of unitary democracy, as opposed to interest group democracy or political parties, makes the goals of the cooperative enterprise more important than those of individual positions."
Kerchner is clear that "The range of test score results among the teacher-run schools is very large, and so is the student population served... The schools appear to have better than average college test results and college-going rates."
As the digital learning tools improve, networks like Edvisions will be able to add engaging and targeted skill-building playlists to their project-based approach.
America needs more educational experiments like Edvisions -- experiments in governance, structure, and learning.
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I completely agree with the idea that teacher evaluations should be done by peer review. Teachers are entrusted with the care of dozens of children every day. They are professionals, not subordinates, and should be treated as such.
Merit pay and other competitive carrot-stick approaches run counter to the ideas of interdependence, cooperation, and democratic schools. Teachers who don't quit after a few years already have the internal motivation to improve; they don't need an incentive to keep that improvement to themselves.
A couple of comments not intended to be adversarial...
1) The focus should be about the learner not the topic.
2) Content is merely cheap fuel to be used in the jobs of the future. I would argue it is much more important to integrate topics in real applications emphasizing skills that build innovators and bridge cultural gaps especially in light of the ever increasing global marketplace. Checkout: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html
3) Having seen and worked with many schools employing this model, perhaps authentic personalized learning is a better label for those who have not seen this or take the label too literally. In practice, if an individual or group a students determines with their advisor that a non-project is best for a given skill to be demonstrated that happens, that's negotiated. However, the demonstration of those skills needs to be something the student owns and if projects are never engaged, the advisor would push for a greater learning stretch in such learning environments. Parallel by the way to many corporate training models.
Maybe this post offers more details: http://tinyurl.com/379lsma