Rethinking Education: Sharing School Reform Ideas and Education Reform Insights – an American Education Group Blog

After eight years as chancellor of New York City’s school system—the nation’s largest—Joel Klein has a deep understanding of the system and the need for reform. As he writes in his article for The Atlantic, “The Failure of American Schools“:

Unlike a bad economy, poor educational achievement creeps up on us…despite massive increases in expenditure, we don’t see improved results. That leads too many people to suspect that poverty is destiny, that schools can make only a small difference, and that therefore we’re unable to fix this problem, regardless of its seriousness. So why try?

If the forces behind reform seem scattered and weak, those defending the status quo—the unions, the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the vendors—are well organized and well financed. Having spent eight years trying to ignite a revolution in New York City’s schools under Bloomberg’s leadership, I am convinced that without a major realignment of political forces, we won’t get the dramatic improvements our children need.

Be sure to read the full article in The Atlantic as it offers a concise argument from an insider’s perspective which is difficult to come by.

Indiana has recently made major changes to the state’s educational system by passing legislation that creates a statewide private school voucher program (and expands the charter school program), beginning with the upcoming 2011/12 school year. The idea behind a voucher system is that it provides greater educational choice for eligible low-income and middle-income families, allowing them to use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools.

This is not without a cost though—the legislation includes accountability measures which mean that participating private schools will be subject to greater governmental regulation, with the state gaining increased authority over curriculum, testing, and performance. Some believe this type of program could severely impact educational freedom, as we see in Adam Schaeffer’s article, “A Strategic Defeat for Educational Freedom.”

As Deanna Martin reports in “Indiana GOP Pushes Ahead with School Voucher Program,” many other states are hoping to pass voucher bills for the coming year as well.

So what do you think? Are vouchers the solution?

A great illustrative video showing how hip hop can be used to “teach language arts, innovation, and (the) value of community.” Check it out at “Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education.”

Last week we looked at Sandy Speicher’s design for the school day of the future. Following on from that, Shelly Blake-Plock, founder of the tech education blog Teach Paperless, posted his vision of “21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020.”

Some of these things include desks, homework, lockers, parent-teacher conference night, and high school algebra I.

Be sure to check out the full list in his post and read some of the comments—this is a controversial topic!

In a blog post by Sandy Speicher, leader of IDEO’s Design for Learning, we catch a glimpse of what the school day of the future might look like. Not like a traditional school of today, which “upon pure observation, looks like a training ground for behavioral management.”

The schools of the future would be,

“…designed around these notions of how we naturally, and individually, learn. Designing the day around discovery of information, connections to real world challenges, discussions digging into our experiences with the world.”

Learn more about this design, and some examples of innovations already being implemented, in her post—”The School Day of the Future is DESIGNED.”

As we read yesterday, empowered parents are reforming school. Not everyone is happy about the parent “triggered” reform of McKinley Elementary School in the Compton Unified School District. The California state teachers’ unions have threatened legal action, questioning if all alternatives were considered to help turn the school around prior to the parents’ vote to turn the school over to charter school operator, Celerity.

It is very possible that change would not have happened any other way, or if it did, it would have taken so long that today’s students would be long gone. The Fordham Institute released a report last week on the change-resistance of low-performing public schools, Are Bad Schools Immortal?: The Scarcity of Turnarounds and Shutdowns in Both Charter and District Sectors. If you are short on time, just reading the Foreword and Introduction will give you a good idea of David Stuit’s findings in this study.

And further to the articles we mentioned covering the parent “trigger” used at McKinley, it’s worth reading The Washington Post coverage written by California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Parents Reclaim a Failing School – And Make History.

Remember the “parent trigger” we covered in our post The Progress of School Reform? This is an idea conceptualized and promoted by parent activist Ben Austin and his group Parent Revolution, which is now part of California state law. It says that if a majority of parents vote that their child(ren)’s current or future school is failing, the district is obligated to make changes to the school. The parents may choose one of four options: charter conversion, turnaround, transformation, or closure.

This empowerment of parents has moved from theoretical to actual thanks to the parents of McKinley Elementary School in the Compton Unified School District. These parents recently “triggered” the conversion of the failing school into a charter school.

Read the full groundbreaking story in the Wall Street Journal’s coverage, California’s Parent Revolution, and the New York Times article, At California School, Parents Force an Overhaul, as well as the report by the Washington, DC think-tank The Heritage Foundation, Parents “Trigger” Reform in California.

For more details on the “parent trigger”, visit the Parent Revolution website.

Related Articles

• Parents intimidated by LA school officials (abclocal.go.com)
• “Parent Trigger Law” Could Trigger Change Around The Nation (education.change.org)
• Compton Parents Use New ‘Trigger Law’ To Demand Charter School (huffingtonpost.com)

How can schools and parents help high school students manage and reduce stress? Following the release of documentary, Race to Nowhere, experts are weighing in on the discussion in the New York Times’ Room for Debate: Stress and the High School Student. Interviewees include authors, a psychologist, a home-schooler, and a senior lecturer.

Read more of our coverage of this important discussion in Education Today: A Race to Nowhere? and Can You Imagine Hating School So Much You Refuse to Go?.

Related Articles

• Is School Stressing You Out? (learning.blogs.nytimes.com)
• If School is a Race to Nowhere, Where’s the Somewhere We Should Be Racing Toward? (coopcatalyst.wordpress.com)

A truly green school in Bali, built by jewelry designer John Hardy. It looks amazing, but is it replicable? Certainly anyone can use bamboo, but open walls and hydropower are geographically dependent features.

Check out his TED Talk full of pictures of the school on My Green School Dream, as well as the school’s website at www.GreenSchool.org.

For more on green schools in the U.S., take a look at our posts Green Schools in Progress and Green Schools Revisited. We often look at the benefits for children of being in nature, such as with Early Education Innovations: Outdoor Learning and Does Time Spent in Nature Reduce ADD Symptoms?.

Happy Friday, and here’s to creating a more sustainable world for our children while helping them to create it themselves.

In the book, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson, the authors wonder why we ask the question: “Why aren’t schools performing as they should?” instead of “Why aren’t students learning?”.

After all, it’s the children’s performance that should concern us. The performance of a school is little more than the sum of the performance of its students.

Now we can read some of their ideas in a free white paper download, Rethinking Student Motivation: Why understanding the ‘job’ is crucial for improving education. So just what is the job of our children? The authors hypothesize that a child’s job is to achieve success and have fun with friends. How do schools fare in helping them to do these ‘jobs’ when compared with other activities that compete for attention? Not so well. Be sure to check out the full white paper for a fascinating look at how we can help students learn better by tapping into their intrinsic motivation.