Category: Learning

To Fix Public Education, Let’s Eliminate Private Schools

Posted on | by Sam | 1 Comment on To Fix Public Education, Let’s Eliminate Private Schools

While hardcore progressives and Tea Party activists continue cozying up to each other in a shared rejection of the Common Core, I have a radical proposal to make – and it might just be crazy enough to garner an equally eclectic coalition of support:

Let’s eliminate private schools altogether. Or, better yet, let’s make every school both public and private.

If that idea doesn’t make sense to you, consider this: it’s already happening at Sharon Academy (TSA), a school in Vermont that offers, in its words, “the best of both private and public school education.” Kids who live near the school can attend TSA just as they would any neighborhood school. Kids who live outside the attendance zone can attend as well, as long as they pay tuition. And the genius of the Vermont system is that those fees are not paid by the family; they’re paid by the hometown of the student.

This sort of arrangement is possible thanks to a 1997 state law that was drafted in response to a Vermont Supreme Court decision that said the state’s existing educational funding system was unconstitutional, and that it must provide “substantially equal access” to education for all Vermont students, regardless of where they live.

As a result, every town in Vermont is required to pay a school up to the amount of the state’s average tuition. Schools can charge more than the average, but TSA pegs its tuition to whatever that number may be (typically no more than $12,000). As a result, no student – I repeat, no student – pays any additional tuition, and TSA commits to cover whatever shortfall exists via its own fundraising efforts.

If this seems too good to be true, it’s worth noting that other countries around the world have found a way to ensure equity. Education in Finland, for example, is free to all beginning at the voluntary pre-primary level and continuing through upper secondary school. Funding responsibilities are divided between the federal and local governments. And not surprisingly, there are very few private schools in Finland. Simply put, in a system that has prioritized (indeed, standardized) equity, they have no niche to fill.

These sorts of efforts stand in stark, uncomfortable contrast to America’s long history of separate and unequal schooling. The closest we came to correcting the inequity was 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 margin, reversed a lower court’s decision in favor of a group of poor Texas parents who had claimed that their state’s tolerance of the wide disparity in school resources violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Gone from the court’s 1973 ruling was its 1954 contention in Brown v. Board of Education that “education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.” Gone, too, was its assertion that “it is doubtful any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity,” wrote a unanimous court in Brown, “where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”

Instead, the five-justice majority in San Antonio v. Rodriguez wrote simply that while the Texas school system “can fairly be described as chaotic and unjust … it does not follow that this system violates the Constitution. Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” If it were, the majority conceded, “virtually every State will not pass muster.”

For Justice Thurgood Marshall, that was precisely the point. “The Court concludes that public education is not constitutionally guaranteed,” he wrote, even though “no other state function is so uniformly recognized as an essential element of our society’s well being.”

Marshall understood that without equal access to a high-quality public education, democracy doesn’t work. “Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights,” he explained. “Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution.”

Were he alive today, Marshall would take solace in Vermont’s decision to chart a different course. And while it is nearly impossible to imagine a future landscape in which Americans refuse the opportunity to give their child a competitive advantage in favor of ensuring equal educational opportunities for all, schools like Sharon Academy are there to remind us that a different model is possible. The rest is up to us.

(This article originally appeared in the SmartBlog on Education.)

In American Schools, What is Quality Work?

Posted on | by Sam

For years now, I’ve been asking everybody I meet the same question: “When and where were you when you learned best?”

I’ve asked this question because so many of our national school reform efforts are not about learning at all; they’re about achievement, which has come to mean something quite apart from the stories people tell when you ask them to recall one of the most powerful experiences of their lives.

And here’s the thing: if you stitch everyone’s stories together, a clear pattern emerges. I know because I did this (see for yourself). And what emerged was that we all need, to differing degrees, learning opportunities that are challenging, engaging, relevant, supportive, and experiential.

I was reminded of that work – and of the importance of relevance – when watching Chapter 8 in the 10-part video series about Mission Hill, a public elementary and middle school in Boston.  It begins with a young boy holding an alligator. It continues with young children organizing and opening a bakery in their classroom. And it concludes with a group of teenagers eagerly ripping open a package that contains fresh copies of the book they have all worked to co-create.

What we learn is that the children have been asked to imagine a possible future profession for themselves, and to interview someone who does that work so they can better understand if it might really be for them. One child envisions a life as an animal tamer. Another thinks he might become a martial artist. And two other students have each set their eyes on becoming the future Mayor of Boston.

“It’s so important that the ideas come from the kids,” says teacher Kathy Klunis-D’Andrea, “and that they get to see them actualized. There’s so much that they can learn about those real-life experiences that make true connections that they don’t forget. They are locked into learning.”

Of course, what we see at Mission Hill is more than just relevant projects. There’s a culture in place, an ethic, that demands the best of its teachers and students. As longtime educator Ron Berger puts it in his wonderful book An Ethic of Excellence, “Weighing yourself constantly doesn’t make you lighter and testing children constantly doesn’t make them smarter. The only way to really lose weight and keep it off, it seems, is to establish a new ethic – exercise more and eat more sensibly. It’s a long-term commitment. It’s a way of life.

“I have a hard time thinking about a quick fix for education,” Berger continues, “because I don’t think education is broken. Some schools are very good; some are not. Those that are good have an ethic, a culture, which supports and compels students to try and to succeed. Those schools that are not need a lot more than new tests and new mandates. They need to build a new culture and a new ethic.”

To build a new ethic at a school, of course, one must begin somewhere. Berger believes student work is the logical place to start. “Work of excellence is transformational,” he writes. “Once a student sees that he or she is capable of excellence, that student is never quite the same. We can’t first build the students’ self-esteem and then focus on their work. It is through their own work that their self-esteem will grow.”

This ethic of excellence Berger describes is at the center of schools like Mission Hill. It’s also present in organizations like Expeditionary Learning, a national network of more than 150 schools. And that network isn’t only filled with established, stable schools; it’s expanding to include the places where a school-wide ethic of excellence is being cultivated for the very first time.

One such place is the Mundo Verde Public Charter School in Washington, DC. Now in its second year, Mundo Verde decided to document one of its expeditions – typically, multiweek explorations of a topic that involves not just original research, but also a culminating project that is presented to the public – in its first year of operation. The film of that experience, La Expediçion, highlights the same qualities we see at work in Mission Hill – and the same core characteristics we see in our own personal learning memories.

As you watch both videos, consider the quality of the work Mission Hill’s 8th graders and Mundo Verde’s Kindergartners are able to produce. In schools like these, there’s no doubt about what matters most – quality work. And if there was any doubt about why that was the right goal to have, Mission Hill’s 8th graders clarified matters by the title they chose for their book: A Place for Me In The World.

(This article originally appeared in Education Week.)

Has TED run its course?

Posted on | by Sam | 1 Comment on Has TED run its course?

I just watched the new PBS Special TED Talks Education, and it’s made me wonder if the TED phenomenon has, perhaps, gone as far as it can go.

Watch TED Talks Education on PBS. See more from TED Talks Education.

In many respects, the growth of TED has mirrored our own growing interest in, well, ourselves. Although it technically started in 1984, TED didn’t really find its sea legs until the annual conference format began in 1990. And it didn’t really take off until it started posting videos of its talks online, in 2006.

One of those early videos introduced the world to a funny and insightful Englishman named Sir Ken Robinson. Ken’s clarity of thought, his humor, and his looseness combined to give us an emotionally powerful indictment of the Industrial model of schooling. The strength of that talk has turned Ken, rightly, into a global phenomenon (full disclosure: he’s a good friend).

But here’s the thing: when Ken was addressing that conference hall back in 2006, he wasn’t angling for a book deal. He had no illusions that his words might someday be played in small villages in Kenya, or across the giant television screens of Times Square. He was merely trying to share, in the spirit of TED’s founding, an idea worth spreading. And he did.

The problem is that now, anyone that gives a TED talk (further disclosure: I’ve given two) has in the back of their mind that they might become the next big thing. This has led to a flaw in most new talks — call it the Curse of Over-Curation. Every slide, every sentence, is rehearsed and revised to such a point that no room is left over for spontaneity and wit — the very things that made Ken’s first talk so powerful. As a result, shows like TED Talks Education feel less like a platform for ideas worth spreading, and more like the stage of a new reality show competition in which contestants are competing against each other to give the most inspiring speech.

When you think about it, that makes sense. After all, TED’s rise has coincided with the rise of reality television, and the lionization of the everyman celebrity. Survivor got the ball rolling in 2000. But the peak/nadir of the format began the same year Ken gave his famous talk — 2006 — with the debut of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County (now in its 8th season).

Now there are as many reality shows, with folks like you and me, as there are scripted ones, with folks very unlike you and me. Photographs of Snooki and Kim Kardashian are as important to Us Magazine as shots of Gwyneth Paltrow or Tom Cruise. And our society’s insatiable lust for celebrity has penetrated everything from teen motherhood to old celebrities wanting to recapture the glory of a time when everybody knew their name (no matter the cost).

Perhaps the format of this particular show — a special on Education — underscored the evanescence and incongruity of  TED’s “sage on the stage” format. After all, we know a lot now about how people learn best (actively) and how problems best get solved (by groups, not individuals). Is giving a select group of people eighteen minutes to wow us with their presentation skills — and making the rest of us sit silently in the shadows — really the change we seek?

TED was a major player in expanding our collective sense of possibility, in elevating the power of ideas, and in providing people a platform to build and sustain an audience for their work. In its current form, it had a great run. And now it’s time for a reboot.

(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)