I find it sad to watch what is happening to our nation’s public education system. It seems fixated in the thrall of a bureaucratized, regimented, OSFA (one size fits all) approach to learning that goes against all the principles of democracy, human nature, developmental science and every other pragmatic wisdom about what makes people (adults and youth) tick. For at least half the kids that are processed through its institutions, and much of its adult staff, it seems to lead to a profound ennui with learning and teaching… framing it as something you have to do rather than want to do. A hazing ritual to be endured, rather than a voyage of discovery, joy and mastery.


So it was good to read a recent Education Week article, “Forget Grade Levels, Kansas City, Mo., Schools Try Something New” and see a big-city school superintendent call out a profound reality and take a shot, within his constrained context, at finding solutions. According to Kansas City Missouri Superintendent John Covington…

The current system of public education in this country is not working. It’s an outdated, industrial, agrarian kind of model that lends itself to still allowing students to progress through school based on the amount of time they sit in a chair rather than whether or not they have truly mastered the competencies and skills.

It’s at the same time painful and liberating to hear a mainstream educrat saying this publicly for all to hear. But it is an important step to break through the mass denial of the dysfunctional ordeal we are putting so many million of our youth (and the adults who give their time to work with those youth) through.

I assume Covington is attempting to respond to President Obama’s well intentioned but (in my opinion) inappropriately named “Race to the Top” program. The word “race” is loaded down with so many connotations of competition, a few winners and many more losers, and doing things to be better than others rather than to develop ones self. And where the hell is the “top” that we should all be racing to? Is it the top of some “heap”? Is this any kind of metaphorical framing for a democratic society that aspires to be some sort of circle of equals?

The Obama administration’s challenge to the nation’s educational leaders (including Covington), to quote the President’s July 2009 statement on “Race to the Top” is to “enforce rigorous and challenging standards and assessments”, rather than something like “find innovative new approaches to learning”, which is what Covington is courageously trying to do anyway.

In simplest terms, Covington’s effort is to transition Kansas City schools from a focus on grade levels (and every student at the same age doing the same thing at the same time… very Henry Ford) to a very different framing based on skill development and mastery. According to the Education Week article…

Students — often of varying ages — work at their own pace, meeting with teachers to decide what part of the curriculum to tackle. Teachers still instruct students as a group if it’s needed, but often students are working individually or in small groups on projects that are tailored to their skill level… Advocates say the approach cuts down on discipline problems because advanced students aren’t bored and struggling students aren’t frustrated.

This certainly is not rocket science, or wildly avant-garde thinking, but acknowledges the natural way most humans have learned stuff since the dawn of time. And my point here is not to argue the details of this approach (you can read the article itself for that) but to instead acknowledge an attempt at pragmatic innovation and to think about other common-sense ideas (at least from a lefty parent’s point of view) that seem to mostly get short shrift in educational policy.

Like…

1. Getting regular feedback from students on what is working and not working for them in their learning process, including acknowledging, respecting and publishing that feedback, and engaging students as one of the stakeholders that can be included in efforts to make their educational process work better. In a democratic society this seems to me a total no-brainer, but so many of us adults (school staff, parents and others) seem to be caught up in the conventional wisdom of authoritarian school governance.

2. Reframing curriculum mandates to acknowledge that (unlike perhaps 150 years ago when mandatory public education was implemented throughout the country) today there is such a wide diversity of things that could be learned along with an acknowledgment of human diversity, that we should have less required curriculum rather than ever and ever more. I think this is counterintuitive to a lot of people, but think about it. Constraining 90% of every youth’s learning within an externally mandated subset of “core” curriculum works against young people plunging into an array of compelling subject matter until they are liberated from their youth by adulthood and high school graduation. Let’s let learning be more fun and based more on what interests us.

3. Reframing school assessment to encourage a wide diversity of learning environments rather than a Henry Ford “any color as long as it’s black”, OSFA approach. As a parent I recall my frustration at failing to find a learning environment for our own kids that was in tune with their learning style, instead forcing them day after day into a regimented instructional environment that acknowledged them only as “product” rather than as “stakeholders”. (See my post on “The Case for Many Educational Paths”.)

From the point of view of a parent who sees their kids as autonomous human souls with unique developmental paths ahead of them, education is not a race to the top. I can understand how a national bureaucracy with the responsibility for outcomes for 50 million youth can get caught up in talking up standardized rigor, for CYA political purposes. But it’s just not pragmatic humanistic thinking and “right-sizing” for effective human development that accommodates the diversity of how we all interact with the world and chart our own courses.