Yazan: admin | 14 February 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Assessment, Educational Innovations, International, Race to the Top, School Improvement
Is it more important for K-12 students to learn facts or to enjoy learning? Is it more important for students to learn about their own country or to know something about the world? Which is more critical, for students to complete Algebra II or to be able to work harmoniously with a small team of peers? Which will result in a more competitive workforce? A wiser population of adults?
Would you rather that students at the end of their 12 years of school emerged with ideas about their own future and their individual dreams, or perhaps to have sweated night and day, spending up to 10-12 hours a day studying to pass tests?
Is it fair to ask these questions? Are they relevant? Must there be forced choices?
If we were working with a team of the foremost educational experts and redesigning schools for the future, what critical components would rise to the top of our list? Who would we invite to plan with us? Would we want this to be a U.S.-based and operated endeavor or to include a team of international experts? Would it make any difference to the outcome? How do we avoid the communication difficulties and the problems coming to consensus when individuals come to the group with different philosophies, beliefs, preferences, and thinking styles?
Are we caught in a cycle, almost like a hamster on on a wheel, where we keep running in circles? Stephen Covey starts with “first things first.” What should be first?
What is it like for students to learn in various environments — public schools, private schools, charter schools, boarding schools, in homogenous settings, with a multi-cultural group of peers and teachers? How important is the physical structure of the school building, the resources, the quality of the teachers? If you could change just one variable what it would it be? Is the size of the school important — do small schools really make a difference?
And what of students who are the poorest, who live in poverty, whose schools have dirt floors and no walls, where there are no books? What improvements have occured in these schools in the last 10-15 years?
We have concrete answers to some of these questions. And in some areas we can see improvements. What’s next? How can you be part of the solution?
Just some random thoughts as I reflect on the research I did this week and the discussions I had with others about quality teaching and improving education — in the U.S. and internationally.