What Makes a School Great?

How do you define a great school?

The way it's typically done in the US is via standardized test scores. If you search a particular school, most likely you'll end up at greatschools.org, a website that ranks schools solely on the most recent standardized test scores available.

Obviously this ranking system leaves much to be desired, particularly for those who realize the flawed nature of standardization and high stakes testing. There is no attention paid to any of the important features of a school that research has proven to be crucial for student learning. These include class size, recess time, parent/community involvement, teacher collaboration/support, and student interest level, just to name a few.

It pains me that some parents select their child's school based solely on a group of test scores that have little application to the world. Standardized tests, after all, cannot measure some of the more important life skills such as problem solving, creativity, social skills, and compassion.

So why then, are we basing such an important decision--where to send our children to school-- on these functionally useless test scores?

Efficiency Is No Friend of School

I love reading blogs and articles about education. This one, by Peter Gray, discusses schools not as places of learning, but places to show off via grades and test scores. He makes a secondary point that I want to discuss further.

Efficiency. This is the enemy of schools, at both the administrative and classroom levels. I'm focusing on the classroom side here, because that's what I know firsthand.

Most people have no idea how much time teachers spend on classroom management. For the average person who is likely unaware of what "classroom management" entails, here is a loose definition: the routines, procedures, and methods a teacher uses to maintain order in the classroom. This involves things such as how to calmly enter the classroom, the signal to get quiet, and signs hung about the room that remind kids to "use their inside voices." Teachers spend hours upon hours just practicing routines and procedures with students. This certainly saves time in the long run because then teachers aren't trying to quiet the class for five minutes straight ten times a day for the rest of the year. However, what if such procedures and routines weren't even needed?

Not having routines and procedures would only work if there were few enough students; I'd say ten or less for younger grades and 15 - 20 for older grades, depending on how the classroom is structured. Imagine the time saved! Entire days could be used more efficiently, perhaps even for a field trip or guest presenter!

Proof in the Pudding

I saw this invigorating, inspiring post today from The Libertarian Homeschooler:

Some Things I Wish I Had Understood When I Started Homeschooling

1. Lessons do not equal learning.

2. Curriculum does not trump real work.

3. My expectations about "who our children will be and what our children will do" need to sit down and shut up.

4. Most veteran homeschoolers don't do sit-down lessons until the child is six or older.

5. Some veteran homeschoolers don't do parent-initiated lessons.

6. Some children don't read until they're 10. Others, 13. And then they pick up and are reading at the same level as their been-reading-since-kindergarten peers. Without intervention.

7. The years we did book learning like mad, our son tested really well. The years we did no book learning at all, our son tested better. Don't put much stock in book learning or testing.

8. No lesson, no video, no book, no class can substitute for a curious parent who is with her child and asking questions, exploring, reading aloud, making messes, making mistakes, facilitating, doing intellectual match-making, and explaining stuff. There's no substitute.

9. You must spend a lot of time with your child every day, intentionally, and open-heartedly.

10. If you focus on understanding the child's needs and capacities everything else will fall into place. Until you understand the child you have in front of you, nothing will fall into place and you'll keep going from thing to thing to thing. 

To Each Their Own Interests

One of the things I struggled with as a teacher was what material to teach. Probably many secondary (middle and high school) teachers struggle with this issue.

I imagine it would be even more difficult to determine what students should learn, especially millions of students. My classes were a mere 20-30 students and there was incredible variation in interests and personalities among them.

The reason I struggled so much with what to teach is because research proves (and I strongly believe) that learning happens best when kids are interested and engaged. It is highly unlikely that any single book will be interesting and engaging to all students in a classroom, even if there are only 20. So how can a rigid set of standards apply to millions of unique individuals who happen to be the same age?

How is it that someone with an advanced degree can determine exactly what millions of children should know at any given point in time? I believe that a second grader interested in dinosaurs should be able to pursue that. And a fourth grader interested in ecosystems should be able to explore that. But with standardization, students aren't allowed to explore their own interests in the name of "college and career readiness."

How Many People Does it Take?

How many people should be responsible for writing the standards that millions of children will be expected to learn? What kinds of credentials should they have?

A mere TWO people wrote the language arts standards of the new Common Core. There was a third person that was consulted. The content that millions of teachers are now required to teach and that even more students are required to learn rests on two (and a half) individuals. But it's ok, because those two individuals are probably highly qualified, right?

David Coleman is perhaps the more notorious creator of the Common Core language arts standards. After graduating from Yale, he studied English literature at Oxford University and classical philosophy at Cambridge University. Not too shabby. Then, he applied for a high school teaching position in New York.... and was turned down. Instead, he began work with a large consulting firm, advising urban school districts. He has never been a teacher and has no educational training whatsoever. But wait, advising urban schools must count for something, right? Sure, but that is the business/administration side of schools and has little to do with instruction.

Anyone writing an educational standard should have some sort of education training and/or experience. Understanding how kids learn is important to creating standards. Incidentally, I left public education due to my interest in neuroscience. We have made leaps and bounds in brain research in the last 30 years but this amazing stuff has been ignored by public education. It is so incredibly frustrating to see schools doing the opposite of what research proves to be effective. Perhaps if the people who wrote the standards had some knowledge of teaching and how kids learn, their standards wouldn't ignore proven research.

Happy Birthday to William Kamkwamba

One of my favorite books and stories is the autobiographic novel The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. It is the story of a 14-year-old kid who built a windmill literally from trash, thereby bringing electricity to his African village for the first time. The author and innovative windmill builder is William Kamkwamba. The book is also available as a children's book. Here is the website for more information.

I love William's story for many reasons, one of which I'll focus on here. I like to see people succeed. As a teacher, helping others succeed is what I strove to do, even though schools make failure more possible. Shouldn't success outside of school translate to success in school and vice versa? The intention of public education, after all, is to prepare kids for life outside of school.

The reason William was able to build the windmill was because his parents couldn't afford his school fees and so instead of school, he went to the library and checked out books related to his interest in science and mechanics. Often times, kids do their best work outside of school, or in spite of school. A particular thing that comes to mind is coding/programming games. I would love to see schools who enable kids to follow their passions and build their own metaphorical windmills.

Places of Learning?

If schools are truly places of learning, then a child shouldn't be "good at" or "bad at" school. Every child has the capacity to learn and usually the eagerness, too, until school takes it away. The very idea that one can be "bad at" school means there is something going on besides learning. Being inherently "bad" at learning is impossible. Sure, we all learn at different paces and in different ways. But the fact remains that we can all learn, and we all do learn, one way or another. 

Perhaps public school only caters to certain types of learning, or only allows certain types of learning. This is especially true with NCLB and now Common Core, which have all but done away with hands-on learning of any kind. Hands-on education is less testable, or at least less directly testable. It's much easier to shove a story in front of a kid and have him answer the questions that go with it. Cheaper, too.