When you bring together any group of children, you immediately notice the wide range of interests, talents, and capabilities. We then pack them off to our school systems for instruction so they can pass the standardized tests. Is there a better way to approach this? We think three things can be done to address diverse needs. Implementing them will require leadership, a shared vision, and it will all need to be enabled by Digital and Information Technology.
Our public schools are seemingly ensconced in a hierarchy of oversight. The US Department of Education sets standards and dispenses some money to the states. The states set additional standards and dole out funds to school districts, which then set further standards and partially fund the local schools. But the bulk of the funding typically comes from property taxes within each municipality.
It is not surprising that this hierarchy of oversight and funding has led to a desire for performance in education. This has manifested itself in programs like No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Common Core. The former mandated standardized tests, lots of them. The latter focused on defined curriculum. One thing that hierarchies do well is come up with “one size fits all” solutions.
The problem is that the students have a diversity of natural talents, interests, and learning styles. Some are visual learners, others aural, others percolate with the written word. Some can focus on lectures and demonstrations, while others need to actively participate with others. Some have a bent towards sports, others academics, and still others music, arts, and dance. One size fits all curriculum and testing risk pounding all these varied shaped pegs into a single round hole.
Fortunately, there are a variety of education reforms that are more student-focused and encourage learning as an exciting and engaging experience that allows for all the student diversity. While much of this innovation is found in the private and charter schools, some public schools are moving in this direction as well, but typically in larger school districts.[1]
In public schools, the impact of standardized testing (MCAS[2], etc.) and Common Core has been to drive the classroom teaching to focus on passing the test. This “teaching to the test” focuses on selecting the right answer from a multiple-choice list. It does not encourage the development of the students’ natural talents, their athletic or artistic abilities, their collaborative skills, or arguably prepare them for life as contributors and participants in the general social and economic life of a community.
Further, all of this education has been location-based. The location is the schoolhouse, the classroom. Kids go to school, are taught, learn, and are tested in the classroom. In the lower grades, it is typically a single room unless art is taught (if at all) in a separate room. In middle and high school, the students move from the history room to the math room. Homeschooled children typically have a place in the home that is the equivalent.
So we have a hierarchic education system and a diverse set of learners locked in fixed classrooms or campuses, that is, until the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic quickly moved the classroom to the home, a camper in a national park, the school parking lot (where there was wifi), and for far too many, nowhere. This latter group may lack a home and/or the technology[3] to connect with the classroom delivery system.
Our education delivery system is differentiated based on physical location, while the needs are diverse and for many, especially in smaller school districts, unfulfilled.
The immediate impact was to move the existing curriculum online using Zoom, Google Groups, and Microsoft Teams to try to replicate the in-class experience. Teachers quickly became tech support, parents became classroom monitors, and the quantity of teaching content and learning dropped by 30%-60%[4] for the students who remained engaged. Others dropped out entirely. This situation is not even a half-win for students, never mind the burden on parents and teachers.
COVID-19 has broken the mold, and technology issues aside, it has exposed a new opportunity. With the right technology, it can lead to a new, more student-centered educational process and result. The pandemic has made every student, every parent, and every teacher proficient in using a variety of technologies. Taking advantage of these new or extended capabilities is at the core of the opportunity. It has three parts:
- Tailoring education to the students’ natural talents and learning styles. Imagine a student with an affinity for studio art who can digitally connect with a painting class in another school, district, state, or country.
- Broadening the available curriculum choices for mid to higher grades. Imagine a STEM program that involves designing a product in one school and manufacturing it on equipment in another, or has access to advanced chemistry or physics in another state, all via collaborative digital tools.
- Expanding the horizons of the students through collaboration with a broad range of learners. Imagine project teams made up of students from Presque Isle, Maine, and Miami, Florida (opposite ends of US1) with an unfamiliar linguistic and cultural mix, trying to achieve a common objective and learning from one another, not to mention learning a new language or two. All enabled by information technology.
While there have been advances in technology to support such activities, there are needs for a comprehensive look at both the educational goals, and the technology needed to implement them.
Each of these ideas represents a new differentiation of education, not based on a place but on student needs and interests. It is a grand vision of the future, but one that will have to be achieved incrementally. Implementation must be done in chunks.
Over the long term, this will require many changes to how education is delivered and supported. Some Charter Schools and large school systems are paving the way and can provide test beds to see what works and what does not. Those that work should be expanded, perhaps to a few schools initially, and eventually throughout all schools. There will be missteps, but properly managed, these can be valuable learning experiences. We need to start the process and focus on the long term goals.
[1] blueschool.org Blue School is founded by Blue Man Group, located in Manhattan. It has Pre K – 8 grades, and focuses on project based learning. High Tech High is located in Orange County, CA. It is a network of schools with project based learning covering K-12.
[2] https://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/ MCAS is the Massachusetts based achievement tests mandated by NCLB. Every state has its own version of the tests.
[3] Alina Tugend, Phyllis W. Jordan and Mark A. Stein, “This School Year Has Been Unlike Any Other” New York Times, October 14 2020.
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCNNxeolXHU Marion County School Board Meeting 50% of time is spent in tech support role.
Interview with University of Tennessee professor. Could only cover 75% of the material allocated for a full class session, assuming no tech support issues.
Implied by the sentiment of the analysis is the idea that there is a near-perfect fit of education for each individual student. I doubt it. For one thing the students change too much. ElHi education isn’t dealing with college students with a clear sense of agency; this is growing and learning kids. But even if such an ideal could be defined for some, much less many students, its besides the point. One value of being obliged to attend classes in math, history, reading/literature, even Phys. Ed. is exposure to a broader world than your fit. I prefer well-rounded knuckleheads.
I suppose the idea behind the name “Common Core” is to ensure a level of well roundedness. I’ll leave it to others to say if Common Core itself would or could do that. I’d like to believe that’s part of its point. My sense is that its too big. The “core” is so broad in its “girth,” the time suck in classroom and home learning is such that little else gets done.
I would add a recommendation beyond the tailoring of education, the broadening of curriculum and the expansion of horizons. I doubt that there is room in any but the very gifted students’ day to take yet more of any of these with the “footprint” of the current core. We need the equivalent of the Five Minute University (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4&ab_channel=joeytaggs).
The Stakeholders who conceive of and compromise on “the core” should be limited to a known, controlled percentage of the oxygen in the education space. Something on the order of the National Core is 25%, the State Core is 25%, and the remainder as local would be very free-wheeling. 70% National, 20% State and 10% Local would be closer to a CEO’s portfolio view of Endeavors: how many involve the traditional business, how many emerging businesses, how many new innovations?
Its in the remainder, however large, that the specialization would be realized. But the core is key. It binds us together and reflects a vision. Yet its size, scope and breadth must be limited, must be controlled, to allow for that remainder and its fundamental benefit.
Ben,
Your thesis that the current education factory lacks the ability to customize its product for the individual student has merit. I am reminded of Henry Ford when he told customers “You can have any color you want as long as it’s black.”
We do seem to be making moves in the right direction, but it is taking generations to move inches. Progress has been made in Special Education, Magnet & Charter Schools, School Choice, and elevated STEM in Vocational schools, but the pace is too slow and too isolated among well-heeled municipalities.
The problem will only get worse. With accelerated skill obsolescence in the workplace. our educational system runs the risk of producing graduates that are out of date the day they receive their diplomas. We need to start educating “learners” not students. I suggest your readers check out Heather McGowan’s talk about the importance of lifelong learning in the following clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqlmp8kJcjE&authuser=0