There are many moving parts to school reform/ revolution/ changes. Charter schools being a big part of changes ongoing, but teacher unions also big part of what has, is, and will happen with education and learning in the US. As well as the politicians as Leonard stated in the article posted yesterday…and then there’s the parents, the kids, the innovators, the startups, the venture capitalists, and on and on.
This story from NYTimes talks a bit about the interface between Charter Schools and Teacher Unions. And a group called KIPP, which is of note. There are studies that compare Charter school student performance using test scores with non Charter school students. Charter schools don’t always show up well in these studies, and sometimes are really terrible….but in NYC apparently do pretty well relative to the public schools.
IMO, Charter schools are innovation incubators, and may or may not serve any particular group of students well. But that’s kind of beside the point which is that someone has to be able to really do innovation because the conventional educational structure won’t. Or can’t. Expecting Charter schools to necessarily perform well is misguided imo, because their goals should be trying things out, and experiment with all kinds of different and new ways of learning/ education.
Some students will be at a disadvantage if they are in charter schools that “don’t work out”. This is a given of the process. But without innovation ALL students are at a more or less permanent disadvantage. We can keep all the teacher’s happy, but that also inhibits innovation. At a certain point, the need for change has to come first. We now have the powerful communication tools to help make the needed changes. We need leadership that gets us to the promised land, despite collateral damage along the way. No other way to get there. OSISTM.
This sounds too ruthless to be popular, no? Is it wrong-headed to believe that change is so needed as to make certain “sacrifices” necessary? Is there a “better way” than biting the bullet, so to speak? These questions might seem abstract, but they will soon be very much on many people’s minds as we are confronted by dramatic choices for how to get from here to there in learning revolution.
I’ve been enjoying perusing the KIPP website. They kind of have Core Concepts too. They call some of those “The Five Pillars”… http://www.kipp.org/our-approach/five-pillars. Among a list of “How We Do It”…which also seems Core Concepts to me….
IMO, it seems to me that we are reaching the point (more than two decades of Charter schools) where it is time to start applying our knowledge rather than waiting to find “the answer”.
Charter schools may serve as incubators, but they will never scale to address the universal education problem. Social and political will to change is the key ingredient that is missing – no simple cure.
I tend to agree with you that Charter Schools are not really likely candidates to scale well to the “student body” as a whole. By definition, their focus is usually a niche. OTOH, Diane Tavenner and her Bay area charter schools might be an exception…
Yes Doc, no simple cure… but then sometimes new tech changes things so fast that social and political will is a bystander. I’m concerned that we are going to lack the “mindset” to accept the changes needed…Leonard article a sobering reminder about how constricting the past viewpoints can be.
Yet I would never have foreseen MOOC blowing up as fast as it has. That old saw about an idea who’s time has come. Been watching a lot of “good stuff” on history channel about how changes propagated over time and distance. Even without trains planes and automobiles, a few things moved very quickly from one culture to another, and one part of the world to new continents etc.