If 'Michelle Rhee' was the answer, what was the question? What if 'strengthening management' is the wrong approach? The goal surely is: quality teachers who put students first. Might there be an easier way?
Are urban superintendents warming to innovative uses of technology? To new roles for teachers? In a recent letter to the Washington Post 16 major superintendents indicate yes. But instead of focusing only on teacher tenure, or adding new technologies to existing classrooms, they could also engage in a complete re-imagining what is possible with schools.
The Paul Revere Innovation School is the first of two new schools to open this year under a 2009 Massachusetts law that allows districts statewide to create schools with autonomy reflective of the chartering sector. Superintendent Paul Dakin describes the ways that the district, administration, and teachers cooperated to design the school and the importance autonomy played in its character—including extended learning time and alternative assessments.
Peter Theil’s grants could provide the inspiration for an innovative high school, modeled after people like Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Gates: Allow for autonomy, accommodate and support entrepreneurialism, and provide an option to start into college courses through online or on-campus courses.
In this guest post LeAnn Binford, director of operations at Big Thought, argues that exposing under served students to expanded forms of learning improves performance. Autonomy and financial support are necessary for this type of re-working of assessment to function well.
As Zuckerberg points at a particular state and calls for start ups, the question raises: Where are the entrepreneurs? There will be people that can come in from the outside, surely. But as with technological innovation, may we assume improvement in schooling can also be driven by the ‘users’?
In this guest post Nick Mathern of Gateway to College describes an attempt to reduce dropout rates by allowing prospective dropouts to move into post-secondary education sooner. Gateway to College helps potential high school dropouts to earn a high school diploma while also earning college credits.
