🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Let us rise up today with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make a better nation. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was reflecting on this challenge from Dr. King on this past MLK Day as I began to write this article. What does that "greater readiness" need to look like? Do we have a powerful pathway along which our students in primary and secondary systems of education become ready as adults to take on Dr. King's challenge? Yes, for some.
But not for all.
For me, one essential response to his challenge is to make our public education system that effective and powerful pathway for all our students. Our country needs all of them as rising positive contributors. We are not there yet. In a time where "personalized learning" has become a common and important topic for classroom instruction, the traditional system of public education presents hidden roadblocks to truly carrying out that goal. Our traditional framework of learning buries significant assumptions that no longer work for today's realities of diversity and its unfolding implications of tomorrow's rapidly changing challenges. Exploring these assumptions and what is built on them reveal serious inequities for too many of our students. The impact of that reality makes our education system a liability for those children it is intended to serve. We are past the tweaks of the traditional system that characterizes school and learning reform.
It's time for a paradigm shift.
Let's start this present discussion by looking at how students are certified to graduate from high school. Graduation commonly depends on each student's transcript of all high school courses, and the document is used to verify that the number and kind of courses passed satisfy district and state requirements. The intensity of expectations is primarily on the core classes in which students have gained proficiency defined by standards. Students take standardized tests to evaluate how well those standards have been absorbed. In some states, additional ways are required to show students' required proficiencies. Schools are rated at the district level according to how well students meet proficiency requirements. In many states, these student metrics have implications on teachers' evaluations, and even in some cases on continued employment.
There are two points to consider with this system of accountability. First, it is inevitable that the pressure from the district flows down to schools and their leadership teams, and from there to the teachers — and from there to the students.
The second is that there isn't always a direct connection between these standards-related accountability metrics for student learning to any given course grade. The challenge rests on the teacher's shoulders to connect standards-based proficiency assessments to how well their students reach course objectives. In the end, teachers ultimately give each student a grade for the course. If it is a passing grade, the course counts towards the student's graduation.
Despite teachers' heroic efforts to convey meaningful learning in this system, graduation certification is on metrics of achievement and assumes the developmental process of learning. The transcript assumes a view of a student's learning, but is in fact standardized, not personalized.
There are many areas where this process breaks down for some students and some areas where it holds all students back. One of the most significant issues arises from traditional approaches to time in the context of students' content learning.
Consider that a class is comprised of a group of students expected to proceed together through a course at the same speed — a pace that may likely be prescribed at the district level. Then students are expected to proceed through courses from grade to grade at the same rate, passing classes across all disciplines concurrently with demonstrated proficiency at each grade to matriculate to the next — together. Some districts have "on time to graduate" student data that becomes part of a school's rating. Content learning within time expectations increases the downward pressure from the district to the students.
But we know students learn differently and absorb content at different speeds and levels of depth. Two different outcomes are possible with some learners who don't match the external pace. The one most commonly receiving attention is when a student falls "behind." For them, over time, this attribute sinks in and sticks. The pressure to keep up becomes even more difficult. Schools can purchase remediation programs that are added into the school day at the expense of time blocks like electives, which may be critical for keeping young people in school. Being labeled as "behind" and "remedial" takes its toll on too many students. Additionally, with some, the school system pressure becomes layered on top of home background challenges. We scratch our heads and wonder why some students drop out.
The other outcome is that some students are fast learners in some disciplines but perhaps not others. In a course through which they might accelerate, whole-class instruction and pacing effectively holds them back. Teachers struggle to give authentic advanced learning activities to such students, which are not just more work at the same level geared to the class as a whole. Even if a teacher can in fact move these students ahead faster, the larger system makes it very difficult to matriculate the student to the next grade level as soon as they are ready. In part, this is because of the fixed nature of a school's master schedule and the pacing of the next grade's course.
What can be done to address how the meaning of graduation can be redefined and empowered?
In the following articles, I'll address key approaches that are needed, and why these constitute what I've called a paradigm shift. These will include new frameworks for learning time and place, teacher and district roles, and student creativity in a standardized environment.