Comments on: High School 2.0

By: 1:1 Laptop High Schools Down the Tubes? Not So Fast « Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Thu, 20 May 2010 15:51:44 +0000

[...] the Tubes? Not So Fast Jump to Comments Recently, I read about three public high schools (Philadelphia’s “School of the Future,” a joint venture with Microsoft, Liverpool High School, outside of Syracuse, NY, and T.C. [...]

By: Barry Garelick

Barry Garelick — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:20:09 +0000

From the article:

“As soon as we had to fit within the system, we lost everything innovative,” he said. “All over the country, urban districts are failing with the traditional curriculum. There’s a 45 percent dropout rate. These students don’t need that. They need something very different. Successful people learned by tinkering, by doing, they did not learn by sitting in a classroom in front of a board.

Could you please define what is meant by “failing with the traditional curriculum”? What are the numbers and the criterion for failing? If traditional teaching failed, it may have been because of traditional teaching done poorly. Has the author considered that teaching at Schools of the Future may be done poorly because it is inherent in the progressive nature of the “student-centered” and “inquiry-based” structure? How does the author know that succussful people did not learn by sitting in a classroom in front of a board? Traditional education is frequently portrayed as “rote learning”, facts in isolation, no connection to the real world. This is at best a mischaracterization and at worst a lie.

By: Catherine Johnson

Catherine Johnson — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:57:23 +0000

“It’s crazy to embed kids in projects…”

It’s crazy to “embed” kids in projects, period.

Next time, try Core Knowledge.

By: Pondoora

Pondoora — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:40:22 +0000

Bill and the Gates Foundation staff need private tutoring from Charles Payne, author of “So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools.”

By: Robert Clegg

Robert Clegg — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:26:49 +0000

Creating curriculum is Art. Not just anyone can do it. Similar to movie script writing, everyone thinks they can do it. It seems so straight forward. Even with a great premise for a thriller, writing the scenes and dialog that make it happen in an engaging and thrilling way takes talent, insight, skill, persistence, passion, and experience.

Especially with this new generation facing a multitude of entertainment and media choices, curriculum must now be approached as an art. Few people do it well. And a graduate degree is no guarantee. It’s not even a requirement.

By: Robert Clegg

Robert Clegg — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:13:48 +0000

Why were people right out of grad school recruited totally without experience and put on the front lines? They had someone creating the curriculum who had no teaching experience! And the article quotes a hand picked grad student with no teaching background in the math dept. No wonder this school hit every pot hole in the road.

I’d like to know why the first “chief learner” left. Personal reasons is a cover up politically correct front. We all deserve more information there. It’s a huge failure to recruit a CEO that leaves quickly.

By: Patricia Kokinos

Patricia Kokinos — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:30:50 +0000

The greatest lesson from this experiment in terror is that our minds must change before our schools can change. That means a sea change in what our expectations of school might be and definitely a change in the way learning is measured. It’s crazy to embed kids in projects and then test them with “standardized” measures. It’s equally crazy to expect kids raised on the standard pablum formula of controlled learning to suddenly develop a taste for freedom and creative thinking. Somewhere we’ve got the development process backward, still trying to fit the round peg of Schools of the Future into the square hole of a top-down, formulaic and moribund bureaucracy. Let’s put our creativity to educating the public about a NEW VISION for schooling that can excite kids and parents and give teachers like Kate Reber et al. an inspiring place to practice their art. Patricia Kokinos, http://www.ChangeTheSchools.com

By: marcus may

marcus may — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:52:30 +0000

A great architectural feat, and perhaps a good attempt at changing education, but 21st century educational models can’t require tens of millions of dollars per school – they must be scalable to be useful.

Visit http://www.newpointschools.org and see a 21st century high school model with a cost structure lower than traditional public schools and yet has 1:1 PC to student ratio, online curriculum and a 95% customer satisfaction rating.

By: Thomas Gaffey

Thomas Gaffey — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:54:10 +0000

I always thought (and still think) that the school of the future was about ideas and people. There are people that work within that building that will move on and do extraordinary things in education. Failure is an empty word that doesn’t capture the experiences of sitting down with a group of people and asking fundamental questions about what it takes to educate well.

Just because this experience hasn’t resulted in a miraculous change in test scores does not mean that it has failed completely. I started my career here and now I have a pretty high bar to take on to my next attempt at educational reform, whatever or wherever that might be.

Nice article Dale. I appreciate your determination at portraying the many perspectives about our school.

By: Dick Schutz

Dick Schutz — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:02:28 +0000

Neither Bill Gates nor Arlene Ackerman has been “turned around” by the SOF experience, and the school has turned around to the past.

Education Building is as complicated as Nation Building. It can be done, but it requires more than rhetoric and money.