The Education Manifesto: Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty defend their approach

WSJ article link

Rhee and Fenty sum up their approach as Merit Pay for Teachers = Success. But on review of their whole strategy and execution, it really seems like getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people OFF the bus was what made the most difference school by school.

(I'd like to vote the idea of merit pay off the island. A teacher should be paid for the role -- and perform well or be let go. A teacher is either worth having on the staff, or isn't. No wonder teachers' unions are upset. No one should feel like they have to deal daily political fealty to a particular school administrator in order to be fully paid for their job.)

The other piece of the right-on wrong-off staffing strategy success was to "...allow principals to make the layoffs based on the quality, value and performance of their staffs." This kept the decision-making local to each school and its own leadership. Principals got to own their staffing decisions; staff got to be accountable to their principals and not to every governing member of the school district. Cutting down on the I have eight bosses effect can't but help.

Notes for the future school administration file...

Prototype schools

A short list of folks we can contact at Dewey-oriented schools in the US:

1: John Dewey Learning Academy in Leecompton, KS, was founded nine years ago as an alternative high school.

Based in Kansas, but we might want to reach out by phone and email to get a sense of how these folks got started and what they are accomplishing.

"The mission of the John Dewey Learning Academy is to provide an authentic, nurturing, and academically challenging learning environment for high school level students that is connected to the world outside of school, is meaningful for students, and promotes their positive sense of community and enthusiasm for learning."

2: John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, NY, opened in September 1969. They list some interesting core principles:

* Students should learn by doing
* Students should learn at their own pace
* A student's education should be validated by his/her experience
* Grades inhibit learning and promote unwanted competition
* A classroom should be conducted by many teachers and many learners, not by one teacher and many learners
* If you give students responsibility, they will be responsible
* Students must be active participants in their education

3: The John Dewey Academy in Great Barrington, MA, just down the highway from Rachel and Greg in the Berkshires.

This one is a boarding high school for students ages 15-21. Their mission:

"We provide an individualized and comprehensive education for bright, troubled adolescents with a history of self-defeating or self-destructive choices. Our peer-based approach leads our students to high levels of achievement and inspires them to develop in ways that promote self-respect, maturity, and respect for others."

I found their FAQs helpful as a reality check as we continue to consider student needs when dealing with students with less privileged or less stable histories. Clinicians on board.

In a New Role, Teachers Move to Run Schools

With the gradual shift from "Principal Teacher" (19th century) to "Principal Administrator" (20th century), teachers are finally discovering what Waldorf has known for such a long time. Teachers must be leaders and, ideally, have control over the environment in which they teach. That means being responsible for the curriculum, the facilities, and the schedule. I cannot reinforce enough the role of appropriate leadership in the school system. Administrators are currently measured on their ability to enforce standards from above. Leadership and significant participation from below is neither cultivated nor appreciated. Is it any wonder teacher attrition rates are so high? I think not.

Thoughts on a Dewey school: student background edition

An "aha" moment getting at the thing I've been trying to pin down during our conversations -- what has us talking about disadvantaged/underprivileged students and boarding schools? Where is the emphasis on environmental factors coming from? What is it we're feeling the need to control for and/or eliminate entirely from students' lives 24/7?

In Experience and Education, John Dewey writes:

"I am not romantic enough about the young to suppose that every pupil will respond or that any child of normally strong impulses will respond on every occasion. There are likely to be some who, when they come to school, are already victims of injurious conditions outside of the school and who have become so passive and unduly docile that they fail to contribute. There will be others who, because of previous experience, are bumptious and unruly and perhaps downright rebellious."

Dewey goes on to say that neither the traditional "battle of wills" method of bringing non-participating students into participation, nor the straight out exclusion of these students from the school, are solutions to these kinds of student situations. He also goes on to discuss the need for sufficiently thoughtful planning on the part of the school, so as to make room for and have resources to deal with such students.

But the assumption I'm hearing is that students start out wanting ever so much to learn and participate democratically and prepare ahead and strike the optimal balance of respect for authority and confidence in their individual positions. This I tend to agree with, but only within the context of students' developmental levels. There is likelihood of student disengagement, rebelliousness, passivity, and poor previous experience no matter where students come from in the socioeconomic spectrum. These things are part human variant, part developmental stage (like separation from authority in high school or devotion to black & white thinking and social group definition in middle school), and part -- not all - environment.

In our next conversation, or one of the next anyway, I'd like to chat more with the group about how, if at all, we would like to continue exploring the implications of targeting specifically disadvantaged student populations for any school endeavor. Ditto the boarding school. There's quite a bit students lose when they are removed from their home environment into one created by, and consisting solely of, their school environment. The kind of students we start talking about when we talk about the benefits of a boarding school will need much more infrastructural support than just a caring set of teachers and a dorm dad.

(Just having an anti-Stand and Deliver backlash moment, and wondering if we can talk about who we want to be as educators without creating straw orphans to save by the sheer power of our great teaching and school administration in the process.)

Have at it with me in the comments?