Envision Florida Best Mathematics Grade 7 Answer Key

[Kathrine Selvage]

Iagree with your standards-based assessment. But two questions: how did standards based reform become so powerful and how do we get out of it? Two, has standards based reform become barrier to building the personaliozed and diverse schools you recommend? In what repects? Thanks Ron.

Ronald A. Wolk:

Arnie, in the late 1980s a couple of things were converging--the quest for systemic reform and the idea of national goals. You remember the first President Bush and the governors meeting in Charlottesville and setting goals for the first time.

Finally, standards based reform is a formidable barrier to innovation, personalized education, and the creation of more diverse learning opportunities. Schools like the New Visions Schools in NYC and most of the school designs supported by Gates are basically incompatible with a highly standardized, uniform system of standards and assessments. These small, innovative schools probably have to make serious compromises in their own educational practices in order to survive.

My argument is that policymakers and education leaders should create an open sector where new schools could be created and could operate with standards and assessments appropriate to ther educational philosophy and practice.

Ronald A. Wolk:

We could create the second front (and the open sector where it would flourish) through policy decisions at the state and district level. (The feds would have to be involved to call off the dogs on NCLB.)

Districts, especially large urban districts, could start replacing failing high schools with new innovative small schools that function under the aegis of the open sector, protected from the harshest requirements of standards based reform.

The new education opportunities that make up the second front offer real alternatives to the traditional schools in the present system. Somewhere between 40 and 80 percent of adolescents are not well served by the current system. Despite the enormous diversity among students, they are all funneled into a monolithic, one-size-fits-all education.

Question from Dr. Stephen L Gessner, President, Summer Institute for the Gifted:

I like innovation but who decides which ideas get funded? What are the evaluative tools used to measure success for these innovative schools? Should they be linked to standards and assessments that other schools have to follow or be excused from those, as many charter schools are? Given the mixed results for charter schools, where would the accountability be?

Ronald A. Wolk:

Funding decisions: The chartering process has already laid the groundwork here. States have mechanisms in place to evaluate charter applications, choose among them, and monitor them. That is something that can be expanded and refined.

Measuring success: Tougher question. First we need to spend some time defining success. Is it simply academic achievement as measured by test scores? Is it high attendance, high graduation rates, high college going rates? Is it the work kids do in and out of class? Do we count habits of mind and behavior?

Question from Jacquelyn Zimmermann, director, Editorial Policy, Publications and Printing, U.S. Department of Education and parent of school-age child:

Such schools as you propose would depend for their success on leaders (principals) and teachers. How would these people be trained in the kind of approaches and thinking needed for success? How long do you think it would take to train an adequate mass of such people to accomplish your proposed goal? Thanks for having this discussion.

Ronald A. Wolk:

You raise a real challenge, but one that has to be made in any education system. We are struggling to find and prepare pricipals and teachers for the current system, and not doing a terribly good job.

There are a number of small programs underway that prepare principals essentially by apprenticing aspiring principals to gifted principals. I know of some few conversations with universities in which innovators are trying to get schools of education to develop new and different programs to prepare teachers for these new and different schools.

If the establishment got behind this with incentives, resources, and marketing, we could make a real dent in the problem. These are small schools for the most part, and the movement is starting slowly. The challenge is not as daunting as trying to change the current system all at once.

Question from Barbara Morey, Education Specialist, Youth Advocates:

What should be the role of profit-making corporations and agencies in the re-forming of public education and the re-structuring of public school programs?

Ronald A. Wolk:

I think there are many roles that business could play in reforming public education. Technology is one major area. Traditional schools can never realize the promise of the digital revolution because of the way they are structured and operated. Software developers are driven by the entertainment market so there is not nearly enough really good educational software. If government, foundations, and business collaborated WISELY, we could revolutionalize education.

If we can get the right software and hardware and be creative and imaginative in crafting its use, virtual high schools should become increasingly popular. Given the promise of technology, it makes little sense to be building great physical plants where kids go for 6 or 7 hours a day.

I think extracurricular activities may be the most valuable part of the high school experience. I hope we can find creative ways to keep them alive and healthy in a society of virtual schools and small innovative schools.

Question from Walt Gardner taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District and was a lecturer in the UCLA Graduate School of Education.:

Will even the best schools that you create using your model by themselves be able to significantly narrow the academic achievement gap, or will you also work to create social and economic policies that cause the problem in the first place?

Question from Hal Portner, Consultant:

Mr. Wolk. Along with your advocacy for retooled schools and schooling, do you also see the need to retool teachers and teacher training? If so, in what ways?

Question from Erin Mosely, education reporter, Montgomery Advertiser:

Where will the funds for the nontraditional schools come from? How does the creation of these schools impact the current education funding infrastructure?

Ronald A. Wolk:

We should make sure the per pupil allocation follows the student. The chartering programs tend to provide some startup help, but after that the schools are funded just like regular public schools.

Traditional schools are labor intensive because the content-driven curriculum dictates expensive organization and staffing. We need the 50 million kids to take responsibility for their own education. They are our greatest untapped asset. Making optimum use of technology and using advisors to help kids manage their own education would probably give us the results we need at far less cost.

These new schools could cause financial problems for traditional schools by attracting students away from them, just as suburban schools did to urban schools over the past 50 years. The answer is not to outlaw suburban schools, but to make the urban schools competitive.

Inform yourself, talk to other teachers, organize, talk to parents and school board members, write op ed pieces, persuade your fellow teachers to start a charter school that is owned and operated by teachers (See EdVisions schools).

See my previous answer. I would find a few interested influential parents and start holding meetings in homes and neighborhoods to talk about the schools, about what we should expect, about what goes on inside those buildings and whether it makes sense, about what our own experience produced in us.

Question from John Mullaney, executive director The Nord Family Foundation Amherst Ohio:

This foundation has supported many schools that provide successful alternative models for educating middle and high school students. More often than not, they are private alternative or charter schools primarily because the school union leaderhip work very hard to thwart reform. How can the union leadership be brought on-board to this discussion and realize that in far too many schools across the country the leadership is the problem that creative teachers and school boards do not want to or do not know how to address constructively?

Question from Matt Matera, Program Coordinator, TRiO Educational Talent Search:

Because for every 100 American students only 18 graduate with an associate or baccalaureate degree within six years,how will the new-schools strategy make a stronger connection between the K-12 education and postsecondary education?

There are good examples in states of higher education and K-12 working together. Progress is being made in creating K-16 boards. Policymakers, foundation officials, and business leaders need to do more here.

Question from Milli Pierce, Executive Director, The Fund for Educational Excellence, Baltimore, Maryland:

Is there any evidence to suggest that using an outside partner to manage an Innovation School leads to high achievement for students or better management and leadership in the school?

Question from David Beedy, Advisor, Skyview Big Picture High School Denver, CO:

What national and common state policy and legal changes are the keys to initiating and maintaining ongoing and innovative school reform across the country?

Ronald A. Wolk:

Better chartering laws. There are organizations that have worked out good provisions and good language. Policy to permit innovative schools to march to a different drummer regarding standards and assessments. The state of RI has amended its grad requirements to incorporate some practices of The Met--multiple assessments, portfolios, etc. Funding provisions that provide equal funding to chartered schools along with facilities.

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