I ran across an article in EducationWeek recently, titled “What It Will Take to Transform Public Education (in 4 Charts).” Written by Elizabeth Rich, the article states:
“The EdWeek Research Center heard this summer from more than 1,000 educators in a nationally representative survey on their ideas about whether the pandemic transformed public education. Remarkably, 95 percent of respondents saw the pandemic as inciting some kind of change – and half of them said that the pandemic was transformative.”
“But the devil’s in the details. Respondents were clear about what they feel is standing in the way of major transformation. Aside from funding issues, 42 percent of educators said that either state, local, or federal officials and state, local, or federal policy and laws are among the biggest obstacles to change.”
“When it comes to the lasting impact of the pandemic 10 years down the line, educators care most about the human dimension of schooling: Almost a third want to see more attention paid to student well-being – and that includes student mental health. One in 5 said they would like to see less attention paid to standardized testing.”
And who or what is the biggest force for change or transformation when it comes to education? Teachers, 35 percent said. One out of 10 respondents said it was administrators, and 13 percent cited funding. And even though survey respondents believe policymakers and their laws are obstacles to change, only 16 percent think policymakers’ efforts could be transformative.”
“What does that say about the field that only 1 percent of educators think that elected federal officials could bring about education transformation? At the very least, it tells us that educators believe agency for change rests in their own hands, provided they have the support – at every level – to do their jobs.”
It’s surprising that 95% of this survey’s respondents believe public education changed over the last 3 years, and that 50% would define that change as transformative. It seems to me that most of what was tried in public schools the past two years, like online learning, has been dismissed as a failure. A great number of America’s students are back in schools and classrooms, and probably receiving the same type of instruction they received before the COVID-19 onset.
I don’t know if public school educators really understand what learner transformation really means. Teachers seem trapped in a place where the classroom, a set curriculum, and they themselves are seen as the instruments of transformation.
They are dead wrong.
Learner transformation begins with asking a young learner what they would like to learn. It continues when a well-trained adult learning leader – I like learning coach over teacher – is identified and hired to support the young learner and their peers as they begin to build a personalized learning plan. Transformation continues when that learning plan leads these young learners and their learning coaches on a pathway that takes advantage of community resources as well as the best that schools might offer.
And let’s get this straight. Public education is not underfunded. It has more than enough resource to support learning plans for all young Americans. The problem is that our current public education system is too human resource heavy, meaning that the system depends on lots and lots of teachers, principals, paraprofessionals, central office staff, bus drivers, coaches – and the list goes on and on – to keep the system going.
When we launched our personalized learning lab school awhile back, we funded each one of our 50 learners at $7,500. That allowed us to pay two learning coaches, one an expert in literacy and the other an expert in problem-solving, nearly $100,000 a year, with a hefty amount left over for additional learner support. We didn’t have a central office. We didn’t have a principal. What we did have was two learning coaches driven to improve 50 young learners’ reading, writing, and problem-solving abilities.
After 3 years, 48 of our 50 young learners showed at least 4 ½ years of growth as readers, writers, and problem-solvers.
And let’s get another thing straight. It’s time to stop blaming elected officials – local, state, and federal – for a failed public education system. From my vantage point, the only move all three levels could make to improve public learning outcomes would be to assign public monies to action research projects that test personalized learning results compared to traditional ones – especially for black, brown, and poor kids.
More attention given to a young learner’s mental health and less focus on standardized testing seem connected to me. When I was a middle school and high school principal, I saw lots of kids whose mental health as impacted by a state-generated and federally mandated high-stakes test. Getting young learners out of these pressure cooker situations can only help kids feel better about themselves. And besides, there are other ways to figure out whether a young learner has learned what they want to learn than giving them a pencil and paper test.
It’s nice that the teachers surveyed believe they are the biggest enabler of change/transformation in K-12 education, but they aren’t – unless they commit to re-training themselves so that they are more focused on learning than teaching. Current higher education institutions still train young teachers to be someone who is supposed to “know,” instead of training them to be someone who “guides, and sometimes knows.”
Here’s the bottom line. The current traditional public education system has tried to transform itself for the last half century. Most of that effort has failed.
Isn’t it time to try different with different leadership pursuing different goals and outcomes?
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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