A Defense for the Spinning Heel Kick

I'm going to a new principal in the fall, moving up from a vice-principalship. The main reason I'm changing jobs is to move from a "traditional" school with schedules, classes, bells etc. The new school is an Outreach school. It is a high school for students who have been expelled or otherwise unsuccessful in a regular school. I want to be able to have flexibility. We will still follow a standard curriculum with standardized tests at the end of grade 12 but timelines, hours per day, instruction, evaluation during a course can all be flexible for each student. I'm excited to hear that you are trying to change the idea of "school" on a larger scale. Let us know how it goes.

dcollins

Good luck on your new assignment! Leading in an environment like you described presents awesome opportunities for innovation. We will definitely be keeping everyone posted on our progress. We will be documenting our research, site visits, debates, parent meetings and brainstorms on my blog over the next school year: http://kriley19.wordpress.com/

This is one of the most articulate arguments that I have read in a long time. Thanks for a great article that was articulate and well-founded.

When my son was taking a martial art I had the same thoughts. I am glad to see you taking the idea and actually trying it. I say it will work and be great! So simple and elegant. We need reform to be simple and elegant, or it just won't work.

A thought-provoking post. I am hoping you are looking for thoughts, criticisms, and warnings! I am wondering, though, about the standards in your state. I know in our state the standards are not by grade level, but by grade level bands. There are "assessment anchors" that are grade level specific, but much too narrow to be useful for any true assessment of learning. I also am wondering if you are indicating that the state assessments used are accurate enough in determining what each child has mastered and the degree to which he/she has mastered subject content. It has not been my experience that learning anything beyond basic skills can be so simply and easily determined. There are so many complex processes involved in knowing and understanding! Teaching and learning are messy. If we want a system where we can move some kids on quickly and easily and keep others behind in "like groups," I do not think we would have to do much work - just look at the outside of school factors. We have plenty of evidence that tells us the children who come from secure home environments would fall in the group that moves on; the others rely on effective teaching practices to learn and progress. Teaching and assessing in valid and multiple ways hold the keys - simple, but not easy!

sk

Thanks you for your ideas and comments. You challenged my thinking in a number of areas that I think we need to be able to respond to:

• The validity and scope of the state standards in California;
• Standardized tests that merely assess basic skills;
• And the notion that some students will move ahead and some will continue to be left behind... (and that the variables that determine who moves ahead or gets left behind are too often those external factors that exist outside of school.)

Good stuff. I'm going to address these on my blog.

I remember a 7th grade math teacher who did her best to deploy this method in the "traditional" setting. She had three groups of students who had been divided based on mastery of a defined set of math concepts (similar to the standards). Students in her class could move up or down the within these three groups based on the pace of your development. In other words, there was a baseline pace expected for all, but there was no "theoretical" upper limit. The three groups of students were divided by how far above the baseline you were. You could demonstrate mastery on a particular topic through a diagnostic "pre test", allowing you to skip the topic completely if you demonstrated mastery on the pre test. In addition, you could re-test at any point in your development to demonstrate mastery, giving you the flexibility to move at a faster pace than would traditionally be allowed if you followed every portion of every lesson.

That was the other unique portion of the design. The teacher was free to spend more time with the "neediest" students, while differentiating her instruction for the three groups and, at times, individualizing instruction as time permitted.

I don't know if it worked well for all students, but it worked great for me.

One of the biggest challenges with aligning students by level of mastery is a logistical one. In theory, you could have an 8 year old student at the same level of mastery as a 14 year old student. So, how do you design a "system" which allows students to have personalized instruction (based on mastery level as you suggest)? Technology is a huge lever for this type of flexibility. Although there is great momentum in online education, in many ways, we're still at the infancy stages of deploying this in K-12 education, especially for the youngest students.

As we move away from our current 19th century industrial model, we can find great opportunities in blending what my teacher did in differentiating instruction and leveraging technology to help teachers do so.

Thanks Steve. You are right... technology and other powerful tools now available to us hold the (potential) keys to to creating a system designed to bend toward our students-- as opposed to the other way around. The role of technology will be huge in creating this transformation.