The myth that public schools can't innovate

[kaygore]

In the Obama-Duncan education world, teachers are the problem! Yes, perhaps the most powerless group in the public education arena is the target of the Obama-Duncan reform movement in education. Offer good teachers $100,000 a year in salary and public education will meet the needs of all learners. Increase the number of charter schools where teachers have even less power, and eventually public education will be so reduced in size that the powers that be can drown it in a bath tub.

I am so tired of attacks on public education. Can it do better, sure! I have been in schools in poor neighborhoods where the bathrooms didn't work, where the halls smelled of urine, and the classrooms lacked sufficient heat. It broke my heart. Teachers have little or no control over school funding or the inequities therein.

Every public school in American should look like Santa Fe Community College--beautiful, inviting, peaceful. But, when it comes to education in this country, we want to do it on the cheap and then blame those who are not given the resources or the support needed to be successful.

Let me tell you about Lemon Grove School District (Lemon Grove, CA: http://lemongroveschools1.net/lgsd/site/default.asp) and then you tell me if public schools can't innovate if they have the leaders with the visions and drive to do so. Rather than attack the teachers, attack those in public school administration who lack the drive, the will, and the vision to make real change.

Due east on the I-94 from downtown San Diego, Lemon Grove, California, is a small, lower-socio-economic, culturally diverse community of about 30,000 residents. The Lemon Grove K-8 school district serves 4,200 elementary and middle school students, a large number of whom are not native English speakers. Over a decade ago, Lemon Grove School district had a vision of technology as a means to facilitate the learning of all of its students. The result of implementing that vision is that Lemon Grove schools are among the most exciting in the country.

Ten years ago, the school district formed a partnership with Cox Communications, the local cable company, to provide broadband intranet connectivity between the schools and the students’ homes. Using Citrix MetaFrame and providing each student with a thin-client computing device, Lemon Grove has enabled students and teachers to access online instructional materials 24/7, extending learning beyond the four-walls of the classroom, as well as enhancing communication among all stake-holders. The result has been a dramatic increase in student achievement and a deep appreciation of the school system by residents of Lemon Grove.

In November of 2006, I had the opportunity to visit an eighth grade science class at Lemon Grove Middle School. Several round tables that could seat up to five students were arranged with various numbers of chairs pulled under them in the middle of the room. On one wall of the room were windows with bookshelves arranged under them. Around the rest of the room were long tables, some with chairs pulled up to them but not in any organized order. The walls of the room were covered with posters—purchased, teacher made, as well as student produced. Various science-related student projects hung from the ceiling. The room had the feeling of a very inquisitive child’s bedroom rather than a classroom.

We met with the teacher briefly before the class started. She explained that the students were studying force and motion and that we would see most students working in small groups on the part of the project that involved using simple model cars that they had built to collect data on the effects of different surfaces, heights, and of various weights in the cars on the distances traveled. Other students who were in groups that had completed that part of the project would be researching motion, momentum, friction, and simple machines on the Internet and through print sources to verify the findings of their group.

When the students tumbled to the classroom, they were seemingly oblivious to the visitors or the teacher, taking their positions around the room in various spots, then opening their thin-client computing devices, and either beginning to work on their computing devices or singly or in small groups preparing for other tasks.

Groups of three students positioned themselves at round tables and created incline planes with objects they secured around the room: textbooks from one of the shelves, a board and a brick, etc. While one student measured heights and recorded the information on his computer, another weighed and recorded the weight of a small model car, then a third timed the decent and recorded the time and distance in her computer.

Another group of three students sat at a round table at the edge of the room with the teacher, presenting their findings and receiving feedback as she reviewed their work and made comments and suggestions regarding not only their results but how they recorded and presented those results.

Another group of students was gathered in a corner reviewing notes from their Internet searches and review of other materials, comparing what they had found and noting where they needed additional information and where they still were lacking answers.

Other students were using their computing devices to search the Internet for information for the project while one student was reading a chapter on force and motion in a Time-Life book. Still another student was watching a video on force and motion on his computing device. One boy was using a computer-based program on force and motion. Finally, one group was discussing how they would present their findings using PowerPoint.

What impressed us as observers was how engaged the students were in their learning. Student activities began in the concrete with the actual experimenting with the cars, weights, surfaces, and inclined planes, then and moved up Dale’s Cone of Experience, culminating with students discussing how they would represent their new knowledge symbolically.

The one-to-one computing environment facilitated a powerful constructivist approach to learning where students were active and engaged participants in their own learning. Students constructed their understanding of force and motion and then had the opportunity to reinforce and practice their new knowledge in a variety of real-life contexts—multiple trials with the cars, discussions among their group members, review with the teacher, individual research, and then presentation of their group’s findings to the class.

Each group worked at its own pace and the individual research portion of the project accommodated individual differences as students were able to refine their understanding through a variety of media that addressed different learning needs and styles. Students provided feedback to each other in their group as did the teacher. Students through their individual research also used what they discovered to refine their understandings. Social interaction among the group members not only provided feedback but facilitated the learning of those students for whom verbalizing their understanding of a concept is a powerful means of making meaning and retaining what has been learned.

In Lemon Grove School District, instructional technology has leveled the learning playing field, enabling all students to become successful learners as well as to learn valuable group process skills that will serve them well throughout their lives.