Fixing Our Schools
By
“Cooking School” — Bigstock Photo
After a wonderful long weekend , I thought it might be appropriate to momentarily drop my Junkyard Dog/Badass Teacher persona and offer some positive ideas about how to improve our educational system.
I think we need to drop the test-based, one-size-fits-all model of education and allow for far more experimentation in school design. To this end, I would suggest that the following approaches to school organization and design be encouraged, in some cases beginning at middle school, in others beginning in high school:
- An expansion of “portfolio schools” which are assessed based on holistic evaluation of student academic work, rather than performance on standardized tests. New York City’s “Urban Academy” is a great example, a multiracial school known for high levels of student/teacher engagement.
- The revival of vocational and technical high schools teaching skills connected to the rebuilding of the infrastructure, sustainable design, repair and maintenance of information systems, along with traditional skills that such schools once offered such as plumbing, electronics, auto repair. Not only will such schools create an entry into existing job markets for their students, they will ease the transition to a