Something interesting is happening in education-land. People are starting to ask the kinds of questions that haven’t been asked before. If students can get report cards with a spring term that virtually disappeared, how relevant -- or important -- are those report cards in the first place? If some kids actually learned more in COVID isolation than they did in schools, how do we account for this? If children can now attend schools on a hybrid schedule -- with part of their week in-school and the other part online -- what does that tell us about the sanctity of classroom instruction? What exactly is happening in schools anyway? Is it time for an overhaul?
While most educational administrators are currently preoccupied with the logistics of reconstructing the coming academic year, and most parents are focused on the safety protocols that will be put in place as their children return to school, there is nonetheless a growing cadre of teachers, educational leaders, students, and parents who are reading between the lines and probing beneath the current frenzy to ask themselves whether there is not an opportunity here to fundamentally reimagine the purpose and operational structure of schools.
On August 8th, a colleague and I had the privilege of hosting an Educational Roundtable video conference with 12 participants, including teachers and administrators from both the public and independent school systems, a highly-regarded educational researcher, and an education student just preparing to enter the field. Barbara J. Smith, the keynote speaker, had recently completed a book entitled How Much Does A Great School Cost? School Economies and School Values, so she began the conversation with an overview of her “Imagine If ..” chapter that sketches out one version of the next generation of schools.
What was remarkable was the depth and breadth of the conversation that followed. Without initially intending to do so, this group of educators ended up spontaneously addressing 16 Questions having to do with the future of education:
What ought to be the purpose (and method) of K-12 schooling?
What are some key barriers to innovation and change in schools?
How does change actually happen in schools?
What can educational leaders do to introduce change in schools?
What are the relative chances for innovation in public vs independent schools?
How do you scale innovations to make them system-wide?
What are the chances of implementing system-wide changes in mainstream education?
What are the structural issues we need to address to change schools for the better?
How can we use physical space in schools to better match our educational purposes?
What effect does the size and composition of a learning cohort have on learning?
What part does digital technology play in supporting and enhancing learning?
How might we change our assessment practices to better align with our educational goals?
How do expectations about university admissions shape what happens in K-12 schools?
How has the COVID pandemic affected our thinking about schools?
What issues of inequality, equity and racism do we need to address in reimagining schools?
How do we go forward in reimagining and reengineering the next generation of schools?
These questions -- and ones like them -- express the “under-rumblings” of a growing number of parents, educators, and students themselves who sense that something fundamental needs to change in the way we understand and operate K-12 schools. Let’s hope that these questions and conversations will continue!
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Ted Spear has over 25 years of teaching and administrative experience in public and independent schools. His book, Education Reimagined: The Schools Our Children Need, offers a compelling vision for the future of education. He is an engaging speaker who invites parents and educators to change the way we think about schools.