What's Become Clear

When we talk about school change there is always a discussion about preparing students for college. There is no doubt that in the 21st century those people who are the most successful tend to be those with the highest level of education. But not all college degrees are highly correlated with being successful in the 21st century.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and in fact later this week I’m going to be visiting with my friend Dr. Jackie Vietti, at Butler Community College to help me make sense of the whole question of college ready. You see, I can give you a whole pile of evidence that we are doing poorly when it comes to preparing kids for college, and that even many of those who make it through college, don’t get jobs that are high paying enough to pay off their college loans. So I am suffering from cognitive dissonance on this issue.

So I’ll tell you what I think I believe up to this point. I’m looking at college degrees from two perspectives. One, is the degree in high demand in society today; and two, is it a high skill degree? I’m still compiling a list of college degrees that I believe are high demand and high skill degrees. In this category I would put engineering degrees, many health science related degrees such as nursing, and some IT degrees. But I also put many two year technical degree, and even some industry certification programs. I’m sure there are others, so if you have some examples send them to me.

So that begs the question, are there some high skill low demand degrees? I think that some degrees in the sciences may fit this category; physics, biology, and chemistry. But I’m not completely sure of this.

And as I was thinking further about these categories I started to wonder if there are high demand and low skill degrees. I think there used to be, but I don’t think there are anymore. I think that liberal arts degrees used to be high demand and low skill. I think now liberal arts degrees are low skill and low demand.

when I graduated from college almost 40 years ago a liberal arts degree, like all college degrees, was the ticket to a good job. Today, that just isn’t true. Graduates with liberal arts degrees are perfectly prepared to go on to graduate school, but the jobs available for most of these degrees are for the most part low skill and sadly, low pay.

And therein lies one of our big problems. All of our K-12 core curriculum, and all of our gen ed courses in post secondary institutions are liberal arts courses. Which means we are spending huge amounts of our time, our most precious educational resource, preparing kids in low skill low demand areas, which the students see as boring and irrelevant. Perhaps it’s time as we talk about school change to begin to deal with the sacred cow of education … the liberal arts degree. – Steve Wyckoff

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Is a great deal of discussion around school change is focusing on the dropout problem. In Kansas, the governor has formed a commission to study dropouts because it has become such an economic issue. As the demand for high skill workers increases dropouts are increasingly a burden on society.

I think one of the positive things that could be addressed is the core curriculum in K-12, and the gen ed curriculum in higher ed. Both of these curricula are at least 115 years old dating back to the Committee of 10, and are primarily focused on the liberal arts.

There was a time in our history when the liberal arts meant well educated. In fact, when I graduated from college in 1972 a liberal arts degree was the ticket to a good job. That’s no longer the case. In fact if you look at two aspects of a college degree, the skill level that the degree instills in graduate, and the demand for the degree in society, the liberal arts degree today is both low skill and low demand. In days past the liberal arts degree was low skill, but very much in high demand.

The second piece of the liberal arts education has to do with our students. The vast majority of our students feel that our core curriculum in K-12, and gen ed curriculum in higher ed, are boring and irrelevant. Boring and irrelevant are not good conditions under which learning can occur.

When you couple all of these issues is obvious to me that our core curriculum and the gen ed curriculum in higher Ed serve no purpose today. They are a relic of education past. We can make major strides to increase the engagement and the relevance of our curriculum for all students by redesigning the primary focus of our system.

What might that new focus be? I’m not sure I have an opinion yet, I need to think about it more. But it may include a focus on globalization, who knows. But if we really want school change, real school change, and to reduce the number of students who leave our system uneducated, then we should take a critical look at the core curriculum in K-12, and the gen ed curriculum in higher Ed. – Steve Wyckoff

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Recently, I was at a social gathering and three sets of parents were engaged in a conversation about their kids attending community colleges. One of the students after graduating from community college was attending a technical college for training in a healthcare field.

This isn’t my first conversation with either parents or students about community colleges. I’ve become aware that there are really two sides to community colleges. One side is made up of very traditional, liberal arts, gen ed courses. Students typically pursue this educational opportunity for one of two reasons, to get the first two years of a four-year degree, or because they’ve been told you have to go to college to get a good job.

The other side of the community college is dedicated to job training with a core of gen ed courses. Students pursue this educational opportunity for specific job training.

There are two reasons for attending postsecondary institutions in the minds of Americans. One is to become a well-rounded citizen, and the others to get a better job.

When I think of the experiences that our students get when they attended a community college I would grade in this way:

If the student is pursuing a liberal arts education in order to be that “well-rounded citizen” I would give the community colleges a letter grade of “D.” It is my opinion that, for the most part, students in the traditional liberal arts classes approach them exactly like they did the core curriculum in K-12. They attend (usually), participate minimally, and do enough to get their desired grade, and move on. In addition they have done little, if anything, to enhance their career opportunities.

If on the other hand, the student is pursuing a specific career training program, I would give the community colleges a letter grade of at least a “B” if not an “A.” While the student may not have covered the material to become that mythical “well-rounded individual”, they have dramatically enhanced their career opportunities.

So if you are contemplating if your child to a community college, I would suggest that you strongly consider a specific training program. Your child will still meet the criteria for admission into a four-year university if they choose, and at the same time will have many more opportunities for jobs. By pursuing this option a student could avoid attending a community college and then finding it necessary to attend a technical college to receive training to actually get a job. – Steve Wyckoff

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Real school change will only happen when the “main dish” of education is a student centered, learning by doing experience. When our 115-year-old core curriculum is relegated to a  “side dish.” There is such a school, Erie High School in Erie Kansas. At Erie high school students have the option to be in a project based curriculum. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, I believe that students at Erie high school who are in the project-based learning curriculum, are the best prepared students in the state of Kansas to face their lives in the 21st century.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting with school leaders in the Erie school district. We had a very engaging and ebergetic discussion about many aspects, and affects, of project-based learning. About their journey to create a school that strives to help every student become remarkable. And not on standardized tests.

But as good as the conversation was the highlight of my day was to tour their new school that will open in the fall of 2010. Over the last 40 years I have been in many, many new school buildings. But this one was different. Oh, there were many of the same features you would see in any school. But what you won’t see in any school is a learning space specifically designed to enable and enhance student learning in a project based environment.

From the state-of-the-art natural lighting, to the large open aesthetically pleasing spaces that will house the individual student workstations, the new facility is amazing. And it’s not just the aesthetics, architect Allan Milbradt, and Superintendent John Wyrick, took the time to show me all of this state-of-the-art green technologies that are designed to enhance learning, reduce cost, and not do damage to the environment.

I only hope that visitors to the school will pay as much attention to the way that students are learning as they do the beautiful facility. The educators in Erie are making tremendous strides towards creating a learning experience that truly prepares every student for their life in the 21st century. This is rural school change! – Steve Wyckoff

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Yes I know blasphemy! But real school change would mean changing the high school curriculum. The high school curriculum has been part of what we believe schools must be for so long that we assume that it has to be that way. In fact our core curriculum has changed very little in 115 years.

In 1892 Charles Elliott, president of Harvard University, formed the Committee of 10 to define the college-bound curriculum. By 1894 the curriculum was complete and in place. In presentations I often use two slides that list the curriculum defined in 1894. I ask participants what the curriculum is? The two most common answers I get are, the regents required curriculum, or our core curriculum.

Just to give you an idea here are the courses defined in 1894:

2nd Secondary School Year

Foreign language … Latin, Greek, German,  French
English Literature
English Composition
Algebra*
Geometry
Astronomy
Botany or Zoölogy (Biology)
History

3rd Secondary School Year

Foreign language … Latin, Greek, German,  French
English Literature
English Composition
Rhetoric (Speech)
Algebra*
Geometry
Chemistry
History
* Option of book-keeping and commercial arithmetic.

4th Secondary School Year

Foreign-language … Latin, German, ranch
Greek
English Literature
English Composition
English Grammar
Trigonometry,1/2 yr.
Higher Algebra, 1/2 yr.
Physics
Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene
History
Geology or Physiography
Meteorology

As you can see over 115 years later it’s still basically our core curriculum. If indeed we want every student to become remarkable, forcing every student to take exactly the same outdated curriculum is not the way to get there.

So what should our curriculum look like? It’s not so much what it would contain as the characteristics it would have. You see, I believe every student should have a learning by doing, customized and individualized curriculum based on their needs, desires, and dreams. Can it be done? Certainly. It’s being done today at Erie high school in Erie Kansas.

Ron Edmonds said it best in the late 1960′s, “We know everything we need to know to educate every child all we lack is the will to do it.” –  Steve Wyckoff

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Friday I had the distinct pleasure of listening to a panel discussion by educators from Erie Kansas about real school change. Mike Carson, Ted Hill, Rose Frye, and Steve Oliver engaged in a wonderful webcast that lasted over an hour and a half, talking about project-based learning. The most encouraging thing about the webcast was that it dealt with education, and a better way of organizing and running schools to better meet the needs of the students, even though the discussion was prompted by declining resources and the need to dramatically cut costs in schools.

So why the title over under? Well, an over-under or over/under bet is a wager in which a sports book will predict a number for a statistic in a given game usually the combined score of the two teams. I wonder what the over under is for the total number of schools that will change to a project-based curriculum even though it is more effective, and more efficient in educating our children.

I think it will take three major skills on the part of superintendents to pull off what Erie high school has pulled off.
1. It will require great courage on the part of the superintendent to lead this change.  It is a political hot potato to change what we’ve always done in schools regardless of how dismal the current results are.
2. It will require great vision on the part of school leaders. We have been doing what we do in schools for so long that it is almost part of an educator’s DNA. Having a vision, and having the ability to share the vision will be critical.
3. It will required great leadership skill. Making this kind of change will take skills that are rarely called upon to run an existing school district.

So what do I think the over and under will be? One. I just don’t see evidence of leaders who have the combination of courage, vision, and leadership to pull it off. I hope I’m wrong. I truly believe that this could be a tremendous solution to a tremendous problem. Only time will tell if we can make the real school change necessary. –  Steve Wyckoff

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Rural schools may be an endangered species. I’ve written many times that I believe that our model in public schools for educating kids is obsolete.  I’ve also written that our goals in public schools are also all wrong. But if we are going to persist in that model then it will take a great deal more money in order to succeed. Unfortunately, especially for rural schools, we are in an era of declining revenue sources not increasing revenue sources.

So what do I see happening? The very existence of many rural schools is being threatened.  You can do the math. In the current model you have a minimum number of teachers necessary to maintain the system regardless of how few kids you have. You must have a teacher in each of the core curriculum areas and also teachers in the areas where students are required to earn credits.

There seems to be a minimum of about 10 professionals in a building to maintain it as a high school in the current system. With budget cuts many rural schools are approaching the point where, based on student enrollment and budgets per-pupil, they can’t afford the number of teachers necessary to cover all the required areas.

So consolidation becomes the default solution. But in many rural areas consolidation may mean closing schools and sending kids to neighboring towns. Unfortunately, those trips to neighboring towns may mean that kids are on a bus more than an hour one way. For the little kids this is unsatisfactory. For the older kids, many of whom are involved in extra curricular activities, there are a plethora of issues with sending kids that far.

But is there another solution to the problem? I think there is. But it will require us to take a very different approach to how we educate kids. It will require us also to change the mental models that students, parents, citizens, and educators have about how schools should look and operate. And I think the solution will lead to more highly educated students, who are much better prepared to be productive in the 21st century.

My solution, project-based learning. It can be accomplished with fewer teachers, in the case of very small schools perhaps with as few as half the number of teachers.

So how his project-based learning better for kids? My opinion comes from my observations of Erie high school. I believe that those students are receiving an education that is far superior to kids in other schools in terms of preparing them for the 21st century.

So the problems we face today may actually lead to  a more well-educated student population. While there are other solutions that will cut cost and do minimal damage to the current system, I believe that moving to a project-based curriculum is the only solution I’ve seen that will reduce cost and at the same time lead to more well-educated students.

In an era of standardized test mania, student scores may not look as good in project-based learning, although I think there is evidence emerging that project-based learning schools aren’t any worse than test preparation schools in terms of standardized test scores.  But in terms of what students gain; 21st-century skills, individualized and customized education, learning by doing, student engagement, and preparation for heuristic work rather than algorithmic work, there is no doubt that project-based learning is a much better approach. And it costs less to do. –  Steve Wyckoff

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Have you ever learned something that later on down the road you realize that your life would have been easier if you hadn’t learned it? Well I have. Several years ago my good friend Tammy Worcester attended a national conference. When she returned she asked me if I’d ever heard of a man named Roger Shank. I hadn’t. Tammy went on to tell me that I needed to read his book because he been a wonderful presentation as a keynote  speaker.

So I purchased Roger’s book, Coloring Outside The Lines. I loved the book and so I decided to contact Roger. The rest, as they say, is history. Over the ensuing years I have paid close attention to the work that Roger and his many talented colleagues are doing. They have reshaped how I think about schools. Which can be a very frustrating thing because there is so little we can do to change schools.

You see, Roger has made me see how what we do in schools has little to do with learning, especially learning that will enable the student to be a more productive member of society. In Roger’s words, “How we teach is antithetical to how we learn.” Roger talks about, “natural learning” and how it is different than what we do in schools. So here’s a quick look at the difference.

Natural learning occurs when an individual wants to learn to do something:

1. The learner has a goal. The more ownership the student has in the goal the better it is, but a skilled educator can create goals that motivate the student.  All learning occurs when the student does something, the goal is to learn to do that “something.”

2. The learner must then develop their own plan for achieving the goal. This plan is the path that the student has chosen to follow in pursuit of his goal.

3. As the student begins to implement their plan they will have expectations.  In their mind they believe they know what to expect as they proceed with their plan.

4. Along this path there will always be expectation failure or surprise. It’s inevitable nothing can be learned without either failing or being surprised that their plan succeeded.

5. Following expectation failure or surprise is the explanation that leads to student learning.  This explanation can come in many forms. It can be a teacher explaining, a video, a book, a website etc. This is the moment that learning occurs.

In natural learning the cycle is constantly repeated. If you think about it, it’s how we learn everything. How you learned to walk, how you learn to talk, how you learned to crochet, how you learn to fish. It’s also how you learned to read and how you learned to calculate.

So how does this compare to what we do in schools? Let’s look at our approach in traditional classrooms.

1. Explanation

2. Explanation

3. Explanation

4. Test

This is exactly the cycle we follow in traditional classroom. Our hope is that the students will remember what we told them long enough to regurgitate it on the test. And more and more that test is becoming a high-stakes State administered standardized tests thanks to No Child Left Behind.

So Roger has led to a great deal of frustration on my part. As they say ignorance is bliss. And my life as an educator was much easier before I considered how kids actually learn. –  Steve Wyckoff

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I’ve written many times about our obsession in K-12 schools with preparing every student to attend a four-year liberal arts college. The data are clear, we need less than 25% of all of our students to have a four year college degree. In fact only about 23% of all jobs require a four-year degree. In the workplace about 65% of all jobs require post secondary education, but not necessarily a four year degree. These high skill jobs are also high wage jobs.

One of the hidden unintended consequences of our attitude in K-12 schools is that we are preparing our very best kids to leave our communities, especially rural communities, and never returning. So in many cases our very best kids leave our communities, get a four year degree, often in the field with little or no job demand, and end up in a job that they would’ve never chosen given all the information. And these jobs are not in our rural communities where many of our kids would like to live.

So while our rural communities are engaged in a life-and-death struggle to maintain viability they are shooting themselves in the foot by having schools that aren’t focused on preparing each individual student for the future of their choice, which in many cases would be in that rural community  if the student had all the information.

It is imperative that our schools began immediately to help every individual student develop an individual plan for their future. But just having the plan isn’t enough if they’re only course choices are the traditional curriculum that only lead to one thing, leave home and go to a four-year college, and earn a degree.

With the advances in technology it is possible today to engage in many more careers than were possible in the past in rural communities. But our kids will only choose those career options if they are given the guidance necessary to develop individual future plans, and educational experience commensurate with that plan. –  Steve Wyckoff

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I think kids at Erie high school have the best opportunity to receive an educational experience that prepares them for their future in the 21st century than any other total school population in the state of Kansas. I had the opportunity last week to speak with Mike Carson, Ted Hill, an architect Allan Milbradt about the transformation of very high school.

We had a wonderful discussion about the steps they took and the lessons learned. But today I wanted to share a video with you featuring Allan Milbradt discussing the project at Erie high school.

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I read this phrase the other day and I thought it applied to education perfectly. Best in execution but worst in strategy. It is my observation that we are doing the best job in education we have ever done, doing what we’ve always done. Our execution is excellent. State assessment scores are on the rise. Dropout numbers are in decline. Each time the state or federal bureaucrats give us a new task to accomplish with our students we commit ourselves to accomplishing it, regardless of how little sense it makes.

On the other hand our students are less well prepared for the world they are going to live in than they have ever been. We have the wrong strategy. We are still preparing our kids as if a small percentage are going to go on to college and earn four-year degrees and the rest, at some point, are going to drop out of the system and go to a factory where they will do mindless work exactly as management tells them to.

Want some supporting evidence? Our core curriculum was designed over 115 years ago. It is still the core of what we teach our kids. It was designed to prepare the small percentage of high school students who were going on to college in 1892 to be successful. It was deemed to be such a good curriculum that every high school student should have it. And it was okay, because those kids who didn’t do well in the curriculum could still go into the workplace, show up every day, do what they were told, and make a good living.

More evidence: in 1950 over 60% of the jobs in America required unskilled workers. Today less than 15% of the jobs in America require unskilled workers. Only about 23% of all the jobs in America require a four-year college degree. The remaining 60% to 65% of the jobs require some type of technical skills.

But we are still preparing every student to go to college in the hopes that they will earn a four year college degree. And we are ignoring the vast numbers of students who need a different kind of preparation to be productive members of society in the 21st century.

Our strategy is all wrong …  but our execution is flawless. – Steve Wyckoff

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For the 34th and 35th time I had the opportunity this week to speak to students in the College of Education at the University Kansas. Twice each semester for the last nine years I’ve had the opportunity to speak to students in Dr. Mike Neill’s class. These are students who hope to become teachers. Usually there are 80 to 100 students in each class. That means that over the last nine years I’ve had the pleasure to interact with between 2,800 and  3,500 students. Okay, so if you do the math it should have had the 35th and 36th time right? Well they missed one day a couple of years ago because school was dismissed because they won some basketball game. You may remember

Anyway, these are always some of my favorite days. I have the opportunity to interact with students who are pretty much fresh out of high school, but also are committed to becoming educators. In many ways it’s refreshing and uplifting. In other ways it’s depressing.

Let me explain. I always love their enthusiasm and their commitment. They possess a passion for what they think they’re going to face. They are bright, engaged, and ready to take on the world.

The depressing part, I always visit with them about authentic engagement. The flow that learners are in when they are so engaged they lose track of time. I tell them it is my opinion that the most important thing they can do is to create learning experiences that are so engaging that their students are regularly authentically engaged. But then I ask them how many of them were authentically engaged on a regular basis in high school.

Yesterday was most one of the most depressing days when I asked this question. Not one hand was raised. Think about it, these are young adults who want to spend the rest of their life in school, and yet none of them were regularly authentically engaged in high school.  Normally, there are only five or six students in the entire class who were regularly authentically engaged in high school, but still to have no students raise their hand was a little bit shocking.

Through our dialogue it was clear that they understand what being authentically engaged is. They even talked about their school experiences that were authentically engaging. They listed them, year book, drama, athletics, and other experiences that were almost all outside of the core curriculum.

When we talk about the core curriculum students in this class through the years have rarely, if ever, identified them as authentically engaging. Interestingly enough  when students did find a class in the core curriculum that was authentically engaging to them, that is typically the subject they are preparing to teach. I hope they don’t model their teaching after the teachers they had simply because it was authentically engaging to them.

The other thing that I’m always aware of when speaking to the students is how pervasive the thinking is that the way our system operates is the only possible way the system can operate. I wish that we had more time to talk about how the system could be modified in order to engage students and yet still learn the things that we want students to learn, that usual in education time limited how much we can accomplish.

Other interesting topics we cover: standardized tests, which always realize a conversation; the need for individualizing instruction; innovation; and our system is pervasively focused on preparing kids to go to four years college rather than preparing them for their life. – Steve Wyckoff

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If  you ask high school kids to describe school in one word, what word would they choose? I’ve asked this question for years, I’ve had four answers, worthless, prison, sucks, and

BORING

I do get the occasional answer that varies from these four, for instance I had a professor from a College of education tell me that he was positive most kids would answer with words like, invigorating, interesting, and stimulating. I suspected he may have been abusing drugs.

Phil Schlecty says that we get kids who are engaged in one of four ways:

Authentically engaged: these are the kids that are so engaged in what they’re doing that they lose track of time. They look up and the bell is ringing, and they didn’t even know that the end of the period was at hand. These are the kids that Csikszentmihalyi would say or in “flow.” This is the state of engagement that we should try to achieve as often as possible, but rarely see especially in our core curricula.

Ritualistically engaged: these are the kids that say, “Don’t tell me what I  need to learn, tell me what I’ve got to do to get an A.” These are the teacher pleasers. They’ve learned how to play the game of school. Sadly when we talk about students being engaged, we mean ritualistically engaged. These are the kids that turn their homework everyday, show up to class every day and on time, smile at like they care, and do what they’re told.

Passive compliant:  these are the kids that say, “Don’t tell me what I need to learn, tell me what I’ve got to do to get by.” These are the students that the teacher has the unwritten agreement with, if they don’t bother the teacher, the teacher won’t bother them. Sadly these kids float through school making passing grades, just barely, never being authentically engaged, and never understanding the joy of being in a state of flow.

Rebellious: these are the kids that just don’t tolerate the system and let us know about it. Their needs aren’t being met but they refuse to sit by passively as victims of the system. They rebel in different ways, some angrily, some through passive aggressiveness, and some who just quit coming, either literally or intellectually.

I think the Phil Schlecty has one of my most often quoted statements. Phil Says

” A teacher’s job is not to teach kids. A teachers job is to create meaningful engaging work whereby the kids learn the things we want them to learn.” -  Phil Schlecty

I think he’s right on target. If we give kids work that is meaningful and engaging to them, and it teaches them the things that we want them to learn, we will have made great strides toward improving our schools. Our goal should be to constantly increase the level of authentic engagement on the part of every student in the system. – Steve Wyckoff

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Erie school district has been blessed. By Mike Carson, Rose Frey, Ted Hill, and many many others who were involved in the transformation of their school. Erie high school is unique. What makes them unique is that their focus is on their students, and their student’s futures.

Erie high school has changed what the students learn, how the students learn, and how they organize the students to learn. In addition, while the students do take the state mandated standardized tests, their students are measured in much different ways than almost all other kids across the country.

The curriculum used in Erie high school is based on projects and problems designed by each individual student, based on their own interest, needs, and desires. And the results have been equally unique, students, and I mean all students, have far exceeded the normal expectations we have for high school kids. And, as former superintendent Mike Carson is fond of saying, “It isn’t just the head cheerleader and the quarterback that are doing great things.”

What Erie high school has figured out is how to not just expose their kids to curriculum with all the standards, but how to actually engage the students in meaningful work, whereby the kids learn the things that they want them to learn. Is it perfect? No. There have been, and continue to be, many issues. But unlike school improvement in traditional schools, they are getting better at the right things, rather than just getting better at what schools have always done.

I’ve observed for the last 40 years scores of creative an innovative projects. Some big, some small. The thing that they all had in common was a champion. The sad truth is, as soon as the champion moved on, and eventually they always do, the gravity of the status quo always pulled the project back into the mainstream and morphed it into a traditional program. There seems to be no way to make real systemic change in the educational system.

So I’m watching Erie high school with great interest. The superintendent has retired, as has the high school principal responsible for the project-based, problem-based learning curriculum. Other changes have been made with key personnel. My hope is that the model employed in Erie high school will spread across the state and the country.  The hope is that new champions have replaced the old champions.

I have low expectations. In spite of the fact that their kids are doing exceptional things and are truly well-prepared for the life they’re going to live; and in spite of the fact that it is actually cheaper to educate kids in this model; and in spite of the fact that we are in a financial crisis; I fear that it is impossible to actually make sustainable systemic change in public schools.

Time will tell.

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I had the opportunity earlier this week to interview almost 20 educational leaders. I asked each of these individuals what the biggest issue is that they were facing has an educator in their role. Almost without exception they identified the financial crisis as the single most important issue. No surprise there.

But the follow-up question that I asked each of these individuals was, “What are you doing to address this issue?” Again, almost without exception, they described the cuts they were making. With a few of the individuals, because of their role in education, I asked them about innovative and creative solutions. I was very disappointed that almost all of the responses were the same, find ways to do what we always done with less money. It’s almost as if, as educators, we can’t see any solutions for educating children other than what we’ve done for more than 100 years.

But I did have three conversations that were very interesting to me. First of all I interviewed the interim commissioner, Dr. Diane DeBacker. Diane is an individual that I have the utmost respect for. In fact, I’m very perturbed that she isn’t a candidate for the commissioner’s position. She would be outstanding. But in our discussion I asked her if she was seeing creative and innovative solutions emerging as a result of the financial crisis. Her response was that she thinks schools are reverting back and becoming more traditional and more entrenched in traditional solutions.

The second conversation was with former Erie school district superintendent Mike Carson. Mike retired last year partially due to health considerations that were at least exacerbated by, if not caused by, the stress associated with making systemic change in the school system. For my money Erie high school is the best school in the state of Kansas. I have no idea what their standardized test scores are but what I did see when I visited Erie was every student authentically engaged in their work. Csikszentmihalyi would’ve said that they were hand “flow.”

If you’ve read my blog posts you know that I think standardized tests are the curse on education. Erie he doesn’t seem to focus on standardized test scores but rather on preparing students for their lives. What Erie high school has done is create a curriculum that is project based in problem-based. Where every student is engaged in learning centered on what is important to them and what they are interested in.

So when I asked Mike what the biggest issue in education was, he responded that our kids not being engaged in what they’re doing is the single biggest problem. And when I asked him about solutions he didn’t automatically say, “we need more money”, but he described a curriculum that met the needs of the students and was more relevant to their lives. What a breath of fresh air.

The third interview of interest was not with an educator, but rather with an architect, Allan Milbradt. Allan designed the new high school for the Erie school district. Allan told me that it was the best project he ever worked on because the school design was based on the curriculum that would be taught within the school, not simply modeled after every other school. Allan probably has more expertise in learning then many educational leaders.

So to answer my opening question, are we wasting a good crisis? I think the answer is yes. We have an opportunity to make lasting systemic change in the educational system. Changes that are sorely needed. Yet very few educational leaders are seeking really innovative and creative solutions.

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