A few days ago in this space I listed the 14 ways to improve public schools that I’ve been blogging about for the past six months or so. However, reactions from thoughtful readers convinced me that I had stopped making suggestions too soon, so here’s a better list, EIGHTEEN simple steps to make our public schools more interesting, more challenging, and–yes–more productive.
1) Looping, which I expanded upon a short time later in Looping (revisited). Looping means a teacher moving up with her or his students. It’s quite common in other countries because it’s been shown to improve both student learning and behavior, for openers.
2)Play. Simply put, kids need to be kids. And for those who are concerned about learning, stop worrying because free play contributes to improved learning.
3) Practice Democracy. If we want children to function well in a democratic society as adults, they need practice. Right now, schools are essentially undemocratic–by design. That’s the worst possible preparation for adulthood. And giving young people more ‘agency’ over their own learning actually works!
4) Business Cards for Teachers. If you are a professional, you carry business cards, which you give out to people you want to stay in contact with. Teachers are professionals! Treat them as such.
5) Involve Outsiders. The vast majority of households do not have children in public schools, and schools need public support. The best advertisement for public education is the kids. Let them strut their stuff!
6) Multiple ‘Talent Nights.’ This is an easy way to make parents feel at home in school. Education is a team sport, and educators need to welcome parents, not treat them as extraneous (or worse).
7) Extended Homeroom. Right now most homeroom periods are short, really just a way for administrators to take attendance. After Covid, kids need more down time. Extending homeroom into a full period provides that.
8) Ask the Right Question. I’ve been pushing this for a long time, but it’s worth repeating: The most important question to ask about all children is ‘How Are They Smart?’ and not ‘How Smart Are They?’ because every child has skills, abilities, and interests that can be tapped into and developed.
9) “Education Grand Rounds.” Teachers need opportunities to watch each other at work so they can improve their own practice.
10) “Making Stuff”. There’s nothing more satisfying than creating something useful. Bring back wood shop!
11) Make the School Safe. Schools need to be physically, emotionally, and intellectually safe. Stop focusing only on physical safety. In intellectually safe schools, it’s cool to be curious, and it’s OK to admit ‘I don’t understand.’ In emotionally safe schools, bullying is not tolerated…and adults and student leaders step up to prevent it.
12) Serve Your Community This is NOT the same as ‘Community Service.’ The distinction makes all the difference.
13) Ban Cell Phones. Completely! That’s right, ban them completely! This is a giant step toward making schools emotionally safe.
14) Acknowledge the “Opportunity Gap”. Most school districts and policy makers focus their attention on ‘The Achievement Gap,’ but, if we close the “Opportunity Gap” (and its companion, the “Expectations Gap”), outcomes will improve across the board. One way to do this is to adopt a proven curriculum like Core Knowledge, EL Education, or the Comer School Development Program. Another option to explore: become a Community School.
15) Change the school day’s opening time for adolescents, who need more sleep and aren’t getting it. This important piece by Dr. Mary Carskadon and Lynne Lamberg (a reader of this blog) is both comprehensive and persuasive. And here’s more on the issue.
16) Improve school food because better nutrition is a cost-effective way of improving students’ life chances, and because, sadly, for many kids their school meals are the only healthy ones they get. Changing the cafeteria is a good opportunity to Practice Democracy (suggestion #3).
17) Teach reading effectively by avoiding the extremes. Don’t let the ‘Reading Science’ craze push schools into going mad for phonics. Phonics is necessary but not sufficient, because our English language is complex and contradictory. (eg, why don’t ‘anger,’ ‘danger,’ and ‘hanger’ rhyme?) Here’s how to teach reading.
18) Involve classroom teachers in curriculum choices and curriculum design. But ‘involve’ does not mean that individual teachers should unilaterally decide what to teach, just that they shouldn’t be treated as cogs in a machine, told by their districts what to teach, and when to teach it. David Steiner of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, told Education Week that “Designing curriculum and teaching curriculum are both very, very demanding skill sets.” He went on: “When Meryl Streep decides whether she’s going to act in a movie, she doesn’t say, ‘No way, I didn’t write the script. She says, ‘Give me the best possible script so that my acting abilities can really shine.’”
What happens next to these 18 proposals? I hope some of you will work with your local school boards to implement these changes. When candidates for school board start ranting about “DEI” or “Critical Race Theory,” I hope you will confront them, because those aren’t real issues; what matters are specific changes that can make schools more interesting, challenging, and effective. Perhaps some of you might even run for your local school board!
With that in mind, I have one final suggestion: Consider adopting as your guiding principle the wisdom of Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Applying that to schools and education suggests to me that:
*Because we want children to be able to write well, they need to write often in their classes.
*Because we want them to be comfortable speaking in public, they need to practice that in school.
*Because we want them to work well with others as adults, they ought to be working together on projects, teams, plays, bands, et cetera, in school.
*Because we want them to be successful as adults in a rapidly changing world, they ought to learn at least two languages in school.
*And so forth….
Other changes, especially reducing class size and repairing or replacing dangerously dilapidated facilities, are also called for, but these will cost real money and will require sustained political effort. None of the 18 changes I am suggesting will cost school districts big bucks, but some do involve changes in habits and schedules, which often makes adults uncomfortable. That is, these changes are simple, but that does not mean they will be easy. I believe, however, that they are the path forward, toward schools that are effective and challenging places that children will want to be.
You’re not a teacher, you say? OK, neither am I by profession, but sometimes we are put in that role. Imagine you’re walking in your neighborhood when a stranger stops her car, rolls down the window, and asks for directions to a local restaurant. You know the place she’s asking about, so you immediately begin figuring out how to explain it to her.
She reminded us that more than 75 million school-age children are not in school and that nearly 800 million adults cannot read or write. And she sounded a theme that is of profound importance: the education gender gap is wide and growing, because discrimination against women and girls is deeply entrenched.
Back to why: The thirst for money, prestige and fame are reliable spurs of innovation. Living in Silicon Valley as I do, I’ve seen plenty of evidence of that. Unfortunately, public education is not the road to travel if your goals are money, prestige and fame.
The Merrow Report 