Public education is at a significant—and at times messy—crossroads. As the United States has shifted from the industrial age to the knowledge age, the basic form of our public education system—from facilities to approaches to measurements—has not kept up.
The old system that worked very well for fifty years is now archaic and ineffective in meeting the demands of the 21st century. If we as a state and a country are going to compete on a world scale, producing, creating and innovating, we must take a long hard look at the current structures and adjust the forms of our education system.
At Manor New Tech High School [8], we are launching new models to enable today’s students to gain the critical thinking, problem solving skills they will need to be successful employees and citizens. We are creating new approaches based on flexibility, high expectations and high standards that offer a blueprint for public education structures of the future.
New Customers
We have to have awareness that our “customer-base” is vastly different that it was even twenty years ago. The kids who are stepping into our classrooms are media-savvy and attuned to exploring at more social, faster paces than previous generations. They expect to touch, feel and engage with robust, dynamic information. Asking these students sit in a desk and listen to a teacher is like ramming a square peg into a round hole. If we compared what kids learned from watching “Shark Week” on the Discovery Channel to what they’ve heard from a teacher about sharks, there’s no question which they respond to more. The Internet and interactive formats will win over a teacher every single time.
New Markets, New Demands
I agree with what Steve Jobs and Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, say—that, in today’s society, it’s about the experience that you have that creates a sense of loyalty. My question is: how are we aligning our public school system to provide the experiences to gain our “customers’”—in our case, students, parents and taxpayers—loyalty and engagement. Until we can do that, public education is not going to deliver the results we as a community and country need.
Jobs of the 21st century will require creativity, flexibility, problem solving. The jobs of the 20th century that held prestige—accountants for example—are becoming less and less prominent. The economy is becoming less company-focused and more project-based. I recently overheard a comment by someone at Apple saying: “If you have to be managed then you’re no longer employable.” We can no longer teach kids a skill in isolation and trust they will find a place to execute those skills.
Yet our schools hew to 20th century legacies, managing students and their activities to the hilt: line up, ask permission to go to the bathroom, fill out the worksheet the proscribed way, answer the questions the expected way.
This approach is doing our kids no favors when they will need to operate in a job market that will evaluate them based on communication skills, flexibility, collaboration or critical thinking.
New Tools for a New Age
Our challenge as public educators is to learn how to adjust our systems to meet market demands for all kids. Through the Manor New Tech High School [8], the Manor Independent School District is leveraging new techniques to help our students gain 21st century skills.
First, we are recalibrating our expectations for our students. Certainly, students need to prove their basic capacities, and standardized testing allows that. But students must also be asked to interact, communicate, solve problems.
In too many schools, the primary learning products for our students are lectures, homework , quizzes and tests. But how much are our kids being asked to present actual ideas and thoughts? Are we asking them to be problem solvers or to answer math questions correctly? We should be getting them to do this outside of just written work—in multimedia or oral presentations, through collaboration, through trial and error, through problem solving. The project-based learning adopted by Manor New Tech High [8] connects the expectations of our students with today’s skills to gain the proficiencies they need in math, grammar and reading.
We also need to redefine how our teachers are instructing students and how they are prepared to teach. Educators and administrators have spent a lot of time training teachers on programs and ways to monitor students. What we should be doing instead is helping teachers become better at their craft, giving them the structure that allows them flexibility in how they are teaching. Our Think Forward Institute [9] (delivered by Manor New Tech staff) trains teachers to evolve with their students, to stay connected to the tools students need and to create unique opportunities for students to explore subjects and approaches.
To support this, we have changed our grading system—giving both students and teachers tools to align curricula with results. The traditional report card gives one grade per class—that one grade doesn’t tell you anything about that child. How do you know if that kid is on time, asking a lot of questions, or is very collaborative? Parents know nothing about those things. And it’s the elements that mean just as much, if not more, on what their child scored on a spelling test. At Manor New Tech High [8], we evaluate students on nine components. They are just as concerned with their scores on team-work as they are with the final grade.
Aligning the Model
This idea of changing our public education structures causes a lot of anxiety. The conversation, because public education is funded with public dollars, always seems to boil down to a question of resources. In a legislative year in Texas, that conversation becomes especially fraught. Legislators—along with the public—understand that the current system is broken, but they don’t know what needs to happen to meet those needs.
Some see the answer in charter schools—allowing the flexibility at the institution level. Others suggest online learning with centralized teachers and individual student-level flexibility provides the answer.
I believe the public education system is the ideal delivery mechanism to give all our citizens access to 21st century skills and tools—and I do not think we need additional resources to meet the demands.
But if we do not find ways to infuse flexibility into this system we will lose students, loyalty and potential. And our communities will lose the intellectual power and resources to compete in the 21st century world.