See part 1 for the vision of my school.
Now let me put on my critic hat - what questions and/or challenges would I have of this plan? For this post, I’m keeping it to just questions of school design - I’m leaving the business plan questions for another post. As I do the research I’ll post and link from here.
Question 1 - time
Q: You propose a bunch of changes to the curriculum, some which will require more time, some less. You have the following:
LESS TIME - Many classes become optional (e.g. European History)
MORE TIME - Mastery required for core skills
MORE TIME - New “core” material
MORE TIME - Deliberate practice and hands-on work
MORE TIME - Exercise and outdoors
How do you know you have enough time to do it all?
A: Right now I’m going on a gut feeling that we have a ton of classroom time, not much to show for it, and that means there are lots of room for improvements the free up time. However, both KIPP and Success have gone to longer school days to get kids up to par on core skills. My thesis is not that KIPP or Success are simply missing big efficiency gains and going long for the fun of it. So what are the possible explanations?
1) A lot of time is spent in classes I would make optional and that KIPP/Success don’t spend most of the time on core reading/writing/math skills.
Research Task #1: What percentage of time in KIPP or Success is spent in classes I would consider core?
2) KIPP or Success are in some tough neighborhoods - that’s what makes their performance so great. However, maybe they have to go long to catch these kids up as they’re coming in behind?
Research Task #2: If a kid starts in a great charter school from the beginning do they need to full day to stay on top of core material?
3) There are efficiency gains through technology - if you could scale 1-1 tutoring for each child than maybe they can move much more quickly.
Research Task #3: What are the speed gains from 1-1 tutoring? Are there any schools that have deployed tutoring at scale?
Question 2 - legal
Q: Do you have the choice to teach whatever you want? Who says you can make European History optional?
A: No idea.
Research Task #4: Can private schools and/or homeschoolers teach whatever curriculum they like? What do you legally have to teach? Do all kids have to take standardized tests?
Question 3 - measurement and feedback
Q: How will you know your schooling method is working? If standardized tests aren’t the goal, how will you measure yourself?
A: If standardized tests provide a good measurement of core skills than I would keep them as part of the measurement toolkit.
Research Task #5: What do standardized tests cover? Are they are a good tool to measure core reading/writing/math skills?
I still need to develop measurement tools for the rest of the goals - curiosity, confidence, connection with mentors, etc. This could be accomplished with a combination of student survey data and metrics such as:
a) time spent learning - particularly outside of mandatory material (a sign of curiosity)
b) number of mentors; connection to mentors 1, 2, 5, 10 years after
c) test scores on the new “core” material
Question 4 - college
Q: Will graduates of your school still be in a good place to attend college?
A: College is still an important step for most people - I would want my students to attend any university they wanted. That brings up the question, what exactly does a high school kid need to attend a good college?
1) Good SAT, ACT, and AP scores
Research Task #6: If you master the core stuff, how well do you do on the SAT? Said another way, how much time would have to be wasted prepping for a test? Same sort of question for AP - if a student is interested in biology and dives in, will they be able to do well on the AP biology exam? Or again, do they need to do some test prep stuff that is not on the natural journey of exploring/mastering a topic?
2) High school GPA, diploma
Research Task #7: How would I have to certify my school so that colleges accept the diploma and any other performance info? How do colleges evaluate homeschoolers?
Research Task #8: Does something like a GPA apply to a school like mine? If not, does that hurt the students? Some schools have gone away from GPA or class ranks - how does that affect their students’ ability to attend top universities?
Question 5 - you’re a dreamer
Q: How many other people have gone down this path towards this wistful, dreamy sort of education and crashed and burned? Why will you be any different?
A: I wonder how many before me have gone down this path. What obstacles did they face? I need to read some history.
Research Task #9: Read up on the history of school reform. Where have ideas like this failed before?
background on My School project
This post is part of a series on developing a new type of school. Click to see the other posts on this school project. If this is new to you, I’d suggest starting with the vision for the school. If you’d like to get notified of new posts, sign up below.