Teachers of New Mexico: the Nation is Watching and Taking Your Lead

By Paul Leather, C!E's Director of the Interstate Learning Community

This blog post originally appeared on Future Focused Education's blog on Monday, December 6, 2021.

As the sun comes up over the green forested hills and ignites the fall colors in the leaves of the trees surrounding my house in Concord, New Hampshire, I am writing this post to you. As you have entered another school year, one with continuing challenges, it has been edifying to see how you have kept the well-being of the children in your care top of mind. Although some students have become disconnected from learning over the last year, you have learned new ways to connect with them and their families.

This year, many of you have answered the call for a new way of teaching, through greater engagement with students and community through capstones and Graduate Profiles. In doing this, you are addressing deep fault lines within your communities, reaching out to those children who have so often found themselves on the other side of the chasm. To support this new way of teaching, wise leaders from your communities and the NM Public Education Department gathered during the darkest days of the pandemic to determine a more fair and equitable approach to learning in your state.

YOU HAVE LISTENED DEEPLY TO YOUR COMMUNITIES

First, they extensively interviewed children, families, educators, community leaders, from Zuni to Logan, from Cuba to Las Cruces. Emerging from those interviews were the voices of children, parents, Indigenous nations, and rural communities. Those voices rang out with stories of inequity, racism, of children not being seen or heard or understood. The songs of these people echoed across the land, in the canyons and the valleys, from the rooftops and the mountain tops, they sang a song demanding to be heard, of connections lost from culture and language, and ways of being.

The wise leaders coalesced around a statement of hope, underlying the pain they heard in those voices:

“To address the education system’s history of structural and inherent racism, New Mexico’s high school students need a more expansive learning and assessment system that honors their cultural and linguistic strengths while providing feedback and other engaging opportunities allowing them to take ownership of their learning, build strong identities and see a rich future ahead."

So many of you have heard the challenges embedded within these words. In response, you have joined a Community of Practice to examine what it would mean to paint a picture of the expectations your communities hold for your children. You created a Portrait of a Graduate, and built a new pathway to learning, the Capstone process, where each child can embrace their identity and their future through deepening connections with you and those in their communities.

YOU ARE COMMITTED TO THE CHALLENGE

This is not easy work, not when you work every day to re-instill the routines of learning in schools for those children who have returned to your buildings. Not when we still do not have a vaccine for all children, and you find yourself quarantining for days on end, while continuing to teach, either in person or remotely.

People from across the country are interested in how you are going about this work, something Future Focused Education is addressing deeply this year in the Community of Practice. You have refused to define yourself strictly by state test results and the deficit thinking that those tend to offer. Instead, your different approach includes a thoughtful Graduate Profile model that includes something you don’t always see elsewhere—a launch pad as a basis to support the rising graduate.

Not only are you looking at deeper kinds of assessments—capstones designed to address the whole child within the school environment—you are also focused on ways to increase their success as they become adults in their community. Through burgeoning internships and work-based learning, you are reframing your schools as community development hubs, something they were always meant to be.

As educators, you have always recognized that children are the future and so you must always seek to help them rise. Your hope is that when New Mexico students graduate by going through the Capstone process, you will have fostered the growth of the whole child and prepared students to take their rightful place in their communities, something youth and their families desperately want and desire.

It is the love that you have for this work, the love you hold for the children in your classes, who have suffered so much from an imperfect system that was not built with them in mind, that brings you to persevere, to carry on and to try this new way forward.

YOU ARE A MODEL TO THE NATION

You may wonder why I, from so far away, am writing this message to you today. Because of your tireless efforts in developing community-based Portraits of a Graduate and your fearless capstone designs uniquely based on addressing systemic inequities, the nation is following your progress.

This includes in the halls of Congress, where your leaders have shared your innovative work with staffers of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) and Appropriations Committees, who are hoping that innovative new ways of schooling will emerge that will be more wholistic in serving children and better connected to community values, which might inform the next reauthorization of the federal Education Act.

Maybe this time around the New Mexico example—your example—can help crack the code of inequities in education across the nation. As your efforts, skills, and capacities grow with the Community of Practice, the stories of your learnings and your students’ success will follow you.

Thank you, New Mexico Educators, for doing your part in a great cause. You are providing a model for all of us as you work to make your public schools increasingly relevant and rewarding for New Mexico’s children and families from all backgrounds, not just the privileged few.

Investing in Learning

Structuring Education Funds to Innovate Out of the Pandemic and into a Brighter Future for All Learners

By Gene Wilhoit and Jennifer Poon

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In times of crisis, effective leaders constantly assess the situation, gathering as much information as they can on damage incurred, advancements made, and where to funnel resources. This notion surfaces in the Biden administration’s recent statement on annual state assessments, citing the importance of “using student learning data to enable states, school districts, and schools to target resources and supports to the students with the greatest needs.”

At the same time as we affirm the urgency of collecting robust, trustworthy information about how learners are faring so that resources can be marshalled in response to need, we grow increasingly curious about better ways to both gather and respond to data. While annual standardized assessments have value in monitoring school and district performance, progress, and equal opportunities in normal years, the pandemic has left us increasingly aware that the kinds of information captured by state tests are incomplete (or worse, biased). Other forms of data - especially locally-sourced information on student learning, engagement, well-being, and opportunity to learn - are needed to complete the picture and guide response. Indeed, in education and other complex systems, better decision-making and responsiveness to needs comes from improved situational awareness followed by actions tailored to context.

We believe this desire for more coherent and responsive systems is fueling calls for Congress and the U.S. Department of Education to invest in pandemic relief right alongside innovation in assessments and accountability (to the tune of $100 million according to state education leaders at Chiefs for Change). Similarly, C!E and others are in conversations with federal, state, and local leadership examining how federal relief funding including American Rescue Plan or CARES dollars might be leveraged in ways that lay groundwork for more resilient education systems built on balanced systems of assessment and shared accountability with local communities (see the Colorado story in the sidebar for one example). In each case, as our colleague Paul Leather notes, giving permission to innovate new systems isn’t enough; funding is an essential enabler because system leaders can’t make use of policy flexibilities if they don’t have adequate resources to engage them.

One thing we’re learning in our equity-seeking work with state and local leaders: it is folly to think that we can create more coherent and responsive systems through the hierarchically-driven processes that are most comfortable to bureaucracies. Instead, we are learning that the kind of situational awareness that enables contextualized, equity-seeking decisions is achieved through elevating learning and wisdom coming from the perspectives of diverse stakeholders – especially families and those most marginalized by the current system – who have direct witness to its impacts. We described such an approach last fall as we issued an Invitation to a New Path Forward: Seeking Equity Together Through Assessment and Accountability. In this invitation, we suggest neither a top-down roll-out of “innovation” nor a full pendulum swing to total local control (and its inherent challenges to ensuring equity); instead, we describe a different kind of collaborative partnership between state and local stakeholders where each have important sets of roles to play.

Consider New Mexico as an example. In 2018, a lawsuit demonstrated significant disparities in educational services provided to students across the state. The state supreme court ordered the state to act immediately to ensure instruction is adequate and tailored to students’ unique linguistic and cultural needs. Interestingly, whereas state leaders could have doubled-down on current assessment accountability levers in their response, they instead embraced the necessity of state assessment and accountability redesign to dismantle New Mexico’s inherently racist system and replace it with one that honors and enriches students’ cultural and linguistic strengths. Further, instead of top-down construction and “roll out” of a new system, they opened the way for an extensive community-led effort that has potential to rectify the compact between the education system and the communities it serves (see sidebar).

We believe that an equity-seeking, learning-based approach to innovation not only holds the promise of producing more meaningful outcomes for children but also enhances the probability of greater results from federal and state investments in education and creates longer-term sustainability and ownership by those who must deliver on these outcomes. We see relevance to the design of federal legislation (and/or the structuring of new state and local funds to support innovation) in the following ways:

1. Invest with a learning orientation. In place of traditional tools like Requests for Information or Requests for Proposals, innovation investments can invite applications through a Request for Learning (RFL), which values the generation of learning as an outcome in its own right. An RFL can push the boundaries of learning by asking applicants to establish hypotheses to drive innovation and improvement around intractable, perennial problems to which answers aren’t already known. It sets expectations for grantees to possess a “learning orientation,” empowering them to share openly about what they are learning as it applies toward both local context and collective goals in the field. These small changes on paper communicate a greater shift of power dynamics in grantmaking by valuing grantees’ creative generation of solutions rather than assuming the grant-maker has already defined the problem and all its plausible solutions. Also, an RFL signals the value of continuous learning by anticipating setbacks and, instead of punishing grantees for them, requiring grantees to iterate and share what they learn along the way (see Assessment for Learning Project in the second below).

2. Invest in the creation of learning communities oriented around a shared learning agenda. One-off investments to individual grantees produces individual pockets of innovation, but knitting grantees in a learning community helps ensure that insights uncovered by each grantee both enrich the work of other grantees (thus compounding return on investment) and contribute to key questions challenging the field at large. Moreover, learning communities support scaling through grantee-to-grantee approximation (see, for example, the Hawaii and New Hampshire story in the sidebar) and processes to fold-in increasing numbers of communities, districts, or regions through phased expansion. But, while learning communities can grow organically, they also require dedicated support and facilitation. Funding streams need to resource these learning processes directly.

3. Expand eligibility to include non-profit intermediaries. Federal education funds historically require state education agencies to serve as the primary applicants. However, SEAs often do not have sufficient bandwidth, capacity, or trusting relationships necessary to carry out innovation work in the way we have described. We have noted that non-profit intermediaries and partners with existing relationships with states and districts can often more readily serve as the connective tissue for this work. They may be more primed to get to work without requiring a time-consuming planning grant, and they are more likely to have the expertise needed to facilitate learning communities driven by a learning agenda. Federal funding programs can still require state education agencies to be meaningfully engaged as partners, but expanding grant eligibility to well-connected intermediaries has potential to streamline expenditures and accelerate the work.

4. Constrain processes, not ideas. How grantees will undertake their work is equally if not more important than what work they are doing. It is important that federal and state innovation funds avoid paternalistic assumptions about what kinds of innovations are a best fit for local context. Instead, funds can be designed to prioritize inclusive, equity-seeking processes that more authentically engage stakeholders and surface solutions that meet both local and global needs. Some examples of equity-seeking tenets emerging from our work include expecting applicants to form unusually diverse coalitions including both state and local stakeholders and to engage parents and community members early in the process (not just after direction and strategy have been set) as co-creators and co-producers of innovation (not just as survey respondents or token focus group members but as collaborators; see Colorado example in the sidebar).

Engaging families and communities to co-create solutions is not quick work, but we believe it is better work, more sustainable work, and the only way of working that successfully navigates a system through complex times. We also note that some gains can be achieved quickly by modeling equity-seeking, community-engaged processes on smaller scales, such as involving communities directly in the design and implementation of CARES-funded recovery initiatives like revamped summer school offerings or high-dose tutoring. Practicing new patterns of partnership within local communities can help build the relationships, habits, and mindsets needed to pursue more systemwide equity-seeking transformation.

Even so, we urge federal and state leaders to learn from local work and repattern their approaches, too -- because how innovation is structured and funded at federal and state levels will continue to entrain behaviors throughout the system. If we aspire to innovate systems of assessment and accountability that are more coherent and responsive to local needs and context, we must invite unusually deep, diverse, and authentic partnerships with families and communities within each state.

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STATE EXAMPLES

More than just theoretical concepts, our suggestions for structuring investments in learning are informed by real examples emerging in states that participate in our learning communities. We share a few examples here:

New Mexico: Broadening the Notion of Equity Work In New Mexico’s story, we see the broadening equity work from identifying achievement gaps to deeper, community-led efforts to redesign systems to reflect the diverse visions and cultures represented in communities across the state.

In 2018, after a lawsuit demonstrated that the State of New Mexico was failing to meet its constitutional obligation to provide all students - especially Native American and English language learners - the services needed to become college and career ready, the state was directed to provide adequate resources and ensure instruction is tailored to students’ unique linguistic and cultural needs. Importantly, as New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Secretary of Education Ryan Stewart responded to this ruling, the state embraced the necessity of state assessment and accountability redesign in dismantling New Mexico’s inherently racist system and replacing it with one that honors and enriches students’ cultural and linguistic strengths.

State leaders in New Mexico could have followed a typical top-down approach to defining new outcomes for students and designing systems that assess progress and hold districts accountable for results. But what sets the New Mexico story apart is its extensive community-engaged approach to creating a Graduate Profile that articulates the “knowledge, skills, and attitudes a high school graduate needs to succeed in college, career, and life,” along with a Launch Pad describing the kinds of educational experiences that would support student development along the Graduate Profile. Because it is more locally-owned, the effort has potential to reorient and strengthen the compact between education systems and the communities they serve.

Now with philanthropic support, Future Focused Education, a statewide intermediary in partnership with both the New Mexico Public Education Department and local districts and communities, is supporting a learning network of local communities that are developing capstone projects through which students can demonstrate the Graduate Profile competencies in ways that are reflective of local context, culture, and values.

Colorado: System Transformation Through Community Design Teams Colorado’s story shows the impact that occurs when educational innovation is valued as integral to pandemic recovery, and when community partnership and diversity, equity, and inclusion take center stage.

In September 2020, Governor Polis announced a $32 million Response, Innovation, and Student Equity (RISE) fund to “support high-needs school districts, charter schools, and public institutions of higher education in creating sustainable innovations to improve student learning, close equity gaps, and enhance operational efficiency for pre-K-12 through higher education.” The fund leveraged the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund -- a part of CARES Act aid -- to invite applications that support student-focused learning models for high-need student populations.

This dual investment in relief and innovation is interesting in its own right, but what takes Colorado’s story to the next level is the community-embedded approach that several districts are taking towards this and other aligned work. Facilitated in part by an intermediary organization, the Colorado Education Initiative (CEI), several Colorado districts have been shifting their understanding of what it means to enact equity-seeking work. While many districts came from a starting place of wanting to close achievement gaps, CEI and others have supported reflective processes through which several district leaders now identify the importance of including students and families on the very teams that design innovations. In the words of CEI’s Samantha Olson, “formation of a ‘community design team’ centered on equity not only gives life to the data but allows families and students to participate in the identification of solutions and how we would evaluate those solutions. This creates better relationships, greater ownership of action, rethinking of roles relative to one another, and ultimately leads to better prototypes and solutions.”

This shift toward inclusive, equity-seeking, locally-led processes to education transformation has not only led to more promising community-owned applications to the RISE grant program but is also improving the quality of work across Colorado’s change initiatives. Similar impacts can be seen in the Homegrown Talent Initiative (HTI), a philanthropically funded statewide initiative that “supports regional cohorts of communities to create homegrown, career-connected learning experiences for K-12 students aligned to the needs and aspirations of their local economies.” A mid-year report an external evaluator found that "those who did deep, authentic empathy building produced the strongest implementation plans,” and that “communities with consistent and meaningful student participation, especially in developing Graduate Profiles, saw greater satisfaction with the finished products as well as a belief that they would create change.”

Hawaii and New Hampshire: Unusual Partners in Learning The friendship story of Hawaii and New Hampshire provides a case study of how two systems an ocean apart can directly benefit from shared learning in a deliberately facilitated learning community. Separately, education leaders in each state were engaged in creating statewide definitions of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that students need to be ready for college, career, and life. For New Hampshire, this resulted in the statewide adoption of Work Study Practices (WSP) that each district could adapt and implement according to local context and values. For Hawaii, a deeply community-engaged effort lead to the creation of the Nā Hopena A‘o, abbreviated HĀ, a culturally-relevant framework articulating Hawaii’s vision for college, career, and community readiness.

Education leaders from both Hawaii and New Hampshire routinely convened through the Assessment for Learning Project (ALP) where they learned about each others’ frameworks. More importantly, through exchanges facilitated by the ALP learning community, Hawaii and New Hampshire leaders began to notice both similarities and important differences in their processes, especially with regard to implementation.

In particular, the New Hampshire team took notice of Hawaii team’s approach to community engagement. The Hawaii team began their community engagement by invitation, not mandate, and “brought together educators, students, families, community members and elders to co-create their community’s vision for the purpose of education, supported by the six elements of HĀ.” New Hampshire’s intermediary organization, the New Hampshire Learning Initiative, was doing important work to help districts build capacity as they contextualize and implement Work Study Practices, but this work was occurring after the vision and intentions for WSP had already been set.

New Hampshire studied Hawaii’s inclusive, equity-seeking process and approximated it according to their own context. As a result they created their own “What is Our Why” project, a student-led initiative that convenes educators and citizens within local communities to co-create shared meaning as they work to define and operationalize local versions of the WSP. The resulting impact has been greater local ownership and depth of WSP implementation which has “felt profound to everyone involved.”

Assessment for Learning Project: Grantmaking for Learning The story of the Assessment for Learning Project (ALP) demonstrates how a novel approach to grantmaking -- grantmaking for learning -- can cultivate new structures and behaviors that impact not just individual project outcomes but the advancement of an entire field.

On a mission to build the field of “assessment for learning,” in 2015 the Center for Innovation in Education and Next Generation Learning Challenges launched ALP, a grantmaking initiative backed by philanthropic support. Rather than reaching for standard grantmaking processes such as Requests for Proposals, traditional implementation plans, and grant reporting, ALP distinguished both its purpose and processes by orienting around learning as a desired outcome alongside more typical notions of “results.” This led the designers of ALP to take several steps uncommon in grantmaking, such as: issuing a Request for Learning (RFL, not a standard RFP) requiring that grantees possess a “learning orientation” and share openly about what they are learning as it applies toward collective goals; orienting and organizing grantees’ individual projects along a field-facing learning agenda; supporting shared learning through a facilitated learning community; valuing missteps for the learning iteration that follows rather than punishing grantees for falling short of original plans; and requiring grantees to report on their projects not through typical reports to funders but through public exhibitions of learning.

ALP’s unique process and some of its direct impacts have been detailed in an evaluation by Social Policy Research Associates, Lessons From the Assessment for Learning Project: Strategies for Building an Authentic Learning Community. Observable impacts included greater innovation stemming from a culture perceived by grantees as “safe” for risk-taking; elevation of atypical players into roles of leadership and teaching; growth in the depth and range of social networks representing the advancement of “assessment for learning “as a field; and greater local relevance and ownership of the work due to stronger relationships and collaboration between grantees and students, families, and educators.

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March 2021

By Gene Wilhoit & Jennifer Poon, with gratitude to Tony Monfiletto, Samantha Olson, Jonathan Vander Els, and our colleagues at the Center for Innovation in Education for their valuable input.

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Download a PDF of Investing in Learning to share below.

Investing in Learning

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Why Do We Have Two Systems of Accountability?

By Paul Leather, Director of the Interstate Learning Community

“…I ‘walk out’, further out of my certitudes, ‘walk on’ further into uncertainty… I fear to talk about these things within the framework of academic institutions, I fear to be judged… I believe that the change in academic settings need to start by voicing out the repressed narratives of our community, exposing ourselves in the vulnerability of that fear, which will grow our strength. I want to bring these voices together…”

Within, By Questioning– Cleo Petric

Walk Out Walk On Blog

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Ramond has always liked math. The answers come to him easily in class, faster than Juan, his best friend, or better than even Maria, who reads way more than he does. So, last Thursday, when Mrs. Burch announced that she would be giving a test on-line, one that was supposed to be given last Spring, he looked forward to it. Sitting at the small desk that he and Abbi had set up for him in the back bedroom of their little ranch house, he felt he was ready. When she came on Zoom, Mrs. Burch told the class that they would need to keep their cameras on at all times and that they would be recording when the test was given. Ramond didn’t like that part, he liked to switch his camera off when he worked a problem, why should others be staring at him when he did his work?

When she was finished talking, he opened up the test. The directions told him to wait until the teacher started the process. The internet was “spongie” again, that was what Abbi called it when it flickered on the screen and odd messages appeared. Ten minutes went by, still nothing from Mrs. Burch. Ramond wondered what was taking so long? 15 minutes now, Ramond raised his hand on-line, maybe something was wrong.

Mrs. Burch came on immediately. “Ramond, are you doing ok?” she asked.

What does she mean, he wondered? “When do we start the test, Mrs. Burch?” he asked.

“Ramond, we are already 15 minutes into the test, didn’t you hear me say, ‘Get Started?’”

“I’ve just been sitting here, waiting,” he muttered, tears forming in his eyes.

“Well, get going, then, the test will be over in 40 minutes.”

Ramond opened up the first question and took a quick peek ahead. There were 50+ questions. No way would he be able to finish in time, he knew. As he scrolled back to the first question, nervous now to get going as Mrs. Burch had said, he bumped his chrome book, flipping it onto the floor, where it promptly flopped shut.

Tears streaming down his face, he yelled, “Abbi, they tricked me!”

Although the names and certain aspects of this story have been altered, this is essentially a true tale from this Fall about a fifth grader’s experience in a state where it had been decided to administer the state math test, against the advice of the State Technical Advisory Council. They had warned that the resulting data would not be comparable to previous year administrations, and thus not usable for accountability purposes.

When Abbi and Mrs. Burch connected that evening, Mrs. Burch consoled her, saying, “Ramond shouldn’t worry, we have to give these tests but it won’t count for his grade.”

“But he is very upset! He says he now hates math, when it’s always been his favorite!”

“You know he often gets upset when things don’t go right, you know he talks with Ms. Lynn,” shared Mrs. Burch.

“Yes, but this was just our wifi, it got spongie, like it does just about every day.”

“I know, but, just tell him not to worry about it and please know that we don’t take these tests too seriously, we have our own assessments that tell us more about how Ramond is doing.”

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We hear stories like this from all across the country. And, aside from the particular difficulties of remote learning and testing in the time of COVID, they are not new stories. When I was Deputy Education Commissioner in New Hampshire towards the end of the NCLB era and during the transition to ESSA, I would attend local school board meetings. There, I would witness District Administrators explaining the state test results from the previous year to their local Board. If the results were good relative to other schools or districts, it was due to the wonderful faculty and hardworking students. Conversely, local adverse demographic considerations were central to the explanations given in communities where the results were not so promising. In all locations, however, the discussion usually ended with how the local Board knew that they had instituted their own assessments and their own set of metrics, separate from the state tests used for school improvement. The staff would extol these locally selected tests and their efforts to improve student performance. It was clear, even then, during the height of the state/federal standards and accountability era, that we had two accountability systems, serving two sets of purposes for two different groups of individuals, at two different levels, state/federal and local.

Psychometricians have called out these distinctions with “Balanced Systems of Assessments.”[1] In such systems there is a recognition that there are different purposes served at different levels and, depending on distinct uses, if the design is both coherent and principled, the whole can be greater than the parts. Serving multiple identified use cases, these systems should be considered at best, “loosely coupled,” where vertical coherence between state level tests and local assessments do not bleed into the others’ purposes, and also do not provide conflicting information to end users.[2] Further, in order to address improvements in the classroom, it is best to be concerned with “horizontal coherence” of curriculum, instruction, and assessments, rather than prepping to the state test, with the hope that intense focus at the this level will result ultimately in state level test improvement.[3]This narrative construct is tough to follow at present, however, as so much state policy and consequential incentives are still based on vertical coherence. For teachers, this may mean that performance evaluations are still tied to state test results, for superintendents, tenure or even the question of a school’s existence may still be based on improved state test performance. Hence, we continue to see state test prep taking time away from deeper classroom instruction and outsized attention to state level results, particularly for schools in lower income communities, where quality instruction is so very important.

During these perilous times, we need to ask the following question -- are we well served by multiple accountability systems where both stakes and impact are overlapping in questionable ways? A further concern is that both systems are essentially internally focused — one with equity of opportunity, the other with system improvement, and the state level pressure and impact on the classroom remains unchecked. As some state Commissioners and boards of education have chosen to implement low stakes state assessments to evaluate learning loss since last March, as done in Ramond’s State, we have observed many students and parents giving evidence to their own decisions with their feet – fewer and fewer students are returning to class or Zoom calls. We are seeing general disengagement from public schooling at levels unprecedented in modern times.[4] Recent findings from our focus groups show that the local concerns of disengaged students, disappearing families, and overstressed educators faced with the day-to-day challenges of multiple choice options for student learning, (in-school, hybrid, or fully remote), are far outweighing the less immediate concerns of meeting federal and state testing and accountability expectations.

Indeed, as we see in broad sectors of society a growing distrust of many governmental institutions, we hear parental and community voices asking, “are these state tests relevant today?” Faced with broad guidelines for opening and/or closing schools during COVID developed by political bodies in the state capitol, local school boards and educators are going their own way. This trend often results in a patchwork of school systems open or closed almost randomly across the landscape. This, in turn, causes other problems, teachers living in one town with schools fully remote, required to report for duty to the school 10 miles away in the next district, caught in an impossible set of choices for their own children and careers.

As we drill deeper, we see paradoxically that trust in local schools is waning simply due to parents and family members finding themselves more and more involved on a daily basis in the delivery of schooling. The one-size-fits-all methods that define many of today’s public school classrooms no longer make sense if we optimally desire to support each individual student’s learning. This truth is ever more apparent today for a mother of two, with one child bored as she completes her online daily assignments in less than two hours, while the other appears to be inextricably lost in grade level work that lies well beyond his learning edge.

If it is not too late, it is time that we reconsider how we think about school accountability, as we shared in A New Path Forward this month. Yes, equity of opportunity across zip codes needs to be addressed. But schools need to be more accountable on a day-to-day basis to the students, parents, families, communities, and educators they serve. Surely, we can find better ways to meld these two purposes. Rather than continue to operate state assessments and accountability measures that were not designed for the conditions and challenges of these times, wouldn’t we be better served by redesigning the system overall?

You may say, “but you’re talking about changing immutable realities at the very core of the infrastructure that define the very shape of the overall system.“ We agree, we have discussed how the core of the fractal of public education is inequitable, systemically racist and we think the only path to equity is THROUGH change in what was initially defined as immutable at the core of our educational system. But you may ask, “are we indeed addressing some things that are not possible to change?” What if this had been Thurgood Marshall’s argument in the opening of the landmark case, Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954, would we even question the existence of segregated schools? You may say, “yes, maybe in an ideal world this should be done, but, well, this will be a hard path to follow. The system as we know it was designed to make education effective and efficient while serving all.” As we previously discussed in Gretchen Morgan’s post, “Origins of the C!E Theory of Action Part 1: Fractals,” this argument denies the inconvenient truth that the current model, core elements first adopted in Thomas Mann’s Prussian influenced Common School design of 1843, and later amended as high schools were re-configured by Harvard President Charles Eliot and the Committee of Ten in 1893, set in place for the ages a system where opportunity is intended to school every child, but to particularly favor “the fit and the able.” By fit, we do not mean “in good health due to exercise,” we mean “of the right size and shape” (and color) most like those currently enfranchised. By “able,” we do not mean “capable of performance,” we mean “most likely to succeed in society as it is currently constructed.” U.S. Public Education as we currently know it is largely an institutional artifact, sitting withIn a society that is rapidly changing demographically. Communities are integrating and socioeconomic redlines are being crossed, if not erased. More and more local leaders recognize the essential need to adapt to emerging complex and chaotic conditions and challenges. Today’s students are not well served by a system where the goal is to meet a set of realities that have become obsolete as they struggle to graduate.

We need to do better by all of our students and our communities. We need to do better by Ramond. Abbi and her family will demand it and Mrs. Burch will need to understand why this is true, how it might be done, and what she will need to make a new order real in her classroom. The system must flex, adapt, and adjust. It needs a full redesign. We, all of us, are called to this work. As the rightful owners of our schools, we can grow strong in the face of fear of failure or judgment. As Cleo Petric muses, we can be safe in our vulnerability. We need to “Walk Out and Walk On,” as Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze have shared.[5]It is time we take this particular journey together, and in so doing, we are responsible to ourselves and to one another. We need to remember Richard Elmore’s admonition regarding the need for reciprocity between teacher and learner, and recognize how it speaks to the need for reciprocity between educators and parents, state and local community -- “For every increment of performance I demand from you, I have an equal responsibility to provide you with the capacity to meet that expectation. Likewise, for every investment you make in my skill and knowledge, I have a reciprocal responsibility to demonstrate some new increment in performance.” [6] Though difficult, Elmore’s challenge to all of us feels today more like the path worth following. The time is now.

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Footnotes:

[1, 2] A Tricky Balance: The Challenges and Opportunities of Balanced Systems of Assessment. S. Marion et al. Center for Assessment. 2013

[3] Design Principles for New Systems of Assessment. L. Shepard, W. Penuel, & K. Davidson. 2017

[4] School Districts Saw Unprecedented Drop in Enrollment. 60 Minutes. CBS News. November, 2020

[5] Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now. M. Wheatley and D. Frieze. April, 2011

[6] Elmore, R. 2002. Bridging the Gap between Standards and Achievement: The Imperative for Professional Development in Education. Washington, DC: Albert Shanker Institute.