Learning from the Successes of Others in Educational Settings

I am a product of a very large public school system.  I worked for 37 years in that same system.  I care greatly about the students, parents, staff, and the system itself, but I am feeling very badly about something that I helped to bring to this large system, but is not leading to improvement.

As one of the reform leaders in Los Angeles' educational system, I fought for a variety of school types to come into our system.  I believed that we could do a better job of educating our children from kindergarten through high school.  I was given the opportunity to help lead reform of our high schools away from very large comprehensive models to smaller environments that would support both students and adults.

It has always been my belief that we must find a way to educate all of our kids.  If we cannot, we need to let others who can do it better.  For this reason, we created small learning communities and small school structures in all of our district's high schools.  At least we received and approved plans for all high schools to recreate themselves into some type of smaller structure.  Included in this work we were given the opportunity to bring some very special models to our district, New Tech and Big Picture. 

Unfortunately, the financial downturn hit and hurt badly causing changes at district and school levels that for many schools, but not all, stopped reform from progressing.  I had to stand in front of our Board of Education on several occasions and explain our restructuring plan, including the building of new small schools.  One Board member would mock this effort by calling these new small school schools, "Turbo Charged Schools" because he felt that they were expensive.  My response to him was always the same.  We have to introduce new "proof points" into our district.  We know that if we can create the right environment with well prepared staff members and gain the support of parents, that we can better educate all students.

What did I mean by "proof points"?  I believed then and still believe that we need to look and learn from models of education different from what we have historically had in our district for many years.  We need these alternative models to be learning opportunities for the district and for the educators.  I even believe that when we have successful models of learning in our neighborhood charter schools that we should learn what we can from them.  We do not have to copy exactly what any other institution is doing, but we can find what they do better than we are doing, and figure out a way to introduce something similar into our schools.

Seven years later, I am finding that there is little if any learning taking place between schools in our own districts, or from those schools that we created within or outside of our district.  Charters exist and will continue to exist.  We should not fight that, but we should accept them for what they are and use them as an opportunity for our own big system learning.

I just read an article from EdSource about the City Arts and Technology High School in San Francisco.  Not only is this school producing great student achievement results, but it is doing so with a student body very similar to the student body of most urban schools.  If they can do it, why can't we?  We can certainly improve our results, but not without learning what this Envision Charter is doing in San Francisco and what other district and charter alternative type schools are doing in our own neighborhood and around the nation. 

As educators, we hope that we are continuous learners because that is our vision for what we want for our students.  Continuous learning requires that the learner remain inquisitive and reflective, and always searching for something being done more successfully by others.

I would recommend that educators, especially in secondary schools read the article about Envision's City Arts and Technology Charter High School and think carefully about how you could bring "deeper learning" to your school.  Check out the article at:  http://edsource.org/2014/charter-school-integrates-deeper-learning/65448?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdsourceToday+%28EdSource+Today%29&nord=1#.VBB6m018OUk

Let me know what you think about the need to learn from others, both in your own district and outside of your district.  Should we be isolationists or should we be continuous learners?