Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Friday, April 14, 2006
A final word on the Oprah shows
OK, we’ve sort of been all Oprah this week. (This post has links to the rest of my Oprah posts if you want to read them all.) Her two-day program on America’ education crisis has sparked lots of conversation. I had two last thoughts on the issues she raised.
First is on the question of who’s fault this is. Of course, many people and institutions share blame when the quality of a public school declines. But it was interesting to me how much parents were singled out as the main culprits causing the decline of schools in the comments at the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s education blog. Posters were saying too many parents don’t care, aren’t involved or are hostile to schools and actually get in the way of good education by encouraging bad attitudes in their kids.
If parents are the main problem, or even just one of the major problems, it creates a difficult situation. How do you deal with those families? Can you somehow force parents to care?
This brings us to the issues of school choice and small schools.
Are small schools a feasible solution, given the potential costs? And can choice work if parents are uninvolved?
Thinking about this reminded me of former Cincinnati Superintendent Steven Adamowski’s approach.
Adamowski believed both in small schools and in choice. In Cincinnati, his goal was to split the city’s big, comprehensive high schools down into smaller schools within the school. So it might look like this — instead of one, huge 2,000-student high school, the same school would be divided into four, 500-student units. Those kids would mostly be kept together in one part of the building with a core group of teachers in hopes of building the intimacy and support that are the hallmark of effective small schools. But the bigger school remains intact, sharing the gym, cafeteria, library and support staff to keep costs down.
And Adamowski wanted each of these units to have a specialized theme. So instead of, say, six huge high schools trying to be all things to all kids, he’d want 24 themed small school units. Years ago, I read an interview in which he described how he hoped this would work. His goal would be to have lots of options for kids. Suppose a student chooses a school with a science theme, but end up struggling. Then maybe they try the student in an Arts-themed unit. Or maybe one that specializes in Montessori method, or a language immersion school, or a military-themed school or even a digital high school? Essentially, Adamowski hoped that with options they could keep trying until they found the place where the kid fit best and, hopefully, flourished.
Part of what he was trying to do was solve the problems of the cost of small schools and of student/parent apathy by creating what he hoped would be affordable, energizing choices.
That vision never got entirely off the ground in Cincinnati, as Adamowski ultimately left after a long-running political battle. But it raises the question of whether some of these seemingly insurmountable education problems can be creatively addressed.
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