I love this NPR interview with Todd Rose, author of The End of Average, where he describes the emphasis on standardization and the impact on schools and how students learn:
"You think of things like the lockstep, grade-based organization of kids, and you end up sitting in a class for a fixed amount of time and get a one-dimensional rating in the form of a grade, and a one-dimensional standardized assessment….It feels comforting. But if you take the basic idea of jaggedness, if all kids are multidimensional in their talent, their aptitude, you can’t reduce them to a single score. It gives us a false sense of precision and gives up on pretending to know anything about these kids."
In spite of our understanding that no two people are the same, we have organized a system that prioritizes and demands over-structured lessons for every student to meet the same objective at the same time in the year regardless of the individual’s unique strengths, interests, or questions to be answered.
My bright spot this week is a teacher who has designed a system for students to create personalized paths to achieve their goals.
With Gratitude,
Katie
