The journey to transforming education for today’s innovation economy is unnerving for many because one must re-examine many long-held assumptions and consider perspectives and research previously not recognized. This section includes informed comments from parents, business leaders, visionary educators, and more that help to frame why we need to reinvent education and what kinds of things we need to do.
Award Winning Teachers on No Child Left Behind
This short asks several award winning teachers about No Child Left Behind. Their comments are very telling about how standardized testing has taken all the life and energy out of learning.
Ted Dintersmith: Prepare Our Kids for Life not Tests
Ted Dintersmith speaks as a parent and an innovation investor how he discovered school is not preparing his kids for today’s world. He was so moved that he took on a mission to drive education change based on his long experience as a venture investor. Ted is behind the wonderful documentary film “Most Likely to Succeed.”
Larry Rosenstock and Rob Riordan on What Kids Need to Learn
In this short animation Larry Rosenstock from High Tech High talks about what students need to learn today and how that translates into a learning environment.
The Need to Continually Reinvent
Dacia Toll, founder of Achievement First Charter Schools, talks about how she realized their successful charter model was not really adequate for the huge need. She created a “Greenfield” initiative to continually reinvent the learning model by borrowing from the very best schools. She has good insights into how education needs to change.
What Students Say
This is panel from the 2017 iNACOL conference. Students from several schools that have student-centered learning environments talk about how this experience differs from previous, more traditional education experiences. While the schools have different versions and degrees of student-centered learning, the impact reported by the students is very powerful. We should listen more to students. About 45 minutes.
The Challenging Journey of Education Transformation with PBL
Aaron Brengrad was a frustrated educator who had the chance to reinvent a failing school. He talks about the many ups and downs of making Katherine Smith Elementary School into a true PBL school which closed the equity gap. There is a lot of insight here for educators.
How Deeper Learning Changes the Learning Environment
Jennifer Morrison, a graduate student at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, talks about teaching in a Deeper Learning environment. She mentions the challenges, but also how it changes the learning environment to engage all students.
Transcending Content to Understand the World
Jose Garcia, a School Development Coach with New Tech Network, talks about how Deeper Learning transcends content and helps students understand the world and their role in it.
How Schools Must Change for Today’s World
Indianapolis Superintendent Lewis Ferebee sits down to talk about the need for schools to adapt as “college and career ready” comes to mean something very different in the modern economy, the growing need to bring agility into the classroom, and why education is the most urgent social justice issue of our times.
Education Progress and Challenge in the World
Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), talks in this video about where education has come and where it needs to go. He provides a lot of very valuable insight based on his experience with education all over the world. There is also a web link to a free copy of a new book he has written on the same topic.
Preparing Kids to Change the World
Tom Vander Ark talks about his growing impatience with schools that look like the days of old, noting that we must prepare kids to change the world. Tom is author of Smart Parents, Smart Cities, and Getting Smart. He is co-founder of Getting Smart and Learn Capital and serves on the boards of 4.0 Schools, eduInnovation, Digital Learning Institute, Imagination Foundation, Charter Board Partners and Bloomboard.
What Doesn’t Work in School Reform
Michael Fullan, a former Dean of Education at the University of Toronto, talks about his research and experience in transforming schools. He highlights four approaches commonly used to drive education transformation that do not work, and also mentions approaches that are effective.
Carlos Moreno: Innovating Kids
Carlos Moreno shares his experience about how poor and minority kids feel disenfranchised. He goes on to outline how he is now transforming education to be effective for kids like him. Carlos is Co-Executive Director of Big Picture Learning, one of the leading Deeper Learning support organizations.
Christopher Emdin: Really Dealing with Equity
Christopher Emdin gives a cogent keynote presentation at SYSWedu 2017 about equity in schools. He says “The nature and structure of contemporary education has forced folks to be so adjusted to norms that do violence on young people that we got to move somewhere else…Are we as educators going to be humble enough to create spaces to allow young people to teach us what we need to do?” This is one of the best presentations on the equity issues I have seen. This version has edited out some of the less important comments to reduce the length.
Richard Elmore: Palliative Care for a Dying Institution
Richard Elmore is the Gregory R. Anrig Research Professor of Educational Leadership at Harvard University, and the director of the Doctor in Educational Leadership (Ed.L.D.) program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is very well known for his extensive efforts first in education policy and later working in numerous schools to help professionalize their teaching practices. This long history makes his comments in the video below about the future of education particularly striking and noteworthy. He suggests that his current efforts are “palliative care for a dying institution,” and he outlines how he sees education moving away from schools and toward learning. The two TED talks he highlights are presented under Resources>Background/Principles. The entire panel from which this was taken can be viewed here.
Russell Ackoff: Need to Do the Right Thing
Russell Ackoff is a well-known systems expert with some of the most original thinking. Here he makes the case that we cannot improve any system (including a school) by improving its parts. We must do the right thing to improve the overall goal of the system.