The sweet spot in schooling is a time when all the stars align, and every day feels like sunshine. Children, teachers, principals, and parents are on the same page and are happy being there. All the tangibles and intangibles of schooling seem to harmonize. The usual obstructions and distractions of school operations – transportation, campus maintenance, food service – are of no consequence. The usual human tensions ease and do not impede successes. There is agreement on goals and people collaborate on how to achieve them. Continue reading
A Baccalaureate Keeps Giving
To offset the half-life reality of our non-durable learning, an educated person who has invested in learning and knows how to succeed in collegiate and technical education continually hits the “reset” button of their knowledge and skills Continue reading
Non-Academic Attributes of a K-12 Education Last Longer. We Prioritize the Wrong Data.
The correlates of non-academic traits with later adult life quality are far more important than we acknowledge. It is time to re-center our priorities of what constitutes a quality K-12 education and begin looking at core life values. Forget academic assessments, grade point averages, and class rankings. Continue reading
Our PISA Scores Are Low Because PISA Is Meaningless to Our Students
The causation for the low status of the United States on PISA assessments is this – our children are transactional and they perceive no benefit for giving their best efforts on the PISA. What matters to our children gets their attention and PISA test results do not matter. Continue reading
Ethical or Transactional. Which Will Our Children Be?
Not to be too simplistic, we can teach children to be Crockett-like in considering the implications of and responsibilities for the decisions they make. This curriculum will not display on their transcript but will be noted in the proverbial book of life. We can teach them that a “True North” is either an ethical process for decision making or it is the endgame goal to be achieved regardless of process. It is their decision to make. Continue reading