“Public Secondary Schooling” should be reconceptualized (structure, curriculum, and pedagogy) to be effective in 2025 in many ways. It’s structure should be more flexible, and not be so divided across disciplines. Assessments should be qualitative and there should not be such a focus on high stakes testing. The curriculum in 2025 should be focused on the “big” picture of the content area. As Oakes and Lipton say in Teaching to Change the World, the curriculum should “place the human story in a larger context” (p. 145). Students should use their own histories to compare and contrast. The focus should not just be on the powerful, but the powerless and include other perspectives. The pedagogy of this curriculum should therefore include a more contructivist approach. Classes should involve projects that force students to solve a problem. Finally, the community should be involved.
Cooperative learning to solve a problem |
By having an interactive, interdisciplinary, cooperative and project-driven base in schools, the focus switches from rote memorization to understanding of content. Tests will still have their place, but students, teachers and schools will be able to focus not on test taking skills but understanding.
As the focus switches from testing to understanding, the content is not only taught, but important skills for 2025 are as well. Students will be able to work together, communicate, solve problems and make connections. On top of all that, students learn better in a cooperative setting. “Even the strongest students make considerable intellectual gains when they work with students of all skill levels” (p. 192). These are the skills that students, future adults, will need in 2025 and beyond as businesses and employers move from organizational charts, (the traditional pyramid) to networks (Draves & Coates, p. 129). If students are taught those skills and they learn from them, then they can use them as adults in networks and continually learn.
Finally, in school systems (and states and nations) that focus on interaction and problem-solving projects and not high stakes testing, the surrounding communities will benefit. In 2011, if a school does not perform, they may be “punished” by a withholding of funds. This obviously will not help the flailing school. If test scores are low, they might not get the money they might need to help bring those scores up, to help teachers focus more on understanding through projects and problem solving. Additionally, if schools are not meeting requirements, that public information is made available which hinders economic and business development in the surrounding community and hurts real estate. Oakes and Lipton write, “All of the scores make headlines. …state policymakers proclaim a crisis when their state’s achievement scores are lower than other states; federal and state government threatens to withhold funds when a school’s test scores indicate that it is ‘low-performing’; the real estate salesperson compares the local school’s test scores; advantaged parents trumpet high-achieving scores as irrefutable proof of their children’s merit” (p. 223). I do not argue that test scores should be private, but they should not be such a focus. What should also be made public are the projects and learning the school is doing. The community should be involved which will help real estate and economic development.