Transcript of Schools doing well/Elliot Eisner

Results...
The result is reform that leaves little room for surprise, imagination, for
improvisation, or for the cultivation of small details and teachable moments. The
consequences of this approach to education include:
A narrowed curriculum, where testing is the priority.
It colors the school climate, leading students to focus on earning a grade & not on true
learning.
In our desire to improve our schools, education has become a casualty.
What are your thoughts on what it means to say a school is doing well?
How does a school that is doing well look different from a school that is not?
Food for thought..
"The formulation of standards and the measurement of performance were intended to
tidy up a messy system and to make teachers and administrators truly accountable.
The aim was then, and is today, to systemize and standardize so that the public will
know which schools are performing well and which are not." What is the ultimate cost
for such a system?
Instead
Educators should be trying to discover where a student is, what their strengths &
weaknesses are.
Less concern about students answering questions & a larger emphasis on their ability
to ASK purposeful questions.
The function of schooling is not to do better in school, but to enable students to be
successful in life!
A focus on what students can do with what they've learned in school is a true
measurement of educational achievement.

What Eisner believes

"We ought to be providing environments that enable each student in our schools to
find a place in the educational sun. But when we narrow the program so that there is
only a limited array of areas in which assessment occurs and performance is honored,
children whose aptitudes and interests lie elsewhere are going to be marginalized in
our schools."
The Bottom Line..
A school is doing well when it can diversify opportunities for its students. These
opportunities allow students to figure out what they're good at & what they enjoy
learning.
A school is doing well when its focus is aligned with the processes, conditions and
culture related to that school & its community.
Those of us that wish to exercise leadership in education must do more than simply
accept the inadequate criteria that are now used to determine how well our schools are
doing.
A little bit about Elliot Eisner:
Wrote this article in 2001.
Born in 1933 & grew up in a lower- middle class Chicago neighborhood.
His focus of work has been in arts education, curriculum studies & educational
evaluation.
Feels that education in public schools is too narrow, unbalanced & lacks artistic
thinking.
How we measure schools in America...
The use of rationalized procedures (objectives, standards, testing, etc.) is what shapes
our ideas of education and drives what we believe makes schools great.
If you don't know where you're headed, you will not know when you have arrived,
right?
We then use the results of our measurements to judge the quality of our students & the
performance of schools.
We assume that these measurements provide accurate results of student and school
performance. But what are we really measuring?