Dr. David Hopson
After spending several days with school business officials from throughout the United States and other countries, I found that we are all facing similar situations and issues despite location, school size, or type of community. These discussions, experiences, and work sessions were made possible by the Massachusetts’ Association of School Business Officials, which hosted the annual international meeting of school business officials in Boston. The conference included some great general sessions, multiple workshops, discussion groups, and the opportunity to network with over 1,200 attendees.
I was particularly impressed with the messages shared by the two keynote speakers. Both honed in on two important aspects of education that they felt were overlooked in the rush to quantify student success via simple written tests: creativity and joy. Creativity and joy are the key ingredients in providing a positive, open, sharing environment where students and staff work collaboratively on items that are relevant to life, such as problem solving, applying information to real life problems, and acquiring skills in a supportive and non-threatening manner. Both speakers shared research studies and experiences to buttress their own experience in working with children both in and out of school settings. According to these speakers, the key to success was creating an educational environment for both students and staff that allowed for the open exchange of ideas, that was supportive of participants by making them feel safe, engaged, and willing to share in a manner that was non-threatening, that provided positive feedback, and that resulted in applying knowledge and skills to a problem that was understandable, realistic, and relevant to their own life experiences.
While all schools strive to provide a safe environment where students and staff can collaborate, where knowledge and skills are integral to learning, and where participants are engaged and active, the reality is that this is difficult under the best of conditions and doesn’t even appear to be on the radar of national education policy. Consider what we’ve allowed to happen in education: nearly continuous testing via only a single medium (written tests, i.e., multiple choice, short answer, short essays); a focus on learning facts instead of a relevant problem-solving, experiential or project-based approach; and a ranking of students, staff, and schools that, based upon a single test, determines their ‘success’, regardless of what positive activities may be occurring. While lip service is paid to 21st century skills such as communication, collaboration, problem solving, creativity, the creation of ideas and items, and preparation for careers as well as college, the reality is that only basic academic content in mathematics, English, and science is tested and used to determine a student’s success, particularly in the idea that a student is ‘college’ ready.
While I agree that knowing and understanding how our students are performing regarding academic success—especially so we can provide either additional help for students struggling in a particular area, or provide more challenging opportunities for those students performing beyond expectations—the reality is we’re not measuring the other items that are important to success in life. For example, we’re not currently allowed to count the success of students in the welding program as they apply their knowledge, skills, creativity, problem solving and collaborative efforts to creating or repairing an object. While our staff do much to help students communicate, while our student activities encourage collaboration and problem-solving, while our ‘arts’ classes and other activities support and nurture creativity, expression, and performance, and while our students and staff work diligently to apply their knowledge and skills to improve our schools and our community, none of these items ‘count’ towards a district’s performance ranking. For many students, especially those applying to very selective private colleges, these activities are often as important as academics! The question is when, or if, the pendulum of students’ or schools’ success will begin to swing from the mandated simple testing currently supported by certain national foundations to a more well-rounded method that encompasses those items that produce positive and productive members of society.
