What's Become Clear

Below you will find an interview with my friend Bentley Richert. Bentley now teaches at Inman elementary school that was a coworker for many years. Over those years we spent many hours discussing school change. Bentley decided to go back to the classroom and see if all those ideas really make sense.

I think you’ll enjoy our conversation that ranges from authentic engagement to standardized tests. Bentley expreses his ideas about individualization and customization, learning by doing, and the use of technology in the 21st century.

Bentley teaches at Inman Elementary School and has a background as an educational specialist at ESSDACK, teacher at a charter school and as a classroom teacher in the Haven school district.

What’s Become Clear w/ Bentley Richert from Steve Wyckoff on Vimeo.

What’s Become Clear w/ Bentley Richert from Steve Wyckoff on Vimeo.

I decided to write this post to honor those educators that I believe are actually doing something to change the educational experiences for significant numbers of kids. So my criteria was, did they actually do something that changed the educational experience for their students for the better? These leaders are actually engaged in school change.

Dr. Randy Watson: Randy is the superintendent of schools in McPherson USB 418. Over the last several years Randy has facilitated a discussion with the Macpherson community to define what they collectively wanted for their students. They’ve decided that the three most important things for their graduates are citizenship ready, college ready, and career ready.

Dr. Mary Jo Taylor: Mary Jo is the superintendent of schools in Stafford Kansas. Stafford high school has a student population of about 70 kids. In spite of that small number. Mary Jo and her staff have implemented three innovative programs that benefit her kids, and their local community. They have a health sciences program with almost 20 students that leads to the students being certified as CNA’s, CMA’s, or EMT’s. Next year they will add certified pharmacy technician as an option. Each of the students is also receiving college credit along with their certification. In addition they have an entrepreneurship center where students are running their own businesses, and a construction program where the students last year built the first new stick home in Stafford and almost 25 years.

Dr. John Morton and Mrs. Natise Vogt John is the superintendent of schools in Newton Kansas and Natise is the principal of Walton Elementary School which has been transformed into a rural life charter schoolOver the last several years. The school epitomizes what a learning by doing experience can look like for elementary school children.

Dr. Diane DeBacker: Diane is the Commissioner of Education in Kansas and after initially being named interim Commissioner of Education, the interim was officially dropped. Diane formed the Kansas Education Commission made up of 50 individuals from across the state to thoroughly examine the key priorities found in the Blueprint for Reform. Diane gets it, the only question is is any individual powerful enough to change the direction of public education. Only time will tell.

Mr. Mike Carson: okay Mike retired two years ago so this is kind of an honorable mention. Mike was the superintendent of Erie public schools. Mike lead the transition to a project based curriculum. This may be the best job of leading I have personally observed in public education. Mike truly lead systemic change. Again, time will tell if the change sticks.

I truly wish this list was a lot longer. There are several people worthy of mention for implementing programs that made a difference for some kids but lacked the systemic impact of these four individuals. Perhaps next year and looking at school change for 2011 this list will grow significantly. – Steve Wyckoff

One of the comments that I’ve heard several times recently is that the one thing we really do well is to teach our kids how to learn. In my opinion one of the very poorest things we do is teach our kids how learn. In fact, when I talk about school change that should be one of the first things on our agenda.

I think we confuse students sitting passively, compliantly taking in information, then giving that information back to us on the test, with learning. I’ve referred many times to my experiences speaking with the college of education students at the University of Kansas. One of the things I always ask them is, “If they took a test as seniors in high school that they got an  “A” on, that they couldn’t pass as freshman in college?” They always roar with laughter and every hand goes up.

My question to them is if you didn’t remember the information long enough to recall it less than a year later did you really learn it?

My good friends Kevin Honeycutt and Ginger Lewman talk a lot about L2L2, Learning To Love To Learn.I agree with him completely but the phrase I  chose, which is less emotional, is that our students become self-directed learners. I do absolutely agree that students who love to learn are our best learners.

This was driven home to me some time ago while I was visiting with a group of students. We were talking about learning when it dawned on me that students see the term learning, in many cases, as a negative. They associate the term learning with boredom, sitting passively, and content that is uninteresting and irrelevant.

The conundrum for educators is this. All of our educators were taught to teach just as they were taught. Yet this traditional teaching mode doesn’t engage students, nor create educational experiences, that give the student the opportunity to be either self-directed nor L2L2L.

In order to give students the opportunity to engage in self directed learning the teacher, in collaboration with the student, must create a learning experience that engages the student and at the same time leads to the learning that the teacher desires. This is a far different requirements than simply creating traditional lesson plans.

It can be done, I spent two days last week observing it. I spent one day in Stafford Kansas at the SEED center, and half a day in the Newton Kansas school district at the Walton Rural Life School. Two very different schools, one for high school students, and one for elementary students. One with the theme of rural life were kids are raising chickens and goats, and one focusing on entrepreneurship were students are actually running their own business.

What they both have in common is learning by doing experiences were the teachers are facilitators who practice excellent Socratic skills, rather than direct instruction skills.

Real school change has to include different learned behaviors on the part of teachers, that lead to learning by doing experiences for students, and real behavioral changes on the part of students. – Steve Wyckoff

In my previous post, School change:  so does Oklahoma get it, and Kansas doesn’t?, I was responding to an e-mail sent to me after my post, School change: Oklahoma gets it, Kansas doesn’t. Part of that e-mail asked the question:

Other comments have to do with what the direction of education should be. We keep hearing that we need to change and there is never an answer about what needs to change. I know the long range vision would be to do something different with our educational system but my question is what?

So I’d like to take a shot at answering that question. Again, this is my opinion, and I would love to hear your opinion on this topic. Bear in mind that I’m trying to describe in a few paragraphs what would require months if not years of discussion and transition for full implementation. And my focus is on high schools.

There are three main areas that we need to address; what we want kids to know, do, and be like; what their educational experiences would look like; and how we would organize our schools to facilitate learning.

The first thing that needs to be addressed is what the educational experience would look like for our students. We should begin the transition to learning by doing, rather than learning by sitting and listening. I think that Erie in high school has demonstrated how you can begin to successfully transition to a learning by doing environment.

They have chosen project-based learning, which I would include, but you could also have students solving real-world problems, engaging in real world career experiences, and entrepreneurship opportunities. Stafford high school is a leader in this area. They have students engaged in construction that last year built the first new home in Stafford in almost 25 years. They have students engaged in health sciences who will be certified in areas such as CMA, EMT, and phlebotomists. In addition they will have college credits in all these areas. They also have students in their entrepreneurship center, the SEED Center, that are rationally running their own businesses.

In Oxford students are running the local restaurant, and in Pretty Prairie they are working to have their students run the local grocery store. I believe that all of these, and others based on the needs of the students and the community, should be options as well.

The “what we teach” should be changed to what we want students to know, be able to do, and be like when they graduate. All of our current standards should be reframed in the context of their real-world application. We can actually start this process today by working with teachers to understand how they can validate standards mastered in real-world experiences.

The key to the success of learning by doing experiences is the ability to give core subject academic credit for standards that are mastered and demonstrated in a real-world context. The pieces are in place to do this today.

The last area is how we organize the school day. I’ve written about this before in a blog post titled; School change: how we organize schools makes no sense. The Carnegie schedule is a relic of the past and needs to be abandoned.

Obviously, this is an oversimplification, and addresses only the changes necessary at the high school level. In my opinion the high school level is the most critical piece of the puzzle. If we change high schools, middle level and elementary level educational experiences will naturally align accordingly.

But even with that caveat  there is a great deal of work that would need to be done. But as I identified above there are schools already doing these things. There is nothing magical here. As Ron Edmonds and Larry Lizotte said, “all we lack is the will to do it.” If we want to change schools for the better, and make every student educational experience more relevant and useful we can. –  Steve Wyckoff

One of the projects that I’m actively involved in is the movement to incorporate entrepreneurship into schools, especially small, rural, declining enrollment schools. The group that I’m working with is very specific in their desire. They don’t want kids to learn about entrepreneurship, they want the students to practice the discipline of entrepreneurs.

I believe that you only learn when you’re doing. And in this case the doing that we want kids to do, is being entrepreneurs … Starting and running businesses.

This week I had the opportunity and the pleasure to visit with Kylie Stupka who is theExecutive Director of Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas, and Phoebe Bachura who is the Development Director. I was aware of Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas. I had looked over their website and read some of their literature. Both of which were very impressive.

But visiting with these two young ladies in person was beyond impressive. Their organization is doing exemplary work with students mostly in south central Kansas. My hope is that we can collaborate with Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas and find a way to scale their program across the state, but especially to rural schools.

One of the major issues we have in rural America is the shortage of jobs and businesses. If we can find those students across rural America who have a passion that can be applied in a local business, we can grow our own jobs. We’re never going to get businesses to move to rural Kansas in sufficient numbers to solve the problem. It’s imperative for the survival of rural America that we begin to grow our own jobs.

At the same time we can use entrepreneurship to authentically engage our students in their learning experiences. Students should be able to apply and master academic skills in the context of whatever it is they’re passionate about, and the businesses they start around those passions.

After all, if our academic standards can’t be applied in real world settings, why do we have them? This is school change that can not only benefit the students but our rural communities. Please take a minute and watch the video below, I think you’ll be fascinated and impressed. – Steve Wyckoff

School change at the high school level needs to begin with completely rethinking how we organize learning for students. That is, if we want kids to be able to do something with what they know, rather than simply knowing a lot of stuff for tests. That’s a big assumption. Schools presently are organized perfectly to give kids a lot of discrete information within any given academic discipline.

But I believe that in the 21st century what we really want is for students to be able to do something with the knowledge and information that they have. Being prepared for the 21st-century is more about the habits of behavior necessary in the 21st century than to simply knowing a lot of factual information for tests.

To help you understand I want to use an example that I’ve been using for many years. I always ask at the end of the example where my example is wrong. I have yet to have anybody tell me my example doesn’t hold up. So here it is.

If high schools were responsible for teaching basketball.

In high school were responsible for teaching basketball this is how we would organize the learning experience for students.The typical student schedule would look something like this.

1st Hour – Dribbling
2nd Hour – Shooting
3rd Hour – Passing
4th Hour – Rebounding
5th Hour – Offensive and Defense
6th Hour – History and Philosophy of Basketball
7th Hour – English Literature

We’d teach the students about dribbling, about shooting, about rebounding, etc. etc. instead of teaching them to dribble and teaching them to shoot, etc. etc. Even that creative teacher who would let them dribble or shoot etc. etc. would be doing it in isolation of the rest of the skills of basketball.

In addition we’d have them learn basketball by sitting and listening while the teacher explained and demonstrated in the front of the room. And we’d only allow them to play the game of basketball AFTER they graduate! And regardless of whether they were 5’6″ or 7’6″ they would get exactly the same curriculum and learn the same things.

It would be up to them to figure out what position and what knowledge and skills were appropriate for them.

By the way, we’d obviously have them learn English literature because for some reason dead white European male authors seem to be sacred regardless the educational system.

I think that you would agree that this would be a crazy way to teach basketball. It is no less a crazy way to organize our high schools if we want to prepare our kids for the 21st-century. Teaching discrete subjects in isolation may lead to short-term memorization of facts within the discipline, but it does nothing to prepare our kids for their future.

Just as in the basketball example, if we want our kids to function in the 21st century we need to give them experiences that, at the very least, simulate the world they are going to live in. Real school change in high schools should begin by dumping the Carnegie schedule .- Steve Wyckoff

As I talk with individuals about school change one of the issues that always arises is the sense that teachers get that they are being criticized for not being good teachers. I always try to point out when I talk about school change that teachers are doing the best job they’ve ever done, at what we’ve always done in education.

The issue is this, the needs of our kids after they graduate have changed dramatically. And therefore what we do in K-12 schools needs to change dramatically.

One of the fundamental changes that has occurred very subtly over the last several decades, is the need for our students to be able to do something with what they know, not just know something.

There are a couple of different aspects to this need. First of all, for decades and decades, it was sufficient to just know a lot of stuff. That’s what separated the educated from the uneducated. And that was okay because the uneducated could still go out, and if they were willing to show up every day and work hard, they could earn a good living.

And Americans are known for their work ethic. So that worked well.

But gradually the need to be able to do something with what you know became paramount. In 1950 65% of jobs were unskilled. They required no post secondary education. Just show up and work hard and you could be successful.

Today those numbers have changed dramatically. In fact about the same percentage, 65% of jobs, require the individual to have acquired some type of technical skills in order to successfully do their work. The real kicker is those necessary skills are always changing. So the need to not only be able to do something is important, but the ability to learn new skills and apply them is now extremely important.

Howard Gardner in his latest book, Five Minds For The Future, does an outstanding job of describing the need for our students to not simply know about a subject, but to practice the discipline of that subject. It isn’t enough to know about biology. We must allow our students to practice the discipline of a biologist. That same logic can be applied to any subject area.

Obviously, it’s impractical to have every student practice the discipline of every field. There simply isn’t enough time. So we need to be figuring out how to allow students to sample the various disciplines and then begin to choose those fields that are most personally interesting to them.

This solves another major issue that we face in schools. By my estimation less than 5% of our kids are authentically engaged in the educational process in our schools. And according to Gallup’s research, 50% of our students are either going through the motions at school, or are actively undermining the teaching learning process.

There is ample evidence to show that students who are given the choice to choose fields that are interesting to them, and are allowed to learn by actually practicing the discipline of that field, are dramatically more engaged than the students who were not.

This means that schools must begin to analyze their entire curriculum, and learning experiences, and figure out ways to move to a learning by doing model.

So I’m not criticizing teachers’ effort or results when I say they need to change. But I am criticizing leaders for not “leading” their schools to models that are more beneficial to our students. That’s what I mean when I talk about school change.–Steve Wyckoff

I’ve been involved recently in several very interesting conversations that demonstrate the need for school change but also bring to light the myriad of possibilities for rural school districts to collaborate with their communities to increase the economic well-being of their communities. It can be a rather complex puzzle but let me try to put the pieces together for you.

In my many conversations with rural educators who want to improve economic conditions in their community. They typically focus on trying to entice a company to move to their town and hire lots of people, in high-paying jobs.

It isn’t going to happen!

But there are several things that schools can do to assist the community.

1. Schools can develop home construction programs. Many districts already have this program, and are using it to create nice affordable housing in their communities. Nice affordable housing is a rarity in many rural communities. One example is in Little River Kansas. They have either built or completely remodeled a home every year for the last six or seven years. There are approximately 15 students living in those houses who moved to Little River.

15 students doesn’t sound like a lot in a metropolitan area, but for a rural community like Little River that has a major impact on the community.

2. Schools can develop entrepreneurship programs. This one’s a little trickier because the natural inclination for schools would be to create an entrepreneurship class. Typically, the students would set and take notes about entrepreneurship. They can answer a lot of questions about entrepreneurship but wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to be an entrepreneur. When I say develop an entrepreneurship program, I mean that the school should actually have the students starting and running businesses.

Just such a program exists in Stafford Kansas. I’ve written about them in this space before. The stuff that the kids are doing there is phenomenal! Most of them won’t end up being entrepreneurs, but if just one student a year stays in Stafford and opens a business, in a decade it will have an amazing impact on the economics of the community.

3. Last but certainly not least, I believe that students could develop a website and using well understood search engine optimization strategies, could attract two or three families to move to their community every year. There are 3 billion people on the Internet, if a community can accurately portray itself on its website, and use search engine optimization to get it in front of the right people, there is no reason that they can’t attract two or three families a year. There are at least two or three families somewhere looking for a community to make home that looks exactly like the community the students are representing.

But most importantly I believe that each of these three ideas would begin to rapidly move us to a curriculum that informs and teaches us about learning by doing. So in essence, the strategies used to improve community economic development are a way to move our schools where we should be going anyway. Now that’s what I call real school change! – Steve Wyckoff

School change means different things to different people, but one of the things that I believe we have to change in schools, especially in rural areas, is a focus on entrepreneurship. If our rural towns are going to survive, and the kids who stay there  live a decent life, then we have to grow our own entrepreneurs, businesses simply aren’t going to move to small rural towns.

This morning I had the opportunity to visit the entrepreneurship school in Stafford Kansas. What a breath of fresh air! The kids at the Seed Academy, which stands for Stafford Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, are doing things that truly impressed me. Not only are they creative an innovative, but their work is of the highest quality.

Over 20% of all of the students at Stafford High School are involved in the Seed Academy. Most of them will never open a business, and even fewer will open a business in Stafford. But some will. And in the community like Stafford every business makes a difference. If only one student a year ends up opening a business in Stafford it will make a huge difference to the community and the economics of the area.

Even the students who never open a business are learning very important lessons for their future. And they are learning by doing, which is absolutely the way all learning should occur.

Their next step? I believe that their next step needs to be a system where students receive academic credit when they master academic skills in a real world setting. I saw numerous examples in the brief time I was there where students could demonstrate under real-world conditions the use of academic skills and knowledge. There is no reason for students to set through an English class when they are demonstrating all of the skills that they would be learning in the class. Give them English credit and let them move on!

I always enjoy visiting those rare examples where schools are truly authentically engaging students in real-world experiences. In my mind that’s what school changes all about. – Steve Wyckoff

Real school change will only happen when the “main dish” of education is a student centered, learning by doing experience. When our 115-year-old core curriculum is relegated to a  “side dish.” There is such a school, Erie High School in Erie Kansas. At Erie high school students have the option to be in a project based curriculum. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, I believe that students at Erie high school who are in the project-based learning curriculum, are the best prepared students in the state of Kansas to face their lives in the 21st century.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting with school leaders in the Erie school district. We had a very engaging and ebergetic discussion about many aspects, and affects, of project-based learning. About their journey to create a school that strives to help every student become remarkable. And not on standardized tests.

But as good as the conversation was the highlight of my day was to tour their new school that will open in the fall of 2010. Over the last 40 years I have been in many, many new school buildings. But this one was different. Oh, there were many of the same features you would see in any school. But what you won’t see in any school is a learning space specifically designed to enable and enhance student learning in a project based environment.

From the state-of-the-art natural lighting, to the large open aesthetically pleasing spaces that will house the individual student workstations, the new facility is amazing. And it’s not just the aesthetics, architect Allan Milbradt, and Superintendent John Wyrick, took the time to show me all of this state-of-the-art green technologies that are designed to enhance learning, reduce cost, and not do damage to the environment.

I only hope that visitors to the school will pay as much attention to the way that students are learning as they do the beautiful facility. The educators in Erie are making tremendous strides towards creating a learning experience that truly prepares every student for their life in the 21st century. This is rural school change! – Steve Wyckoff

I’ve been watching Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking. Fascinating stuff. But it got me to thinking how boring all of my science classes were. So I tried to reflect on why they were so boring and these programs are so interesting. And then it hit me, these programs are a story, my science classes were a string of endless, meaningless, many times incomprehensible, facts.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not promoting students listening to stories over actually learning by doing. But If we are going to continue in the traditional “chalk and talk” educational model, at least do it in a story that’s interesting. Will the stories be more engaging? Probably a little, but they will be much more entertaining. And I guess barring actual engagement at least entertaining is more tolerable for our kids.

Not the school change I would ask for, or hope for, but at least less boring. – Steve Wyckoff

Have you ever heard somebody say something and said to yourself, “That really make sense.” And then days later, or weeks later, or years later, and even decades later you realize how profound that statement was. Well  Phil Schlechty has one of those quotes. The first time I heard it I was intrigued but over the last couple of decades, as I thought more and more about it, I realized how profound it is. Phil said;

“A teacher’s job is not to teach kids, a teacher’s job is to create meaningful engaging work whereby the student learns the things we want them to learn.”

How profound. Phil also led me to understand how important authentic engagement is to learning. I don’t know if Phil decided authentic engagement was important and that led him to understand what the teacher’s role needed to be. Or if he analyzed successful teachers and saw that those that created work for the student, that was meaningful and engaging, led to engaged students. It may be a chicken or egg discussion.

But the reality is this, for students to truly learn, not just remembering stuff until the  standardized tests are over, they must be emotionally engaged in the learning process. Nothing emotionally engages students in what they’re learning more than doing work that is meaningful and engaging to them.

“Work” also implies that the students are doing something, not passively observing as the teacher does the work. There is a mountain of research that you only learn something, by doing something. My friend Roger Schank has led the research and the movement for learning by doing.

I think when you couple learning by doing, Roger Schank’s work, with Phil Schlechty’s theories, work that is meaningful and engaging, you have the recipe for students becoming remarkable. – Steve Wyckoff

Yes I know blasphemy! But real school change would mean changing the high school curriculum. The high school curriculum has been part of what we believe schools must be for so long that we assume that it has to be that way. In fact our core curriculum has changed very little in 115 years.

In 1892 Charles Elliott, president of Harvard University, formed the Committee of 10 to define the college-bound curriculum. By 1894 the curriculum was complete and in place. In presentations I often use two slides that list the curriculum defined in 1894. I ask participants what the curriculum is? The two most common answers I get are, the regents required curriculum, or our core curriculum.

Just to give you an idea here are the courses defined in 1894:

2nd Secondary School Year

Foreign language … Latin, Greek, German,  French
English Literature
English Composition
Algebra*
Geometry
Astronomy
Botany or Zoölogy (Biology)
History

3rd Secondary School Year

Foreign language … Latin, Greek, German,  French
English Literature
English Composition
Rhetoric (Speech)
Algebra*
Geometry
Chemistry
History
* Option of book-keeping and commercial arithmetic.

4th Secondary School Year

Foreign-language … Latin, German, ranch
Greek
English Literature
English Composition
English Grammar
Trigonometry,1/2 yr.
Higher Algebra, 1/2 yr.
Physics
Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene
History
Geology or Physiography
Meteorology

As you can see over 115 years later it’s still basically our core curriculum. If indeed we want every student to become remarkable, forcing every student to take exactly the same outdated curriculum is not the way to get there.

So what should our curriculum look like? It’s not so much what it would contain as the characteristics it would have. You see, I believe every student should have a learning by doing, customized and individualized curriculum based on their needs, desires, and dreams. Can it be done? Certainly. It’s being done today at Erie high school in Erie Kansas.

Ron Edmonds said it best in the late 1960′s, “We know everything we need to know to educate every child all we lack is the will to do it.” –  Steve Wyckoff

If we really want  real school change we have to consider how students learn, not just measuring traditional student learning. Students, in fact everyone, learns by doing. Ask anyone to recall their most memorable learning experiences and they will invariably tell you about doing something. I’ve written before about the steps involved in learning so I won’t rehash all of that. Suffice it to say that if the student isn’t emotionally involved in actually doing something they won’t learn. They may remember something for a test, but they haven’t learned it.

The student must be involved in setting their learning goals and developing their plan for reaching those goals are learning to be successful. Even more importantly the student must experience failure for learning to occur. That point at which a student fails and subsequently receives an explanation is the exact moment that learning occurs.

In schools however students are penalized for failing rather than encouraged to stretch their experiences, knowing that failure will occur. The research is clear, when we tell students that if they fail they are not  ”smart” it dramatically reduces their motivation to try and learn new and challenging things.

Real school change must put student learning by doing as a primary focus. They’ll still do okay on standardized tests, and in fact will be much better prepared for life.

Rural schools may be an endangered species. I’ve written many times that I believe that our model in public schools for educating kids is obsolete.  I’ve also written that our goals in public schools are also all wrong. But if we are going to persist in that model then it will take a great deal more money in order to succeed. Unfortunately, especially for rural schools, we are in an era of declining revenue sources not increasing revenue sources.

So what do I see happening? The very existence of many rural schools is being threatened.  You can do the math. In the current model you have a minimum number of teachers necessary to maintain the system regardless of how few kids you have. You must have a teacher in each of the core curriculum areas and also teachers in the areas where students are required to earn credits.

There seems to be a minimum of about 10 professionals in a building to maintain it as a high school in the current system. With budget cuts many rural schools are approaching the point where, based on student enrollment and budgets per-pupil, they can’t afford the number of teachers necessary to cover all the required areas.

So consolidation becomes the default solution. But in many rural areas consolidation may mean closing schools and sending kids to neighboring towns. Unfortunately, those trips to neighboring towns may mean that kids are on a bus more than an hour one way. For the little kids this is unsatisfactory. For the older kids, many of whom are involved in extra curricular activities, there are a plethora of issues with sending kids that far.

But is there another solution to the problem? I think there is. But it will require us to take a very different approach to how we educate kids. It will require us also to change the mental models that students, parents, citizens, and educators have about how schools should look and operate. And I think the solution will lead to more highly educated students, who are much better prepared to be productive in the 21st century.

My solution, project-based learning. It can be accomplished with fewer teachers, in the case of very small schools perhaps with as few as half the number of teachers.

So how his project-based learning better for kids? My opinion comes from my observations of Erie high school. I believe that those students are receiving an education that is far superior to kids in other schools in terms of preparing them for the 21st century.

So the problems we face today may actually lead to  a more well-educated student population. While there are other solutions that will cut cost and do minimal damage to the current system, I believe that moving to a project-based curriculum is the only solution I’ve seen that will reduce cost and at the same time lead to more well-educated students.

In an era of standardized test mania, student scores may not look as good in project-based learning, although I think there is evidence emerging that project-based learning schools aren’t any worse than test preparation schools in terms of standardized test scores.  But in terms of what students gain; 21st-century skills, individualized and customized education, learning by doing, student engagement, and preparation for heuristic work rather than algorithmic work, there is no doubt that project-based learning is a much better approach. And it costs less to do. –  Steve Wyckoff