Corbett's Advanced Placement Passing Rates

Corbett High School was ranked 8th in the nation by Newsweek Magazine in 2009 based on its rate of participation in the Advanced Placement program. This is a remarkable achievement, but with a caveat: what about the PASSING rates? It's the second question that comes up at every conference and presentation that we do.

So what about Corbett's passing rates? There are a number of ways to look at this question, but let's get away from the sweeping statements and look at specifics.

Last year Corbett had .12% of all of the students in the State of Oregon. So what would be a reasonable passing rate? It seems to me that we ought to have .12% of the passing scores in each subject in order to have 'our share'. So how did we show up, subject by subject? I'm going to create an index where if got .12% of Oregon's total passes in a subject, we call that a "1". "1" means we got our share. If we got .24% of all of the passing scores in the state, we get a "2". With me? (The reason for presenting this way is simple...it eliminates the need for everyone to pull out a calculator to deal with decimals and percent signs.

Let's start with an easy one. In Biology, Corbett students posted .6% of all of Oregon's passing scores. Divide that by Corbett's .12% of Oregon's student population, and you get an index score of "5". So Corbett passed 5 times its share of AP Biology Exams last year.

Here are some other indexed results:

Subject Index
Biology 5
Calculus (ab) 6.5
Calculus (bc) 22 (yes, really)
Statistics 27
Micro Economics 8
World History 48 (not a typo)
Chemistry 13
Physics 18
Psychology 16
English 19
Spanish 7
Studio Art 29

What's Corbett 'fair share' in each case? A score of 1. Did we really have 48 times our 'share' pass World History last year? Indeed we did.

Corbett's passing rates are not remarkable if one divides the number of exams passed by the number attempted. And while we have kids earning college credit, class by class, exam by exam, at anywhere from 5 to 50 times the rate of their peers around the state, I can't bring myself to care. We are in the business of learning what we can and creating exceptional opportunities for kids. Business is good.

J.K. Rowling for State Superintendent of Schools?

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix includes a magnificent parody of the anti-intellectualism that gave rise, in this country, to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. In the novel, the Ministry of Magic invades Hogwarts and attempts to convert it to a test prep mill in which students prepare to pass their OWL exams and avoid unnecessary distraction such as wands and magic. This in a school for wizards!

The parallel to schools in Oregon where attention to passing the OAKS exam threatens to eliminate any possibility of classroom magic is unmistakable.

Silly? Perhaps. Fun? Undeniably. Hogwarts is a school the likes of which would never be tolerated in the pubic sphere. Classes are taught by 'unqualified' teachers who are only expert practitioners in their fields of study. Instructors raise their voices. Sarcasm is freely administered. Classroom activities sometimes end in injury (which in public schools is allowable on the football field, where an ambulance is always standing by, but never in the instructional program) and there is no guarantee against utter failure.

All well and good, but what of the Ministry of Magic working to reduce schooling to a series of basic competency exams? Certainly there is no parallel in our dimension!

Is there really a movement so plodding, so pedantic, so life-denying in our own place and time? Absolutely! It goes by the name of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. It is the brainchild of the nations governors and the state superintendents of schools. Forty-eight states have signed on to date. Oregon included. Who signed on Oregon's behalf? Nobody that I know. Not anyone who knows a much about education, so far as I am aware. And yet we are somehow signed up!

Common Core State Standards! What can that mean? All fourth graders the nation should know and be able to do the same things on February 19th of each year? And how is this educational travesty to be promoted if not by a single, national test? Call it an OWL, and OAK, or whatever one wishes, it is a profoundly wrong-headed notion. It would be a wrong-headed notion if it could be achieved with the waving of a wand, with no investment of time or expense. But in the world of muggles, there will be no wand waving. Instead, we will waste millions of hours and dollars on a process at the end of which we will not have achieved any significant gains and we will be looking for the next silver bullet, magic bean, and scientifically-based miracle.

Let's be clear. Common standards do not make sense for two 9-year-olds sitting in the same classroom. They make less sense to two 9-year-olds living across town from one another. And common standards for all 9-year-olds in America (among whom the oldest are 364 days older than the youngest) is stupidity the likes of which can only be achieved on a grand scale.

Rowling is smart. She tells good stories. That all makes sense. But how does she understand so much more about education than do the high-profile policy-makers in our state and nation? What a strange turn of events when a writer of fantasy displays more educational insight in her sub-plot than the majority of educational thinkers have been able to put together with decades of conferences, summits, legislative edicts, and re-re-re-re-re-reforms?

We educators like to call what we do a profession. Yet we tend to be cowards when it comes to actually professing. We leave it to the Rowlings, the Tolkiens, the Mathesons of the world to say what really needs to be said about schools and schooling while we professionals stand guard over the safe, the stalwart, the polished forms that are too often empty of meaningful content.

We professionals need to find our voice. We need to profess. We need to demand that what we be allowed to do what we know. That what we do should be fun. We need to be a little more fanciful and a little less concerned with appearances. We need to teach more like coaches and coach more like teachers. We need to develop real, authentic relationships with our charges and bring extraordinary expertise to their intellectual lives. We need to read literature with an ambulance on the sidelines and play football with a poet's passion.

We should demand that what we do is fun. Serious fun. More fun than Bill and Ted or Ferris Bueler. More fun that Charlie Bartlett.

The obstacles are many and they are formidable. The State of Oregon. The Ministry of Magic. The U.S. Department of Education. Every professional organization that I am aware of. Public opinion, shaped by years of uniformed (to put the best face on it) reporting.

It appears that Superintendent Castillo may have competition in the next election. Election? Is that really how we want to choose a state superintendent? Do we really want which ever applicant can mount the best political campaign? Perhaps we should consider an alternative. Many states appoint a superintendent. Maybe it's worth considering. And J.K. Rowling might be worth a look.

The Virtue of Boasting

Newsweek ranked Corbett #8 in the nation last year. We have improved since then. A lot.

On a per pupil basis, Corbett passed 25% more exams than the next most prolific Oregon school. 40% of Corbett's graduating Class of 2009 earned AP Scholar status. Outrageous. Over one third of Corbett's 2009 AP Scholars were in 10th or 11th grade and are back in Corbett again this year!

Now, if these facts reflected achievement on the football field, no-one would think twice about our 'crowing' a little...after all, to win is good. But because they are ACADEMIC achievements, it is considered bad form for a school to 'brag'. Why is that, I wonder? And why is it that we ignore the prohibition?

Corbett is a small fish, but we don't live in a big pond. Rather, we are swimming up a large, swift river. The current against us is substantial, consisting as it does in the orthodoxy of both the various education agencies and the corporations that make their living by reducing the complexities of education to a 'simple, guaranteed' consumable.

Believing and behaving in ways that disregard Corbett's approach to education is literally a multi-million (and probably billion) dollar industry. Education consultants charge thousands of dollars per day to speak at conferences. Districts pay thousands of dollars per day to train teachers not to teach, but to study and interpret data. Federal programs literally prohibit the use of what we believe to be best practice regarding at-risk students. It is impossible to exaggerate the degree of contradiction between what we do and what a lucrative education industry insists must be the done. Why are they so insistent? Why don't they give credence what we do? Because if the majority of educators immulate us, there is little left to sell, little left to buy, little profit to be made.

This is not to say that we are utterly without fellow-travelers. We owe tremendous intellectual debts to remarkable thinkers. We enjoy the counsel of the best minds in the field. No exceptions. Who are these 'best minds'? Kieran Egan, Mem Fox, Frank Smith, Howard Gardner, Parker Palmer, David Solway, Deborah Meier, Nancy Atwell and countless others who have written about education from the 'inside' as well as from 'the outside'. (Others include Michael Polanyi, Northrop Frye, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Neil Postman).

Those who have read these writers will quickly realize that they are not all of one mind. They don't represent a 'school' of thought or a program. One of the things they have in common is perhaps best represented by Nancy Atwell's comment, in The Reading Zone, that she has discovered that she no longer has a 'program' to market!!! All of these 'friends of Corbett' are authors, and some are teachers as well. They all sell books. Many of them speak in public. But none of them sells a program that lends itself to traditional 'staff development' in which teachers are told where to stand, what to say, how to test, or how to interpret data. None of them has anything to say about preparing for the Oregon Assessments. They all have something to say about becoming educated, about preparing for an uncertain future.

This is all well and good, but still, is bragging appropriate? CORBETT'S RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENT IS ITS 'HALL PASS', ITS PERMISSION SLIP FOR ITS UNORTHODOX PRACTICE. WE PRODUCE BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. IT BUYS US BREATHING ROOM.

It gives us an answer when we are asked, again and again, why we don't do things the way that other schools do.

And what do we brag about, really? What is it right and proper to brag about? Just this: Corbett might be the most fully democratic school in Oregon. Corbett offers to every student what is the exlusive domain of the 'elite' in other schools.

Unless an interdisciplinary team determines otherwise, every 9th grader in Corbett takes Advanced Placement Human Geography. Every 10th grader takes AP World History. By age 16, Corbett students have more experience with AP courses, and therefore with college-level expectations, than do 80 percent of Oregon graduates. After 10th grade comes the real fire. Two years of Advanced Placement English. Advanced Placement Government. Many students add one, two or even three AP Math classes. Many of the students pass multiple exams prior to graduation. In fact, Oregon's 2009 AP State Scholar (the student who passed more AP exams than any other 2009 graduate in the state) graduated from Corbett last year. But that's almost beside the point. We know that students who score a 2 (with 3 considered a 'passing' score)have a significant advantage in college over those who have not attempted an exam. Even that is beside the point.

The point is that we don't sort. We don't select or 'deselect'. We don't decide ahead-of-time who is 'good enough'. We offer opportunities to every student. More than that, we make beneficial demands of every student. We schedule them, support them with extra study halls specifically designed for promoting their success, and we pay for the exams. Students benefit differently, based mostly on how much they are willing to work. (That's another thing we do...we admit that some students work much, much harder than others).

So we brag. We are proud. Proud of our students and proud of the opportunities that we offer. It's what makes us different. It's what makes our work worth doing. It's what creates space for us to be outside the box but still inside the system.

Anthem

"There is a crack,
A crack, in everything,
That's how the light gets in..."
Leonard Cohen

I believe that we are currently experiencing an historic peak in the government's effort to create and exploit efficiencies in education. Money is tight. Why not strive to achieve desired outputs with minimum inputs? Why not economize? None of us would settle for leaky plumbing, so why should we settle for inefficiencies in our education pipeline?

And while we're on the subject, what does a good plumbing system look like? How do we judge it? Well, I suppose we'd start with no leaks. All of the water should be contained. When we turn on a fawcet, we want the water to be hot or cold, depending on our purposes, and we want it to be clean. We want it to be at a constant, reliable pressure. We want the system to be functionally invisible, really, and to provide us fresh, running water at our convenience with little or no upkeep. We don't care about (or even distinguish among) separate drops of water, the flow is the thing. O.K., bad analogy. Children can't be the indistinguishable drops of water...that's just silly. Clearly, the plumbing analogy won't hold water. We need a new analogy. Can they be shoes? Automobiles? Electrons? Dollars? Services? In the efficiency model, what exactly are the kids?

Or maybe it's not the kids that are the product. Maybe we're producing knowledge. Units of education, so to speak. Bits of ability to come to terms with the world. Test scores? Each point on a test would have to represent a single, unique, identical unit of education. (Otherwise running statistical analysis is just numerology and not mathematics). Not only that, but the test scores as we move from grade to grade would have to be perfectly aligned, which we know is not the case.

Neither educated children as a 'product' nor education conceived of as identical, consumable units provides a remotely satisfactory description of the work of schools. Neither our children nor their individual achievements can be standardized, and without standardization of both inputs and outputs there is no way to calculate efficiency. And yet the government, undaunted by the realities on the ground, extends its reach ever further into the classroom and compulsively measures everything that can be weighed, plumbed or counted.

But like leaky plumbing or bad wiring, government efforts at steering the course and managing the flow of our children's learning fail constantly and create a perennial nuisance for those of us who live and work in the school house. This is particularly true in that the state's obsession with measurement robs us of valuable classroom time and diverts our focus from learning. It also commits thousands of dollars to technology that exists primarily for the administration of tests.

What is the silver lining in all of this? It is that the accountability system leaks like a sieve. It is perhaps the least efficient aspect of the state government's involvement in education, and one simply must sit for a moment and enjoy the irony of the 'inefficient efficiency expert.' Chaplin would have had a field day filming the bumbling Sargent tripping over his own boot strings while attempting to form up his squad! And we are thankful for their inefficiency. Because while they roam about like the Tin Man trying to learn ballet, there is room inside the leaky, creaky system for really good schools to operate. And while filling out the latest PE report (how many P.E. facilities do you have, are they gymnasiums or play sheds, who teaches P.E. to whom, by grade level, and for how many minutes a week) wastes considerable time, it doesn't have to interfere with the work of teachers and students and only detracts modestly from the support that we are able to afford them. And the testing system, while it is expensive, intrusive, and counter-productive, offers the state the 'sense' of accountability and keeps the funding (which our constituents provide!) flowing back to the district.

So let us resist the temptation to improve state oversight of schools. They are good people doing their best. Embrace them as they are. Because where education is concerned, the inefficiencies, the cracks in the system, are where the light gets in.

Multiage Practice

Thanks to Randy Trani, Ed.D., for his kind permission to post what follows:

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About Multi-age Education
From Fallacies in Education: Why Schools are Mired in Mediocrity
By Randy K. Trani and Robert K. Irvine

Why would a School go multi-age?

There are two main reasons schools use multi-age education. First, it is pedagogically sound, in short it is better than single grade level education. Second, it is economically the most efficient way to operate a school.
Corbett provides and interesting case study in what can happen to achievement when a district adopts a multi-age approach. Since Corbett has gone to multi-age education both the high school and middle school have gained national recognition as being among the best schools in the country. The success of the high school and middle school can be traced directly back to the move to multi-age classrooms.
Corbett's most thoroughly multi-age program is their math program. When you allow students to work in a multi-age environment and combine that configuration with a continuous progress approach great things happen. Math students are expected to make progress at their own rate without regard to their age; this is what we call continuous progress. Corbett uses this approach in all disciplines not just math. This forces a school to regroup students according to achievement level rather than grade level. When this approach is used it is not uncommon to find 3rd-6th grade students working in the same math room, or 7th-12th grade students working together in pre-calculus. The end result of this approach has led Corbett High School students to take and pass Advanced Placement Calculus exams at a rate more than 1000 times what would be expected of a school their size.

Who Says that Multi-Age Classrooms are Better?

Looking at Corbett's steady improvement over the last 10 years provides evidence that this method of instruction is better than the old single grade level configuration. Comparing Corbett's K-12 achievement to all other schools in the state, the vast majority of which are still using the assembly line single grade level model of Henry Ford's era, also provides evidence that this way is better. So, we say it is better. But does anyone else?

A review of more than 2,000,000 peer reviewed articles on education, when filtered for articles pertaining to multi-age education, produces a unified voice from the education community that this model is better than the single grade level model, particularly with regard to social, emotional, and developmental needs of students. In fact there appears to be no serious dissenting voices in the peer reviewed literature with regard to multi-age classrooms.

What does the literature say about traditional grade level classrooms?

According to Hallion (1994) John Dewey one of the foremost authorities on education considered graded classrooms too confining and machine like.

Pardini (2005) says that graded education is the antithesis of developmentally appropriate practice, and despite its popularity there is no research showing that it helps students.

Placing students in classrooms according to their age within a given time to cover curricular expectations is detrimental to their academic, social, and psychological growth (Goodland & Anderson, 1987).

Children's learning is effected negatively when they are forced to follow grade level constraints (Copeland, 1998).

Although traditional classrooms continue to be the most common way of organizing elementary students there is no evidence to show that all children of the same 12-month age range are able to learn the same things, the same way, at the same time (Katz, 1995).

Drawbacks of traditional classrooms include first, children of the same age vary in readiness to learn. Second, children have different learning styles so a single grade level classroom is unlikely to be effective for all children. Third, traditional classrooms compare children with each other. Children who are not within the norm are considered failures. This leads to feelings of discouragement and low self esteem (Gaustad, 1992).

What does the literature say about achievement in multi-age classrooms?

Research studies reporting significant outcomes for students in non graded classroom have demonstrated improved performance in language, including vocabulary and literacy, and in mathematics (Kinsey, 2002).

A continuous progress approach produces superior academic performance and children do better academically (Calkins, 1992).

Teachers report that through a continuous progress approach they experience fewer classroom behavior problems. Classrooms that use a continuous progress approach experience more time on task, they become self regulators, and help enforce classroom rules (Hanes, 2008).

First graders in multi-age classrooms function at significantly higher average cognitive development then first graders in traditional classrooms (Cromey, 1999).

Continuous progress multi-age schools make students responsible for their own learning and produce increased learning (Mack, 2004).

New Zealand, the country with the highest literacy rate in the world, uses multi-age grouping as a common educational practice (Kasten & Clark, 1993).

In 1981 Milburn compared the reading achievement scores of 6-11 year old children in multi age and single grade level classrooms. Children in multi-age classrooms scored significantly higher on standardized tests, especially the young children.

In nongraded classrooms, students of different abilities, interests and backgrounds can interact, and student in all ranges of ability can benefit from nongradedness (Merrit, 2008)

The state of Kentucky mandated non-graded programs. A review of Kentucky's top 20% of all students showed that they outperformed the top 20% of all other states (Viadero, 1996).

Applying a continuous progress approach utilizing grouping children of various age and ability levels maximizes teaching and learning (Nye, 1993).

Students in multi-age classrooms have more positive attitudes about school, develop and exhibit more advanced social skills, benefit in the areas of cognitive development, and show improve performance in reasoning skills (Merrit, 2008; Green, 1997; Kruglik, 1993; Stegelin, 1997; Thelin, 1981).

Children in multi-age classrooms attained a higher cognitive developmental level at a faster pace compared to children in traditional classroom and they scored significantly higher on a standardized reading achievement test (Fosco, et. al., 2004).

According to Maeda (1994) there is mounting evidence that multi-age classrooms have the following benefits:
Optimal learning occurs in a nurturing environment.
They foster self esteem and improved decision making.
Individual differences are accommodated.
Learning is more holistic.
Students construct their own knowledge rather than having it transmitted to them.

A major meta analysis of 57 multi-age studies that examined standardized academic achievement test scores of multi-age and traditional grade level found that in 91% of the studies the multi-age students scored as well or better than their grade level peers (Paven, 1992).

Learning in non-graded classrooms is more developmentally sound (Kruglik, 1993).

Multi-age classrooms maximize student learning (Aina, 2001).

Mix- age programs permit flexible learning arrangements for developmentally appropriate instruction of all students. The approach creates an active learning environment that encourages individual development and and fosters growth of staff and students (Hanes, 2008).

What does the literature say about social/emotional development in multi-age classrooms.

One of the most important benefits of multi-age groupings is the opportunity to learn nurturing behaviors (Tangen-Foster, 1998)

Mixed age groups were shown to be better at taking turns than single-age groups, and to exhibit greater social responsibility and sensitivity to others (Chase & Dolan, 1994).

Social competence develops for younger children as they observe and emulate the behavior of older classmates, who in turn grow in their role as nurtures and teachers (Katz, 1995).

In multi-age groups fewer children are isolated or rejected by peers. Children are more willing to watch our for one another, to include less popular children in play, and to ask one another for assistance with problems (Mclellan & Kinsey, 1996).

Multi-age classrooms improve life for middle school students particularly in the social, emotional, and developmental arenas (Petrie, Lindauer, Dotson, & Tountasakis, 1996).

Students in multi-age classrooms have more positive attitudes about school, develop and exhibit more advanced social skills, benefit in the areas of cognitive development, and show improve performance in reasoning skills (Merrit, 2008; Green, 1997; Kruglik, 1993; Stegelin, 1997; Thelin, 1981).

Teachers report that through a continuous progress approach they experience fewer classroom behavior problems. Classrooms that use a continuous progress approach experience more time on task, they become self regulators, and help enforce classroom rules (Hanes, 2008).

When students are placed in same-age groups and asked to complete a task there is more bullying behavior than in multi-age group (Chase & Dolan, 1994).

According to Maeda (1994) there is mounting evidence that multi-age classrooms have the following benefits:
Optimal learning occurs in a nurturing environment.
They foster self esteem and improved decision making.
Individual differences are accommodated.
Learning is more holistic.
Students construct their own knowledge rather than having it transmitted to them.

Multi-age classrooms allow teachers and students to develop long-term learning partnerships (McLaughlin, Irvin, & Doda, 1999).

Mix- age programs permit flexible learning arrangements for developmentally appropriate instruction of all students. The approach creates an active learning environment that encourages individual development and and fosters growth of staff and students (Hanes, 2008).

What does the literature say about special populations and multi-age classrooms?

Multi-age grouping is good for special needs children since it creates a classroom where individual differences are more likely to be accepted and more importantly are expected, and roles are found to suit the strengths of all children (Clark, 1996, Tangen-Foster 1998).

In nongraded classrooms, students of different abilities, interests and backgrounds can interact, and student in all ranges of ability can benefit from nongradedness (Merrit, 2008)

In a review of a K-2 school Fu et al. (1999) found that for single-age classrooms the first week of school is the hardest week for teachers, while the teachers in the K-2 classrooms had a far different experience. The teachers new most of the parents and students and instead of one teacher having to train 24 new students each year, the teacher had 16 classroom helpers to welcome the 8 new Kindergarten students each year. Kindergarten students and their older peers enjoyed a much smoother start to the school year then other children in single grade classrooms. Furthermore, parents expressed satisfaction with the arrangement and also had a much smoother start to the school year.

When students are placed in same-age groups and asked to complete a task there is more bullying behavior than in multi-age group (Chase & Dolan, 1994).

According to Maeda (1994) there is mounting evidence that multi-age classrooms have the following benefits:
Optimal learning occurs in a nurturing environment.
They foster self esteem and improved decision making.
Individual differences are accommodated.
Learning is more holistic.
Students construct their own knowledge rather than having it transmitted to them.


What does the literature say about parents and multi-age classrooms?

Communication lines between parents and teachers are open and maintained better in multi-age classrooms (Aina, 2001).

In a review of a K-2 school Fu et al. (1999) found that for single-age classrooms the first week of school is the hardest week for teachers, while the teachers in the K-2 classrooms had a far different experience. The teachers new most of the parents and students and instead of one teacher having to train 24 new students each year, the teacher had 16 classroom helpers to welcome the 8 new Kindergarten students each year. Kindergarten students and their older peers enjoyed a much smoother start to the school year then other children in single grade classrooms. Furthermore, parents expressed satisfaction with the arrangement and also had a much smoother start to the school year.

By working with students individually in multi-age classrooms, teachers are better able to provide useful information to parents about how to assist their child (Kruglik, 1993; Pardini 2005).

Schools often face difficulties with parents , or community members at large, who view themselves as experts on education simply because they themselves went through the primary grades, or that they “know what is best for their child”, or because “it was good enough for me so why is it not good enough for my kid”. Educating parents by showing them the literature as well as the success of schools that use multi-age education can help minimize these distractions (Petrie, Lindauer, and McKinney, 1998)

Parents sometimes feel apprehension about new multi-age programs. They want to know what the benefits for their child will be, will they learn more or less? Multi-age grouping is actually more natural and educationally more beneficial than many realize (Aina, 2001)

Often times multi-age configurations never get off the ground because administrators are unwilling to take on, and convince, the inevitable “Doubting Thomases” in every community. Taking on one more political task of reassuring anxious parents and community members is often one task too many for school leaders who have extensive responsibilities of advocating for school bonds, formulating yearly budgets, providing building maintenance, fighting drugs, etc. Yet, multi-age schools promise to deliver Americans the schools they demand and need. The challenge for administrators is to convince the public that yesterday's graded barriers need to be replaced with tomorrow nongraded opportunities (Yarborough, B. & Johnson, R., 2000).




Multi-Age Rersources

Aina, O. (2001), Maximizing learning in early childhood multiage classrooms: Child, teacher, and parent perceptions. Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2001.

Calkins, T. (1992) Off the track: Children thrive in ungraded primary school. School Administrator
49 (5) 8-133.

Chas, P. & Dolan, J. (1994). Full Circle: A new look at multi-age education. Portsmouth, NH: Heineman Publishers.

Clark, A. (1996). Special needs children and mixed-age grouping. The Magnet Newsletter. 5(1). Internet document retrieved from http://ericeece.org.pubs.mag.magfal96.html#b.

Copeland, K. (1998) Reflections. Primary Voices K-6. 6 (2) p44-46.

Cromey, A. (1999). Impact of multi-age programming on social competency in five to seven year old children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Psychology.

Fu, D., Hartle, L., Lamme, L., Copenhaver, J., Adams, D., Harmon, C., and Reneke, S. (1999). A comfortable start for Everyone: The first week of school in three multi-age (K-2) classrooms. Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol 27, No. 2, 1999

Fosco, A., Schlesser, R., & Andal, J.(2004). Multiage programming effects on the cognitive developmental level and reading achievement in early elementary school children. Reading Psychology, 25:1-17, 2004.

Gaustad, J. (1992) Nongraded education: Mixed-age, integrated, and developmentally appropriate education for primary children. Oregon School Study Council, 35(7) 1-38.

Goodland, J. I. & Anderson, R. H. (1987). The Non-graded elementary school. New York: Teachers College Press

Green, B. G. (1997) Reading instruction in the nongraded classroom. Reading Psychology, 18(1), 69- 76.

Hanes, J. (2008). Continous Progress Approach. Research Starters. Ebsco Research Starters 1-7.

Hallion, A. M. (1994). Strategies for developing multi-age classrooms. Washington DC: Education Resources Research Center (document number ED 373 899), p25.

Kasten, W. C., Clarke, B. K. (1993) The multiage classroom: A family of learners, Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owen

Katz, L. G. (1995, May). The Benefits of mixed-age grouping. ERIC Digest.

Kinsey, S. G. (2002). Multiage grouping and academic achievement. Washington, DC: Education Resource Center (document number ED 466 328).

Kruglik, M (1993). Results from nongraded classroom program: Good, bad, and unclear. Curriculum Review, 33(4), 16.

Mack, J. (2004) Continuous progress schools see the “whole child”. Education, Vol. 129, No. 2, p.324- 27.

Maeda, B. (1994) The Multi-age classroom: An inside look at one community of learners. Los Angeles, CA: Creative Teaching Press.

McClellan, D. & Kinsey, S. (1996). Mixed-age grouping helps children develop social skill and a sense of belonging. The Magnet Newsletter 5(1) retrieved from http://ericeece.org/pubs/mag/magfal96.html#a

McLaughlin, H., Irvin J. L., & Doda, N. M. (1999). Crossing the grade level gap: Research on multiage grouping. Middle School Journal, 30(3), 55-58.

Merrit, R., (2008). Non-Graded Instruction. Research Starters. Ebsco Research Starters 1-9.

Milburn, D. (1981). A study of multi-age or family-grouped classrooms. Phi Delt Kappan,
62(7), 513-514.

Nye, B. (1993) Questions and Answers about multiage grouping. Educational Research Service (ERS)
Spectrum. 38-45.

Pardini, P. (2005) The slowdown of the muttiage classroom. School Administrator. 62(3) 22-30.

Paven, B. (1992). The benefits of nongraded schools. Educational Leadership, 50(2), 22-25.

Petrie, G.; Lindauer, P.; Dotson, K.; & Tountasakis, M. (1996) The nongraded middle school: Can it improve life for early adolescents? Education, Vol. 121. No. 4, p 781-786.

Steglin, D. A. (1998). Creating contexts for middle-age learning. Childhood Education, 74(4), 234-236.

Tangen-Foster, J & Tangen-Foster, L (1998) The caring capacity: A case for multi-age experiential learning, Electronic Green Journal, 1998.

Viadero, D. (1996). Mixed Blessings. Education Week, 15:33, 31-33. Editorial project in education, Inc. Washington, DC.

Yarborough, B. & Johnson, R. (2000). Nongraded schools: Why their promise has not been realized and should be reconsidered. Contemporary Education, 2000, Vol. 71 Issue 3, p.42.

"To See The World in a Grain of Sand"

William Blake

"Soon we shall know everything the 18th Century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us."

Randall Jerrel

The single greatest threat to the life of the mind, the uniquely modern challenge to becoming educated, is that we are constantly exposed to information from sources both reliable and otherwise. In some ways, this exposure is a thing of wonder. But it is only wonderful for those who have cultivated the expertise and wisdom to know how to sort the real from the fantastic, what matters from what does not. To the unprepared consumer, the torrent of words and images that permeate our lives may create the illusion of understanding, but it can never truly inform us.

There is a simple, daunting mathematics that is the inevitable result of the 'information glut', and it is this: Any attempt at becoming 'educated' by learning some significant, fixed proportion of the world's accumulated knowledge is utterly futile, and grows more futile as the totality of human knowledge grows. It is impossible to keep up.

In the Natural Sciences, it has been 150 years since the passing of Alexander von Humbolt, the last man who was believed to have mastered the total knowledge in the field. Today, such a feat is beyond the realm of possibility. It is beyond the realm of reason for a hundred people, or a thousand, all working together. It is beyond the realm of possibility for a thousand people in the field of biology alone. In practical terms, there may not even be a 'field' of biology, as it has been parsed into ever-narrower sub-fields and specialties.

If education is a race to master some fixed percentage (even if it is called a 'core') of human knowledge, then the finish line is receding inevitably toward a horizon that we may never approach. We have lost that race already. Any attempt to measure educational achievement in these terms is utterly impractical.

While it is impossible to know 'everything', and futile to attempt to master some fixed percentage of everything that is known, we ought not lose track of the possibility and the value of knowing virtually everything about some very small aspect of the world.

What is the value of knowing 'everything' about some relatively modest topic?
Among other things, knowledge is fun. And I mean fun in a very serious sense. Human beings are wired to know. Knowing is a pleasurable experience. Knowledge is connectedness, to each other and to the world. Ignorance, even ignorance characterized by the accumulations of hundreds upon hundreds of unrelated facts, is a terrifying state, a state of isolation prompted by a loss of meaning. Meaning requires that we see the 'whole' of something. Meaning is necessary to our sense of well being.

Lack of meaningful knowledge manifests in negative side effects. One such side effect is confusion, which results from knowing enough to have a sense of a thing, but lacking the ability to put all of the pieces together.

Another side effect of lack of knowledge is boredom, which is, in the words of Kieran Egan, the product of ignorance.

While confusion, in the right circumstances and with proper coaching, is a valuable (sometimes crucial) learning experience, boredom is ignorance indulged. The only prescription for boredom, if we are not to give in to a crippling narcissism, is to insist upon deeper learning.

Boredom is the opposite of engagement, and this can lead to the false conclusion that the solution to boredom is to 'channel surf' until we hit upon something 'interesting'. This strategy, as its practitioners know too well, tends to have at least two negative results. First, it is always a temporary solution, resulting in the recurring need to change the subject as soon as its novelty wears off. Second, it fosters an egocentric worldview in which a child (or an immature adult) reserves the right to declare some aspect of the world to be unworthy of study based on knowing almost nothing... hardly the basis for future scholarly achievement.

Knowing some aspect of the world in depth is critical to further learning. Knowing just one thing, and knowing it intimately, is a road-map to the act of learning that transfers to all other endeavors. It is a template, a diagram, if you will, of what it means 'to know'. It foster a sense of what is reasonable, what is likely, what are more and less reliable sources of information or pathways to further knowledge, and how knowledge hangs together. Knowledge of one thing guides good thinking. The lessons learned in the process of becoming truly expert transfer to all of life's endeavors. More urgently, so do the lessons of never developing any particular expertise.

Accessing the lessons that are only available to those with expertise is what the Gorge Initiative is about. It is also what Learning in Depth is about. These are our strategies for talking back to an educational trend that promotes channel-surfing. We aspire to offer to our students the opportunities that they would miss in other schools. Other schools may skim flat rocks across the water and celebrate the bounces, while we want to teach patient, deep consideration of the pool. We want to dangle our toes in it, swim in it. Walk on it when it's frozen over. Be there to hear it thaw. We want to know the pool. We want to know the river, the salmon, and how the Gorge got its shape. We want to know who lived here before us and where they are today.

We don't propose to entertain our students with the channel-surfing curriculum. We don't intend to stave off boredom through amusement. Boredom is not a guidepost. It points to nowhere. Boredom is a symptom. It indicates a deeper problem.

The world is a place of endless surprises, worthy of contemplation. But in order to see it, we must discipline ourselves to be still. We need to pause over worthwhile ideas. It doesn't even matter so much that we stipulate ahead-of-time which worthwhile ideas as it does that we pause. The ability to think deeply and well cannot be developed in the run. We slow down.

We have no reservations that this is the best possible way to serve our children.

To educate in this manner is to make unparalleled demands on teachers, who must simply know more than those working in other schools. They too must overcome the urge to channel surf. They must resist the temptation to demand that the children are always busy. There must be time for contemplation, for puzzling, for wonder.

To educate deeply requires the patience of parents who are accustomed to other approaches to schooling. The vision of education as a production line, the school as a 'factory', the children as workers whose time on task and efficiency should be carefully monitored...these images are both pervasive and (ironically enough) counter-productive. They are the dominant image in virtually every failing school in America. They are among the childish things that we must put aside if we want to educate our children in the way that they deserve.

As a member school of Corbett School District, Corbett Charter School affords students a partnership with one of the most challenging high school programs in the country. We want them to be fully prepared to take advantage of this opportunity. Their preparation is always on our minds.

"To see the world in a grain of sand..." In a very real sense, there is no other way in which to see it. And there is no better approach to educating young children, no better way to prepare them for their futures.

The First 10 Bricks

From The Three Little Pigs to the Gospel According to St Matthew, Western Literature takes very seriously the business of building a home. The temptation to rush the job, to settle for unsuitable ground or inferior building materials, is known to lead to disaster.

So here is a 'mind experiment': Let's suppose that we have determined to construct a dwelling, that we have a good piece of ground, but that there is no money for construction. As if by Providence, we receive word of a design competition. Here are the rules:

"Each contestant receives 10 bricks with which to begin construction. A team of judges will evaluate the placement of those first 10 bricks. The contestant who makes the best use of the first 10 bricks will be declared the Champion! The Champion will receive an unlimited supply of building materials with which to complete the project."

What would the judges look for? Level placement? Should the bricks be solidly set in the ground? Should a perfect 'corner stone' be constructed to ensure that the rest of the eventual construction will be square? Should all 10 bricks be used, one at a time, flat on the ground to define the exterior walls and doors? The judges could use any of these or other criteria, I suppose...

There might be more than one great way to begin, but there would also be some conspicuously inept approaches. Perhaps the least wise course of action would be to imagine that the goal is to get the first 10 bricks to reach as high as possible and to stack them one on top of the other. This might be the strategy of a contestant who wanted to convince the judges that he was 'furthest along'. What makes this such a sad start? It's all too easy to imagine that the end result of this approach cannot be anything but rubble.

The moral: How high you can stack the first 10 bricks is not a good indicator of the quality of your eventual dwelling.

And you are right, that's just silly. NOBODY who gave it a moment's thought would imagine otherwise!

We are in the process of administering the newest version of the State of Oregon Assessments. They always remind me of the first 10 bricks. The State really does believe that stacking the first 10 bricks as high as possible, in preparation to take the 3rd grade assessments, is the way to begin construction. We believe otherwise, which is one reason our 10th grade passing rates are so high while our 3rd grade rates are relatively modest. It is why we are recognized nationally while being barely noticed in our home state. It always requires some explaining, so I thought I'd get a head start.

Creating a false sense of 'achievement' by working to inflate 3rd grade passing rates is a waste of time. It's bad practice. We are busy building the foundations that will put these same children in good stead when they begin to take exams that matter.

Meanwhile, perhaps one of you with artistic ability will work out a way to illustrate this metaphor. I'd love to see it.

On the Necessity of Ironic Understanding

Kieran Egan identifies five Kinds of Understanding. The first is Somatic, and is the result of our bodily and social inheritance as human beings. The next two Kinds of Understanding, Mythic and Romantic, are built upon the acquisition of first oral, then written, language. Though vestiges of each of these Kinds of Understanding will continue to inform us throughout our lives, there are certain areas of study that are built upon, and require, Philosophic Understanding. The sciences are the prime example of Philosophic Understanding.

Philosophic Understanding becomes possible when students are able to make generalizations, theorize, and follow scripted procedures (mathematical formulas, for example). Philosophic Understanding harnesses a drive toward certainty, to know 'for sure' what is 'really' going on. High School, with its discrete courses of study (chemistry, biology and physics rather than 'general science', for example) is the reasonable educational embodiment of Philosophic Understanding.

In fact, the differences between Philosophic Understanding and Romantic Understanding are the basis for the differences between Corbett's High School and Middle School approaches. Schools that try to design middle school like high school (which the vast majority do and which the State of Oregon virtually requires!) or high school like middle school (which a few brave souls have tried and which may have good therapeutic outcomes but will never graduate hordes of AP Scholars) are making huge categorical mistakes. They are mistaking one sort of thing for another. Their results speak for themselves.

Philosophic Understanding allows access to the sciences, to mathematics, to literary analysis, to advanced performance techniques, to the application of technique to works of art, and to the study of economics, history, and politics. It allows the appreciation of grammar and syntax, sine and cosine, evolutionary theory and plate techtonics.

Philosophic Understanding enables human beings to predict, control and (to limited degrees) manipulate nature to their own advantage. Philosophic Understanding is what Sir Frances Bacon had in mind when he said 'Knowledge is Power'. Philosophic Understanding put a man on the moon (vestiges of Mythic Understanding ensured that it had to be a MAN!).

Philosophic Understanding is potent. But what are its limits? We know that Philosophic Understanding is adequate to a deep understanding of rocks. A well-trained scientist can bring to bear multiple perspectives from which almost nothing that can be known about rocks will remain hidden. And the scientist need never leave the comfort of Philosophic Understanding in this undertaking. But what about the person who wants to understand the scientist who is employing Philosophic Understanding in order to understand the rock? Can Philosophic Understanding fully comprehend the thinker who is practicing Philosophic Understanding? This is more than word play. If the answer is 'no', the consequences are immediate and significant. If the answer is 'no', then Imaginative Education has something to teach us not just about educating children, but about how we think about education.

Irony is, at its core, the understanding that the language we use to communicate our experience of the world is never fully adequate. For everything that is said, there is something made un-say-able. When we dig deeply to uncover one truth, we are building a burial mound beneath which another truth is ever less available. We have built certain habits into our ways of speaking in order to attempt to acknowledge this dilemma. We say, "one the one hand...but on the other hand", or "looking at it from one point of view", or "from my perspective". These ways of speaking pay homage to a world that simply overflows our descriptions, one in which simple categories and causal relations fail to capture our experience.

Does all of this add up to cynicism? Not in the least. To nihilism? Only in the hands of a beginner. Ironic Understanding at its best is the cautionary tale that reminds us that good science enables certainty regarding only some aspects of the world and that it should be tempered with humility regarding other matters. It reminds us that the paradigm that allows us to understand and predict chemical reactions does not necessarily generate understanding or predictability regarding, for example, the learning (or teaching) of chemistry.

And if you have ever wondered why we seem so often to be at odds with what is going on in the education 'universe' around us, then imagine this: expertise at education requires Ironic Understanding. Among other things, the Cognitive Tool of Reflexivity must be brought to bear as part of any attempt to understand to multiple, simultaneous human interactions that constitute the educational enterprise. Attempts to comprehend education from the standpoint of Philosophic Understanding, untempered by Ironic Understanding, result in bad theorizing, bad policy-making, and ineffective practice.

So Ironic Understanding is not just a guide to better classroom practice. It offers the means to think deeply and well about education in general. It offers a critic of the 'scientific' approach to education that is crippling our schools and truncating the educational experiences of the vast majority of our children.

And now consider the direction that education policy has taken over the past 20 years. It celebrates its emphasis on Philosophic Understanding, touts its 'scientific' orientation, and fails to recognize that Philosophic Understanding represents an adolescent approach to understanding the world: powerful in some respects, but incomplete in others, and with regard to certain phenomena (the work of educators, for example) utterly incompetent. Ironic, isn't it, that the institutions with the greatest influence over K-12 education should suffer from arrested development?

That's where we live. Those are the attitudes and beliefs that we have to work around in order to be effective. Those are the people to whom we have to report the number of minutes per day that our students are spending in P.E. classes...by grade level!

Ironic Understanding rarely wins friends or elections. Socrates, a master of irony, was offered Hemlock for his efforts. But doing our best for kids has to take priority over 'getting along' or currying the favor of The Powers That Be. Irony is our defense against the worst excesses of misapplied social science, against ill-informed regulation. Irony is the difference between great education and meaningless skill-building. It's the difference between teaching facts and building the capacity for limitless learning. It's what we do. Perhaps it won't win friends, but it will help our children secure a good future. It's a simple matter of values. All we need is love. And Ironic Understanding.

What is Imaginative Education? (Or is JM right?)

"Imagination is ...reason in its most exalted mood."...Wordsworth

Imaginative Education posits that education consists in the initiation of young people into their cultural inheritance. What is that inheritance? In the broadest terms, it includes all of the achievements of humankind. More particularly, as it pertains to education, it consists in the Cognitive Tools that have been created over the course of human history. The Cognitive Tools are embedded in five Kinds of Knowing that are generally chronological, though the Cognitive Tools associated with more sophisticated Kinds of Knowing may appear 'out of sequence'. In the chronology that follows, any generalizations regarding sequence should not be mistaken for absolutes. Life is messy.

Somatic Understanding refers to those abilities that seem innate to human children as the result of their essential bodily and social experience. Somatic Understanding is predominant from Birth to the acquisition of oral language.

The Cognitive Tools associated with Somatic Understanding are: Bodily Senses. Emotional Responses and Attachments, Rhythm and Musicality, Gesture and Communication, Referencing and Intentionality.

Mythic Understanding refers to those abilities that are related to the acquisition of oral language. Mythic Understanding is predominant through the acquisition of literacy.

The Cognitive Tools associated with Mythic Understanding are: Story, Metaphor, Abstract Binary Opposites; Rhyme, Meter and Pattern; Joking and Humor; Forming Images, a Sense of Mystery; and Games, Drama and Play.

Romantic Understanding refers to abilities that are possible as the result of the development of written language, of literacy.

The Cognitive Tools associated with Romantic Understanding are: Extremes and Limits of Reality; Sense of Reality; Association with Heroes; Wonder; Humanizing of Meaning; Collections and Hobbies; Revolt and Idealism; and Context Change and Role Play. Romantic Understanding is embedded in literacy and dominates the imagination until the acquisition of Philosophical Understanding.

Philosophic Understanding is characterized by the desire for generalizations and theories, and by the quest for certainty. It is the full flower the adolescent mind. It depends on the theoretic use of language.

The Cognitive Tools of Philosophic Understanding are a Drive toward Generality, A Facility with Processes, the Lure of Certainty, General Schemes and Anomalies, the Search for Authority and Truth. The Scientific Method is the Zenith of Philosophic Understanding.

Ironic Understanding depends on the reflexive use of language. It entails a recognition of the limits of theoretical thinking, the particularity of the moment, the tenuousness of our knowledge.

The Cognitive Tools of Ironic Understanding are Reflexivity and Identity, the Limits of Theory, Particularity and Radical Epistemic Doubt. Ironic Understanding requires years of preparation and intellectual courage. That's the goal. Everything else is preliminary.

Open Letter to the Charter Community

Hi, folks,

Hope you are well.
Progress reports are nearly ready to go, and we are knocking on the door of the holiday season.

This is a good time to remind everyone that even though the holidays mean some days out of school, we are still doing serious work and we need everyone in school for the entire day when we are in session. This is a critical time, as we don't want a few days off to result in flagging effort.

We have been incredibly busy, and it seems almost impossible that we are coming up on Thanksgiving. I am very pleased with the progress that our children have made and with the work that the entire staff has invested in the process. The first few weeks of operation of a new school are a scary and delightful time, and I hope that we are all learning more about each others expectations as we go.

Corbett Charter School is a school of choice, and we are committed to being clearly and consistently who we are so that you can continue to make informed choices regarding what is best for each of your children. We recognize that this is not how most schools work, but we continue our commitment to a laser-like focus on extraordinary schooling and invite you to join us in doing the same.

We know that many of our core beliefs are unusual and even startling to folks. But if we believed just like everyone else, we would be setting ourselves up for average results. We do not anticipate ever being average.

One respect in which we want to see vast improvement is in student conduct. Many of our students are exemplary in this regard. Some are not. If our teachers are to be free to focus on achievement and on meeting the needs of those students who are attending to their business, then we need to limit the amount of time that they spend addressing misbehavior. The standards of good behavior in school are not a mystery and shouldn't have to be taught beyond the first few days. After that, teachers should be able to expect cooperation from their students in the vast majority of instances. Parents are the key ingredient in this key element of schooling. A classroom full of respectful, well-behaved students has virtually unlimited potential for growth. It's a wonderful thing to see. It depends, to a large degree, on the willingness of all of the adults involved to insist that school behavior is a matter of choice and that children must be held accountable for their choices.

Modern American pop culture temps us with all sorts of unfounded theories about why students misbehave. They are mostly bad psychology designed to sell books and seminars. (They are usually some derivative of the theory that 'everything is somebody else's fault!) The fact is that we humans beings are choosers, and we can be responsible for our choices. Youngsters can't be held responsible for making choices that involve complex problem-solving, but they absolutely can be (and should be) held responsible for being respectful of adults and for doing as they are instructed by a teacher. If you honestly believe otherwise, then some of our habits will seem strange. (But trust me when I say that there is a method to our sanity!

I know that we can work together to improve student conduct and that the result will be ever-increasing student achievement. It is a simple formula. We literally can't do it without you.

Thanks, and happy early holidays.

Pascal: Geometry, Finesse and Which is Which

Nearly 400 years ago, the French philosopher and mathematician Pascal posited two ways of knowing about the world...two fundamental capacities of the human mind. One he called the "geometrical bent", meaning the capacity to break things down, analyze, calculate, predict with precision, and apply unalterable principles such as those that characterize mathematics and (with some limits) the physical sciences.

The second human capacity he called (pardon my French) 'esprit de finesse', which Jacques Barzun (whose essay 'Culture High and Dry' informs this posting) translates as 'intuitive understanding'. Intellectual finesse (which seems to me closer to what Pascal called it) is necessary for understanding and succeeding in those areas of human endeavor that do not lend themselves to measurement, analysis, calculation, precise prediction and the application of unalterable principles. Finesse is necessary to the apprehension of those things that can't be 'broken down' (the literal meaning of analysis), rearranged and improved through engineering.

What could be more evident than that education is an endeavor of this second sort? What could be ironic than that contemporary educators somehow became so enamored of Pascals 'geometric bent' that they continually misapply it to an endeavor that he himself would have said was clearly a matter of 'esprit de finesse'? A geometry of teaching? A science of education? An utterly preposterous, though clearly profitable, notion. Charlatans playing on the fears and anxieties of parents and governing boards are all too ready to insist that a geometry of education is not only possible but is (forever, it seems) just around the corner as the result of each year's revolutionary new scientifically-based methods of delivery! Today they even offer it over the internet!

But what about the criterion of predictability? At what point does generation after generation of abject failure add up to evidence that the 'geometry of education' possesses no predictive power and is therefor (by it's own standards) a failure? When do we admit that such an approach has borne no fruit for decades and holds no promise for the future? Why do we cling so desperately to a failed model (all in the name of Continuous Improvement!)?

I suggest that it is because the alternative is unthinkable, and perhaps in two senses of that word.

First, it is politically unthinkable because a reliance on the experience, judgment and (yes) finesse of expert teachers strips the state of the appearance of control over the process. ODE, TSPC, Schools of Education, all depend on the myth that teachers and teaching can be mass-produced in accordance with the principles of scientific management. The unfortunate thing about the current level of state control is that while government agencies have some control over the behavior of some of the adults (mostly the administrators and support staff at district offices) they clearly have no control over the quality of education or the experience of the students in our schools. Still, this appearance of control evidently plays an important role in someone's thinking about how 'the education question' ought to be addressed. (That they can only address 'the education question' and not education itself ought to be apparent from the lack of progress over the past 20 years).

Second, perhaps finesse with regard to education is simply outside the experience of the current generation of 'deciders'. The illusion of scientific management, which was born outside of education, can be learned elsewhere, imported, and easily (mis)applied to schools and schooling. It requires no knowledge of education per se. Perhaps those who (whether from inside or outside the field) understand so little about education as to imagine that it can be scientifically managed are simply incapable of rethinking schools as places where finesse drives success. Perhaps they have never seen success up close, thus their infatuation with 'improvement' and their despairing of real results.

But even given all of that, why the appeal to Pascal? What makes him a reliable guide? Is this just a case of dragging up the name of some old European because he supports my take on things? Maybe. But Pascal understood 'the geometrical bent' that drives education policy today. And he could have predicted that it's application to education would produce disastrous results. It has. And he proposed an alternative way of thinking about problems that don't lend themselves to technical/geometrical solutions. What Pascal called 'intuitive understanding' is a viable alternative to what has repeatedly proved to be a failed stance toward education. Maybe it shouldn't matter that he wrote nearly 400 years ago. Maybe it should matter more that he appears to have been on to something that we have missed to the detriment of our kids. Maybe we should take a break from planning and think instead. Every year that we delay, we misdirect hundreds of millions of dollars toward wasteful activity and we fail to keep the promise that we make to our children each time we invite them to spend a day at school.

We can do better. But if we lack the commitment to revisit some basic assumptions then we must continue to grind inevitably toward to the same failed conclusions that got us to this point. That's not going to be good enough. That's not going to be good enough even if there is adequate funding for education over the next three years. Given the more likely scenario of near-historic shortfalls, the risk represented by a commitment to the educational status quo is simply unacceptable. We may not, in either practical or moral terms, fail to change.

Ripples of Hope?

Just a few weeks ago the Oregon Department of Education announced that it has not, for some years now, had the 'time' to nominate schools for national recognition (Blue Ribbon Schools). Given that the Department has had time to sponsor banquets for schools that, according to the state assessment folks, have 'improved' their performance on State Assessments, the issue is clearly not time so much as priorities.

Along the same lines, for the past two years the Oregon Department of Education has failed to publicly recognize Oregon's Advanced Placement State Scholars...students who have set the bar for Advanced Placement achievement in Oregon. Each year one boy and one girl from Oregon are selected based on their total number of AP exams passed during high school. The College Board does all the work, even going so far as to provide sample letters of congratulations and press releases. ODE has shown no interest.

In 2008 Corbett was ranked #8 in the nation by Newsweek Magazine, and the Oregon Department of Education chose never to publicly acknowledge the achievement. Nor did it ever mention that Corbett was the only Oregon school to be awarded Gold Medal status (and a top 100 ranking) by U.S. News and World Report. Because of my association with Corbett, I am likely more bothered than most by these omissions. But the trend of elevating 'improvement' to the highest (only?) educational value and of repeatedly devaluing or ignoring excellence should be troubling to anyone who cares about schools.

Does their attitude matter?

Six years ago, Oregon boasted three high schools among the top 500 in the nation based on participation rates in the Advanced Placement program. Last year there was only one. Is it possible that Oregon's top schools are beginning to reflect the disregard with which the State of Oregon views its high achievers?

I am deeply concerned that Oregon seems to have given up on a vision of extraordinary education, seeking instead a comfortable 'middle' in which the narrowing of 'the achievement gap' trumps all other concerns. Equity matters, which is why we organize life in Corbett as we do. But while equity is an ethical imperative, it is not an adequate vision for Oregon's future. There simply has to be more.

Do we Oregonians have a vision for our best and brightest? For exceptional students? For exemplary schools? Is there life beyond benchmarks? Learning beyond State Standards?

Oregon has been doing educational triage to the exclusion of everything else for much too long. We need to get our heads out of the 'emergency room' paradigm and start building something really interesting with our schools. This effort requires that the State leadership and the professional organizations grow into the trust that has been place in them and do something bold for a change.

Next week's annual conference of the Oregon School Boards Association is called "Ripples of Hope". Wake me when it's over. Ripples? That's what we're shooting for? How did we regress from the President's 'Audacity' to 'Ripples'? This is just too sad. Ripples?

We need to do better. We need to lay claim to a future in which Oregon places more graduates in better schools than anyone else in the country. We need to demand more from our students than others are willing to dare, and we need for more teachers to be willing to take on the impossible and make it work. 'Audacity' on a book cover is one thing. (It is certainly better than 'Ripples', but still...) We need Audacity in action.

I believe that Oregon has the talent to be extraordinary. That talent needs to be fed, and 'ripples' won't nourish it. The goal of bringing everyone up to average won't do it. Talent wants a vision. It wants boldness. Will Oregon provide either?

The Damage Done

Education is a peculiar enterprise. It's expensive, it's messy, it's unpredictable, it's nearly invisible, it's mostly unmeasurable, it's mandatory (except that it isn't really), it's mysterious, it's agonizing, it's pure joy. It's a dance, a march, a ramble, a race, a rumble, a stumble, a meandering path. It's a hunch, a dazzling flash, a false start, a recurrence, three steps forward, two steps back. It's zero to 60 in hyper-drive, it's sitting still enough to hear the faintest rustle of Fall. Hear that? Can it be measured without being interrupted?

But education is also an private industry and (in some cases) a government institution. Neither industries nor governments are very comfortable with the truth about education. They want education to be a straight path, a direct line, a graduated cylinder. (In fact, in their minds, all graduates must be cylindrical. "We'll have no 'square pegs' in this graduating class, Buster!") Governments need these incremental measures for the sake of making quarterly quotas. Industry needs them for 'quality control' for predictability, and for convincing customers of their value. How are parents to know that they are spending their tuition dollars wisely if not for daily concrete measures of unambiguous progress?

It's no mystery, then, that parents have been taught by both private and government schools to expect a quarterly evaluative Matrix that records everything from shoe size to phonemic aptitude to charm, complete with percentile rankings and prognostication regarding future achievement (by month)! Parents are taught to take great comfort in percentages (which specify that Johnny has learned 84% without every solving the puzzle of '84% of what?' or "What is the value of that particular 100%?")

BUT what if a school refuses to pretend that education occurs along a non-problematic trajectory that can be divided by 13 (years), divided again by three or four (terms or trimesters) and parsed out in intelligible increments? Well, you get something like Corbett Schools. Several years ago, Corbett Schools deferred the assignment of letter grades until students reach high school. (At this point it might be objected that many elementary schools don't issue ABC grades. Ya, OK. They issue ESN or ESU grades instead. It's the same old thing, as I knew when I received my ESN elementary report cards decades ago.)

In Corbett, we report progress. Not as a precise percentage of some false standard of perfection (100%!), but as movement in the general enterprise of becoming a reader, a writer, a mathematician, a speaker, a scientist, an artist, a musician...and if you stop to consider particularly outstanding people in any of those enterprises, the first thing that might stand out is how very different the great ones are from one another. They didn't all follow the same path and they don't all have identical qualities. They were not produced, they were nurtured. That's what we hope for. We want to nurture young people, to protect them and provoke them to do something interesting and deeply human with their lives.

Grades will come soon enough. The high school is full of them. They are necessary in order for colleges and universities and scholarship committees to make sense of how we spend our time. And Corbett's graduates leave here with a transcript that can be a ticket to virtually any school in the country, limited only by the abilities and efforts of each individual student. The evidence of Corbett's success is out there, at Harvard, at USC, at OSU and U of O. At Smith, Willamette, Vassar, Reed, UPS, PU, UP, Lewis and Clark, MHCC, Sarah Lawrence...the evidence of our success is in the successes of our students. It's not in their elementary or secondary report cards. It's in their lives.

Still, how does one know that a second grader is on track for Harvard? It can't be known. Period. But one can know with certainty that someone else got there by walking this path. Kids who grew up in these same halls are making home visits from some of the best colleges and universities in the country on both coasts. Maybe that's enough. It's the best possible evidence...real people, not test scores, report cards or other abstractions.

It's possible that in spite of the availability of first-hand evidence, of real young people, some will continue to desire the illusion of certainty that only a grade Matrix can provide. We will continue to argue that to do so constitutes a desperate case of misplaced concreteness. Worse than that, it creates an atmosphere of anxiety that could well impact children. Childhood is an anxious time as it is, having to learn to share, wait in line, take turns, do as an adult asks...the last thing that children need is to worry about whether they are growing or maturing at an 'acceptable' rate. It's how so many of us have been taught by long experience to think about education and about schools. I believe it to be a kind of cultural damage that has been done. It is 'spilled milk', and I guess that means there's no crying over it.

As it has been in the past, my only advice is that parents choose the school that suits them best and trust that they made a good choice. And if they didn't, it's always OK to change. We are all only human. Always only human, and trying together to do it well and to pass along what we learn to our children. And that's why percentages don't apply. (Or if they do, they should never be hired.)

Looks like good weather for visitors. May all your butterfingers be fresh and may none of your whoppers be hollow.

Credit by Proficiency: A ruse whose time has come?

If you want to lower standards in education, all you have to do is sprinkle your proposal with words like 'rigorous' and 'standards-based'. Your slide to the lowest common denominator will be heralded as the path to closing the achievement gap. After all, the lower the standard, the narrower the achievement gap. It's simple math.

Susan Castillo has just announced that 'credit by proficiency' is the key to improving Oregon schools in the future. The first question that comes to mind is why she would believe that she knows this, given that Oregon implemented and discarded the 'credit by proficiency' nonsense during the waning years in the 1980's. (Not her fault, really, since she may not have been involved in education in the 1980's) Every high school class had a list of proficiencies as long as your arm, and every teacher was expected to check off each 'proficiency', one at a time, for every student. It fell flat. It was a phenomenal waste of time. It did nothing for student achievement. For many courses of study, it simply made no sense. But like every failed idea in education, it has waited in the wings in hopes that memories would fade, allowing it to be relabeled as an innovation.

Credit by Proficiency is just the latest rendition of the old war between 'academics' and vocational training. The 'proficiency' theory is that students should receive high school credit based on what they can do and should not receive credit just for sitting in a classroom for the designated amount of time.

The argument appears at first to be just a matter of common sense, but on closer inspection it is founded on a classic straw man. Whether they call it 'seat time', call it 'sit and get', or any number of names that are intended to discredit (in this case literally) the exchange of ideas between teachers and students, the claim is that students are currently receiving high school credit based solely on how long they sit in a chair. It's a simple claim, and it has a certain appeal to everyone who was every bored in school. But it takes very little reflection to realize that only in cases of outright fraud did 'seat time' automatically generate credit toward graduation. If it had, we wouldn't have such vivid memories of tests we didn't prepare for, papers we didn't finish on time, and failing grades. Yes, failing grades. Why? Because contrary to the myth perpetrated by the Credit by Proficiency folks, grades are not and have never been based on seat time, but on performance on several measures including classroom discussions, quizzes, tests, papers, daily math lessons, ect.

LET'S BE CLEAR. THE 'CREDIT BY PROFICIENCY' ADVOCATES' FREQUENT CLAIM THAT STUDENTS CURRENTLY EARN CREDIT BY ACCRUING 'SEAT TIME' (SIMPLY SITTING In A CLASSROOM FOR THE APPROPRIATE LENGTH OF TIME) IS A LIE. TAKE AWAY THAT LIE AND THEY HAVE LITTLE OR NOTHING TO OFFER.

But is it a lie, really? And if it is, is it polite to say so? Consider this. If credit is currently given just for showing up, why are so many students credit deficient? Why is the graduation rate so abysmal? One of the top reasons that students give for leaving school is that they are hopelessly behind in earning credits toward graduation. How did they get so far behind? By missing seat time? Not so. It is against the law in Oregon to withhold credit or to lower a grade based solely on lack of attendance...clearly a devaluation of seat time and a requirement that grades be based on performance and not on showing up. Kids who fail to earn credit fail to achieve.

Finally, if seat time is all that matters, how is it that some students are earning A's and B's while others are earning C's, D's and yes, even F's? Clearly there is much more than seat time going on here. And one has to believe that the proponents of 'Credit by Proficiency' know all of this.

In Corbett, which can make a claim to being a high performing program, about one in every seven grades is an 'Incomplete'. This is in a school in which 90% of sophomores pass the 1oth grade reading assessment. Clearly we don't believe that proficiency is enough. There is more to being an educated person than meeting some state-sanctioned minimal proficiency, and that 'something more' should be our priority.

So what is the goal of the 'credit by proficiency' clan? It's to create the illusion of education without having to work at the real thing. It is education by checklist, with the goal for every child being identical...put a check in every box. It's the 'field strip and M16 in 30 seconds while blindfolded' theory of learning. Ultimately, it is about education on the cheap. It's about devaluing the role of the teacher. It's about devaluing any learning that can't be reduced to a checklist.

Proficiency as a goal has it's place. In vocational training. But not in education.

Why not? Because like every permutation of the Standards Movement (credit by proficiency is just the blue collar version of the broader Standards debacle), its implementation inevitably limits student achievement. It has a leveling effect whereby the minimum standard tends to be adjusted downward (like the Oregon 10th grade assessments in Reading and Math) so that a respectable number of students will pass (it's funny how these 'standards' always wind up being normed to a curve) and it discounts excellence. Everyone gets pushed to the middle...standardized, as it were. Once a student has met a standard (and it is imperative to remember that this standard will always have to be low enough that the vast majority of students can meet it without too much effort!) then there is no need for the most able students to extend their learning. In fact, in a true proficiency model, there won't be any course material beyond the 'proficient' level...it will be time to move on and demonstrate another 'proficiency'.

A final word for you professionals: the proficiency movement, to the degree that it is internally consistent, will wind up decapitating Bloom's taxonomy and leaving little (if any) room for anything beyond application. This is the level at which the vast majority of 'proficiencies' will be targeted, since synthesis and evaluation don't lend themselves to a checklist approach. Whatever is easiest to measure is what we will always tend to measure most.

Oregon's Race to the Middle

The State of Oregon is preparing an application for federal 'Race to the Top' funds. This is a competitive grant, and if Oregon's feeble proposal warrants financial support then the nation is in worse shape than even I believe.

What are Oregon's strategies? (See if any of this sounds familiar)

1. Merit pay for principals and teachers if their school improves. (But not for principals and teachers whose schools already perform?) This old shoe will never be implemented, though national examples of half-implementation followed by gradual abandonment abound, offering the consolation that others have been gullible before us.

2. Reshuffle teachers and administrators if schools don't perform. What does this mean, exactly? Move those supposedly low-performing teachers and principals to better schools and move teachers from better schools into the low-performing school? That's it? But doesn't that mean that the district-wide teaching staff is precisely what it was before, but is now assigned to different schools? Doesn't that just redistribute the same level of effectiveness? (And didn't Portland do this in the early days of NCLB?) How is that improvement? And for the 100-or-so Oregon districts that have only one building per grade level, it means less than nothing. It means that they are superfluous.

3. Frequently inform students how their performance compares to grade-level benchmarks. Yes, it's called 'scientifically-based nagging'. This is a clear winner, because no-one can resist the motivational power of a good nag. I suppose that this could eventually lead to merit pay for the very best nag. Maybe even a nag-of-the-year award down the road!

Conspicuously missing from the list? Anything to do with Oregon's bare tolerance of charter schools. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan thinks enough of charter schools that he stopped by to address the national charter convention to unveil the Race to the Top program in person. Where does Oregon stand on this strategy? Out in the cold. Why? Because in the Oregon political 'verse, unions determine elections and children are too young to join unions. So charter schools, which are opposed by the NEA, the OEA, the national pTa, COSA, and every other major stakeholder in the status quo, are only grudgingly tolerated and are under attack in every legislative session. Yet charters are at the center of the federal improvement strategy. So Oregon sides against the Democratic president, his Secretary of Education, and the grant-readers who will determine the distribution of significant federal dollars. And we offer them a good old-fashioned 'nagging' in hopes that they don't real the grant too closely.

Poor, poor Oregon. We tolerate the absurdity of No Child Left Behind because of the availability of grant money...a case of bad practice tolerated in the name of fiscal necessity. And now we are essentially turning down federal dollars because we don't want to see real innovation take hold in the form of charter schools...a case of promising practice avoided in spite of urgently needed financial incentives.

Nobody can say that Oregon doesn't act on principle...but the principle seems to be that what's good for reelection is good for the kids. And reelection means avoiding real reform while talking incessantly about oh-so-incremental school improvement: the song that never ends.

Superintendent Castillo has announced that she is running for a third term. The word on the street is that nobody will bother running against her. But she's not taking anything for granted, and her campaign is clearly underway.

Charter Schools, Politics and Market Forces

In some people's minds there is a 'charter school movement' that is at odds with school districts and is driven by economic theories about competition and 'market forces'. I don't put much stock in competition as a tool for improving schools. It might be useful in some instances, but I don't personally know of any cases in which competition has been a catalyst for much improvement. And I don't have much use for 'movements'. They are not, as we have seen, of much use in education.

This is why the conversation about approving or denying a particular charter application ought to have exactly one dimension: Is there a reason to think that the charter school in question will improve student achievement? If a charter school increases students' access to a better education, then it should be approved. Whatever distractions might be brought introduced to the conversation, whether they be matters of convenience, pride, annoyance, greed or embarrassment, all ought to be put aside in favor of academic achievement.

We are not acting out parts in a Clancy novel, and we ought to quit playing at political intrigue when it comes to our children's futures.

It's time for a change. While they are still children.

If Oregon Uses a Continuous Improvement Model...

then where is the improvement? And please don't answer that it is in the progress of our 3rd graders. Since we started saying that, 12 cohorts of 3rd graders have become fully bearded without having met the 10th grade standards in any significant numbers.

O.K. This isn't about Corbett. At any rate it's not just about Corbett. Or maybe it is, but it's also about education in general and about Oregon education in particular.

Nearly two decades after the passage of the Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century, education statewide is experiencing a peculiar malaise. I say peculiar, because it is characterized by an almost hyper-activity regarding initiatives, programs, trainings, policies and promises all aimed at improving student achievement. Never have so many adults been so busy at 'improving' schools. But student achievement isn't budging. The achievement gap isn't appreciably narrower than it was five years ago. Where passing rates appear to have improved, most of the change is due to the State of Oregon having lowered 10th grade standards in Reading and Math, garnering what appeared to be a 10 point bump in passing rates in both of those subjects in 2007. That same year, the State increased the cutoff score for Science (the subject that doesn't count for AYP calculations) by 1 point, and passing rates have remained stable. Overall, 10th grade passing rates might be creeping upward at a rate of 1-2% per year. With the State assessments in a continual state of flux, I don't put a lot of stock in even that meager 'gain'.

So what do we, as a state, intend to do differently next year? Well, nothing at all. That doesn't mean that we won't see new initiatives, new grants, new buildings, new funding proposals, and new promises. We will. In droves. And each new idea, regardless of its merits, will be subjected to a process that has, to date, prevented any really good idea from being implemented to any significant effect. What is this amazing 'sterilizer' through which every promising idea must pass lest a good idea might survive intact? It is the ironically-named Continuous Improvement Planning Process. What does it do? It limits vision, sets parameters on 'acceptable' goals, and virtually guarantees a very safe mediocrity.

What is the alternative? What ought we to do?

What Oregon needs, and what the education establishment in Oregon will never tolerate, is outrageous aspirations. We need impossible goals, audacious undertakings. Because getting even partway to something really worthwhile represents far more progress than meeting an utterly pedestrian 'SMART' (yes, it's a real acronym, but I've never cared to know what the letters stand for) goal. What I do know about SMART goals is that they are small, cheap, easy, achievable in no time at all, and the total result of 10 years of Oregon schools meeting annual SMART goals is virtually no improvement at the high school level. We are stalled out, with plans in place to repeat this process until the federal grant money runs out.

I believe that Charter Schools represent the only possibility for rapid, meaningful school improvement. Although Oregon law goes a long way toward trying to tame the wild energy that Charters often possess, there is enough breathing room for charters to aspire to greatness. Greatness, not compliance. Inspiration, not bureaucracy. Achievement, not excuses. That's the path that Oregon needs to take, and I don't see anyone at the state level breaking trail. We need to decentralize. Scattered outbreaks of inspiration would be a vast improvement over standardized mediocrity. And today mediocrity is the only SMART goal that ever makes it through the Continuous Improvement Planning Proccess.

This cannot continue.

Talented or Gifted, Part II

The twin practices of grade leveling by age and of teaching to standards create the need for special programs like 'Talented and Gifted' by imposing on each successive age cohort of unsuspecting students the convenient (for the grownups) assumption that all children should learn the same things at the same rate .

The result is the delivery of a chaotic and largely ineffective educational experience to all but the 30% of students who are reasonably close to this imaginary 'average'. The 70% of students who fall hopelessly below or ridiculously above this 'ideal' trajectory experience everything from discouragement to boredom to outrage at the misalignment of their abilities with the curriculum. The majority of students are willing to troop along, stay out of trouble, and enjoy those classes and activities that tend to be geared toward achievement (athletics, music, various clubs and competitions) rather than age or grade level. Those on the more extreme ends of the 'curve' (for lack of a better word) tend to wind up in the hands of special programs where it often feels like more hours are spent planning and debating than instructing.

One important (though largely unconscious) function of special programs is to legitimize the mainstream programming the creates the need for them in the first place. They imply that there must be something amiss with the student and never call the general classroom practices into question. So far it is working like a charm. There are raging debates about how much special education costs, and wars within special education regarding best practice. There is constant litigation regarding the rights of parents and the obligations of schools. And what none of this furious activity ever gets around to is questioning the practices that create 90% of the need for special education in the first place.

The same dynamic is a play with Talented and Gifted education, minus the money and most of the litigation. The would-be Talented and Gifted lobby lacks the emotional appeal and the sheer weight of numbers to prompt much political action, but there is little question that the general curriculum in most schools is as inappropriate to the intellectually capable students as it is the those who are the least able. Feeble, unfunded legislative suggestions (it would be hard to call them mandates) hint that something ought to be done if only anyone had some notion of how to proceed.

What is the primary need of Talented and Gifted students? It is to be unfettered from grade level expectations all day, every day, without the need for meetings, plans, tears and threats. They need to be able to walk through the door and access their own appropriate 'next steps' in their educational journey. How did this become a mystery and why are we always only on the verge of solving it?

There are only two barriers, as I see it, to the vast majority of gifted students accessing a great public school education.

First, the culture of public education is such that all students are 'supposed' to undergo the same age/grade-level curriculum at the same time unless the proper forms and filled out, meetings attended, consensus reached, authorizations issued and documents signed. Gifted children need more than anything else to spend time in a room with someone who is versatile, able to create on the run, think on his or her feet, innovate, make rapid and sound judgments. Instead Suzie gets a clumsy committee process that has nothing educational to offer except to those students seeking the patience of Job. The end result of the process varies from place to place and from parent to parent. It almost never leads to higher achievement but tends to focus on 'enriching experiences'...experiences that would be enriching for almost all children and have little to do with the particular needs of Talented and Gifted children.

The second barrier, which sometimes supports the first in a destructive way, is the discomfort that some teachers experience in the presence of an extremely intelligent student. This results in limits to what a gifted student is able to achieve within the structure of the school environment. The result is that a gifted student is hampered by the need to find a mentor, an outside expert, to provide guidance outside the school setting.

It is my experience that multiage classrooms and multiage teachers easily overcome both of these barriers. And because they dismiss the grade level myth out of hand, they are inclined to support whatever sorts of learning beyond the standard curriculum are appropriate to each child. Multiage practice is extremely demanding, and teachers who embrace this practice are risk takers. They are thinkers...planners...schemers...often dreamers. They delight in work that takes an unexpected turn and that exceeds all reasonable expectations.

I believe that the Corbett School and Corbett Charter School are intellectual playgrounds for gifted teachers and students. This is equally true at all grades, and it takes a unique twist at the high school level. Corbett students can complete a year or more of their college education without ever leaving the high school campus and without sacrificing the companionship of their classmates. And their classes are taught entirely be those teachers that they already know and who know them.

One quarter of the high school students in Corbett School District are taking AP Calculus this year. This number includes about a half dozen 9th graders. None of these students were placed Advanced Placement classes as the result of being "Identified" as Talented and Gifted (it occurs to me that you don't have to be 'identified' if people already know you!) or attending committee meetings. It was just their next step. In the case of the 9th graders, they took Algebra I in elementary school, Algebra II with a middle school teacher in 7th grade, precalculus with the high schoolers in 8th grade, and just kept moving along with no particular fanfare. It's just school. Corbett students progress in reading and writing according to the same logic and students have done advanced work in English, Science and History as early as 9th grade when it seemed like a good fit.

40% of Corbett's graduating class of 2009 earned AP Scholar designation (they passed three or more AP exams) prior to graduation. In most Talented and Gifted programs, earning AP Scholar recognition would be a reasonable goal for the participants. But obviously 40% of the class wasn't identified as TAG! So with all of this going on, how can you tell the Talented and Gifted students from the rest? My own strategy is to look more closely at results. 40% of the class passed three or more exams with a score of 3 or higher.

The top 10% of the class (more than would typically be identified as talented and gifted) passed an average of 10 exams each, placing them in the top fraction of 1% of the Advanced Placement program participants. I don't know if that Talented and Gifted, but it will do.

Giftedness often doesn't feel to parents like a 'gift' at all. It is tempting for students to wish (and I've hear more than one do so out loud) to just be 'normal'. Schooling can't alleviate all of the hassles that can come with possessing exceptional ability while attending schools that are preoccupied with 'meeting standards'. But schools can be organized so that the most able students benefit from, rather than having constantly to fight against, the status quo.

Highly able students walk away from Corbett Schools with evidence of exceptional achievement and with the support of an expert adult community. They leave having gained admission to selective colleges and universities and with thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars worth of earned credits. They receive significant financial aid in support of their undergraduate pursuits. And they leave with an extraordinary K-12 education.

Giftedness should be experienced as a gift and not as a struggle against institutional rigidity. Although there will always be challenges that come with seeing the world through the eyes of an exceptional intellect, schools themselves should be safe harbors and not sources of additional frustration.