School of One - How does it work legally?
Justin Bathon on Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 5:06PM As we start to consider a lot of different models of education, one that is getting a lot of play is the NYC School of One initiative. I have had superintendents bring it up to me and it is getting attention in the blogosphere. Here is their overview video:
Program Overview from NYCDOE Teacher Development on Vimeo.
So, lawyers, what stood out to you? For me, it was this phrase "Individualized Learning Platform."
So, when I was teaching fresh out of undergrad I remember talking to one of the senior special education teachers in my building. We were talking about various issues and at some point I mentioned that I liked the IEP concept in special education and thought one day it will probably become the norm across all of education (remember, I was young and naive - okay, I still sort of am). Anyway, I was not prepared for the scolding that ensued. I got a 10 minute lecture on why that would be a horrible idea, that we would all be swimming in paperwork, that it would be utter chaos. So, I sort of dropped the idea. She made some good points and I was already swimming in paperwork just teaching under Title I, so I sort of resolved to agree with her for the time being. Then in law school, as I worked with the State of Illinois on special education issues, I remember thinking how impossible it would be to implement this for all children. We were barely, and I mean barely, keeping an handle on the special education system as it was, it would have literally shut the system down to add 10 times more students to that kind of system.
So, all this talk about the School of One has sort of brought me back to this issue, especially when they use language like an "Individualized Learning Platform." I want to be able to consider the idea and I want to like it, just like I wanted to like it fresh out of college. But, having now seen the stacks of paperwork and hours of due process for some students, I just can't wrap my head around how implementation of such a system would be possible, realistically. From the video they say technology is helping to bridge the gap, but what I saw was a gaping chasm, is technology really going to bridge that? Even if it does and we have electronic student records and we don't do IEP meetings and whatnot, how are we legally going to deal with a separate curriculum for each kid? I don't even know if it is physically possible, let alone practicable.
So, help me out here. How are we going to do this? Or can we?
Reader Comments (8)
It helps if you just think about it as a middle school math curriculum (which is basically what it is now).
Maine (and probably other states) has begun implementing various initiatives which our Department of Education (DoE) has named "Standards-Based Education" and "Maine Course Pathways" which place the emphasis on individual student learning. There are also a couple of high schools which are "piloting" Re-Inventing Schools Coalition (RISC) style programs. In addition, I have heard DoE people say that Response To Intervention (RTI) means having an individual plan for each and every student, although not necessarily of the complexity of a special education IEP. Add to this the 1-to-1 laptop program for middle and high schools, and it could be said that Maine is well its the way to school-of-one education. I suspect Susan Gendron, resigning-as-of-today Commissioner of Education, would say so.
Whether or not most teachers in Maine know about all these initiatives and the potential implications, I'm not quite sure, although I don't believe so. There may be pockets of so-called innovation, but the day-to-day classroom experience hasn't changed all that much for either students or teachers.
If children were more integrated into the adult world, this would be entirely possible. Adults would multitask between working and mentoring children (and getting help in their work from children) and kids would spend part of their time learning with other kids, part of the time in dedicated topic-specific intense courses, part of their time apprenticing and working, and part of the time in virtual spaces.
I don't even know why I use the conditionals. This is exactly the sort of education my child and many of her friends are getting right now. Legally, it's registered as "homeschooling" but it's not schooling and it's rarely at home.
@Nancy - Yeah, I agree that some initiatives, like RTI, have sort of been pushing us in this direction, but it is not to the point yet where we have individual learning platforms. But, I do think Maine is a good example because of those issues you talked about. Interesting to hear that it might not be reaching the ground in all districts. That speaks to another issue, even if we were to do something like individualized learning plans at scale, implementation would be extremely difficult and legally challenging because not all schools would be capable of complying with the law for a long time.
@Maria - I think you make some great points and homeschooling is obviously analogous here because in that circumstance each kid does get a personalized learning plan, embedded with the cool elements you are describing. But, from a legal perspective, how can I mandate that? De we mandate that each adult spends 30% of their time training and supervising students? Do we mandate that all business have release time for homeschooling? Not everyone can homeschool at scale and keep the current economy that we have that requires 40+ hours of work from the vast majority of adults. I like homeschooling as a concept, but when faced with millions of students, it is not practical unless our economy itself deeply reforms itself (as in, is probably not capitalistic anymore).
In most cases, you can't directly mandate social change without undermining the autonomy of people. Your examples ("mandate that each adult spends 30% of their time training students") illustrate the ridiculousness of such attempts, and bring to mind dangerous social experiments of the past, for example, forced reeducation in Cambodia or "nationalization of children" in Soviet Russia. Sustainable and meaningful social change has to grow from individual local practices.
I also agree that changes that I outlined are deeply connected with economic changes. The economies of homeschool communities, as they exist today, are already very much mixed, with some money-based participation (often businesses, but also work for hire), and some gift economy of services within local and online communities, some local barter, much use of local and global open resources, and a lot of local coop collaboration. In a day, a kid may attend an open-to-public seminar at a local university, join a public webinar, take a coop class led by a parent, meet with friends for child-organized interest club, participate in a for-fee sports team, and work with an adult friend as an apprentice to his business.
In the US, homeschooling has been growing at about 10% a year, faster in college-educated circles. Overall, about 4% of all school-age kids, and 7% of kids with college-educated parents, are now homeschooled.
If you want my opinion on what needs to be mandated by law, I can probably dream up a long list, starting with, "Mandate lifting age restrictions from all university courses." However, I have no direct influence on laws, so I usually focus on things I can personally change here and now - such as creating learning materials and know-how for community-centered education, or helping people organize meaningful learning experiences for their families and communities.
The first problem I see is, as you pointed out, the general time constraints that teachers already face. This seems to put the daily burden of generating and modifying schedules on the teacher, yet it doesn't address the training that would be necessary for a teacher to effectively implement the program. The video focuses on the skill necessary to design a single lesson to meet the varied instructional needs of their students without addressing the skill necessary to schedule these students appropriately in a complex scheme and to EFFECTIVELY use technology-based instruction. (Yeah, yeah, I know they suggest that the magic computer will generate schedules, but the teachers are to modify the schedules and this is putting a lot of trust in the machines...).
The program seems to rely heavily on the effectiveness of the computer and algorithm. Even assuming that the technology is bug free and user friendly, there has to be an enormous cost for the hardware, software, training and support necessary to sustain this program- money that most states don't have- money that could arguably be used to hire more teachers or to improve the skills of existing teachers.
It would be interesting to see a program like this widely implemented or mandated without creating additional due process rights for students. Further, how difficult would it be to monitor special education plans in this system? When overseeing twenty-some-odd individual schedules daily, I would probably miss a few details if I were the teacher. I feel a few "the computer made the mistake" defenses coming on.
However, I think the biggest disservice of the "school of one" concept is the illusion it creates for students we hope to be training as lifelong learners. In a differentiated classroom, student needs are addressed, but they are exposed to many different approaches to learning. In the school of one, it seems the students interests and styles are almost (if this is possible) TOO catered to. The 'school of the world', on-the-job learning, just in time learning for everyday needs, and largely higher ed, will most likely not be catering to the individual by delivering content in the format that most meets the individual's needs or learning styles.
>Not everyone can homeschool at scale and keep the current economy that we have that requires 40+ hours of work from the vast majority of adults.
But it doesn't, that's why we're in a depression. (Oh sorry, it's still called a recession, isn't it?) ;^) For families to have a decent income usually requires two earners, but that's not at all the same as the economy requiring two earners per family. I don't know enough history of economics to know, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 40 hour week (brought to you by unions) came in at a time when the economy needed less work hours.
I actually saw a presentation by School of One a few months ago and I must say, I am impressed with their work (even if there is more to be done). Think of it like Pandora (www.pandora.com) meets education - meta-tagging educational concepts and matching them with learners who need them - an educational genome project. Students are diagnosed by a daily "update" (a diagnostic quiz) and their daily educational "playlists" are populated based on the results. Very cool use of technology to help teachers maximize their time on concepts where students are struggling.