The new frontier in educational equity

By Charlie Schlegel

I was not necessarily looking for something to write about when I walked into Mr. Watson’s fifth grade class recently. He had invited me to stop in and see the culmination of nearly a month’s worth of meticulous research by his students. I listened as students offered carefully-prepared, awkwardly-presented profiles of great figures from the Age of Exploration, 500 years ago.

The nervousness each speaker felt was obvious, yet the information was interesting. Miguela offered fascinating facts from Vasco De Gama’s first trips to India (interspersed with awkward pauses when she lost her place in her notes). Playfully dressed in matching black berets, Desmond and Jonathan shared, in character, stories from the life of Ferdinand Magellan, the first explorer to sail around the world.

However, it was Daniel’s presentation that really stood out. Standing proudly in a white sailor’s hat, a black jacket and high-collared, dress shirt (probably borrowed from his grandmother’s closet), Daniel profiled the explorations of Ponce De Leon. Reaching beyond the ordinary facts and figures, he drew interesting parallels between De Leon’s ventures to new lands and his own journey as a student in his first year at our relatively-new, fairly challenging charter school.

Leave it to a 10 year-old to lend such insight into the state of education reform in the 21st century. I certainly never considered there to be a connection between my experience in charter schools and the romantic adventures of Ponce de Leon, but I left Mr. Watson’s class a little prouder that day. Daniel made it clear that we are all pioneers – adventurous, courageous, audacious explorers. Ponce de Leon sought the “fountain of youth.” We seek quality education for urban children.

In fact, every year thousands of students, like Daniel, venture outside the familiarity of their neighborhood schools. They search with their parents for a safe and appropriately-challenging place to grow – places painfully scarce in most cities today. Similarly, a growing body of teachers and principals also are opting out, looking beyond the familiar terrain of conventional salary schedules and district-wide curricula in search of exciting, if uncertain, opportunities to work in innovative, mission-driven places like charter schools.

Of course, I don’t want to overstate the similarity. I doubt Vasco de Gama ever spent time supervising detention or cleaning up bathroom graffiti. Nonetheless, I think Daniel was on to something. In fact, I believe that schools as a whole - and especially urban schools where the challenges are often greatest - are actually on the edge of a new frontier.

Today, many charter schools and a handful of urban districts are building their entire organizations around a surprisingly novel idea: student learning. In this new world, high quality schooling is determined not by the number of days students spend at their desk or the classes they pass. Rather, quality is measured by what they learn at each stage in their education. This simple but basic change carries broad implications for our work in schools.

For instance, a focus on student learning pushes us to establish new standards in quality. It is not some evolutionary law that enables children to read proficiently by second grade; it is a consequence of exemplary teaching, strong home support, early intervention and a shared culture that truly values literacy.

A new focus on learning will require a new level of flexibility. We cannot expect students with entirely different profiles or learning styles to learn equally well over the same amount of time within a single classroom. You would only need to see how long it takes me to learn a dance step to realize that we all bring different skill sets to each learning challenge. In time, I may achieve mastery on the dance floor, yet it will require more time, more effort and more creative instruction for me than for most of my peers. The same applies for students learning multiplication.

Finally, building a critical mass of urban schools focused on learning forces us to develop entirely new models of school. The support that teachers offer to students must become more individualized and tailored to the specific needs of each learner. Leaders must devise more sophisticated and timely tools to figure out what students know and then to define strategic methods of intervention to help all children develop the knowledge and skills essential to succeed at each level.

My point is that leaders of learning-focused urban schools – drawing inspiration from Daniel – need to push ahead boldly no matter how rough the seas. Five hundred years ago, explorers set sail for a world not yet known to them. Along the way, they developed maps to help others follow their path. They found courageous backers willing to finance their explorations even while they could make no promises that their search would produce rich rewards. Most of all they combined hope, vision, and vigorous commitment to seek a goal that lay beyond the horizon.

As explorers on the edge of this learning-focused educational frontier, we may not yet be able to see exactly where we are going; but we have some maps (and models) to guide us, and we’ll try to steer a steady course. As we travel together, it’s reassuring to know we have students like Daniel, Miguela and Desmond with us. I think they can see beyond the horizon better than we can.

Schlegel is the principal of Challenge Foundation Academy.