Arne Duncan at King Middle School

If you have time, take a look at this video from Portland's WCSH-6. The 3 minutes of video provide a fascinating text of things said, implied, and ignored in the effort jump on the King bandwagon - a bandwagon that I'm on by the way. Some points:

First, Expeditionary Learning is not "so-called,"as the reporter described it, nor is the term interchangeable with "experiential learning," a wonderful term but far more generic in the sense that Maine Public Radio used it. Expeditionary Learning Schools has, over 17 years, "grown from a small adventurous group of ten schools into a network the size of a substantial urban school district." It is what in school innovation circles is described as a "replication model:" a (usually) non-profit organization that works with existing public schools and/or starts new public schools - often charter schools and often as part of the Gates Foundation's high school reform work. Why is this significant?

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Strange bedfellows

When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visits King Middle School tomorrow, he can claim credit to being part of the team that got some of the fiercest fiscal conservatives in Maine to defend President Obama. How did he do this? Am I about to write what I think I am - that the Maine Heritage Policy Center is right about something?

In the wake of Maine's dismal Race to the Top performance, Mr. Duncan is, among other things, cheering teachers up and trying to convince them that the Obama administration does not have it in for them. If he has it in for anyone, it is for those in positions of power and influence who continually seek to protect their institutional interest at the expense of our public school students.

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Don't Go it Alone

This article from Monday's New York Times describes a strategy - replacing a quarter of a failing schools' teachers with a squad of talented, experienced educators - that at once is among the most promising and the most challenging of effort to transform schools.

The promise lies in some of what we know about organizational culture and the change process. Change that relies on a single, charismatic leader, despite stories that often highlight such leadership, is not widely replicable or sustainable. Not only are there simply not enough of those people, but each school is a culture, one that carries forward not just teachers, but families and communities, sports teams and

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Asking the right questions...

During the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee debate around the innovation bill that was passed in May to facilitate Maine's Race to the Top application, much of the testimony - including that around enabling charter schools as an innovation strategy - repeated some fairly old arguments based on some assumptions that may longer be true. What is a public school? What kinds of public schools can serve Maine's young people, parents, and communities? How can innovation thrive without dismantling the parts of our current system that are working? If we ask the right questions, we might get closer to agreement on what kinds of policies and practices will work for Maine.

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