While channel surfing the other night, I caught five minutes near the end of an episode of the Andy Griffith show. The high school principal had just told the drama club director that he would not permit a scene in a school show to reflect the kind of wild dancing and dress that characterized modern day (1970s) students. The drama club director asked the principal to walk to the auditorium with her and observe, for himself, what the students were preparing. As they entered the auditorium, a student, on stage, announced “And here is a scene that shows the attitudes and mores of our parents and grandparents generations when they were children.

On stage, a dozen performers did a vibrant performance of the Charleston, decked in revealing (though not obscene) costumes and looking as silly and raucous as the modern day students of whom they often disapproved.

As the scene ended with the principal saying “I see what you mean, you can tell the students they can go ahead with their performance,” I reflected on this front page article from the January issue of “Sounding Board,” a publication of the Jefferson-Lewis Teacher Center:

“Children are now tyrants…they no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up food at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers.”

The next paragraph continued:

“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?”

The narrative in the teacher center publication than continues: “You can just tell that teachers wrote that, can’t you? And they were both absolutely right. Of course, the teacher who wrote the second quote (Plato) was a student of the author of the first (Socrates) and may have been one of those same tyrannical children he was upset about. Sounds like they had some tough times in the faculty lounge even if it was the Golden Age of Greece.”

Our thanks to Mary Pobedinsky, Director of the Center, at the time. Good luck in your new position, Mary.

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If
you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a
message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2001, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

How do you know when a student has grasped a concept?

When they can apply the concept in a different set of circumstances and when they can articulate the concept in a different application than the one in which it was taught.

Raina (11) and I were returning from the mall where she had shopped for her mother’s gifts. She was anxious to get home to enjoy the pizza we’d just picked up and kept prodding me to “drive faster,” and to “pass that car.”

“Raina,” I said, “if I try to pass that car and we get in an accident, it will take us at least an extra twenty minutes to get home, assuming the car is able to run after I have exchanged insurance information with the other driver.”

I thought for a moment, and then I added, “It’s been said that sometimes fast is slow, and slow is fast.”

Raina didn’t respond.

Do you know what is meant by that?” I pursued.

“Sort of . . .well, not really,” Raina answered. Then she added “Who said it?”

“Someone I worked with said it over ten years ago. I only met him once, at a workshop, but I remember that quote. It means that sometimes when you try to go fast, it can actually take you longer.”

“You mean, Raina said, “If we get pulled over by a police officer for going too fast,” it will take much longer to get home?”

“That’s right,” I said, “But if I drive a little slower, we may actually get home faster than if I speed and get pulled over.”

“So, it means that sometimes fast is slow because you can get in an accident or get pulled over,” Raina repeated in her own words.

I was about to correct her and point out that there was a more universal meaning to the saying “Sometimes fast is slow and slow is fast,” when she added “That’s exactly what Laura said in ‘Little House . . .,’ no, wait a minute, it wasn’t in ‘Little House,’ it was the mother in Felicity in the American Doll stories. She used to say to Felicity ‘Sometimes fast is slow’ when Felicity tried to hurry through her work.”

How do you know when a student has grasped a concept? When the student can apply the concept, as Raina did, in another context.

Recognizing that concepts, to be understood, must be applied in a variety of settings presents teachers with an excellent opportunity to spiral curriculum. Take a concept that students learn through their study of a particular unit, and then have them transfer the application to the content you are about to study.

Example: We have studied the Civil War and focused on the concept of how the victor treats the vanquished. Now we are about to study the post war era. “Students, we’ve discussed how General Grant treated General Lee upon Lee’s surrender, and we have discussed how the North treated the South when the war ended, now we are going to study peer mediation. What, if anything, have we learned about how the victor treats the vanquished that we can apply to peer mediation?”

Or: In math, students have been studying how to balance a check book, and you now build on the concepts implicit in check book balancing to begin a study of how a corporation balances its books.

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If
you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a
message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2001, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

Guess which topic had eighth grade students engaged in a heated debate?

A. Who would win the super bowl?

B. Should students be allowed to leave school grounds during lunch?

C. Which words in a sentence are the adjectives?

Sorry, but I couldn’t resist one more article on student-run classrooms. I didn’t intend to write this. But a visit to Ausable Valley Middle School, and reports form four teachers who conducted 42 minute student-run classes, excited me.

Gemma Orzech, an 8th grade English teacher, entered our 90-minute discussion group with a tape of her students teaching fragments to each other and she described the lesson as “awesome.”

“I’m so glad you pressured me into trying it,” she said to me. “Well, you didn’t actually pressure me, but I’m glad you persisted. The kids were awesome. I said to them at the end of the lesson, ‘You guys are going to teach for the rest of the year – you were so much better than I am.’”

How did Gemma conduct her lesson and what was the evidence of student success?

She walked into class, on a Monday in January, asked her 26 students to self select into six groups of four and five each, and handed folders to every student. There were six sets of folders; each student received the same folder as the other students in his/her group. Information in each folder focused on one of these six aspects of sentence structure:

• What is a sentence?

• What are conjunctions?

• What is a dependent clause?

• What is an independent clause?

• What is a fragment?

How can I avoid using fragments in my own writing?

Each folder contained the same two-page handout, which began:

“On Wednesday you and your group will be presenting information that is contained in your folders. Our main topic will be sentence fragments. Each group will be given a separate topic (see above). It is your group’s job to present the information to the class in such a fashion that the class can take notes and understand the concept. All six areas need to be covered so we can understand what a fragment is and how we can avoid them in our own writing.”

The handout also included sections on presentation suggestions, presentation assessment, and individual assessment. The combined effect of these sections in the two-page handout was to clarify expectations for the students.

The students then had full periods Monday and Tuesday to prepare for their group presentations. Here are is the evidence of student success:
• The teacher provided a one-page handout with some Internet references. Each of the six groups brought in at least a dozen pages of Internet references, one group had 15 pages. All of this was extra work on the part of the students (what Paul Vermette would call “disguised homework”). None of this had been required by the teacher.)
• One of the students who usually has difficulty in class wrote a poem entitled “Fragments” which is published at the end of this article.
• While groups were asked to present for a minimum of ten minutes and a maximum of 20, five of the groups were still presenting after 20 minutes and had to be “guided” toward a quick finish. The sixth group presented for twelve minutes.
• According to Gemma,” The kids were just having so much fun, and they corrected each other frequently.” As one group would present, other students freely would correct grammar or assumptions of the presenting group.
• The “heated debate” referred to at the start of this article was over the sentence “Mary had long hair.” The student presenting this sentence asserted that “long hair” was the adjective and that it modified “Mary.” Some students in the class corrected her and said, “long” is the adjective and it modifies “hair.” A debate ensued with some students agreeing with “long hair” as the adjective and others agreeing that “long” is the adjective. Eventually, the students were able to agree on the right answer. If they hadn’t, Gemma would have used this as a teachable moment. Think about the fact that, because of the debate, the students’ likelihood of understanding the concept of adjectives is greatly increased. They have hooks to hang their thoughts on (connecting the debate to their understanding of adjectives).
• The students generated questions for a test on the six aspects of “fragments,” but the test was so difficult that most of the scores were failing. Gemma then gave her own test and the scores were higher than students had achieved in previous years when the material was taught traditionally.

What about the reports from the other three teachers, and their principal?

• Bob Dolan conducted a team quiz game similar to one he’s done in the past, only instead of making up the questions himself, he had the students design the questions.

• Carol Crowningshield asked the students to create their own review activity in preparation for end of the semester exams. One group created a rap song, another jeopardy, and a third made a game out of “The Weakest Link.” Barbara was thrilled with the results because the entire class became engaged in the learning process.

• Jennifer Daniels’ learning objectives for her 9th grade students was world religions. She put her students in groups and assigned each group a different religion to study. They were given two weeks to prepare their presentations, however, they were given very little class time. The work had to be done mostly out of class. This is what Dr.Vermette would call “disguised homework.” The students were excited enough about their task that they did far more work outside of class (disguised homework) then the teacher could ever have assigned.

What was the evidence of success with Jenny’s lesson? Jenny had invited high school principal Pete Atchinson to observe the student-run class. When Jenny began sharing her thoughts at our workshop, Pete offered his perceptions:

• Usually, I expect a class to take a few minutes to settle down when they first enter the classroom, sometimes as long as ten minutes. As soon as the bell rang, Jennie said “You all know what you need to do,” and she sat down in the back of the room. The first group of student presenters took over in front of the class and for 40 minutes there was never a lull, never a hesitation, as one group of students followed another with its presentation.

• The students used their rubrics effectively.

• I was really impressed with how the students created their own guided notes as part of the process, while other groups were presenting.

• This was a ninth grade CT (consultant teacher) class, not always the easiest class to teach, and yet the entire 40 minutes went by flawlessly.

There is one common denominator of these four student-run classes and the growing number of student-run classes I’ve seen in the past four months: “student engagement.” Pat Flynn states emphatically: “You will not generate student UNDERSTANDING without ENGAGEMENT. Student-run classrooms generate engagement. There is plenty of additional evidence of student learning (see above), but the best evidence that student learning is occurring might be when you see and hear students actively engaged. As Dr. Vermette says, the student “engagement” allows the teacher to hear students thinking.

When Marc Spicer conducted his student-run classroom in the Malone Middle School (newsletter of January 6), he observed afterwards that “The students learned six terms they had been taught over and over, in the past, but had never really learned.”

When Marc made that statement, the other eleven teachers in the room all nodded knowingly, thinking of the many terms they had taught “over and over” but which students had never really learned.

I mentioned earlier that one of the students in Gemma’s class who often has difficulty with course content wrote a poem as part of her group’s presentation on “fragments.” As you read, think about how actively engaged her mind was with the course content in order to create this poem:

FRAGMENTS

You Fragile Fragments
Hit the road
You’re no good to me
You’re making me slow

You come to me in pieces
With no place to go
I wish I could put you into a
Sentence
Instead of throwing you out the
Window

You can’t stand alone
You’re not at home
You make no sense
I’m feeling dense
So I suggest you hitch a Ride
On the next_____fly by
A Sentence

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If
you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a
message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2001, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

If you’ve seen me cringe, it’s probably been when someone has indicated that the use of lecture means you are not being constructivist. This commonplace misconception usually surfaces when someone says, “Don, there are times that my subject matter requires some lecture instead of constructivist strategies.” This all too familiar refrain implies that one must choose between lecture and constructivist strategies and that if one strategy is employed it means the other is not.

WRONG!

Whether a lecture is being used as a constructivist strategy depends on the context in which it is used. Sometimes a lecture can be a constructivist strategy. Sometimes student interaction is not constructivist. The following was written, in collaboration with Pat Flynn, Mike Smith, Paul Vermette, and Jim Waterson. It evolved from my frustration with the implication that lectures and constructivist strategies were opposites.

Are Constructivism & Lecture Compatible?

Which is better – lecture or a constructivist approach?

A lecture is a strategy. Constructivism is a theory about learning and knowledge.

Strategies that can be integrated into a constructivist classroom include reflection, portfolios, authentic tasks, lectures, performance assessments, assigned readings, probing questions, cooperative learning, etc.

Whether a classroom is constructivist, or whether a teacher should be identified as a constructivist teacher depends on how strategies are used, when they are used and the purpose for which they are utilized.

A lecture, as a strategy, can be part of a constructivist lesson (as an intervention), or it can be used in situations that run counter to how research indicates people learn.

To contend that a lesson has to be either a lecture or constructivist is no less ridiculous than to insist that an animal is either a dog or has four legs. Some animals with four legs are dogs and some animals with four legs are not dogs. Some lectures are part of a constructivist lesson and some are not.

Would you rather go to California or by Car?

(Next week, I will share a definition of constructivism, also a product of my collaboration with Flynn, Smith, Vermette, and Waterson.)

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If
you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a
message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2001, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

This article will be short and to the point.

As a staff developer, I am constantly on the look-out for those strategies that will have the most BANG for the buck. Here are three that are simple to do and will reap ample dividends for the limited time required for implementation:

1. ADMINISTRATORS:

Reflect on your last staff meeting. If a teacher conducted class the way you ran your most recent staff meeting, how would you evaluate the teacher? Remember, we do as our leadership does, not as it says.

Reflect on your last staff development day. If a teacher conducted class the way you ran your most recent staff development day, how would you evaluate the teacher?

Does anyone doubt that modeling, through our own behaviors, what we want others to do is the most effective strategy for teaching and leading?

1. PARENT INVOLVEMENT:

Most schools have signs requesting that visitors report to the office. Look at the signs in your building. What kind of a message do they send? If I, as a parent, see a sign on a plain piece of paper that says, “Visitors must report to the office,” how will I react? Here are two simple suggestions:


a. Be sure the word “please” is included.


b. Have an art teacher or (preferably), a class of students, design an attractive poster to replace the sterile sign you probably have posted on your walls – have them design something warm and fuzzy, something with an attractive border.

The sign that directs me, as a parent, to the office is often the first thing I notice when I enter your school. This is my first impression. It will either reinforce my stereotypes (and fears) or generate a smile on my face and in my heart. Which effect will your signs have on me, as a parent?

1. STUDENT MOTIVATION:

Create a fifteen minute student-run activity and see what happens. Simply ask three or four of your students to teach something that can be taught in fifteen minutes. Select a topic that you need to teach. Refer the students to an appropriate reading or provide them with a resource packet. Offer them extra credit or makeup credit, or the option of doing this in lieu of another assignment.. Select the students randomly or pick them for a reason – they are students you want to challenge, they are students who complete another assignment first, or they are students you want to motivate.

Please let me know how it works, how you react, what you might do as follow-up.

If you’ve already done an entire student-run class (40 minutes) then you understand the value. If not, you might be more comfortable beginning with this fifteen minute idea, and then you can decide whether to get more ambitious.

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If
you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a
message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2001, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

If you intend to be a facilitator or participant at this summer’s conference, or if you are the parent of a child ages 9 – 18, this column is for you. The most frequent observation I hear from parents of children who have participated in our summer conference is about the “growth” they see in their child due to involvement on a student team. I’ll share an anecdote about one of our students at the end of this column.

This summer’s conference will be the 10th since the initial Grand Island Design in 1995. Each seems to surpass the previous one in terms of participant reaction and indications that constructivist practices are gaining acceptance. However, nothing gives us more satisfaction than the involvement of parents and students at each conference.

Thanks to Sue Doin at Champlain Valley Educational Services, at least two parent teams will be supported in their attendance at the 2002 summer conference. Once again, Roberta Stillin-Dowman and Sue Rau are guiding our efforts to involve parents in the fabric of the conference. In 1995, a Kentucky principal observed that the meaningful involvement of parents added a valuable dimension not present at most conferences. Many teachers and administrators tell us that the conference value for them is greatly enhanced through the participation of parents.

Openings exist for up to 30 students, ages 9 -18. The involvement of students at the conference has amazed, encouraged, reinforced, and overjoyed almost everyone who has been with us. This year, we will offer four options for children of participants or facilitators:

1. Once again, there will be a student newsletter published daily. We’re hoping Robin Thompson and Shelly Stacey will return to guide the students who write, edit, interview, and publish.

2. Sandy Hildreth will return to facilitate students in video production of conference events. This year, instead of daily newscasts, Sandy is going to expand the work of the students into a variety of projects that will be videotaped.

3. Beth Konkoski-Bates and Linda Konkoski will return to once again guide students through publication of a book of illustrated poetry. Beth proposed this concept a year ago; she and Linda offered this opportunity at the 2001 conference and it was a wonderful learning experience for every student who spent the week with them.

4. Facilitator Jack Drury made a suggestion last summer that we will implement for our fourth option. Jack suggested that a team of students study the environmental impact of everything we do at the conference and make recommendations for what we can do to improve. Professors Celia Evans and Janet Mihuk of Paul Smith’s College have offered to facilitate this group of students. Professors Evans and Mihuk will also be wonderful resources for everyone else at the conference.

Our student groups are extremely popular and demand is beginning to exceed our capacity. Therefore, this year we will need to charge $75 per student to help offset the cost of their food and facilitation. There will be a charge of only $50 for a second or third child from the same family. These charges are less than it costs us for each student and far less than parents pay for a week-long summer camp experience. The students work as long and hard as everyone else at the conference and the quality of their work is shared with all.

We will accept students into this program on a first come-first served basis because there will be a limit to the number of students accepted into each of the four options. If you are planning to attend the conference, either as a facilitator or participant, you can reserve a place for your child by sampling e-mailing the request to me.

SPECIAL OPTION for STUDENTS

Singer songwriter Dan Berggren will be performing at our conference the evening of Tuesday, July 30 for the benefit of the Adirondack Curriculum Project (which will have two teams working at the conference). Dan has offered to work with students during the day, Tuesday, and write songs with them. The students will perform their songs as the opening act for Dan’s benefit concert.

Students participating in any of our four options at the conference will be offered the opportunity to work with Dan Tuesday afternoon and appear with him that evening.

Now for the anecdote:

An assistant superintendent from Maryland brought his family to our first conference in 1995. His 11 year-old daughter, Sherry, participated with the student newsletter team. At the end of the conference I asked him how his daughter liked her experience.

“On Tuesday,” he told me, “I asked her how things were going and she looked a little concerned. She said ‘Dad, I’m not sure I want to continue. They want me to interview an adult and I’m not sure I can do that.’

“On Thursday,” the assistant superintendent continued, “I walked up to her and began to say ‘Sherry, how . . .’

‘Not now, Dad,’ She interrupted, ‘I have to go interview one of the facilitators.’”

Facilitator Suzanne Miller told me yesterday that her son Eamon, one of the shining lights on the illustrated poetry book, last year, is anxious to return. He still remembers that the highlight of his work, two years ago, on the student newsletter, was when he interviewed Gerry Peters.

Eamon, we’re excited that you will be returning for a third year and you can have your pick of the four options.

We are in the process of finalizing facilitators and teams for the summer “constructivist” conference; if you are interested in sending (or bringing) a team, or in facilitating, please let me know, NOW!

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If
you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a
message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2001, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.

Visits to Arizona, the State with the most charter schools (nearly 450) have shown me some of the pros and cons of charter schools.

Approximately three years ago, an article in the Arizona Republic touted successes of several charter schools after a few years of operation. These schools had broken paradigms and were offering evidence of students’ success. This exhibited the best of charter schools – they have the flexibility and incentive to focus on student learning and create models for improving student achievement.

However, on a visit to Phoenix and Flagstaff two weeks ago, the same newspaper ran articles that highlighted the downside of the charter school movement:

More than fifty charter schools had been cited for failure to provide mandated services to students with special needs, despite the fact that they had been threatened with loss of funding if they did not correct deficiencies which had been pointed out to them months before. These deficiencies included failure to write IEPs for a significant number of special education students and failure to provide services required by IEPs.

The Arizona legislature was concerned because it was becoming apparent that the State was powerless to prevent charter schools from hiring teachers with criminal records.

There is no mechanism, in Arizona, to require charter schools to hire certified teachers.

Charter schools are relieved of most regulatory procedures that bind public schools. If the purpose of charter schools is to pilot models for adoption by public and private schools, or to provide an incentive for public and private schools to improve, then there might be justification for waiving certain regulations and for government incentives to encourage the development of a few charter schools. However, proponents of charter schools rarely propose encouraging the development of a few charter schools for these limited purposes.

The Arizona experiences are demonstrating what is inevitably going to happen as soon as charter schools become more than a tiny percentage of the schools providing service to students. I can best sum up my reaction like this:

If waiving regulations and procedures can enable charter schools to achieve success beyond what we find in public schools, why not waive these same regulations for the public schools?

On the other hand, if there is a good reason for some of these regulations, why do we waive them for charter schools?

Please help me out on this one. It seems so logical that I must be missing something. Why are we waiving those regulations and procedures which have a purpose? The situation in Arizona whereby there is no legal way to prevent the hiring of teachers with criminal records is an example of what can happen when we waive regulations that have a purpose. How long do you think it will be before someone, in Arizona, with a criminal record, does something tragic and causes the legislature to enact regulations for charter schools?

On the other hand, where there are regulations we can waive for charter schools, because they promote little more than excessive bureaucracy, why don’t we waive these regulations for all schools?

Let’s follow the charter school movement to its logical conclusion. Let’s assume that charter schools are so successful they put the public school system out of business. We would now have a school system with far less regulation than currently exists. If this can work, and meet society’s needs for a school system, that would be great. But then we would be left asking, “Why couldn’t we have waived those regulations for the public schools so they could have been successful?”

More likely, what would happen if charter schools proliferated is that, gradually, we’d add restrictive regulations. When a teacher with a criminal record abuses a child or commits a robbery (or worse) we would pass legislation requiring charter schools not to hire employees with criminal records. When there is another teacher surplus and complaints pour in about the quality of uncertified teachers in charter schools, we would begin to regulate the hiring of uncertified teachers. Charter schools are already bound by regulations requiring services to special education students. We would begin enforcing them, as Arizona is beginning to do. Then we might find that some charter schools can’t do as well (without significant budget increases) because of the time and money required to meet needs of students with disabilities.

In my opinion, charter schools can be worthwhile while they are limited in number and can be utilized to pilot educational programs and new ideas. They can be used as a litmus test to be held up to public and private schools to motivate these schools to break out of paradigms, reduce political influence on educational decisions, and improve student achievement.

However, we must be smart enough to realize that as charter schools increase in number, the honeymoon that comes with any new venture will cease to hide the blemishes. In short, it has taken hundreds of years for the regulatory system that governs public schools to evolve because many of the problems the regulations are intended to address emerged gradually – they were not all apparent on the first day the first school opened for student enrollment. Some of these regulations are no longer needed and should be eliminated. Many (such as screening employees for criminal records and protecting the rights and needs of students with disabilities) have a reason for their existence and, as Arizona is learning, must be applied equally to charter schools.

Are the time, effort, and money going into charter schools taking away from the resources we need to improve the public schools? This is my fear. If the end result of the charter school movement is to learn that many of the regulations that are waived for charter schools are actually needed, and many others could as easily have been waived for public schools, then the time, effort, and funding being directed at charter schools is simply a diversion of resources from where they are really needed. What a waste!

It’s always easier to dream of creating a new system rather than getting down to the hard work of restructuring the old. Why do we believe there will be any less work involved in creating a charter school system than in reforming our existing public school system? When the number of charter schools is small, it is easy to oversee them and to help them be successful. If we had only a handful of public schools in the country, we could focus on them and help them all to be successful.

Our challenge, as Americans, is to make a nationwide system of education work for all of us. We have countless isolated examples of individual schools demonstrating unique success with student achievement – from Central Park South to Ithaca’s Alternative School. What we need is models that can be implemented nationwide that take into account the overworked, underpaid nature of the job of school employees, the varying degrees of parental support (and lack of support) of our children, the financial limitations of our taxpayers, the political influences, the attitudes of many of our students, and the need for legislated rules and regulations. We need to look at those models we already have (Central Park, Ithaca, etc.) and ask “How can we take what is working in these places and replicate nationwide, even without the individuals who were responsible for making these models a success?”

Can charter schools ever do more than serve a small segment of our population before encountering the same problems that confront public and private school educators on a daily basis? If not, why don’t we stop wasting time and step up our efforts to address these problems in our public schools?

As our politicians and dreamers fiddle with alternatives such as vouchers and charter schools, we continue to burn the chances for many of our children to become well educated.

We are in the process of finalizing facilitators and teams for the summer “constructivist” conference; if you are interested in sending (or bringing) a team, or in facilitating, please let me know, NOW!

The author welcomes comments, feedback, reactions of any kind to the thoughts expressed (above).

Please feel free to forward this message to a friend or colleague. If
you know someone who would like to be put on the list, please send a
message to Don Mesibov at dmesibov@twcny.rr.com.

Copyright (c) 2002, Institute for Learning Centered Education. All
rights reserved.