Not All Great Ideas Fly

In late January, 2003, I heard Jerry Mintz over the local public radio station in Great Barrington, MA, talking about the recently ended International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) in Albany, NY. IDEC, he reported, brought together folks from around the country and from around the world to celebrate formal education through individual intrinsic motivation and learning community self-governance, which taken as a whole is called “Democratic Education”.

He explained, as I recall, and as he has done many times since, children are natural learners endowed by a powerful curiosity about all the things and the people of the world. This natural instinct compels knowledge seeking, acquisition and use, he argued: adults need not force children to learn. And growing children to maturity by way of their natural inquisitiveness, i.e., their intrinsic motivation to learn, he asserted, grows children to be healthy, happy, self-regulated and self-actualizing, most beneficial outcomes, everyone would agree. However, the conventional adult selected, directed and ordered learning of traditional schooling, AERO’s Director stated, destroys this natural process transforming competent, confident, independent development into a learned helplessness.

He went on to point out that children feeling an ownership in their collective learning environment through their full participation in school governance assures they will grow in their natural way. School governance, he outlined, is by way of the Democratic Meeting where the community comes together in regular meetings of the whole community to decide issues open to community decision. Adults and children have equal rights to speak and to persuade within these community forums. Each has a single vote on questions up for community decision and decisions are majority ruled. The community can decide policies on such as curriculum and assessment, individual or group or school projects and assignments, graduation requirements and ceremonies, expectant behaviors consistent and inconsistent with the norms of the school as well as the means by which inconsistent behaviors are resolved.

I had been very much attracted to the ideas of Maria Montessori and John Holt who both saw intrinsic motivated driven learning the best way of structuring formal education. So, my attention fixed on the radio as I heard this fellow saying some of the same things Montessori and Holt were saying. More, Jerry Mintz referenced A.S. Neill's Summerhill, Daniel Greenberg's Sudbury Valley School  and Mary Leue's Albany Free School, if memory serves, as exemplars of this type of schooling.  I knew of Neill, his school and the book he wrote on it, but I had yet to read the volume; my earlier association with NCACS introduced me to Sudbury Valley and Albany, but I had only a fleeting understanding on what they were about.  The next day I got a hold of a copy of Neill's Summerhill, read it and recognized from where Democratic Education ideas had their genesis. I also delved deeper into what was going on in Sudbury Valley and Albany.

I should point out presently that there is a class of student for years known as Gifted Talented Learning Disabled, currently known as Twice-Exceptional.  Our son Sean should have been found Twice-Exceptional and schooled according to Twice-Exceptional characteristics.  But, he wasn't on all counts and suffered greatly.

I had been wondering about the exact structure of a formal learning environment suiting our son and all other Twice-Exceptional children since I began looking at alternative education in 1994.  So, while I was generally looking at Montessori and Holt and talking with folks in both AEE and NCACS, I was thinking on how to use what I was learning to better the lives of Twice-Exceptional children.  By the time I heard Jerry Mintz, I had formulated a general outline of a school for Twice-Exceptional children employing Democratic Education constructs and thought it would be of benefit to engage him in starting it.  Well, when I contacted him and told him of my desires, he invited me to join a school start-up group he was forming in NYC to develop Democratic Education schools in the City.  For about a year, I motored between our Great Barrington residence and start-up group meetings.

Now, my father having passed in 1975 left my mother to herself and to her many friends.  But, by 2004, at age 87, she needed someone in the house.  We decided since she would not move in with us in southwest Massachusetts we would move in with her. Karen obtained an apparel industry position in NYC and in May, 2004, we took up residence with my mother in her house in Breezy Point, and I became her primary care giver allowing me to more easily participate in the NYC Democratic School start-up group and develop my school for Twice-Exceptional children.

Altogether from mid-2003 to mid-2005 the group detailed a public Democratic Education school and took it the City in application for it to be one of the Department of Education's new, small schools. The City's DOE had undertaken to open dozens of new schools each school year since the early 1990's and we were working to make our endeavor one of them. On board for this application were the then principal of The Renaissance Charter School, a public junior/senior high school, Monte Joffee, the AERO Director, Jerry Mintz, a public school Vice-Principal, Alan Berger, a public school teacher, Roger Dennis, a college administrator, several parents and me.

I had actively pursued making application to the DOE for my school concept during the several years prior to our initial relocation up to southwest Massachusetts. I kept contact with DOE folks thereafter just in case we moved back to the City. So, I had a really good idea of the application needs the DOE required to be met. More, I had seen first hand the types of new schools being opened. (I actually was a substitute teacher in one.) Unfortunately, each school was structured exactly the same. My conclusion at the time (and remains today) was that the powers that be were looking for what would amount to magnet schools where themed subjects classes would be the draw to keep youngsters in school to receive the traditional core subjects. Teaching/Learning, student evaluation and cohort movement through grades were to remain exactly the same as in the older, large schools. The main difference between the established big schools and the new, small schools rested in the limited total student enrollment of about four hundred, ideally, allowing class size to be small, between 15-24 youngsters, but in practice it ballooned to 32-35 students in most cases.

Against this background, I thought it would be a very hard push to get any school organized along different principles passed into public brick and mortar. But, as the slogan of the New York State Lottery says, “Hey, you never know!”

According to the group's application to the City, individualized learning through a personalized curriculum based on the student's individual interests, talents and needs would be the foundation of the “School for Democracy” (SDF), the name of the proposed school, rather than the uniformity of curriculum, teaching and learning of all other public schools. Students in SFD would select what they wanted to study and the way instruction was to be delivered. Subject content would be interdisciplinary and integrated, meaning thematic; and, learning structures could be any one or combination of teacher-led classes, student-led classes, one-on-one tutoring, peer-to-peer learning, small group study, individual independent study, internships, field trips and community service. Each student would set down decisions in areas of subject content and on instructional means in an Individual Learning Map (ILM) at the beginning of each term. During the ILM composition process students would meet with an adviser who would negotiate with the student to see learning moved along a positive growth line and to assure the inclusion of state standards.

SFD's application was rather general on evaluation of student learning. However, it stated that SFD students would take all mandated New York State assessments pledging improvement in scores at a rate at or above the average of comparable students. Beyond this, the application looked to informal weekly conversations between students and teachers where students self-evaluated against their ILM's; additionally, twice yearly-once in December and once in June-teachers would be required to compose a narrative to describe the progress in academic and “other” areas.

I remember I argued that the proposal we were handing to the City contained internal contradictions impossible to reconcile. The most problematic were implementing a personalized curriculum while assuring the City the SFD would adhere to State learning outcomes, employing an integrated interdisciplinary, thematic content learning while satisfying state standards and pledging to provide more than adequate yearly progress in mandated test scores while keeping an intrinsic, self-directed personalized curriculum and non-test evaluation measures.

The personalized curriculum driven by intrinsic motivation, I stated, would result in content study different from student to student across the entire student population leading to what I call quality differentiated outcomes. NYC public schools, however, demanded a common subject content student to student within grade levels, especially for core subjects, and a narrow range of common outcomes across student populations, I explained, and the City authorizers would not agree with such differentiated learning resulting in potentially a wide variety of different learning outcomes. On the other hand, if the SFD actually adhered to State standards' outcomes, I maintained, students would be severely limited by them to the point of having the curriculum essentially being dictated to them by their advisers contradicting the whole point of intrinsic and self-directed learning so foundational to Democratic Education. Perhaps marking the coincidence of student selected learning and certain State standards' outcomes would allow the scope and the breath, the differences, of a personalized curriculum, but, I argued, the City authorizers want to see a definite commitment to State standards driven teaching, learning and outcomes. I just could not see a compatibility between the personalized curriculum and a State learning standard driven outcome process.

While State standards of the time in academic skill areas were formulated in surprisingly general terms for each grade level, the subject content standards were quite specific for each grade level. Advisers with little or no agreement with the student could include academic skill standards coincidental to the student selected content learning without doing much damage to the self-directed learning process or to the State standards so broadly drawn were they, but State content standards being so particular would require direct statements of specific discipline content in ILM's providing the distinct probability of teacher insistence and student acquiescence, thus defeating the purpose and the function of the individual intrinsic motivated personalized curriculum.

More, none of the State content standards allowed the type of integrated interdisciplinary content study proposed for SFD students. Thus, to satisfy state content standards, I argued, would require students to forsake aspects of connection between, among and across disciplines in favor of specific discipline knowledge and to be demonstrated to have been achieved as if each student was in the specific grade consistent with the standard. Yes, through an honest negotiation between adviser and student both recognizing the wisdom of the other would somewhat mitigate the antithetical to Democratic Education adult over child power dynamic kindly guiding the student toward State academic skill and content standards' satisfaction; but under the intrinsic self-directed impulse foundational to the School for Democracy, I argued, adherence to State learning standards could never be assured with every student all the time, a criterion necessary for City application success.

Third, with the student selected, integrated interdisciplinary learning in SFD so different than what is assumed by other public schooling, I wondered in what manner SFD students would be able to demonstrate State learning standards on mandated standardized tests. To achieve the application goal of more than adequate yearly progress on State tests, so much of SFD curriculum would have to correspond with the expectations of content on State tests as to severely narrow self-selection of what is to be learned to that in State standards, thereby, largely negating both the individual intrinsic motivated personalized curriculum and its integrated interdisciplinary character. More, SFD students would have to be so accustomed to test taking as to require testing as an integral assessment strategy which the application implies is rejected for other types of assessment.

Point after point I made arguing that assuring the City of SFD's intention of maintaining State standards, assessments and outcomes would in practice reduce so much of Democratic Education elements as to destroy the project as one based on individual intrinsic motivation and self-directed learning essential to Democratic Education, not to mention school community self-governance which the City did not, does not and will not recognize at all. I argued strenuously that to get the City to approve the SFD the school would have to look like all others and destroying the project that way wasn't worth it. Jerry Mintz, however, assured me and others of the group that working with State standards and mandated testing regimes would leave enough student choice in determining the individual content of student learning as to guarantee individual attainment of health, happiness, self-regulation and self-actualizing in each youngster.

I had great doubts as I had witnessed first hand the crushing power of City authority to structure its public schooling to other principles, definitely not to Democratic Education's. Having students taking SFD's proposed kind of responsibility for basic learning decisions, providing them with such a large variety of learning structure options and relying on informal and narrative evaluation of learning, not to mention the self-evaluation elements, was directly against each and every successful application where each applicant based their schooling on adult decisions on what children were to know, how they were to acquired the knowledge and how they were to demonstrate they knew the content they were suppose to know. Even the magnet subjects were organized by way of complete adult direction. Yes, students could choose which magnet classes to take but the teaching, the learning and the evaluation of student learning were all teacher-directed.

But, as it turned out, while these contradictions did not win any fans, the rejection of SFD's application was most attributed to the school's structural design. SFD, the application stated, would pioneer the concept of “micro-schools”, very intimate educational settings reminiscent of one-room school houses. When fully established SFD would consist of five micro-schools, called “pods”, each growing to a maximum size of seventy-five students covering the conventional grades of kindergarten through twelfth. Each pod would be located at a different site. The pods would be semi-autonomous but would also work together as an entire school unit whenever suitable.

Essentially, the City said, the separate pod structure would replicate by five the needed resources just to serve only a few students, thereby costing the City more money per student than when all youngsters are served within one building. As Monte Joffee reported the City public schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, as saying, SFD possessed “diseconomies of scale”. Indeed, the schools authorized then as now were the usual one building, multi-classroom structured units.

So the moral of this story is when it comes to public schooling in the City of New York, not all great ideas fly, certainly not ones which so differ from established, conventional thinking. Yet, I wondered if my Democratic Education school concept for Twice-Exceptional children would find acceptance as a New York State Charter school or as a private, independent community school.