Posts by Dana Bennis
10 Elements of Good Education
In honor of today's National Day of Blogging for Real Education Reform, I'm reminded that the ideas for how education can be improved are already out there. Here at IDEA, we know that we are not pioneers of what is good in education. What IS deeply needed is to find new ways to frame, present, organize, advocate, and directly support schools and other programs working with youth so as to bring these ideas into reality.So, on this national blogging day, I want to highlight a list of 10 features of good education from a 2002 report by Linda Darling-Hammond and the School Redesign Network at Stanford University. The report is called 10 Features of Good Small Schools: Redesigning High...
Posted on Nov 22, 2010 - 04:00 PM by Dana Bennis
“Glee” on Schools
I'm a big fan of "Glee," I admit it. Not that it's a perfect show, but I love the variety of music, the quirky characters, and the humor. Watching last night's episode, something else stood out to me: the compelling way in which "Glee" portrays school life and particularly the message this episode sent about the role of teachers and a school in students' lives.The plot of yesterday's episode revolved around three students: Kurt, the only openly gay student at the school; Puck, a popular and rebellious student; and a football player and bully who specifically targets Kurt.
I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet. But what I was struck by was how well the episode showed...
Posted on Nov 10, 2010 - 10:53 AM by Dana Bennis
Are we really Waiting for Superman?
In two days, one of the most well publicized education documentaries in recent memory premiers in several cities around the country - Waiting for Superman. You may have already heard about it on The Oprah Show, in Time magazine, or from any number of other sources. Most of the coverage in these media outlets has been overwhelmingly positive, and there are many big name supporters of the film, including Bill Gates and the controversial Chancellor of D.C. Schools, Michelle Rhee, in addition to the big-name director of the film, Davis Guggenheim of An Inconvenient Truth.In short, the documentary profiles 5 children and their families who are hoping to get into charter schools as a way in...
Posted on Sep 22, 2010 - 08:37 AM by Dana Bennis
New assessments - are they better?
Secretary Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education announced the awarding of $330 million yesterday to two consortia of states under the Race to the Top Assessment program for their proposals to create a new generation of assessments. This is on top of the $4 billion announced in the past months to the state-wide Race to the Top competition. The Department of Education framed the contest as one that would create assessments that help "prepare students for college and the workplace, that more validly measure student knowledge and skills, that better reflect good instructional practices, and that support a culture of continuous improvement in education." The plan is for the assessments...Posted on Sep 03, 2010 - 08:44 AM by Dana Bennis
Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival
Two weeks ago I received an exciting call from Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza, a talented film-maker who directed, shot, and edited IDEA's launch-time video, "Make Your Voice Heard." He had just got word that our video was selected by the Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival as one of 33 films to be shown during the festival out of 235 that were submitted! Here's a bit about the festival from their website:"Lights. Camera. Help. The Nonprofit Film Festival is the world's first film festival dedicated entirely to nonprofit and cause-driven films. This 3-day event gives films-for-a-cause the attention they deserve by putting them up on the big screen in a theater setting."
The festival...
Posted on Aug 03, 2010 - 09:01 AM by Dana Bennis
The Education Policy Debate
I enjoy reading columns by David Brooks in The New York Times. He's a moderate conservative who promotes a more compassionate, intellectual, and pragmatic form of conservatism than what is often found in politics and the media. Nonetheless, I often disagree with him, and his recent op-ed on education deserves a critical response.He begins by praising Obama's direction on education, saying that Obama is using "federal power to incite reform, without dictating it from the top." Yet Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan's Race to the Top program is rewarding $4.5 billion to a limited number of states who receive the most points based on a scoring rubric (PDF) the administration...
Posted on Jun 07, 2010 - 10:26 AM by Dana Bennis
Celebrating Alice Miller: Pioneering Psychologist
Alice Miller, a leading psychologist whose work and books revealed the dangerous effects on children of corporal punishment and more subtle forms of physical and emotional coercion, passed away this past month in France at the age of 87. Her books are essential reading for parents and anyone who works with young people, including the The Drama of the Gifted Child, and For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence.Miller showed how the “poisonous pedagogy” of repression and fear will lead to severe psychological problems, even if parents and other adults think they are acting in the child's best interest. Here is a powerful quote from Miller's For Your Own...
Posted on Apr 26, 2010 - 11:59 AM by Dana Bennis
Obama Praises Democratic School
In a speech yesterday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, President Obama pointed to the Met Center schools as a powerful model for engaging young people and providing them with personalized support and hands on career experience. The Met schools and their parent organization, Big Picture Learning, network over 70 schools throughout the United States and around the world. The schools provide largely lower income youth and youth of color with the respect and opportunity to be meaningfully involved in their own learning and to pursue their interests and dreams.Since 1995 the Met schools have grown to be one of the most vibrant and powerful examples of democratic education and 21st century...
Posted on Mar 02, 2010 - 11:27 AM by Dana Bennis
The ABC’s of School Success
On Feb. 1, President Obama vowed to toss out the nation’s current school accountability system and replace it with a more balanced scorecard of school performance that looks at student growth and school progress.
I love the idea. Mr. Obama and education secretary Arne Duncan have repeatedly criticized the No Child Left Behind Act for keeping the “goals loose but the steps tight.” On their watch, both men aspire to introduce a new law that keeps the “goals tight but the steps loose.”
With that more flexible standard in mind, I have a scorecard to propose: the ABC’s of School Success. It provides both structure and freedom by identifying five universal measurement categories—Achievement, Balance, Climate, Democratic Practices and Equity—and letting individual schools chose which data points to track under each category.
Posted on Feb 12, 2010 - 08:27 AM by Dana Bennis
Obama’s Education Disconnect
The Obama administration is ramping up its focus on education following last week's State of the Union. Unfortunately, it does not seem to go very far in taking a broader look at learning and giving teachers and young people more of a voice in the education process. Positive proposals include expanding the system of rating schools to include more than just test scores and using a student growth-based metric rather than a static grade comparison across schools. However, there is still no talk about more authentic forms of assessment or supporting student growth beyond academics, and the Race to the Top initiative, which guides additional education spending, remains focused on linking...Posted on Feb 02, 2010 - 01:22 PM by Dana Bennis
Teacherken on Linda Darling-Hammond’s New Book
I've followed Teacherken's writings on education for a couple of years now. Teacherken (Kenneth J. Bernstein, a teacher in the DC metro area) is one of the most outspoken voices advocating for more personalized and democratic education, writing on the popular Daily Kos blog. In a post written this past weekend, he reviews educator and author Linda Darling-Hammond's new book, The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, a great book I just picked up last week. As Teacherken explains, Darling-Hammond provides us with a strong argument to significantly change the direction of education in this country away from more tests and standardization...Posted on Jan 25, 2010 - 10:22 AM by Dana Bennis
What Paying Students Really Teaches
Remember New York City(tm)s plan to reward students who excelled with cellphones? That plan fell by the wayside, not because so many people thought it was absurd •€” after all, cellphones are not allowed in New York City Schools ” but because the project•€(tm)s guru, the Harvard economist Roland Fryer, decided to apply his energies elsewhere not long after the project began.
The plan seems to have had at least some ripple effect: Starting in February, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York will begin a pilot program to try to combat Type 1 diabetes in young people by offering more personalized health care ” and to the young people, ages 11 to 17, who enroll, they are offering specially programmed BlackBerrys.
The Blackberrys are, to some extent, a hard, cold incentive: participate in this diabetes care management program, and get a hot gadget. But the BlackBerrys will have been programmed specifically to help young people monitor their health, so that instead of writing in some notebook what they•€(tm)re eating and how they feel, the young people can do it on their phones, looking like they(tm)re blithely texting a friend instead of trying to avoid the emergency room. The phones function like personal coaches, automatically turning on if a child turns it off after receiving one of the preprogrammed prompts, say, to check blood sugar.
Posted on Jan 19, 2010 - 08:09 AM by Dana Bennis
Tests or Innovation? Education in U.S. and China
Yong Zhao occupies a unique position from which to reflect upon the current national direction of American education in his recent—and very readable—book, Catching Up or Leading the Way. Mr. Zahoa, a University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Michigan State, is also a product of the inquiry-suppressing, conformity-inducing, national-standardized-test-driven system that constitutes Chinese education. These two seemingly antipodal perspectives alone offer more than ample reason to listen to Mr. Zhao’s voice, all the more so when he argues that both systems are moving, each in their own way, toward becoming more alike.
The crux of Professor Zhao’s analysis appears in his preface. “...What China wants is what America is eager throw away—an education that respects individual talents, supports divergent thinking, tolerates deviation, and encourages creativity; a system in which government does not dictate what students learn or how teachers teach; and culture that does not rank or judge the success of a school, a teacher, or a child based on only test scores in a few subjects determined by the government…An innovation-driven society is driven by innovative people. Innovative people cannot come from schools that force students to memorize correct answers on standardized tests or reward students who excel at regurgitating dictated spoon-fed knowledge…why does America want to adopt practices that China and many other countries have been so eager to give up?”
Posted on Jan 11, 2010 - 08:55 AM by Dana Bennis
On Motivation, Schools, and Post-Its: New Books for 2010
Happy New Year! It's 2010.What better way to embrace the optimism and hope of the beginning of a new year than reading inspiring books?
I recently picked up two new books that speak to heart of why and how education ought to be more democratic. They carry a great deal of wisdom and practical ideas for schools and learning, and they both connect the value of greater voice in learning to the creation of a more vibrant society.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
, by Daniel H. Pink (2009: Riverhead Books), throws out the underlying assumption of most businesses and schools: that people need to be controlled by rewards and punishments in order for work to get done or...
Posted on Jan 05, 2010 - 08:33 AM by Dana Bennis
Painting The Landscape
Think “landscape” and you might visualize an expansive nature scene, or maybe the nitty-gritty workings of the political landscape. Perhaps you think of the act of landscaping in terms of developing a park or other area. For the purposes of this blog, the landscape metaphor refers to all of this and more.The Landscape is a blog for IDEA staff, board, and advisory board members to reflect on the bigger picture in education today, from philosophy to practice and policy to pedagogy. We'll report on exciting ideas, schools, and changes toward the development of a more deeply democratic educational experience for young people. We'll also share stories from our personal experiences as...
Posted on Nov 23, 2009 - 10:28 AM by Dana Bennis
Children’s Rights, 20 Years Later
On the anniversary of twentieth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child—the most ratified human rights treaty in human history—the leaders of five major organizations focusing on children make a joint plea to put children’s best interests at the heart of human activity.
By Anne Lynam Goddard President and CEO, ChildFund International, Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Secretary General, Save the Children Alliance, Kevin J. Jenkins, President and Chief Executive Officer, World Vision International, Richard Pichler, Secretary General, SOS Kinderdorf International, and Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director, UNICEF
Twenty years ago this week, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a far-reaching and idealistic treaty that would dramatically alter the way the world looks at children. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, developed after years of intricate negotiations, offered a vision of a world in which all children survive and develop, and are protected, respected and encouraged to participate in the decisions that affect them.
Based on four core principles—non-discrimination; the best interest of the child; right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child—the Convention made it not just wise and just, but legally imperative for governments to recognize and uphold children’s rights to such basic things as education, adequate healthcare, shelter and access to safe water and sanitation.
Posted on Nov 20, 2009 - 05:31 PM by Dana Bennis
Welcome to IDEA!
Welcome to IDEA! We’re very excited that you’re here. Make sure to check out our welcome page for a summary of who we are and what we do.
IDEA is a national effort to unite education with our nation’s democratic values. We believe that young people ought to be active co-creators of their own learning and valued participants in a vibrant learning community. This is democratic education in action, which as you know is sharply different from the reality experienced by most young people and educators throughout the country.
Yet we know there are countless teachers, young people, parents, education leaders, youth workers, policy-makers and others who believe in the power of democratic...
Posted on Nov 16, 2009 - 01:09 PM by Dana Bennis
What is Democratic Education?
In a society based on participation, empowerment, and democracy,
shouldn’t education be participatory, empowering, and democratic?
The United States of America is founded on democracy and the democratic values of meaningful participation, personal initiative, and equality and justice for all.
Democratic education infuses the learning process with these fundamental values of our society. Democratic education sees young people not as passive recipients of knowledge, but rather as active co-creators of their own learning. They are not the products of an education system, but rather valued participants in a vibrant learning community.
Democratic education begins with the premise that...
Posted on Nov 05, 2009 - 02:12 AM by Dana Bennis
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