School Reform Takes Another Step

By Dan Gorenstein on Tuesday, May 18, 2004.

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New Hampshire education officials met in Concord this week to do some big thinking.

The State Board of Education hosted what was billed as the biggest education reform effort since 1919.

With statewide school regulations due to expire later this year, the board is considering a number of major changes.

For some the all day workshop was an opportunity to reinvent public education.

But as New Hampshire Public Radio's Dan Gorenstein reports for others, that radical spirit took a back seat to the more practical concerns.

Everything about the conference encouraged what was called thinking outside the book.

In fact the poster that greeted the 200 or so participants carried the image of an open book morphing into an eagle.

The image strikes at the core of school board chair Fred Bramante's vision for New Hampshire schools.

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3:05 what are we trying to do? Discover the eagle in every child. To me there is something special in every child and we've got to find out what that is...We've got to discover what that is, and we've got to enable them to soar.

To unlock those eagles, Bramante is strongly advocating what he calls real world learning.

To him, that means getting kids out of traditional classrooms and into internships and activities that directly relate to what a student already finds interesting.

Bramante wants people in school's to look at their roles in a fundamentally different way.

It isn't to just give kids skills they need, but to see what skills the kids can learn by interacting with the world.

Bramante, as an example, talks about auto mechanics.

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11:28 why shouldn't the auto dealerships be the laboratory for teaching kids automotive related studies, with the school acting as the coach, the facilitator, the overseer...the potential is there that significant things could come out of this.

To some, the thought of transforming the entire state into a big classroom, may sound far-fetched.

But Governor Craig Benson doesn't think so.

He has heartedly endorsed real world learning.

And when the school board rewrites new rules later this year Benson expects to see some evidence of the model in place.

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1:04 by changing the educational curriculum standards that incorporates this real world learning, we are going to offer more imagination, more different ways to do things...and by the way, we have schools already doing things, but now they will have state approval.

The emphasis was on revolutionary ideas.

But Derry Superintendent Dr. John Moody is concerned the dreams can get out in front of reality.

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4:46 ..., slow down, be cautious, first things firs...slow down the juggernaut, b/c that is what it is, of real world learning. And focus on the things that are important to the children of NH, and htat is an adequate education for every child. That's what the poster should say.

Moody says there's nothing wrong with thinking outside the book...or trying to free students eagles.

He just says, right now he's preoccupied with knowing how much lawmakers are going to budget for his school district next year.

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1:35 ... that's what's important to me. Not what would I do with an extra million dollars. And some really creative thinking around real world learning...you can't get there, you don't think about that, until you have solved what you know today. And there are too many issues, problems raised here, that have to be solved first.

On the matter of money, Bramante says some of the ideas may be expensive, and others could save the state money.

But for Kearsarge teacher Linda Burdick the conference was less about politics, than about possibility.

She says the discussions hold a lot of promise.

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14:12 students are always asking you how am I going to use this. Well, if we can give them the answers right there in the curriculum, half our jobs is cut out for us.

At the same time, the veteran teacher doesn't want to get too caught up in some fly-by-night scheme.

12:38 I think it needs to be based on pilot programs and it also needs to be based on research. What works. I don't want to be part of a fad that jumps onto a bandwagon gets into something, and then five years later that's discarded and go to soemthign else...and if some of these models turn out to be this way, then let's look at them very seriously.

In the next month or two, the board is expected to release a draft of new rules for schools.

That should be the public's first glimpse at some of these new ideas, and how they may reinvent schools, discover students eagles, or prove to be too costly to realistically consider.

For NHPR News, I'm DG.