An artist learns to dance in chains.

– Nietzsche

Can there be artistry in leading schools? Can there be joy in teaching? Can learners be inspired to soar way past “Proficient” or “Advanced,” past the just barely “A’s” on their report cards, and fly through the imagined adult boundaries of walls or roofs with their achievements and passion for learning?

I think our nation’s future security and economic prosperity depend on a YES answer to these questions.

My forty years as a Massachusetts urban teacher, suburban school administrator, and collegiate instructor (Program Designer/Coordinator) have taught me to dance, despite the institutional chains of public education. I accept that the chains are there, and that the institutions mean well. But I do not allow them to compromise my artistry or shut out the music and lyrics that compel me to keep dancing: that all children have the capacity to grow, achieve, and sometimes astonish – given a consistent environment that is physically, emotionally, and intellectually safe. Adults also have this capacity, provided they feel similarly safe.

Unfortunately, most of America’s public schools are unable to guarantee these safety basics for children or adults. Success has been reframed for schools and for individual students by test companies that grow rich in the political frenzy to prove that American students are as smart as their peers in Singapore or Sweden. More disappointing is the reality that state and local education leaders have acquiesced to the test makers’ “authority,” giving up their own. People seem to have forgotten that tests are limited. They can only measure what is easily measured in this format, leaving much valuable learning for the 21^st Century unmeasured, and increasingly, untaught. The skill of working in a team is one such example.

Many superintendents, principals, and teachers feel powerless before testing expectations that overwhelm their time and hold them hostage to programs that teach to the tests. Dutiful kids with savvy parents learn the testing and school rank game, and stop reaching when someone calls them “Advanced” or averages their tests and awards an “A” grade. Others learn to loathe the game. They do only what is required for passing, and find fulfillment elsewhere. Still others struggle, learn to loathe themselves, and eventually give up. There is no joy when children are subjected to tests on material they have not been taught, so their failure can give the test makers baseline data. The tests themselves create an unsafe learning experience that is hard for teachers and students to shrug off. Harm is done, in the name of raising achievement. Some children never recover their sense of efficacy. Many teachers become disheartened with the testing culture in public schools, and retreat to private schools, which are not subjected to state testing requirements. Others leave the profession and seek other career options.

Where are the ideas that can improve student engagement? How can we implement promising ideas on a large scale, and give them time to show results that boost achievement? In the absence of ideas, and a climate of impatient politicians looking for a quick fix, testing has becomes our national vision for education – by default. What we have here is a lack of courageous leadership, and a failure of imagination. If we continue down this road, we are truly “A Nation at Risk.”

I have seen where this pathway leads! In 1997, I was privileged to be part of a delegation of eight urban and suburban Massachusetts School Superintendents who visited China as guests of the National Education Department. In our tours of schools and discussion with Chinese officials, we learned that Chinese teachers were expected to prepare and teach the same lesson, never veering from the agreed plan. These officials were critical in their observation of American teachers, whose practice of seizing the “teachable moment” was viewed as “winging it” and deemed irresponsible. Chinese teachers and students were accustomed to strict discipline. We further learned that, following each test, students’ seats were rearranged, with the highest scoring student seated in the first seat of the first row, and on down to the lowest-ranked student. Major tests at key points – 7^th grade, 10^th grade – determined which students were asked to leave. By 12^th grade, only 10% of Chinese students were still in school. The officials’ hope was that they could learn what we were doing in the West to turn out students who had innovative ideas and the capacity to develop new products. They wanted to grow their own inventors and entrepreneurs – and not have to buy the latest technology from us! They understood that they would have to change their educational system in order to achieve this goal, and wanted to send Chinese teachers to be resident in our schools, so they could see firsthand what American teachers did.

American teaching practices that were exemplary in 1997 are fast becoming extinct under the yoke of ubiquitous testing. We are on the brink of losing what the last fifty years of progressive education has done well – teaching students to think and solve problems in creative ways. Graduate programs like the one I helped to design and coordinate at Massachusetts’ Framingham State University (an M.Ed. with a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math concentration) fly in the face of the testing juggernaut. A strictly focused curriculum that teaches to the test makes no allowances for creating a classroom environment that promotes inquiry – the acceptance of mistakes as valuable parts of a design process, and the pursuit of thoughtful questions as well as answers. The teachers in the cohort struggle with this reality:

We know this is how to engage children in the excitement of learning – especially by helping them develop the skills and attitudes of a scientist or engineer. But if we actually make time for this to happen, we will be behind the other teachers in our grade level in our coverage of topics. We will get pressure from our parents and our principal. And if our test scores are lower than our fellow teachers’ students, then we’ll be seen as bad teachers. It’s a real dilemma (Click here to see an article that discusses their concerns and suggests next moves for them and their administrators: __________________) 

The solution? We must find ways to affirm the artists, give voice to their ideas, help them in their implantation, and stand in solidarity with them, so they have the strength and courage to dance in chains. This website is dedicated to that quest.

Will you? Wont you? Will you? Won’t you?
Will you join the dance?

– Lewis Carroll, The Lobster Quadrille