Elliot W. Eisner (2001)

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SAY A SCHOOL IS DOING WELL?

Marco D. MedurandaEDCS 215

Elliot Eisner

“Those of us who wish to exercise leadership in education must do more than simply accept the inadequate criteria that are now used to determine how well our schools are doing.” Eisner (2001)

OVERARCHING PURPOSE OFNO CHILD LEFT BEHIND . . .

To close the achievement

gap with accountability,

flexibility, and choice, so

that no child is left behind.

NCLB requires states to adapt content and achievement standards, to

measure students progress towards those standards and to implement a series of interventions and sanctions in school and district that failed to

meet their targets.

“What Does it Mean to Say a School is Doing Well?” (2001)

Efforts to reform education in the US have resulted in an all too rationalized approach that depends upon easily quantifiable uniform standards and rubrics. • learning to do well in

school (passing tests) VS learning how to do well in life.

“In our efforts to improve education, we have evolved a very rationalized approach.” - Eisner

• it depends on a clear specification of intended outcomes.

• use measurement as a means through which the quality of performance is measured and represented.

• it is predicated on the ability to control and predict.

• the whole rationalization approach downplays interactions.

“In our efforts to improve education, we have evolved a very rationalized approach.” - Eisner

• it promotes comparison, which requires commensurability.

• rationalization relies upon extrinsic incentives to motivate actions, such as paying bonuses to administrators if the students in their charge perform well on standardized test.

In our desire to improve school, education has become a casualty. - Eisner

• narrowed our curriculum, • marginalized subjects not

considered to be core learning areas.

• testing defined our priorities

• Deeper problems of schooling go unattended, such as quality, challenging conversation and constructive self-discovery.

Eisner spends the rest of the article asking excellent questions, which refocus us on what we should be thinking about and working toward:

• students creating their own questions, • students learning about things in the “real world,” • students exploring their own interests, • students working in the community, • teachers working together and observing one another, • having informed parents, and • a rethinking of the age-graded school system.

Signs of a School Doing Well: • inquiry; intellectual

significance; • multiple

perspectives; many forms of thinking; • connections to the

world; • literate in

representational forms;

• student led purpose;

Signs of a School Doing Well:

• students as communities of learners (not necessarily by age);

• self assessment; • motivated to learn; • teachers as

learners; • parent connections

to help define quality;