When we talk about failing schools, most of us are focused on schools in underprivileged communities, or schools that are ranking in the bottom 5% of performance.  Parents who have more resources often live in communities with higher performing schools – indeed, they often choose a place to live based on the quality of the schools.

But there is now reason for all parents of school aged children to be very concerned, whether they are low income families in urban settings or more affluent families in the suburbs.  Most schools, even the “good” ones, simply aren’t preparing our children for success in the real world.

Harvard Professor David Edwards in “American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist” says, “Failing to create a new way of learning adapted to contemporary circumstances might be a national disaster”. 

Venture Capitalist Ted Dintersmith realized while observing his own children, how poorly their school was teaching them critical skills like innovation, problem solving, seeking clarity in ambiguity, risk taking and entrepreneurship (i.e. the world of work) – skills he saw as essential to the success of companies he invested in.  Dintersmith started a 50 state tour, producing an incredible education documentary and a book, both titled “Most Likely to Succeed”. 

Dintersmith, now a philanthropist, is dedicating his second career on trying to transform public education in America with all the zeal of a venture capitalist researching an industry for possible investment.   At the conclusion of his journey, Dintersmith states:

“The most innovative country on the planet is blowing it. As we move full swing into an era of innovation, the United States should be educating to our creative strengths, but instead we’re eroding the very characteristics that will enable our kids to thrive. We’re setting kids up for a life without passion, purpose, or meaningful employment. Absent profound change, our country is a decade away from having 50 million chronically-unemployed young adults, adrift in life and awash in debt.”

Maybe you believe this doesn’t affect you because you live in a great neighborhood, which you chose for its great public school, which has excellent test scores, a high number of AP courses and a student body that virtually all goes onto college.

But are these traditional “hallmarks” of a “great” school still relevant?  Dintersmith asks us to consider these facts:

At Lawrenceville High School, one of the best high schools in the country, students taking final exams in Science in June had an average grade of 87%.  The same exam was administered in September to these same kids after summer break and the average grade plummeted to an F (58%) and not one single student retained mastery of all the concepts they appeared to learn in June.  Given the rapid vanishing of learning, one has to wonder if any learning happened in the first place?

Dartmouth College conducted an experiment where students who had taken and scored well on an AP psychology course in high school (AP courses in high school are the harbinger of rigorous, college-ready courses that give high school students college credit) took the final exam on the college’s entrance psychology course and a shameful 10% passed. 

Even where market forces like parental choice (i.e. charter schools and magnet schools), school reputation and high test scores continuously attract market demand by parents to fill these schools, the normal business factors are not in play here in education. Dintersmith says in this Washington Post article:

“Most teachers are motivated by a passion to transform the lives of our kids, not by money. Parents may be pretty good at identifying a really bad school situation for their child, but are largely uninformed about what constitutes a great learning environment. The more a school tried to boost its test scores, the less the students are learning. And the overall performance of our charter schools has been mixed at best, with lots that are mediocre or downright awful. Business people need to understand that not all phenomena in life conform to the free-market model.”

So how do we break this cycle?  As a parent, ask yourself this question:  is my child’s school truly teaching him or her the mental skills and models, the ability to imagine and create, the ability to interact with purpose, the ability to learn and adapt – all skills that are crucial to success in an ever changing world with virtually every industry in dynamic flux?    

99.5% of you should now be as concerned as I am.  We are teaching children how to pass standardized tests, rather than how to think, learn and create. What can we do about this?  Here again, Dintersmith points us to two simple and yet surprisingly elusive concepts about transforming education:

1.  Dreams + Passions.  Connect learner to their dreams or something they’re passionate about (that the students are passionate about, rather than the teacher) and you will connect them with a power source for life.  They will naturally want to solve problems, learn skills and take risks for dreams they have and passions that capture their imagination.  The Future Project is one such organization that does this well and is one reason Matchbook Learning has partnered with them in our high school.  Every one of our students from Kindergarten up dreams of what they want to be when they grow up… and we capture and build upon these dreams.  School = a dream making engine.  We cannot provide a student with their dream, but we can help them realize it. 

2.  Project Based Learning.  Harvard Physics Professor Eric Mazur is the person “many of our country’s most innovative ideas about education come from.”  In this talk,  Mazur states that the brain’s most dormant, non-engaged and inactive state is when it is asleep, but the same lack of brain activity can also be found when a person is watching TV or listening to a lecture.  Students who were actively engaged in discussions with each other and creating and applying concepts to actual projects (i.e. the scientific approach to teaching) demonstrated much, much higher levels of both understanding and retention. 

It would be easy at this point to cue the highlight reel for Matchbook Learning and say how we are embracing this direction.  It is true that we’ve developed a cultural DNA that emphasizes dreams and passions in our students and a learning methodology that contains a cycle of learning across four stages and environments (Learn-Conference-Apply-Assess) the heart of which is the “Apply” stage.  Students engage in peer-to-peer learning, sharing via “conference,” and then apply what they’ve learned on each and every standard in a real project.

However, Professor Mazur challenges the notion that personalized learning via technology and the popularity of online lectures and content (i.e. Khan Academy) is just “new wine in old wineskins” and that content delivered via lectures, whether online or in person, are generally speaking terrible ways to both understand and retain concepts.  Mazur in his talk emphasizes that students do not really learn knowledge, but rather mental models of learning that are best taught through application. 

Patience and vulnerability.  These two virtues tend to be in short supply - in my life as much as anyone’s – but those are two qualities we need more than ever.  The kind of model of education that Edwards, Dintersmith and Mazur all reference is an absolute necessity, but regardless of our ambitions, we will not transform our schools overnight.  We will have to handle a high degree of ambiguity, confusion and constant iteration and failure while we continually prototype our way to deeper forms of learning that result in more engaged, retained understanding.  We will need the patience and probably a 10-year horizon to reach this destination. 

However, if I am honest, vulnerably so, I am not sure if we have that kind of time.  We live in a world of continuing standardized tests whose performance and progress is what “counts” to those who hold schools accountable.  We have to work within the current trajectory (maximize short term results on standardized tests) even while we pursue a higher, deeper, less linear and more long-term trajectory.

So, I am back where I started.  I am very concerned - scared even.  Scared that my children and yours not being prepared by our schools to be productive, contributing members of our society. 

The start of a New Year may be cliché but nonetheless represents a proverbial moment of hope and potential change.  We resolve around this time of year to make our lives different – not incrementally, but fundamentally so.  Come January 1st, we face our biggest fears head on.

My New Year’s Resolution for 2016 is two-fold:

1.  As a parent of three school-aged children, to continually probe what their passions, dreams and desires are and to curate experiences that apply, test and risk their developing skills and habits against these dreams. 

2.  As an education organization, to continually tinker and experiment with ways our model of school can be embrace these concepts of dreams, project based learning and a scientific approach to teaching that gives the students we serve as much of a chance in life as I desire and am trying to create for my own 3 children. 

I’ll do my best personally and professionally, to share what I learn on this journey, hoping that the mistakes we make do not hinder our pursuit of our ultimate goal – to create future life long learners, creators, problem solvers and productive citizens highly valued in an increasingly dynamic, globalized, multi-faceted world.