TECHNOS

November 20, 2008

Special Feature: Audio File

In addition to this important interview, you can read our TECHNOS Quarterly Interview with Dr. Sizer.

Educational reformer and author of the “Horace's School” books, TED SIZER is chairman of the Coalition of Essential Schools at Brown University.

Our interviewer is Phil Harris, former director of Professional Development for Phi Delta Kappa and currently executive director of Association for Educational Communications & Technology. This interview with Dr. Sizer is featured in AIT's professional development series, Reinventing Our Schools and is brought to you by TECHNOS..

As you're well aware, we've been into the reform movement for almost ten years to the date - since the publication of A Nation at Risk report. From your perspective, how would you assess the last ten years of the education reform movement?	On the education reform movement: (RT=00:47) “Oh, I assess it very happily. I think we're making progress. ? A Nation at Risk was not the beginning of the reform movement, it just legitimized it; the seeds are in the civil rights movement.”
So, you think we're making some progress.	On the progress of the reform movement: (RT=00:36) “We're making some progress, and our very frustration continues to be the fuel for more progress.”
Are there some promising practices that you've seen in this past decade in the reform area?	On the promising practices, esp. at the high school level: (RT=01:22) “Yes, there are many promising practices: student action, coherence of work, variety of devices where students show off their work.”
Dr. Sizer, you mentioned exhibitions and performances of students as a part of what you're seeing that's promising. How would you contrast the conventional, norm-referenced standardized testing and the performance-exhibition approach for students?	On the difference between norm-referenced standardized testing and performance-based assessment of student achievement: (RT=00:31) “There's a fundamental difference. The traditional tests are surrogates; they're tokens. The performances and exhibitions are real work.” On authenticity in student work: (RT=00:30) “If you want to know if a youngster can write, look at his writing.” On the exhibition tradition of student assessment: (RT=00:40) “The exhibition tradition is about the student's best work, debated publicly. ? it's much harder to do.”
You think this is, in a sense, putting the responsibility on the student for the learning, as opposed to saying the to teacher, “You're responsible for those kids' learning”?	On accepting responsibility for learning: (RT=00:15) “Oh, yes, and the youngster has to show that she can do some things. It shifts the load ? it's also much more complicated.” On standardization of learning: (RT=00:34) “How do you standardize these richly wonderful and varied responses?” On testing and accountability, learning versus sorting: (RT=00:24) “One of the current mania about assessment and accountability and testing that I think is very costly is that it's taking our attention off learning and putting it on sorting.”
Do you think it's one of the factors that's been, in a sense, handicapping our reform movement?	On the detrimental effects of the standardization movement: (RT=00:55) “Oh, yes. It's diversionary. It also is clean work: I can sit in a university and write tests; dirty work is close-in stuff in schools.”
When you say the schools are “mis-designed,” could you elaborate on that?	On why schools are mis-designed: (RT=00:03) “Ask yourself the question: How much serious intellectual and imaginative activity do you do in 40-minute snippets? Not much.” On how to design good schools: (RT=00:21) “Everybody who wants to talk about serious school design should be required to shadow a student in the high school of choice for a week. That is a radicalizing experience.”
As I've listened to you talk about various aspects of the reform movement, I wonder if we haven't lost sight of what the purpose of public education really is?	On the purpose of public education: (RT=01:11) “The point of education is to help people learn to use their minds well. And the point of school is to 'learn up' generations of resourceful, decent, thoughtful people - underline the word 'thoughtful.' ? There is a clear need for people who can use their minds in analytic ways, people who have the habits of teaching themselves new things.” On what schooling is for: (RT=00:17) “As soon as you say that schooling is about helping people learn to use their minds well, you deliver to them the respect of autonomy.”
It's very clear when you hear Lee Iacocca say that, in his view, the purpose of public education is to train the labor force - has that in any way shaped or handicapped the reform movement?	On training a labor force versus a learning community: (RT=01:10) “Thoughtfulness extends not only to figure out a better way to make a Chrysler, as to how better to govern the local community. It's how better to govern one's family responsibilities.”
If we have this conversation ten years from now, what would you hope you'd be sounding like in describing the second decade of reform?	On the future of school reform: (RT=00:36) “I would like to say that what I call a minority movement - a small group, now - is a majority movement.” ? “The policy community would have learned not to persist in the hierarchical sense, that is, this move toward standardization.” (RT=00:34) ? “The country would have woken up to the fact that a fifth to a quarter of American school-aged children are growing up in poverty.” (RT=00:53) On political responsibility: (RT=00:53) “Ten years from now, the Los Angeles riots could be simply a small example of a coming conflagration between the rich and the poor.”

Photo by John Foraste, Brown University.