Sustaining Great Progressive Schools: Leadership, Courage, and Fulfilling Democratic Purpose

Presenter: Carl Glickman, Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos

This session is presented in separate parts. Use the buttons at the end of the transcription to navigate between each part.

Part Three

CARL GLICKMAN: Some of these schools have proposed in the past, and they have received, variance from all or parts of their district or State accountability systems. More typically, schools had to comply with district and State testing, but they employed their own standards and assessments that were larger in interdisciplinary than what the State was testing them on. They had larger assessments that they held themselves to than the State tests.

In a few cases, schools followed their own curriculum requirements, and mainly they ignored the test until it got closer to test-taking time, and then they went into a rapid mode of preparing kids for the test. But you did not see a lot of the State test objectives and so on through the course of the year, but you saw them emerge as the time got closer and closer.

So, my point here is that in none of these schools did the external tests determine the school’s curriculum. Now, that is a pretty brave thing to do today, with all the pressures that people are under.

But I also have to be very, very clear. When interviewing faculty from two of these schools, and asking them to recall the most critical times in which their core educational values were threatened, many of the veteran teachers told me it is right now that is the most critical time about whether or not we can sustain our work. That the increased State and national directives that are enforcing single, content-based tests for accountability of students is making it more and more difficult for these schools to provide a curriculum that is both interdisciplinary and it is connected to larger communities. It is getting harder to keep it. It is getting harder to expand upon it. And this is what I want to come back to shortly.

The article in Ed Leadership this month was talking about the traditions, symbols and ceremonies of these schools. When we walk into most schools, the symbols and the education that hit us are few or not at all. What we see generally when you walk into a school and into the front lobby and the office is you may see plaques. You may see students wearing tee-shirts or jackets or uniforms. You may see some kind of slogan or a statement about what a great school X is. The school may have a mascot or a prince or a lion that promotes extracurricular activities, sports and bands. You see the American flag waving. You see students taking pledges. But these are symbols of a nation. They are not the symbols of what is core educationally in the school.

None of these slogans or symbols conveys what is the promise of education here. So, let me contrast this lack of symbols, customs and traditions with a visit to a few of these schools.

In Yaelle's school — I will get back to her, too, in a moment — every student every day begins homeroom in a morning circle, with 14 other students, with a faculty member, who is their advisor, mentor and friend. Thirty-five minutes each day, they have time to share the best of their work, to conceive joint projects, to assist each other in weathering tough time at home or in school, or simply relaxing and enjoying the companionship of each other. This morning circle is not coerced. It is not a therapy group. It is simply a way for faculty and students every day to pause, see, care, and learn from each other.

In Gerald Middle School, every morning the entire membership of the school sits in a large open space in the center of the building for morning call. They hear the days’ announcements. They usually observe a student, faculty or community member's short recital, and they participate in singing a student-written song, an anthem of what it means to be a Gerald student. Each graduating class adds additional lines to the Gerald anthem. In over 20 years, the Gerald song now has grown to four different versions.

In Padre Elementary School, you walk into the foyer and you immediately notice what is hanging on the wall in the entrance. It is a huge and colorful quilt done by the first graduating class of students of the then-new education program begun decades before. In that first historic year, working with teachers and parents, each student stitched into the quilt their own patch describing the connection of the school to its community.

One sees patches with scenes of barn raisings, fresh rivers flowing with fish, new industries being created, and small farms flourishing. Also on the quilt are patches that show the first schoolhouse for white students and a separate one for black students. There are patches that depict scenes of great turbulence during court-ordered integration, patches of various community leaders, of Native American ancestors, and scenes of great conflict and reconciliation. Each patch then contains the signature of the student.

The quilted patches together make up a large story of how this school is embedded in this community, and it displays the hopes for this community. From the first year of the school until its 30th year, every graduating class of students adds to that wall in terms of their learning and how they view the promises or perils of their community.

These schools in some ways have what I call camp-like qualities, where there is academic, intellectual and personal interaction between school and community. The school is not just a school in the community. The school is for the community. And the displays and the rituals signify that that has been true in the past and that will be true in the future.

I will give you a nice example of a ritual of a small K-12 independent school. This one is great. This is classic. Well, maybe you will not think it is. The school began in the early seventies and continues at graduation that there is a single graduation robe for seniors. "A" graduation robe.

The first class in the seventies, there was only a few students that graduated. Thirty years they graduate many more students. But the original graduation robe, which is now pretty heavily stitched and repaired, is still worn by each graduate. A graduate wears the robe, crosses the podium and, after receiving the diploma, the robe is lifted and circled back over the head of the next graduate. And this cycle has continued for 30 years.

You see what I am talking about symbols, and ceremonies and rituals and continuity. What is the core word of our work? Yaelle, a 14-year-old, brown-skinned, bright-eyed, female student comes running over to me with a grave concern. She says to me, you have not heard the entire story. And there is an older woman trying to keep up with her, who is behind her. They both catch up and they walk along side me.

We have just finished an hour group meeting in which I have interviewed a group of current and former students at this city high school. This school has been in existence for 28 years and is one of the most highly accomplished, progressive public school in America. The school draws from all categories of students by lottery. It has a large percentage of minority students, African American, Asian, Hispanic, recent native-speaking immigrants, a higher percentage of special needs students than most high schools, and many students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. It has a wide range of students from those who would be categorized as failures or dropouts at other high schools, to those who would be regarded academically very able students, capable of doing extremely well in any conventional school.

Nearly all the students in this school graduate in the normal time. State tests show all students statistically grouped according to various ethic and socioeconomic categories for comparisons outperform their peers from other schools, and nearly 80 percent go on to post-secondary education, and the remainder go directly into a vocation. Follow-up studies have shown that graduates of the school outpace with their peers from other high schools on college graduation, job secures, and healthier lives, and active citizens in later communities as adults.

On the day that I was visiting, the annual three-week integrated semester was commencing, where classes of students, teachers and parents were finishing academic projects involving extended activities, often in locations outside of school. So, I was fortunate to be able to gather students and staff in between. And what I wanted to do was find out what made this school. What was is it that they were doing in terms of curriculum? What were they doing in terms of assessments? How did they schedule this? And how had they kept this going for so long?

I thought I had learned everything that I had needed to learn, and then Yaelle just bolts and tries to catch me before I get away. And she does catch me, and this older woman is behind her. So, the older woman who catches up says to me that she was Yaelle’s mother and that she went to school here as a child and this school changed her life. "I vowed that someday I would volunteer here so that I could pay this school back. I am married. I hold a good job and now my oldest daughter, Yaelle, is here."

Yaelle is listening quietly. She bends down, picks up a piece of litter off the school path, and she explains to me that she has to go quickly to her seminar, but she wanted me to know that what we told you at that meeting was what we do at this school, but that is not the most important part of this place. Her mother added that it is hard to explain to others, when you attend this school, it never leaves you. It is with you forever.

Yaelle interjects that when you meet someone who went to school here, whether younger or 20 years older, there is a special closeness among us. It is not that we do not have atime when school is a pain, but this school is always part of us.

Now, I was kind of startled, because very rarely do I hear students describe their school this way. Her mom, listening to her daughter, says to me quietly, with a welling of tears in her eyes: “What you need to know is that we are standing on sacred ground.”

I have never heard anyone refer to their school as a sacred place. And Yaelle nods quietly. The two say good-bye and the moment is gone.

So, what all of this has left me with is an impression that I have gathered in working with and visiting these particularly powerful schools that really do provide an American education, or an education for the public, over the past 30 years. They are not places of classrooms, kind teachers, expansive hallways, and organized schedules of classes. The attitudes, purpose, activities, rituals, and demonstrations of student achievement have created an intergenerational institution of sacredness, premised on democratic ideals. And they have powerful symbols that remind people constantly what the school is about and the tradition that they carry on for their community.

The National Commission on Service Learning, that I was honored to be a part of, came very clean in saying that we must reclaim the purpose of American education. That the purpose of education must be seen as more than the ability to pass standardized tests and subject area exams. It is more than preparation for jobs or postsecondary education. It is more than the fulfillment of a student's own economic, family, social, ethnic, religious, or ideological interests. Public education is, first and foremost, about ensuring that all our students can use their learning to become valued and valuable citizens. To ignore this purpose, which we have been doing, is to stand by and watch the failure of American democracy itself, the end of a dream of freedom and equality of all.

This is probably the most significant issue in education today. What do we educate students for and what do we expect them to be able to do with what they know? So, who are you as a professional and as a person? Are you a student, a principal, a beginning teacher, an experienced teacher, a grade or department head, a mentor, an assistant principal, principal, superintendent, school board member? Some of you are from small communities, so you are all of those, and some of you have specialized roles.

Let me ask this in another way. Who are you as a question of personal identity? Are you female? Are you male? Are you gay? Are you straight? Are you Christian? Muslim? Jewish? Hindu? Buddhist? Agnostic? Atheist? Or other spiritual religious persuasion? Are you a Southerner? Are you a Northerner? Are you a Midwesterner? Are you a Westerner? Are you an internationalist? Are you a descendant of Europeans? Of Africans? Of Asians? Hispanics? Latino? Native American? Or some robust combination of many identities?

Are you first generation? Are you third generation? Are you twelfth generation? Are you from wealth or are you from poverty? Did you or your ancestors arrive here seeking freedom or were you dragged here in chains? Or were you here before other people discovered your land?

Regardless of our differences, we all have chosen to be educators committed to public purpose. Many of us have been fortunate to have the opportunities this country has afforded us but, at the same time, we know this in our heart, that there are so many others that do not have such fortunate choice and live in austere conditions, with little or no imagination of what else might be. Always remember that education and democracy are not good things to write in mission statements. They are not this rhetorical flourish to wrap ourselves around. They are the practice of education and life among people.

When all is said and done, our profession is, as the parent in that first video said, about hope. A hope that as humans we can live up to the ideals of a democracy of all citizens that provides dignity and respect for all of us. Cornell West said that in America — and I include many other societies and nations as well — there has always been a prophetic slice about the ideals of democracy that cuts across race, religion, class, gender, and sexual orientation. It is a progressive slice that says we are not going to give up on this fragile democratic enterprise. In his words, "Even as incomplete and unfinished as it may be, we are not going to give up."

So, hold on and work towards and do not give up. Our work is both sacred and secular. You are the hope of a better democratic life for all. Thank you very much.

[Applause]

CARL GLICKMAN: Thank you. I know it is late in the afternoon. Some of you need to get going, but if some of you have some questions we can take five or 10 minutes of those. If you need to go, just go ahead and go. Wave good-bye to people. If there is a question, comment, reaction, let me take a few. I do not have any way to force you to do that. A question? Reaction? Comment?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Were all of the schools that you looked at public schools?

CARL GLICKMAN: The question was, Were the all the schools that I looked at public schools?

The answer is yes. I did use one example of an independent school, though, in this talk.

Some other comment, question, reaction?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Off microphone.]

CARL GLICKMAN: The question was in relation to accountability and No Child Left Behind, what is my take on it?

This is something that I have been heavily involved in for the last just five or six years. My take on it is that state standards, disaggregation of data, everyone publicly knowing how kids are doing in school, are absolutely the right things to do. Single-test accountability is absolutely the wrong thing to do. There are multiple measures of how you assess student learning, and they need to be part of an accountability system, because they rob kids of being able to learn about what you do with what you know.

So, my stance is very, very clear. Any type of accountability system that has the reliance on a single test is dangerous to the conception of democracy and the further enhancement of education of citizens in this country. That is my stance.

[Applause]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Carl, I am not one that believes that choice is the solution to American education, but I have come to think that, to some degree, because of the vast differences in our values, perhaps some choice will help us to get some things that I believe in. Would you say where choice fits in with these schools you have observed. Are they all schools where people go because they are assigned there or is there some choice involved?

CARL GLICKMAN: It is both. Some of the schools are I guess what you could call school of choice in that they have a distribution. About half the schools are just regular schools right there in the community. And they are valued so much by the community because their school's programs are doing things for the community. Their kids can do for their community what adults cannot do. And then it is also they can demonstrate what they have learned and how they use their learning, so they have a lot of political power because the community believes so firmly not only in the value of the education but what that school does for our community.

In some ways, it is kind of like a throwback. I do not want to be like sentimental and romantic, because it never was totally this way, but once we really did have community schools, where the school was really tied to the entire life of the community. Basically, what we have now is, in the name of sort of standardization and in curriculum and so on, we have almost like generic schools whose education is not uniquely tied in anyway to the place that the school is on.

I have always been an advocate of public school choice, of charter schools under public authority. I do not think people should be forced to go to places they do not want to go to. But I do think there is an obligation to make sure that schools do not get stratified by ideology or ethnicity or class or whatever.

But I think the biggest issue right now is I have found no one who has ever objected to anything that I have said. The whole question is doing it. People all agree, yes, that is education, public purpose, what should be done. And the irony is that, if that is our purpose and it is of a high priority, then it should be of the same priority, if not more so, than all the other kinds of requirements that we do.

And I guess it is just because the word is used so often about democracy and education, people — and I am not castigating them, I am just saying to actually unpack it and say, how do we provide this in our curriculum? How do we develop capstone assessments so that kids actually will use their learning in a way that contributes to something real? And then how do we assess it and how do we make it publicly known that other people can review and see the kind of work that students are capable of?

That is a whole different issue than simply saying, yes, education and democracy are linked. We have got to get under the rhetoric on it and look at what the actual practices are. And we have a network of schools that work on that, but it is a really silly thing in some ways to think that we actually have to say that education has a public purpose. That it is not just an economic purpose. That it is not just the purpose of individual attainment. There is a reason why all these school buses pick up kids, and it is not just for the advancements of individuals. It is for the advancement of a society that believes in certain principles.

Well, thank you very much once again. Thank you for your questions, and have a good afternoon and a good evening. Thank you.

[Applause]

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