MAAP Con 2012 - Final Thoughts

By Michael Diedrich, Policy Associate, February 22, 2012 at 11:00 am

I went to last week's Minnesota Association of Alternative Programs (MAAP) conference not knowing what to expect beyond an interesting list of presentation topics made stronger by the classroom ties of the people doing the presenting. I left the conference tired but with a head full of interesting thoughts.

In case it wasn't clear in past posts, most of the schools in MAAP are working almost exclusively with students who have had little to no success in more conventional school settings. As a result, they face enormous pressure to do things differently and find, well, alternative programs to encourage student learning and prepare students for a rapidly approaching future outside of school.

To characterize these students as “at-risk” is to understate the situation. These students are post-risk, and on the losing side of that risk. This is part of what drives the sense of urgency around developing new approaches to teaching them, and it's a shame that we're resistant to that same mindset with most of our other students.

Perhaps one of the most refreshing things about the conference was seeing how clearly committed these educators were to student learning and how clearly irrelevant they found our current “measures” of student learning (i.e. test scores). We've allowed ourselves to slip into a mindset that decides the most worthwhile thing about a school are the MCA scores it produces once a year.

This (a symptom of the larger attempt to turn education into a marketplace) means that other attempts to encourage innovation struggle. Charter schools were supposed to be about teachers developing new programs to help students learn. Too often, however, we lavish the most praise on schools that, according to their conservative boosters, “[use] 'drill and kill' methods that would drive most education professors shrieking from the room.”

We aspire to more than that, or at least we ought to. The people at the MAAP conference are developing the substance under the shiny surface of online learning (facilitated by an in-person instructor). They're figuring out how to get students learning beyond the classroom. They're getting their students plugged into the generations of wisdom in their communities. There are plenty of teachers in more conventional schools doing the same, but they aren't getting enough credit for that work.

It's time to give credit where it's due and make it easier to build new programs without obsessing over what it means for test scores.

Full MAAP Con Coverage:

Posted in Education | Related Topics: K-12 education  Achievement Gap  Charter Schools  Classroom Methods 

2 Comments

mark wolhart says:

February 22, 2012 at 10:56 pm

Thank you for your attention to the situation of the “learner” and giving credit to all people who do their very best everyday to help others become the best they can be no matter what the learners present LIFE setting is.Do your best to help others!
Thank you very much!!!

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Doug Thomas says:

February 22, 2012 at 3:12 pm

Kudos Michael for your thoughts and for attending the MAAP Conference.  So few people have figured out the real job of teaching is to engage and to personalize the learning experience, no matter the setting.  The alternative school folks have been working their tails off for years without nearly enough recognition.  They deserve the positivity!  Thanks.

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