Unorthodox Ideas in Education

I’m no expert on education but this post is about a great example of an unorthodox solution to a big and timely problem. Public discourse, especially in education, can be very hostile to unorthodox ideas and while I strongly agree that new solutions should be carefully analyzed and discussed before being implemented I think that our unwillingness and fear to discuss contrary or unpopular ideas hurts as a society and nation. In brainstorming there are no bad ideas. If you think the following is terrible or brilliant please leave a comment explaining why – either here or on the original post.

Victor Harbison has a very thought provoking (and certain to be controversial) guest post about Magnet schools at Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times blog. Harbison, a teacher, talks about how he sees average students excel when surrounded by smart peers and stagnate when they are surrounded by other average or less motivated students. Since magnet schools pull out top students from a large number of schools they rid many students of their smartest peers:

When educational leaders decided to create magnet schools, they didn’t just get it wrong, they got it backwards. They pulled out the best and brightest from our communities and sent them away. The students who are part of the “great middle” now find themselves in an environment where the peers who have the greatest influence in their school are the least positive role models.

So far so good, most people who have been through a Magnet school will tell you about how much they enjoyed the experience and the idea that taking the top performing students out of average schools might hurt their environment is relatively intuitive. Now for the controversial alternative:

What should have been done was to pull out the bottom ten percent.Educational leaders could have greatly expanded the alternative school model and sent struggling students to a place that had been designed to meet their educational needs. [...] Imagine if pulling out the “bottom ten” had been the policy for the past 30 years. Neighborhood schools could have purred along like the go-go 90’s under Clinton and the students with the greatest needs, facing the greatest challenges, would have had millions of dollars in resources devoted to their education in brand new state-of-the-art buildings (with Ivy League-educated, amazing teachers, no doubt). Just imagine.

Would this work? I think that tailoring curriculum to help get underachievers up to speed and to provide them with additional and specialized resources would definitely be a good idea. Furthermore, taking the worst performers out of most schools might free up additional teacher time for the remaining students and also stop distractions from such students.

On the other hand, would lots of underperforming students make these schools exceptionally hard to manage? Would it be difficult to get teachers to work in these more difficult schools (Teach for America is a good indicator that some teachers would like the challenge if given the support)?

Furthermore, what about the top performers – aren’t they a big part of creating the kind of innovative research and companies that help move a country forward? Would they be worse off if they have to continue to study with more average peers? Or would interaction with more average students give them a better understanding of the wider populace and allow them to create things more targeted and useful to more people? Harbison ends with the following:

I look forward to the arguments defending magnet schools. They are legion and many are spot on. That is, if you can live with the idea of condemning the vast majority of students in your community to sub-standard schools. No one can rationally argue that they are a good long term solution to what ails schools in this country.

The comments on the article are also very worth reading.