Sunday, January 17, 2010
250 Attend Conference at Fieldston in New York City
More than 250 teachers and administrators attended ICG’s Re-Imagining High School conference at Fieldston School on Friday, January 15. We invite those interested in follow-up discussions to log on to our post-conference forums.
More than 250 teachers and administrators attended ICG’s Re-Imagining High School conference at Fieldston School on Friday, January 15. We invite those interested in follow-up discussions to log on to our post-conference forums. A copy of the conference program and the list of conference attendees are posted there. Thanks so much to all who attended! See below for keynote remarks from John Klemme, Principal of Scarsdale High School.
John Klemme
Principal, Scarsdale High School
Remarks Delivered January 15, 2010
Re-Imagining High School Conference
It’s a privilege to be here today, not only as a speaker but as a participant observing the most important feature of this conference: the sharing of ideas about best practice in a variety of disciplines by teachers who have such important aspirations for their students. Without the compass (and chains) of the Advanced Placement Program, what we are doing today is furthering the important process of providing opportunity for our students to prosper from creative, engaging, and longer-lasting learning than ever before. I’d personally like to praise Bruce Hammond for his vision of what an independent curriculum group can produce as an organization of educators, and the substance of today’s conference is a powerful affirmation of that vision.
I would like to share three major points today.
First, I’d like to reflect on the change process from AP to Advanced Topics.
As you know, we are in our third year of transition to Advanced Topics courses replacing Advanced Placement curricula, courses that we believe promote student engagement, deepen student understanding in the disciplines, and provide better assessments of what students know and can do.
This initiative initially began as a discussion among faculty about how to enhance the senior experience. Scarsdale HS regularly sees around 60% of its graduates admitted to the most selective schools in the nation. The percentage of applications under various early protocols has risen to nearly 90% of students in the Class of 2010. Given such a set of circumstances, several years ago we asked how we could best enhance the second semester of the senior year to make it a meaningful experience for students whose earlier work had secured them places in selective institutions.
The discussion that ensued crystallized another issue. How could we seriously consider changing the nature of the senior year if we continued to be driven by the dynamic of AP testing in May? We did some reading as a faculty and invited educators from Fieldston, curiously enough, to speak to us, teachers who had abandoned the AP focus years before, and at a critical moment, one of those teachers asked our faculty, “How many of you believe you could design courses that would be richer and more meaningful for your students that the ones oriented toward successful performance on the AP exam?” A decisive and overwhelming number of Scarsdale teachers answered in the affirmative and we were off and running.
In retrospect, there was a certain degree of naivete about the struggle that would come in the transition to the Advanced Topics curriculum. We planned a meeting with the PTA the next fall to explain to the community our thoughts, and many of us arrived at that meeting to find that a cadre of parents had organized, armed with flyers and petitions to oppose such a change. A series of community meetings followed over the next several months, some of them quite contentious, as this group of parents expressed their opposition to any curricular change that would not have AP performance as its centerpiece. Coverage by the New York Times and the local newspaper drew regional and national attention to our efforts.
While many of you have enjoyed the freedom from AP for many years now, we were the first high profile public school to embark on this path, and the fanfare over what we had thought would be a minor adjustment came under intense scrutiny.
Tho opposition grew out of a profound fear on the part of some parents that we were playing Russian roulette with their children’s college futures and became so intense that the head of the Scarsdale Parent-Teacher Council resigned her position and moved to a neighboring community in protest.
We were called upon to do our homework. We conducted a survey of the 100 schools to which our students most often apply, asking them whether the AP label would be decisive in any admissions decision. Around 95 replied that the label was not as important as being able to identify the most accelerated and demanding courses in our curricula. We spoke with admissions officers at the other 5 and clarified questions they had about what we were up to, and confirmed that as long as we could identify with clarity which courses were our most rigorous, the AP label would be inconsequential. In addition, many admissions officers shared with us that they knew the quality of a Scarsdale education and voiced their belief that the shift to a teacher-designed curriculum could in all probability enhance the prestige behind our most able students’ applications.
In addition, we surveyed past graduates about their use of AP credit in seeking advance standing in college courses or credit for graduation. We held a number of meetings with parents about how the Advanced Topics approach would offer our students that an AP driven curriculum could not. We spoke about our expectation that our students would continue to do well on AP exams even though we would no longer have that as a central goal for instruction, and we advanced the argument wherever we could that professional creativity was constrained by the inordinate focus on AP exams. Still, the critics were not satisfied, and we found ourselves constantly articulating a professional position that was at odds with the beliefs and fears of a vocal minority of parents.
In the end, three important variables allowed us to move forward. Cannot overestimate the significance of a supportive and enlightened Board of Education that listened to our case, posed important questions about how we would implement such a curriculum, and voted to approve the plan under the auspices of two oversight committees consisting of parents and teachers: a Validation Committee that would determine whether our new goals were being met, and a College Information Committee which would continue our conversation with colleges and universities about the efficacy of the Advanced Topics Program. In addition, the Board provided substantial financial support for a Visiting Professor Program that would bring college personnel to our campus and take our teachers to college campuses to determine how our curriculum could best prepare graduates for success in college courses. This was one of the truly unexpected dividends of the AT program, and to date, our teachers in all disciplines have established working relationships with university professors at Harvard, Brandeis, Columbia, Rhode Island School of Design, NYU, and a host of other colleges in the quest to upgrade our curriculum in a manner that is consonant with expectations at the post-secondary level. A visit with professors at Brown University the previous summer had confirmed for us that mathematics and science professors had profound reservations about the depth of thinking that AP Scholars with Distinction actually brought to the college classroom, and that sentiment has been echoed in all of our subsequent interactions with college personnel. Colleges want students who think critically, who explore creative solutions to complex problems, and draw on solid disciplinary knowledge in order to grapple with ambiguity and uncertainty.
Second, because the Board adopted a moderate approach toward implementation over a three-year period, our college admissions data and AP scores during the first year became incredibly important. As it turned out, during the first year of implementation of the AT Program in social studies and art, our admissions decisions remained as strong as they had ever been. When AP scores came in over the summer after the first year, they were judged well within the range of performance of the past ten years, a statistic validated by an independent agency through NYU. If we had seen a decline in college admissions rates or in AP scores, I am confident that we would have had another battle on hand. But we did not, and the parent anxiety and harsh criticism from a small number of parents abated significantly. The Board authorized a second year of implementation in English, Science and Music Theory. Another year of successful college admissions and AP scores prompted the third year of implementation in World Languages and mathematics tis year. At this point in time, we have passed the hurdles that were once in our path, and we look forward to the continued refinement of AT curricula in a way that can sponsor student engagement, professional creativity, and depth of understanding that lie at its core.
Third, the investment of our teachers in the Advanced Topics initiative has made all the difference. Freed from the focus on AP prep and exams, the professional staff has engaged in a significant curriculum development process that has produced a new and higher-order course of study. We still offer preparation for exams outside class, but the day-to-day business of learning is imbued with essential questions that probe the complexity of disciplinary knowledge and assess student understanding in ways that more accurately reflect what students know and can do.
I’d like to speak next of the positive dimensions of that change at Scarsdale High School for our students and their teachers. Over the past two and half years, a strong current of professional energy that had previously been inhibited was unleashed as teachers considered ways in which quality learning and depth of understanding could be cultivated among our students. It is a lasting tribute to my colleagues, many of whom are here today, that our students report that they are more engaged and more focused on the joy of learning for its own sake. I’d like to provide some examples of that creativity that has emerged as a powerful force during the implementation of the AT Program.
Art History—the annual New York museum scene as a springboard for instruction; our proximity to many of the foremost museums and galleries in the world means that our students can see a show at the Metropolitan Museum on Rembrandt and contextualize his place in the history of art.
Studio Art—three-dimensional installations that reflect important themes distilled by student artists; students were each assigned a locker, for example, and charged with developing an installation that mirrored their interests, my favorite being the young woman who used her locker to depict a museum of modern art, complete with Mies van der Rohe chairs and miniaturized Van Goghs and Monets.
English—the development of assessments that showcased extended study of the entire work of great writers and shared major themes and subjects in a community of learners; add to that work in nonfiction and oral interpretation of literature; and different schools of literary criticism other than New Criticism.
Science—the modification of curricula so that it subsitutes cutting edge scholarship for some more traditional work in the sciences—string theory in physics, genetic engineering and HIV development in biology, molecular dynamics in chemistry.
Music Theory—the incorporation of contemporary technology in the process of musical composition. Students regularly use electronic keyboards to compose and revise and study the masters through new programs in Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven.
History—work with primary documents at the JFK and FDR libraries, simulations in economics and government, new performance assessments in US History and psychology. At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, economics students took on the roles of leading economists, members of the banking industry and the Federal Reserve, and presidential candidates to debate the merits and pitfalls of fiscal policy.
Significantly, these innovations in instructional practice are not currently part of the AP exams in those disciplines. Make an important point. This has never been about bashing the AP program for us. The program has served millions of students well over its long history, especially those for whom a demanding and rigorous curriculum has not always been available. But in our situation, which I acknowledge is relatively unique, we have been able to tap the creativity and expertise of teachers to define courses of study that are current, engaging, and supportive of the highest quality of learning of which our students are capable. By definition, a paper and pencil test cannot accommodate the kind of learning we have seen in these and other instructional approaches.
Finally, there is a larger context in which the shift from AP to AT has occurred, a plan for the continued promotion of creative and critical thinking outlined in the document A Scarsdale Education for the Future (and available at our website, scarsdaleschools.org) that focuses not only on our most accelerated students but on students at all levels. The Plan posits that today’s students must be prepared to engage complex problems that do not lend themselves to easy solutions, that there are certain habits of mind that prepare students for such an encounter, and that effective participation in an interdependent and complex world demands citizens with a love of learning and a desire to be a decent and responsible contributors.
In addition to the disciplinary knowledge which has always been a part of our mission as a school district, the Scarsdale Plan calls for engagement with global issues that have interdisciplinary implications: issues of poverty, education, sustainability, biodiversity, and political and religious convergences and tensions. We are currently at work in devising structural opportunities for students in the high school to engage those difficult questions in a systematic way, and we hope to grow those kinds of opportunities in the coming school year. These kinds of issues will demand critical thinking and problem-solving expertise reflected in the ability to analyze, synthesize, evaluate ideas and knowledge, and apply knowledge to new situations. They will also require creative thinking, as Daniel Pink and Sir Ken Robinson have suggested, those qualities of originality and creativity and innovation that have historically been critical to the solution of problems. Our work with the Lincoln Center Institute and our commitment to aesthetic education K-12 evidence the district’s appreciation for innovative thinking that has historically distinguished American competitiveness and even dominance in the world arena.
Our students must also exhibit information, media, and technology fluency, the ability to locate, analyze, and communicate information, and the capacity to use digital and print media for communication and creative expression. Finally, the dispositions of flexibility, leadership, initiative, perseverance in the face of complexity and ambiguity, collaboration with others, and self-efficacy will define those who will be successful in coming decades.
So although the AT initiative on one level has been about re-imagining high school for our students, it is part of a larger enterprise dedicated to the idea that from the earliest days of school, students ought to be prepared for the adult lives they will lead in a challenging future that is also full of incredible potential. That is why all our students engage in a capstone project on a topic of their choice. That is why all our middle school students work together on public service announcements that address important problems. That is why all our freshman students collaboratively research and share their findings in a symposium on the great cities of the world during an important period in world history. And it is the reason the 70% of our students engage in Advanced Topic courses that present opportunities for in-depth understanding of problems in the various disciplines. It is a powerful antidote to the kind of rote learning and test-focused assessment that characterized education for so long.
In closing, I’d like to acknowledge the important work of this organization, the Independent Curriculum Group, which encourages the exchange of creative approaches and has as its mission the promotion of real learning and real teaching. I began my career nearly forty years ago in an urban setting teaching English to seventh-graders. In my first month of teaching, I was told that the approach to improving literacy was to teach the foundations of transformational grammar and the arcane rules of noun clauses, auxiliaries, and phonemes. Although a child of the relevant 60s, I was young and obedient and no doubt bored my students for three years unto death until I moved to a school more concerned with what real learning might encompass. Now, no longer young, but hopefully more wise, I preside over an institution that sees engagement and student voices as the lynchpins of learning. Thank God the educational community has come to its senses. Thank the stars for organizations like ICG that make the difference between passivity and learning.