Actual Innovation?
This from
KSBA:
Interested Kentucky school districts will be able to begin applying
for new Districts of Innovation status by early January. Education
Commissioner Terry Holliday and David Cook, director of Innovation and
Partner Engagement for the state education department, outlined the
process to about 100 local and state education leaders Friday afternoon
in Louisville.
Holliday said the process, authorized by a law passed by 2012 General Assembly, should not be thought of “as business as usual.”
“Don’t bother applying if all you want to do is move the deck chairs
around on the Titanic,” Holliday said. “Innovation is not a program or
professional development, having kids use computers to access content or
moving from a regular schedule to a trimester schedule.
“We don’t want you just thinking outside the box – we want you not
even thinking about the box,” he added. “Not everybody is going to be
successful. You’re going to learn from your failures.”
Holliday and Cook detailed six criteria for approval, which must be
given by the state. They are personalized learning, world-class
knowledge and skills, student voice, performance-based learning,
district support systems and anytime, anywhere learning.
While Holliday noted that teacher voice is built into the process,
because the law requires 70 percent of teachers to approve a proposal,
he also said the plans must have students telling why this would make a
difference.
Districts will be given a Self-assessment and Readiness for
Innovation document. Cook advised, “Take that document, sit down with
your leadership team and board of education, and as accurately as you
can, determine, ‘Are we really ready to do innovation at the highest
level?’”
The Innovation status allows districts and from one school to as many
as all schools in the district to be exempt for five years from most
state regulations and statutes directly pertaining to student academics.
The program begins with the 2013-14 school year.
“A School of Innovation plan submitted to the department that only
talks about one particular initiative is less likely to be seen as
valuable as a school with a whole-reform plan,” Cook explained.
The Districts of Innovation plan was unveiled at the Kentucky Leads
the Nation Summit, a two-day conference on school innovation led by the
Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative.
2 comments:
Isn't it positive, professional and reassuring how our commissioner aligns PD, student computer use and schedule changes with the "Titanic".
We create an entire generation of teachers who have had their curriculum and assessment dictated to them by the state and even their training and resources supplied by private vendors and now you expect folks to create something outside the box?
All we have done for the last two decades is try to standardized everyone and now you want innovation and individualization when the one-size fits all isn't working. Seems like the get-out-of-jail-free card for state regs says it all. Basically, the parameters which we have established may actually be getting in the way of educating kids so if you come up with a good idea you don't have to follow them anymore.
Remind me again how many KY tax dollars and federal RTTT funds we are spending on these operational parameters we are all suppose to be following and how much are they spending on this?
What the...?
I also found the Titanic reference most unfortunate...for most of the reasons you state.
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