A 21st Century Vision and Mission for Our Schools: Leading in a World of Cosmopolitanism, Competition, Cooperation, and Choice

Background

We live in a world that is rapidly becoming more integrated economically and culturally than it was in the past.   The world as a whole, and the corner of it that we live in, is far more cosmopolitan than it once was.  

To give an example: 28% of South Orange and Maplewood residents with origins in Africa are people who were born abroad, as are 76% of residents with origins in Asia and 40% of residents with origins in Latin America.  (The figure for residents with European origins is 9%.)   Further, our SOMA community has around double the statewide average of residents who have family origins in both Asia and Africa, Asia and Europe, and Africa and Europe.  We are cosmopolitan, and becoming more so.

The new reality of international cosmopolitanism calls for a serious rethinking of U.S.-based, historically-oriented approaches to matters of individual and group identity.   Much as the American past remains highly relevant, we need to move in the direction of an inclusive, international, future-oriented perspective on issues of identity and diversity.

We live in a world in which American workers increasingly must compete against workers from other nations, and are often not as well-equipped educationally as they should be in that competition. 

An example: American students are not doing well on the high-quality PISA exam by comparison with students from certain other nations, such as Korea and Finland.   That reality calls for a rethinking of purely state-based or national benchmarking of our students.   Much as such domestic benchmarking has its place, we need to move toward assessing ourselves using international standards.

We live in a world in which teamwork and cooperative social connections across different national and academic cultures are becoming ever more important.

An example: The Supply Chain Management program I teach in and help administer at Rutgers brings together faculty, students, and businesses from China, the U.S. and other countries around the world with “hard” skills in math and “soft” skills in management and other fields, such as my own fields of business law and ethics.  Much as traditional academic boundaries will remain part of life in our schools, we need to figure out how to bring in more opportunities for cooperative interdisciplinary work into our curriculum, with science and social studies as particular focuses.

We live in a world of increasing choices and flexibility, in which “one size fits all” approaches to education are giving way to alternatives.

An example: Sal Khan, the young Harvard Business School graduate who founded the Khan Academy, has developed nearly 3,000 free, online tutorials on subjects ranging from calculus to physics to art history, that in a typical three-month period are viewed by over 10 million students from around the world.   Much as traditional teaching and learning will be part of the mix in our schools, we need to embrace innovative, flexible approaches like Khan’s and the alternatives they offer for students, parents, and teachers.

These ongoing trends toward cosmopolitanism, competition, cooperation, and choice define the future for our schools.  We need a vision and mission that takes these realities seriously and that positions us as leaders in addressing them.

A.     Summary

Our current district vision is to be the top-performing diverse suburban school district in the nation.  

The first paper of this paper consists of a discussion of that vision language, which I believe we need to have a conversation on that involves the community as well as the Board.

A suggestion for further discussion: South Orange and Maplewood should raise the bar in our level of ambition.   We should benchmark ourselves internationally, and thus broaden the places we compare ourselves to.

A second suggestion for discussion: Our current vision implies a notion of diversity that might have been on target for the United States, New Jersey, and our towns twenty years ago, but that may not correspond well to where we are now and where we are going.  

A third suggestion: Our current emphasis on being top-performing leaves out a critical component related to content.  Important as it is for us to be assessing achievement test results, we also need to be assessing the opportunities that our district offers.  

Compared to other districts, are we empowering students, parents, and teachers rather than dictating to them?  Here, one logical point of comparison is our near neighbor Montclair, with its strong history of innovation and choice.

Compared to other districts, how strong are the academic opportunities we offer for our best students, for our broad middle, and for our struggling students?    Here, Livingston, Millburn, Montclair, and West Orange are all logical points of reference.

A conversation on our vision needs to involve a process that engages the community as well as the Board.   We need to listen to one another, and to respect one another’s concerns.  Changes should come through an open process that engages the values issues at stake. 

In order to translate an internationally-oriented, 21^st century vision and mission into reality, we need to put meat on the bones.  In 2011, I initiated a Global Innovation & Education (GEI) Task Force that has been working on developing proposals for innovative, globally-oriented, and cost-effective educational initiatives. 

I believe we should be considering initiatives in three major areas—a GEI program, Columbia High School, and cost-effective governance--in order to help make an ambitious, future-oriented vision and mission for our schools a practical reality.  The second part of this paper consists of a description of these three areas.

The discussion here is informed by the draft Global Education & Innovation report that was submitted to the Board in September and that resulted in the adoption of district goals related to virtual learning and integrated STEM projects, and that is currently being revised by Task Force members for submission to the full Board.   At the same time, I stress that the discussion in this paper is my own, and does not represent the views of my colleagues on the Task Force or the Board.  

A summary of the three areas:  First, we should work on developing a dedicated Global Education & Innovation program that is devoted to delivering global education and other content through innovative means, such as after-school and online programs.

Given the importance of the early years, elementary schools would be a particular focus for GEI. 

A GEI program at the elementary school level would  be successful were it to offer the following opportunities: A rich combination of online learning experiences that support acceleration and special attention in all subjects, along with a similarly rich combination of after-school and summer classes that provide, for example: i) open-to-all global learning opportunities, such as Mandarin or other foreign languages; ii) extra work for students who can benefit from it to achieve at grade level; and iii) acceleration in mathematics.

Second: We should promote Columbia High School as a GEI beacon.  This has two significant components, both of which are important in order to achieve lighthouse status for our high school and our district.

a)  CHS as a recognized leader in an important “hard” dimension of GEI that relates to having students prepared to perform effectively in a world of integrated economies and rapid technological change.  Although the specifics need to be developed rather than laid down here, one good accountability metric for determining the success of the vision in that regard consists of offerings of AP courses, whether through traditional or innovative means, that equal or exceed the offerings in benchmark districts;

b)  CHS as a recognized leader in an important “soft” dimension of GEI that relates to having students prepared to perform effectively in a world of cultural intermingling and rapid socio-cultural change.  Again, specifics need to be developed rather than laid down.  One good accountability metric would consist of offering, for students who elect these options rather than on an across-the-board basis, the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program in Grades 11 and 12 and the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program in Grades 9 and 10.  Although specifics need further discussion, one possibility worth exploring is to have an IB option or options offered on a leveled-up basis.

Third: Open-minded consideration of innovative means of implementing GEI.  In an era of tight fiscal constraints, burgeoning charter schools, and concern over the efficacy of traditional public school ways of doing business, SOMSD needs to explore fiscally prudent and innovative ways to carry out the after-school, summer, and online activities of a GEI program. 

B.      A Conversation about Our Vision

We need a conversation involving the community and the Board on whether and how to recast our existing vision of being the nation’s top-performing diverse suburban school district.  

Some questions we should be discussing:

a)   How should we benchmark student achievement?

Our vision of being the nation’s top-performing diverse school district would suggest that we are benchmarking our achievement test results relative to multiple peer districts in other states.  We are not in fact doing so.  If we are serious about realizing our current vision, we need to do that. 

Currently, we are benchmarking ourselves in part based on an approach to college readiness that includes high elementary school grades and high academic level placements as indicators of readiness.  We need to have a conversation about whether that is appropriate.  There is certainly a correlation between good grades and being in a high level and readiness for college, but it does not follow that it is effective policy for our schools to raise students’ grades or level placements. 

The New Jersey-based way we actually benchmark ourselves in our district goals is to compare ourselves with the 100+ districts (Verona, Livingston, Montclair, etc.) that the state Department of Education classifies as sharing the same socio-economic level with South Orange and Maplewood.   Given that reality, we need to discuss whether we should refer to that  benchmarking in our vision, rather than to interstate comparisons of achievement that we are not actually making.

Finally, and in my view critically, an approach to benchmarking that should be discussed is benchmarking ourselves internationally.  A desirable way to do that would be to use a locally-administered version of the PISA test that is the gold standard of international assessment.  Though there are issues to deal with, that would in all likelihood be easier than establishing reliable statistical comparisons with districts in multiple states using multiple state tests.  It would have the further advantage of utilizing a test that is considerably superior to the New Jersey state tests and of aligning us with the world.

 b)   Should we go beyond “top-performing” as an aspiration?

There is real value in aspirations that can also be expressed in clearly measurable terms.  At the same time, there is also real value in more open-ended aspirations that are less clearly reducible to a single metric, such as test scores.  

One good possibility for opening up our vision would be by aspiring to be at the top in terms of opportunities for students, parents, and teachers to choose academically challenging and innovative paths.

In a world in which our students must compete with other students from around the world, are we providing opportunities for academic excellence that are equal to or better than those offered by leading districts in New Jersey, the nation, and the world?   

We can measure ourselves in terms of, for example, Advanced Placement courses offered by innovative, non-traditional means as well as those offered in the regular school day in regular classes.

In a world in which our students must connect with others here and around the world, are we providing top-tier opportunities for struggling students to bridge gaps at an early age, when intervention can make the greatest difference?   

We can measure ourselves in terms of innovative programs, including after-school and summer programs, that allow struggling students who work hard to make progress in reading while they are still young.  

In an ever more cosmopolitan, connected world, are we providing opportunities for globally-oriented learning by the broad middle and by all our students that place us at the top?  

We can measure ourselves in terms of, for example, after-school and summer classes in Mandarin or other foreign languages for elementary school children who can pick up languages readily, and that would continue as an option for older children. 

In a world in which people increasingly choose their countries of work and residence as well as their ways of life, how do we stack up in terms of honoring the principle that students, parents, and teachers should be able to make educational choices?  

We can measure ourselves relative to districts here in New Jersey, nationally, and internationally that have a reputation for fostering choice and innovation in their programs.  

c)  Should we limit our point of reference in our vision to districts that are diverse?    What do we mean by diversity?

We need to talk about, and figure out how to deal with, the shift to a more cosmopolitan, international present and future in our community and elsewhere. 

My own sense is that by referring to diversity in a fashion that implies a limited, arguably outdated definition of the term, the language of our current vision limits us unduly. 

In having this conversation, we ought to address whether the language and underlying policy notions associated with the ideas of “educational debt” and “school-dependent children” are aids or impediments to a future-oriented vision and mission for a school system in an increasingly cosmopolitan SOMA in which the children we educate and their parents will increasingly be born in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  

Similarly, we should consider whether the “Excellence and Equity” framework currently employed by the Board is an aid or an impediment to a future-oriented vision and mission.

Both excellence and equity are highly important if not always easy to define values, and there is a case for their current prominence in our district’s rhetoric.

At the same time, there is reason to be concerned that the excellence-equity formulation can be conducive to polarization, finger-pointing, and people of different sympathies all feeling beleaguered and defensive.

On “school-dependent children”: My intuition is that the rise of innovative choices in education and in our society makes that phrase less than helpful to us in constructing a forward-thinking vision and mission. Much as children need nurturing and affection, all children, especially as they grow older, need to become empowered individuals.  Treating any group of children as though they and their families are bound to be dependents of the school system is neither appropriate in a modern world of individual empowerment nor likely to be effective in helping those children. 

I fully recognize that issues of individual and group diversity and identity are highly sensitive ones, on which people of good faith are not of one mind.  At the same time, we are a community with a vibrant civic culture and a great track record of addressing difficult issues.  We can have a successful discussion involving our community and the Board and move forward here.

C.    Realizing a GEI Program

The September 2011 draft GEI Task Force report includes the following language:

“From New York to California, schools are making breakthroughs in customizing curricula for individual learning needs, and in restructuring schedules, faculty assignments and student placements to better match students and curricula according to students’ skills and maturity. While many of these approaches are unproven, in a district as diverse as SOMSD we do not want to miss an opportunity to benefit from advances that soon could show great promise. Accordingly, the task force recommends that administration and faculty engage in outreach to districts elsewhere to learn from experiments in progress in order to determine how these strategies might best work for our district. We also recommend building upon competency-alignment approaches already proven to benefit students here in our district, such as the acceleration of high-performing math students in middle school.”

I reiterate the draft report’s call for competency-based learning.  Here, I make it in the context of a call for a conversation and a coming together on behalf of a broad global leadership vision for our future in which competency-based learning would be a key part.  We must move beyond the industrial-era model of schoolhouse as factory, with a standard school-day shift.  In lieu of that 20^th century model, we should move toward a future-oriented model in which after-school learning and online learning keyed to students’ individual skills and maturity play a key role.

Though GEI learning is a concept with strong applicability to all grades, the elementary schools are the logical place to begin.  I offer four reasons to support this conclusion: a) for students below grade level, the early years are the optimal time for after-school supplementation to make a difference in closing gaps with their peers; b) for strong students, particularly in mathematics, advanced GEI work in the early years would fill a gap that we should be filling; c) for all students and families who are interested, we should be taking advantage of the plasticity of the minds of young children to start supplementary instruction in Mandarin and/or other foreign languages; and d) it is likely that there will substantially more leadership bandwidth to devote to a GEI initiative in the elementary schools.  Our elementary schools can be labs for GEI learning, with programs initiated at the school level as well as district-wide programs.

Although this paper is not the domain for a financial analysis, it should be noted that opportunities such as those noted above need not have a high cost.  For example, a single after-school class that met for an hour fifty times a year at a $30/hour instructor cost would by itself have a modest cost of $1500.   Of course, there are additional costs to be considered, including administrative costs, building operations costs, and transportation costs.   None of these issues should be minimized; at the same time we should realize that at least some parts of a strong GEI initiative can be carried out at a modest cost.

D.  Columbia Holding a Global Leadership Torch High

For all the importance of middle schools and of the elementary schools, there is no substitute for a high school as an embodiment of a district’s highest aspirations.   Columbia is indeed the jewel in our crown.  With its long history of national recognition, its many stellar alumni and current students, and its majestic front and soon-to-be renovated auditorium, Columbia High School must be a leading part—perhaps the leading part--of a global leadership vision and mission for our schools. 

In making Columbia a central point of a global leadership vision, we need to recognize that we in South Orange and Maplewood need to have a high school that offers opportunities that stand up to—and if possible surpass—the opportunities available in two of our nearby neighbors: Millburn High School with its well-earned reputation for exceptional participation and success on AP examinations and Montclair High School, the capstone school in a district with a well-earned reputation for innovation and choice.  

In contrast to our current DFG test score goal, in which we hold ourselves accountable for matching the performance of our peer districts in regard to proficiency and advanced proficiency on the NJ ASK and HSPA, I do not believe that establishing a participation rate and score goal for AP tests that is benchmarked to Millburn is the way to go in setting out a global leadership vision.  Instead—though the specifics need to be worked out in a process with public participation—we believe that it is much more promising to aspire to AP offerings, through non-traditional GEI means as well as traditional in-school classes, that are at least on a par with Millburn’s. 

In some respects, notably in our offering of accelerated math in which our best math students are taking the Calculus BC AP exam as juniors, Columbia High School is already ahead of Millburn.  We can and should identify other areas in which we can surpass our neighbor in a notable way—creating a class for our strongest social studies students to take the World History AP in ninth grade, after their two required years of world history, is one GEI implementation possibility that may well have merit, much as we stress that this statement is not tied down to that or any specific possible implementation.

At the same time we commit ourselves to expanded electives and AP opportunities at Columbia as part of a long-term global leadership vision, we need to continue our existing data-driven commitment to achievement, accountability, and access.  The “hard,” market-savvy side of our global future is not simply a matter of having high achievers in STEM and other fields who are ambitious takers of AP exams; it is also a matter of having a high school with a middle that achieves well, of raising up those who are struggling, and of preparing all students for careers. 

At the same time we commit ourselves to being a front-of-the-pack school in regard to AP opportunities, we should also recognize that we in South Orange and Maplewood cannot and should not be characterized simply in terms of Millburn and its impressive culture of electives and APs.  We also need to see ourselves in relation to a long tradition of innovation and choice in our own schools, and also in the schools of our near neighbor to the north, Montclair.

By setting out a global leadership vision in which aspire to equal or surpass both of our excellent neighbors, we can be truly exceptional as a leading edge school district in a leading edge suburban community.  With the “equal or surpass Montclair” side of our global leadership aspirations as well as with the “equal or surpass Millburn” side, delineation of the specifics requires thought and a process over time.  One excellent and obvious possibility in regard to the humanist side of our global vision is to introduce the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program at Columbia High School as an option for students in Grades 11 and 12, with a lead-up in the form of an option for students to participate in the IB MYP program in Grades 9 and 10.  Such an option would vault us ahead of Montclair in a highly significant and salient respect. 

A possibly related, possibly distinct proposal for the “equal or surpass Montclair” side of a global leadership vision would be the introduction of a fully or substantially deleveled optional program, which might or might not be tied to IB, at Columbia High School for parents and children who want it.  Once again, such an option at our high school would vault us ahead of our excellent near neighbor to the north, which has such an option at the middle school but not the high school level.  The specifics of such a substantially deleveled option, including the structures to insure quality and representativeness, would need very careful consideration.  But such a program if done right could be an excellent way for us as a district to build on our strong legacy of progressive educational options, such as those offered by the Seth Boyden opt-in and multi-age at Marshall School.  Such options are one feature of what make us, like Montclair, appealing as a place to live and go to school for many residents and prospective residents.

Another aspect of creating a 21^st century Columbia High School is to reform academic placement so that to the maximum degree feasible it is a matter of student and parent choice rather than dictate to the student and parent.   In such a reformed placement system, counselors (or other relevant school personal) would be expected to lay out to the student and the family the individual considerations (test scores, grades, subjective teacher evaluations) that are relevant to whether the student is in an AP, honors, advanced college prep, or college prep class, with the student and family having an ultimate choice.  Expectations and consequences would be laid out, and further consultation could take place if teachers and counselors later concluded that a student had made an inappropriately high or low placement choice.  

Such a choice-based approach to academic placement is in my judgment far more likely to empower students who currently are falling through the cracks at the high school than alternative systems, including across-the-board deleveling that is unlikely to work well in classes with older students and complex material. 

A choice-based approach to academic placement—significant elements of which can be found in our near neighbor Montclair—also comports well with the way the world is going.  Old command and control structures are breaking down in favor of flexible networks and individual choice.  Given that reality, flexible placement is a better way to go in the future at CHS. 

E.  Innovative GEI governance

Currently, SOMSD and other New Jersey public school districts and school boards face what might be described as a perfect storm.   A new era of fiscal austerity; vocally expressed concerns by education reformers of various stripes over the efficacy and the future viability of traditional public school ways of doing business; a rising number of non-profit and for-profit charter applicants in successful suburban districts like ours as well as in urban districts: These and related trends define the period we are now in, and very well may continue and intensify in the future. 

I respect that people of good have different judgments on the way forward for New Jersey public schools, and I do not offer any judgments here on the lively debates taking place in Trenton and elsewhere on proposed changes in the laws that govern us.  I do believe strongly that a GEI initiative is highly compatible with—and perhaps logically calls for—an innovative governance structure.  In a time of straitened finances, we must look for creative and potentially less expensive ways to deliver GEI content.

In that spirit, I call for a conversation and suggest two potential governance options, both of which appear to have significant merit.  Option one, which is analogous to the way we run our successful food service program, involves the hiring of an accountable district employee to lead the GEI program, as called for in the report, with the actual implementation of the program carried out by a contractor who would be selected after an RFP.   I believe that a potential GEI contractor could be drawn from the ranks of non-profit entities active in education reform efforts, though for-profit entities like the corporations that have operated our food services over the years would also be interested in the opportunity.  One conversation that I believe should take place involves a value-driven discussion of the type of contractor the community and the Board support looking for in an RFP.  

Governance option two--which is more complex and hence likely to involve more time than option one, but also has the potential upside of building a broader consensus around a GEI intitiative among community residents and our town governments—involves the hiring of a leader accountable to the Superintendent, as in option one and the Task Force recommendation, but also involves the formation of a non-profit corporation to operate the GEI initiative that would be accountable to the BOE and that would have its own governance structure and fund-raising capabilities. 

For all the legal intricacies and practical difficulties that more complex structure would involve, it should in my view be considered.  In a time of intense concern over finances and the rise of a class of active private funders who are committed to putting their money into reform efforts rather than into traditional public schools, especially in comparatively affluent suburban districts such as ours, we should consider in whether we can run the GEI initiative in a manner that accords with these trends.  The result of that consideration might prove to be a decision in favor of the simpler option one.  But I believe option two needs to be on the table as well, particularly given the prospect that a public-private partnership might be a much more attractive applicant for funding by foundations that support educational innovation than our district alone would be.

F.  Conclusion

It is important to couple the call in this paper for a reworking of our schools’ vision and mission and for a GEI program to help realize that revised vision and mission with a strong appreciation for all that is already good in what we are doing in our schools.  We have a highly skilled Superintendent, a highly dedicated Board, a fine teaching staff and administration, committed students and parents, and an excellent tradition of civic activism in our community.  Let’s be proud of all that!

The vision suggested in this statement comprises steps that are to be layered upon our existing SOMSD commitment to college readiness for all and to achievement, accountability, and access.  Those commitments need to remain a fundamental part of the SOMSD mission. 

In moving forward together, we must avoid polarization and false dichotomies. 

For example: We should not be a district that emphasizes “hard,” market-savvy aspects of a global vision to the exclusion of “soft,” humanistic aspects, or the other way around.  Both the “soft” and “hard” dimensions are crucial to the development of a vision that can build on our community’s and our school district’s values and our legacy of continuing excellence to position us in the 21^st century.  Both dimensions are necessary to make South Orange and Maplewood a nationally and internationally recognized leader going forward.  

The conversations we should have about a modernized, internationally focused vision for our schools and about a Global Education & Innovation program will not all be easy ones.   But we are an extraordinary community, with a great track record of recognizing change and responding to it constructively.  We live in a time of revolutionary change—and we are very lucky to be positioned well to address it and benefit from it.