Schools of the Future

In coming weeks at commencement exercises across the nation, speakers will make the point that commencement means the beginning of something rather than the end. In keeping with that idea, while we are at the end of another school year, schools are embarking on plans for the future. There is much discussion in the education world today about "Schools of the Future" and what form(s) they might take. Through the years, public education has changed very little in some respects, and dramatically in others. As the world and our technologies change more rapidly than any time in the world's history, I thought this article abstract was an interesting look at the possible paths the schools of tomorrow might take:


What Will Schools of the Future Look Like?

In this thoughtful Education Week article, Richard Elmore and Elizabeth City of the Harvard Graduate School of Education ask us to think ahead 10-15 years and guess the proportion of student learning that will take place in schools (versus elsewhere). “The availability of relatively cheap technologies offering direct access to knowledge of all types creates opportunities for students to experience a dramatic increase in the choice of what they learn, with whom they choose to learn, and how they choose to learn,” say Elmore and City. Right now, most schools have resisted the digital revolution, sequestering computers to special labs, using laptops as digital typewriters and presentation producers, and treating social networking as a subversive activity. Will that change in the years ahead? Here are three possible scenarios for 2025:

• Fighting for survival – Schools look much the way they do today, but expand the use of laptops, interactive whiteboards, digital lessons, digital grading, and new ways to communicate with parents and schedule meetings, while teachers continue to control access to content and learning. “In this instance,” say Elmore and City, “schools will increasingly become custodial institutions, isolated from the lives of their students and the learning environment beyond their walls.”

• Controlled engagement – Schools define learning goals and map out the best pathways, then use technology to open portals for students to learn from a wider world. For example, a school in Alabama participates in a two-way bilingual cooperative with a school in Shanghai, with teachers using video technology and shared materials to alternate between English and Mandarin lessons. “Teachers are less gatekeepers of knowledge and more knowledge brokers,” say Elmore and City. “School leaders become less managers of instruction, and more entrepreneurs connecting their organizations to the broader learning environment. Schools become less places where students go to learn from adults, and more places where adults and students get together to enter a broader learning environment.”

• Open access to learning – There are broad standards for content (like the Common Core) and general guidance on how students and parents can get access to learning, speculate Elmore and City, but schools “are on their own, competing with other types of service providers and learning modalities for the interest and loyalty of students and their parents. A family might combine services from two or three different organizations into a learning plan for its children – tutoring for ‘basic’ academic content, active learning and access to the digital environment at an experiential learning center, and physical and kinesthetic development from sports and recreation center.” Students might take as long as sixth months in one learning environment – a language program or a biology expedition – accumulating digital learning portfolios of their learning that would be used to apply to colleges. All this would be funded by per-student grants adjusted to family income, language status, and disabilities.

“Schools, as we presently know them, would gradually cease to exist and be replaced by social networks organized around the learning goals of students and their families,” say Elmore and City.

Which of these scenarios makes the most sense? The authors suggest that we find our way toward the answer by:

• Talking with students and educators about what school could and should look like;
• Visiting schools that are breaking the mold;
• Using new school construction and renovation projects as opportunities to think differently about what configuration will maximize student learning.
“Beyond Schools” by Richard Elmore and Elizabeth City in Education Week, May 18, 2011 (Vol. 30, #31, p. 24-26) http://www.edweek.org