State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson lays out a pretty ambitious agenda in her latest blog post. Her vision for the future of public schooling includes the following reforms:
- more technology dependent than ever
- greater emphasis on uncovering and closing gaps in learning
- underlying goal of a more personalized education
- different kinds of assessments
- more virtual learning for students and teachers (virtual charters excepted)
- a rapid move toward digital textbooks
- greater ability to collaborate online
- more reliance on personal devices like smartphones and notebooks
- interconnected school districts and charter schools
- school building will evolve into a place where students come to apply content, think critically, interact with their teachers and collaborate
- testing will evolve more toward finding students’ deficiencies early in the year with the objective of reaching learning goals and less toward measuring how students fall short at the end of the year
- moving away from 19th and 20th century artifacts of learning such as grades, grading and seat time for credit
She predicts that these reforms will produce “intensive debate among policymakers.” She’s right. Her proposals largely dismantle traditional accountability measures.
