Is Progressive Schooling Just Around the Corner? (Part 2)

Predicting the future, well, is iffy. Except for an occasional Nate Silver who became famous in calling the 2012 election of Barack Obama, more often than not, predictions of what is around the corner range from goofy to funny. I do laugh at the big bloopers made by smart people about the future (see here). And I have gotten off a few clumsy ones of my own. So, at best, I am somewhere between occasionally right and, more often than not, wrong.

But my lack of success has yet to stop me from looking around the corner. The previous post asked whether a progressive coalition was forming to challenge frontally the current efficiency-driven, standards-based, testing and accountability movement that has dominated public schooling for the past three decades. I would like to think so but my experience, research, and ability to read portents of the future do not add up to an enviable record. So, readers beware.

Here are some fragments of a potential coalition that I do see emerging:

*Parents, educators, and students drawn from the political left and right (e.g. progressives, home schoolers, and Tea Party advocates) opposed to the amount and spread of standardized testing–the op-out movement–including mounting anxiety over new tests for assessing student learning of Common Core Standards;

*Traditional progressive groups (often splintered and small) that have low profiles for a long time yet continue to support educating the whole child, holistic education, democratic and social justice education, alternative schools including career academies, project-based learning, etc.

*The Maker movement (Do It Yourself–DIY) to invent, innovate, and work with everything by hand and through technology from rockets to crafts applied to schools.

*Personalized learning (see previous post)

*Donor, corporate, and parental supporters of urban school hybrids including charter schools and blended learning.

The last item needs some elaboration since it is hardly a self-evident emerging interest group.

The charter school movement has roots in a progressive agenda that, as educator Joe Nathan wrote in Rethinking Schools in 1996, viewed charters as “an important opportunity for educators to fulfill their dreams, to empower the powerless, and to help encourage a bureaucratic system to be more responsive and more effective.”

In the previous post, I mentioned some progressive charter schools. Beyond those self-defined progressive charters are emerging hybrids of schools that stress both teacher- and student-centered instruction and learning. Sure, it is still hard for many to combine traditional (think KIPP) and progressive teaching and learning in the same sentence (see here). But combinations of progressive and traditional approaches, including social-emotional learning do exist now and have existed (see here and here).

Some urban schools have embraced blended learning models that mix individualized  instruction with traditional approaches (see here for range of examples).

Whether these different fragments can coalesce into a political movement, I do not know. Pulling together Democrat and Republican partisans, educational progressives and conservatives, KIPP champions and whole-child enthusiasts is not only risky but a Herculean feat. Can it be done? Yes. Will it occur?  I do not know. What I do know is that a shift from the current center of gravity of seeing schools as a powerful tool for economic growth to one where historic goals of tax-supported public schools such as graduating thoughtful, literate, and well-rounded young men and women engaged in supporting and helping their communities is imperative. It will, however, require a coalition of different groups to act politically in making the changes occur. Whether my timid prediction will turn out to be a blooper or not, time will tell.