My colleague, Katherine Mackey, and I had the opportunity to visit Covington Elementary School in Los Alto, Calif. recently, where teacher Rich Julian's 5th-grade math class has thrown out the typical math curriculum and instead given every child their own laptop, adopted the online Khan Academy math curriculum and assessments, and allowed the students to proceed at their own pace through any part of the 5th-grade curriculum.
The results are stunning. Katherine blogged about one aspect of how much the children work with each other. There are many other fascinating aspects, too, not the least of which was that every single student was on task the whole time we were there (I've visited the school twice, and it has been the same each time).
An obvious question that emerges is why don’t we see more of this happening? This happened in Los Altos because there was great leadership throughout the district. The school board, superintendent, principals, and the select teachers running the pilot all saw the potential, were willing to throw out everything they knew about how schooling worked, and make the leap.
But the reality is there are many disincentives in place for this to happen. Click here to read more of my post and find out why I believe one way to unlock innovation in our school system and help it transform into a student-centric one is to get out of our own way and eliminate these disincentives
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