 "Making Powerful Learning Public"
Students often produce powerful work—essays, poems, graphs, art, etc. But this work is rarely shared outside their classroom. TCLA invites students to submit examples of class work as part of their school report. For each submission, students should answer the following questions:
1) Why did you choose this work as an example of powerful learning?
2) What makes this work different from other work you could have chosen?
3) What classroom conditions enabled you to produce this work? (Were you assisted by your teacher's knowledge and skill? Books? Computers? Other learning materials?)
What Does it Mean to be "Well-Educated?"
Think of one person who you consider "well educated." You don't need to choose someone who has completed many years of formal schooling. Select an individual whose words and actions demonstrate wisdom and learning.
1) Who did you choose? Describe the qualities that make him or her "well educated."
2) Read Deborah Meier's definition of what it means to be 'well educated.' What are the similarities and differences between your description and Meier's description?
If we agree that what we want are citizens with a lively curiosity—who ask, "how come?" and "why?" and "is it truly so?" — we’ll have the start of a new definition of ‘well-educated.’ How about being closely observant, prepared to keep one’s eyes and ears open for patterns, for details, for the unusual? Schooling should encourage playfulness — the capacity to imagine, to wonder, to put things together in new and interesting ways — as well as the possession of a skeptical and open mind. To be in the habit of imagining how others think, feel, and see the world — in the habit of stepping into the shoes of others — should surely be one of our new basics. (How else, after all, can we follow the Golden Rule?) And of course we need to be respectful of evidence, to distinguish good data from bad, to hesitate before sounding off without any facts. I’d add knowing how to communicate carefully, persuasively, and powerfully in a variety of media — including the skilled use of written and spoken language. My definition would also put a high premium on caring enough about the world and one’s fellow citizens to take a stand and defend it.
Deborah Meier. The power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Learning Walks for Learners
Many schools in LAUSD hold "Learning Walks" that allow educators to visit other classrooms and study learning in progress. TCLA encourages parents and students to conduct and report on their own learning walks. You may wish to focus attention during your visit on evidence that students are demonstrating the qualities you associate with being "well educated."
On Intelligence and Intellect
Read Cornel West's distinction between intelligence and intellect.
Does your school encourage you to develop your intellect? If so, how?
 "We must think critically. But it takes courage to think. You have to say that in America because it is such a profoundly anti-intellectual civilization. Profoundly so. It is market driven, obsessed with business and short term gain and it puts a premium on intelligence which is nothing but a manipulative faculty. We are talking about intellect. Intellect and intelligence are not the same thing. Intelligence engages in immediate valuation of various particular contexts in order to gain access to a short term gain. Intellect evaluates the evaluation, looks at the hidden presuppositions, the tacit assumptions, what holds the whole framework, a vision, a paradigm together."
From Cornell West's "Progressive Politics In These Times: From Vision to Action," the 2001 Mario Savio Memorial Lecture, UC Berkeley, 11/15/01.
 Resources on Learning and Assessment
• Report from Members of the LAUSD Task Force on Alternative Assessments, January 2003. (PDF, 36 K)
• National Center for Fair & Open Testing
http://www.fairtest.org
This site is home to an advocacy organization that works to end the abuses, misuses and flaws of standardized testing and ensure that evaluation of students and workers is fair, open, and educationally sound.
• Harvard Civil Rights Project:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/civilrights/alerts/testing.pdf
This pdf file provides information about the dangers of high-stakes testing disproportionately penalizing minority students who have had inadequate instruction.
• Fair Assessment Practices
http://www.aahe.org/Bulletin/may2.htm
This site provides seven steps for equitable assessment while emphasizing that each student should be assessed using methods and procedures most appropriate for that student.
• Initiative to Require Political Candidates to take High-Stakes test
http://www.kuow.org/Full_News_Story.asp?NewsPage_
Action=Find('ID','847')
This site contains an interview with Bob Howard, a University of Washington professor who co-sponsors a Washington State Intitiave "Candidates take the WASL" to require candidates to take the same high-stakes test as children are required and have their scores posted in the voter's guide.
How can you submit your reports to TCLA?
Please click here to find out how to submit your reports.
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