What’s the matter with high schools?

       This, of course, is probably unfair as a lead to an editorial. High schools get that a lot -- for some reasons they own, and a bunch they don’t. Yes, they’re slow to respond to change. Yes, they often have bad failure/drop-out/low-performance/low-attendance data. Yes, their teachers often fail to reflect national standards.
       Of course, in our data-driven education world -- and in a political environment where a regional legislature with almost no education experience has more influence than a well-considered and published education researcher -- a lot of instructional practice is changing for some very bad reasons. Not only are we beating up on how well high schools are doing, we’re sending a bunch of mixed messages on what they are supposed to be doing in the first place! Do we really want all students to attend college? Do we really want all students in STEM programs? Do we really want our students to just do well on quantifiable high-stakes tests? Do we really want our education aimed solely at how to be a good college student/employee/citizen?
       The end result is that high school teachers and administrators often feel completely at a loss. The attention brings sanctions, reform initiatives, negative press, leadership changes, teacher accountability measures, more and more tests, and a host of other things intended to help, but, ultimately, end up just contributing to the piling-on. The end result is a collection of professionals who feel threatened and powerless.
       In the face of that, not surprisingly, the response is often to hunker down and circle the wagons. Principals do their best to make sure the school is the source of their reform and change. Teachers close their doors, narrow their focus, and attend to that which is in front of them. As a frequent observer and participant in programs at the high school level, I’ve seen this over and over and over again. Even high schools who are viewed in the district and community as high functioning often exhibit the same behaviors. (As a district tech resource teacher, the most telling response I get from school-based folks is "What are you doing here?")
       But is that "circled wagons" response effective, or is it dysfunctional?
       It can make one feel better – more empowered, more in control, more connected to the immediate school community who have, as their common mission, the correction of that bad image for, at least, their school. I won’t begin to comment on whether it might be effective as a general strategy, but I do worry about how it fits into all of the implications of 21^st Century teaching and learning. If a student has more information instantly available through his smart phone than a teacher learns in a lifetime, will closing doors help? If a student can take a course at the school across town, or online, or from freely-available MIT/Kahn Academy/HippoCampus instructional resources/course syllabi, does it make sense to insist that all learning opportunities come from the school he attends? If a student participates in an international learning community through social networking outside of school, does it make sense to restrict his contact in a classroom to the thirty students there? If there are hundreds of thousands of motivated, involved, attentive experts online, does it make sense to force only one teacher to provide that experience?
         There are lots of education observers who promote an extension of connections to learning experiences as a way of addressing education reform. One of the most interesting of them might be Logan LaPlante, who, as a 13-year-old, did a TEDx talk on “Hackschooling.” His experience, to say the least, is atypical – upper middle class family, parents who took him out of formal schools and allowed him to structure his own educational experiences. But he gets a lot of things right, including connected and integrated learning from a variety of sources.
       What’s the matter with high schools? It isn’t that they don’t care. It isn’t that they don’t have what it takes. It isn’t that they can’t change. In our super-connected world, my only fear is that, it’s because they aren’t listening.