Vicki Phillips has written a timely piece for Education Week encouraging a movement that is central to STC’s core: Schools must work together, regardless of type.
Collaboration is the key to transforming schools and communities, ensuring all kids receive the quality education they deserve. A former teacher and superintendent herself, Vicki Phillips knows what goes on on all sides of this battle to improve schools:
“First, the only things that are viral in education are the viruses that come to school during cold and flu season. To actually transmit best practices from classroom to classroom, much less from school to school, district to district, and state to state, is incredibly hard.”
This is exactly the reason that our stellar Boston Regional Council team has begun implementing Study Tours and why they are being spread to other cities as well; they work!
Best practices can be shared across all types of schools. There should be no worry about competition from the participating schools, regardless of type, because they should all be in it for the students’ benefits. Having a school run for the benefits of the students, and not the adults, is one of the biggest factors to overcome in education today according to Former DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee:
“The children are not the problem,” Rhee said, “the adults are the problem.”
(via The Baltimore Sun, Inside Ed. “Michelle Rhee cites Baltimore in justification for tough tactics”)
When the adults start collaborating, and not competing behind invisible front lines, we will have change.