A public school veteran has actually offered an education reform that at least acknowledges the real world. “Learning will take place in schools but not in formal classes that meet for so many minutes at set times of the day or on certain days only,” D. H. Treichler, the former assistant to the superintendent of the Binghamton City School District proposes in the current issue of the American School Board Journal. “Students will be presented with learning technology or experiences that deliver the lessons.”
“Look at Khan Academy and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), available from many universities and websites such as Coursera and others, for the model.” Treichler currently is a member of the Board of Education of the Vestal Central School District, which is also in New York.
“As students master the material based on frequent assessment, they will move on to the next lesson individually. The teacher is now a learning enabler. Rather than lecturing to the class and helping with homework, the teacher turns the lesson over to the technology and teacher-planned experiences and to the rate of progress of the individual learner.”
“The teacher checks comprehension, provides supplemental explanations, and assists students whose learning styles are not aligned with the media used to instruct.”
