The Ideal School

By Peter D. Relic

Is reform of American elementary and secondary education making any progress? Tough to tell, because the federal role in education is really very small (although fairly noisy), and at the state level, the assessments seem rigged. Either all students pass the new proficiency tests, suggesting that the goal was to look good rather than to create assessments based on quality standards; or most students flunk the state examinations, indicating that there is no reasonable correlation between the tests and the actual curriculum and the professional development of teachers.

Better, perhaps, to look for individual schools that have made some sense for themselves of the reform movement. Somewhere there must be a school community that has clarified its philosophy and values, clearly stated its mission, priorities, and goals, and, even if everything has not yet been achieved, demonstrates that progress is being made. Does that school exist? Let's take a look at an ideal school and its measures of success.

The curriculum of the school is designed by the faculty to match the strengths and to meet the needs of the students at the school, not some mythical median blend of the state's students or the tens of millions of students who attend the other 110,000...