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Stanford GSB News

 

In Schools We Trust

March 2003

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—On Friday, March 7, award winning education reformer Deborah Meier addressed a full house at the Stanford University School of Education Center for Educational Research. Her talk, entitled "In Schools We Trust", centered on the importance of building trust among all stakeholders in a school, the focus of her most recent book "In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization."

Meier founded the Central Park East Schools in East Harlem and the Mission Hill School in Boston, where she is currently coprincipal. Speaking from her 35 years of experience, she admitted that this last school year has been "the worst of all times" but she remains hopeful because there are more good schools "than ever before" in our nation's history.

Meier declared that America was in a period of severe crisis due in a large part to the gap between the rich and poor that is greater than ever before and to the lack of citizen involvement in public life. She emphasized the importance of a true democracy in the country and in the schools. "Democracy doesn't come naturally," she said. "It requires a leap of faith that we can trust ordinary citizens."

For democracy to occur in schools, "relationship building" is essential--this requires extended time with the same people, and security through relationships with other people. "Schools should be places where people learn how to be citizens," she said. Since we learn through relationships with others, schools should be as much like families as possible, where everyone learns how to "persuade, argue, and reason," she added.

Unfortunately, she said, schools are a disaster because they take the most efficient ways of learning, and replace them with the opposite way learning takes place, through lecture-centered classrooms. Instead, we should consider that children learn an enormous amount through the context of their families and that schools should be more like homes. She talked about learning how to drive a car from watching her mother do it, while her granddaughter learns to drive through note-taking in a classroom, with very little actual time behind the wheel.

Meier admitted that sometimes she is hesitant to take on the label of a "school reformer" because she might be mistaken for someone focused on something like test scores. "We've focused on the one thing that by design over predicts the success of the wealthy and under predicts the success of the poor. Test scores are the least sensitive to serious school reform and the most sensitive to social variances outside of school. The gap between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' in schools is less than the gap between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' out of school," she explained.

Despite all of the challenges, however, educators can make a difference if they focus on the things they can do in schools, she emphasized. "We've got one thing going for us—the kids are attracted to us because we're fellow human beings and if we use that power we can make a difference—we can remind children of simple truths, give them our time and local communities…and create new models of what schools can be."

Meier also emphasized that Americans should rethink their hostility towards local school boards since the alternative would be to turn power over to more "hostile forces". She asked the audience to consider that in 1931 there were 200,000 school boards in the nation, while today, there are only 15,000 with three times the number of students. The older model was clearly better, she explained, because school boards with fewer schools to govern would be much more involved and make better decisions.

Meier has been a fellow at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and is vice chair emeritus of the Coalition of Essential Schools. She is also the author of "The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem."

Funding for the event was provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and sponsors included: Stanford University School of Education, California School Redesign Network, Stanford Educational Leadership Institute, Partners for Education (P4E) at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Aspire Public Schools, and the Stanford Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa.