Suggestion for an Important and Massive Change in Public Education

A few years ago my wife and I retired from being respectively headmistress and headmaster of a private school, The Academy For the Gifted. We enrolled in the school when it was initiated the high school pupils who were having difficulties in the public school system, and who were thus frustrated, withdrawn, or simply not progressing. Our per-capita costs were 50% of those of the public schools.

To simplify this essay on what made our school and its instruction extremely successful, this writer will confine the description of what we did to THREE ESSENTIALS.

They were: An in-depth interview with the student and his parents or guardians at the point of his enrollment by a competent fully trained counselor. There were several goals in that initial interview: Understanding the psyche of the student and noting it, finding what his difficulty had been, and most of all, his mental level and educational capability. This we composed at the school on a computer biography of the student and set levels to be expected from his studies. MOST IMPORTANT!

Once enrolled, the student was issued EACH DAY at the entry time(usually 8:00 a.m.) a CONCEPT SHEET which described what was expected to be accomplished by him-her during that day, with rewards for progress, and other avenues of study for non-accomplishment. THIS DAILY SHEET was based on his computer profile.

The SECOND essential is the most controversial one, and the one that made us eminently successful:

We taught ONE main subject a day. MONDAY for mathematics, TUESDAY for science, WEDNESDAY for social studies, THURSDAY for English and related topics, and FRIDAY for foreign languages and other options. Computers for each student were actively used.

We were fortunate in being in a city which had many retired educators of high abilities and were able to find real teachers who loved to teach. That was the THIRD essential, and of course with ONE subject being taught each day, we needed teachers who were highly diversified and who could go from one subject to another with ease. Surprisingly, we found that easier than one would think.

On Friday, we offered several foreign languages, and had a few pupils in each. We also had a half-hour “program” attended voluntarily which brought a philosophic(non religious) speaker each week. It was successful.

SPORTS were chosen after careful consultation with the student body, and in our particular school, they chose soccer…we fortunately had a retired Australian soccer coach available, and soccer was played and learned after the closure time of the school at 3:30 PM.