Viewpoints

Superintendent Moran emphasized the need for schools to evolve, adapt, and improve the work we do or will accountability just be assimilated like so many past initiatives.

She also focused on the importance of walk-throughs to identify teaching styles and evidence of learning.

An intriguing issued she raised was the importance of establishing community goals for a school, where all the individuals of a building are responsible for every student's success, eliminating competition and instilling cooperation. A cooperative environment will lead to school focused on research and development, innovation, and creativity.

As usual Pam Moran is on target but for once is too pessimistic. If mass production is the problem (which I agree it is) mass customization is the solution. Permit me to elaborate with a favorite example of mass customization (the real problem technology can help solve):  Alexander the Great's education.  His father, Philip of Macedon, hired Aristotle as the royal tutor. That is the vision I have for technology, providing, as it were, a brilliant tutor for every student.

Denis P. Doyle

The trouble, my dear Dr. Doyle, is that Philip of Macedonia not only had the ability (read firepower)  to summon Aristotle's services as a teacher for his precocious child, but that he simply summoned the "best of the best" (think Newsweek  top ten list).  Had he realized his son was hopelessly ADHD and suffered from delusions of grandeur and violent fantasies, he might have hired Plato as his instructor, Philip might have had a son who contributed as much to philosophy as he did, in real life, to the art of war.