Nordblad, Elizabeth   

Dintersmith, Ted., (2018). What schools could be. Princeton University Press.

            What Schools Could Be presents the reader with a taste of our current K-12 school system. Ted Dintersmith takes the reader on his 2016 journey across all fifty states visiting schools and engaging with students, educators and politicians. Dintersmith’s opinion is that our system is outdated, ineffective and blatantly underserving poor students, families and communities. Additionally, the students who do well in the current system tend to do so because they have an abundance of resources, specifically parents and funds that support them.

            I walked away from this book confirming what I already suspected, that students learn best when they are engaged. Engagement means that students have a sense of purpose and autonomy over their learning. Unfortunately, our system is not set up to promote engagement but to promote high GPAs and SAT scores to get students into college. Simply put, the way students learn and the way they are taught don’t match up in our current school system.

            To make matters worse, we are not providing students the opportunity to develop essential skills that they really need like innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving. The world of today and tomorrow require these skills.

            This book inspired me to think that we, in education, cannot wait for the education system to drastically change instead we need to implement better practices and better opportunities on our own. We need to continuously assess what is working and what is not. The measurement of success should come directly from how well are students are doing not by how well they score on standardized tests. We need to encourage more hands-on learning and less drill and kill. We all want kids to find their passion and run with it.  

           

Some of the facts Dintersmith shared were not surprising but still deplorable and noteworthy to consider.

“…47% of adults in the United States can’t pay an unanticipated bill of $400 unless they sell off personal possessions or beg money from friends or family.” page. 13.

“…3% of the enrollment at our nation’s most competitive colleges come from families in the bottom income quartile. At most elite colleges, as many students come from the society’s top 1% as from the bottom’s 60%.” page. 122

“…19% of our kids who drop out of high school, …two thirds of prison inmates are high school dropouts.” page. 150