Educator agent for change
Deborah Meier, 73, principal of the Mission Hill pilot elementary school in Roxbury and founder of the Central Park East alternative schools in East Harlem, N.Y., has spent 35 years advocating for education reform and developing a new approach to urban schooling. Central Park East, a K-6 elementary school, was the first school of choice in a famous public school ''experiment" in school choice in East Harlem's District 4 in 1974. Based on Meier's work with that school and a few others, Central Park East Secondary School was formed in 1985 and became one of the first schools in a national network of schools to base graduation on a set of rigorous portfolios presented to an external review committee. Over 90 percent of Central Park East Secondary School's incoming ninth-graders graduate and 95 percent go on to four-year colleges. A native New Yorker and renowned critic of state-mandated standards and testing, Meier believes that a strong community of parents, teachers, and students is necessary to build effective schools. In an interview with Katie Oliveri, a Globe correspondent, Meier talked about measuring success among students, parents, their children, and education, homework, and her thoughts on the controversial No Child Left Behind Act. Meier recently contributed to the book ''Many Children Left Behind," published by Beacon Press and due out Thursday, in which she writes about the importance of democracy in our education system.
Q. You believe that parents should be partners in the educational process. What do you say to parents who say to you, ''I can't help my child with their homework"?
A. Then we need to rethink the homework. The purpose of school isn't to make parents seem dumb to their kids. Parents are confronted with the same problems as educators. Home schooling is a fact of life and it must be done. . . . Parents are responsible for the other 12 hours their kids are out of school, and if they don't take that responsibility seriously, their children are at risk. I think sometimes schools help make parents feel stupid, and it's done because they're being defensive. There is little time in both the parent's and teacher's lives for collaboration.
Q. How do you know when a child has really learned something?
A. Intellectual achievement can be seen in all the work that [students] do. . . . It's a combination of written, spoken, and even standardized testing. I think test scores are less important, but that doesn't mean they are not important at all. I look at a mix of things to have a better sense of success. I try to look deeper if there is a problem. . . . Is it a bad measure of testing achievement or is the child picking up different aspects? You're in trouble if a child's achievement is based strictly on test scores and not on the child themselves.
Q. Why do you feel the [No Child Left Behind] Act is actually leaving our children behind?
A. Because by that very nature, it begins to create schools that place focus on students doing well on tests; that's the greatest handicap we can give them. Children need to learn in school how to reason and how to communicate. . . . You can't test for mind and heart matters such as these. It frightens me when schools start cutting out recess and when they teach art class as though it's testable. By doing this, it distorts intellectual life and ignores things kids need. I find that sometimes kids get disgusted with school because they can't stand being humiliated. Subjects like math and history should be taught as a playful subject, something to be tried out. . . . When math isn't taught this way, we cut the future mathematicians out of our future.
Q. What's your ideal classroom?
A. Twenty students is ideal. . . . It's hard to make important decisions with more than 20 in a classroom. . . . Twenty or less lends to effective face-to-face discussions. The faculty shouldn't be more than 20 either, since they're the people who make those decisions. . . . No school should have more than 300 [total].
Q. If a student asked you personally to take one of the tests they were given, would you be willing to do so and post your score?
A. People who we consider successful should be required to take the same tests and have their scores compared if we're making kids do it. I say this only for purposes of public information...we're assuming adults who teach this stuff already know it so it shouldn't be a problem. If the state Legislature, the board of education, and teachers are giving these tests, they should be willing to take them.
Q. If you were teaching a teachers' college class, what exactly would you teach?
A. First,
you have to know thy self as a learner. . . . You have to recognize
what stands in the way of your learning and what facilitates your
own learning. You must gain a better understanding of what people
are like by learning from each other. . . . We must expose ourselves
in order to solve problems. We are all learning disabled in different
ways and gifted in other ways. We need to be clear that it's important
to use our minds well and become educated people and not to just settle
for high test scores and hard classes. 