Promising Future: A Call to Improve Learning for Maine's Secondary Students

Abstract:

The book began with A Call to Action; a challenge and invitation to join the effort to improve learning. The 6 Core Principles for Secondary Educational Practice in Maine that guide the improvements were listed as follows:

• Students are successful in educational experiences which promote:

1. A safe, respectful and caring environment.
   
2. High universal expectations with a variety of learning opportunities.
   
3. Understanding and actions based on assessment data.
   
4. Teacher practice which values and builds upon the contributions and needs of each learner.
   
5. Equitable and democratic practices.
   
6. Coherence among mission, goals, actions, and outcomes.
   

The book continued on with an overview of observations and challenges seen in the public secondary education system in Maine in 1998. After clarifying the challenges most schools are facing, the book goes on to describe the 15 Core Practices which are recommendations for actively improvement. These practices were split up into two types: Core Practices for Learning and Teaching and Core School Practices to Support Learning. Once these 15 practices were listed and described with essential elements, they went on to describe practices that need to be phased out because they impede the Core Practices. And finally, they describe how seven recommendations to local and state policy makers, parent groups, school district leadership, town officials, and state leaders. These policy makers must help if high schools are to serve our youth most effectively!

Reflection:

I feel they did a really great job creating these Promising Future Core Principles, Practices and Recommendations. All of them are important and need to be implemented in order to improve all Maine high schools. I think Core Practice 3: Every teacher challenges learners both to master the fundamentals of the disciplines and to integrate skills and concepts across the disciplines to address relevant issues and problems, is very important. So many teachers teach their subject and only their subject; a lot more learning could occur by integrating disciplines. One practice that I do not think is applied nearly enough is Core Practice 4: Every Student learns in collaborative groups of students with diverse learning styles, skills, ages, personal backgrounds, and career goals. Tracking is used in most high schools and it hinders the learning of the majority of students. Given that we are a culture that "communicates high expectations for all, equity of educational opportunity and goals, and democracy requires that students experience learning alongside students who are distinctly different from them" (pg 18). Why, if our culture requires us to work in a diverse society, should we teach students in homogeneous groupings?
I really enjoyed reading this short book about Promising Futures. If all Practices are implemented correctly and maintained in all high schools in Maine, I think we will see a huge improvements over the next tens years.