Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Transforming Education in Cleveland is a Vital Part of the City's Growth
by Piet van Lier, Executive Director, Cleveland Transformation Alliance
In her talk at the City Club last week, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond focused on the need to educate the whole child, address students’ social and emotional needs, and dramatically change assessment.
On testing:
- We must assess competency, critical thinking, and even compassion, not just an ability to pick the right answer on a multiple-choice test;
- We need to move from “assess and punish” to “assess and improve.”
On a whole-child approach:
- In addition to dramatically changing assessment, we must include art and music as core subjects; they are foundational, “not frills.”
Dr. Darling-Hammond praised Ohio’s strategic plan for education for its focus on equity and the needs of individual students, and its stated goal to address social-emotional learning. Without this shift, it will be hard to improve education in a world where so many children live with toxic stress on a daily basis.
Money may not be the answer to every challenge – effective solutions do matter. But legislators must be willing to find ways to pay for these good ideas, otherwise they’ll remain plans on paper and won’t improve the lives of our children, our families, and our communities.
